Weird Studies/Tarot/The Empress

08 Apr 2022 03:55 - 30 Jul 2023 03:10
Open in Logseq
    • Intro, not going to lead heavily into the supernatural, that's good.
    • Nature. Somehow the Empress justifies all the bad with her fecundity and life-giving.
    • A long discussion of gender, trying to distinguish the cosmic archetypes found in the tarot from the kind of stupid and toxic gender stereotypes of American culture. I can appreciate the goal, although not sure I have a good model for the archetypes.
    • Mentions MotT and discusses the nature of Christian Hermeticism, that miracles and magic are similar types of things.
    • Sacred magic
    • Symbols
      • crown: legitimacy . Crowley: contacting the Holy Guardian Angel, anything else is black magick, egoistic, arrogating powers improperly. Symbol of harmonization of the high and low.
        • HGA as something of a middle term between man and god?
      • Eagle/Shield - magic aims at sublimation of man??? "the moment of transcendence, when personal will and divine will merge" (paraphrased)
      • Sceptre – the power/means by which to do this. The male aspect of this largely female figure.
      • throne – the place of magic, analagous to dharma body.
    • The repression of the feminine in modernity and in general, materialism as a domination of matter.
    • At the 1:00 mark, a long spiel by JFM on materialism that I didn't quite get, but seems important. Science discovered matter? That seems wrong, obviously people have always dealt with matter...maybe he means in the abstract, the idea that there is something called "matter" that includes rocks and air and bodies, that these aren't just different things but variations on a single thing. But that wasn't a new idea with science either I think...sorry don't get the idea at all.
    • What we call materialism is a reaction to something that put the lie to patriarchy: the discovery of matter. The materiality of the moon makes it more unknown? Esthetic and relative terms, what was the point?
    • Idealism is a reduction of materialism. But we should embrace the realities of materialism, becoming more modern (I'm fully on board with that)
    • Basic prop of magic: The subtle ruling the dense. Empress represents this.
    • JFM spiel on finding one's true avocation, the thing that makes you lose track of time (he wouldn't name the "controversial figure", I'm guessing Jordan Peterson). This is different for each person but represents a kind of transcendence. Might involve some left-hand path decadence. I'm on board.