A Fools Journey Through The Universe
Riding On The Back of The Swan

The Fool In The Mirror

The Book of Thoth by Aleister Crowley and Lady Marguerite (Frieda)  Harris
for the First Time Unveiled and Opened with
The Key To It All – The Mayet Method of The Opening The Book Of Thoth
With The Mirror Of Thoth and Oracle of Oz

The legend of Percivale, integral of the mystery of the Saviour Fish-God, and of
the Sangraal or Holy Grail, is of disputed origin. It appears certainly, first of all,
in Brittany, the land best beloved of Magick, the land of Merlin, of the Druids,
of the forest of Broce liande.

Some scholars suppose that the Welsh form of this
tradition, which lends much of its importance and its beauty to the Cycle of
King Arthur, is even earlier. This is in this place irrelevant; but it is vital to
realize that the legend, like that of The Fool, is purely pagan in origin, and
comes to us through Latin-Christian recensions: there is no trace of any such
matters in the Nordic mythologies. (Percivale and Galahad were “innocent”: this
is a condition of the Guardian ship of the Grail).

Note also that Monsalvat,
mountain of Sal vation, home of the Graal, the fortress of the Knights
Guardians, is in the Pyrenees.

It may be best to introduce the figure of Parsifal in this place, because he
represents the western form of the tradition of the Fool,

1 Call him “Harlequin”, and a Tetragrammaton evidently burlesquing the Sacred Family
spflngs to sight: Pantaloon, the aged “antique-antic”; Clown and Harlequin, two
aspects of the Fool; and Columbine, the Virgin. But, being burlesque, the tradition is
confused and the deep meaning lost; just as the medieval Mystery- Play of Pontius an
(1 Judas became the farce, with opportunist topical variants, “Punch and Judy”.
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and because his legend has been highly elaborated by scholarly initiates. (The
dramatic setting of Wagner’s Parsifal was arranged by the then head of the O.T.
O.)
Parsifal in his first phase is Der reine Thor, the Pure Fool. His first act is to
shoot the sacred swan. It is the wantonness of innocence. In the second act, it
is the same quality that enables him to withstand the blandishments of the
ladies in the garden of Kundry. Klingsor, the evil magician, who thought to fulfil
the conditions of life by self- mutilation, seeing his empire threatened, hurls
the sacred lance (which he has stolen from the Mountain of Salvation) at
Parsifal, but it remains suspended over the boy’s head. Parsifal seizes it; in
other words, attains to puberty. (This transformation will be seen in the other
symbolic fables, below.)
In the third act, Parsifal’s innocence has matured into sancti fication; he is the
initiated Priest whose function is to create; it is Good Friday, the day of
darkness and death. Where shall he seek his salvation? Where is Monsalvat, the
mountain of salvation, which he has sought so long in vain? He worships the
lance: immediately the way, so long closed to him, is open; th£ scenery
revolves rapidly, there is no need for him to move. He has arrived at the
Temple of the Graal. All true ceremonial religion must be solar and phallic in
character. It is the wound of Amfortas which has removed the virtue frorn the
temple. (Amfortas is the symbol of the Dying God.)
Accordingly, to redeem the whole situation, to destroy death, to reconsecrate
the temple, he has only to plunge the lance into the Holy Grail; he redeems not
only Kundry, but himself. (This is a doctrine only appreciable in its fulness by
members of the
Sovereign Sanctuary of the Gnosis of the ninth degree of O.T.
O.)

