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study guide for superdomain02d ["Augury"]
Material from: Crowley, A. (1974). The book of Thoth: The Egyptian tarot. Level Press, San Francisco.
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1. Know whether or not Magick is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with the Will. Know whether or not, in common parlance the word Magic has been used to mean the kind of science which ordinary people do not understand. Know whether or not the business of Science is to explore Nature. Know whether or not [early Greek] science was hoodwinked by theological and philosophical theories of the a priori type. Know whether or not [in early Greece] The idea of measurement was hardly known to anyone but mathematicians like Archimedes, and astronomers.
2. Know whether or not the doctrines of "correspondences" and "signatures" were based upon fanciful resemblances. Know whether or not [much of early science] sounds today to many people mere superstitious ignorance and nonsense; but it is not altogether so. Know whether or not [practitioners of] alchemy…were forced by the nature of the work to add real to their ideal observation. Know whether or not modern Science, intoxicated by the practical success which attended…[research] innovations, has simply shut the door on anything that cannot be measured.
3. Know whether or not obsession with strictly physical qualities has blocked out all real human values. Know whether or not the calculations involved [in Tarot] are very precise, but they never lose sight of the Incommensurable and the Imponderable. Know whether or not the theory of Animism was always present in the minds of the mediaeval masters. Know whether or not [in the view of animism] any natural object possessed not only its material characteristics, but was a manifestation of a more or less tangible idea on which it depended.
4. Know whether or not we may doubt how far the personification of these entities was conceived as real by the ancients. Know whether or not a person still more advanced in this science could get into real connection with the superior, because subtler, forms of Life…[and] perhaps cause them to manifest themselves to him in material shape. Know whether or not Platonic ideology…maintained that any material object was an impure and imperfect copy of some ideal perfection.
5. Know whether or not men who wished to advance in spiritual science and philosophy strove always to formulate for themselves the pure idea. Know whether or not the Meaningless and Abstract, when understood, has far more meaning than the Intelligible and Concrete. Know whether or not the Five of Wands…is subject to the Lord of Fire, because it is a Wand, and to the Sephira Geburah because it is a Five. Know whether or not, if used actively, [the Five of Wands] means that the proper course of conduct is to contend.
6. Know whether or not, in order to use the properties of this card [Five of Wands], one way is to get into communication with the Intelligence concerned, and to induce him to execute his function. Know whether or not there are…seventy-two "Angels" set over the thirty-six small cards; these are derived from the "Great Name of God" of seventy-two letters, called Shemhamphorasch. Know whether or not the "Name" is Tetragrammaton, I.H.V.H., commonly called Jehovah.
7. Know whether or not it is quite useless to study…attributions of all intelligences. Know whether or not these matters are here mentioned for the sake of completeness, but the Tarot will lose all its vitality for one who allows himself to be side-tracked by its pedantry. Know whether or not the Tarot is…intimately bound up with the purely magical Arts of Invocation and Evocation. Know whether or not evocation is much more objective.
8. Know whether or not the further advanced one is in initiation, the less the idea of hostility enters one's mind. Know whether or not, in order to understand any given card, one must identify oneself with it completely for the moment. Know whether or not the ancient theory of the Universe included the thesis that every object in Nature possessed a spiritual guardian. Know whether or not [in speculative fiction] a particularly powerful weapon was likely to get the reputation of not having been manufactured at all by human hands, but forged in volcanoes or in fairy-land, and thus imbued with preternatural powers. Know whether or not some famous swords had names, and were regarded as living beings; they were liable to fly out of the window if the owner played about too much, instead of killing people as is proper.
"As Below, So Above"
[Graphics by Descript's Overlord and Microsoft's Powerpoint. Background videos by Wix.com].
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