Intensive Deck Study Support Thread ~ Part 2

SolSionnach

Scion said:
Well...

I was gonna see if you feel like poking around in some traditional astrology, but I know that's not really how you work with the deck.
I'd be up for some traditional astrology, Scion - after all, that's what Mel's astrological spread is all about. I bought the Louis book on Horary, and Deborah Houlding's book on the houses - but right now I'm reading Huson.
 

SolSionnach

Emily said:
I'm back :) - three guesses which deck I'm going to be using in my next IDS - the Liber T lol. Ohh well - I think I'm a lost cause.

I haven't been able to find a deck that stands up to the Liber T - I can read with other decks quite easily but they just don't seem to have the depth that the Liber T has and they don't make intuitive reading easy.

The themed decks don't work for me at all, they seem to be too narrow in the interpretation or I see the same things each time I look at a card and it gets repetitive and I still don't want to go back to the RWS symbolism - well not for a deck I want to study. The Liber T artwork is very fluid and works with you. I guess I wasn't ready to move on.

All I have to do now, is to work out some kind of study programme again or decide how I'm going to do it this time round. :)

Edited to add:-

Just been looking at the above spread and it looks very interesting. :)
Welcome back, Emily!
Somehow I'm not surprised that you're back with Liber T - I can't come up with a deck that has as compelling a system, unless it was something like the NOVT. I'm also not surprised that the BG couldn't hold a candle to the LT. :) I had the same problems with the BBC - not enough 'there' there. Not that they are bad decks, not at all. I can see me having great fun with the BBC again. But not now!
 

Scion

Emily said:
Egyptian mythology sounds great. One of my favourite cards is the Moon card but you can see the Egyptian influence in many of the cards.

I'd definitely be interested in the books you could recommend. :)
Well, a couple of overviews:
Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt by Richard Wilkinson
Egyptian Cosmology: The Animated Universe by Moustafa Gadalla
Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses by George Hart
Egyptian Mythology by Geraldine Pinch
And even Budge's (now outdated) books can be useful because the represent info & ideas that Crowley would have been exposed to.

Then for some less academically cautious, but possible more useful/inspiring in the context of the Liber T, these are things by authors with a real passion for the topic and "occult" applications (rather than academia) in mind:
HEKA - The Practrices of Ancient Egyptian Ritual and Magic by David Rankine
The Powers That Seek and/or Egyptian Animals: Guardians And Gateways of the Gods by Akkadia Ford
Sacred Tradition in Ancient Egypt by Rosemary Clark (which is published by Llewellyn, so come with your New Age detector charged; and be ready for unfamiliar spellings)

And if you're feeling frisky and want a juicy (compolicated) history of Egypt's impact as an idea:
The Secret Lore of Egypt: Its Impact on the West by Erik Hornung
 

Scion

sravana said:
I'd be up for some traditional astrology, Scion - after all, that's what Mel's astrological spread is all about. I bought the Louis book on Horary, and Deborah Houlding's book on the houses - but right now I'm reading Huson.
See, I need to get into Mel's spread... Once I put a few projects to bed.

But in the meantime, some traditional astrology books I've been loving. :)

The Moment of Astrology by Geoffrey Cornelius (I love this book so much I made Enrique buy a copy!)
All of John Frawley's books: The Real Astrology, Real Astrology Appiled, Horary Textbook etc. Really thrilling interesting stuff.
Classical Astrology for Modern Living by J. Lee Lehman
Olivia Barclay's Horary Astrology Rediscovered.
Temperament - Astrology's Forgotten Key by Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum
Astrological Roots: The Hellenistic Legacy by Joseph Crane
A good edition of Lilly's Christian Astrology which is really the last great premodern astrological text
Book of Instructions in the Elements of the Art of Astrology by Al Biruni
 

SolSionnach

Scion said:
See, I need to get into Mel's spread... Once I put a few projects to bed.

But in the meantime, some traditional astrology books I've been loving. :)

The Moment of Astrology by Geoffrey Cornelius (I love this book so much I made Enrique buy a copy!)
All of John Frawley's books: The Real Astrology, Real Astrology Appiled, Horary Textbook etc. Really thrilling interesting stuff.
Classical Astrology for Modern Living by J. Lee Lehman
Olivia Barclay's Horary Astrology Rediscovered.
Temperament - Astrology's Forgotten Key by Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum
Astrological Roots: The Hellenistic Legacy by Joseph Crane
A good edition of Lilly's Christian Astrology which is really the last great premodern astrological text
Book of Instructions in the Elements of the Art of Astrology by Al Biruni
That's a hell of a list, bro.
I used to have the Lehman - made me a wee bit crazy. The Greenbaum sounds interesting, and I think I'm familiar with that Cornelius fellow - I vaguely remember something about a web essay about astrology as (wait for it) DIVINATION and how scandalous that essay was. (this was several years back).

I don't have the dough to spring for more books than I already have, but will keep these in mind.. ;) Perhaps now that I'm older and wiser I'll be able to grasp where this stuff is going.

