‘BOTA’s Application of Tarot’

     
Builders of the Adytum has released news of its 2014 Northeast Conference, scheduled for October 17 through 19 at New Lebanon, New York. Its focus will be Magical Application of Tarot.

From the publicity:

You are cordially invited to join your BOTA fratres and sorores at Abode of the Message, nestled on a wooded hillside in the Berkshire Mountains. Abode of the Message is a residential spiritual community, conference and retreat center with Shaker-style buildings set in scenic grounds.

Among the weekend activities: Vibratory Attunement, a guided group meditation that utilizes chanting and visualization; Recorded Ann Davies Meditation, an active, guided meditation utilizing qabalistic chants, preceded by an introduction to the meaning and practice of chanting techniques; Workshop, a lively, interactive discussion and presentation led by fellow fraters and sorores; and the Qabalistic Service on Sunday morning, led by a BOTA minister.


In other news, BOTA has new books available and not-so-new books now in digital media. From the publicity:

A Concordance of The Book of Tokens has been written to help students using The Book of Tokens to do two things. The obvious purpose is for finding passages that one has remembered or heard but is having difficulty locating in the text or quoting accurately.
The deeper purpose is to aid meditation. If a student wishes to contemplate the occult significance of a word or concept, they can find the Tarot Keys, Hebrew letters, and phrases with which it is associated. Furthermore, the concordance reveals patterns of repetition and connection between the ideas represented by the keys and the letters that would not otherwise be obvious to a reader. It can be instructive to choose a word, and follow its appearance throughout meditations. The concordance is bound as a spiral workbook to provide easy and repetitive use.

The Book of Tokens, Tarot Meditations by Dr. Paul Foster Case, is one of the most important tools that have been left to students of the Western Mysteries.
The 22 major Tarot cards are called “keys,” keys to understanding. By giving us meditations on these keys, and the 22 Hebrew letters assigned to them, The Book of Tokens offers guidance for using the keys to open the self to wider worlds; it is, as it were, a peep through the keyhole.

The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order is Paul Foster Case’s thorough and lucid explanation of the Rosicrucian allegories Fama Fraternitatis and the Confessio Fraternitatis. It is now available as an eBook from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple. Dr. Case’s book expands these classic esoteric texts into an entire system of spiritual unfoldment.”

The Sun: Key 19

When the conscious and subconscious phases of mentality are regenerated, or born anew, a human personality becomes a radiant center through which the Life Power manifests itself. The Ipsissimus knows that circumstances are the projections of his interpretations of Reality. He has made this knowledge deep-rooted and permanent. Therefore, his mode of life is incomprehensible to the merely natural man. He is a free channel for the expression of Omnipotent Spirit.
(Chapter XXI, p. 307)

The One Identity is the Sun of life and light, the spiritual Sun of which our daystar is the external manifestation and symbol. He who would know will understand eventually that his personality has no existence apart from the shining of the spiritual Sun.
(Chapter XVII, p. 248)

The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order
Paul Foster Case


In a delightful development, BOTA now offers a download of the 22 Major Arcana (TIFF files in BOTA black and white) for printing and coloring, or even just for portable viewing on your smartphone. Click here.

In closing, BOTA also has its regularly scheduled Saturday morning session at Masonic Hall in New York City. That’s August 23 at 10 a.m. in the Chapter Room on the 12th floor. Very interesting group. The more I learn, the more I am intrigued.
     

‘A new Fama translation 400 years on’

     

Enigmatic literature of the esoteric world is at its most powerful when it intrigues and inspires occultist practitioner, academic scholar, and candid seeker alike, and the mysterious Fama Fraternitatis has stood the test of time for these reasons, despite there never being a high quality adaptation into English of the original German text. Leave it to Dr. Christopher McIntosh and  wife Donate Pahnke McIntosh to bring the classic text into the 21st century with this brand new English translation in the quadricentenary year of the Fama’s first publication. Donate McIntosh also has produced a translation into modern German.

The Fama—its full title reads: Fama Fraternitatis: Manifesto of the Most Praiseworthy Order of the Rosy Cross, addressed to all the rulers, estates and learned of Europe—is perhaps to Rosicrucianism what the Declaration of Independence is to the United States. Its message is an announcement to the world of the existence of the mysterious order, and it arrived at a time when Protestantism was setting free Christianity from the confines of Rome. Its authorship is legendary, meaning no one is sure of the exact who, what, and why. It’s even said that the author meant it as a prank, or a gambit of disinformation to protect something and someone else.

Regardless, values like truth have layered significance in the esoteric world. Factual accuracy sometimes ranks behind intuitive import when romantic types are attempting to define their spiritual lives. Sometimes believing is seeing.

And sometimes that’s okay.

I do not have a copy of this new paperback yet, so for description I will just share what Amazon offers:

Christopher McIntosh
at the 2011 Rose Circle
conference in NYC.

