The Fool and the Pole Star

Aleister Crowley was subtle in incorporating Papus' ideas in his own Tarot deck. There is suggestive evidence of the influence of Papus in Crowley's commentaries on the Fool card, the Ace of Disks and the Princess of Disks in particular.

Ace of Disks

This is the chapter where Crowley mentions Papus.

Dr. Gerard Encausse, "Papus", who followed Eliphaz Levi, felt himself even more closely bound by his Oath of Secrecy, so that his dealings with the Tarot are worthless; and that although he was Grand Master of the O.T.O. in France, and Grand Hierophant 97° of the Rite of Memphis on the death of John Yarker.

The next two paragraphs are significant:

These historical data are necessary to explain why all previous packs are of little more than archaeological interest; for the New Aeon demanded a new system of symbolism. Thus, in particular, the old conception of the Earth as a passive, immobile, even dead, even "evil" element, had to go. It was imperative to restore the King-Scale colour attribution to that of the Aeon of Isis, Emerald Green, as was understood by the Egyptian Hierophants. This green is, however, not the original vegetable green of Isis, but the new green of spring following the resurrection of Osiris as Horus. Nor are the Disks any more to be considered as Coins; the Disk is a whirling emblem. Naturally so; since it is now know that every Star, every true Planet, is a whirling sphere. The Atom, again, is no more the hard, intractable, dead Particle of Dalton, but a system of whirling forces, comparable to the Solar hierarchy itself.

This thesis dovetails perfectly with the new Doctrine of Tetragrammaton, where the Earthy component, Hé final, the Daughter, is set upon the Throne of the Mother, to awaken the Eld of the All- Father. The NAME itself, accordingly, is no longer a fixed symbol, emblem of extension and limit, but a continuously revolving sphere; in the words of Zoroaster, "rebounding, whirling forth, crying aloud".

Princess of Disks

Quite why Crowley feels the need to cite Papus at this point only becomes clear when we study Table 1, where the Heh(f) of Heh(f) position is given as infinity. As we know, technical analysis shows the Earth element not to exist in terms of YHV, and there is the famous phrase 'Kether is in Malkuth, but after another way'. Crowley incorporated this concept in the Princess of Disks, last of the Court cards, who

...represents the Earthy part of Earth. She is consequently on the brink of transformation... Her crest is the head of the ram, and her sceptre descends into the earth. There its head becomes a diamond, the precious stone of Kether, thus symbolizing the birth of the highest and purest light in the deepest and darkest of the elements.

Later in the same paragraph,

Her sublimity is further emphasized by the disk which she bears; for in the centre thereof is the Chinese ideogram denoting the twin spiral force of Creation in perfect equilibrium; from this born the rose of Isis, the great fertile Mother.

The last phrase shows the Daughter becoming the Mother in the doctrine of YHVH.

The Two of Disks has the symbol of infinity incorporated in it:

About them is entwined a green Serpent (see Liber 65, chapter iii, verses 17-20). His tail is in his mouth. He forms the figure Eight, the symbol of the Infinite, the equation 0=2.

Note that the green colour signifies Earth, while the Serpent has a crown, with its tail in close proximity, which again suggests "Kether is in Malkuth..."

Crowley's favourite dictum 0=2 is very interesting in this context. For a long time, I have followed the idea that Crowley is discussing eleven, the Lust card. Eleven is the number of change, the 'false sephira' Daath, the qlippoth, the letter Kaph. Crowley modified the counting method in the Opening of the Key for the Aces from five to eleven as well. Kenneth Grant discusses the significance of 11 in his books. However, in the Sepher Yetsirah, Aleph follows the ten sephiroth, therefore the Fool is the Eleventh card.

