The Dueling Tarot Decks of Aleister Crowley and Arthur Waite!

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back to the Demon Toast podcast. I'm your host, King Loki, which is Old Norse for Daniel Sokoloff. This is the official podcast for Death Wish Poetry magazine. We cover horrific and gothic literature and themes as well as the spooky people behind it. With us are my co host, the intelligent and assertive Ca and the effusive and brilliant artist Adrian, as well as our very special guest, tower reader and psychic medium Britney. [00:00:25] Speaker B: Yay. Hello. [00:00:28] Speaker A: Cool. Yeah. Tonight we're discussing the sinister Aleister Crowley and his fellow British sorcerer Arthur Edward Waite and the card game they recreated, which was played by the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. That game is known today as Duel Monsters or Yu Gi oh. Are you ready to taste the demon? [00:00:49] Speaker B: To joke was coming. I literally knew the Yu Gi oh joke was coming. [00:01:03] Speaker C: Yes, it was so coming. [00:01:06] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:01:07] Speaker D: As a yuh nerd, I love it. [00:01:09] Speaker A: The whole thing in that show is that like Dual Monsters is just an ancient game the pharaohs played and their souls were at stake. So anyway, all kayfabe and jokes Aside, Crowley and Mr. Weight created the two most popular decks we have in the modern age. The Thoth deck. Thoth deck to deck, however you want to say it, and the Ryder Waite Smith deck, which many people today choose to call the Waite Smith deck because Ryder was just the publisher. Waite was the sorcerer, Smith was the artist. So why are we giving the the publisher any credit? [00:01:38] Speaker B: You know, literally why. [00:01:40] Speaker A: These cards have a long history as playing cards and are directly related to the standard playing cards we have today. These days, though, tarot cards are mostly used for divination, which is Cartomancy. All disciplines of magic and occultism have super cool names, and Caramancy just refers to reading with a deck of cards to divine the future. We'll get deeper into both decks, but first, a short intro to both. Most people defer to the Rider Waite Smith deck henceforth referred to as the Weight or the Weight Smith deck, which has become the standard deck for all the fun variants that capitalism has dredged into being, due in part to its accessibility and simple, easily understandable illustrate illustrations done by the artist Pamela Pixie Coleman Smith. [00:02:24] Speaker C: Yes, she's my favorite. [00:02:26] Speaker A: She's pretty great. We love her. Dizzyingly complex Crowley incorporates images and symbols from such diverse disciplines as Hermeticism, Kabbalah, ancient Egyptian religion, Hebrew Gematria, demonology, and the ratings of such occultists as Levi. Why don't you guys give me your history with the two decks? Obviously, Brittany's a professional. Also by the way, I would like to mention that the Roma have historically been called gypsies. That is considered a slur today, but it is. We're probably going to read stuff that refers to the bohemian or gypsy tarot, and we'll talk about that history. I just wanted to acknowledge that gypsy is a problematic term. So before we even start. [00:03:06] Speaker C: Yes. [00:03:07] Speaker A: Right. So, Adrian, tell me about your history with the tarot and what you think about that. [00:03:11] Speaker C: You know, I mean, which one do you want to go to? [00:03:15] Speaker A: I don't care. [00:03:17] Speaker C: Okay. So believe it or not, my grandmother was, like, this crazy. She was really into Egyptian magic, which is crazy. She's the first person who taught me how to use a tarot deck. She was pretty phenomenal. They actually wrote books about her. And I literally today wish I could have called her to, like, talk to her about some of this stuff, because I feel like she knew more than I will ever know in my entire life. But she was really into Egyptian mysticism, and so the whole Crowley tarot deck and stuff like that, I feel like it's been, like, this really interesting journey because. I don't know. Like, I feel like my grandmother had roots in this stuff that I didn't even know about. You know what I mean? So. And then the original deck, the weight deck, the Smith weight deck. I. I'm gonna say Pixie's my hero. Like, can I be Pixie when I grow up? Like, she was just fucking cool. Like, she got to show in the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum after she died, obviously. But, like, her works are very much more acceptable because she's not associated with Crowley. Yeah, that's where I'm gonna go with that. [00:04:38] Speaker A: Cool. So. So you. You know, you've never read with them, right? Not really. [00:04:43] Speaker C: I'm more familiar with the Smithway deck, the Thoth deck. I had actually never really looked at it, but I'm pretty sure that's actually what my grandmother used. [00:04:55] Speaker A: Cool. [00:04:55] Speaker C: Which is really interesting. Like, some of the imagery looked really familiar to me. And then I was going through it, reading it, and it was like, oh, my God. So it's like this whole, like. Like, it's just interesting to me. [00:05:08] Speaker B: That would make sense that that would be more her primary deck if she was into the, like, Egyptian. [00:05:14] Speaker C: I'm gonna tell you, this woman was in her 70s, and she had Egyptian scarabs, like, tattooed all along her collarbone and, like, on her ears and, like. And they had been there like. Like, dude, this woman got these tattoos, like, back in, like, the 50s, and. [00:05:31] Speaker B: It was like, I want to be her when I go, like, seriously? [00:05:36] Speaker C: Yeah. My grandmother was literally the coolest human being ever, and I only got, like, bits and pieces of it, so. Yeah. And, like, they mention her in, like, Wicca books and stuff. Like, it's crazy. [00:05:52] Speaker A: What's her name? [00:05:53] Speaker C: Elaine Amiro. They mention her in the Drowning Moon and they talk about her. Like, I got to see at my dad's funeral this year. Like, she wrote up this whole thing about, like, her Egyptian mysticism beliefs and stuff, and I didn't get a chance to read through the whole thing. So, like, literally, after this podcast, I'm going to ask my aunt if she will send that to me. [00:06:15] Speaker B: Yeah. That's so cool. [00:06:17] Speaker C: I know. Also, she was an artist, and I had no idea, but she did, like, crazy art shows, and she was, like, the coolest person ever. I loved her. She was the only person that never treated me like I was weird when I was a kid, and I guess there's probably reasons for that. [00:06:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [00:06:32] Speaker B: It's really beautiful. [00:06:33] Speaker A: Fascinating. Ca. You know what? Yeah. What's your. What's your history with, you know, tarot decks? [00:06:39] Speaker B: So, yeah, I've been familiarized with tarot for a long time. I think I came across my first deck probably, like, back in the aughts, the late aughts, like 0809. I hate that word. I literally hate that word. [00:06:56] Speaker A: Like, it's dreadful. It's. It's not great. [00:06:59] Speaker B: So. So, yeah, that's the time I, like, came across the deck for the very first time. Immediately drawn immediately, like, wow, this is so interesting. And it was a Wait Smith deck. Not so, you know, I just kind of, like, looked at it, messed around with it, tried to learn a little bit about it, but kind of set it to the side. Years later, I inherited one by accident, which is super, like, random. It was like I was, like, given a box of items from a distant relative. Like, it's too difficult to even actually describe how. So I won't. But anyway, all of a sudden it landed in my lap and I was like, oh, yeah, this. I used to be really interested in this. So now we're talking maybe like, 2015, 2016. At the time, I was super religious, and I was, like, told that this was, you know, a doorway to Satanism and demons and things like that. And so I was like, yeah, like, can't touch it. But weirdly, I didn't get rid of it. I just, like, tucked it back into the closet and I was like, well, I don't feel Right. Throwing it away because it belonged to a family member. I don't know. Fast forward. I left the religion that I was in and I was gifted another deck, a brand new deck from a loved one. 2020. Immediately took to it. I was like, I'm gonna. This is it. I no longer have restrictions. I'm deep diving, baby. And learned everything I could possibly learn about the tarot. I started reading for myself. I started reading for friends and family about a year. Well, two years ago, I started reading beyond friends and family, like, kind of like referral based sort of a thing and just kind of like online for people. Then about a year ago, I started reading in person for people on a regular basis, actually at the shop where Brittany works. That's literally how I know Brittany is because I came into the shop that she works at and shout out to Crystal Sunflower, greatest place ever in Norfolk, Virginia, come check us out. So came in and she was reading. She was sitting, doing readings that day. I was there with my best friend. And yeah, we just got to talking. I told her I had been reading tarot for a while and she's like, well, if you're interested in doing readings here, you should check out, you know, contact the owner. Which I did hit it off, bing bang, Bob's your uncle now. I've been doing readings there for about a year. So the Thoth, I've never done readings with, but I have studied as just a intellectual pursuit almost for on and off, almost tangentially with the Waite Smith deck. But I've. It's. It's just like it sits on my shelf. I'll pull it out every now and then. I'll like, read through some of my books about it and then I put it back. So I did more research about it leading up to this episode than I probably have collectively over the past four years. So I'm excited to kind of like deep dive into it. I don't know, who knows, maybe now I'll start doing readings with it because I feel a lot more educated and familiar with it now. But we'll see. [00:10:19] Speaker A: Yeah. So I'll talk about my experience next. Then I'll let Brittany take over because she's, you know, she's the expert. She's the expert. She's the most professional out of all of us. I would say just an assumption. Crazy assumption. But personally, I. I got into tarot cards to help me with my writing. I figured it would be a fun way to psychoanalyze myself because I assumed they were archetypal and whatever was in my mind would come out in the cards. And that turned out to be more or less true. I started out with this deck, the deviant Moon Tarot. It's really good deck. All the people are moon faced, like denizens of this dark nightmare world. And a lot of it's very beautiful and eerie, but obviously you know, the Rider Waite is the standard, you know, these days. I got into reading four people because I was at a party and I was drinking and doing my weird poet thing and I was picking out the cards and just pulling them and cackling and I wound up reading for my one friend and my other friend. And then before you know it, I was, I was that mystical weird guy and I had a business for a bit reading for people and it became too much to handle and