Floating (Museum of Suspense III)

Peter Paul Rubens, Hero and Leander, c. 1604, oil on canvas, Yale University Art Gallery

Ale Nodarse July 8, 2025

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Certain images bring you back to them. Peter Paul Rubens’s Hero and Leander (c. 1604, Yale University Art Gallery) is one such image. It is, after all, a painting about return. Or rather about return’s denial.

On the surface, it is a mythological image: a tragic scene of Ovidian lovers. A boy named Leander crosses a sea — the Grecian Hellespont — to reach his beloved Hero. He swims only at night, guided by the stars and Hero’s lamplight. But one night, a storm unfolds. Hero’s light is obscured and Leander loses his way. He drowns. 

In Rubens’s picture, the protagonist continues to float, his body outstretched. He is carried by the waves and the nymphs who ripple within them — graceful bodies which murmur “ebb” and “flow” in a language theirs alone. Perhaps it is telling that when the Neapolitan poet Giambattista Marino saw Rubens’s canvas, he admonished the nymphs. “Where, where do you sea-nymphs carry [him]?” the poet cried.¹ How often has nature (or the divine, of which Rubens’s nymphs are part) appeared to us unsympathetic? 

Rubens, a masterful conjurer of figures and fables alike, condenses the Ovidian narrative into a single cinematic frame. In the fable, Leander’s lifeless body would be brought by waves to Hero’s shore; upon her discovery of him, Hero would throw herself from the tower which once lit her beloved’s way. In the painting, Leander remains within the picture’s center. He is an eye stilled within the storm. Whereas Hero, but a dash of red cloth at the picture’s margin, falls. To be more precise, she is still falling. 

Everything remains in a state of suspense, including the composition of the painting itself. Glancing above Leander’s body, past the throws of nymph and storm, one finds the horizon line. There, in the distance, the storm has subsided. That horizon remains out of reach, and the aperture  upon which it opens appears destined to close. The whole painting centers on this closure. To return to the painting is, analogically, to return to life as if from the brink of death. 

Three centuries after Rubens, the poet Leigh Hunt gave voice to Leander’s floating thoughts, to those questions which emerge when life and death approach one another. In Hunt’s 1819 poem, time dilates as Leander turns between the eternal and the everyday:

Then dreadful thoughts of death, of waves heaped on him.
And friends, and parting daylight, rush upon him.
He thinks of prayers to Neptune and his daughters.
And Venus, Hero’s queen, sprung from the waters;
And then of Hero only, — how she fares.²

When faced with a final glimpse, with the limited horizon, to whom do our own thoughts return? 

I return to the painting in part because it stretches beyond myth and beyond the lives of the fabled lover and beloved. Set within the Museum of Suspense, its poignancy resides in the force of possibility as well as doubt. It presses beyond the individual life to ask us how we, in confronting our own mortality, might better turn to the lives of others. 

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¹ “Dove dove portare / Ninfe del mar […] / Il feretro funesto / Del misero d’Abido.” Giambattista Marino, “Leandro morto trà le braccia delle Nereidi Di Pietro Paolo Rubens,” La Galeria (The Gallery), 1620. More precisely, the poet refers to a cask as opposed to the body inside.  
²Leigh Hunt, “Hero and Leander,” in The Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt (London, 1849).

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Alejandro (Ale) Nodarse Jammal is an artist and art historian. They are a Ph.D. Candidate in History of Art & Architecture at Harvard University and are completing an MFA at Oxford’s Ruskin School of Art. They think often about art — its history and its practice — in relationship to observation, memory, language, and ethics.

The Lovers (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: The Lovers or the Lover
Number: VI
Astrology: Gemini
Qabalah: Zain, the Sword

Chris Gabriel July 5, 2025

The Lovers is a card of both unification and division, opposition and polarity. Each version features two lovers and, between them, Eros the God of Love. This is the image of the idiom “Opposites attract”.

In Rider, the Lovers are Adam and Eve in the Garden, still naked for they are not yet fallen. An angel emerges from clouds before the Sun, ordaining their love. Adam stands by the Tree of Life, Eve by the Tree of Knowledge, where the Serpent is laying in wait. A mountain rises in the distance.

