Heh, I don't own the Mary-El deck either. It's not even finished yet. But the artist, Marie,
has a website where all of the currently completed cards are posted.
I love it when non-serious people jump in to serious conversations.
Not that I'd even consider it a serious conversation. I can often come across as more serious and intimidating than I mean to be, just because I can be so aggressively intellectual. But to me, it's all just the joy of playing with ideas.
I don't worship Crowley at all. Hell, I've only recently even begun to study his work. I really respect the guy, but that ain't the same as thinking him perfect or beyond satire and criticism. I too enjoy the stories of his escapades. He's an interesting figure.
But I have always found that he was very much a product of his time and his upbringing.
Sounds like you and Marie have some similar views on him.
(Again, when I was young, I got into Chaos. Both the theory and practice, and that colours my view on people like Crowley. I find all the dressing up, all the dogma, both pointless and funny.)
It's funny. I can come at that from two angles. I've never studied Chaos Magick, but I'm a fan of Eris and Discordianism, as well as tricksters like Coyote or Bugs Bunny, and like seeing things get shaken up, old forms picked apart. That said, I also value the power and importance of tradition, ritual, and systematic practice. As someone who follows the way of Zen, I know that without all of the rigid structures and practices, I would never have been able to transform my life and my mind the way I have.
But at the same time, I recognize the arbitrariness. It's a good system--no less, but no more, either. If you get attached to the dogma, cling to the costumes as if they're the truth, you're "a demon haunting the fields and grasses," as an old Zen master would say. You've missed the point.
And I don't care if they are true or false or exagerated. They are fun to read.
The weirder and wilder they are, the more I like them.
So, in this particular case, I can't really talk to someone about their deck whenI don't even know it.
And conversations about Crowley in general, I find that people don't get what I'm saying. I get into arguments I didn't mean to start.
So, I decided I'm better off avoiding them.
Sounds like pretty good reasoning to me. I just worry I scare people off by coming across as more serious and threatening than I mean to be. I'm a trained intellectual monkey, so I know how to link up my wandering ideas in a convincing fashion. But that doesn't mean I'm right, or that I even know what the hell I'm talking about most of the time
There's a funny little book about the "dark side" of the astrological signs I bought a while back:
Born on a Rotten Day by Hazel Dixon-Cooper. It cracks me up. The following is a description of folks born under the Sun sign under which I was born, Aquarius:
You have the annoying habit of acting like an authority on subjects about which you know little or nothing. This is because your brain is like an encyclopedia with chunks of pages missing. You confuse snatches of conversation held a year ago with the Adventure Channel's special on the pyramids you saw last week. Then insist you had a conversation with the curator of an Egyptian museum on the relics found in King Tut's tomb. The sad part is that you believe your fantasy so you are not only a phony but also a fruitcake.
Aliens kidnap Aquarians more often than any other sign. In fact, you probably are an alien who uses the kidnapped story as a cover for your strange behavior patterns. Your brain works faster than you can speak, so your conversation is riddled with mispronounced five-syllable words that makes you sound like Roger Rabbit talking about his uncle's "probate" gland.
I must sadly admit that this is more true than I would like it to be... I can just cover it up well because academia has schooled me well in the art of dressing up bullshit to make it look like something else