certain aspects of it felt slightly dishonest. I was very bothered that people, you know, because my attitude towards reading was, look, I like occultism the way I like my poetry and my literature. I like to learn the conventions of it. I like to understand the style, understand the tradition and engage with it on that level. My attitude is I am here, I'm reading these cards. I may be the conduit for greater powers, but I myself am not psychic. I cannot read your mind or see your destiny. I'm reading the cards and interpreting the symbols. You know, here's Harley Quinn as the fool, by the way. So my thing is that when I started reading, my shop was called Mimir's Lair, it was on Etsy. I'd have people coming to me about, you know, asking about their past lives and their demon lovers. And honestly, I'm like, look, I guess when you believe one thing without any basis, why, why stop there? I've replaced Christianity with tarot cards now. And it's like I, that's not how I roll personally, you know, I walked away from Judaism at a very young age. I've dabbled in occultism seriously. But frankly, it's one of those things, you know, it's just I engage with that at a superficial level and like I'll talk to Odin in like an almost joking way because I don't really think anything's actually there. But these are archetypal things that help me keep my life in order and understand my, understand my surroundings, you know, So I do like the Thoth. There's something about it. It's very. Even before I really understood, it's, it's a Kabbalistic associations and the, the sheer madness and dizzying ambition of it. I mean, you know, just pulling out the Chariot. I mean, you have the joining together of all these opposites. You have the world in the hand of this mystic, alchemical knight. I mean, it just lights my brain on fire when I look at it. It's like eating a bag of potato chips, you know? And when I'm writing. When I'm writing a poem or something, and I'm like, you know, I. I pull a card like, you know, what is Splinter thinking right now? And I pull the Princess of Cups, and I'm like, you know, he's mooning over that girl, isn't he? That lovely, lovely girl in her pink gown, you know? [00:13:31] Speaker B: Cool. [00:13:31] Speaker A: It's still a game of sorts. Yeah. So, Britney, what do you got? You know, like, what's your history with these cards? [00:13:40] Speaker D: I started just reading tarot in general. I'd say about. I'm going on 10 years ago. I started when I was 15. I just turned 25 this year and. Or last year. And I started with the Waite Smith Tarot. It was the first deck that I purchased with myself. And I was actually introduced to the tarot through Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And I saw it being used, and I was like, huh, that seems interesting. And that was just kind of like a little side thing. But I had really. I grew up Irish Catholic, and thankfully, I come from a wonderful family that was always very encouraging of my own relationship with my own faith. And so they were very encouraging of me to, you know, explore my path and explore what it is that I felt like I believed in. I felt like what I resonated with. And I researched so much. I looked into Hinduism, I looked into Buddhism. I looked into Wicca, and. Wicca and Tarot is kind of what led me down this path of spirituality. And tarot was the thing that really kind of spiraled me into my belief system of what it is now. So, in terms of the cards themselves, I've only ever used the waitesmith Tarot. I have a bunch of other, like, niche collectible decks. I love to collect decks, and I love to collect the artwork. I've never worked with the Thoth Tarot or the Thoth Tarot before this. And in fact, I actually purchased this deck for this podcast so that I could see the artwork and I could understand basically, what Crowley was doing and what he was wanting to accomplish. So, yeah, that's my history with the cards. [00:15:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Very cool. And, you know, the Waite Smith deck is. I mean, you know, again, like, I held up a Harley Quinn jokingly, but all the elements of the fool are here. I mean, you know, she's not walking off a cliff, but she's jumping off a building. And there's no. There's not a. What is it, a little goat or a little dog? It's a little dog. Usually they're her little, you know, her little guys, her little hyenas. [00:15:32] Speaker D: Coyote. Yeah. Hyenas. [00:15:34] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, they're hyenas. And she's not holding a bindle staff, but, you know, she's holding her. Her thing. And what I like about it is, you know, there's a bit of the Crowley here because she's much like Crowley's little green man, which I should probably hold him up. He's. You know, she's. She's. [00:15:49] Speaker C: Nicely done. [00:15:50] Speaker A: There he is. Yeah. He. You know, he's kind of at the. At the center of creation. He's. He's the green man. He's. He's gliding on the ether. Right. You know, so, you know, I mean, the Rider weight is very much the standard. You know, all these gimmicky decks. And I call. I say gimmicky, not in a disparaging way. It's just. It's the. It's the DC Comics tarot. It's Apollo at Midnighter. [00:16:10] Speaker C: As I have a last unicorn. [00:16:14] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have. I have, like a Winnie the Pooh deck. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. Oh, it's Owl. He's the king of wands, because he's writing with his wands. He's the wise king of wands, because why wouldn't he be? Right. [00:16:30] Speaker C: Of course, it's Owl. [00:16:32] Speaker A: Naturally. Right. Who else would it be? So I think we should talk about, you know, the way these two decks kind of developed. Right. So I will say that when I conceived this topic, I was thinking it would be like. Because Aleister Crowley being Crowley, in his one novel, Moon Child, he styles himself and all the characters of the Hermetic Order of the golden dawn as rivals trying to create a moon child and take over the world. And Arthur Waite is one of his. One of the villains of the piece. He's arthwait, the sinister villain. And you look at them in real life, and I, having never really done a deep dive into the history of these people, I was like, well, this is gonna be fun because you have these two tarot decks that are coming at, you know, the same concept from different angles and different mindsets. They must have been bitter rivals. There was a magical duel somewhere in There. No, not at all. Not at all. [00:17:20] Speaker C: I mean, I think for Crowley there probably was, but Wade just did not care. He was just like, no, draw. [00:17:26] Speaker D: He's like, I'm just here, guy. [00:17:29] Speaker B: Just a chill guy. [00:17:31] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll get there. I have a fun excerpt about their relationship, but it's, you know, Wade is kind of unfortunate in that. Like, he's not terribly interesting. But let's talk about the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. I don't want to get too bogged down in any of this. The Hermetic Order of the golden dawn was a secret society based around teaching initiates occult knowledge. The golden dawn, by the way, feel free to cut me off at any point if you want to interject, but, you know, it was founded in 1888 by three Freemasons looking to make money and network with other intellectual socialites and, you know, sell things and, you know, screw women as, as. As we all do, I guess. Algernon Blackwood, William Butler Yeats, I love you, Ca. [00:18:11] Speaker C: I love you so fucking much. [00:18:12] Speaker A: Bram Stoker. Even the fame dreaded Aleister Crowley were members. And more on that. [00:18:17] Speaker C: Arthur Conan Doyle was in it, too. [00:18:19] Speaker A: Yeah, ostensibly, it's. It's. It's alleged that he was part of it. You know, I'm sure he tried very hard to keep that quiet, you know, Mr. Respectable Sherlock Holmes man. But, yeah, I think Ian Fleming was part of it, you know, and I think it was more. So they showed up, nodded along politely, looked around and were like, all right, cool, yeah, I'll call you. Don't call me, you know, But I mean, much like the Freemasons and anything else, it was most likely just a way to network. Yeah. So a lot of what they were teaching was drawn from older occultists like John Dee and Eliphas Levy, who's going to come up a lot. They had their own scheme for interpreting the Tarot and the canon and tradition of Jewish mysticism. Kabbalah, the 22 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet have mystical properties, you know, in books like the safer Yetzira, which is the book of Creation. Right. You can buy this in the bookstore, by the way. It's not that secret. They are directly connected to the Tree of Life, which is basically the tree of Life is. So we have these things called the sefirot, which are the manifestations of God's properties. Right. And they're drawn in a tree. There are 10 of them for the. The first 10 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet. And, you know, they're all called things like Kesser, which is crown Gevura, which is strength. And I'm not gonna get too bogged down into it because it really doesn't matter. It's not that important. You know, you can see this tree of Life in Neon Genesis Evangelion at the end when the robots are doing like a mystical thing and they kind of form into it and Shinji's mind goes crazy. It's. Yeah, it's very, very, very seminal. Anyway, the Sefirot are connected through channels, of which there are 22. Insert a picture here and a Hebrew letter assigned to each one, symbolizing the relationship between them. Because of this, the Hebrew words, words that make up each Sephiroth, Kesser, Gevurah, Binai, understanding, they're said to be able to invoke mystical forces similar to how the letters of the Elder Futhark can be used in divination or magical formulae. Hebrew prayers, in fact, were written in kabbalistic formulas, the better to appeal to different aspects of the divine. The golden dawn took this idea and ran with it, assigning the 22 major trumps of the Tarot to the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. Each one also got a Hebrew letter in the process. There are, of course, two portions of the tarot, the Major Arcana, which, you know, also called the trumps or triumphs, which is the word is derived from. They are all archetypal ideas and figures like the fool, the Emperor, justice, the Devil, and the Minor Arcana, which are analogous to our modern playing cards. [00:20:44] Speaker B: I think it's worth doing this because we're in it. Like, it lays the foundation for getting into a little bit more about Crowley as a person and the. The order itself, which is that, like, you really do have to think about these orders as, I mean, okay, so the Order of the golden dawn, like, they're not the only ones that were like them, right? Over the course of time, this talking about, like, the upper echelon of society that are all super wealthy. And when you're super wealthy, you have a lot of time on your hands, so you get bored, so you get into the occult. Like, it was literally just like. It was like a trope back then, like, all across, like, history for a whole long time. [00:21:23] Speaker C: Like all of the famous, like super, like, well known, I