The Crocodile (Mako, son of Sd; or Sebek).
This same doctrine of maximum innocence developing into maximum fertility is
found in Ancient Egypt in the symbolism of the Crocodile god Sebek. The
tradition is that the crocodile was un provided with the means of perpetuating
his species (compare what is said above about the vulture Maut). Not in spite
of, but because of this, he was the symbol of the maximuin of creative energy.
(Freud, as will be seen later, explains this apparent antithesis.)
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Once again, the animal kingdom is invoked to fulfil the function of fathering
the redeemer. On the banks of the Euphrates men wor shipped Oannes, or
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Dagon, the fish god. The fish as a symbol of fatherhood, of motherhood, of the
perpetuation of life generally, constantly recurs. The letter N. (Nun, N, in
Hebrew means Fish) is one of the original hieroglyphs standing for this idea,
apparently because of the mental reactions excited in the mind by the
continual repetition of this letter. There are thus a number of gods, goddesses,
and eponymous heroes, whose legends are functions of the letter N. (With
regard to this letter, see Atu XIII.) It is connected with the North, and so with
the starry heavens about the Pole Star; also with the North wind; and the
reference is to the Watery signs. Hence the letter N. occurs in legends of the
Flood and of fish gods. In Hebrew mythology, the hero concerned is Noah. Note
also that the symbol of the Fish has been chosen to represent the Redeemer or
Phallus, the god through whose virtue man passes through the waters of death.
The common name for this god, in southern Italy to-day, and elsewhere, is Ii
pesce. So, also, his female counterpart, Kteis, is represented by the Vesica
Piscis, the bladder of the fish, and this shape is continually exhibited in many
church windows and in the episcopal ring.1

In the mythology of Yucatan it was the “old ones covered with feathers that
came up out of the sea”. Some have seen in this tradi tion a reference to the
fact that man is a marine animal; our breathing apparatus still possesses
atrophied gills.
Hoor-Pa-Kraat.2
Arriving at highly sophisticated theogony, there appears a perfectly clear and
concrete symbol of this doctrine. Harpocrates is the God of Silence; and this
silence has a very special meaning.
1 “IXOYC, which means fish
And very aptly symbolizes Christ.”
-The Ring and the Book.
The word is a Notariqon of Iesous Christos Theou Huios Soter (Jesus Chnst, Son of God,
Saviour.)
2 The Fool is also, evidently, an aspect of Pan; but this idea is shewn in his fullest
development by Atu XV, whose letter is the semi-vowel A’ain, cognate with Aleph.
p.61

(See attached essay, Appendix.) The first is Kether, the pure Being invented as
an aspect of pure Nothing. In his manifestation, he is not One, but Two; he is
only One because he is 0. He exists; Eheieh, his divine name, which signifies “I
Am” or “I shall Be”, is merely another way of saying that he Is Not; because One
leads to nowhere, which is where it came from. So the only possible
manifestation is in Two, and that manifestation must be in silence, because the
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number 3, the number of Binah-Understanding-has not yet been formu lated. In
other words, there is no Mother. All one has is the impulse of this
manifestation; and that must take place in silence. That is to say, there is as
yet no more than the impulse, which is unformu lated; it is only when it is
interpreted that it becomes the Word, the Logos. (See Atu I.)
Now consider the traditional form of Harpocrates. He is a babe, that is to say,
innocent, and not yet arrived at puberty; a simpler form of Parsifal, he is
represented as rose pink in colour. It is dawn- the hint of light about to come,
but not by any means that light; he has a lock of black hair curling around his
ear, and that is the influ ence of the Highest descending upon the
Brahmarandra Chakra. The ear is the vehicle of Akasha, Spirit. This is the only
salient symbol; it is the only indication that he is not merely the bald baby,
because it is the only colour in the blob of rose pink. But, on the other hand,
his thumb is either against his lower lip or in his mouth; which it is, one cannot
say. There is here a quarrel between two schools of thought; if be is pushing up
his lower lip, he emphasizes silence as silence; if his thumb is in his mouth, it
emphasizes the doctrine of Eheieh: “I shall Be”. Yet in the end these doctrines
are identical.

