- Joined
- Feb 23, 2022
- Messages
- 52
- Reaction score
- 73
I was always intrigued by the Golden Dawn’s opening of the key spread.
There was something somehow fascinating about it, dividing the shuffled deck into 4 piles (according to YHVH), locating the pile with the significator, and then reading the whole pile, in strict order according to various criteria.
However, something puzzled me. Why go to so much trouble – potentially reading all 78 cards in the deck over the course of hours, rather than just a few minutes for a Celtic cross? What was I missing?
So when I discovered ‘the tarot and the magus’ I was equally intrigued. A book that solely focused on the opening of the key. And then I began to find out what was behind the curtain.
Paul Hughes Barlow’s (PHB) ‘the tarot and the magus’ is a very specific tarot book. It’s not a beginner’s book, it’s not for general application to other decks, eg rider waite, it specifically uses Crowley’s Thoth deck and specifically teaches a single spread, the ‘opening of the key’ (OOTK).
PHB teaches various techniques used with the OOTK spread, focusing heavily on card pairing, elementary dignitaries, and of course card counting.
PHB incorporates a huge amount of depth in a relatively short book. Through using the book It’s becoming clear that, like many areas of magick, the OOTK spread works on a number of different levels, which begin to unfold like the layers of an onion, as you travel upwards and inwards. Although I’ve had the book for about a year, and I have casually been using it, it has suddenly caught fire as I’ve began to see where it is going, and the next level has opened up. It’s a ‘true fact’ that magick takes time, and at beginner / apprentice level it is simply not possible begin to ‘get’ or comprehend the higher-level information, at all, sometimes not until years after you initially began. Perhaps that is the sign of a true adept work.
So to give away the spoilers, PHB stated that after beginning to play the book, his experience of writing began to change. After he had begun, he realized that what he was writing was not actually a book on Tarot Divination, but a grimoire for contacting the mercurial spirits of Liber 221. PHB claims that the OOTK was the pinnacle of the Golden Dawn teaching, perhaps why it was not actually elucidated in any great depth, and that the spread is rather a technique to ultimately contact one’s HGA, via the spirits of Liber 221, who began to be appear all around him, and eventually leading to union with the HGA.
Overall, this is a fascinating, inexpensive book for magicians who are into Crowley, Tarot, Thelema, Kaballa and magick. I thoroughly recommend it.
There was something somehow fascinating about it, dividing the shuffled deck into 4 piles (according to YHVH), locating the pile with the significator, and then reading the whole pile, in strict order according to various criteria.
However, something puzzled me. Why go to so much trouble – potentially reading all 78 cards in the deck over the course of hours, rather than just a few minutes for a Celtic cross? What was I missing?
So when I discovered ‘the tarot and the magus’ I was equally intrigued. A book that solely focused on the opening of the key. And then I began to find out what was behind the curtain.
Paul Hughes Barlow’s (PHB) ‘the tarot and the magus’ is a very specific tarot book. It’s not a beginner’s book, it’s not for general application to other decks, eg rider waite, it specifically uses Crowley’s Thoth deck and specifically teaches a single spread, the ‘opening of the key’ (OOTK).
PHB teaches various techniques used with the OOTK spread, focusing heavily on card pairing, elementary dignitaries, and of course card counting.
PHB incorporates a huge amount of depth in a relatively short book. Through using the book It’s becoming clear that, like many areas of magick, the OOTK spread works on a number of different levels, which begin to unfold like the layers of an onion, as you travel upwards and inwards. Although I’ve had the book for about a year, and I have casually been using it, it has suddenly caught fire as I’ve began to see where it is going, and the next level has opened up. It’s a ‘true fact’ that magick takes time, and at beginner / apprentice level it is simply not possible begin to ‘get’ or comprehend the higher-level information, at all, sometimes not until years after you initially began. Perhaps that is the sign of a true adept work.
So to give away the spoilers, PHB stated that after beginning to play the book, his experience of writing began to change. After he had begun, he realized that what he was writing was not actually a book on Tarot Divination, but a grimoire for contacting the mercurial spirits of Liber 221. PHB claims that the OOTK was the pinnacle of the Golden Dawn teaching, perhaps why it was not actually elucidated in any great depth, and that the spread is rather a technique to ultimately contact one’s HGA, via the spirits of Liber 221, who began to be appear all around him, and eventually leading to union with the HGA.
Overall, this is a fascinating, inexpensive book for magicians who are into Crowley, Tarot, Thelema, Kaballa and magick. I thoroughly recommend it.