I could now study and practice anything I wished!
The turning-point came for me in the year 1999, with the discovery of a book written by a man named Francis Israel Regardie. This book outlined the initiatic curriculum of the Western Magickal tradition, pioneered by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, of which both the author and Crowley were members. I was deeply moved by what I read, and I immediately began converting the living room of my apartment into a temple. I made an altar, the four elemental Weapons (Wand, Chalice, Pantacle, and Dagger), and I even handmade a “tau” robe. I began in earnest the daily practice of the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, just as I'd done at age nine with chalk and imagination.
At the time, I was introduced by a coworker to the Pagan community in Salem Massachusetts, of which she was a member. I learned the hard way that mentioning the name Aleister Crowley in the Wiccan community was a fast way to unmake friends! Strangely, I still hadn't read anything written by the man, even though I was now fully immersed in the curriculum of the esoteric society to which Crowley himself had once belonged.
Then one day, as I was walking the streets of Salem, I wandered into a store called The Raven's Nest. I was greeted by a man with wild eyes and a slightly cocky air about him. We talked at length about my current practices, The Golden Dawn, and the spiritual usefulness of psychedelics. He invited me to join a private ceremony taking place on the following Saturday, and I agreed. The ceremony involved a ritual reenactment and celebration of the Rites of Osiris and the Resurrected god, and blended Egyptian and Christian motifs into a single archetypal whole. The words “Thelema” and “Ra Hoor Khuith” were repeated here and there, and the phrase “Do What Thou Wilt shall be the Whole of the Law” was uttered by the High Priest, to which the other Officers responded with “Love is the Law, Love under Will”.
A few months later, my associate asked me if I'd like to become a Probationer of the Ordo Templi Orientis (Order of Oriental Templars). The branch of the Order to which he belonged is called the Holy Order of Ra Hoor Khuith. I accepted the offer and was hoodwinked, blindfolded, and led into an antechamber where my initiation took place on the fifth of July, in the year 1999. It was here that I was introduced to who Aleister Crowley truly was, at least his spiritual philosophy. Afterwards I was sworn to secrecy, asked to create a new name for myself, and given three books authored by Crowley to study and practice. These books were The Book of the Law, Magick in Theory and Practice, and The Heart of the Master. Besides certain metaphors, ambiguous symbols, and sarcastic turns-of-phrase, I couldn't understand why this man had gotten such a bad reputation. It wasn't until I researched Crowley's history, read a few biographies, and saw first-hand how his work was being perverted by other authors for their own ends, that Crowley's nasty reputation began to make sense to me.
I eventually withdrew from the Holy Order of Ra Hoor Khuith, for reasons I won't get into, and a few people left with me. My own practices had rapidly come to fruition. It was as if this approach to spiritual transformation was in direct alignment with my soul, and I took to it like a duck to water. The highly ritualized approach of the Western Magickal tradition enabled me to use my seemingly inborn talent for lucid dreaming and astral projection to rewire my neuronet to house higher frequencies, face my own Shadow, and devote my entire bodymind to the Work. This devotion to God, the Divine, the Sacred, by whatever name, began in early childhood, and had now come to a peak as the result of the unity of Light and Shadow within me. My own darker elements had hitherto been repressed, due to the one-sided theology of my Christian upbringing. This psychic schism had now been healed, thanks to the holistic approach of the East/West synthesis of the Western Magickal tradition.
During this time I lived in poverty. I spent most of my time in seclusion and surrounded myself with only a handful of fellow-seekers. This seclusion, it turns out, was pivotal to the three greatest initiatic crises of my life. The first and most earth-shattering one was my attainment of what has been called The Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel (HGA). This came unbidden, because of profound solitude, devotion, and self-discovery. This experience had a dramatic impact on myself and the people closest to me at the time. To be honest, I didn't handle it well at first. I was too young and stupid at the time and couldn't live up to the task I'd been presented with. It wasn't until the year 2004 that I'd begin to fully process and digest the information I'd received from my Daemon. I was fortunate to find a place and group of people who protected me during this period, which involved roughly two years of solitude and deep meditation. I worked as a musician and drywall taper, only as much as I needed to get by, and spent the rest of my time sitting in darkness with my Angel, until I was abandoned to the Abyss between the years 2006-2012.