This babe is in an egg of blue, which is evidently the symbol of the Mother. This
child has, in a way, not been born; the blue is the blue of space; the egg is
sitting upon a lotus, and this lotus grows on the Nile. Now, the lotus is another
symbol of the Mother, and the Nile is also a symbol of the Father, fertilizing
Egypt, the Yoni. (But also the Nile is the home of Sebek the crocodile, who
threatens Harpocrates.)
Yet Harpocrates is not always thus represented. He is shown by certain schools
of thought as standing; he is standing upon the
p.62
crocodiles of the Nile. (Refer above to the crocodlle, the symbol of two exactly
opposite things.) There is here an analogy. One is reminded of Hercules-the
infant Hercules-who spun the wheel in the House of Women; of Hercules, wh9
was a strong man, who was innocent, who was ultimately a madman, who
destroyed his wife and children. It is a cognate symbol.
Harpocrates is (in one sense) the symbol of the Dawn on the Nile, and of the
physiological phenomenon which accompanies the act of waking. One sees, at
the other end of the octave of thought, the connection of this symbol with the
succession to the royal power described above. The symbol of Harpocrates
itself tends to be purely philosophical. He is also the mystical absorption of the
work of creation; the H~ final of Tetragrammaton. Harpocrates is, in fact, the
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passive side of his twin, Horus. Yet at the same time he is a very fully-fledged
symbol of this idea, which is wind, which is air, the impregnation of the Mother
Goddess. He is immune from all attack because of his innocence; for in this
innocence is perfect silence, which is the essence of virility.
The egg is not only Akasha,1 but the original egg in the biological sense. This
egg issues from the lotus, which is the symbol of the Yoni.
There is an Asiatic symbol cognate with Harpocrates, and though it does not
come directly into this card it must be considered in con nection with it. That
symbol is the Buddha-Rupa. He is most fre quently represented sitting on a
lotus, and often there is behind him spread the hood of the Serpent; the shape
of this hood is again the Yoni. (Note the usual ornaments of this hood; phallic
and fructiform.)
The crocodile of the Nile is called Sebek or Mako-the Devourer. In the official
rituals, the idea is usually that of the fisherman, who wishes protection from
the assaults of his totem animal.
There is, however, an identity between the creator and the destroyer. In Indian
mythology, Shiva fulfils both functions. In Greek mythology, the god Pan is
addressed “Pamphage, Pangene tor”, all-devourer, all-begetter. (Note that the
numerical value of the word Pan is 131, as is that of Samael, the Hebrew
destroying angel.)
So also, in the initiated symbolism, the act of devouring is the
1The Black Egg of the element of Spirit in some Hindu schools of thought. From it the
other elements Air, Water, Earth, Fire (in that order) proceed.
p.63
equivalent of initiation; as the mystic would say, “My soul is swallowed up in
God”. (Compare the symbolism of Noah and the Ark, Jonah1 and the Whale, and
others.)
One must constantly keep in mind the bivalence of every symbol. Insistance
upon either one or other of the contradictory attributions inherent in a symbol
is simply a mark of spiritual incapacity; and it is constantly happening, because
of prejudice. It is the simplest test of initiation that every symbol is understood
instinctively to contain this contradictory meaning in itself.

Mark well the
passage in The Vision and the Voice, page 136:
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“It is shown me that this heart is the heart that rejoiceth, and the
serpent is the serpent of Da’ath, for herein all the symbols are
interchangeable, for each one containeth in itself its own opposite. And
this is the great Mystery of the Supernals that are beyond the Abyss.

