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Dean 
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 Posted: March 29 2017 at 04:16 |
 Vompatti wrote:
Dean wrote:
Vompatti wrote:
not really because you need the external stimulus k
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Why? Isn't life an external stimulus?
However, using a tarot deck as a visual prop has nothing to do with magic, occultism or esotericism. It's not even divination or tapping into some mystical stream of subconsciousness. |
Isn't it though? What would you consider divination?
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I take divination to mean what it is defined as: "the art or practice that seeks to foresee or foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge usually by the interpretation of omens or by the aid of supernatural powers", and that is what tarot card reading purports to do. I would avoid confusing divination with intuition, though there are those who would see them as being one and the same, they're not.
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Vompatti
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Posted: March 29 2017 at 03:53 |
Dean wrote:
Vompatti wrote:
not really because you need the external stimulus k
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Why? Isn't life an external stimulus?
However, using a tarot deck as a visual prop has nothing to do with magic, occultism or esotericism. It's not even divination or tapping into some mystical stream of subconsciousness. |
Isn't it though? What would you consider divination?
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Dean
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Posted: March 29 2017 at 03:40 |
Vompatti wrote:
not really because you need the external stimulus k
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Why? Isn't life an external stimulus?
However, using a tarot deck as a visual prop has nothing to do with magic, occultism or esotericism. It's not even divination or tapping into some mystical stream of subconsciousness.
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What?
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Vompatti
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Posted: March 29 2017 at 03:34 |
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not really because you need the external stimulus k
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Dean
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Posted: March 29 2017 at 03:32 |
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...or just thinking for yourself.
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Vompatti
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Posted: March 29 2017 at 03:27 |
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The cards are universal enough so you pick one and apply it to any situation and it'll make you think of something you wouldn't have thought on your own. It's the same as picking a random passage from the Bible or a number of random words from a dictionary.
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Dean
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Posted: March 29 2017 at 02:55 |
2dogs wrote:
People have always been very good at making up what they don't know, embellishing and extrapolating ideas, and money making deception, in all fields of life. |
This is indeed correct, and that works because people have always been very good at convincing themselves that they can distinguish between what is real and what is deception, that their ideology is the one true ideology and their beliefs are the one true belief. This conviction is the result of connecting the dots between what they know (or believe) to be true and those extrapolated ideas that ought to be true as a consequence, and then drawing conclusions that only have a passing relationship to the original "truth" yet are taken to be (self-evident?) truths.
We can do this because we are very good at pattern recognition yet that can (and does) result in false-positives that in visual and audio pattern recognition psychologists term as pareidolia, and in general terms is known as apophenia. The ability to see apparent patterns in the random distribution of any single set of data points and/or draw false conclusions from the coincidence of two unrelated data-sets is the "downside" of being able to detect tigers hiding in tall grass.
2dogs wrote:
Noticing meaningful coincidences has led me to just experiment for myself e.g. draw a Tarot card plus a card each from my two decks of fact cards then look at all three for common ideas i.e. which bit of the gobbledygook in the Tarot book is the relevant part of the message? I've actually had a lot more success with just the fact cards when doing reading exchanges with other people using various "oracle" decks on a Tarot forum - it's a great buzz when the reading works - but I'd like to have another go in the Tarot section for which I have to use a proper Tarot deck. |
I'm not completely sure I follow every word of what you've written because it doesn't follow any of the tarot reading methods I am familiar with, but I think I get the gist of it. There are trigger-phrases in your post like "meaningful coincidences", "look...for common ideas" and "when the reading works" that alert my scepticism here.
Edited by Dean - March 29 2017 at 02:55
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2dogs
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Posted: March 29 2017 at 00:57 |
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People have always been very good at making up what they don't know, embellishing and extrapolating ideas, and money making deception, in all fields of life. Noticing meaningful coincidences has led me to just experiment for myself e.g. draw a Tarot card plus a card each from my two decks of fact cards then look at all three for common ideas i.e. which bit of the gobbledygook in the Tarot book is the relevant part of the message? I've actually had a lot more success with just the fact cards when doing reading exchanges with other people using various "oracle" decks on a Tarot forum - it's a great buzz when the reading works - but I'd like to have another go in the Tarot section for which I have to use a proper Tarot deck.
