Turning Things Around: The Inner Tarot Revolution Chapter 30
Analysis Paralysis
Welcome to Chapter 30 of Turning Things Around: The Inner Tarot Revolution. The Sun Card and Shadow Card for this chapter follow smoothly from my previous post, Sic Semper Tyrannis!, in ways that have been wholly unexpected (which follows from the fact that I wasn’t completely sure I was even going to write that post until the day I did so).
Today is the Spring Equinox, which is one of my favorite days of the year, as well. It’s close to my birthday. It’s the beginning of Spring. It’s one of two annual points of balance between light and darkness, which fits with many of my personal sensibilities (not to mention the very essence of my Word, Hermekate). What’s not to love, really?
My feelings after publishing Sic Semper Tyrannis! are conflicted.
On the one hand, it felt great to finally articulate some aspects of the Word of Hermekate that had previously been left largely unexpressed. In that post, I highlighted the relationship between the Word of Hermekate and that of Xem, which has been a theme on my path for several years running. In some regards, it has haunted my path like a specter of sorts, due in large part to my former aspirations to join Temple of Set and the fact that I was dimly aware of the…”mixed” legacy of Xem. To finally give expression to the sympathies between Hermekate and Xem was an act of “claiming” for which I’ve longed, inexplicably, since before I had any good, rational reason to do so.
It also felt very good to express how I see those facts connecting with the Word of Xeper itself, and to finally say out loud that I feel very much as though I’m here to set aright something that has gone very wrong in terms of the way both Xeper and Xem have unfolded. This is still a matter to which I am largely blind; even with the information I do have, there remain very large gaps in my understanding of the full context into which I feel the Word of Hermekate fits. The reason for this is very simple: Having never been a Temple of Set member, there is a lot of the story that I just don’t know. The amount of information regarding the Temple’s history that has been published is minimal, and much of it is very likely to be outdated at this point. Although my findings thus far have only supported and added weight to what was previously nothing but a hunch, I have to face a certain reality: I have been forming certain conclusions based on accounts of events that are now something like 40 years old. In light of all that I don’t know, it’s very easy to second-guess myself and to suppose that perhaps this is all a lot of projection on my part.
I really went out on a limb writing that post, knowing there was a big chance of achieving nothing more than making a huge fool out of myself.
I also know that, even if the picture I am forming is accurate, it is likely to be viewed by certain people (particularly members of the Temple of Set) as overstepping boundaries of propriety. I can imagine certain people reading this stuff and thinking, “Who the fuck does this guy think he is to be saying this stuff?”
And the answer would be: This guy thinks he is the Magus of Hermekate, whose Word is every bit as connected to The Prince of Darkness as any other Word, from Xeper to Xem, from Runa to Remanifest. It may sound farfetched to some, but the very fact that Hermekate is coming from outside the existing tradition of previous Words of the Aeon of Set is very much the point. I am taking it on faith that Hermekate connects with all of these other Words, and with the activities of the Temple these past 40-ish years, in ways that illustrate a “jumping of the gap” in public knowledge of the above.
From what I understand, the Word of Hermekate is meant to fit in and line up with the inner work of the Temple like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle.
The ostensible purpose of this would be to illustrate that, despite great effort on the part of the Temple’s founder, its environment and its influence are not as “isolate” from the rest of humanity as has been thus far supposed. In a sense, it is meant to serve as a signal confirming that, yes: The Prince of Darkness is very real, which is a fact that, from what I can tell, is difficult even for many Temple members to accept even though that is one of the organization’s very founding principles. It’s one of the chief ways in which the Temple differentiated itself from the Church of Satan; and yet (as I know all too well from personal experience), even if one is more or less inclined to believe in the reality of Set, it still somehow manages to come as a shock when one sees certain phenomena that make such a reality impossible to ignore.