For
below the Abyss, contradiction is division; but above the Abyss,
contradiction is Unity. And there could be nothing true except by virtue
of the contradiction that is contained in itself.”
It is characteristic of all high spiritual vision that the formulation of any idea is
immediately destroyed or cancelled out by the arising of the contradictory.
Hegel and Nietzsche had glimmerings of the idea, but it is described very fully
and simply in the Book of Wisdom or Folly. (See citation, below, Appendix.)
This point about the crocodile is very important, because many of the
traditional forms of “The Fool” of the Tarot show the crocodile definitely. In the
commonplace interpretation of the card, the Scholiasts say that the picture is
that of a gay, careless youth, with a sack full of follies and illusions, dancing
along the edge of a pre cipice, unaware that the tiger and crocodile shown in
the card are about to attack him. It is the view of the Little Bethel. But, to
initiates, this crocodile helps to determine the spiritual meaning of the card as
the return to the original Qabalistic zero; it is the “He’ final” process in the
magical formula of Tetragrammaton. By a flick of the wrist, she can be
transmuted to reappear as the original Yod, and repeat the whole process from
the beginning.
1Note the N of Jonah, and the meaning of the name: a dove.
p.64

The innocence-virility formula is again suggested by the introduction of the
crocodile, for that was one of the biological superstitions on which they
founded their theogony—that the crocodile, like the vulture, had some
mysterious mehod of reproduction.
Zeus Arrhenothelus.
In dealing with Zeus, one is immediately confronted with this deliberate
confusion of the masculine and the feminine. In the Greek and Latin traditions
the same thing happens. Dianus and Diana are twins and lovers; as soon as one
utters the feminine, it leads on to the identification with the masculine, and
vice versa, as must be the case in view of the biological facts of nature. It is
only in Zeus Arrheno thelus that one gets the true Hermaphroditic nature of the
symbol in unified form. This is a very important fact, especially for the present
purpose, because images 6f this god recur again and again in alchemy.

It is hardly possible to describe this lucidly; the idea per tains to a faculty of the
mind which is “above the Abyss”; but all two-headed eagles with symbols
clustering about them are indications of this idea. The ultimate sense seems to
be that the original god is both male and female, which is, of course, the
essential doctrine of the Qabalah; and the thing most difficult to understand
about the later debased Old Testament tradition,1 is that it represents Tetra
grammafon as masculine, in spite of the two feminine components. Zeus
became too popular, and, in consequence, too many legends gathered around
him; but the important fact for this present purpose is that Zeus was peculiarly
the Lord of Air.3 Men who sought the origin of Nature in the earliest days tried
to find this origin in one of the Elements. (The history of philosophy describes
the controversy between Anaximander and Zenocrates; later, Empedocles.) It
may be that the original authors of the Tarot were trying to promulgate
1 It was a tribal necessity of the savage wanderers to have an uncivilized and simple
Demiurge for god; the complexities and refinements of settled nations were to them
mere weakness. Observe that the moment they got a Promised Land and a Temple,
under Solomon, he went “an~whoring after strange women” and gods. This infuriated
the Diehard prophets, and led within a few years to the breach between Judah and
Israel, thence to a whole sequence of disasters.
2 The earliest accounts relate the distribution of the three active elements as Dis
(Pluto) to Fire, Zeus (Jupiter) to Air, and Poseidon (Neptune) to Water,
p.65.