mean, writers. [00:21:29] Speaker B: Yes, well, yeah, so basically it was a bunch of rich people that were all Freemasons because you were a Freemason as well. If you were wealthy and in a particular echelon of society. And. And then it's like you spend long Enough in the Freemasons. And then what do they do? They're like, oh, well, we want our own, like, club within a club. And so then they just like double down on it. And then they created. I don't know, they'll say that like, oh, it was channeled. It was either channeled or manufactured. You know, the. The cipher manuscripts. And that's what they based there, Our. [00:22:04] Speaker A: Secret text, bro, trust us, we totally have them. [00:22:06] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:22:07] Speaker B: Like super real. No, but I mean, really, there were an amalgamation and collection of a bunch of different teachings. Alchemy and astrology, the Kabbalah, as you mention, Gautam, all of that stuff kind of just compiled. And then as you said, it was like. Yeah, then they just were like initiating people in these rituals and levels that you could hit. [00:22:32] Speaker A: I do want to point out that like the Zohar, for instance, it's this. It's this. It's this canon of Hebrew mysticism and it's. It's the Zohar, it's the Book of Light and it talks about the Watchers and all this stuff. It's this. It's this extra biblical narrative and it's about like different planets and stuff. And the rabbi who wrote it claims he had a mystical book. Where is it? No one knows. He translated it from some, you know, Aramaic text he had or something. Right. And like, that is really common. Yeah, Like Eliphas lavey, he claimed he had a secret manuscript that he had been in connection with like, you know, departed people or whatever. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. They claim they had secret chiefs that they were in contact with. And Crowley, in the Book of Thoth, he just talks about it freely, like it's a real thing. So, you know, I do have an excerpt. Go ahead, go for it. I will find. [00:23:24] Speaker D: My excerpt I thought was interesting was that the fact that the golden dawn was founded by Freemasons, but then they allowed women to be a part of the Golden Dawn. [00:23:34] Speaker C: Like Pixie. Pixie was totally in it. I love her. [00:23:39] Speaker D: Yes, she was. [00:23:40] Speaker C: I feel like we would be friends, honestly. [00:23:44] Speaker D: And this is not me just being like super woo woo. I do feel like she is a spirit guide for me. I keep a photo of her on my reading desk because I feel so deeply connected to her and I can't wait to discuss with you, like, her. [00:23:58] Speaker C: Oh my God. I did it on Frida Harris and Pixie because, like, holy crap, I'm an artist. So as an artist, these women and what they were doing was so phenomenal. And where they got their inspirations and all of this stuff. She literally designed sets for frickin Bram Stoker when he was doing his theatrical because of the golden dawn stuff. Oh, my God, she's so cool. [00:24:27] Speaker D: She was a feminist. She what? I like to say that she was a Victorian era hippie. Like, to be completely honest, she started. [00:24:35] Speaker C: An entire magazine for women writers. She was like, so cool. [00:24:42] Speaker D: Yeah, she was awesome. [00:24:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So let's back up. [00:24:45] Speaker A: So, you know, obviously, Pixie, Pamela Pixie Coleman Smith designed the. [00:24:52] Speaker C: Wait. [00:24:52] Speaker A: Smith Tower deck. [00:24:53] Speaker C: Yeah. A Jamaican folklorist. [00:24:56] Speaker D: Yes. [00:24:57] Speaker C: Oh, my God. She still was. And she published books about it and it was like, super flipping cool. And the female, like, she did the Green Sheaf press. She published women, like women's literature, who wrote stuff. It was super cool. Obviously, I'm getting overly excited and I can't find my words. I'm sorry. [00:25:19] Speaker A: Well, no, she's great. And I do want to point out that Pixie was really cool. She was really flamboyant in a way that Waite is not and whatever. Brittany. Me and Brittany, just before we started, you know, recording, we talked about how the major arcana of the Rider Waite deck are kind of medieval, they're kind of Catholic in nature. [00:25:38] Speaker C: Well, they based them off of like, the 18th century and the 15th century, like previous decks. But then she, like, cast her friends in the roles and was like, super. [00:25:50] Speaker A: Well, yes, but here's the thing, right? Like. Okay, so let me explain what I'm trying to say. So Temperance. Yes. You have the arcade, you have an angel, one hand, you know, one foot on earth, one foot in the water, pouring water from one chalice to another. Whatever. Right. He's got the name Jehovah on his chest. He's Archangel Michael. That is a Christian, Jewish, whatever concept. Right. A lot of these are very Catholic inspired. But what me and Brittany were saying is that the more inspired cards tend to be the minor trumps. Right. I mean, they're, you know, they're actually very similar to the Thoth. Not all of them, obviously. Crowley's cards are crazy, but I mean, like, elemental as. [00:26:33] Speaker C: Yes. [00:26:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Three swords. [00:26:35] Speaker D: Well, a few swords. [00:26:38] Speaker C: So Waite was very specific about the major arcana. And so he literally, like, basically told her, like, what she needed to do. Yeah, like this and this and this. So the minor arcana, that's her jam. That's where she came alive and got to, like. She literally did portraits of. Thank you. [00:27:01] Speaker D: This was. Yes. So this is the Queen of wands. She actually based this Card off of her friend Ellen Terry. [00:27:06] Speaker C: Ellen Terry, Yes. [00:27:08] Speaker D: This is Ellen Terry's cat. [00:27:10] Speaker C: Actually, she did another one, Lawrence Far, which is phenomenal. Like, she literally. Oh, my God. Like a girl crush. [00:27:20] Speaker D: I'm just saying she's amazing. She's truly amazing. Like, I was gonna say something else. [00:27:26] Speaker C: But I can't remember the major arcana. It was like, okay, I have to do this, this, and this, like, artist work. I can flat out tell you it's like, all right, I gotta get this done. I have to have this and this and this. And then the minor arcana. She's like, this is mine. Like, it's mine. She just got to, like, do her stuff. It's magical. [00:27:49] Speaker D: Also phenomenal on the fact that she illustrated every single card in a matter of six months. [00:27:54] Speaker C: Oh, my God. Who does that? I could not do that. [00:27:57] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:27:57] Speaker C: Like, I literally had a whole artist crisis with commission work. Like, literally, I could not do that. But, like, six months. Oh, my God. She did it in a phenomenal amount of time. And do you know how many cards that is? It's insane. I have no respect. I have the utmost respect for this woman. As an artist. She was phenomenal. [00:28:19] Speaker A: Well, she was cool, for sure. And she was working with Waite. Who? The thing about Waite is that he was very academic. He. He was kind of contemptuous of a lot of his contemporaries and especially of Eliphas Levy, who. Not a contemporary. He was an 18th century, you know, 19th century, rather sorcerer who claimed that the tarot was based on an Egyptian book or an Egyptian game or an Egyptian deck of cards, whatever, without any real evidence. He didn't like that. He also didn't like Court de Gabelin. He was another 18th century occultist. You know, he just didn't trust these. These people. There was no Book of Thoth that they were constantly referencing it. Not to be confused with Crowley's Book of Thoth. [00:29:04] Speaker C: He borrowed that from Egyptian mythology. [00:29:08] Speaker A: Well, yes, sure. But there's nothing in Egyptian mythology about a magic deck of cards. And the Rosetta Stone was old news by the time, you know, Mathers and all those frauds were putting on their long black cloaks and standing around altars. [00:29:23] Speaker C: And don't just necessarily write them off as frauds. They were interesting characters. Okay. [00:29:30] Speaker A: They were about as magic as the people from the strange case of Dr. Norrell and Jonathan Strange. I got the title wrong. Dr. Norell. [00:29:39] Speaker C: Yes, I know exactly what you're talking about. [00:29:43] Speaker A: Great book. [00:29:43] Speaker C: It was fine. [00:29:45] Speaker A: But, yeah, so Wake didn't like this stuff. He thought he thought attributing the tarot arbitrarily to the Kabbalah was silly. He thought that there was nothing to it. And, you know, it is interesting that there are 22 ways you can link the sefirot, the 10 sefirot, and there are 22 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet. And that the Jews have a system of gematria where they add up the letters of a number and get a value which they can then link to other numbers. I mean, that. That is something, right? But Wade is like, but does that really mean anything? And I'm like, you're a sorcerer, but whatever, whatever. You believe in magic. I don't know what to say, but. [00:30:25] Speaker C: That was the thing right there. [00:30:26] Speaker A: The Wade Smith deck is cool because it dispenses with some of the medieval archetypes that the older golden dawn maintained, the Magus, which was an elevated form of the juggler. The golden dawn made the juggler into the Magus. He made it the magician. He's like, whatever. It's this guy with all four suits before him. He's not juggling balls. He has all these things at his disposal. Rather, he has the cup, the sword, the pentacle and the wand. Yes. You know, and he's dressed like one of the golden dawn sorcerers would be, you know, with a headband and a robe and all this stuff, you know, this is what they thought they looked like, by the way. Very, very aggressive. [00:31:05] Speaker B: I was trying to pull it up. You beat me. [00:31:06] Speaker C: And Daniel knows why I can't with that right now. [00:31:09] Speaker A: Very, very Grecian, very cool, you know? You know, the female Pope went from. Well, it went from the female Pope, Pope, Pope Joan or Pope Joan, whatever. This weird legend about a pregnant female pope who was outed when she gave birth. I don't even know what they're talking about. Waite made her into the high priestess, the keeper of arcane knowledge and a mighty woman in her own right, you know, no need to make a female pope. What even is that? The Pope himself became the hierophant, taking it slightly out of the Catholic world and making him more of a. Well, one of them, you know, an occultist, a sorcerer. The shadow of Catholicism, as it were. Right. Fortitude became strength, with the male figure becoming female, allowing the deck to express a little more of, I don't know, the male dominated world of Victorian England. Is that even the right term? Yeah, I suppose so. [00:32:03] Speaker C: Appropriate. [00:32:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Maybe a reference to Cyrene, whom Apollo saw wrestling a lion. And weirdly, despite his contempt for Eliphas, Livy, the devil himself became Baphomet, which is Levy's, you know, personification of the devil as this. This figure embodying all of mankind