A passage from Don Webb’s Overthrowing the Old Gods comes to mind that illustrates this well; I remember being surprised to read it (since, again, my understanding was that the reality of Set is taken as a given by everyone in The Temple):
When I was a new adept, I had to represent the Temple at a law enforcement seminar that Aquino had suddenly been unable to attend due to a pinched nerve. When I reported on the event (which had scared me to death), Aquino remarked that he thought that Set must have pinched the nerve on his back. At the time I thought this was a silly religious remark. Now I understand it.
pp. 152-153
However, when I first read the passage, I was much less familiar than I am today with the difference between a Temple Adept and a member of the Priesthood. Knowing how that difference is basically defined (i.e., that a member of the Priesthood is one whose personal connection with Set is greatly enhanced and much deeper than that of the average person), the above scenario now makes much more sense to me.
This supposition of mine runs even deeper than I have suggested above; this is the first time I am admitting this (and it feels risky to do so), but the truth is that I have sometimes felt, from a place deep within, that my coming may even have been “predicted” or “foreseen” at some point in the Temple’s history—that Set may have suggested to at least one, but possibly more than one person, that someone like me would someday appear.
I used to temper this feeling with hard doubt, until recently, when someone told me that they had always felt that someone would show up at the Temple’s doorstep already a Magus, and that they would either join the Temple and completely change things, or they would stay out of the Temple and found a different group. In my case, I actually tried like hell to get in, but was turned away twice; now I am carrying my Word anyway, without their support. The only detail that has been different is that thus far, I have been adamant about not founding a new group. However, sometimes I think that’s my fear and self-doubt talking. There are times when I think that’s precisely the thing I’m meant to do, and that I’m avoiding it.
I’ve repeated the story several times now about how my main “spirit guide” when I was younger—and the one who said himself that he was the representative of my Self, that he was the same thing to me that Aiwass was to Aleister Crowley—told me his name was Ilyas. I’ve mentioned how I had never encountered that name before he revealed it to me, but that I eventually learned it was the Arabic transliteration of the name of Elijah, an Old Testament prophet. There have been many ways in which that connection has carried symbolic meaning related to my path—one of them being that, along with Enoch, Elijah was the only other human being who was taken directly to heaven at the end of his life (Jesus doesn’t strictly count since, as the very Son of God, he was said to have come from there to begin with, and was thus never strictly “human” to begin with). We’ll touch on one point of relevance to that detail later, but there’s another one I often chuckle at when I think back on my difficulty in joining the Temple:
In Judaism, there is a tradition at Passover involving pouring an extra cup of wine for Elijah during the Seder, and then opening the door for him to enter (see “Who was Elijah and Why Do Jews Open the Door for Him on Passover?”). I believe this may also have been the ultimate source of a Christmas tradition in my Polish Catholic family wherein we would set an extra place at the table on Christmas Eve in case a beggar showed up at our door, because if that were to happen, it just might be Jesus.
I laugh, because I showed up, and I knocked at the Temple’s door, but I was not let in. As big of a letdown as this has often been for me, I also feel this was anticipated by Set, because the imbalance Hermekate is meant to correct has a lot to say for the fact that it happened in the first place.
There are other aspects of Elijah’s story that resonate with some of the ideas and themes I introduce above: He was a “firebrand,” his devotion to God so intense that he often behaved erratically; that fits with me and my experience thus far in carrying the Word of Hermekate. He, too, was on a mission to “right various wrongs.” According to the article I cited above:
In that period, [9th century BCE], a good number of the Israelites were wavering in their faith. King Ahab of Israel really wanted to have it both ways, worshiping the Israelite God and [the Canaanite god] Baal.
This fits somewhat with the “ambiguous” situation within the Temple that I mentioned above, wherein many of the members don’t seem to take Set as seriously as others; I’ve also seen some people allege that Michael Aquino was “hedging” his own bets, claiming Set was real while simultaneously maintaining a more “humanistic” approach so as to cater somewhat to the sensibilities of many of the Satanists who followed him in the founding of the Temple. Frankly, if you read his writings carefully, you do get a sense of ambiguity on his part as to the reality of Set; there are times when he makes clear, unequivocal statements that Set is real, and yet there are other times when his attitude is about as skeptical and rational as that of LaVey himself (and although LaVey’s popular reputation mainly holds that he was fully atheistic, there are those who say it was never that cut-and-dried with him, either; this tension between belief and rational doubt seems to be common in the Age of Satan and the Aeon of Set, and it does serve its important purposes).