We might understand 0=2 to mean that the Fool is equivalent to the 11^th card. "The Fool... represents an original, subtle, sudden impulse or impact, coming from a completely strange quarter." (BoT). However, the 11^th card, Lust, represents "Courage, strength, energy and action, une grande passion: resort to magick, the use of magickal power." (BoT). The Lust card is considered to be an important aspect of Crowley's sex magickal system, but the fact is, Crowley uses far more explicitly sexual language in his commentary on the Fool card, particularly in his description of Parsifal. Few writers consider the Fool card to have such an overtly sexual nature, but Crowley even discusses the Formula of Tetragrammaton; how the Father and Mother produce Twins. "In the most stable dynasties, the new King was always a stranger, a foreigner; what is more, he had to kill the old king and marry that king's daughter." (BoT).

Quite what this obsession with sex has to do with the Fool card is not clear, and I am surprised more is not made of this. I eventually found the clue after pondering Table 2, searching for the connection it must have with Crowley's BoT, I found myself looking at the Contents page of BoT - ( not something that is necessary considering the number of times I have read the book!), and there was the answer - The Fool is listed separately from the other 21 Major Arcana, and what is more, the sub-sections of the Fool are also listed. Crowley clearly intended the Fool to have special treatment.

Here are the 15 titles of the Fool section in the Index. Fortunately, as we shall see in the actual text, Crowley concatenates them into 11 sections:

The Fool

The Fool as Zero, the Mother Letters, the vulture and spiral creation (Princess of Disks, Star, Devil)

The Formula of Tetragrammaton

Succession through introduction of alien blood

The "Green Man" of the Spring Festival. "April Fool". The Holy Ghost

Spring

The "Great Fool" of the Celts (Dalua)

Salvation and the Saviour, Paternity

"The Rich Fisherman" Percivale

Saviour Fish-God, Holy Grail, King Arthur, Parsifal Opera

The Crocodile (Mako, Son of Set or Sebek

Maximum innocence developing into maximum fertility", Pole Star, Fish Gods, Noah

Hoor-pa-Kraat

Akasha, Babe in the Egg, the Nile, Crocodile as devourer, Creator/Destroyer, innocence virility

Zeus Arrhenotheleus

Hermaphrodite, Air as origin, Dianus and Diana, Akasha=Harpocrates (Hoor-pa-Kraat)

Dionysus Zagreus. Bacchus Diphues

Two Gods as one. Crowley identifies them as the 'Vau of Tetragrammaton'. Bisexuality, Priapus, the crocodile.

Baphomet

Set

There are enough textual clues to suggest that the main categories follow an order that can be applied to Papus' structure.

Papus' Tarot and the Fool in the Book of Thoth

Y	1	4	7	10	13	16	19
H	2	5	8	11	14	17	20
V	3	6	9	12	15	18	0
	+	-	+	-	+	-
	Y		H		V		H
	God 21		Man 21		Universe 21		Return to Unity
	Green Man Holy Ghost	Great Fool, Celts	Percivale	Sebek	Hoor-paar-Kraat	Zeus Arrhenotheleus & Dionysus Zagreus. Bacchus Diphues	Baphomet

The first two sections 'The Fool' and 'Formula of the Tetragrammaton' provide an overview, and so can be omitted here. However, Crowley hints that the Fool card contains the YHVH system, and there are enough clues to show this to be so. We start with the Green Man, Spring and Aries - fiery attributes which fit in with Yod of Yod positive. Dalua/Christ fits in with the ideas of paternity and salvation for Yod of Yod negative. In the Heh section we begin with The Fisherman for the Heh of Yod positive, and the Crocodile for the negative aspect - both of course have watery connotations. Hoor-paar-Kraat is the Son, perfect for Vau positive. There is a potential problem with Zeus Arrhenotheleus and Dionysus Zagreus and Bacchus Diphues, but I suggest that they can be accomodated in the negative phase of Vau. Finally, we can have Baphomet in seventh place. The Summary can be conveniently ignored for these purposes.

There is another interesting idea that connects the Fool card to the Ace of Disks and the Two of Disks - Crowley draws attention to the colour green - the Green Man of Spring, the green of Isis for the Ace of Disks, and the green snake in the 2 of Disks.

