One of my birthday presents was a check for $75 (thanks mom)... today, I cashed it and continued on my quest for knowledge in the Tarot. I've bought quite a few tarot decks over the past few years, mostly for aesthetic reasons, and have even taken a couple classes locally (Intro to Tarot and Qabalistic Tarot). Lulls between purchase events and classes have been pretty lengthy, I forget and come back, just like everything else in life; that's just how I work. People always tell me, "You know now, right? You took classes... so start doing it!" But, I'm not sure if I want to "do it" just yet, or if that's just my perfectionistic nature talking; maybe both.

The one thing I've noticed is, if I let it sit long enough, choices and actions suddenly make themselves apparent. For example, my choice in going with the Thoth Tarot as the deck of choice simply came to me one day... I hadn't given my 6 decks (yes, I own six) even a second-glance for a year or so, and one day coming home from work, I happened to glance. I stopped, looked, and thought, "Yep, that's the one." Who knows why, who cares really.

After settling on the deck, I bought a meta-book of sorts... a guide to the guide to the Thoth Tarot; ie. someone who could explain the complicated writings of the original author, Crowley. It took me a good few months to get through the book, usually reading a little bit every night, card by card plus some high-level stuff... and then (you guessed it), I put it on my shelf and went about other business.

Today, I decided to continue on the quest for knowledge, diving deeper down the rabbit hole... I bought The Book Of Thoth, originally written by Crowley himself and (apparently) intended to be sold with the tarot deck itself! I also bought a book by a tarot historian, of sorts, who provides history into Crowley and Frida's (the artist) biographical background and another book on an interesting new type of spread called a "string" (strangely like metaphysics these days, no?) where you use all the cards in relation to one-another.

Anyhow, The Book Of Thoth is exactly what I needed to fill-in some gaps! I highly recommend this book to any of my friends who are slightly bent toward the philosophical and metaphysical, as it relates the Kabalah, numerology, Hebrew, and astrology to the tarot as its foundation. The concept of the Tree of Life absolutely blows me away, as does the fact that modern science is basically (finally) returning back to zer0 (the fool), and re-learning that a whole is not merely the sum of all its parts (see quantum physics). If anything, go to Powell's, grab this book, and read the first 48 pages -- it's purely philosophical, and barely touches on the actual tarot.

I did want to relay one absolutely stunning quote to you, as is the purpose of this blog entry:

"Modern Science, intoxicated by the practical success which attended this innovation (the idea of Measure within science), has simply shut the door on anything that cannot be measured. The Old Guard refuses to discuss it. But the loss is immense. Obsession with strictly physical qualities has blocked out all real human values."

Chew on that over lunch tomorrow...