I think it’s very likely that even Michael Aquino was somewhat conflicted about it. I think he wavered a bit as to whether Set is truly real, or perhaps in the extent to which he operates as something like a living “entity” vs. something more abstract and impersonal, like a “principle.” And I think that explains a lot about how Aquino went on to conduct the Temple: He had the Priesthood to cater to those whose connection with Set was an undeniable, palpable part of their experience, and the Adepthood, where one can, for all intents and purposes, conduct themselves and their initiation in ways that ultimately wouldn’t be all that different from being a Satanist if that’s what they wanted to do. If you spend enough time around Temple members and reading their writings, you realize that a large amount of the Temple’s emphasis is on down-to-earth, very secular modes of personal development. It is almost perverse and takes some getting used to, when first encountering the Temple culture, how critical they seem to be of concepts and practices that are elsewhere very commonplace in the realm of the occult; it is perhaps the least “occult” of all so-called “occult” organizations.
In The Book of Coming Forth By Night, Aquino (as Set) penned a passage suggesting that, in essence, Aleister Crowley came up short in his Task by failing to distinguish Set from HarWer (Horus):
Truth there was in the words of my Opposite Self, but a truth ever tinged with the inconsistency and irrationality of which I have spoken. And so the Book of the Law was confusion to all who came upon it, and the creative brilliance of the Magus Aleister Crowley was ever flawed by mindless destructiveness. He himself could never understand this, for he perceived HarWer as a unified Self. And so he was perplexed by a mystery he could not identify.
The Temple of Set Vol. I
p. 35
If this is true of Crowley, then I think something similar was likely true of Aquino, though something of an opposite nature: While he saw Crowley as too caught up in “mindless destructiveness” and also perhaps overzealous in the more “religious” of his convictions, I maintain that perhaps Aquino was too careful, perhaps not quite zealous enough, and more conservative in his views than Set would have preferred. After the turn LaVey had taken, Set needed someone more open to the transcendent aspects of this work, and Aquino was the best option at the time simply because he was the closest to LaVey and thus had the clout necessary to effect a new beginning without completely starting from scratch, which would have been a considerable setback. Aquino got off to a good start in writing The Book of Coming Forth By Night, but I think his skepticism prevented him from taking certain activities and ideas as far into the territory of the transcendent as Set was pushing for.
And while there were definitely big problems in how “despotic” and “overbearing” Barrett was in implementing the Word of Xem, I also believe the basic impulse behind that Word was to “pull” the Temple farther in the direction of emphasizing higher Initiation and actual communion with Set. Very regrettably, the actions of Barrett not only threatened the existence of the Temple, but I think that in the aftermath, the destruction he wrought also served to render Aquino even more hesitant than he had already been to steer the Temple toward higher Initiation; after the disaster, it became difficult to separate Barrett’s actions from the core essence of his Word, and it’s sensible to suppose that maybe it left a very bad taste in Aquino’s mouth. Someone like him would be very wary of “tempting fate” and perhaps didn’t want to “jinx” anything by holding Xem and its objectives in very high favor after the damage it had done. I think the fallout scared him away from incorporating the basic impulse behind Xem, and led to his “doubling down” on some of his more secular inclinations because they felt “safer.”
I’ve spoken to this more than once already, but this seems to be a running pattern in all Magi: Human beings all have their limitations and shortcomings, especially from the viewpoint of a being like The Prince of Darkness. At any given time, Set chooses the person who is best positioned to advance his plans regarding humanity, but it just so happens that none of us have yet been exactly what Set would call “ideal.” I didn’t include it here, but before Set addresses the shortcomings of Crowley in The Book of Coming Forth By Night, he also addresses those of Anton LaVey, while later qualifying this by saying that he nonetheless holds LaVey dear (though I notice there was not a similar qualifying comment about Crowley—which I think goes to show how much of any inspired writing is really coming from the viewpoint of the person writing it; after all, Aquino knew LaVey personally and looked up to him as a mentor, but had no such relationship with Crowley, who thus received harsher criticism from him). It would seem Set is acutely aware that humanity in general is still very far from the stature of divinity to which he endeavors to eventually raise us; even the best possible representative available to Set at any given time also has various personality flaws, or personal traumas, or other obstructions to doing things as well as we could. Set takes what he can get and works with what he’s got.