Ursa Major

Assuming there is some merit in this system, we need to explore exactly what it is we have discovered. Any group of seven in occult work automatically has the connection to the seven planets, but apart from the Green Man, there are no astrological attributions to work with. Some clues can be found in Madame Blavatsky's books, but a clearer explanation of the origins of these ideas are found in Darcy Kuntz's The Golden Dawn Tarot and Arthur Edward Waite.

Kuntz introduces John O'Neill (1837-1895) who believed among other things that

... the primordial tradition ran on a North-South axis from the Northern Pole and not on a East-West axis as traditionally taught. He also believed that the seven occult Planets were in fact the seven stars or the Big Dipper which circle the Northern Celestial Pole and not Planets at all.

O'Neill's ideas were co-authored with E.A. Wallis-Budge the Egyptologist, into a two volume book "The Night of the Gods: An Inquiry into Cosmic and Cosmogonic Mythology and Symbolism" (1893). The second volume was financed by Alfred Nutt (1856-1910), who wrote about the Holy Grail. There are other authors on Grail romances at this time, at least one of whom was member of AE Waite's Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. It seems that W.B. Yeats was inspired by The Night of the Gods, and that the primordial tradition could be found in an ancient Welsh version of Parsifal. Waite, as we know, had a passion for all things Celtic. Waite met Pamela Coleman Smith (artist of the Rider-Waite tarot deck) when she was working on her play 'Where There is Nothing', which became 'The Unicorn from the Stars' (1907). Charles Williams comments that 'Look,... these are the twenty-two cards - the twenty-one and the one which is nothing (i.e. The Fool).' WB Yeats met Waite to discuss Arthurian legends.

We have a consistent pattern emerging - the seven planets of Ursa Major (The Great Bear), the North Pole, Parsifal, and 'the twenty-one and the one which is nothing'. Clearly the concept that the Fool should be treated separately from the other cards was already entrenched. However, these ideas were not, and are still not, common currency. Waite, the architect of probably the most popular Tarot deck that spawned a thousand imitations, intended to keep it that way:

My province was to see that the designs - especially those of the important Trumps Major - kept that in the hiddeness which belonged to a certain Greater Mysteries, in the Paths of which I was travelling... I saw to it therefore that Pamela Coleman Smith should not be picking up casually any floating images from my own or another mind. She had to be spoon-fed carefully over the Priestess Card, that which is called the Fool and over the Hanged Man.

Waite, Shadows of Life and Thought, 1938.

The implication here is that even if PCS knew about these ideas, Waite endeavoured to make sure she never incorporated them into her tarot artwork, nor that this was the direction his studies was taking him. This quotation also hints that the Priestess card and the Hanged Man have particular properties as well as the Fool card.

The North Pole and the Princesses

The Big Dipper, The Plough, the Great Bear, or Ursa Major is the constellation whose stars point to the North Pole. The Pole Star varies over extended lengths of time due to Precession. The Tarot cards have been given astrological attributions as is well known, but there has been a tradition of rulership over various parts of the heavens. The Princesses are unique in Tarot, in that they are given rulership over the quadrants of the world:

In the Book "T", it is written: "Also the Dragon (i.e. Draco, the constellation at the Northern pole of the Heavens) surroundeth the Pole Kether of the Celestial Heavens." It is further laid down that the Four Aces, (symbolized by the Princesses and Amazons), rule the Celestial Heavens from the Northern Pole of the Zodiac unto the 45^th degree of Latitude North of the Ecliptic, and from the Thrones of the Four Aces which rule in Kether.

Israel Regardie, Golden Dawn Book

Note the ambiguity between the Aces and the Princesses. Regardie equates them as being one and the same. Elsewhere in the Golden Dawn book (Llewellyn edn), Regardie remarks on the "... five divisions of the Tarot". In Hebrew, "Throne" is equivalent to Chariot, an implicit reference to the Merkaba Vision in Ezekiel. The Throne is also a symbol of Binah, the Great Mother.

Crowley points to the amibiguity between Malkuth and Kether where

The Princess of Disks...represents the Earthy part of Earth. She is consequently on the brink of transformation... Her crest is the head of the ram, and her sceptre descends into the earth. There its head becomes a diamond, the precious stone of Kether, thus symbolizing the birth of the highest and purest light in the deepest and darkest of the elements.

