/lit/ - Literature

NOTE: these additional books are only to be discussed if the detail you want to mention is relevant to the current (or previous) MOTT chapter we are discussing!

If you are interested by what the people who use tarot for divination say about the arcana:
the first two books are about the English school, the second two of the French school
"Tarot Dictionary and Compendium" by Riley (1995)
"Dictionary of the Tarot" by Butler (1975)
"The Tarot" by Maxwell (1933, translation 1975)
"Tartot de Marseille" by Marteau (1949, translation 2021)

If you are interested in history of the tarot and games played with the tarot:
"A History of Games Played with the Tarot" by Dummett & McLeod (2004, 2 volumes)
"The Encyclopedia of Tarot" by Kalpan (1978, re-edited 2020, 4 volumes)

I won't mentioned any esoteric or occult works as they were all included in the Meditations on the Tarot and discussed at the appropriate places.

>>23283755
Anon, start date was given as May, not April, 13! Nonetheless, I'll read over the first card this evening and report back late night-- working now, unfortunately

>>23283971
oh I'm sorry I gave that date 2 weeks ago but was thinking that May comes after March
good luck with your work
if it doesn't work out we could make it again next week for the same card (1)

we can read from page 3 until page 7 (when the card description starts) as it's sort of a preamble... and continue from page 7 to page 21 next week i.e. 20th April, and then move on to the second Arcana on 27th April

>>23283983
>oh I'm sorry I gave that date 2 weeks ago but was thinking that May comes after March
lmao what

>>23284237
sorry I don't have cute little angels floating around saying stuff like "anon anon next months is April not May!"
anyway I managed to read through half of the first chapter, didn't even feel the hours, so I'm pretty cool with it
may Jesus have mercy on us all

>>23283755
Hey, I’m the OP from the original thread. I just finished the magician chapter/letter. It’s taken me forever because I have to keep going back to reread. It’s so dense and I wanted to make sure I understood everything. I kept getting mixed up about his point about the different types of symbols. From what I understand, he says there are two different types of symbols: typological and mythological. Typological symbols (e.g., tarot cards) are images that represent something akin to Plato’s forms. Mythological symbols are myths that represent universal human experiences (e.g., Adam and Eve’s sin and their fall from grace). All of this ties into the hermetic principle of “as above, so below.” Something that confused me though is his talk about the unity of all things. This sounds like a nondual position, but Catholics — including Tomberg himself, if I’m not mistaken — are dualists. However he did cite Patanjali on this point, and I know Patanjali is a dualist even though I haven’t read him. Maybe I should read the Yoga Sutras next for some more clarity.

>>23283983
Got it, but I'll read it tonight. And send a late, late post.

>>23284468
>nondual position, but Catholics — including Tomberg himself, if I’m not mistaken — are dualists
define nondualism and dualism
>However he did cite Patanjali on this point
on what point? the only time he mentions Patanjali is to highlight the necessity for concentration, and after he mentions a lot of other sources
>and I know Patanjali is a dualist even though I haven’t read him
?!
>Maybe I should read the Yoga Sutras next for some more clarity.
please do not use this thread to market other faiths (streetshittery, in your case)

>>23284805
I'm at page 12 but I just ate and it hinders my concentration heh
don't worry if you don't finish it, better to get a good night's sleep

>Thus the Magician is a typological symbol; he reveals to us the _prototype_ of the MAN OF SPIRIT. Whilst the Biblical accounts of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and if you wish, also the _schisme d'Irischou of S-Y d'Alveydre are, on the other hand, myths
kinda reminded me of this scene
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npf0mWVP9sc

I really like the idea of concentration without effort. Unfortunately, I can't seem to ever get there. I'm a bit of a daydreamer and it's hard to avoid it.

Same problem with contemplation. I can direct my thoughts to God but I can't empty my mind easily. I find yoga helps with this to some degree, or even working out first. But I have a two year old so trying to fit it in during short breaks or before bed is quite hard. I normally end up reading instead.

I didn't know this was a thing here, just happened to pick it up again recently on a lark. I made it like 5 books in before but in the two years since I've read way more of the Patristics, St. Athanasius, more St. Augustine and St. Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, St. Maximus, Eriugena, Evargrius, and Origen, and so it makes more sense now. Also more Plato and Aristotle.

I'm in a Catholic philosophy grad program so it's really prepared me to appreciate it a lot more.

Maybe I will make it through this time.

>>23285329
Also noticed von Balthasar does the afterward. Just found him. His book on St. Maximus is excellent. Theodrama is an interesting concept too. I didn't realize he was a cardinal.

Didn't realize how many philosophical heavyweights were in the church hierarchy. Pope/St. John Paul II's stuff is great too.

>>23283755
this thread ought to be cut from divine

Can I dive right into this or is it something you need background knowledge for?