So Aquino was human, too; that’s all I’m saying. I’m of a less skeptical and rational mindset than him, but you best believe I understand how it must have felt to be him in the sense that it is very easy to doubt just how real Set and his plan are. A very delicate balance must be struck in this work in order to avoid slipping into certain excesses associated with deep, unquestioning, relatively “mindless” religiosity. I’ve wrestled with doubt my entire life, though in my case it’s been more about my ability to do what I have to do. Back when I was younger and Set spoke to me as Ilyas, I very often expressed to him the feeling that some great mistake must have been made if I were the one being called to do this work. I’ve felt that way all my life and honestly, I sometimes doubt that’s an aspect of myself that I will ever completely “cancel out” no matter what I do. So, Crowley was too zealous, LaVey was too proud, Aquino was too skeptical, Barrett was too despotic, and as for me? I’m too scared of my own potential.
This leads me to “the other hand” regarding the post Sic Semper Tyrannis!: A few hours after I had published it, I began to have second thoughts about the validity of the ideas I expressed in it. I started to feel as though I was talking out of my ass, and it led to a state of questioning that is reflected very well in the Sun and Shadow cards for this chapter of Inner Tarot Revolution.
It’s actually quite common for me to respond in such self-sabotaging ways just as I reach a new level of success, so it’s probably something I will simply have to work through. It just may be that when I start to feel that way, it’s really because I’m doing a better job than I think and that scares me.
Nonetheless, one of the main things I have been questioning over the past few days is the matter of whether or not I’m truly fit for walking the Left Hand Path. I am far beyond doubting the reality of my Word…but I do still waver in how sure I am that I’m carrying the Task of the Magus properly. I wonder if I’m not making too a big a deal out of my spiritual vision, or if I’m vastly overestimating my own importance. I tell myself that I’m not necessarily adding anything to the picture and that my work isn’t making a difference. Webb described aspects of this as “the egg-on-the-face moment” of a Magus, wherein they sometimes think they aren’t saying anything meaningful at all but are instead just puffing up ideas that everyone around them already takes for granted. I still occasionally think of retreating entirely from public view and living out my life in quiet seclusion, voluntarily “resigning” my Task and accepting that I am simply a failure as a Magus.
This week’s cards are suitable for walking through some of the thoughts I’ve been having.
Let’s do cards.
Top/Sun Card
This is yet another one of those cards that I love and am happy to see turning up in the Sun Stack. I make a great many personal associations to this card, all of which are pleasant. However, its nature also has a lot to say for the uneasy position in which I now find myself, because while I was happy to finally write Sic Semper Tyrannis!, I also recognize how much of the content of that post stems from ideas that come more from my intuition, from “hunches,” than from my rational intellect. In tarot, swords are the very suit of the intellect, and I experience a great deal of anxiety over the fact that while my work is so intuitively-derived, I’m daring to speak for a lineage and tradition that is thoroughly suffused with “swords energy.”
To quote from Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot by DuQuette:
The Ace of Swords is the root of the element of air and represents the Ruach. Ruach is the intellect part of the soul, and (according to Eastern mystics) the mind is the great enemy. The mind violently resists identification with any higher levels of consciousness. Consequently, from out of the mind springs conflict, frustration, anxiety, worry, and sorrow. Is it any wonder that the suit of Swords is filled with so many unpleasant cards? However, in the proper hands, the sword can be the weapon that cuts through the crap, and the Ace of Swords is the sword of the Magus, “crowned with the 22 rayed diadem of pure light.”
p. 168
One key word for the suit of Swords, and especially the Ace, is “analysis,” which signifies “a breaking up, a loosening, releasing,” or a means of exploring an idea or phenomenon by separating it out into its various simpler components. As we have explored in previous chapters of this series dealing with Aces, the Aces also represent the root essence of their suit in the form of pure potential, meaning they precede concrete action or manifestation. As such, the Ace of Swords is a clear symbol for the state of over-analyzing things, or of being deeply locked into a state of analysis so intense as to prevent further progress or action.
