ATU

“Why haven’t I got living fire which could weave musically these beauties. I can’t do it with pigment. I want poetry & music & light, not coloured chalks”

~Lady Frieda Harris to Crowley,’ From Lon Milo DuQuette’s, Understanding Aliester Crowley’s Thoth Tarot.

   This series was created during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic utilizing tools, expertise, and auspicious timing to reinterpret the Major Arcana of the Thoth Tarot. This series was inspired significantly by a reimagining of the Major Arcana in conjunction with the Thelemic Holy Days (March 20th through April 10th), where The Book of the Law was received by Aliester Crowley in 1904 as he traveled through Egypt. “In the Thoth Tarot, the twenty-two trumps are formally referred to as ‘Atus of Tahuti’. According to Crowley, ”Atu” was Ancient Egyptian for ‘house’ or ‘key’; Tahuti is the God Thoth (the Egyptian Hermes, or Mercury).’ From Lon Milo DuQuette’s, Understanding Aliester Crowley’s Thoth Tarot. Each photograph is an established distinct and separate world from the other photographs. This allows each piece to fulfill the need for universal truth and world-building.

   Incorporated into each image are diverse symbolic representations that enrich every image, questioning the functionality of Tarot as both a tool of divination, and an artistic representation of the times we are in. The creation of art is a conversation with the eternal: to call out and ask for a response, to awaken the vestiges and icons of previous incarnations, and to shake them at eternity viscously–asking for a discovery to awaken the soul and unfold the lotus of enlightenment. As mortals, we both cherish the gods, and grind our teeth when they cannot meet our standards or desires. Art, in its truest form, is a statement. This statement berates eternity with the knowledge that we believe we hold over the past, presuming that we’ve mastered the past, and are prepared to devour the present moment. For now, we have created the pinnacle of all that could be. The future does not exist except to see our presence further extended. There are no amendments that can be made to the present as we are in the act of continuing creation. Beyond the present, is a thing which does not exist.

   Each image is a representation of the New Presence of the New Aeon: it demands the complete devourment of the previous religions, the icons of the past, and the poetry of the fallen.