Here's a question: why not use the sidereal zodiac in horary, rather than the tropical? and what house system to use? ;) ;) :p
 

Emily

Scion said:
Well, a couple of overviews:
Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt by Richard Wilkinson
Egyptian Cosmology: The Animated Universe by Moustafa Gadalla
Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses by George Hart
Egyptian Mythology by Geraldine Pinch
And even Budge's (now outdated) books can be useful because the represent info & ideas that Crowley would have been exposed to.

Then for some less academically cautious, but possible more useful/inspiring in the context of the Liber T, these are things by authors with a real passion for the topic and "occult" applications (rather than academia) in mind:
HEKA - The Practrices of Ancient Egyptian Ritual and Magic by David Rankine
The Powers That Seek and/or Egyptian Animals: Guardians And Gateways of the Gods by Akkadia Ford
Sacred Tradition in Ancient Egypt by Rosemary Clark (which is published by Llewellyn, so come with your New Age detector charged; and be ready for unfamiliar spellings)

And if you're feeling frisky and want a juicy (compolicated) history of Egypt's impact as an idea:
The Secret Lore of Egypt: Its Impact on the West by Erik Hornung

Thanks for these :) I've copied this list out and will have a look around for them.
 

Scion

sravana said:
Here's a question: why not use the sidereal zodiac in horary, rather than the tropical? and what house system to use? ;) ;) :p
Actually, that's an easy one to answer. John Frawley covers this elegantly in Real Astrology; I'm gonna paraphrase badly, but witht he hopes you'll go see how he discusses it...

Basically, our zodiac and the signs are no more than a circular measure, a 360-degree scale of twelve equally spaced 30º segments. But the signs of the zodiac are not literally connected with the constellations which bear their name. Skeptics (and siderealists) will gleefully rush to inform you that the astrological signs are no longer in sync with their ancient placements in the Wheel of the Year. Taking it further, many historians seem convinced that somewhere in the distant past a caveman looked up at the sky and said one group of stars looks exactly like a man pouring a jug of water, and then spread the word to all the other imaginative cavepeople… and that anyone who suggested that group of stars looked like a tree or a muskrat was ostracized until they were willing to tow the zodiac line. The thing is, if someone actually goes an looks at the sky they'll observe that the signs are not, nor could they ever, be equivalent in size or distribution. Scorpio is MASSIVE and Aries is a blip, to take two extremes. Only astrologers who have never gone and looked at the sky could suggest that the 12 signs of the zodiac were literally the constellations upon which they were mapped.

Again an important thing to remember, before Leo & Naylor got hold of Astrology the Zodiac was not the dominant concern. That only happens after the advent of newspaper sunsign astrology. :mad: For thousands of years the planets were the primary concern and astrologers were expected to make predictions with provable results. Only in the dingdongy, mass-market 20th century did astrologers start suggesting that humanity can be boiled down into 12 simple flavors like E-Z cheese and that astrology was some kind of mushy affiirmational pablum. Which in turn gave science ample opportunity to ridicule and demolish whatever real astrology Leo hadn't trashed.

Anyways...

For the astrologer, the signs are differentiated by the process of creation. The primal matter of the Cosmos comes into manifestation as (what appears to us as) hot, cold, moist, dry. Onto these four possibilities fall the three modes of creation: the outgoing, which carries the initial impulse from the source into the creation, the expansive, which maintains and explores the creation, and the returning, which turns the impulse back towards its source. Three principles (outgoing, expansive, returning) falling on four qualities (hot, cold, moist, dry) give twelve combinations which each possesses its own distinctive nature. For each nature, an image was revealed which describes (a picture being better than a thousand words) that nature. These are the signs of the zodiac. Once the image was known, a group of stars in roughly the right place were joined to create a picture of it as a mnemonic. The constellations are not and never were equal in size or distribution; they are a mnemonic that helped astrologers map the landscape of time with some degree of accuracy.

Does that make sense?

Now house systems: that's a more delicate quandry... :D
 

MareSaturni

Would it be too ridiculously late for me to try an IDS again?

I know, last time i didn't survive a month, and frankly, i couldn't tell you if i'll survive another if i try again. But i want to. I finally found amidst my deck collection the one i wish to use for the next few months, and besides, i need to study a bit more of Tarot.

Life has just been so...complicated lately. I need something to concentrate on, a personal project, a study...anything.

But i'm unsure...i wouldn't have problems with wanting to try other decks, because i have been barely using any of my decks. My problem would be the opposite...USING the deck, reading, learning, journaling. Sometimes i do a three-card reading and it feels like i'm trying to read greek...nothing comes, i struggle to make sense of the readings. But i love tarot, it's impotant to me, i don't want to 'lose' it.


So...what do you think? Should i try again? What if i fail?
 

Hooked on TdM

Every failure brings you one step closer to success. It's a journey. Of course you can try again!

What didn't work for you last time? What did? What things do you want to try that are new?

Go for it! :)

Hooked
 

Cat*

Marina said:
So...what do you think? Should i try again? What if i fail?
Yes, try again. What if you don't fail? :)