That’s a good description of me these past few days.
Two crescent moons adorn the hilt of the sword, which points to one of the other associations I’ve had with this card going all the way back to 2013 when I first began working with the Thoth tarot: Hekate. I used to always think of this sword as being Hers, even though the more traditional symbol associated with her would be a dagger as opposed to a sword.
This is relevant for a few reasons: As I’ve expressed a number of times here at Dark Twins, another aspect of the Word of Hermekate (which, you’ll note, includes Hekate’s name) involves acknowledging and honoring the more feminine side of The Prince of Darkness. I have gone so far as to refer to said entity as “The Princess of Darkness” instead. In the post Big Content Drop - And a documented, witnessed oath to the Prince(ss) of Darkness, I documented an encounter in which I subjectively felt the presence of an entity I identified at the time as the Prince of Darkness as it “indwelt” the character of Impa in the game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (owing to these connections, it’s now hard for me not to look upon the sword in the Ace of Swords as representing The Master Sword). Given the fact that Impa is canonically a woman (along with the similarity of this moment in-game to the moment of my constitution as an Entered Apprentice in Co-Masonry, which was enacted by an older woman) I interpreted this at the time as suggesting that the Prince of Darkness was revealing to me its feminine aspect. I also linked this with Hekate, because prior to learning of the Temple of Set, I note that Hekate played a role in my life essentially identical to the role attributed to Set in The Temple of Set.
This has a number of ramifications, but among them includes a turning to acknowledge the validity of intuition as a way of knowing. Not only is Set a decidedly masculine figure, but the traditions associated with Set/The Prince of Darkness of late—both Satanism and Setian thought—are also very “masculine” in the sense that they so strongly emphasize rationalism, which has traditionally been considered a masculine trait. Intuition, by contrast, is traditionally considered to be feminine. As such, the change indicated by these associations with the Word of Hermekate involve “loosening” up these tendencies to make room for wider variation and greater diversity in the Left Hand Path.
In a way, it’s kind of sad that this is necessary at all, and that the more rationalistic tendencies ever came to dominate the environment in groups such as the Church of Satan and the Temple of Set to the extent that they do. This gets into a deeper exploration of the very nature of the Left Hand Path that is beyond the scope of this post, but another post focused on this aspect of the Word of Hermekate will be coming up soon.
At any rate, I have theorized more recently that I may have misinterpreted what I was experiencing on January 3rd, 2023 when I swore my Oath to “The Princess of Darkness,” and that instead, the sense of “the feminine” imparted to me during that experience may be accounted for by the possibility that it wasn’t just Set dwelling in the “body” of Impa that morning—it might have been Set overshadowed by Ma’at, or a blending of the two not dissimilar from the way Set and HarWer were described in The Book of Coming Forth By Night as “blending” together in the work of Anton LaVey:
The Aeon of HarWer endured until the Equinox of the common year 1966, when HarWer and Set were fused as one composite being. And so commenced the time of Set - HarWer—known as the Age of Satan—which was to bridge the expiring Aeon of HarWer and the forthcoming Aeon of Set.
The Temple of Set Vol. I
p. 35
In like manner, just as Anton LaVey’s work as a Magus was described here as serving to “bridge” the Aeons of Horus and Set, I have now come to think that perhaps the Word of Hermekate plays a similar role between the Aeon of Set and that of Ma’at. This is suggested in my later decision to modify the title “Princess of Darkness” to that of “The Twilight Princess,” which served to even further tie my sense of this dark Initiator to the lore of Zelda, for that title is also the name of one of the best Zelda games. In that game, Midna was the leader of the Twili, a (relatively) dark race of beings who were banished by the Goddesses Din, Nayru, and Farore to a dimension called “The Twilight Realm.” Lore-wise, this has a lot of resonance to the concept of Da’ath, with the Twili being a potential metaphor for the idea of “Babes of the Abyss”—but I digress. With its “liminal” and “shadowy” resonance, this title makes for a great name for an entity combining aspects of both Set and Ma’at.