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"There is nothing new except what has been forgotten" - Marie Antoinette
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Vompatti
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Posted: March 28 2017 at 08:39 |
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^^ I WOULD reply is m@x would let me
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The T
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Posted: March 28 2017 at 08:27 |
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Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated.
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Dean
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Posted: March 28 2017 at 07:26 |
Remove the pretension, self-delusion and all-out bollocks and all that remains is an orchestrated confidence trick of smoke and mirrors. In spite of everyone knowing the old adage that " there's a sucker born every minute" the enduring draw of any con is in the showmanship with which it is presented, of which being able to craft a well-written believable patter is merely a tool of the trade that preys on doubts and uncertainties of the subject. For even when the mark knows it is a scam the trick is to make them believe the suckers are the other guys, the ones who aren't as smart as them. No one is too smart to be conned. The scammers spiel is constructed to convince the target that they're not a sucker, that they are smarter than everyone else, including the trickster himself. So their self-belief is skillfully manipulated and their ego is bolstered and flattered into thinking they can beat the con, or at least not be suckered into it; the art of the confidence trick lays in word "confidence", the trickster draws the audience into their confidence while inflating the sense of self-confidence of those who gather round. Everyone knows they are selling snake-oil but what if the snake-oil is as good as they say it is?...
As a child in the 1960s I grew up in a seaside resort town on the east coast of England and in the summer holidays I would cycle down to the seafront to walk among the holiday-makers, watching them feed coins into the slot-machines in the penny arcades along the esplanade (while my hard-earned 2/- a week pocket money remained secure in my pocket) and listening to the calls of the roustabouts on the fairground rides that rang-out over the cacophony of pipe-organ music and blaring top-20 pop tunes blasting out from each pitch. But my favourite of all these attractions were the mock auctions, cornucopias of seemingly high-value goods offered at knock-down prices that drew crowds of people as the "auctioneer" barked out descending values of money for each item held aloft by his assistants until the sea of raised hands waving folded £1 and £5 notes in the air halted the "auction". Where upon those proffered notes would be plucked from willing hands in exchange for plain white boxes in opaque plastic carrier bags that contained perhaps not an exact duplicate of the item being sold, but its close approximation. Not then the prestigious goods sold in upmarket West End stores as promised, but the low quality knock-offs hawked in any street market. As an eight year old, this fascinated me for even at that age I could see this was a con so presumed that all those who waited patiently to snaffle the bargains the "auctioneer" was selling also saw through the subterfuge and knew that these were mock auctions. Yet still they waved their paper money in the air at the prescribed moment his litany of decreasing prices reached the selling price he always intended. I would stand and watch them for hours, then return on another day and watch the show all over again, because that is what it was, a show, carefully scripted and played; over time I noticed that some of the audience were there every day, yet their waved notes where never taken and goods were never exchanged for they too were actors in the show and the "auctioneer" was the star.
The writings of Ted Crowely and Howard Levey et al are the pitch of the fairground huckster, dressed up as philosophy and religion, and shrouded in believable truths and heavily disguised invention. Their words, like all snares, are a trap baited and primed, waiting to be sprung: seeded with tempting morsels that are rooted in truths and received wisdom; extrapolated to plausible half-truths that promise to reveal untold secrets and deeper, hidden truths once the bait is taken. Any dialog that promises something that cannot otherwise be attained is a scripted confidence trick written to ensnare the intended victim. Crowley and Levey were the stars of the show, but it was a show nevertheless, hence their adoption of stage-names to heighten the mystique of their crafty art and the carefully staged publicity photographs. This is the mechanism by which all religions and philosophies work, whether by benign [innocent] intent or malignant [dishonest] design, for even those exponents who proselytise those ideologies as honest belief that they hold to be true are using the same techniques and employing the same psychological hooks, even when they don't know they are or care not to admit it. Even those cut-back, pared-down fundamentalists who dispense with regal dress-me-up of staged ritual and gilded iconography are presenting an "off Broadway" production to engage the congregation...