In Thoth, we have a significantly more complex image. The Emperor and Empress come together holding hands. The Empress holds a cup marked with a dove, the Emperor holds a spear. He wears a crown of gold and has dark skin, she wears a crown of silver and has light skin. Unlike the other versions of the card, Thoth features a more extensive doubling: below them are their children, Cain and Abel. One carries flowers, the other a club, Abel touches his mothers cup, Cain touches his father’s spear. Above them, another doubling: Eve and Lilith. Beside them, a red lion and a white eagle. All stand atop a winged egg about which a serpent is coiled. In the center is a giant cloaked Hermes, hands raised as if he were puppeteering the figures below, and at his head flies the blind cupid. This is the Chemical Wedding.

In Marseille, we have three standing figures, two bear laurels, and have their hands on the middle figure. Jodorowsky rightly focuses on the profound ambiguity of the situation; are the two in laurels being married by the middle figure? Or is one unhappy with the other taking the blond for a lover? Is it something even stranger than that? This card differs from the other two in title, as it is simply “The Lover”, a singular figure. The Lover could just as well be Eros above them, flying before the Sun, ready to let his arrow loose into the situation below.

Much of the brilliance of Tarot comes down to the interaction of the four elements in the form of the suits, and the Lovers offers the most vibrant image of this. In every other card featuring the four, they are static, sitting in the corners, in their own way, but in the Lovers, they are active and chemically interacting.

In Rider, the four elements are Adam and Eve, Angel and Devil. In Thoth they are the Emperor and Empress, Cain and Abel. In Marseille it is the wreathed two, Cupid and youth. In each we have one pair of lovers, and one pair of enemies. 

One can see this as the dual and the duel, the two forms of Gemini.

Is Love random and contentious as Marseille posits? Is it a divine union ordained by God as in Rider? Or is it an interaction of elements, a simple biological “chemistry”? It is all of these of course - Love is the greatest mystery and power of them all.

For most people, the experience of love is the closest to “magic” that they will experience; strange coincidences, unexplainable feelings, and exploration of the other. Even in atheistic science, it is the spontaneous attraction and unification of disparate elements that forms the universe.

This article comes at a particularly meaningful time for me. I was recently at the beautiful wedding of my dear friends Eric and Eva and at the chapel I truly saw this card, the real ritual of marriage when two become one right before our eyes.  During the party, I saw a family walking to the hotel. Their little boy walked up to a beautiful antique car, a 1965 Rolls Royce, and promptly threw a golf ball at it. This is of course, what Love is all about, in that moment he was just like Cupid. Love is not kind, and often we hurt the ones we love. Heraclitus recognized that the world is a product of God, a divine child, playing with toys. Cupid is like a child making two dolls kiss, something you can see really clearly in Thoth. 

When we pull this card, it may be directly about love, a relationship or a friendship, but it can also be about the resolution to a division. Alternatively, the two ‘lovers’ can be duelling, so one can be met with argument and opposition.

Dedicated to Eric and Eva

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Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

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The Seven of Cups (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Debauch, the Seven of Cups
Number: 7
Astrology: Venus in Scorpio
Qabalah: Netzach of He

Chris Gabriel June 28, 2025

The cups of pleasure which we have been filling throughout the suit overflow here. If five was not enough, and six was just right, then seven is too much. This is an overindulgence in sensory pleasure.

In Rider, we have a backlit figure in awe of the phantasmagoria before him. Seven fantastic cups emerge from a cloud, within them are various images: a head, a veiled person, a snake, a castle on a hill, jewels, a skull cup where a laurel sits, and a dragon. This is visual overstimulation, relatively uncommon in 1909 when this deck was first published, but a daily occurrence today. This is the algorithmic feed and a walk through the city, bright colors, temptations, and madness.

In Thoth, we have seven cups arranged in the form of the lower half of the tree of life. They overflow with sickly green viscous water. The lotus system which moves this water is drooping down. The card is given to the badly placed Venus in Scorpio. The Six of Cups, Pleasure, was a perfect match for our desires, this Debauch is too much. The green fluid of this card is the vomit that comes from too much drink, and the discharge of a Venereal disease. (Venereal literally means of Venus).

In Marseille, we have the least negative form of the card. A column of three cups stands between four cups  in the corners. Qabalistically it is the Beauty of the Queen, and represents Love in and for the World. The vast sensory inputs of the world are treated with kindness and care here. 