To take this discussion back to the card in question, the observant will note something interesting:
The Ace of Swords is apparently the very same sword that is being held by the central figure in Atu VIII: Adjustment—the Thoth version of the “Justice” card. This, too, indicates a strong tie to the goddess Ma'at.
As I noted recently in the post Hermekate and the Aeons, there is a conspicuous lack of direct mention of the Aeon of Ma’at in most written works about the Aeon of Set, which is strange considering how closely together the Words of IPSOS (held by followers of Soror Nema to be the central Word of the Aeon of Ma’at) and Xeper (the central word of the Aeon of Set) were Uttered; IPSOS even came first, so if Nema’s works were ignored, one almost gets the sense that this was quite intentional. Nonetheless, since writing that post, I’ve come to learn that while the Aeon of Ma’at has apparently been neglected, Ma’at herself has not—and there appears to be a strong connection between ma’at as discussed within the Temple of Set and the Word of Xem.
There is an entire essay entitled “Ma’at” in The Temple of Set Vol. II that was written by Alexandra Sarris, a Priestess III° at that time, which makes a strong case for integrating the Egyptian principle of Ma’at into Setian work. Based on statements in other articles, it appears that Sarris was one of Barrett’s students and a member of his Order of Anubis. Further, Barrett makes several references to Ma’at in his writings about the Word of Xem. In all of these cases, Ma’at is discussed more as an abstract principle than as a personified goddess (and even in ancient Egypt/Khem, while she had both forms, she was more often conceived of as a principle than as a divine “person.”) All of this helps to further solidify my ever-growing convictions about the relationship between the Words of Hermekate and Xem.
The Book of Coming Forth By Night was meant to firmly differentiate Set from HarWer and to usher in that Aeon which belongs to him exclusively, and it was ushered in on the North Solstice of Year X/1975. This is reflected in the very first line of The Book:
The Equinox has succumbed to my Solstice, and I, Set, am revealed in my Majesty.
The Temple of Set Vol. I
p. 34
Regarding the meaning of this statement, Aquino elaborates in his commentary:
The apparent reference is to the North Solstice, as explained above. There may be a second implication: Aleister Crowley identified the events surrounding the inception of the Aeon of Horus in 1904 CE as the “Equinox of the Gods”. The Book of Coming Forth By Night heralds the eclipse of that aeon in favor of the Aeon of Set.
p. 41
On this Vernal Equinox of 2024, I say:
Not so fast, my friend.
As Aquino himself notes in his examination of the nature of Aeons in The Temple of Set Vol. I:
As with the degree system, it would be very difficult if not impossible to spend all of one’s time in a “higher aeon”. When we go about our affairs in the profane world, we are usually Osirians, peering with curiosity and vague alarm at ecological activists (Isis) or avant-garde artists (Horus). Yet we experience periods of Isis and Horus too—and, when we wish to, that very rarefied Aeon of Set.
p. 201
In other words, Aquino has recognized that in a sense, it’s silly to speak of any one Aeon “eclipsing” or superseding another, and that even those who view themselves as partaking of any given Aeon such as that of Set nonetheless shift their level of consciousness from one to another.
Furthermore, while Aquino goes on to give a nod in the following paragraph to the fact that Crowley predicted the next Aeon to be that of “Ma” or Ma’at, he does so largely to set that idea up to be simply brushed aside by his declaration that Crowley was wrong about this.
Unfortunately, no matter what Michael Aquino thought or believed, Liber Pennae Praenumbra Came Into Being before The Book of Coming Forth By Night. In other words, by the time Aquino established the Aeon of Set, the Aeon of Ma’at had already been formally declared “open” in parallel with that of Horus.
This works, in a sense, because while the Aeon of Ma’at is considered to be “pan-Aeonic”—that is, it somewhat encompasses and runs throughout all the other Aeons—the Aeon of Set is opposite in its nature: It is held to be the “outsider” among Aeons, standing fully apart from them in the same sense that Set stood apart from the other neteru.
