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quote:Originally posted by Mystery Gypt:
oh great, take your advice on cabala from someone who claims to have learned it all from promethea? that's some in depth advice.
most people in our current time and place wouldn't know about cabala if not for the efforts of crowley and the golden dawn. where do you think moore gets his initial impetus? christ. "real" cabala doesn't even use the fuckig tarot cards, so if you're looking for those symbolic associations, you're already in a christianated / corrupted version.
you study crowley to understand crowley, and to see what a master synthesis looks like, not to understand the ultimate teachings of the zohar. how much hebrew do you speak?
don't mean to be so snarky, but it seems a silly thing to be purist about. unless you're actually going to study cabala with the hasids, you're cobbling together your own working technology of myth and symbol, and you should be clear on doing exactly that. crowley was.
In you urge to get angry over my criticism of Crowley, you were very, very annoying, mister. And you misinterpreted what I said, twisting my words, which is something I hate.
I shouldn't care about you, but I'll explain myself better so Jest can draw his own unbiased conclusions:
When I started to study magick, 7 years ago, it was by reading lots of Crowley's books. I didn't have a any OTO "masters" to teach me, because I knew of no such organization in Brasil, so the only one I could talk to about it was my boyfriend, who knew as much as I did.
I spent lots of time trying to figure out the meanings of all the numbers and symbolic references in the Book of the Law, and, lemme tell ya, the only thing I lerned from it was that "do what you will" is one of the nicest pieces of advice ever (oh, and I like the "every man and every woman is a star" bit, too).
The Book of Lies was very interesting and so was "Magick in Theory and Practice", but they had the same problem: sometimes I had to read the same paragraph over and over to get its meaning, which is ridiculous! I started to think that there should be other way to say things without being so arcane about them. I mean, Dion Fortune herself and Israel Regardie could do it, why not Frater fucking Perdurabo, or whatever?
My irritation with Crowley increased as I began to read Chaos Magick stuff and Chinese and Hindu philosophy - a relief.
Ok, so:
- did I say Crowley had no merit for bringing Cabala to "our current time and place"? I didn't.
But the fact that he was the responsible (and I have my doubts) doesn't mean I should rotten my eyes into his cryptic writings and pretend I'm lerning soemthing when I could get much more from more didactic books. That'd be purism.
- did I say I learned "it all" from Promethea? Well, I did learn some things from Promethea, but mostly from three other works I left in Brasil, one of them written by a rabi (sp?), the other relating the Three of Life with Jung's collective unconscious and Waite's tarot deck and the third I took from the internet (can't remember the names). And I must say: all these works gave me wonderful insights on the theory and the practice, even if they're not the "real" cabala.
And Promethea has illustrations, which are very useful.
Actually, your despising of Promethea smells like some kind of prejudice against comicbooks as lerning material.
- What's "real Cabala", anyway? Whatever it is, I wasn't even thinking of it.
- Who dictated that "you study crowley to understand crowley"? When did you make this law?
And why would I want to understand Crowley? What will it teach me?
- Who the hell is being purist? 
I'm just trying to make him look for more didactic stuff, so he can actually get easily into the theory. Then he can go back to Crowley with a better background.
- I don't speak hebrew. Do you, master? And what on earth has this to do with undestanding things?
Oh, 777 I still think is very useful.
Odd Jest, I have Thoth's Tarot deck too, and I love it. You could as well look for books by people who studied the Book of Thoth, they usually have good explanations/interpretations if you really want to get into the meanings. I had one in my mind right now, but I forgot the name. As soon I remember, I'll post about it for you.
Flame: cheers  |
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