with women's breasts and, you know, wings symbolizing the air, pointing up and down and symbolizing this pantheistic kind of acceptance of the human condition. So I have an excerpt I'm going to get to, but did anyone want to take over? No. [00:32:44] Speaker D: I have two things I wanted to say. Go. I love to talk about the strength card, because when you brought it up, I just love talking about Waits depiction of strength in the tarot and how often it's misinterpreted. In my opinion, I see the strength part as being synonymous with obstacle and acceptance of obstacle and acceptance of. How do I put it? So whenever we play the word game, you know, what's the first thing you think of when you think of strength or something strong? You think of something very physical. See, I can see everything better now. Okay. Technology, you always think of something being very physically strong. But in the Wake Smith hero, it's depicted as a woman not necessarily taming a lion, but accepting a lion. The lion itself being like the obstacle or the challenge that she has to face. You know, it's not. You can't fight a lion because you're gonna lose. You can't run away from a lion because it's gonna chase you, and you can't sit there and just stare at it because then nothing is being done. So it's this depiction of. You have to accept the things for what they are, and that's what true strength is supposed to be coming from. At least that's my interpretation of the card, and it's my favorite card in the deck. So I just wanted to use that as a opportunity to kind of tangent about that. [00:34:04] Speaker C: I feel like that's actually my favorite explanation of that card I've ever heard. [00:34:08] Speaker D: Thank you. [00:34:11] Speaker B: We could deep dive into the cards themselves, like, for hours and hours and hours. It's one of me and Brittany's favorite things to do, so. [00:34:19] Speaker D: Oh, yeah. [00:34:19] Speaker B: But it's very interesting that you brought up the strength card in particular. And I don't know how much. I was just gonna say I don't know how much we want to get into, like, the direct comparisons. We can't go through every single card because we will be here forever. But this is a bad example to kind of do a literal side by side because. [00:34:37] Speaker D: Exactly. [00:34:38] Speaker B: First of all, in the. In the Thoth deck, it's not strength. It's Called Lust. [00:34:44] Speaker A: Yes. [00:34:44] Speaker B: And we, we have the same, you know, two figures. We have a woman and we have a lion, except. But the imagery is super different. So if you are just listening to the audio version of this podcast, watching us on YouTube. [00:34:59] Speaker A: Yeah, go Google it. [00:35:00] Speaker B: Yeah, you can Google it. How would we describe this? I mean, it's a. [00:35:04] Speaker A: It's, it's, it's, it's a. You know, the Whore of Babylon astride Father Chaos, holding these. [00:35:11] Speaker B: Yes. The quote unquote lion has, you know, multiple faces and the tail of some creature. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, and it's called Lust. Right. And so you would look at these side by side and go. And when you look at the strength card, the woman, you know, she has this like beautiful infinity symbol above her head. She's wearing white with purity. Wearing white. She's looking really demure. She's like gently engaging with the lion. And so you would look at these side by side and go, wow, they're so different. But really they're not. Which is exactly super interesting because this card, the Waite Smith card, is basically like depicting a visual of exactly what Britney said, which is that we have something huge, intense and strong that we have no business trying to control. [00:36:10] Speaker D: Yeah, right, exactly. [00:36:12] Speaker B: And so what she chooses to do in the imagery of this card is, like you said, just accept the strength of the lion and like ally herself with it almost. And just be like, hey, let's, let's just be friends. Let me harness this power with you rather than fight against you over it. And that's really exactly what's going on over here with this quote, unquote whore of Babylon imagery. It's just a lot more juicy looking. Exactly. Symbolically, it's a very similar message. It's. Well, there's this big, powerful energy. I'm all right. Literally, I'm going to ride it out to the sunset. So this is an interesting side by side comparison where we can really see that although there are some deviances between the two cards. Sorry, between the two decks. And we'll dig into, like, where the differences really lie. I like using some side by sides, especially this one, to show that, well, we're dealing with the same sort of archetypal knowledge and stories and imagery. It's just that Crowley, you can. [00:37:19] Speaker A: So. [00:37:20] Speaker B: So just a different kind of dude. He was a different breed. [00:37:23] Speaker C: Oh, I was his deck. [00:37:25] Speaker B: So the thing is gonna look like him, basically. [00:37:27] Speaker A: The thing is. Wait, wait. Despite walking away from like hardcore Christianity, like when Crowley reached out to him, he told Crowley to Go pray. Right. I mean, Kuwait couldn't help being an older man and being religious. And you can see that chasteness, that kind of Catholic meandering, even if it was Anglican. Whatever. Same difference to me. I'm an ethnic Jew. Leave me alone. I don't know, it all looks the same to me. But like, whereas Crowley eschewed all of that, he was actually really disappointed when he bought his first book of magic and there was nothing about Satan there. He was like, oh man, this is just like, you know, whatever this is. Narish K. This is bullshit. You know, so you can see. Yeah. Like, cuz Crowley's not the person who's gonna tell you not to have whatever freaky sex you want to have. He's gonna be like, yo, man, go for it. He's the motherfucker who wrote do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. [00:38:19] Speaker B: Yeah, gonna talk about that. We're gonna talk about that. Because it's a bit. [00:38:22] Speaker A: Are we. [00:38:24] Speaker B: Do you want me. I'll get into it. I'll get into it right now, baby. So here's. I do without. Wilt. Do with that. [00:38:32] Speaker C: Wilt. Yay. [00:38:33] Speaker D: All right. [00:38:33] Speaker B: No, that will. No, actually this is what's interesting is, and this is part of the reason why Crowley gets such a bad rap. He got a bad rep then. Still getting a bad rep now. [00:38:44] Speaker C: And she's kind of an asshole, but. [00:38:46] Speaker B: He was okay, I am not going to defend him, like as a human being, but if we're going to talk about the principles that he wrote about, taught about, etc. Like objectively speaking, this phrase, do what thou will shall be the whole of the law. This wasn't about rabid licentiousness. This wasn't about just doing literally whatever you want. 247 people misread it as that then and still do to this day. What he was actually talking about was in his, like, religion that he invented Thelema, which we'll get into as well. The, the, this is with the tenet. The main tenet was that there in each of us, it's kind of Jungian, if you really think about it, is that like in each of us we have some great calling, some, I don't know, sacred reason why we're here on Earth and it's our life's journey, is to uncover and discover. Discover what? That, you know, special spark of the big. Why, like why you? Why now? Why are you here? To uncover that, discover it, and then live it out to the best of your ability. So do without Wilt actually isn't about licentiousness. It's about being as in line with your quote unquote, divine will or sacred will. He wouldn't use divine probably, but your sacred will, your big reason why you are here, be in line with that at all times and like perfect that journey as best you can while you're here. Do what thou wilt on that journey to make sure that you get to the highest level of your calling that you are here to do. [00:40:20] Speaker A: A lot of that is analogous to the modus operandi of a lot of modern non theistic Satanists where their idea is that every one of us is a God and we affect our own universe, you know, and perhaps that tree of life that, you know, they adapted from the Jewish Kabbalah exists within all of us. As much as the Tarot deck is a simulacrum of the universe with the Sephiroths and, you know, Jehovah and all that Narishkite, it's also within. It's also a simulacrum of each person, you know. So, yeah, I think that's fair. I think that's definitely a thing. I think Crowley is a very much a person who figured out that Jesus wasn't real pretty quickly and was sort of like, I guess, you know, whatever we affect our will on is what manifests, you know what I mean? [00:41:06] Speaker B: I think he just was like a little too early. He like in time, right, because he was like in the, you know, turn of the century and you know, into the twenties and all that. And it was just like he was basically embodying religious freedom. Freedom from religion, basically. He really was, yeah, religion and also sexual freedom. The sexual revolution didn't happen until the 60s and 70s. He was just a little before his time. And so really a lot of his, like there was, you know, the equivalent of tabloids being written about him and you know, the wickedest man of all time, all these things, you know, it was really. A lot of it was just the pearl clutching at the time. Now again, there are things that he did in his life, especially later on in his life, that were, were deplorable. And I'm not standing by him like on business or anything like that. Like, I, I don't vouch for the dude through and through, but I do think especially like in his earlier work especially, and he was just like basically speaking out against religion and he was speaking for sexual freedom and he identified as bisexual and that was not acceptable at the time and all of these things. And so a lot of the, like, naysayers were coming at him for those reasons. And I just think that that's worth pointing out. [00:42:25] Speaker A: Well, Crowley loved it. Honestly. He, you know, and being called the wickedest man alive at a time when Hitler was the dictator of Germany, that's that. That's. That says a lot about, you know, about the world, doesn't it? [00:42:38] Speaker D: I feel like he was a spy. [00:42:41] Speaker C: He was a spy. Like he was. And he was being like, pro German. Like, like, yeah, Germans, go take over Britain. But really they were like using him the whole time to like, spy on stuff. And that blew my mind today. [00:42:57] Speaker A: Well, that was later. That was later because when he was actually in. In Britain, he was there for the blitz. I mean, he was there for that. And we will talk about his magical war with. With the Nazis. It's. It's super disappointing. It's not as exciting as you think it is, but it's only relevant, I feel, because it occurred during the making of the tarot, the Thoth tarot deck. So I do want to talk about all the wacky things he was up to in 38. And honestly, I do agree that a lot of it was overblown by, you know, I'm gonna call them normies who were like, you know, they see this guy in the newspapers going like this and, you know, I mean, look at this picture. [00:43:38] Speaker D: I just want to interject and say I feel like Crowley