Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

I went to a wonderful Tarot workshop in Dallas Texas. This was hosted by my lovely friend Mustafa Al-Laylah, he is a mentor to me in my O.T.O. work, and a wonderful proponent of the mystical ontological anarchism known as The Moorish Orthodox Church of America.

A delightful group, who’s members have totally showered me with comfort and bliss to the point of strides towards enlightenment.

One thing I took from this workshop was the Binah is the home of the Dark Mother. That got my attention since I visualize my HGA as a Dark Venus, Santa Muerte, Mictecacihuatl, Kali, Whore of Babylon, Nuit, Hathor type lady.

I decided that I was going to start a magickal study of the Tarot from Malkuth to Binah on the Qabalah in order to really start learning the Tarot.

I have been using Tarot on and off since I was 15, but I still have to look most of the cards up.

I knew almost nothing about the Qabalah when this began.

What I do is I do a spread of the 10 suit cards in the form of the Qabalistic tree of life. I only turn over the card I’m on. Then I think about that card until I do the next one, and the Sephiroth it represents. I recognize there are four suits of the Tarot (Swords, Wands, Cups, Disks), I believe each number from each suit will incarnate a different aspect of the sephiroth. I am focusing on the Swords first, I felt intuitively drawn to them.

On the 8th of July I wrote in my journal about this work, which I now call my Ladder of Swords Working. (This will drive some Thelemites crazy, since Crowley referred to his biggest spells as workings, but what is the fun in magick if you can’t have a flare for the dramatic).

What I wrote is: “will do journey to Binah in the suit of swords, as this spell will fill my Ruach and allow my sexual ascent.”

Here is a link on Parts of the Soul, this gives the basic Qabalistic-Thelemic framework for my efforts with the Tarot and Qabalah. There one will understand what I meant by Ruach, but interestingly enough the Swords being the suit of mind they are ideal for this task. I am learning to put my mind in its proper place: under will. I did not know this when I wrote it in my journal though, and this is one of those things that sets of my synchronicty neurons.

And what I meant by “allowing my sexual ascent,” is that in the last few years I have felt my sexual energy lacking, my sexual connection as well. I have written on this already and will continue to do so. But in a nutshell I want a higher baseline of sexual arousal, for better and more frequent sexual encounters and for fuel for my Sex Magick.

I began in Malkuth, which is the 10 of Swords: Ruin. According to Wasserman, the guy who wrote the little booklet for my tarot deck it is Ruin , faulty reasoning, death, failure, disruption. This follows what seems to be a negative current through the whole Suit of Swords. To the uninitiated, the suit of Swords is the shittiest of bad luck. Wasserman also added that this card can describe an eloquent but in pertinent person (sounds like me at times). Spiritually, according to Wasserman, this card may herald the end of delusion.

Now for the real meat, according to Aleister Crowley in The Book of Thoth this card corresponds to Malkuth. Malkuth is ften thought of as the material world. Malkuth is the end of all energy, a lesson which statesment should have learned but not. Perhaps I will fathom that last statement someday, but for now that demonstrates the shift of depth when Crowley discusses a Tarot card compared to Wasserman.

He goes on to say that the 10 of Swords represents reason divorced from reality, ruin of the intellect, damping down the creative impulse, and a purge. The meaning of these concepts, especially in the context of my climb up the ladder of swords is not lost on me.

People constantly accuse me of pretention and arrogance. I give this young turk vibe to some people so badly that if I asserted that I stood on ground and the earth was above me they would seek to punish me for my rude banter. I want this reduced.

It is not my desire to be combative, but to be enlightened.

So each step on the climb to Binah will probably show me some aspect of myself, my mind, my Ruach, that I must plunge the sword into my heart over. In Book 4 Crowley says the sword in the hand of the magician should be used on himself, and that the hilt of the sword is made of love.

So I must climb, hands and feet bloody in my astral form, to Yesod.

According to Crowley, yesod reflects the light of the other sephiroth. Yesod is the great seat of the crystallization of energy. I wrote in my journal, “now I must crystalize my energy.”

This makes me think of what is currently my favorite Crowley quote:

“The whole of Yoga is to prevent the movement of the mind: all practices, etc., are mechanical aids to this end.” – The Master Therion 666

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With these thoughts on Yesod in mind let us proceed to the analysis of the 9 of Swords. We will begin with Wasserman: Cruelty, mental anguish, despair, hopelessness, worry, suffering, loss, illness, malice, burden, oppression, lying , shame. On the less negative side Wasserman attributes obedience, faithfulness, patience and unselfishness.Its amazing how much I felt the negative when I did this card almost 3 months ago, and how obvious the positive is to me now.

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Crowley says the Ruach is consumed in the 9 of Swords, that is my end game. He says that here thought has gone through every possible stage, the conclusion is despair. That sounds to me like the “all life is suffering,” wisdom of the Buddha. Detachment is liberty.