Those were the worst years of my life…
Imagine being head-over-heels in love, and your lover suddenly leaves you. You were living beneath the waterfall of heaven and drinking from the fountain of poetic inspiration, and then suddenly all goes dark. The well runs dry and you don't even know who you are anymore or what you're capable of doing. It was at the midnight of that Dark Night of my Soul that I met my teacher, Dr. Yang Jwing Ming, from whom I'd learn Taoist Internal Alchemy and Nei Gong. Then, when I met the woman who’d eventually become my wife, I left Massachusetts and headed for Woodstock New York, where I met my Xingyquan teachers, Jason Blickstein and actor/teacher Martin LaPlatney, by whom I was initiated into the lineage of Li Gui Chang. In those days, my wife and I lived in a small ramshackle cabin in the middle of the woods on Yerry Hill Rd. We had no car, no money, no creature comforts like a hot shower, laundry facilities, windows that weren’t cracked or broken, or a real bed. We had to sleep on an inflatable mattress, hand-wash our clothes, boil water on a wood stove for bathing, and so forth. If we needed anything from the store, we had to make the three-and-a-half-mile long trek to town, which involved going down and up a steep mountain, regardless the weather. My wife became pregnant, and so this task fell solely onto my shoulders, and she had to endure the loud silence of the mountains alone for long periods.
Here's an aerial photo of the cabin taken by satellite:
I spent every waking hour practicing some aspect of Taoist/Buddhist practice, whether it was changing my basal breathing habits, Microcosmic Orbit, Taijiquan, or Mindfulness; I was always sharpening my sword, so to speak. I earned money by teaching Tai Chi to the Woodstock natives, eventually earning an official teaching slot at the Mountain View Studio. Soon thereafter, I landed a job working for the Municipality of the Town of Woodstock and moved us into an apartment (A hot shower never felt so good!)
During this time, I hadn't given much thought to Magick and Mr. Crowley. I was too focused on my own practices and with securing a life for my family. I gave Tarot readings to friends and family, but that's about it. Then, after I landed a job working for a successful construction company on the other side of the Rhinebeck bridge, we packed our bags and moved to Dutchess County, in the town of Hyde Park NY. Finally, we had gained a relatively stable financial situation, and all was good and well for the Kelley family. My creative, intellectual, and spiritual life took on a renewed vigor, and my diet became a Vegan one. I taught myself to read musical notation, began learning Spanish as a second language, began consolidating my Taoist, Yogic, Buddhist, Hermetic, Tantric, and Oneironautic knowledge into the system of Conscious Sleep that I’d eventually dub Subliminal Cognition Training (SCT). I wrote and published my first book on the subject in 2018, through Original Falcon Press, the other half of what used to be called New Falcon Publications. At the time, I thought nothing of the fact that this is the leading publisher responsible for keeping Crowley's work in print.
Then came the recent synchronicity that led to the writing of this preface…
The book you now hold in your hands was written in the year 2006, as an attempt to articulate and record the essential teaching of my HGA, using Crowley's Thoth Tarot deck as a symbolic template, a slideshow o
f archetypes to aid in the task of bridging my own spiritual pulse with the perennial wisdom of the Masters. A series of accidents put the publication of the book on hold. I phoned a trusted friend and asked if he'd save the manuscript to his computer, which he did, but a series of accidents led to that computer getting lost. I thought that was the end of it, and that the publication of Predicting The Present wasn’t “in the cards”, as the saying goes (pun totally intended).