the doctrine that the origin of everything was Air. Yet if this were so, it would
upset the whole Tarot as we know it, since the order of origin makes Fire the
first father. It is Air as Zero that reconciles the antinomy.
Dianus and Diana, it is true, were symbols of the air, and the Sanskrit Vedas say
that the storm gods were the original gods. Yet, if the storm gods really
presided over the formation of the Universe as we know it, they were certainly
storms of fire; to this astronomers agree. But this theory certainly implies an
identification of air and fire, and it seems as if they were thought of as before
Light, that is, the Sun; before creative energy, that is, the phallus; and this
idea continually suggests itself, that there is here some doctrine con trary to
our own most reasonable doctrine: one in which the original confusion of the
elements, the Tohu-Bohu, is to be put forward as the cause of order, instead of
as a plastic mass on which order imposes itself.
No system truly Qabalistic makes air in the conventional sense the original
element, though Akasha is the egg of spirit, the black or dark blue egg. This
suggests a form of Harpocrates. In that case, by “air” one really means “spirit”.
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However this may be, the actual symbol is perfectly clear, and should be
applied to its proper place.
Dionysus Zagreus. Bacchus Diphues.
It is convenient to treat the two gods as one. Zagreus is only important to the
present purpose because he possesses horns, and because (in the Eleusinian
Mysteries) it is said that he was torn to pieces by the Titans. But Athena
rescued his heart and carried it to his father, Zeus. His mother was Demeter;
he is thus the fruit of the marriage of Heaven and Earth. This identifies him as
the Vau of Tetragrammaton, but the legends of his “death” refer to initiation,
which accords with the doctrine of the Devourer.
In this card, however, the traditional form is much more clearly expressive of
Bacchus Diphues, who represents a more superficial form of worship; the
ecstasy characteristic of the god is more magical than mystical. The latter
demands the name Iacchus, whereas Bacchus had Semele for a mother, who
was visited by Zeus in the form of a flash of lightning which destroyed her. But
she was already pregnant by him, and Zeus saved the child. Until puberty, he
was
p.66

hidden in the “thigh” (i.e., the phallus) of Zeus. Hera, in revenge for her
husband’s infidelity with Semele, drove the boy mad. This is the direct
connection with the card.
The legend of Bacchus is, first of all, that he was Diphues, double-natured, and
this appears to mean more bisexual than hermaphroditic. His madness is also a
phase of his intoxication, for he is pre-eminently the god of the vine. He goes
dancing through Asia, surrounded by various companions, all insane with
enthusiasm; they carry staffs headed with pine cones and entwined with ivy;
they also clash cymbals, and in some legends are furnished with swords, or
twined about with serpents. All the half-gods of the forest are the male
companions of the Maenad women. In his pictures his drunken face, and the
languid state of his lingam, connect him with the legend already mentioned
about the crocodile. His constant attendant is the tiger; and, in all the best
extant examples of the card, the tiger or panther is represented as jumping
upon him from behind, while the crocodile is ready to devour him in front. In
the legend of his journey through Asia, he is said to have ridden on an ass,
which connects him with Priapus, who is said to have been his son by
Aphrodite. It also reminds one of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm
Sunday. It is curious, too, that, at the fabled birth of Jesus, the Virgin Mother is
represented as being between an ox and an ass, and one remembers that the

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letter Aleph means Ox.
In the worship of Bacchus there was a representative of the god, and he was
chosen for his quality as a young and virile, but effeminate man. In the course
of the centuries, the worship naturally became degraded; other ideas joined
themselves to the original form; and, partly because of the orgiastic character
of the ritual, the idea of the Fool took definite shape. Hence, he came to be
represented with a Fool’s cap, evidently phallic, and clad in motley, which
again recalls the coat of many colours worn by Jesus, and by Joseph.

This symbolism is not only Mercurial, but Zodiacal; Joseph and Jesus, with twelve
brothers or twelve disciples, equally represent the sun in the midst of the
twelve signs. It was only very much later that any alchemical significance was
attributed to this, and that at a time when the Renaissance scholars made
rather a point of finding something serious and important in symbols which
were, in reality, quite frivolous.

Hoofnote By Mayet
The Swan of fairytales for example the 12 Swans that the sister knitter the sweaters for and missed an arm on the last one is also an analogy of the formation of the Y Chromosome from an error in the “cloning of X”

Baphomet.

There is no doubt that this mysterious figure is a magical image of this same
idea, developed in so many symbols. Its pictorial correspondence is most easily
seen in the figures of Zeus Arrhenothelus and Babalon, and in the
extraordinarily obscene representations of the Virgin Mother which are found
among the remains of early Christian iconology. The subject is dealt with at
considerable length in Payne Knight, where the origin of the symbol and the
meaning of the name is investigated. Von Hammer-Purgstall was certainly right
in supposing Baphomet to be a form of the Bull-god, or rather, the Bull-slaying
god, Mithras; for Baphomet should be spelt with an “r” at the end; thus it is
clearly a corruption meaning “Father Mithras”. There is also here a connection
with the ass, for it was as an ass-headed god that he became an object of
veneration to the Templars.

