Teheuti said:
Scion and Aeon - What I hear is that reading Angie's work and thinking of others reading it is extremely painful to you. It must be terrible feeling that a favorite deck is not understood the way you'd like it to be understood. You seem very concerned that people are in danger of having something hurtful happen to them, the work, or to you. In your minds, what is the worst case scenario for what would result from people reading Angie's book?
You put your finger on it, Mary. I hadn't thought of it that way but it's a good characterization. Her book does make me mad, and for several specific reasons. I know that people have steering clear of this discussion because emotions are running high and no one wants to step on toes. Please know that I'm finding the discussion fascinating because it's forcing me to articulate something for myself. Always useful!
I hadn't responded to the above because it seemed you were taking personal offense, and I had no intention of upsetting you. The question you raise is an interesting one. Though you would have it otherwise, I couldn't care less about Angeles Arrien. Literally the only time I've spoken of her directly in the thousands of words posted on this topic is the use of the word "moron" for the purposes of a parallel structure in reponse to Ligator's post about Crowley being a "god." Rhetorical usage, but as you say, unfair and I apologize for that word. Still, 1 word out of 10,000 seems minor.
To be blunt, waggling Arrien's PhD doesn't impress me in the slightest; I know plenty of doctorate dingdongs who teach at much fancier schools with far greater acclaim. Her career in anthropology doesn't "cancel out" the mess in
The Tarot Handbook. Frankly, if she'd published this book as part of her bid for tenure it would have been rightfully denied. No. Arrien's book is the problem, not just for itself but for an attitude which it espouses and encourages. I take enormous exception to promotion of a book so manifestly riddled with error and outright fakery. I cannot find a single redeeming thing about it not handled better and more clearly elsewhere. Other people can; I cannot. I don't care if she's nice. I don't care if she has a following. I don't care if she can walk on water. I DO care that her book on the Thoth continues to circulate misinformation and flat-out bullshit that unwitting newbies absorb and repeat
ad nauseum. It's embarassing and frustrating for them and for people who know the source.
What kind of person teaches people falsehoods willfully? It's pathological. For a career educator, it's doubly so. If I had learned Swedish from a illiterate megalomaniacal con artist for 2 years and then went to Sweden I'd have TWICE as much work and zero benefit. I would very likely never learn Swedish because I would be even more convinced of my inability to learn it and deeply suspicious of anyone who suggested another attempt.
The worst case scenario, Mary, for people exposed to her book is that people's instinctive response to one of the great decks in history is mangled irreparably by the misguided blather of someone who proudly champions laziness and inattention and manifests it in spades. At best, they've learned how to think like Arrien by memorizing Arrien's uneducated, misguided, idiosyncratic, psychobabbled stream of consciousness. At worst, they will discover that they've absorbed a load of wank and have to scratch it all and start over from scratch, forever dogged by those initial impressions with which she infected them. Who would want to destroy and manipulate another person's experience of something as beautiful and complicated as the Thoth?
What I find initially irritating, what gradually gets me so enraged when I read her misnamed
Tarot Handbook is the
deliberate laziness and inattention. I don't care if some random Thoth user decides to approach the deck personally to faff their way through at leisure, and I'd wish them luck. It would be quite a slog to attempt to piece it all together from scratch, though possible I s'pose; it took Crowley a lifetime of monumental scholarship and magicakal practice to conceive the thing. But the minute an author puts her name on the cover of a book and suggests that she has something to say, wisdom to impart, a fresh perspective, and then goes on to admit explicitly that she has opted for laziness and inattention... My stomach knots. My gorge rises. I start to believe that she did all of it on purpose: made the mistakes, skipped research, fluffed up the scary bits, hit th epunters where they live. It seems like a deliberate con to take the poor suckers who are scared by the Thoth with fluffy pastel platitudes. After all, not only does she cop to skipping the research on the 2nd page of the intro, she is writing a Tarot book and the basis of any Tarot practice, no matter how loose or rigid: is
paying attention.
Now, I understand the argument for a user-friendly intro. I understand that some people are scared of all the symbolism and ideas and iconoclasm in the Thoth. But the idea of ANYONE recommending a book that is deliberately, adamantly, incessantly wrong is... bizarre and cruel, to say the least. In my world it borders on criminal because it promotes the publication of shoddy books and it misleads the uninformed. Quite frankly, there are stacks of other books that do the job better and with fewer mistakes. So (it seems to me) the only reason to recommend the book is if you personally like her. Which is your business. Ironically I have read a few other Arrien books. I have an interest in the Muses, so that one made its way into my hands, etc. (Equally facile, sloppy, and poorly written, not researched BTW.) My trouble with her writing is that it is bad and empty. That's okay: lots of authors can't write; they just fill a niche or make people feel soothed. Again, only my opinion. Totally subjective. Anyone who thinks she's witty and articulate should continue to do so. But surely, no one is going to argue that the woman did her homework: she tells us she didn't. You admit she didn't. And before anyone suggests I'm being vague or not providing evidence, a few pages back on request I flipped through
The Tarot Handbook at random and gave page numbers of some of the Arrien-embarassments in a 4000 word post. Go look. Several people have also cited howlers. Interestingly, I have as yet not seen ONE person quote something true or useful in support of the book. Though I suppose she does identify shapes and colors accurately.