It wasn't until the year 2017 that my friend, seeing that I recently published a book, notified me and said that he's found the computer containing my manuscript! I excitedly asked him to email the book to me so that I might begin editing it. I notified the chief Editor of Original Falcon Press and sent him a few sample chapters. As I was combing through the manuscript, I decided that I wanted to add some Crowley quotes to open each chapter with. During my internet hunt good quotes, I stumbled upon Crowley's translation of the Taoist classic, the Tao Te Ching, which he began translating during his Magickal retirement on a small Island, called Esopus (Aesopus) Island, where he stayed for forty days and nights. During this time, Crowley claims that he discovered the ultimate secret of the grade of Magus, which he says is most accurately contained in Taoist mysticism. He also worked out some of the concepts for the Thoth Tarot deck during his stay on Esopus. I wasn't aware of the location of Esopus Island until I saw on the internet that it’s somewhere in New York. Out of curiosity, I decided to punch “Esopus Island” into the Google Maps app on my phone. The directions read, “Six minutes by car, fifteen minutes by foot”. I thought the app must be mistaken…
So I put my shoes on and started walking…
Sure enough, overlooking the Hudson River at the Vanderbilt Mansion behind my apartment, was Esopus Island! What are the odds that a famous British occultist would find his way to a small desultory island in the middle of the Hudson River in the year 1918, and that in 2015 I'd unknowingly find my way to an apartment that's so close to that island I could swim to it?
I rented a Kayak and made my way to Esopus. I meditated, performed Crowley's banishing ritual (called the Star Rubae), and looked for any trace of the man who called himself the Prophet of the New Age, the Master Therion, and the Great Beast. But the red paint with which Crowley had painted the words “Do What Thou Wilt shall be the Whole of the Law” had long since faded away. It only seemed right that I should compose this preface here, on Esopus Island, where the man who created the Tarot deck for which this book has been written had the experiences that gave birth to it. I'm not a Thelemite, though I do admire much about Thelemic philosophy; but I do admire Crowley's genius. Perhaps now, having written this book, the strange karma which has kept me walking in the shadow of The Master Therion for as long as I can remember, will now come to fruition.
Daniel Kelley (Fr. Oneiros Anathanatos)
Esopus Island, Hyde Park NY.
June 2nd, 2018, 1:31 pm
Introduction
How I Came to Write this Book
My initiation into the world of Tarot began in the year 2004, as a birthday gift from a friend. I'd mentioned to her on a few occasions that I was very much intrigued by Aleister Crowley's Thoth deck, for I'd seen a painting of the seventeenth trump, The Star, and was struck by its profound depth and beauty. My appreciation for these cards quickly evolved into a love affair, and what I thought was going to be a simple process of learning to give Tarot card readings soon evolved into a game of insights, through which I was able to consolidate the concepts gleaned from the myriad schools of thought I'd been devoted to for the past twelve years. I'd found in the pictorial format of Tarot an efficient organizer of otherwise unexplainable truths, for Tarot is a map of symbols which follow a definite pattern. Like anything else in the manifest universe, each card in the deck is at the same time an individual and a participant in something greater than itself. Tarot is a map, but a living one. This is important to understand because, although it follows a definite pattern, Tarot present us with information that works only when we apply ourselves to it, and vice versa. Tarot, like the game of Chess, has rules; but the way those rules apply will depend upon the nature of the player.
You can get the gist of how Tarot works by way of analogy to the art of poetry. If a poet wishes to express, say, the joys of romantic union, he'll of course use words which follow a clearly defined pattern. Should he decide to write a sonnet, the expression of his joy will look different than it would should he decide to write a villanelle. In much the same way, there are no proper arrangements of the cards when dealing with any specific issue. The issue fills the cards and takes their shape in the same way as the poet’s joy takes the form of his chosen style of lyrical composition. The purpose of contemplating Tarot is to flex and stretch your capacity for insight by taking the problem itself to the level of the solution, which is never on the same level as that of the problem.
