I'm in my room.I'm Dr. Doom,
Because I'm not someone else
-Alice Cooper, Blow Me A Kiss
I've been reading a little on the life and times of one Jean Baptiste Pitois, one of the people who believed the Tarot to have an Egyptian origin. Though not entirely supported by history, it's an interesting idea. According to Pitois, the 22 Major Arcana were never actually intended for divination purposes- rather, they were a series of symbols kept by Egyptian mystery cults. As symbols, they were thought to reflect all the wisdom of the world. Were they? Well, the problem with this is you could take pretty much any given system of symbols and assign meaning to it. The thing about symbols is, it's not the actual symbols themselves, but rather the meaning they are imbued with.
Pitois describes the "Ritual Of The Temple", in which an initiate is brought through a secret passage below the Sphinx, and leading down a series of passages to below the pyramid of Cheops. The initiate then goes through a series of tests- first facing a mechanical Reaper, who swings a huge scythe towards the initiate's face. The goal of this test is that the initiate, desiring the secret knowledge and wisdom more than anything else, does not run away or flinch, but rather faces his fear down. From this, the initiate then goes on to face other tests, such as crawling down a tunnel where a loud voice disorients him, shouting how the unenlightened must not profane sacred wisdom, or words to that effect. The whole point of this is that the initiate must put the desire for wisdom before all else, even his own safety and fears. Should he pass the test, he is ushered into a secret, circular chamber where 22 pictures hang on the wall. These 22 pictures corresponded to the 22 Major Arcana, and a priest would enter the room with the initiate to explain the symbols and reveal the hidden wisdom and meanings of them.
All in all, history has proved more or less inconclusive in this regard. It could well be that there was such a place, though the fact is that the earliest historical evidence of these 22 symbols is in Italy, not Egypt- called the triomfi, they represented a common ceremonial procession used by the nobility, and were usually comissioned to mark an event. However, there's strong anecdotal evidence for a universality among human experience that lends some credence to this theory.
I've also been reading through Raven Grimassi's Wiccan Mysteries, which traces the origins of Wicca back to an ancient "Cult of the Dead"- the Wiccan lineage is not really unbroken, and has evolved into modern times into two more or less distinct branches. The Wiccan religion, according to Grimassi, divides into two parts-the old religion, based on nature, and the template it shows us, and the new religion, less structured, based on freedom of thought and individual experience. Gardnerian Wicca, as a for example, would fall under the old religion, which has a greater focus on tradition and doctrine than the more eclectic new religion. All in all, an interesting argument- clearly, further research is indicated. Or I should just finish the book, also not a bad idea.
There seems to be a lot of 'chicken and egg' debate among modern day witches and Wiccans- my tradition is older, therefore superior, to yours. This is probably due to that pesky old Judeo-Christian idea of absolutes- something is absolutely true, or the 'right' way, while everyone else is wrong and incorrect. But correct me if I'm wrong, wasn't that why a whole lot of Wiccans left Christianity in the first place? Because it's incompatible with what they see to believe? The problem with this is that if everything is true, how do you find out what is and what isn't? Personally, I'm thinking we can strike a balance. Experience tells us a good deal- say as a for example, we have learned that the stovetop is hot- if you have an electric stove, don't go sticking your hand on the red coil, it'll hurt. Perhaps some of us, hopefully most of us, go through life not finding this out first hand- I for one am prepared to accept it on anectodal evidence, and not put my hand on the very same red coil to find out that it is in fact hot. So in a larger sense, we have here an indication that the people who have come before have amassed a body of knowledge. We can build on this without having to go back and re-test every single little hypothesis they've come up with. Of course, we can do that, should we want to- but why bother? Would it not be easier to just move forwards? This is the way science works- we don't need to go back and re-prove every theorem, though we can go digging and see how these things were actually proved. I don't need to re-test Gregor Mendel's theory on genetics to know why both my children have the same brown eyes that I do.
I've also been reading through Raven Grimassi's Wiccan Mysteries, which traces the origins of Wicca back to an ancient "Cult of the Dead"- the Wiccan lineage is not really unbroken, and has evolved into modern times into two more or less distinct branches. The Wiccan religion, according to Grimassi, divides into two parts-the old religion, based on nature, and the template it shows us, and the new religion, less structured, based on freedom of thought and individual experience. Gardnerian Wicca, as a for example, would fall under the old religion, which has a greater focus on tradition and doctrine than the more eclectic new religion. All in all, an interesting argument- clearly, further research is indicated. Or I should just finish the book, also not a bad idea.
There seems to be a lot of 'chicken and egg' debate among modern day witches and Wiccans- my tradition is older, therefore superior, to yours. This is probably due to that pesky old Judeo-Christian idea of absolutes- something is absolutely true, or the 'right' way, while everyone else is wrong and incorrect. But correct me if I'm wrong, wasn't that why a whole lot of Wiccans left Christianity in the first place? Because it's incompatible with what they see to believe? The problem with this is that if everything is true, how do you find out what is and what isn't? Personally, I'm thinking we can strike a balance. Experience tells us a good deal- say as a for example, we have learned that the stovetop is hot- if you have an electric stove, don't go sticking your hand on the red coil, it'll hurt. Perhaps some of us, hopefully most of us, go through life not finding this out first hand- I for one am prepared to accept it on anectodal evidence, and not put my hand on the very same red coil to find out that it is in fact hot. So in a larger sense, we have here an indication that the people who have come before have amassed a body of knowledge. We can build on this without having to go back and re-test every single little hypothesis they've come up with. Of course, we can do that, should we want to- but why bother? Would it not be easier to just move forwards? This is the way science works- we don't need to go back and re-prove every theorem, though we can go digging and see how these things were actually proved. I don't need to re-test Gregor Mendel's theory on genetics to know why both my children have the same brown eyes that I do.
So in some senses, it's not a bad idea to retest theories, if you want to really get that personal experience. But we can accept a few things on assumption. I can reasonably accept that the sun will come up tomorrow, gravity will still work, and that water will continue to sustain life. But the question then becomes, what do we accept and reject? Well, there are factual matters that we can generally accept- if you doubt something, well, then go figure it out yourself! There's nothing wrong with reworking the assumptions of the past- if we didn't do that, we wouldn't have modern-day Wicca, with all its eccentricities and various subsets.
But back to Pitois. Here was one of the scholars who attributed Hermeticism to Egyptian origins- there was a similar pattern of thought originating in these same Egyptian mysteries that later spread to Greece and from there throughout the world. It's a pretty common human trait to try and create correlations and correspondences- seeing similarities, not differences. Again, I would conjecture that this can also indicate a commonality of humanity and human experience. This doesn't indicate that these spiritual traditions are invalid or simply made up- rather, it could very well indicate something higher and more esoteric essential to our human nature- we filter it through experience and perception to make sense of things that themselves are not really derivative of any one system. Well, at any rate, it gave me a good deal to think about. Our ability to think, I believe, is pretty strong evidence for human evolution- from the lower to the higher, so to speak.
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