Tarot reading is another play of this disguised confidence trickery, though differs from other forms of divination because anyone can learn to read the cards themselves. However the interpretation of the lay of the cards follows rules that have to be learnt and applied, and the reading itself bears all the hallmarks of a scripted show, with all the theatre and stage-props that would grace any Amdram production. The rules of the major arcana are the trick, not their interpretation, which is why Ted Crowely adapted those to his own design, bending them to suit his contrived philosophy. All forms of divination uses the technique of cold-reading, where the reader gleans information from the sitter that is used to enforce the belief that what will be revealed will be true. Newspaper horoscopes use a passive form of cold-reading that makes use of vague generalisations that the reader interprets as they will, those who believe will always find a modicum of truth in what they read because of this. Of course in tarot there is little need for cold-reading of the sitter if they interpret the cards themselves, and that's where the psychology comes into effect, tarot is not rooted in psychology but employs it in every turn of the cards and in the theatre of its staging.
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2dogs
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Posted: March 27 2017 at 23:11 |
Vompatti wrote:
Isn't tarot rooted in psychology as well since it maps to the tree of life?
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Yes, Crowley included Hebrew letters on the cards to match them up and diagrams in The Book of Thoth. Using a limited number of cards to represent everything in the universe though does make for some very complex symbols as with using the twelve Zodiac signs to represent human personalities (these also match up with cards, as do the planets and elements).
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"There is nothing new except what has been forgotten" - Marie Antoinette
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dr wu23
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Posted: March 27 2017 at 13:14 |
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I remember reading a lot about the occult back in the late 70's and into the 80's....I recall Crowley material, Regardie, Gurdjieff, etc...and of course reading The Occult by Wilson... a great summary of the occult through the ages.
Edited by dr wu23 - March 27 2017 at 13:23
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One does nothing yet nothing is left undone.
Haquin
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dr wu23
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Posted: March 27 2017 at 13:12 |
I don't know about the occult but this damn web site keeps rejecting my attempts at posting saying some stupid crap about security checks...?
Edited by dr wu23 - March 27 2017 at 13:14
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One does nothing yet nothing is left undone.
Haquin
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Vompatti
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Posted: March 27 2017 at 10:00 |
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Gods are a convenient way to represent certain aspects of the mind or the collective consciousness k
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The T
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Posted: March 27 2017 at 09:36 |
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I don't believe in good or bad or middle gods. But I love to have satanist symbols just to piss off Christians.
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Vompatti
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Posted: March 27 2017 at 03:29 |
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Isn't tarot rooted in psychology as well since it maps to the tree of life?
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Thatfabulousalien
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Posted: March 27 2017 at 02:19 |
^^
Well from my perspective, his writing is very evocative of images and emotions and highly intriguing. From an academic perspective, I find it to be a very complex maze of clever interconnected references.
As I've initially stated and mentioned on multiple forums, I'm an atheist but I do see something very 'je ne sais quoi' in it, there is a large depth to his work but it also depends the context and perspective.
I for one think the whole tarot idea is laughable if taken literally, I don't do rituals. But Sex Magick is actually a powerful idea rooted in psychology and similar initial concepts can be found in other cultures.
But to get back to point, I think he is a brilliant writer and I find his work inspirational and very thought-provoking.
From a religious perspective, whatever is in question; I make my own path, my own philosophy defined by my own experiences. I agree about the "imaginary friend" analogy you mentioned earlier though, "religion" is incredibly bizarre when it comes to that 
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Classical music isn't dead, it's more alive than it's ever been. It's just not on MTV.
https://www.soundcloud.com/user-322914325
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Dean
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Posted: March 27 2017 at 01:16 |
Thatfabulousalien wrote:
Crowley a bad writer? alright, you can come off your high horse |
Admittedly it was Vomps that called Crowley a "Bad Poet" while I merely contradicted his implication that Crowley was "a brilliant writer" so technically neither Vomps nor I uttered the phrase "bad writer" so it's difficult to determine who of us needs to dismount from the towering nervous equine that currently bears us. For myself, I quite like it up here, I can see further. Like I can see that there is a world of difference between a bad writer and someone who is not a brilliant writer, a writer can be one or the other, or neither (or if you are William McGonagall, both). Of course understanding the subtleties and nuances of the English language is a prerequisite for anyone volunteering to make a literary assessment of the quality of a writer and their work.
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Thatfabulousalien
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Posted: March 27 2017 at 00:21 |
Crowley a bad writer? alright, you can come off your high horse
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Classical music isn't dead, it's more alive than it's ever been. It's just not on MTV.
https://www.soundcloud.com/user-322914325
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Magick/Occultism/Esotericism