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Crowley goes on to say Cruelty is the cathedral of the Damned. Sounds like my dream house. He continues that previous disorder is now rectified. I wrote on my journal,” turn phone off, draw line in the sand.” What I was thinking at the time was that to get more artwork done, more writing done, more of the stuff that I really strive to do, I need to be a little cruel. I need to cut myself off from those who would seek my company. Not totally, but that I mist not be afraid to do this. I have improved a little on not dropping my real work for random unplanned invites. In my circle of friends its easy to accidently fill every evening with unplanned outings to bars, movie nights, karaoke, and other things which are not my art or writing. I am convinced of one dogma: I must write and I must draw.

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Crowley also says that this is crude rage and hunger operating without restraint; although its form is intellectual, it is the temper of the inquisitor. Deep. I will probably have epiphanies about this later in life.

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Some final thoughts on this card is that the way of dealing with this card is the way of passive resistance, resignation and the passive acceptance of martyrdom…or revenge.

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For the most part I am ignoring the paths between the sephiroth, I am doing this on purpose, because I want to focus on getting the suits. I will do it with paths again in the future. I will consider it a continuation of my Ladder of Swords Working. But for right now, just the sephiroth, except for that on the path from Malkuth to Hod I saw it had Resh, Liber 200, the practice of solar adorations. It had been high on my to do list, but I was procrastinating. I did not permit myself to leave the 9 of Swords until I had begun a diligent practice of Resh. I sat in Yesod for over a month and a half.

Resh is the Sun. A card I will summarize with one Aleister Crowley quote for conciseness on what is already a long post: “to work out simply and without prejudice the formidable problems which have been raised by the growth of civilization.” So fucking insightful.

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Furthermore, I had an interesting experience in synchronicity. I have a theory about synchronicty (I will have to write a post on this) which works with my naturalistic confines, but to the true believer my behavior will be indistinguishable from their own.

After getting into Resh I did a scrying on a traditional store bought Ouija Board. One of the entities kept saying “8-A-8.” Now this is another thing I will have to write about, I am actually planning to do a great deal of research on Ouija, but for now just understand that this primed me quite heavily for Interference: The 8 of Swords ( a card that I am currently doing an erotic painting of).

At this point, and with all the build up as I entered Hod, the 8th Sephiroth, quite bloody from the climbing. My ladder of swords makes me a Fakir. So I will start with my intuitive responses to this card.

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8 is the number of intellect over interference. Interference is a tactic. Interference is a constant. The issue of interference is intense in my mind. Remember my problem with needing to turn off my phone. I am always in pursuit of intense goals, writing books, drawing comics, posting more here, posting more on my podcast, being a better husband, being a better magician. But I get distracted. In Texas we call this “chasing rabbits.”

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It makes me think of a quote by positive psychologist Tal Ben Shahar: “Learn to fail, or fail to learn.” Indeed.

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In the card 2 swords parry 6. This makes me think of my relationships. Gemini is influencing. Some of the best sex of my life was with a Gemini.

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At long last I am now in Netzach, skinned like a cenobite. Washing myself at the sacred pools of the rose garden on the Tree of Life. Netzach is known as Victory. Indeed, right now I am a mujahadeen at war with his own intellect, to understand the deeper truth. To see with my third eye. My ajna chakra.

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Here I have begun to learn deep and powerful lessons about being enflamed in prayer. Always invoking. This is what David Shoemaker advises and often quotes from Crowley (though I can’t remember what the source material is.)

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But this is where I recall I am climbing swords, though the beauty of Netzach, and its yielding visions may make me feel as if I have been climbing diamonds. Which are also notoriously sharp.

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The Seven of Swords is Futility:

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Here I live. I have been working into my magick some stuff to try to lose weight. I am 5’9 and I have weighed well over 200 lbs. for years. My doctor tells me I must get under 200 and stay there for the rest of my life. Diabetes and heart disease runs in my family.

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So in some of my meditations, astral projections, Qabalah based vision work, I have concluded that I must reach 210 lbs. in order to enter Tiphareth, because this Sephiroth has such strong association with the HGA. I must pay for this ascension. I must not climb the swords any further until I have shown some victory in my own life.

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Netzach is under the influence of Venus. On this level I have discovered Qliphoth (the inverse Qabalah). The Qliphoth deserves its own episode of the Occult Skeptic blog. But I learned of it here in Netzach, where I believe my synchronistic energy and currents presently reside. And the Qliploth of Netzach is A’rab Zaraq , the place of the burning god and ravens. It is pointless sexuality, and here I discuss with an entity I visualize from the Goetia called Buer

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Buer is, among other things, a philosophy teacher. When in his presence I am always confronted with the futility of life.

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The Crowley quote on this card that has me captivated like a Zen koan is : “The symbol shows six Swords with their hilts in crescent formation. Their points meet below the centre of the card, impinging upon a blade of a much larger up-thrusting sword, as if there were a contest between the many feeble and the one strong. He strives in vain.”

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I arrived at Netzach at about 230 lbs. Now I am 220 lbs. And this work is a part of the energy that I called upon to achieve that. I am going to try to start practicing the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentegram as a way to banish the energies that given me so much weakness. To learn to interact with the angelic energies which are coming my way in Tipereth.

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I must be purified. There is something coming that will allow me to climb to the Abyss. I must transform. I must be as impeccable as I can be. I must be ready.

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At 210 lbs. I will overturn the Six of Swords which is Science. I expect some powerful realizations about the HGA. I will continue from there to Binah and write the second part of this piece.