That’s well and good, within reason—however, the Word of Hermekate insists that insofar as this planet hosts many living people and serves as the ground of activity for all of the Aeons—the Aeon of Set must play by the rules in its interactions with human beings. Just as the Word “Hermekate” contains both the names of the god Hermes and the goddess Hekate, it likewise establishes the polarity prevailing between Set and Ma’at and asserts that within the bounds of the natural universe, not even Set can fully defy Ma’at’s laws. No matter how staunchly Aquino and others choose to ignore the Aeon of Ma’at, it will nonetheless impinge its influence on their work. To deny this is hubris. I am planning an entire post to more deeply address this relationship between Set and Ma’at.
In the “Indications” section of this card’s entry in Gerd Ziegler’s Tarot: Mirror of the Soul: Handbook for the Aleister Crowley Tarot, he writes:
Your present clarity is a wonderful condition for your undertaking. You will be able to recognize facts and call by name things which other people would prefer to sweep under the carpet. This entails a great responsibility on your part. Be sure never to express your insights heartlessly. But when you are fully in contact with Love, use your sword without sparing yourself or others.
p. 137
Shadow Card
With all of the sharp conviction I have begun to express in this post, one might wonder just what I meant when I mentioned that the completion of my previous post left me with a relative dearth of confidence, because it certainly doesn’t sound like it. That’s one of the reasons it’s important for me to write these posts: Putting these feelings into words has unexpectedly resulted in my own clarification of my principles, such that I realize I am on much more solid footing than my level of concern these past few days would suggest. That’s great.
Nonetheless, where this chapter’s Sun Card can be summarized with the word “analysis,” the Shadow Card can be summed up with the term “paralysis.”
It also follows very neatly from both cards in Chapter 29 of this series, the 3 and 4 of Wands. One might also think I hadn’t adequately shuffled this deck! Alas, I’d been using it for years prior to setting it aside for this Working.
Anyhow, the suit of Wands is usually a very dynamic, energetic suit; it is almost always filled with activity, with “piss and vinegar.” To view most of the basic attributions here you’d almost think this card should follow suit; as DuQuette explains:
In The Book of Thoth, Crowley writes more about the Five of Wands than any other small card in this suit. Could it be because this card represents the first decan of Leo, which happens to be where we find the Ascendant in Crowley’s astrological natal chart? Crowley identified strongly with Leo. His signature even bore the astrological sign of Leo in place of the “A” of Aleister.
p. 216
And of course, with a pen name like mine, I, too, identify with the “Leonine” symbolism here; I elaborated on these same references DuQuette makes to Crowley’s Ascendant in Chapter 22 of this series when the Prince of Wands made its appearance.
Unfortunately, there is one major force raining on this parade:
Saturn.
As such, the results of that planet’s introduction into the overall formula of this card are considerable…and they reflect what I’ve been going through lately, even in areas of my life outside of my work with the Word of Hermekate.
In short, I’m no spring chicken. I’m about to turn 41, and my body is showing it. I am slowing down physically. For the last few months, I’ve been sluggish and lacking in energy. To be fair, some of this is physical, while some of it is situational: Ever since moving to Texas last June, I have been locked in combat with an overwhelming inertia: For several months we were without a car due to supply chain shortages in the wake of a small accident just after we arrived here, but even beyond that: It’s been very hard to find a job that fits with my plans to return to school in the Fall. My options in this remote suburb of Houston are fairly limited. Fortunately, it’s not really a matter of life and death for me, but the general situation has me feeling like I am falling short of my potential to contribute to the cash flow in my household, and spending each day behind these same four walls aside from the occasional trip to eat or go shopping has me feeling stir crazy.
My inability to change this despite considerable efforts has me questioning my stature as a so-called “Magus.”
But, of course, I also realize that this perception probably stems largely from the fact that I’m looking at this all wrong. Like I said, I’m not exactly in a bad situation materially or financially: In short, it’s definitely arguable that I have manifested my needs. I just haven’t done it by, say, working a job to pay my own rent.
Is that so bad?
It’s probably worse in my mind than it is in any real practical sense.
And besides, the lack of a job at the moment is one of the things making such ample room for me to continue my writing here; and if I truly am a Magus, there’s an argument to be made that that’s really what takes precedence at the moment anyhow.