is the king of any attention is good attention. [00:43:43] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:43:44] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, definitely. Because, I mean, like, look, this guy. [00:43:46] Speaker D: Made you lean into all of it. [00:43:48] Speaker C: He was like a rock star before rock stars were a thing. [00:43:51] Speaker A: When Crowley found occultism, he founds a world of people who believed things very easily. He wanted to be the one who, as much as he wanted to learn about magic and all that stuff and mythology and sexual liberation, he also knew that there was a niche where he could slip in and just. He could be the one people went to for sex, magic, for reading, for learning, learning secret knowledge. And, you know, he was really desperate to get this deck off the ground, which sadly was not published during his life. But I mean, let's talk about it. So 38, he was collecting investors for a clinic that would offer rejuvenation through radiation therapy, massages, yoga, and some nebulous elixir, which you would have thought the elixir would be the product. I mean, you've got the fountain of youth somewhere. Like, what? Hey, you know, you know, he was trying to get enough money to actually go to America and seize control of the Rosicrucian chapter there. Never happened, sadly. Let's see. He was engaging in sex magic with a lady named Peggy Wetton, who probably paid him for the privilege, attempting to create a supernaturally mighty successor to his mystical legacy. She miscarried and burnt her hand in a kitchen fire. So Crowley threw himself into more sex magic to, you know, cure her with a different woman. And Peggy disappears from Crowley's story, probably for obvious reasons. You know, I mean, this is the kind of person Crowley was, the kind of stuff he was doing. And I. I agree there's a lot of value in his work. He was definitely ahead of his time, but he wasn't above using people, is. [00:45:20] Speaker B: My point, you know, Very much so. [00:45:22] Speaker A: Right. And I think comparing him to a rock star is probably apt. I mean, look at. Look at the. The lead singer of Ramstein with the weird sex scandal or Marilyn Manson or. I don't know. Pick. Pick sex offender here. You know? I mean, seriously. [00:45:36] Speaker B: Literally. Yeah, yeah. He was leveraging that, you know, hierarchical position that he assigned to himself, basically. [00:45:45] Speaker A: That's true. [00:45:47] Speaker B: As a way to, you know, manipulate and get people to have sex with him. And it was under the auspices of sex magic to the point where, like, the whole second half of his life, like, every single variation of teaching or ritual that he did involved sex. Like, he didn't even. He. It was like there was no, like, chill. Hanging with Crowley and, like, doing anything. Like, oh, let me just, like, teach you something. It was like, oh, we're gonna have sex. Like, it was literally, like, every single thing that he did in, like, a teaching capacity or a ritualistic capacity also involved that. [00:46:26] Speaker A: Yeah, he was the Rasputin of his day. Yeah. I think it's interesting that Frieda Harris was convinced to embark on Crowley's tarot adventure due to her art, of course. And she's another incredible character. I think that the women are super interesting. [00:46:40] Speaker C: I love them. [00:46:42] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. But I think it's also interesting that she didn't know anything about the tarot. And Crowley pushed her. Pushed her, pushed her. And then she ended up paying him to teach her about magic, which is. [00:46:51] Speaker C: Like, even more than that. She actually paid him to illustrate the deck. Yeah, it's a thing she did. She paid him to be the artist for this tarot deck. [00:47:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Mr. Manipulator. Aleister Crowley. He did think it was going to be easy, but then he looked at his Equinox of the Gods, which he'd written 40 years before, and was kind of like, oh, no, I gotta re. Rewrite all this. Because it's too simple. And, I mean, she was into it. Honestly, she was really excited to do it. She didn't just, like, phone in these cards. I mean. [00:47:27] Speaker B: I mean, these things are crazy, dude. [00:47:31] Speaker A: The ace of Swords. Behold. I mean, come on, man. It's a sword. [00:47:36] Speaker C: You guys picked the same card. [00:47:38] Speaker B: I literally just opened my deck and picked the exact same card. [00:47:42] Speaker C: Oh, my God. That's crazy. [00:47:43] Speaker A: I picked a card at random Serendipity. [00:47:49] Speaker B: I'm gonna tell you right now, in my experience, this is actually how the Thoth deck works. The Thoth deck is a fucking troll. This deck literally trolls you. I am so serious. [00:48:02] Speaker A: I. I'm a skeptic. And there's a reason why I come back to the Thoth all the time. [00:48:07] Speaker B: That was too funny. [00:48:09] Speaker A: That was hilarious. I can't even make the point I was gonna make. Now I'm shattered. [00:48:13] Speaker B: We were talking about how awesome the artwork is. [00:48:15] Speaker C: Okay? 60 when she started. Okay. Like, she was 60 years old, and she started this tarot deck. So she's like, an old lady, okay. And she's, like, working on this stuff. And, like, some of those cards, like, guys, she would, like, do full out. Like, she did, like, eight copies of them. Eight different versions, trying to get it right. Like, we need to do it like this. We need to do it like this. This is wrong. This is wrong, this is wrong. And she would, like, paint the whole thing out, and then it would be wrong, and then she would just start over. Like, that's insane. [00:48:52] Speaker D: Like, guys. [00:48:55] Speaker C: Like, that is insane. [00:48:58] Speaker A: Yeah, agreed. [00:48:59] Speaker C: The fact that she outlived him blows my mind, because, like, I'm surprised she didn't die while making it. [00:49:06] Speaker D: Oh, my gosh. As I was researching him. That's what I was about to say. As I was researching him, I'm like, how do you survive this long? [00:49:16] Speaker C: Like, I don't know everything you did. She drew pictures of him on his deathbed. Like, he's dying. He's sitting there with these charcoals, like, drawing him for him. And then he made her one of the executors of her his will, which is probably the only nice thing he ever did for that poor woman. I'm just saying. [00:49:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:49:36] Speaker B: I mean. And what Brittany and I are referring to is his lifestyle choices. He was a heavy alcoholic, a heavy drug user for most of his life. So the fact that he lived as long as he did is shocking. [00:49:48] Speaker C: It is shocking. [00:49:49] Speaker B: He actually also had a lot of sexually transmitted diseases because of that part of his lifestyle. [00:49:55] Speaker D: Like, dude, how did he actually use he actually. Can I say it on the podcast? I don't know if I'm allowed to. [00:50:03] Speaker B: He go. [00:50:04] Speaker D: He used cocaine so much that he actually had his nasal cavity collapse, and he had to get reconstructive surgery on the inside of his nose because he used cocaine so much. And he got addicted to heroin, I think, at least twice in his life. The first time was because it was prescribed to him, and then the second time is that he was just like, I'm going to do this again. So insane. It's absolutely insane. [00:50:29] Speaker C: If you've ever met anyone who's done cocaine, they are the most obnoxious humans in the planet. [00:50:34] Speaker D: I'm just saying, I have my stories. [00:50:38] Speaker C: Yeah. Like, dude, I. [00:50:40] Speaker B: Can we. Can we talk about how cool the death card is? Look at this thing. [00:50:44] Speaker D: Yes, let's talk about that. [00:50:47] Speaker A: He's Osiris. Yeah, it's. It's excellent. Yeah. [00:50:49] Speaker B: Yep. Exactly. [00:50:50] Speaker A: And he's. He's in, like, a rhythmic orgasmic dance. [00:50:54] Speaker C: It's. [00:50:54] Speaker A: It's exquisite. Really cool. [00:50:56] Speaker B: With the giant scythe and then the scorpion and the snake down there, so. Sure. [00:51:04] Speaker A: I just wanted to point out that the version I have, which is published by US Cards & Game Systems, which also publishes my version of the, you know, the Riders. Rider. Waite Smith deck includes three versions of the Magus. All of them have the same iconography. They have, you know, the. They have the ape. What is that? The ape is a Thoth. No. Yes. I don't know. A little rusty. It's okay. The Orphic egg appears, the. The mystical coin, and. But they're all different, you know, and of course, the one they went with, ultimately, the. One of the, you know, the. The Magus, like, kind of levitating amidst all the splendor and mysticism of the deck is the best one. [00:51:45] Speaker C: But the reason you have those is because she had to do, like, eight different versions of those cards. Like, they can't. [00:51:52] Speaker A: They can't include all the versions. So the mages being Crowley's card, you know. Yeah, it's. [00:52:00] Speaker B: It's favorites. [00:52:01] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. As we all do. As we all do. Of course. You know, he had his. [00:52:07] Speaker B: Not favorites. Like, he hated the Hanged Man. [00:52:09] Speaker A: Oh, well, everyone hates the Hangman, you know. I'm just kidding. [00:52:13] Speaker B: Associated with the element of water and, like, emotions and actually. And he hated the whole entire set of Cups because of that. Because I thought he was, like, above it, because it had to do with, like, emotions and, like, femininity. And he was like. He was just. He thought he was above all that. [00:52:32] Speaker A: Brittany, does that have anything? [00:52:33] Speaker B: So, actually, not just that. [00:52:34] Speaker A: I'll be. [00:52:35] Speaker B: Let me give it a little more credence. It was actually because part of his, like, religion, the Thelema thing, is that he believed that we were entering into the eon of Hora, of Horus, which would be ruled by the element of fire. And so anything having to do with the element of water, he struggled to, like, integrate because he just felt it wasn't as useful to us in this eon of fire. [00:53:00] Speaker D: Basically, very reflective of his character. [00:53:05] Speaker A: He was. He was definitely the king of wands, you know, for sure. [00:53:08] Speaker B: For sure. [00:53:09] Speaker C: Swords, wands. You sure? [00:53:11] Speaker A: Well, no one. Wands are associated with fire, so. [00:53:13] Speaker C: I know. I'm joking. [00:53:15] Speaker A: Whatever. [00:53:16] Speaker C: I'm not. I'm sorry. I'm not really hard, though. [00:53:22] Speaker A: I mean, looks aren't everything, you know. I want to say. What did we want to talk about? Yeah, so Harris went ahead and, you know, when she had enough of these done or when she'd finished them all, she tried to have an exhibition, you know, it was at Oxford, and she tried to show Crowley, you know, the pamphlet she had done. Right. Let me. Let me actually read what he said when he saw her pamphlet. Over 6,000 words of complete obfuscation, no hint of what terms like tetragrammaton, Sephiroth and their kind may mean. She had also sent the Juggler, the one trump that must be done again. And in