XPost: alt.magick.tyagi, alt.magick, alt.pagan.magick   
   XPost: alt.tarot, alt.divination   
   From: luckymojo.com@nagasiva   
      
   Orig-To: private email   
      
   50041001 viii om   
      
   Plebeian Tarotology: The Hierophant (F-GUIDE-TAURUS)   
      
   #> The pearl symbolized evil. It led a simple man to greed, treachery   
   #> and loss to its owner. This is more symbolic of the Devil, I would   
   #> say. I see the owner as the Four of Pentacles being trapped by the   
   #> Devil.   
      
   symbols, of their own, constitute no meaning whatever except to the   
   interpreter of those symbols. prefiguring them is a conceptualiza-   
   tion determinable by the logic of their composition, but it is only   
   in the entire structure that this logic may be properly discerned.   
      
   #>    The black & white, right & wrong, images from the exerpt describe   
   #> the Hierophant.IMO, the Hierophant, taken to its extreme, can fall   
   #> into a Devil-like trap, but on a spiritual/religious/philosophical   
   #> level, rather than material.   
      
   GUIDE (hierophant):   
   	stature, inequity, trickle-down, transmission, authority   
           in a structured, formal, and matricular performance test.   
      
   	the Guide is the practiced of the regurgitated and safe,   
   	carefully providing what has proven true in a constrained   
   	and universal fashion what may only work for a select few.   
      
   # ...the Pearl itself symbolizes innocence _and_ change....   
      
   no object, itself, represents change. better inferences of   
   change or flux are processes and events identified but which   
   are truly inconsistent, like combustion and what we call   
   'flame' (EARTH/FIRE), or atmosphere and what we call   
   'cloud' (WATER/AIR).   
      
   # The Pearl while in possession, becomes a vision of literal   
   # blackness, instead of promise of luminous whiteness. We   
   # have to know when to throw this possession back into the   
   # sea where it emerged....   
      
   especially in reflection of popular stories (e.g. "The Pearl").   
      
   # ...the Hierophant is the Magus of the Eternal Gods.   
      
   the hierophant is the communicator of religious edifices,   
   the instructor of staid knowledge congealed into tradition.   
   this is why the individual has social costume, sports   
   wands of societal power, and is depicted resounding in the   
   status of ecclesiastical benefaction: because he is no   
   Magus, he is the tool of a bureaucratic, preservative   
   enterprise born aloft by cultural predisposition and bias.   
      
   # Here is Magic.   
      
   here is the 'magic' of the lower kind: change in conformity   
   with will, established through direct influence and coarse,   
   blatant cause. there is no embarrassment in its exposition:   
   engineering, whether technical or social, is an achievement.   
   its lack of the use of *symbolic and indirect cause* leaves   
   the category of 'magic' to the most contrived and ridiculous.   
      
   # Here is Eternal Knowledge.   
      
   we can only hope that such knowledge exists, let alone   
   attempt to preserve it in social institutions, doctrines   
   of edited composition, and biased perceptual inferences.   
   the hierophant doesn't represent Science, but Religion.   
   he doesn't suggest the transcendental except in the aims   
   promoted to the common for purposes of sociopolitical   
   advantage and exploitation. preserving cultural treasure,   
   he mixes it with the cement of dogma and produces but a   
   rudimentary stew of temporary value, dependent upon the   
   local entropic dissolution for comparative brilliance.   
      
   this is not Knowledge, but knowledge. this is not Eternal,   
   but strictly temporal and a limited refraction of half-   
   understood and half-received wisdom, preserved for all.   
      
   # We will never know all that knowledge.   
      
   quite true, but for reasons based on the power of   
   imagination and the unlimited capacity of expression.   
      
   # We are not allowed to know it all.   
      
   no such Grand Epistemological Guardian delimits us.   
   we are instead barricaded by the parameters of our   
   own minds and biases, forever excluded from true   
   understanding by attachment to particular lexicons,   
   theories, and ideologies which serve our egotism.   
      
   # What we are provided with, is the necessities,   
   # whether we want them or not.   
      
   so, in our innocence and ignorance, we vainly hope,   
   in actuality given so much more than we need that   
   we are awash in disorientation at the babbling   
   translucent similarity of it all.   
      
   quoting not "The Book of Thoth":   
   #$	Offer thyself Virgin to the Knowledge and   
   #$	Conversation of thine Holy Guardian Angel.   
      
   whereas the Hierophant of the Old Aeon recommends   
   steeping oneself in study and preconception prior   
   to assuming a known role within an age-old edifice.   
   whether a New Aeon or Old, the role of the Hierophant   
   is the same, the limitations and futilities the same.   
      
   #$	All else is a snare.   
      
   and yet the aim is utopian and innocent in its   
   blatant impossibility. how is it suggested that   
   one ought achieve this 'Virginity'? with quasi-   
   Jewish rituals reformatting to Old Aeonic   
   standards the glories dreamt by The New Elect   
   ("The Qabalistic Cross"? "The Banishing Ritual   
   of the Pentagram"?!).   
      
   #$	Be thou athlete with the eight limbs of   
   #$	Yoga: for without these thou are not   
   #$	disciplined for any fight.   
   #$	---------------------------------------   
   #$	A.Crowley (Comment on 'The Hierophant')   
      
   better by this spiritual dwarf was written in his   
   Aleph on the matter of the Hierophant amidst aeons:   
      
   $	All these symbols [of the Bull, related   
   $	to The Hierophant in character/meaning]   
   $	are most simlar in their nature, save as   
   $	the Slave-Gods have read their own Formula   
   $	into the Simplicity of Truth. For there is   
   $	Naught so plain that Ignorance and Malice   
   $	may not confuse and misinterpret it, even   
   $	as the Bat is dazzled and bewildered by   
   $	the Light of the Sun. See then that thou   
   $	understand this Bull in Terms of the Law   
   $	of this our AEon  of Life.   
   $	---------------------------------------------   
   $	"Liber Aleph...", Crowley, Ordo Templi   
   $	 Orientis (OTO), 1991; 'Taurus', p. 153.   
   $	=============================================   
      
   while disciplined for any fight, the yogi coalesces   
   without regard for integrity and elegance, aiming for   
   a unity by dispensing with diversity and innovation.   
      
   # The three elements spoken of are the Virgin,   
      
   hamstringed by a lack of experience.   
      
   # the Snare,   
      
   myopic in the extreme attempt at detachment from all.   
      
   # and the Fight.   
      
   a struggle-based warrior-mentality born of adverse   
   condition and perpetuating a terse and aggressive   
   attitude to all it encounters, eventually blind.   
      
   # In the perpetual sense of readiness, all three must   
   # be kept most consistently at the focal point of any   
   # and all intent.   
      
   ascetic in its orientation, this trio predisposes the   
   sour and surly, disappointed with the pure and perfect   
   pleasures of the world, to look askance at those who   
   are fully and gainfully engaged, projecting a hierarchy   
   where none obtains, and an escalating withdrawal to the   
   status of spirituality.   
      
   those with exposure to the holistic expanse of the real   
   know that this may serve the cause of an 'Elect', but   
   reduces to stringency what might otherwise become very   
   grand and playful in its expressive mystical delight.   
      
   y   
   r       B   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)