In other words, things are probably working out much better than my limited and self-critical mindset is making them out to be.
That being said, I really am pretty low on energy and pretty demoralized lately by my seeming inability to leverage a great deal of change on this situation. It’s not that I’m not trying; it’s that I’m not succeeding.
Perhaps my True Will and my more limited, egoic, personal will are in conflict here? And if my True Will is winning, then there isn’t necessarily anything wrong, is there?
Maybe my obsessing over the gap between how things are and how I’d like them to be is tantamount to picking scabs? At any rate, my hangups about it all do seem petty, and I do seem to be coming down much harder on myself about it than I need to be doing.
It is eminently normal and natural for a man of my age to be slowing down, and it would seem that the graceful thing to do would be to take this as an opportunity to practice the ideal of “amor fati.”
There is yet another aspect of this that I have considered, though I also often think I may be getting ahead of myself:
I have referenced the chapter in Overthrowing the Old Gods on the grade of Magus extensively here at Dark Twins, but one I have quoted much less often is the next one on the grade of Ipsissimus. Don Webb noted something interesting there:
For the Ipsissimus the manifest Self has become a perfect mirror in space-time to the greater Self. In other words the Ipsissimus can’t push real hard to make something work. The way that initiation has taught him or her—that if one really focuses a better result can be had—is lost. This is disorienting to the Ipsissimus. On the one hand his or her most perfected Self is accessible all of the time; on the other hand this doesn’t stop the Ipsissimus from being a sloppy jerk. The Ipsissimus is not different because she or he is in the ritual chamber versus unplugging a toilet. The method of action for Ipsissimi is wu wei—the Taoist concept of nonbeing, or that by doing whatever comes to them, they will achieve results that are harmonious with their Will.
p. 152
By most standards with which I am familiar, I wouldn’t think of myself as having attained the grade of Ipsissimus VI°: I still have a great deal of work to do in carrying out my Word. However, I have often felt that I’ve adequately completed its actual Utterance; and I have felt the above description to be a very close summation of my life experience of late. For example, I have sought to “enhance” my magic(k)al practice in certain specific ways, incorporating practices that I have felt to be “lacking” in my repertoire as a magician, but on the other hand, it’s not like I really feel like I “need” them since I have come to accept the work of proclaiming my Word; if those skills weren’t strictly necessary on my path toward fulfilling my True Will, why should I arbitrarily chase after them now that I’m so firmly rooted in that work?
I don’t need them.
Elsewhere in his writings, Don Webb alludes to a state of magic(k)al development at which magi(k)al ritual becomes unnecessary as one’s Will is simply done as a matter of course; and I do feel like that’s started to happen for me.
It’s somewhat paradoxical.
I’ll have to think long and hard about this.
Nonetheless, Ziegler describes the resulting sense of this state of being quite well in his chapter about the 5 of Wands—particularly with regards to my efforts to assert my personal will in my day-to-day affairs:
This card signifies a general condition in which the creative power of the Lion is blocked (Saturn). Because the free flow of energy is greatly restricted, it has begun to stagnate. This concentrated charge of energy strives vainly to find a possibility for expression. Life becomes a burden. The tiny wings at the bottom of the staff continue to struggle, attempting to lift the leaden weight.
p. 105
Insofar as I stubbornly attempt to leverage my personal will—which, I acknowledge, is mostly driven to the goals that it is by fear and insecurity—the above feels true. However, like I said, I am not truly in dire need of making any changes, and when I let go of my personal will, everything else seems to be flowing and falling right into place. My work here is proceeding apace, and I spend some time each day working toward clearing some requirements necessary for getting enrolled in classes come autumn. In other words, my highest aspirations are already in the process of unfolding, and that’s where all the current action seems to be; everything I’m obsessing about beyond that is basically “extracurricular.”
Do I really need anything more?
The obvious answer seems to be to go with the flow in any case here, because no matter what else is true, the best I can do is apply myself gently but firmly until something finally gives somewhere.
I feel as though I am getting in my own way.
Perhaps the next set of cards will reveal my next step.