any case, very unsuitable indeed for rapper to be reproduced very expensively, so that printing and paper must be cheap. I have no memory of so black a rage as has consumed me for the last five hours. All this, though I had long ago prepared a proper catalog, approved, I should say, by Lewis Wilkinson and other sensible people who understand such things. Clear, modest, cheap to produce. Yeah. Frida was like, that's great, Alistair. Listen, I think we should take your name off this because A, I don't care, and B, if they find out you're associated with this, they're gonna pull the plug on the show. [00:54:45] Speaker C: And on top, he had done, like so many versions. She was so tired. She was giving. [00:54:52] Speaker B: It's giving like a Yelp one star review. Like, that's the energy of. It's like. Have you ever read Yelp one star reviews or Google one star reviews? They give that energy. It's like, I'm so appalled that this thing should exist in this manner. It's like, so pretentious. So pretentious. [00:55:11] Speaker C: No, dude, as an artist, I will tell you, like, yeah, she's gonna do this thing, and she's gonna make it happen. And she specifically was trying to do it to where, like, okay, she paid the guy to do the art. She gave him her connections, okay, to, like, fund things and whatnot. And then she's like, like, where is she? Right? So she's doing all this work, and so she's, like, trying to do this art show, and then he's, like, an about it, and then they cancel it anyway. [00:55:47] Speaker A: Like, yeah, it was. It was canceled because she's like. She said it was canceled because of the war because, you know, they were being bombed. But what actually happened was they canceled it because they. They found out that that lunatic Alistair Crowley was involved. [00:55:59] Speaker D: So, yep, it's. [00:56:01] Speaker C: It's being an artist and who you work with, like, totally matters. That's all I'm saying. But also, like, Jesus. [00:56:11] Speaker A: She's pretty great, though. [00:56:12] Speaker B: She is, like, props to her, though, for, like, the fortitude that it took to make it through that project about her. This is a lot about her creative energy, and that says a lot about her character as a person. [00:56:26] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:56:27] Speaker C: She saw things through this woman. Like, literally. She's like, okay, you gave me a project. I'm gonna freaking finish it. You're gonna tell me this isn't good enough. Okay, I'm gonna do it better. Okay, I'm gonna do it better again, like, eight times. And then she's still like, oh, my God. Like, this woman is just phenomenal. And, dude, this is not a young lady. This is a woman, Dickies. Okay? In the Victorian era. So that's like a whole other thing, right? Like, wow. Yeah. [00:57:03] Speaker D: She's truly incredible. Truly incredible. And I see it very much reflected in her work. I feel the connection that I feel with this deck. With the folk tarot is definitely, of course, Aleister Crowley, but just in looking at the imagery and the artwork, it's so. So deeply her. It's so deeply her. [00:57:25] Speaker C: It has this feminine feel to it, even though it's very. Like a masculine deck. Right, Exactly. [00:57:31] Speaker A: It's very. It's. It's very mystical. [00:57:33] Speaker C: Absolutely, yes. [00:57:34] Speaker A: I mean, look. Look at this. Look at the star. You know, the star is very much a card of outpouring and releasing. And look at it just. I mean, look at how the nymph is. She's almost flowing with the water, the watery energy of the moon and the. The what? The seven pointed star up here. Emanating light that's pink and lilac, and it's just. Yeah, yeah. [00:57:58] Speaker C: Beautiful. It's my favorite card. So you just so yeah, it's gorgeous. [00:58:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, you know, I think it's fun that, like, I don't know. Crowley was very much like. He was also trying to go to war with the Nazis. He had. He was trying really hard to find something that could combat the swastika because he didn't know the history of the swastika, and most of the Nazis probably didn't either. But it was the symbol that the Nazis united under. And he was kind of like, we have to combat that. We need something phallic. So he wrote some stupid poem called Thumbs up. And he tried really hard to get it, like, on the radio. And, you know, when Adrian told me he did some spying, I suspect it was really just the British government trying to get him to go the away because he wouldn't stop. Like, he drew this, like, weird symbol. I'll flash it up here on the video version of this. But yeah, yeah, Crowley had his hand in a lot of pots. The. The tarot deck itself wouldn't be. It had a limited run in the 60s from the Simpson Printing Company. No color. They just copied it from the Thoth, the Book of Thoth. But it wasn't ultimately put out by us. US Games Systems Incorporated until 78. He was long fucking dead by then. Do we want to move on to the Book of Thoth, or do we want. Do we want to talk about the deck more and Harris More? [00:59:18] Speaker B: Is there anything. I think we've done a decent job talking about the deck. And unless there's any other little, like, factoids that anybody has that need to be said. [00:59:28] Speaker A: I mean, the goat is in front of a phallic, phallic tree, and there's two testes in front of him. That's pretty cool. [00:59:33] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so cool. [00:59:38] Speaker D: Yeah. Our art is truly incredible. And I. My two cents that I'll leave it on with just the comparison of the two decks. I feel as if a lot of people from the outside looking in will see these two decks as being incredibly different, which they are. They are incredibly different decks and the intentions behind them were very different. But I feel as if. I feel almost as if Fali was really putting himself on a pedestal of saying, this deck is so much better than the weight Smith, when, in fact, when you really look deep, especially with what we just did, comparing the strength cards together, you really didn't do that much, guys. He did a lot. Definitely. He did do a lot. And there is definitely different intentions behind it. But no matter which way you look at It. A lot of the cards, or at least that I have seen, still do hold very similar meanings to each other, even in just the death card. I'll use an example because I had it pulled up here. Just seeing in the way that in the Thoth tarot, it's almost as if. And this could be, again, my interpretation, but I see that his scythe has all of these different strings attaching to all of these different souls. And it's almost like Crowley is embodying death as being not essentially not being the end of things, but a transition into things. And that is how Waite depicted death in his death as well. So there's, again, I feel like he kind of probably puts himself on a high horse of being like, mine is so much better, when in fact, he still used a lot of the same intentions, if not subconsciously. [01:01:16] Speaker A: So I have the world, you know, I have this. This goddess. And, you know, she's. She. She's tamed the Ouroboros, right? And she's flanked by the four animals that are on the face of the. The cherub in the Book of. I believe it's a. Ezekiel looked up and saw the spaceship. Whatever. It doesn't matter. The. You know, it really doesn't matter. Who cares? It's just the Bible. But anyway, there you go. And then here's Crowley's version. It's not the world. Behold the universe. And it's this. This dizzying, dizzying, dizzying dance between a goddess and some mystical serpent being projected from the allseeing eye of Horus, perhaps the Ann of Horus bearing down upon the universe, because that's what she is. And you have the same cherubic faces, but they're, like, framing this. This cosmic drama. And for my money, I mean, I'm a very dramatic person. I'm like, if a Wagner play was a person. Like, I like things to be loud and melodic. And I get more out of this. I mean, I look at this and I'm like, okay, you're going to get to the conclusion of your thing. And this one, it's like, you'll be fully realized. You won't just complete the great work. You will be the great work, and it'll matter. And it's like, you know, it just. Okay, that's the thing about. Go. [01:02:34] Speaker B: Honestly, Daniel, you're actually, like, hitting the nail on the head about the point that I want to make to kind of almost wrap up one of what I would say is the primary difference between these two decks. Like, ultimately, Bird's Eye View difference is. And. And Brittany, you were alluding to it as well, the intentionality behind the decks. Truly. [01:02:51] Speaker A: The. [01:02:51] Speaker B: The Waitsmith deck was intended for the masses, number one and number two for cardomancy, for. For divination. [01:03:03] Speaker D: One thing I want to deck is a direct quote from Waite is he said, my tarot is a spiritual. [01:03:09] Speaker B: Yes. And so what he. What he wanted was. So with the Wait Smith deck, it was meant for divination and it was meant to be accessible to just like any person easily. Right. To be able to look at the imagery and engage with it. [01:03:28] Speaker D: Exactly. [01:03:28] Speaker B: Intentionality. Wasn't that. In fact, nowhere in Crowley's explanation of his deck does he at all talk about divination. That was not meant to be part of his deck. It wasn't meant to be read the same. Those cards aren't meant to be read the same way that the Waite Smith cards are, where it's a divination game. It was much more for personal, esoteric exploration. Basically, it was meant to be consumed by the individual and if consumed with others, still wasn't really a divination tool. It wasn't necessarily about getting to know your fortune or what's coming up next for you or anything. It was more like, we're gonna dig into your soul and teach you things about who you are. Like, that's really what his deck was meant to do. [01:04:15] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, exactly. [01:04:17] Speaker A: I think that it would have worked better, though, if he'd use, like, Batman and the Joker for the tower. [01:04:23] Speaker C: And I mean, he could. [01:04:27] Speaker A: You know, two Face for the Wheel of Fortune. I'm just kidding. No, that. That's a great breakdown, Ca. Honestly, thank you. Yeah, I don't really have anything to add to that because. You're right. [01:04:37] Speaker D: You're absolutely right. You're absolutely. [01:04:39] Speaker A: Crowley himself kept the Tarot deck with him, and he would. He would reference it every day. And he wasn't doing this Celtic cross bullshit spread. He was doing his own stuff, you know, not that. Not that the Celtic cross is bs, you know, it's. It's practical. And frankly, Brittany, you probably use it for. You probably use it for your clients because it's practical and you can get a lot out of it. I use it too, and I read for myself, you know, I'm just saying that Crowley himself was probably doing three. Three card spreads or whatever his mind decided on that day he was going to do, you know? [01:05:07] Speaker D: Exactly. [01:05:08] Speaker A: Yeah. It wasn't this institutionalized thing at the time, you know, I mean, we can't. [01:05:13] Speaker B: Deny Crowley's Impact on the world of spiritualism, occultism, all of