I never denied the beauty:
Imperial pomp of sunrise,
The seductive glamour of sunset.
The snaking voluptuous river,
Swollen with incessant downpours,
The glitter of rare raw minerals,
A glimmer waiting in the depths.
Beyond the mist in the distance,
The harrowing sublimity of mountains.
The perceived chant of the angels,
Drifting across the aether.
The vertiginous descent of the eagle,
Intent upon the sighted prey.
The patient strength of the ox,
Harnessed for growth and generation.
The gilded and haloed lion,
Surveying the buffet of the savannah.
The shining lights of the city,
On the snow capped hilltop.
The voluminous text of flesh
Awaiting to be read in the dark.
The beauty of the world is undoubted:
But I suspected treachery
A beauty that bites after caressing
Wanting to leave its mark
Because it too is just passing
A floating world of samsara,
Always changing; never
Still: completes a cycles,
Pauses briefly before transformation
Then same as it ever was,
Is or will be.
1.
Strife is justice: perfect kiss, holy death,
golden ratio and mean, overflowing
cup filled with tears and other secretions
soon emptied however, drank to the last dregs
but still the thirst for love is not quenched.
2.
Wishing that the world was already burning,
all the better to build on the ruins
the man whose eyes blaze with the dying light
of a thousand million supernovas
tosses the match to start the conflagration.
3.
Like a character from an distant age
the chevalier cuts a tragic noble swath
captivating hearts and minds of all alike
but the attention means less than nothing
until that time amidst the crowds he sees
4.
You are the pearl, crowning perfection,
to possess you I desire ruination
I‘ll watch with delirious satisfaction
when you strike me with total destruction
for this pleasure is worth the damnation.
5.
It all adds up, the whole equals the sum
of its myriad variations and parts
you just have to stand at the right distance,
keep still, relax, the answer is apparent,
just will to dare to know the only Law.
One of the most notorious of Tarot decks due to its association with the infamous Aleister Crowley, the Thoth Tarot was designed and painted by Lady Frieda Harris under instruction from the Great Beast. In addition to referencing Crowley’s new religion of Thelema, (Do what you wilt shall be the whole of the Law. Love is the law, love under will), Lady Harris includes elements of Goethe’s theory of colour and Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy in the execution of the project.
In 1937 Crowley had asked his friend the playwright Clifford Bax to find an artist to realise his longstanding ambition of re-designing the Tarot deck along Thelemic lines After two artists failed to show Bax invited Lady Frieda, then aged 60, to met Crowley. Third time around indeed proved to be a charm and they worked together on the deck for 5 years. Crowley initiated Lady Frieda into his mystical order the A∴A∴ and Lady Frieda Harris persuaded Crowley to break somewhat with Tarot tradition in the Thoth deck. Surprisingly Crowley seemed to develop a genuine affection for Harris and she in turn was devoted to him up to and during his last difficult days in a Hastings boarding house.
Crowley re-named several of the Major Arcana from the Rider-Waite-Smith, for instance Trump XI Strength becomes Lust and Trump XX Judgement becomes The Æon. Naturally the Hebrew letter and astrological correspondences are changed because no two occultists have ever agreed on such matters. The astrological significance of the Minor Arcana is very comprehensively outlined in the accompanying Book of Thoth written by Crowley.
Austin Osman Spare-Inquirer Card-Tarot Deck c 1906
Most of the occult artist Austin Osman Spare‘s experiments in cartomancy were believed to be forever lost (including the ‘Surrealist Racing Forecast Card’ pack, a real shame as this covers a number of my favourite things: art, cards, the occult and gambling), however in 2013 a hitherto unknown pack of 79 hand painted Tarot cards was verified as being the work of the art nouveau enfant terrible.
Influences from the Tarot of Marseilles and the Rider-Waite-Smith decks are evident in the design, however the idiosyncratic verve and boldly brilliant use of line could only have been executed by the skillful hand and wild imagination of Austin Osman Spare.
One of the most sumptuous and beautiful of all illuminated alchemical texts, Splendor Solis was published in various versions throughout the German states in the 16th Century. Attributed to Salomon Trismosin, a legendary figure who acquired the Philosopher’s Stone and was allegedly Paracelsus’s teacher, Splendor contains 22 (the same number as the Major Arcana of the Tarot) gorgeous, mystifying images with elaborate decorative borders reminiscent of medieval Book of Hours. As with all alchemical treatises the text is full of dense allegorical references to the Solar King and Lunar Queen, death and re-birth, the black and the inner suns, planets and tinctures.
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