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Tarot Purpose, Knowledge, and Occult Philosophy

To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick,alt.tarot,alt.divination
From: catherine yronwode 
Subject: Re: Tarot Purpose, Knowledge, and Occult Philosophy
Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2004 04:24:51 GMT

Humble T*r*t S**r wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 07 Jan 2004 02:06:52 GMT, catherine yronwode
>  wrote:
> 
> >The Bible has been used as an oracle far
> >longer than the cards invented to play the game of tarocchi
> >have been used for divination. Jews practice Bibliomancy
> >with the portion of scripture that is Jewish. The Christian
> >Bible is used as an oracle by Catholics, Protestants, and
> >Christian Spiritualists alike.

> >> Any book can be "used" in this way - even a cookery book -
> >> as in the answer to your question is three pounds of flour,
> >> folded in egg white
> >
> >To say that a cookery book could be used the same way as the
> >Bible is to betray your disrespect for a particular sacred
> >scripture of many people -- and this is a fault, i believe,
> >on your part.[...] forgive me if i am coming on too strong 
> >and you were just trying to be witty -- but i get quite 
> >annoyed when people compare how Jews and Christians practice 
> >magic to using a cookbook.

> please, show me where I specifically compared how Jews and
> Christians practice magic to using a cookery book, if you can.
> 
> I can certainly show you where I compared bibliomancy to the 
> "art"of randomly picking a meaningless passage in any old book 
> - I used a cookery book as an example.

Bibliomancy is a form of divinatory magic that relies for
its efficacy on the divine nature of scripture. A cookbook
is a mundane work of recipes for food and holds no link to
the divine.

I don't know if you are familiar with ceremonial magic (this
post is cross-posted to various newsgrous) but i assume from
your nick that you are familiar with tarot, so i shall make
a couple of analogies:  
 
I see in what you wrote a statement equivalent to 

"Invoking the names of the angels accoring to the Lesser
Banishing Ritual of the Pentragram could be done by calling
random names from a phone book" 

or 

"Reading tarot could be done by laying out the covers of 78
consecutive issues of the 'New Yorker' magazine."

or

"Reading the I Ching could be done by randomly throwing out
a basketful of plastic children's toys and interpreting the
way they fall."  

These are true statements -- but they are also untrue
statements. There is blunt truth in the word "could" -- it
COULD happen -- but subtle untruth is in the implication
that such rites would be divinatory or invocatory or would
result in a connection between the diviner and the divine.
There is a fine line between chaos magick and an
abandonement of magic altogether, between the adaptation of
rite and ritual to changing cultural paradigms and the
abandonment of rite and ritual in favour of trivial and
mundane jokes. I felt that you were crossing that line in a
way that undercut the discussion of tarot and Bibliomancy. 

Now, if i misinterpreted what you meant or if i interpreted
it correctly but we simply disagreed, you need only have
said that in plain English. There was no call for the ad
hominem attacks you made on me (and which i have deleted
here); i don't respond to them.

cat yronwode 

Freemasonry for Women ------- http://www.luckymojo.com/comasonry.html

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