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| Golden Dawn regalia of Aleister Crowley |
I have written here before about my problem with Qabala. My problem is that the Major Arcana cards are placed on the pathways (well they have to be, there are 22 of them), whereas their importance would suggest they ought to be on the sephiroth. Cowley talks of them being illuminated by the sephiroth, and I think it should be the other way around. This is only one of the orthodoxies of tarot which I find hard to swallow, and thus I will always incline to witchcraft. Can you imagine what I'd be like in a Golden Dawn temple?
Despite my chronic INFJ mixture of total conformity and simultaneous anarchy, which would make me unfitted to a magical order and even used to make my own mother say she couldn't make me out, I find the Golden Dawn fascinating. In the way I do Freemasonry, but would never join, because it is another of the ingredients of modern witchcraft. The true historical predecessors, the cunning men and women, got their magic from the grimoire tradition, and thus this theft is in a great tradition. I particularly like this article about Doreen Valiente drinking from this well before she met Old Gerald.
Personally the reason I want to get to grips with the Golden Dawn tarot is that if you've seen it, it crackles with magic! It is also the tradition underlying both the Rider-Waite and Thoth traditions so is a venerable ancestor. I have a feeling that learning its system will illuminate much that comes afterwards in tarot.
