RWS Esoteric or Exoteric?

LRichard said:

The pips illustrate the Golden Dawn decan interpretations (among other things) but that need not be taken into consideration when doing divination.

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Are you sure about that? The GD decan interpretations are what, let's say, half of the RWS pips divinatory meanings consist of.

closrapexa said:

......It is damned funny, though, that the GD considered the Hebrew alphabet secret knowledge, even in the midst of the language's reawakening.

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It is hard not to think that may have been a humorous tongue in cheek exaggeration by Crowley. Perhaps the 'revelation' was not merely of the alphabet alone, but in connection with tarot and/or the GD's planetary attributions of the double letters.

Michael Sternbach said:

Are you sure about that? The GD decan interpretations are what, let's say, half of the RWS pips divinatory meanings consist of.

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That's true. I was speaking only of the illustrations, not their divinatory interpretations, which are all over the map. Are there any RWS pip cards whose illustrations are not compatible with the GD decan titles?

closrapexa said:

Very true. If it were merely a matter of knowing the attributions we would all be Adepts.

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Exactly! The attributions serve to reveal the arcanum while simultaneously shielding it.

closrapexa said:

It is damned funny, though, that the GD considered the Hebrew alphabet secret knowledge, even in the midst of the language's reawakening.

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The glamour of the participation mystique.

LRichard said:

It is hard not to think that may have been a humorous tongue in cheek exaggeration by Crowley. Perhaps the 'revelation' was not merely of the alphabet alone, but in connection with tarot and/or the GD's planetary attributions of the double letters.

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I think Crowley's comment was based on his experience after his Neophyte initiation in the Golden Dawn. The first Knowledge lecture isn't exactly full of super secret mysteries. In fact the majority of it is quite ordinary and mundane.

It's the sort of stuff that Waite would have reserved for 'club members only'.

As far as the RWS illustrations wandering from the GD/Book T meanings of the decans, yes...there are numerous instances; for example 6 of Swords "Lord of Earned Success"...for that matter, Crowley does too, with "Science". We've talked about that very card in this thread already....here's MY take: RWS...the swords (the mind) keeps us IN the boat...i.e. on track, till we get to our goal...we set mental limits, not to stray to left or right, till we "make it to the other side"....that's good scientific method too. If you successfully reach your goal, that's a Success you have Earned.

Also...remember that Paul Case founded BOTA on what was basically the RWS Major Arcana, with a few "tweaks" of color and by returning the Sun and Death to their more classic TDM forms. 15 years of weekly esoteric instruction, kabbalah, astrology, alchemy, magic squares, etc...all on this basic RWS deck. I guess the Albano is to bring BOTA color theory to it....so yes there is incredible deep estorerics there....everything in every card has deep esoteric significance. Personally I believe, that whether people know about it or not, they buy it...and buy it, and buy it....for a reason that escapes them....they were constructed with esoteric wisdom (Waite) and Psycic/intutive insight (Smith) and people can feel it when they look at it.

Also, when you put millions of rabid tarot geeks on the project, they have dug deeper in insight than probably Artie and Pixie even dreamed. I expect that the whole RWS "family" that has been spawned by their deck would blow them away. Who would have guessed?

closrapexa said:

It is damned funny, though, that the GD considered the Hebrew alphabet secret knowledge, even in the midst of the language's reawakening.

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They didn't consider the alphabet to be secret, rather it was the assignment of the Fool to Aleph and the switch between Strength and Justice to match the Sepher Yetzirah's astrological correspondences that was the secret.

Teheuti said:

They didn't consider the alphabet to be secret, rather it was the assignment of the Fool to Aleph and the switch between Strength and Justice to match the Sepher Yetzirah's astrological correspondences that was the secret.

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I'm not so sure about that. The Tarot instructions come a little later on. But right from the beginning First Order Golden Dawn members were still required to swear oaths of secrecy in return for some rather mundane 'secrets'. It was this mixing of initiation with education that annoyed Crowley. He felt the two should be kept separate.

Here's Crowley's explanation in chapter 20 of the Confessions.

Aleister Crowley said:

At my initiation [Neophyte], I could have believed that these adepts deliberately masked their majesty; but there was no mistaking the character of the "knowledge lecture" in which I had to be examined to entitle me to pass to the next grade. I had been most solemnly sworn to inviolable secrecy. The slightest breach of my oath meant that I should incur "a deadly and hostile current of will, set in motion by the Greatly Honoured Chiefs of the Second order, by the which I should fall slain or paralysed, as if blasted by the lightning flash". And now I was entrusted with some of these devastating though priceless secrets. They consisted of the Hebrew alphabet, the names of the planets with their attribution to the days of the week, and the ten Sephiroth of the Cabbala. I had known it all for months; and, obviously, any schoolboy in the lower fourth could memorize the whole lecture in twenty-four hours.

I see today that my intellectual snobbery was shallow and stupid. It is vitally necessary to drill the aspirant in the groundwork. He must be absolutely familiar with the terminology and theory of Magick from a strictly intellectual standpoint. I still think, however, that this course of study should precede initiation and that it should not be mixed up with it.

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Mallah said:

I've thought that the RWS is so excellent for use with sitters ("unitiated") who can get involved in the depth of the reading and it's imagery as presented therin, without the reader (initiated, perhaps) having to explain all the esoteric clues that are being presented to their own "eyes that see".

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I agree. A person doesn't need to know a thing about the esoteric allusions to tell a story and receive a very apt message with the RWS deck. Furthermore, most of the time what a person "gets" is directly related to the deeper esoteric allusions without needing any of the convoluted references. This is one reason why I find the deck so powerful.

Information was about to go global and so was spirituality....and Waite was feeling that, and offering "what he could".

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Waite was definitely on a mission. He spent his entire lifetime writing and translating over a hundred books and many more articles - all on the same topic - a Secret Tradition that recounts through many forms and religions the mystical journey to union with the Divine. He saw this as a more profound purpose than the Golden Dawn's "knowledge and conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel," even though he recognized that as a step along the journey.

BTW, I was recently re-reading some of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's brilliant essays on literary criticism (remember Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan?) and noticed a striking similarity between his prose and Waite's style of writing. Coleridge wrote at the very beginning of the 19th century, so Waite may have been emulating some of his favorite authors from that period. It was Waite's contemporaries like Yeats who really helped modernize literary writing.

It does seem rather mundane. There were undoubtedly Jews in the GD who would be not only familiar with the alphabet, but this was also the beginning of Zionism, and Eliezer ben Yehuda was already working on his dictionary. Probably some even came with a Kabbalistic background of their own and would know the Sephiroths.

I guess it was a rite of passage of sorts. If an aspirant couldn't even keep those non-secrets, then they couldn't be entrusted with the actual secrets.