Book of Thoth

Kether, of course, is associated with the Aces but there is more to the depiction of the Princess of Disks. The Sceptre extends beyond the top of the card, while the tip with the diamond appears to end below her feet - the perspective is all wrong unless she is standing on something, as she is holding the sceptre almost at her side. Further, the diamond is at the bottom, which could be seen to be an inversion of the Tree of Life, or that the Princess is indeed above Kether. It is my view that the Princess is holding the central axis of the Earth. Behind the trees is a geometrical shape suggestive of a Pyramid, although in the commentary Crowley discusses the significance of the Holy Mountain. There are incongruous elements here - the phallic sceptre and mountain, and the diamond, ruled by Venus.

Behind the mountain, in the top right-hand corner, is the shadowy spiral of Draco.

Israel Regardie continues on the subject of Draco:

Head of Draco

The Throne of the Ace of Cups

Forepart of Draco

The Throne of the Ace of Swords

Hindpart of Draco

The Throne of the Ace of Pentacles

Tail of Draco

The Throne of the Ace of Wands

Of course, the Aces in Book of Thoth of them have nothing like a dragon on them. For the Princesses, however, there is a different story.

Lining up the Princesses in the Draco order from left to right, we see that the figures on the Cups and Disks face forward, while the Air and Fire Princesses have their backs to us while they face the top left hand corner. Further, the Princess of Cups is on the same diagonal, while only the Princess of Disks stands vertically. All the cards have convoluted aspects. The Princess of Cups does not have the head of Draco, but there is the swan, turtle and fish. The Princess of Swords has the suggestion of an S shaped swirl about her head; the Princess of Disks we have dealt with, while the Princess of Disks has the tail of a tiger (the same one that is biting the thigh of the Fool, but significantly the tail is not visible) wrapped about her neck, and the S shaped flame behind her can now be seen to be the tail of Draco. (That the cards of the Book of Thoth can be combined to create new visual ideas and concepts can be seen in Frieda Harris' use of Goethe's geometrical symbolism.

It is at this point in the GD book that Israel Regardie introduces Elemental Dignities:

Fire and Water be contrary, and also Earth and Air be contrary. And the throne of the Element will attract and seize, as it were, the Force of that element, so that herein be the Forces of Antipathy and of Sympathy, or what are known chemically as attraction and repulsion.

Regardie then combines the elemental order of Draco to the elemental order of YHVH, the mechanics of which defy analysis, at least for myself.

The elemental order of Draco is interesting as it is the YHVH system except that the Yod has moved to the 'back'; HVHY. Written HVHY, we have the mirror image - is this part of the idea that there is a reverse order or 'Back of the Tree of Life'? The constellation Draco encircles the North pole - the Dragon or snake holds its tail in its mouth, symbol of the Orobouros. Crowley has a similar motif in the Two of Disks:

About them is entwined a green Serpent (see Liber 65, chapter iii, verses 17-20). His tail is in his mouth. He forms the figure Eight, the symbol of the Infinite, the equation 0=2.

When Draco holds its tail, we have the YHVH order restored.

The primordial tradition of North-South axis from the North Pole is alive and well not only within the Golden Dawn tradition, but in the writings of Waite and Crowley.

In some versions of the Book of Thoth deck, there are three versions of the Magician card. Kenneth Grant points out that there is a Bear behind the Magician in one version. This is none other than the Great Bear, Ursa Major, which has seven stars, and as I have shown are related to the Fool card. The significance of the Bear being behind the Magus becomes clear - it reflects the influence of the Fool card upon the Magus. Kenneth Grant, student of Aleister Crowley, has written extensively on this Typhonian Tradition in Outer Gateways. Grant's prose style is not easy, but now we have the key to this system, namely the Fool card.

In the Opening of the Key Spread, we are told that the Princesses represent the Seven Palaces of Assiah, but since there are seven stars in the Great Bear, we may infer another connection.