that stuff. He opened a lot of doors and a lot of avenues. Controversial as he was horrible as he was manipulative and whatever. He really cracked open some eggs and made some omelets, for sure. [01:05:33] Speaker D: How do you guys feel about that phrase, separate the art from the artist? [01:05:39] Speaker A: It's a case by case system. We. We talked about it in our. Our episode about Edgar Allan Poe and Sarah Helen Whitman, where, you know, Poe is the. He's this. He's this proto incel who just couldn't get along with people. But I mean, I mean, the guy wrote, you know, the Telltale Heart and Lenor. I mean, come on, you know. [01:05:59] Speaker D: Exactly. [01:05:59] Speaker C: There's also the whole thing with Nosferatu, like, and it being used for Nazi propaganda, which totally happened. It's really bad. And like, they still use Rat King imagery. And I'm so grossed out because I'm like a folklore, like, nerd, nerd. And then finding out that like, they took like all of this stuff and used it for this stuff and, you know, like, people died. It's fucking horrible. [01:06:29] Speaker D: It is. [01:06:30] Speaker C: I don't know, like, you can separate the art from the artist so much, but there's also like, depends what it is. [01:06:38] Speaker B: Depends what it is. [01:06:40] Speaker A: Yeah, like, like with HP Lovecraft. In the same breath that I will tell you that the Call of Cthulhu is a groundbreaking, incredible, incredible, monumental, beautiful story. It's also problematic and racist as mostly against, you know, my people. You know, Lovecraft is a guy who happily used the N word in his stories. And, you know, I mean, like, it really does depend what we're talking about. Like, enters game. Yes, I bought that book used because he's a. He's a notorious homophobe. He spends a lot of money, you know, donating to anti gay organizations and his books don't embody that. It's weird. You know, it's not. It doesn't even have the problematic shit that like, you know, Harry Potter has with the Cho Chan character or whatever. Ender's Game is a masterpiece, but I'm not giving that guy my money. You know what I mean? That's. That is somewhat. I don't know if that addresses your, you know, your question, but in a roundabout way, I do think it really does matter. There is a lot of nuance in that discussion. [01:07:38] Speaker D: There is a lot of nuance in this collection. [01:07:41] Speaker A: As a writer, as a poet, as someone who really, you know, a lot of my heroes are, are dead. It matters. And you have to engage with things. And you can't just throw things out because they're part of problematic legacies such as Nosferatu and its depiction of the vampire as Jew. A rat, like, Jew monster. You know, it's like, it's still Nosferatu. It's a groundbreaking movie. It's, it's, it's lyrically beautiful. It's a hauntingly, hauntingly frightening movie. And listen, at a certain point, it's a cultural artifact, and you've got to talk about that. And with Crackley and his entire career. Yeah, it prefigures this sort of thing and kind of highlights the trap that people who, you know, walk away from traditional ways of thinking can sometimes fall into. That's not to say that the Catholic Church is a civilizer, but Crowley's a guy who justified his actions with Thelema. His, his. His hucksterism, his, his. His lies, his corruption. And I mean, it just goes to show you that, you know, one thing can be as bad as another if your intentions are bad. So that's my shame. [01:08:51] Speaker D: Exactly, exactly. I asked the question to ignite the discussion, of course, but also because I feel like that phrase in itself, separating the art from the artist, it's applicable, but also it's exactly like you said, it's nuanced as well. Like, you can't sit here and take, Take it and be like, aleister Crowley did this, this and this for the history of the occult. And it's very, very important. So we should ignore everything that he was. No, absolutely not. It needs to be recognized. It's like, it's this situation in which, yes, the things that he did were important to modern occultism. And that should be recognized, but it also should be recognized how shitty of a person he was. [01:09:36] Speaker C: You have to hit both. [01:09:38] Speaker D: You have to hit both. And I feel like a lot of people will really might have this kind of black and white thing of it of, oh, we should only really look at all the good things he does, or, oh, he's such a bad person. We shouldn't look at any of the good thing that he. He's done. And it's again, it's that nuance of you really have to look straight down the middle and say, okay, he did both things, you know? [01:10:01] Speaker C: Yeah, you have to do both. [01:10:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Adrian. Adrian wasn't aware of the fact that Dracula itself, like the novel, is a xenophobic novel. [01:10:08] Speaker C: Oh, my God, it's so bad. It's so fucking bad. [01:10:11] Speaker D: What's that thing on TikTok where it's just like, I was today years old when I learned. [01:10:17] Speaker C: Like, seriously, dude, like, it's horrible because, like, I love my mythology and I love folklore, and it's something I've immersed myself in, like, my whole life. Like, dude, I can tell you what monster is what and, like, where it originates and blah, blah, blah. Like, people can't tell you about the real monsters behind how this started. Apparently. The moral of the story. [01:10:41] Speaker A: Exactly. [01:10:42] Speaker B: Boom. [01:10:42] Speaker A: Exactly. All right. Absolutely. [01:10:45] Speaker D: So. [01:10:46] Speaker A: So, yeah, interestingly enough, Pamela Coleman Smith does get, like, the. This here card. Wait, doesn't get actually, does he? I don't think so. Oh, curses. [01:10:57] Speaker D: I don't think he gets anything. [01:10:58] Speaker A: No, no, no, no, no. Yeah, they give her a credit card in the deck. So I think that's. That's pretty rad. Personally, that is. [01:11:05] Speaker C: That's probably one of my favorite. [01:11:07] Speaker D: I have something. I have something earmarked here that I would love to read off to you specifically about Pamela and when she passed. Pamela dies on September 18. The National Probate Register recorded the following as such. Corinne, Pamela Mary Coleman of 2 Ben Coulin House. Bud Cornwell died 18 September. Effects 1048 pounds, 4 shillings, 5 pence. That is the wealth that the Swift. She didn't receive a single dollar. Are illustrations of the Waite Smith tarot deck. [01:11:50] Speaker A: That's a very common story. I mean, if you look at the history of, like, comic books, for instance, I always defer to this because it's just a field of art that I'm intimately aware of. I mean, like Gary Friedrich, who created Ghost Rider for Marvel, right? Makes them lots of money, right? He was at a convention selling drawings of a character he created, and Marvel gave him a season desist. They were like, hey, that's ours. What are you doing? He was making like 100 bucks a pop. Maybe the Siegel and Shuster who created Superman, they were paid 15. Like a. I think it was like $150 for the rights to Superman. And I mean. I mean, the character makes billions every. Every week. [01:12:25] Speaker B: So, you know, I mean, I'm sure Adrian could go on and on about the. The using and abusing of artists and how much their art is literally just stolen from them and not compensated. [01:12:38] Speaker C: So for American Horror stories. So like 150 bucks and no, like, dude, they do they. So. [01:12:46] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:12:48] Speaker C: She. [01:12:48] Speaker A: She literally makes art for. She's made art for movies and TV shows, and an agency takes it and gives her. What. Adrian, what do you get paid? Like, what did you get paid for? [01:12:57] Speaker C: Lady Gaga necklace Like, it's fucking stupid. And most people want to pay you an exposure. Like, that's like. [01:13:04] Speaker B: I hate that. [01:13:05] Speaker C: Oh my God. I will give you exposure. Exposure. Cuz that's what you need. [01:13:09] Speaker B: It's like, does your exposure pay my Right? Does it keep my lights on? [01:13:15] Speaker C: Yeah, like, come on. Like, come on, man. I'm obviously like, I make like, if you want my pay for it. [01:13:22] Speaker A: O. [01:13:23] Speaker C: Did I do that? I'm sorry. [01:13:24] Speaker B: It. [01:13:25] Speaker A: What? [01:13:27] Speaker C: Lots of. I went on a rant. I'm sorry. [01:13:29] Speaker A: Soapbox Frankatron appreciates you. [01:13:33] Speaker C: Thank you, my little crite. My Christmas kite thinks that that's awesome. That not the cutest thing you've ever seen? I have two. [01:13:41] Speaker B: Look, actually. It's really cute. [01:13:44] Speaker D: I love that. [01:13:45] Speaker C: They're my favorite. That was my best Christmas present this year. [01:13:49] Speaker B: Critters reminds me, like in a weird way. Like the facial structure reminds me a little bit of Ludo from Labyrinth. [01:13:55] Speaker C: Labyrinth. Ludo friend. [01:13:58] Speaker B: Ludo friend. [01:13:59] Speaker C: I've never seen that movie a day in my life. [01:14:02] Speaker A: You know, I don't. I don't really recommend watching Critters. They're pretty awful. [01:14:06] Speaker C: I mean, it's fantastic. Don't even. I mean, it's bad, but it's like the good kind of bad. They're awful. [01:14:11] Speaker A: I don't know. It's not like puppet master, where when the puppets show up, they're delightful. Like the critters are there for so little of the movie. Just watch the first one. [01:14:20] Speaker C: It's so fun. [01:14:22] Speaker A: Adrian's gonna kill me because I said Critters is bad. [01:14:25] Speaker C: Yeah, I am. I'm gonna. I mean, I love Psycho. All right, let's continue henceforth and hitherto. [01:14:34] Speaker B: What else do we need to talk about before we. [01:14:37] Speaker A: I don't know. I think that was about it. I mean, I wanted to mention that. Okay, so I wanted to mention that the Book of Thoth. I dropped my script, but who cares? The Book of Thoth is kind of great because Crowley doesn't even engage. So I mentioned how Arthur Waite thought that Eliphas Levy was a fraud and he didn't engage with his ideas, even though he ended up using quite a few of them. Like, you know, Baphomet being the devil and, you know, drawing on his ideas for a lot of the minor arcana. Crowley doesn't even play that. He's like, he knows how the game is played. You appeal to some ancient manuscript and you just roll with it, you know? So he literally treats the Book of Thoth as revealed knowledge and he's just like. Yeah, you know, he doesn't. He doesn't address the elephant in the room because I think that the writer Waites came out in 1919. Right. [01:15:28] Speaker D: 1909. [01:15:30] Speaker A: 1909. Thank you. I was off by 10 years. That's okay. It's not that. Not that bad. You get what's 10 years. But my point is that he doesn't address the elephant in the room. He doesn't address this, you know, this deck. What he does say is that Eliphas Levy was working from an ancient cipher manuscript. He doesn't name it. He doesn't talk about what it is. He doesn't care. He knows you don't care because you're just, like, trying to keep up with him because he's just talking at you at a million miles a second, you know, and. Yeah, it's such a. It's such a. It's such a hassle because I love the