One of the hallmarks of my own spiritual path has been my willingness to confront issues within myself and others without unnecessary criticism or preconceived ideas. As a result, I've become thoroughly convinced that the binary relationship between what one thinks versus what one actually is sits at the heart of spiritual transformation and is usually interpreted and expressed according to personal and cultural disposition. In other words, we rarely contemplate an issue afresh. The purpose of this book is to introduce the Tarotist to a way of using the Thoth deck to stir the cauldron of the deeper layers of the soul, so that the clandestine forces hiding there can be lured into the light and their energies reclaimed without feeling the need to filter them through the sieve of conditioned morality. The spiritual path is beset with many tasks such as this, and this is a book about that path.
But by “spirituality” I don't necessarily mean religious.
To unquestioningly adopt a list of commandments rather than allowing their significance to flower because of profound and honest self-exploration represents, to me, not sincere aspiration but a pathological distortion of the spiritual drive. The so-called fruits of the spirit aren't attained through religious obedience any more than the apple gives birth to the tree upon which it grows. To think or practice in such a way is to avoid doing the real work. One might use honey-coated words as bait to lure one's lover to the bedroom, but a mere "fisher of men” attempting to hook the Almighty by specialized means is a gross overestimation of any method whatsoever! To be a Christian, for example, doesn't necessarily make you Christ-like, nor does the compulsive repetition of rituals approximate a true transformation of consciousness.
Religion becomes problematic the instant it attempts to organize itself into an elitist political institution in which dogma takes precedence over genuine mystical epiphany. Having said that much, if the essentials of the religious drive are honored first, before one buffers them with that soiled pillow called dogma, then religion can become an extraordinary tool on the way to discovering one's own personal myth. The journey of self-discovery is a true quest, and it should at least attempt to honor the importance of not being a hypocrite. Therefore, within the pages of this book, you'll find repeatedly stressed the importance of self-acceptance coupled with enlightened self-examination.
It’s my sincere wish to provide the Tarotist with a recapitulation of the interrelated symbols of the Thoth deck and, at the same time, to paint a picture of the perennial wisdom of the Masters pre-modern, modern, and post-modern, using this beautiful Tarot deck as a canvas. Thus, each chapter opens with a list of helpful quotes, carefully selected to illustrate the myriad levels of meaning ascribed to the trumps. These quotes, along with the many parables and anecdotes found throughout the text, serve a dual purpose:
To indicate that which can't be understood by the intellect alone and to do so in an entertaining way.
I've done my best to be as diverse as possible in selecting these quotes and stories. I do, however, confess that I've drawn specifically from those teachers who've been a source of inspiration for me, so if at times I appear biased please forgive me.
I realize also that a good portion of this book presupposes that the reader has at least an elementary knowledge of Kabbalah. To me, any true examination of the trumps, specifically the trumps of the Thoth deck, can't possibly be complete without at least getting our feet wet in Kabbalistic and Alchemical waters which, to the novice, may at times feel more like quicksand. The many Tarotists who use the cards intuitively evidence that this knowledge isn't necessary to give an accurate and helpful reading; however, to obtain the full benefits of the Thoth deck as a contemplative tool, its relationship to the Tree of Life (and Knowledge) quite simply can't be sidestepped. For the sake of convenience, I've included in the Appendix a diagram of the Tree of Life with the twenty-two trumps in the locations unique to the Thoth deck. I'd like to make it clear that these forays into the more abstract features of Tarot are always with an eye to their direct relationship to spiritual growth and insight. Where possible, I try to offer analogies and parables to connect the abstract with the practical applications of these correspondences. The reader can then view them in relation to her own situation.
It's also worth mentioning that this isn't a workbook. As a book written namely for the intermediate to advanced Tarotist, it's presumed the reader already has an array of spreads with which to work. For this reason, I've only offered my ideas for spread design where it was necessary to elucidate a certain standpoint from which to view a particular arrangement of the trumps.
How This Book is Arranged
This book is written from a psychospiritual standpoint, approaching the multi-dimensionality of the Major Arcana from the vantage point of all-encompassing Spirit. For this reason, the so-called "light" and "shadow" aspects of each card are honored as necessary to the full apprehension of a card on its highest level, but there's no absolute distinction made between them.
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