And for the record, yes: Crowley made mistakes. I'm not sure why this is news to anyone who can read. He also created the deck in question. Anytime Arrien wants to actually create something that outlives her, I'm ready to defend her right to incorporate her own mistakes into an actual creation rather than an interpretation of someone else's work. The thing is, "New Criticism" has been pretty much discarded as a self-involved exercise in academic masturbation along with a lot of other postmodern exegesis. Laziness. Inattention. The exceptions tend to be those critics who are such gifted intellectuals that their ramblings qualify as a sort of independent creative philosophizing. People don't actually learn much trying to interpret Euripides using a Girl Scout handbook, so that line of inquiry has been dying an ugly death. As I've said repeatedly, Arrien is so manifestly a product of a moment in academia that I feel embarassed for her. If this book were just forgotten or superceded it wouldn't be an issue. But it hasn't been and isn't.
I think it's great if people want to believe that there is a quick-fix for discovery and development. I wish such a thing existed: we'd live in a very different world. I imagine there are lots of people who open Arrien's book and breathe a sigh of relief: no magick here! Crowley wiped clear! Nothing scary or complex or paradoxical... But this reminds me of all those infomercials advertising weight loss equipment on late night TV. They sell because they look like they'll work in a flash with no effort. And America stays fat because they
don't. Laziness. Inattention. Do people really believe that the secrets of the universe come in a can like E-Z cheese? This is another fundamental thing I find insulting, misleading, and cruel in the book. That quick fix is a LIE. I'm not saying that everything needs to be byzantine torture and that every person who picks up the Thoth wants Knowledge and Conversation of their Guardian Angel, but shouldn't they have the option? Any kind of exercise involves effort just beyond our comfort zone, and then time to recuperate. Arrien's book LIVES in the comfort zone.
It's not that I believe there's one right way to learn, I don't! Rather I do believe that there is a WRONG way to learn. And Arrien's book is fundamentally wrong.
Anything that suggests that laziness and inattention is a desirable state in the process of study is lying. I do think that working with the Thoth (or any solid deck) privately and individually can be wildly illuminating and transformative.I can also see that nervous types might appreciate the handholding Arrien offers. You could counter that her willingness to just bluff her way through and just GO for it provides a kind of empty infectious enthusiasm. May be. You could say that her repeated New Age cliches and platitudes make the book accessible to a wider audience. You could say she's so darned gifted she's plugged directly into the pleroma. You could make the case that she's paying attention to her own ideas and that's somehow more pure. I have no problem with that, except for one thing: she's using someone else's deck, and kicks off with idea that the creators ideas are an impediment AFTER admits she couldn't make it through his book 'cause it's just too hard. Laziness. Inattention. But that's not the end of it. She then proceeds through the deck blithely sticking her foot in it on every page, not bothering to check facts or to research anything. Laziness. Inattention.
Infuriating. Maddening. Like fingernails on a blackboard. Endless fingernails on a blackboard that other people will repeat out of ignorance as long as Arrien's pastel doorstop is in print.
Mastery is earned. There is nothing easy about becoming good at anything. The "New Agey" quality to which people refer, that you don't see, may be Arrien's soundbite psychology and the implied suggestion throughout that the easy way to connect to something is to just make it up as you go. That is not study. That is laziness and inattention. If people want to do that, mazel tov. But why publish a book saying that books are worthless?!
The Tarot Handbook is an oxymoron. It does in fact (your protestations notwithstanding) "belittle itself" on every page; in fact it ERASES itself: a book about the worthlessness of books. I could offer a class on Swedish and just make all of it up. It might be, as you put it, "mind opening" for me as a creative linguistic exercise to invent a grammar and a vocabulary. But what the hell would my students have learned in a year? Wouldn't it make me a liar? How would they fare in Sweden? What benefit would there be other than to my wallet?
Languages must be learned. By the same token, Crowley DESIGNED his deck to affect the intuitive functions. I think that someone could actually study the Thoth on its own and still get enormous benefit from personal direct work without cracking Crowley. It would just take longer. I could build a particle accelerator out of paper clips but I might need a few millenia to figure out the math. Why not just learn, properly? Laziness. Inattention.