The seminal document known as the Fama Fraternitatis (the Proclamation of the Fraternity) burst like a firework over Europe in the early 17th century, igniting the imagination of many with its story of the German seeker Christian Rosenkreuz, his journey through the Middle East in search of wisdom, and his creation of the esoteric Rosicrucian Fraternity.

The first of three so-called Rosicrucian Manifestos, it has hitherto received no adequate English translation. Now, to mark the 400th anniversary of the original German publication in 1614, Christopher McIntosh and Donate Pahnke McIntosh have produced an English rendering, based on careful study of printed and manuscript versions. This edition is an essential resource for all who are drawn to Rosicrucianism, whether as a field of study or a spiritual path.

Paperback: 62 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (June 25, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1499555482
ISBN-13: 978-1499555486


About the Author: Dr. Christopher McIntosh is a writer and historian specializing in the esoteric traditions of the West. Earlier in his life he worked in publishing in London and subsequently for the United Nations in New York and UNESCO in Hamburg and has travelled throughout the world. He was for several years on the faculty of the Centre for the Study of Esotericism at Exeter University. He lives in Bremen, Germany. Dr. Donate Pahnke McIntosh is a scholar of religion and was for many years standing a lecturer at the University of Bremen, specializing in Gender Studies, Esotericism, and Ritual. She runs the Selene Institute for Ritual in Bremen. Her work as a translater includes books, articles, lectures, poetry and regular translating for the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, Hamburg.
     

‘Explore the Appellatio Fraternitatis’

     

The Rosicrucian Order has five nights of workshops planned for next week to bring to life the meanings of the Order’s new writings, the Appellatio Fraternitatis, in the tradition of Rosicrucianism’s founding documents printed in the early 17th century. (If you didn’t know, this year is the quadricentenary of the publication of Fama Fraternitatis in Germany. I have been meaning to write about this for three months—and hopefully will do so by year’s end—but it is difficult to collect my thoughts of this hefty subject.)

Anyway, Steven Armstrong will return to the Rosicrucian Cultural Center uptown for discussion and activities intended to explain what all this literature means, and to make it useful in life.

From the publicity:

In commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the issuance of the Fama Fraternitatis, the Appellatio Fraternitatis is a powerful call to understand and to manifest the Rosicrucian Principles in this crucial time in human history.

March 31 through April 4

Nightly from 6:30 to 7:30

Rosicrucian Cultural Center of New York City

2303 Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard

This participatory workshop will explore not only the meaning of each section, but will also discuss ways of implementing each in our lives.

The first night we will consider the Preface and the Historical Background of the Manifestos.

The second night we will work with the Appeal for Spirituality.

The third night will center on the Appeal for Humanism.

The fourth night will deal with the Appeal for Ecology, and the Conclusion.

On the fifth night, participants will discuss the Imperator’s Discourse: Being a Thinking, Active, and Responsible Mystic.

Please read and meditate on the appropriate sections before each workshop.

The facilitator of this workshop, Steven A. Armstrong, M.A. Hum., M.A., M.Div., is a professional historian, philosopher, and teacher based in the San Francisco Bay area. He serves at the Grand Lodge in Membership Services; is an active member of both the Rosicrucian Order, AMORC and the Traditional Martinist Order; and has served as an officer in both Orders. His current areas of interest include how the Primordial Tradition permeates all world traditions, and the way in which the Rosicrucian and Martinist paths provide unique and unifying viewpoints on those traditions. The author of more than 30 published papers, articles and podcasts, and a lecturer for the RCUI, he is no stranger to New York City, as he received two of his Master’s Degrees at Fordham University’s Rose Hill Campus.
   

‘Fama and Confessio’

     

Courtesy Ouroboros Press

The Temple of the Rosy Cross, 1618.

Treat yourselves—well, some of you anyway—to copies of the limited edition imprints of the Rosicrucian Manifestos soon to be available from our friends at Ouroboros Press, printers of esoteric texts and supporters of education in our arts.

Of course the books are the Fama Fraternitatis and Confessio Fraternitatis, the heralds of the founding in the early 17th century of the Brethren of the Rosy Cross, an order outside of dogmatic religions that championed the search for the secrets to life, the universe, and everything via Alchemy and Kabbalah.

The texts’ origins, not unlike the origins of practically everything else one studies in the Western Mysteries, are obscure and confounding, and yet the so much is built upon the foundation they constructed that they are essential reading. And if you have to read a book, I suppose it may as well be a beautifully bound, heirloom quality masterpiece you will treasure for life.

And then there is the trade edition for guys like me. Click here to make your selections and place your advance orders.

Silkscreen on camel-stock prints, 18x24, of the artwork above also are available for purchase at $25 each.

Courtesy Ouroboros Press