book of Thoth. I think it's a lot of fun. But if you really want to learn how to read with a tarot cards. Well, with the filth tarot card, you want this book called Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot. It's by a guy named Lon. Milo Duquet, who is. I probably butchered that name. You know, me and Brittany were chatting about it. It's like French. It's probably a pen name too, because these guys are, you know, they're. They're super cool, you know, I don't know anything about going by, you know, nom de guerre, but, yeah, it's very informative. It's very to the point and down, you know, down to earth in a way that Crowley is really not. [01:16:42] Speaker B: Crowley's reading. Crowley is not for the faint. [01:16:45] Speaker C: I love him. [01:16:45] Speaker A: I love him. He's like William Blake, you know, he has this great poem where the book of lies is just madness. It's like I wrenched dog backwards to find God, but now God barks, you know, like, awesome. I went to bed with Faith and found her a corpse in the morning. I partied and danced with doubt all night. I found her a virgin in the morning. I mean, you know, Crowley's great. Crowley's the king. Yeah. He is a giant asshole. [01:17:12] Speaker C: Sorry. [01:17:14] Speaker A: He is an asshole. [01:17:16] Speaker B: He really kind of is. [01:17:17] Speaker A: Yeah. He was a womanizing huckster. And for that, we thank you. [01:17:22] Speaker B: And he died penniless as well. He wasted. He was so. He gets so. From so much wealth and he, like, would make all this money and then spend it all on drugs and prostitutes. And whatever else, he would jump from city to city because he kept getting kicked out of cities. [01:17:37] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:17:37] Speaker B: Like, he just. [01:17:38] Speaker A: Man, they said. They said of Lord Byron that he was mad, he was bad. He was. He was like Caliban. He was dangerous to know. And a passing fad. Aside from the passing fad thing that applies to Crowley, you know, more than sure. Applied to Byron. I mean, for. [01:17:55] Speaker C: I will say that Crowley did leave whatever non existent that he had to Frida Harris on his deathbed, like, when he died, I mean, it was nothing. But she got to, like, elect the new elder for the OTO and shit. Like, he tried at least, because I guess she was like, you're an. But I'm still, like, friends with you and I believe in you, so I'm just gonna come and hang out with you even though you're dying. And then she died, like, 10 years later. [01:18:32] Speaker D: Do you feel like it could have been pity? [01:18:34] Speaker C: Yes, it was totally pity. It was totally pity. She felt bad for him. She was doing sketches of him on his deathbed because, you know. [01:18:41] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:18:42] Speaker C: You know, he was vain and, you know, he wanted people to have that. And of course she was like, all right, dude, I'm gonna do this for you. [01:18:48] Speaker A: Honestly, his own sketches were nothing to write home about. Like, I'm gonna flash up on the video version of this a picture of his self portrait. It's kind of amazing. He looks like a weird alien man. Because he can't. [01:19:01] Speaker C: Oh, my God. [01:19:03] Speaker A: Yeah, it's great. It's pretty awesome. [01:19:05] Speaker D: He was a weird alien man. He would love to be complimented like that. [01:19:08] Speaker B: I think, actually he would love to be called a weird alien man. [01:19:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:19:15] Speaker B: Yeah, he really would. [01:19:16] Speaker A: Pretty magical guy. Pretty magical guy. No. No pun intended. [01:19:20] Speaker C: We didn't talk about the thing. [01:19:23] Speaker B: All right, let's end with it. [01:19:25] Speaker A: Adrian, tell us how Aleister Crowley's association with the Hermetic Order of the golden dawn ended. [01:19:33] Speaker C: Okay, so he and Yates got into this huge fight. And I'm gonna tell you guys, this is the most hilarious thing I've ever heard in my life. [01:19:42] Speaker D: Give me the tea. [01:19:44] Speaker C: Okay, so they were literally up on the top of this, like, you know, like, they went up the stairs, and they're in this room and they're mad at each other, right? So they're, like, fighting, but it's not like a fist fight. These guys are literally sitting there making sigils at each other, having. And shouting and shouting at each other, having this imaginary wizard battle at each other, trying to, like, hex each other. And Yates real Gets so mad at freaking Crowley. Like, he's done with the sigils. He's done. And he kicks him down the stairs. [01:20:23] Speaker D: I'm sorry. [01:20:24] Speaker B: Can you picture it? [01:20:26] Speaker C: It is the most hilarious thing I've ever heard in my life. [01:20:29] Speaker B: They called the things are better than your dog. [01:20:32] Speaker D: No, they're not. [01:20:33] Speaker C: Down the stairs. Oh, my God. [01:20:36] Speaker A: Crowley was. Was accusing Mathers of, like, trafficking and sex, as if Crowley wasn't doing that himself himself. [01:20:42] Speaker C: Well, Yates apparently cursed him by sending a vampire to his house every night for, like, 10 years. Like, oh, my God, that was Gates's revenge. [01:20:52] Speaker A: Like, I mean, don't you. Don't you hate when that happens? You get into a magical duel with your boss and then some poet, you know? [01:20:58] Speaker C: Okay. Two grown men standing at the top of the stairs, literally trying to make these magical sigils at each other. Trying to, like, expelliarmist each other. I don't know. [01:21:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, listen. I mean, like, you know, the seven pointed star of Babylon only gets you so far when your Hungarian landlord is screaming at you. I mean, you know, I. I don't even know what that guy was saying to me. I'm just, like, tracing sigils and. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:21:28] Speaker C: He was a frail ass, dude. Okay. He was like, not okay. And he kicked Crowley down the stairs. [01:21:39] Speaker B: Hey, the element of surprise, though. I mean, if you're having a sigil fight and then out of nowhere, you just get, boom. [01:21:46] Speaker C: Honestly, good for Yates. Like, way to go. So that's how Crowley was no longer part of the Order of the Golden Doll. [01:21:55] Speaker B: He quite literally got kicked out. [01:21:57] Speaker D: Quite literally. [01:21:58] Speaker C: And not by just anybody. By William Butler Yates. He got kicked out by William Butler Yates. [01:22:05] Speaker A: I mean, Yates. [01:22:06] Speaker D: That is hilarious. [01:22:07] Speaker A: Yates is the greatest Irish poet. I mean, he wrote the sec. You don't write the Second Coming and not be able to kick a wizard down the stairs. I mean, you know, come on. [01:22:15] Speaker B: Yeah, dude. [01:22:15] Speaker C: Or like, a vampire to, like, you know, whatever. It's fine. Oh, my God, I love it so much. I've never laughed. The heart of my life reading that. [01:22:25] Speaker B: Amazing. [01:22:26] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that is the story of the many stories of the dueling tarot decks of Aleister Crowley and Arthur Edward Waite. If you enjoyed this, then, you know, do like and subscribe. You know, as. As we in the, you know, entertainment business are want to say and, you know, do follow us. I do want to, you know, cite my sources here. I personally brought. You know, I read Perturabo the life of Aleister Crowley by Richard Kaczynski. The Essential Tarot Writings, edited by Donald Tyson. The Mystical Origins of the Tarot by Paul Huson, and the Book of Thoth by Aleister Crowley. Brittany, of course, can be found @cunningfolktarot on Instagram. Brittany, did you want to shout anything else out? [01:23:14] Speaker D: Yeah. So cutting Folk Tarot is my Instagram. That's the best way to reach me. I also work for the lovely Crystal Sunflower on Instagram as well. That's where I do most of my readings. You can check us out at the Crystal Sunflower. And I'm also a paranormal investigator for WTCW Paranormal. Also WTCW Paranormal. So you can check us out there. If you don't know. This is for you guys. Do you guys know who chills is on YouTube? He does like. Oh, he does like all of the ghost videos and everything like that. He actually reposted us and he's actually. Yeah, that was a really, really big deal for us. [01:23:48] Speaker A: So cool. That's awesome for you, man. [01:23:51] Speaker D: Super cool stuff. So, yeah, that's where you can find me. [01:23:55] Speaker A: Yeah, ca, of course, can be found at Venom Stellium. CA has a. Another podcast of her own called Unlearned. And ca, you want to talk about. [01:24:05] Speaker B: We are relaunching. [01:24:07] Speaker A: Hell yeah. [01:24:08] Speaker B: So excited to announce it is actually officially relaunching. We are in recording right now, so then we'll have some. A little bit of time for production. But yeah, you can look forward to some new episodes coming out. It's. It's beginning of January now, so by the end of the month, you'll be hearing from us again. We've had a lot of requests to relaunch because we went on a bit of a hiatus. But we're so back, baby. 2025. Let's go. [01:24:33] Speaker A: Love it. [01:24:33] Speaker C: Winning. Winning. [01:24:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:24:37] Speaker A: Adrian, of course, is an artist. You can find her at. You can look at her pretty, pretty paintings on. At Shalott Lily on Instagram special shout out to our social media sorceress, Ashley from Tucson Media. You can find them at Tucson Media on Instagram. They do handle all of our social media on Instagram, which is phenomenal. You know, there's so much we couldn't do without them. So do check them out if you need help promoting your business or creative project. I myself am the editor of Death Wish Poetry magazine. We're currently closed for submissions. You know, this being the month of January, but the winter edition is live, so check it out. I mean, you know, there's some incredible poetry, erotica and short stories on deathwitchpoetry.com and we are going to be launching a physical edition this year. So I'm very excited for that. So do check that out. And check out my dark fantasy novels. You can find them at Demonland Bookstock. You know, or don't. It's okay. I love you anyway. I truly do. [01:25:39] Speaker B: And yeah, also speaking of launchings, we also launched our Instagram page for this podcast. It's real. Go follow it. [01:25:50] Speaker C: Because we're like real people. [01:25:51] Speaker A: Oh, my God, that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is of course the death wish poetry at Death Wish at Death Wish Poetry on Instagram, but Demon Toast does have its new fledgling page at Demon Toast Podcast. So check that out. You know, by all means, show us some love. Yeah, yeah. You know, watch our clips, you know, leave comments and all that junk. Help us out, man, because, you know, it's. It's hard to make art in this, this dark, dystopian, post logic nightmare world we live in. And aside from that, on that note, love your demons, write the poems, make art and stay spooky, obviously. [01:26:27] Speaker C: Stay spooky, my friend. [01:26:29] Speaker A: Hell yeah. [01:26:31] Speaker C: I love you guys. [01:26:39] Speaker A: Sa it. Sa.