This is where this book and all books of its ilk seem like slow, sweet poison to me stacked in pastel rows at strip malls everywhere. They are caustic and insidious, devouring everything inexorably like the "little foxes" in the Psalms. Of course they do! People LIKE being lazy and disconnected. They WANT to be told they're perfect and loveable and skilled as they are without lifting a finger. It's a seductive and lucrative position to take. I have no idea of Arrien knows how crappy and useless her book seems to many-many-many-many people; I imagine she must have a sense. People do generally. But it
sells. And that's the bottom line. The world is full of passive, credulous consumers that want an easy out and will accept and enshrine anything between covers as gospel. It may be that she unwittingly embraced the sullen, bourgeois complacency at the core of me-generation pop psychology and it just leaked out into her book. Frankly, it doesn't concern me. Her outdatedness doesn't concern me. She doesn't concern me. It might be that I would love her on sight and embrace her as a sister. But her book would still be empty and facile.
There is something at work in the world, something loose that thrives in apathy... a kind of beige, mushy permission to sit slack-jawed in sweatpants and gum frozen McFood while staring at the television. Do people really, truly, deeply believe that they will access some kind of Gnosis by sitting on their asses? Or is it just that opportunists are willing to sell that idea for $19.95 by the bushel to anyone gullible enough? It's not that I think everyone should still be wearing suits and dresses. It's not that I think people all have to speak in complete sentences and use more than 400 words with regularity. It's not that I believe in hard choices and good books and rewards that are earned and being proud of yourself because you've actually accomplished something. (
Well, actually I do) But I think work matters and discipline is worthwhile and knowledge is the hardest won, most precious thing on the earth. ANYONE who states in print, even passively, that people needn't bother, that they can just muddle through, that everything will be easy and they can just keep their asses in the Barca lounger in front of the TV and know the mind of G-D... seems like the closest thing to pure Evil I can imagine.
If anyone is still reading I have an anecdote that might clarify... About 10 years back, psychologists did research on math skills in children living in low-income housing projects. It was theorized, and later "proved," that children who were only comfortable and familiar with present tense never developed certain brain functions. By not using past tense, or future, (and certainly not
subjunctive) these children grew up with cognitive deficiencies that impaired math, spatial logic, and verbal abstraction. The things ncessary to strategize, calculate, visualize, or problem solve. The same study showed that low-income parents spend 16 hours a week watching TV, and less than 1 talking to their children
in the present tense. Young brains that didn't use those non-present tenses literally atrophied in spatial and quantitative areas. The use of limited and improper verb tense is common in most low income households and it changes who they are and what they can do forever. Whole populations of children are growing up NEVER remembering the past or planning for the future or dreaming or solving problems because they are primarily spoken to (and speak) in the (...like, ya know...) present tense exclusively: "Get me my bag," "I want to eat," "Get in here." The present tense is easier and it gets the job done, right? Compare/Contrast middle and high income families who talk more, read more, verbalize more in MANY tenses. Parents who interact actively and imaginatively with their children are literally building them into stronger skillful adults. Insidious and cruel, no? The study made many people very mad, because it means there are kids trapped by laziness and inattention and it has LITERALLY crippled their minds... and the minds of their children... and their children... A cancer of language that is devouring us and our civilization's capacity to evolve.
Now, what does that have to do with the Crowley-Harris Thoth or Angeles Arrien's book? Those kids grow up functionally impaired because their associational cortexes aren't developing the neural paths they could. And they will raise their children the same way. That makes me MAD, not at them, heaven knows, but at the great televised tit that has numbed this country into a state of complacent idiocy where we're at war with everyone and can barely get off the couch. Laziness. Inattention. The idea that anyone would willingly champion a book that seeks to stripmine the discipline and richness out of a deck seems wicked, in the original sense. I'm appalled by the suggestion that if everyone can feel self-congratulatory relief for a while, once they realize they've been had they'll just wise up and get over it. Vile. It makes me feel like I've thrown up in my mouth and swallowed it at the funeral for our culture.
I think discipline is beautiful. Literally beautiful. Like the curve of a throat. I love seeing it. It pierces me to some secret core. Same thing with study. The raw pleasure I get from the flash of a new synapse is something I hold close in the dark moments. A spark of the divine fire. I believe the Thoth is one of the great esoteric creations of all time. Literally. It is a masterpiece, in the same way that
Bovary is a masterpiece or
Guernica. Reading a book that is so cavalier, so sloppy, so rude, so passive, so emphatically, insistently incorrect about it out of laziness and inattention seems like an insult on the order of smearing a handful of shit on a Degas. I can understand why someone might hate Degas, but the idea of taking the
time to go, and carefully execute something so mind-bogglingly negative and silly seems literally
pathetic... as in evocative of pathos. It makes me acutely aware of
my own mortality and of the smallness of human beings. Arrien will never in her life create anything that will be remembered that way, and the best she could come up with was to mutilate the primal experience of the deck for thousands and thousands of unwitting readers. Why? Laziness. Inattention.
And that is why I get so mad.
Scion