>>23285360
Just dive, it was made for absolute beginners and it also possesses scientific rigor, meaning that every concept used is explained and every source referned

>>23285502
>referned
Referenced

>>23284468
Of interest here might be Aristotle's two types of knowledge. Aristotle, in Metaphysics, IX 10, distinguishes between two kinds of truth: truth as the correctness of speech and thought (true vs false propositional knowledge), and truth as the grasping of indivisibles (ignorance versus awareness) (asyntheta, adiaireta).

A lot of discussion of adiareta looks at how it can come prior to propositional knowledge as a sort of basic sense awareness. However, I think it would be appropriate to say that propositional knowledge must reinforce and "make more full" our awareness (adiaireta) of terms as undivided unities. For, if we had to "unpack" all our propositional knowledge about complex things every time we used them in thought we'd never get any thinking done.

However, me might also think of adiareta being in some ways unconscious/subconscious processing.

When we think about the milage artists and poets can get out of archetypes, it seems this is because these symbols "call forth," a great many ideas without having to have them unraveled in propositional thought. So the symbols are a short of shorthand, terms that become loaded and can be manipulated more easily. It's sort of like data compression or declaring variables in code so that you don't have to have a huge chain of strings.

But I think it's more than that. In the Republic and Letter VII, Plato stresses how true knowledge is a unified grasp of something, a going out from one's self to the thing sought. Reason is ecstatic in this way, transcending the current self (so is love, e.g., the Phaedrus). Plato avoids having Socrates try to fully describe the Good in discursive terms because words always point to appearances, the less than absolute. What is full in itself can only be grasped in its entirety, not by discursive reasoning (dividing and concatenating as St. Thomas says).

Now as Aristotle says early in the Posterior Analytics, and as St. Thomas agreed in his commentary on Boethius' De Trinitate, human reason is always processual. We never have a thought in "no time at all." But symbols can get us closer to having a thing fully present to us, "all at once." This is the idea behind Kabbalah from what I understand as well.

>>23284468
>Typological symbols (e.g., tarot cards) are images that represent something akin to Plato’s forms. Mythological symbols are myths that represent universal human experiences (e.g., Adam and Eve’s sin and their fall from grace). All of this ties into the hermetic principle of “as above, so below.”
No, only the first part (typological symbols / those which reveal prototypes a.k.a. Platonic forms) tie into "as above so below"... the mythologycal symbols (archetypes) are on the vertical axis (time as a flat circle viewed from the side, if you insist) of "history repeats itself"

>>23283755
I have the Robert Powell translation. This the same?

>>23285711
Yep

>>23285529
Thank you for this post. Very interesting. I’ll add Aristotle’s metaphysics to my reading list. I’ve had similar thoughts about how archetypes allow artists to invoke various ideas without having to directly posit or construct them, but I never really fleshed the thought out. You put it very well, and it makes more sense when you put it like that. I’ll have to read more Plato too. I’ve only read a few of the dialogues that were included for background in a course on Kierkegaard that I took.
>>23285616
I reread that part of the letter after reading your post. I don’t know how I missed that, he directly states as much and included a diagram. But that raises another question for me. Does Tomberg view the events of Genesis as being literal historic events that symbolically repeat themselves, or as being only symbols drawn from historic patterns?

>>23285790
>Does Tomberg view the events of Genesis as being literal historic events that symbolically repeat themselves, or as being only symbols drawn from historic patterns?
There are pretty many events in the Genesis (and btw the relations between them can only be determined via the vertical, and not narrative "mythology"), I will assume you asked about the expulsion of Adam and Eve
From what I remember he said that the archetype itself is a "true myth" but its description is always of a specific event... so yes, that would imply that it happened in that way once... its a specific instance of an event that repeats itself, but not all components have to be the same every time
At least that's what I got from it..

>>23284858
Just home; yep, tomorrow it is

>be complete scatterbrain
>even in meditation my thoughts are like a constant white noise
>read the concentration without effort part
>"One may say that the entire being becomes like the surface of calm water, reflecting the immense presence of the starry sky and its indescribable harmony"
>next time i meditate i try my best to picture this
>eventually imagine my scattered thoughts taking the form of bulls running rampant across the sky
>this lasts for a few minutes then suddenly the bulls completely stop in the sky as with the white noise of my thoughts
>nothing going on in my mind, no thoughts, nothing. just the image of the unmoving bulls and the starry night sky
>after a few seconds the switch is flipped and the bulls along with my thoughts start up again
I have never experienced my mind be so still and i cannot express how good this whole experience felt. And as silly as it sounds, i feel like i was given a taste of this as a sign that if i keep at it, even i can attain concentration without effort.

>>23283755
>MOTT
I wish this well, definitely too dense for me to read alone.

