Secrets of the Thoth Tarot VOL I: A Magical Atlas of the Universe by Katz Marcus

Secrets of the Thoth Tarot VOL I: A Magical Atlas of the Universe by Katz Marcus

Author:Katz, Marcus [Katz, Marcus]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Forge Press
Published: 2018-06-23T16:00:00+00:00


VIII. Adjustment (Justice)

She is wrapped in a cloak of mystery, the more mysterious because diaphanous; she is the sphinx without a secret, because she is purely a matter of calculation. In Eastern philosophy she is Karma. [290]

Correspondences: Lamed (ox-goad), Libra.

Image : A masked female figure holds a sword between a large set of scales, in which are the symbols of Alpha and Omega. She is placed within four geometrical shapes and sets of symmetrical spheres.

In the back of the Book of Thoth are two sections that often go unremarked and yet are incredibly rich with information on the Major cards in particular. These are “General Characters of the Trumps as they Appear in Use” in Appendix A and the “Vital Triads” in Appendix B. The latter is part of an appendix of correspondences mainly taken from 777 and lists key aspects of Crowley’s own correspondences and cosmology.

In the first appendix, we are also given a verse by Crowley on each of the Majors, so we will take this as his own summary of the essential quality of the card, particularly in reading. Here is the one for Justice – which as we have seen, Crowley renamed Adjustment, and placed in the sequence of Majors as 8, rather than 11:

Balance against each thought its exact opposite.

For the Marriage of these is the Annihilation of Illusion.

In this verse Crowley is commenting on the nature of thought, and what Lon Milo Duquette calls the “western zen of Thelema”. [291] Crowley paired Adjustment as the feminine counterpart (Crowley says strongly, “partner and fulfilment”) to the Fool. [292] The reason for this is partly that the Hebrew letters corresponding to the Fool and Adjustment are Aleph and Lamed, spelling AL. This is both the root of the word “God” and backwards, “LA” meaning “not”. So the letters, the meaning, and the two cards by virtue of correspondence, signify “everything” and “nothing” in constant combination; the very essence of existence.

The Adjustment card, who also equates to Ma’at, the ancient Egyptian goddess of truth and measure (who was even above the very gods themselves), is the perfect nature of everything considered in harmony, and the Fool is the nothingness that must be when everything is one. This is an entirely paradoxical, essential, and mystical doctrine.

It is also interesting with this image that we see how Frieda Harris’s “channelling” during the card design and execution, affected Crowley’s later textual descriptions of the cards. She described in her letters for this card; “She has, after all, insisted on being Beardsley …” and “Harlequin comes in & out of it so I must have to submit …” [293] This later appears in Crowley’s text for the Book of Thoth as he compares its relationship to the Fool.

On a more everyday level, Crowley offers key meanings for the card in terms of reading; “law suits or prosecutions”, of which he had several experiences prior to writing the Book of Thoth and during his life. He goes on to say it can also mean in social terms; “marriage or marriage agreements” and politically, “treaties”.



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