One thing I didn't quite reckon on when diving back into Tarot was how well it interacts with my dreams to dredge up past memories and unresolved complexes. WHo needs a Therapist with these 78 picture cards around?
Pertinax
@aainalbion.bsky.social
Thelemite, A.'.A.'. aspirant, Zen Buddhist and Ki Aikido practitioner with an interest in Taoism. Also environmental scientist, ecosystems modeller, amateur musician.
I regularly see people posting "I think somebody did black magic on me" posts. My first thought is generally, do you really think you're that important?
I wish people would stop posting screenshots ofvtwitter on here. If I wanted to see what's going on over there I'd make an account.
It's a very strange thing, learing to read with the Marseille tarot after decades of Golden Dawn inspired Rider-Waite or Thoth Tarot intepretations to lean on. In one sense the archetypes of the Trump cards is much purer, on the other hand the pip cards are an open field for intepretation.
If your superior insists on outdate methods and tests that don't assess the actual practice at hand, but rather apeing something Crowley wrote before much was known in the west about yoga, then you might be in a museum piece cult, not practicing the emperical methods of the A.'.A.'.
A.'.A.'. initiates are not supposed to fraternise, but given the internet age, they do anyway. What it reveals is that many lineages and teachers are truly backwards (in my opinion) in their teaching methods, and slavishly follow what Crowley wrote. So much for the method os science.
People are talking about the infamous bowl test that Crowley mentioned for passing the 2=9 grade. Not only does this show a basic misapprehension of Yoga, but also demonstrates a dogmatic mentality of 'Crowley said it, it must be right' that is at odds with the imperical methodology of the A.'.A.'.
Once it clicks that you can't not 'Do what Thou wilt', the Great Work becomes simply the daily business of getting out of the way.
The funny thing about True Will is, you can't not do it. Sure, you can paddle about in the river, splash a bit, make bubbles, but the current is stronger than your tiny ego attempts to move it.
You could probably use AI detection software to screen out original thoughts by how much a given piece of writing diverges from the mean. If you can’t pass a pearsons test you get thrown in the incinerator for thought crimes.
While ‘the Law of Liberty’ seems to offer a philosophy of freedom in the sense of ‘you can’t tell me what to do!’, its actually a pretty severe injunction to total self-honesty and a somewhat austere adherence to what is, rather than what we might fantasize about our lives.
This focus on the Great Matter of life and death was what attracted me to Buddhism, just the stark practice of sitting zazen. Scholastics and doctrine, robes and traditional forms, so easily become just more distractions.
While I recognize that there are many reasons to practice Zen Buddhism, for me the only reason for any practice, especially Buddhist, I to face the questions of how to live, and how to die, which are really the same question. I couldn’t care less what Dogen thought about robes or if AI is sentient.
It saddens me sometimes that due to logistics and life, A.’.A.’. in Albion is not currently able to offer the temple initiation experience, but instead offers only Pyramidos and recognition. For that reason I reckon going elsewhere if the full meal deal is what you need.
Since initiation is a bestowal, something granted, not something taken like an item in a shop, I feel that it behooves us as initiates and aspirants, to carefully examine our attitudes towards it. Are we seeking genuine deepening of understanding, or are we just shopping for a new product?
Pet peeve: "I took initiation"...No, you 'recieved' initiation. It's an invitation, not something you just reach out and take. Have a bit of grace FFS. Linguistic laziness of unaknowledged grasping mentality?
More and more I'm tending to feel that any spiritual path that doesn't teach you how to die well as well as how to live well, obfuscating the continuity of the states or otherwise avoiding seriously addressing the question, isn't worth a piddle in a rainstorm.
All the genuine mystery traditions begin with a ritual of death. However I've come to believe that they fail insofar as they fail to convey the stark and final reality of death, and instead treat it as some sort of temporary inconvenience to be overcome. This is only Initiation into a delusion.
Rejecting the slave gods remains a key aspect of Thelemic practice. This is true even when those gods come bearing our favourite traditions and spiritual home-comforts.
The concern I have with AI, on an equal footing with the potential for data theft and ecological impacts of data centres, is that reactionary rejection of it and corresponding embrace of authoritarianism disguised as 'tradition' and 'folk wisdom'.
Excellently written piece on a subject that I have some familiarity with, being an occultist/practitioner who spent several years reintegrating the Catholic church I was brought up in. Well worth a read.
Marco Visconti@marcovisconti.org · 3w agoMy latest for Mere Thelema: www.merethelema.com/2026/08/02/w...
My latest for Mere Thelema: www.merethelema.com/2026/08/02/w...
When Occultists Go Back to Church
As contemporary occultists increasingly turn to traditional Christianity for ritual and community, Marco Visconti warns against letting aesthetic appeal blind us to the political dangers of religio…
merethelema.com
The first in an irregular series on the Tarot de Marseilles. The idea isn't to authoritatively assert anything but to learn this system organically but to put my thoughts into print. formlessfire.blogspot.com
formlessfire.blogspot.com
Deleting the Bluesky app and only logging in once in a while if I happen to be using the laptop that has the right passwords seems to be the right way to go.
When we find ourselves defaulting to 'everyone else is doing it wrong', perhaps thats's a sign that we ourselves have run out of anything interesting to say?
I saw a clip for the film SILENT FRIEND, where a woman was attempting to talk to plants. I'm not sure I could even be a vegetarian if my salad spoke to me as I tried to slice the lettuce.
From a Thelemic perspective, do you regard True Will as emergent or as deterministic. I tend to lean on the side of the former.
At nearly 46 I've gone from 'yay it's Friday', to 'shit, another week of my life gone, never to return'.
On something of a Tarot binge these days. While I still have the same Thoth deck I recieved for Christmas in about 1995, I'm finding it to be more a grimoire of Thelemic doctrine, and am instead drawn to the Marseille, the medieval archetypes seem much more real and lived then Crowleys work.