A while back I went on a bit of a Crowley binge. I wasn’t reading his works or studying his Tarot deck, instead I was studying him. I read three different biographies in an attempt to learn more about the man behind all of those nasty, naughty stories. I wanted to know if he really was the “Wickedest Man in the World”, or if he just got a bum rap from the press. It is true that I could have gone directly to the source, reading all of Crowley’s works in order to get a better view of the man. …
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I have written in the past about my concerns about channelled books and about information passed on by those who have left the path, but now I’m wondering about those works which clearly contain “bad history” and other things that are widely known to have been disproved. Examples that come to mind here are Margaret Murray‘s works or that good old Ancient Potato Goddess featured in a book on Celtic spirituality published (and obviously not fact-checked) by everyone’s favourite new age publisher. Right now I’m reading The Sacred Tarot, a book published by The Church of Light (an occult organization…
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Back in December, I signed up for a free teleconference about an oracle deck I had picked up a little while before. The deck is The Anubis Oracle, by Nicky Scully and Star Wolf, illustrated by Kris Waldherr (who created The Goddess Tarot and The Lover’s Path Tarot). I was really interested to hear what the creators had to say about the deck, partly because I was a little skeptical about it. The deck, accompanying book, and a sister book (Shamanic Mysteries of Egypt) are all the result of channelling. And, as I’ve said before, I’m not sure how I…
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Lately I’ve been reading biographies of Aleister Crowley in an attempt to better understand the man who had a great influence on both the modern Western Mystery Tradition and on Tarot. Of the three books I read, the last, Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley by Lawrence Sutin, was really the only one that dug into his magic(k)al work. In that book, I came across a really interesting quote from Crowley about Tarot. (I believe it actually originates from The Book of Thoth, but I have yet to work my way through that tome.) He says: The…