Huck wrote:Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote:
I will give you a few hours.
...
... and what happens then?
And then I explain it. I didn't want to give you days, because you might then be able to study the question and write a sensible response.
It is a complicated question, but it is simply a series of facts, not arguing interpretations of anything. Not very many people understand the GD and Crowley's fiddling with the order of the trumps.
As I understand English language "Crowley's confusion" in my sentence could address "Crowley's own personal confusion", or the "confusion, that Crowley started for others" (especially if the speaker speaks with ironic language).
If "the confusion that Crowley started for others" is what you meant, then a normal English speaker would never say "Crowley's confusion". 99.9 percent of the time, this would mean "the confusion Crowley had", "the confusion in Crowley's mind", or, well, just "Crowley's confusion".
But you didn't say just "Crowley's confusion", you said that something
caused Crowley's confusion, which means that your attempt to retreat to obscure possibilities of English diction makes even less sense. Did you really mean to say that the Fortitude's Lion and Justice's Scales caused the confusion that Crowley started for others?
No, it is clear what you meant, and your attempt to confuse the issue is troubling to me. Please admit when you don't know what you are talking about.
Well, Crowley didn't start it, the Golden Dawn (GD) did, and Waite's deck perpetuated it with the switch of the positions of Justice and Strength.
Whichever way you want your statement to be taken, it is still wrong - Crowley DIDN'T start it.
Moreover, he actually put Strength (as "Lust") BACK at position 11, and Justice (as "Adjustment") at 8. But he still kept the GD Hebrew letter attributions.
However you want to spin what you said, you are wrong - Crowley did not have, and did not start, any confusion about the positions of Justice and Strength in the Tarot.
It is your refusal to admit your error and accept correction that is causing me to pick on you about it. Normally when a mistake is corrected, one will say "thank you" to the one who corrects you.
This is far from the first time, although I didn't berate you the last time, because it was not your mistake, although you tried to rescue it by stretching the truth so far it could mean anything.
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=845&p=12095&hilit=mestier#p12096
The lesson is that a mistake is a mistake, and it should be acknowledged as such, corrected, committed to memory, and then any personal feelings (and theories based on the mistake) forgotten.
I know definitely by own experience, that a few were confused by the double loop of the zodiac, but about Crowley (either confused or not confused by the strange experience, that somebody or something declared, "that Tzaddi is not the star") I personally don't know - I can't ask him.
This is not the point, and Crowley couldn't have been confused about a term and a concept he himself invented (the "double loop" in the Zodiac). You also don't have to ask him, you just have to read what I collected from him about the concept.
It would be very easy to demonstrate the reason why he called it a double loop, with a moving image, but I don't know how to do that. I have found that most people are too lazy to get the concept through intellectual effort, so it remains like some kind of "mystery" to many Crowley deck users. The more you try to explain it to them, the more they suspect you of pushing a personal interpretation. Therefore, we need someone who can make a simple series of moving images, so even idiots can SEE it.
Like this:
1 - the Zodiac in a circle.
2 - the Sepher Yetzirah 12 Single Letter attributions of the signs of the Zodiac.
3 - the GD-Tarot de Marseille order of Tarot Trumps (Aleph=Fool) attributed to the single letters/zodiac (Teth=Leo=Justice, Lamed=Libra=Strength).
4 - the Cipher manuscript transposition of these two attributions (Teth=Leo=Strength, Lamed=Libra=Justice).
5 - a moving circle around Virgo showing that these two positions are revolving, a "loop" of these two signs around Virgo.
6 - highlight Heh=Aries=Emperor, Tzaddi=Aquarius=Star, on either side of Pisces.
7 - a moving circle around Pisces showing how the the transposition of these two sign-letter attributions around Pisces creates a second "loop" in exact balance on the other side of the circle of the Zodiac.
If that doesn't get the concept of the "double loop" through someone's mind, then there is no further hope for them.
In the article of you, that you linked to, you yourself addressed doubts about the date, when Crowley precisely knew or assumed, that He and Tzaddi somehow should have an exchange with their attributes. You come to a conclusion of c. 1918. The Tzaddi scene took place 1904. So - somehow -, if your analysis is right, one might conclude, that Crowley had been 14 years "confused" about "Tzaddi is not the star" and found then to a second insight, which told him "now you got it".
But this has nothing at all to do with your original statement, that "Crowley's confusion" had something to do with Justice and Strength. In fact he had no confusion, he believed the doctrine whereby Justice had the letter Lamed and the sign Libra, and Strength had the letter Teth and sign Leo, and when he had accepted that the Star might be Heh and the Emperor Tzaddi, he noticed that these two signs are also separated by only one sign, Pisces. The Secret Chiefs' "transposition" of Justice and Strength was matched exactly, balanced, on the other side of the Zodiac, to the transposition of Aries and Aquarius, Emperor and Star. So Crowley figured he had found his solution.
But I think this problem not so interesting, and I'm not interested to prove, that Crowley was confused.
What is important is take responsibility for your statements, admit when you are in error, or not to make uninformed assertions that turn out to be wrong and then try to defend them by twisting the meaning of words or phrases.
Crowley was not "confused" in any case. You are confused. About Tarot history, Crowley, like all the occultists, was simply WRONG, but that is not the question here. You are imposing that standard on them.
The issue here is what they believed and why they believed it. It is no different to studying the biblical story of creation or Ptolemaic cosmogony. We know that both are wrong in factual terms, but it is anachronism to say they were "confused" when they drew conclusions from what they believed.
It is in fact quite logical to believe that the Earth is fixed at the center of the universe, and everything turns around it. That is a simple, unconfused belief. What is confusing is to believe that the Earth is floating in nothing. That is not the case, but that is what most people who don't know a little bit about astronomy actually think is happening. They believe it because nobody believes otherwise these days, and there are satellites and space travel and whatnot, and scientists are really smart when they aren't working for a Liberal conspiracy to destroy America.
The situation was simply so, that Crowley and others and the research of early 20th century hadn't our level of information.
That is irrelevant to the question of this thread. If you don't want to discuss the history of occult ideas about Tarot, then don't make erroneous statements about it. If you do state something in error and are corrected, accept your mistake and move on.
So what are you going to defend?
I'm going to defend staying on topic and not being anachronistic and mixing everything up. I don't care whether the occultists were right or wrong about real Tarot history, when I talk about occultist writings about Tarot. I care about what they said and why they said it. It is part of intellectual history, culture, whatever.
I happen to know a lot about Aleister Crowley and his ideas, which is why I caught you bullshitting here. Perhaps many times I don't catch you, because I don't know about the subjects you are writing about. But about this one I know the facts, perhaps better than anyone who has written about them on the web. I also know about Tarot history, which is why I will defend the facts against bullshit in most places I find it. I don't go LOOKING for trouble, but if I am in a conversation where someone says something stupid or bullshits, I'll point it out. Often that person will admit their mistake and learn, but sometimes they will defend their mistake and then an argument might ensue.