A fascinating and wacky guy

[cimorene]

Aleister Crowley was like the Oscar Wilde of neopaganism.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

Yeah, he was something.

The tarot deck he designed with Lady Frieda Harris is quite something too.

[cimorene]

I love it! I actually have it, although I do not actually believe that tarot decks have any particular power. I just kinda... like them? But I don't collect them or anything. I only have that one and the one that was a brief hobby-fandom-fad of mine when I was 14 and I got it for a present with a book about it and my best friend and I made up a series of cheat cards to explain the meaning of each card so that we could do tarot readings for other kids at school in the gym and at lunch, which was an unsurprisingly popular activity. (I actually tried to learn some solitaire game that uses tarot decks just so I'd like, have an excuse to actually use them, but it's so much easier to play solitaire on a computer than with cards that I kinda ended up giving up.)

[princessofgeeks]

Cool!

I love the tarot although I am not doctrinaire about it and have about 15 decks.

the book Angeles Arrien wrote about the Crowly deck was better than Crowley's own book, I thought.

[cimorene]

I haven't read a single book about tarot specifically. The one I had as a kid was a companion to a Greek mythology deck, so it did have a fair bit of general knowledge on suggested methods and reading but most of it was arguing the choices of motifs for the Greek myth versions of the cards, lol.

[vass]

I am SO OFFENDED on Wilde's behalf I cannot even

[cimorene]

This comparison is more about their influence on culture and other people and their reputation and symbolic meaning for history than about their personal qualities... though it's totally plausible that Wilde would be offended to have his cultural meaning and influence compared to Crowley's anyway. And probably still pretty legit tbh.

[vass]

That's fair.

[cimorene]

As Wax said, Wilde was definitely funny, and arguably sometimes silly, but he wasn't naff.

[viggorlijah]

I think Wilde got into fewer fights… And possibly fewer orgies.

[cimorene]

I wouldn't be surprised at all if he got into fewer fights,that's a good point.

[phosfate]

He was great at taking people who would probably want to fight him and turning them into pals, except when he took his mother's advice.