Do what thou Wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
Richard said:
Wow...a lot to chew on here, much of it not *quite* on topic...
Sort of. But I do think the idea of a god having a mortal double whom he torments and kills, and who then receives immortal glory thereby, ties in with the Cain and Abel/Romulus and Remus myths.
Both of these complexes point to a synthesizing of two elements that works somewhat differenly than the normal harmony-of-male-and-female implied in most Lovers cards.
Rather than opposite things combining, similar things conflict. A new state is still produced, but in a quite different (perhaps more powerful?) way.
Instead of just love, we have love and strife, which is both a more realistic picture of the way lovers act and a more effective formula for transformation.
I don't know why I didn't put this together before, but Orpheus getting torn to pieces...do you think that would imply an association with Osiris?
Yes. Almost anywhere Dionysus shows up, dismemberments start happening, which suggests a common Near Eastern heritage with Osiris, filtered through a Greek lens.
Orpheus is torn to pieces by maenads; only his head is preserved, which continues to sing and prophesy. Lycurgus is driven mad and hacks his daughters to death with an ax, thinking they are grape-vines. Pentheus is rent by his mother, who thinks he is a lion cub.
In the Orphic fragments, Dionysus himself - not the second Dionysus born to Semele, but the first Dionysus, the child-ruler of the universe born to Persephone - is cut to pieces by the Titans after they paint their faces white, dance around him, and dazzle him with toys and a mirror. They then boil, roast and eat his limbs, with only the heart being preserved by Athena.
Zeus strikes the Titans dead with lightning and the smoke from their ashes gives birth to humanity, who are part Titan and part god. A new Dionysus is made from the heart, and is set with Persephone over the process of freeing the divine in man from the Titanic nature.
To bring this back to the thrust of our discussion, we might say that the Thoth Art card represents the process by which the divine is extracted from the Titan in us (Persephone, like Art, was supposed to have had two faces and four eyes; the cauldron recalls both the alchemical process by which the purification might happen and the cauldron in which Dionysus was cooked).
The fratricide of the Lovers/Brothers ("The Children of the Voice"), which in the cases of Cain/Abel, Romulus/Remus, and Dionysus/Orpheus marks the beginning of laws and oracles, would represent the revelation, institution, and commencement of this purification-process - "the Oracle of the Mighty Gods."
Just my prelimary musings, anyways.
Love is the Law, Love under Will.