The Early Christians also were accused of worshipping an ass or ass-headed god,
and this again is connected with the wild ass of the wilderness, the god Set,
identified with Saturn and Satan. (See infra, Atu XV.) He is the South, as Nuit is
the North: the Egyptians had a Desert and an Ocean in those quarters.
Summary.

It has seemed convenient to deal separately with these main forms of the idea
of the Fool, but no attempt has been made, or should be made, to prevent the
legends overlapping and coalescing. The variations of expression, even when
contradictory in appear ance, should lead to an intuitive apprehension of the
symbol by a sublimation and transcendance of the intellectual. All these
symbols of the Trumps ultimately exist in a region beyond reason and above it.
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The study of these cards has for its most important aim the training of the mind
to think clearly and coherently in this exalted manner.
This has always been characteristic of the methods of Initiation as understood
by the hierophants.
In the confused, dogmatic period of Victorian materialisation, it was necessary
for science to discredit all attempts to transcend the rationalist mode of
approach to reality; yet it was the progress of science itself that has
reintegrated these differentials. From the very
p.68

beginning of the present century, the practical science of the mechanician and
the engineer has been forced further and further towards finding its theoretical
justification in mathematical physics.
Mathematics has always been the most severe, abstract, and logical of the
sciences. Yet even in comparatively early schoolboy mathematics, cognisance
must be taken of the unreal and the ir rational. Surds and infinite series are the
very root forms of advanced mathematical thought. The apotheosis of
mathematical physics is now the admission of failure to find reality in any
single intelligible idea. The modern reply to the question “What is anything?” is
that it is in relation to a chain of ten ideas, any one of which can only be
interpreted in terms of the rest. The guostics would undoubtedly have called
this a “chain of ten aeons”. These ten ideas must by no means be considered as
aspects of some reality in the background. As the supposed straight line which
was the framework of calculation has turned out to be a curve, so has the point
which had always been taken as the type of existence, become the ring.
It is impossible to doubt that there is here a continually closer approximation of
the profane science of the outer world to the sacred wisdom of the Initiate.
* * *
The design of the present card resumes the principal ideas of the above essays.
The Fool is of the gold of air. He has the horns of Dionysus Zagreus, and
between them is the phallic cone of white light representing the influence from
the Crown1 upon him. He is shown against the background of air, dawning from
space; and his attitude is that of one bursting unexpectedly upon the world.
He is clad in green, according to the tradition of Spring; but his shoes are of the
phallic gold of the sun.
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Father. In his left hand he bears the flaming pine- cone, of similar significance,
but more definitely indicating vegetable growth; and from his left shoulder
hangs a bunch of purple grapes. Grapes represent fertility, sweetness, and the
basis of ecstasy. This ecstasy is shown by the stem of the grapes developing
into rainbow- hued spirals. The Form of the Universe. This suggests the
Threefold
1Kether: see the position of the Path of Aleph on the Tree of Life.
p.69
Veil of the Negative manifesting, by his intervention, in divided light. Upon this
spiral whorl are other attributions of godhead; the vulture of Maut, the dove of
Venus (Isis’or Mary), and the ivy sacred to his devotees. There is also the
butterfly of many-coloured air and the winged globe with~its twin serpents, a
symbol which is echoed and fortified by the twin infants embracing on the
middle spiral. Above them hangs the benediction of three flowers in one.
Fawning upon him is the tiger; and beneath his feet in the Nile with its lotus
stems crouches the crocodile. Resuming all his many forms and many- coloured
images in the centre of the figure, the focus of the microcosm is the radiant
sun. The whole picture is a glyph of the creative light

vo

nuit