Scion
Aeon I take your point... but I tend to be a completist about these things.
It's not that I believe any one original source exists with a pristine order for the 72, but more that by examining every scrap of data we can trace the edges of the topic. The Goetia are so hyped in the magickal community, and yet the material that circulates seems to come from the same 4 sources. I really dig Rankine & Skinner's new book mainly for the fact that they poured more info into the stream. And bottom line: it works.
I was also amused by the Abramelin kerfuffle. In the same way I am by the bickering between the various Golden Dawn orders wrestling over claims of legitimacy. In these things I tend to take the Chaos position: does it get results? Like Crowley, I think the main thing is that the consideration not derail the practice. But obviously he studied everything upon which he could get his paws.
The same skew happens throughout the grimoire tradition because people forget about things like copying errors and historical context. At best the "Solomonic" material is working notes specific to a practitioner that got copied. At best, the books are a starting point.
In a sense the Goetia question is the easiest: we just have to ask them.
It's just that I'm fascinated by the history as well and the way the material has been coopted and adapted over time. With regard to the Golden Dawn's use of the spirits, I'm interested how FEW people comment on it; the situation reminds me of my little Liber Hermetis "discovery" with the decans: it's not that the Liber T art was "weird" but that no one had bothered to post the Hermetis decan descriptions on the internet... which meant that they'd virtually ceased to exist in easy-access internet consciousness. As a consequence EVERY review of that deck decided that it was simply bizarre and negative. If everyone just relies on each other's research then no progress is made. It's like a dark Ouroboros where we'll all just read the same rehashed bits and never move in any direction.
With the Golden Dawn stuff, I think it's because most people tend to repeat and regurgitate the same accessible material over and over from Regardie et al. How many copies of the Bornless Ritual, or the lesser Banishing Ritual does ANY library need to contain? How many times do publishers have to print bollocks about pathworking or the letter assignments from people who don't read Hebrew or practice magick of any stripe? And recently a lot of fluffy Angels-in-a-can coming down the pipe. It's not that I think it's worthless, it's just that it's material that's been covered so often. I understand the marketing issue, but the bias blurs over into "serious" occult writing as well, academic and otherwise.
As André Gide said, "One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." I still want to know everything I can about every element I can reference. Not as the outline of some monolithic castle-in-the-sand truth, but as logs for the fire.
Which goes back to the original question: is there any evidence of the GD or its members making use of the Goetic attributions in conmnection to Tarot? And to add your wise codicil: did it get results?
It's not that I believe any one original source exists with a pristine order for the 72, but more that by examining every scrap of data we can trace the edges of the topic. The Goetia are so hyped in the magickal community, and yet the material that circulates seems to come from the same 4 sources. I really dig Rankine & Skinner's new book mainly for the fact that they poured more info into the stream. And bottom line: it works.
I was also amused by the Abramelin kerfuffle. In the same way I am by the bickering between the various Golden Dawn orders wrestling over claims of legitimacy. In these things I tend to take the Chaos position: does it get results? Like Crowley, I think the main thing is that the consideration not derail the practice. But obviously he studied everything upon which he could get his paws.
The same skew happens throughout the grimoire tradition because people forget about things like copying errors and historical context. At best the "Solomonic" material is working notes specific to a practitioner that got copied. At best, the books are a starting point.
In a sense the Goetia question is the easiest: we just have to ask them.
It's just that I'm fascinated by the history as well and the way the material has been coopted and adapted over time. With regard to the Golden Dawn's use of the spirits, I'm interested how FEW people comment on it; the situation reminds me of my little Liber Hermetis "discovery" with the decans: it's not that the Liber T art was "weird" but that no one had bothered to post the Hermetis decan descriptions on the internet... which meant that they'd virtually ceased to exist in easy-access internet consciousness. As a consequence EVERY review of that deck decided that it was simply bizarre and negative. If everyone just relies on each other's research then no progress is made. It's like a dark Ouroboros where we'll all just read the same rehashed bits and never move in any direction.
With the Golden Dawn stuff, I think it's because most people tend to repeat and regurgitate the same accessible material over and over from Regardie et al. How many copies of the Bornless Ritual, or the lesser Banishing Ritual does ANY library need to contain? How many times do publishers have to print bollocks about pathworking or the letter assignments from people who don't read Hebrew or practice magick of any stripe? And recently a lot of fluffy Angels-in-a-can coming down the pipe. It's not that I think it's worthless, it's just that it's material that's been covered so often. I understand the marketing issue, but the bias blurs over into "serious" occult writing as well, academic and otherwise.
As André Gide said, "One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time." I still want to know everything I can about every element I can reference. Not as the outline of some monolithic castle-in-the-sand truth, but as logs for the fire.
Which goes back to the original question: is there any evidence of the GD or its members making use of the Goetic attributions in conmnection to Tarot? And to add your wise codicil: did it get results?