>>23286721
Ha, yeah. I've had the same problem with St. Bonaventure's The Mind's Journey Into God. I was able to finish it because it is so short, but understanding is another thing. I want to finish the Periphyseon some day too...

>>23286588
Thank you anon, will try it
I also like to imagine that when I try to still my mind, the thoughts that appear are not mine, as I did not will them: I willed a still mind. While it's not a complete solution, it takes away a lot of their "emotional potential"

Oh hey, I've meant to read this one.
Sure, I'll join. Bump

>>23283755
Since this got shilled on /x/ i will shill on here too
Go to >>37640764 if you want to talk about more Christian Esotericism
>>23284468
Microcosm Macrocosm theory isn't Hermetic, it's nearly universal and existed in Christianity around the same time if not before Hermetism influenced it
Tomberg, after leaving Anthroposophy considered himself a Christian Esotericist, but his thought is closely tied to the Sophiology of the Russian Orthodox Church, so he can be considered a Catholic Sophiologist which is/was a small movement in the late 20th and early 21st Century
This current is an outgrowth of Naturphilosophie and Illuminism, putting Tomberg in the theosophical tradition of Christianity, Jakob Böhme being its chief representative
This Tradition of Christianity can in one sense be described as 'Vishishtadvaita', Qualified Non-Dualism (of course not exactly like the Hindu doctrines), as in it the creation account of Genesis is interpretated as God emanating the world out of himself, but it at the same time being totally distinct from him
I can go on but that would be barely related to the thread topic
>>23285329
Don't struggle with it, it's supposed to be effortless
I recommend you learn to practice Lectio Divina, as for reading material you can use Meditations on the Tarot, and slowly progress through it that way, with time your mind will be much more refined
Hugh of Saint Victor likens the mind to a piece of wet wood, it first has go dry to be able to be enflamed by God
>>23285334
The greatest thinkers tend to come from the Church
>>23285360
It's written for an audience made up of 'normal people' and Anthroposophers to bring them back to the faith, you can just dive right in
Antoine Faivre even calls it the best Introductory book on Christian theosophy
>>23285529
Augustine developed our understanding of Divine Illumination but which fell in popularity with the rise of Nominalism
Thoughts should be seen as a sixth sense, not just as a 'room' where you create things, the Will moves the Intellect which reflects and is transformed by the various Platonic Ideas, the Logoi (forgot the name Augustine uses but this is Maximus' name for them) which are located in God's Mind
That's why the more you think of the Logos the more your Intellect will be transformed into him, which is the basis for Mysticism
>>23285790
>>23285867
We today think of the Fall as being horizontal, set in time, but in the Pre-Modern world Genesis was seen as a Vertical story, telling the story of how Mankind fell from the divine into time and space
This story also happens inside of everyone of us, just as the story of Jesus Christ also has to occur inside of the believer
>>23286588
Sounds more like you were just very focused, but continue practicing
>>23286775
You have to read their sources and also try to think like them, our way of thinking is radically distinct from nearly everyone from before 1800
>>23287032
Please read what i wrote about Divine Illumination above

>>23287707
>>>/x/37640764

>>23287707
Tomberg probably left the Orthodox Church for the Catholic (Universal) one because he was dissapointed by the hypocrisy of people like you. All Orthodox countries are the same because all Orthodox "Christians" behave the same way: either like gypsies, or toleratig gypsies. Not to mention that you unleashed the shit-flood of Communism on the world yet you are still crying about how Orthodox priests & monks were persecuted... in reality there hardly were any persecutions, at least compared to what Catholics faced (Henry VIII or the French Revolution etc.)
You should be ashamed of yourself.

>>23287926
Very powerful critique of me but i am not Eastern Orthodox, i'm Roman Catholic with a sweetspot in my heart for Lutheranism (Pietism and theosophy)

>>23287934
A tree by its fruits.
Stop spamming this thread, you already had your revenge (your shit in the middle of the street, as it were) for me posting a simple link in the thread you are paid to manage. So leave it at that. You won, it stinks like shit. Now please go away.

>>23287950
?
Are you confusing me for someone else or did you forget to take your meds?

>>23287707
>Since this got shilled on /x/ i will shill on here too
>>23287966
>Are you confusing me for someone else or did you forget to take your meds?
I beg you , in the name of Jesus Christ, leave this thread or series of threads and never return

>>23288001
Ah now i get it, you're that guy!
Well if you're that scared of me i'll lay low for you

>>23288021
I don't care, I just beg you not to post here or in any subsequent thread with the subject of Meditations on the Tarot on /lit/ ever again. You don't need to: I learned my lesson and won't believe anybody who professes to be a Christian ever again. Thank you and goodbye, I hope we never "meet" again.