In the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu writes:

Five colors blind the eye
Five notes deafen the ear
Five flavors dull the mouth
The Great Hunt drives men's hearts wild
What’s difficult to get brings harm
The Wise trust their guts, not their senses

This card embodies this wisdom, the overstimulation of the senses leaves us burnt out, depressed, and numb. In dieting, there is a concept called “Intuitive Eating”, the idea that one can eat when they feel hungry, and stop when they are full. This ability is akin to telepathy in terms of how easily it can be achieved! In reality, many tend to eat like animals. Dogs, cats, horses, goats, and many others, when given an endless supply of food will eat themselves to death. 

The sensory pleasures cannot be truly satisfied until one learns what fullness is, just as a great deal of war goes on because the powerful cannot themselves bear the boredom of peace. As this card is Venus in Scorpio, this is especially relevant to romance. This is a “toxic” love, one that we can’t get enough of. Even when one knows they are in a bad romance, it is far too enticing to see it to the bitter end.

When we pull this card, we may indeed be given a feast for our senses, and have it! Take your fill and will of Love. Just be ready for the hangover of the morning after.

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Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, THOUGHTS

Tobias Lütke

The Seven of Disks (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Failure, Seven of Disks
Number: 7
Astrology: Saturn in Taurus
Qabalah: Netzach of He

Chris Gabriel June 21, 2025

The Seven of Disks is a card of waiting, of boredom, tedious labour, and perseverance. If the Six of Disks has given us a great gift of say a field or a house, this is the time where we “watch the grass grow” and the “paint dry”.

In Rider, we see a farmer leaning on his staff, looking sadly upon his growing crop. The sky is grey. He yearns for brilliant flourishing flowers, but must wait.

In Thoth, we have a more depressing image: dead plants covered in seven leaden coins. Four bear the face of Saturn, and three the Bull of Taurus. Saturn in Taurus is a long suffering placement, the efforts it undertakes can take years and years to come to fruition. This position requires constant effort without seeing results.

In Marseille, we have four coins about the corners of the card, with a central three forming an upright triangle. A flower grows from within the three. Qabalisitically, this is Netzach in He, the Beauty of the Princess.

“Rome was not built in a day” is an obvious, but painful truth. The materialization of our dreams and desires is not always a simple task. We  wait in a dark night,  knowing not when or if the Sun will rise, but we must keep going and have faith that it will pay off.

I am reminded of Churchill’s famous speech:

“We shall prove ourselves once more able to defend our island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do.”

This willingness to go on indefinitely is the dignified character of the Seven of Disks, the negative element is that of dejection and failure in the face of time.

Up to this point in the suit, each card has been focused on growing and developing the seeds of the future. This is perhaps the darkest point in the suit, when all of that hard work seems to be for nothing. This is not only the waiting for full growth, but the blight and pestilence which can affect what we have grown. Perhaps we have raised a large crop of wheat, only to find it blighted, overgrown with fungus. This is the sort of failure we face here.

When pulling this card, we must strengthen our resolve through any given setback, delay or difficulty. We must continue to have faith in a seemingly fruitless effort. The suit goes on to profit a great deal, this is just one difficult step toward a brilliant goal.

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Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, THOUGHTS

Dan Reynolds

Maeshowe, Sound, and Viking Runes (Artefact II)

WUNDERKAMMER #2

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Artefact No: 2
Location: Maeshow, Orkney Islands, Scotland
Age: 5,000 years 

Ben Timberlake June 17, 2025

Maeshowe is a Neolithic chambered burial complex on the Orkney Islands, an archipelago to the north of Scotland that is a floating world of midnight suns and brutal, dark winters. The tomb overlooks the Lochs of Harry and Stenness. On the narrow spit of land that separates the two lochs is The Ring of Brodgar, an ancient stone circle. It is nothing to look at from the outside - bored sheep munching salty grass on a small mound — but inside is one of the finest prehistoric monuments in the world. 

The tomb’s structure is cruciform: a long passageway some 15m long, a central chamber, with  three side-chambers. The main passageway is orientated to the southwest. Building began on the  site around 2800BC. It is a work of monumental perfection: each wall of the long passageway is  formed of single slabs up to three tons in weight; each corner of the main chamber has four vast  standing stones; and the floors, walls and ceilings of the side-chambers are made from single  stones. Smaller, long, thin slabs make up the rest of the masonry. They are fitted with unfussy but  masterful precision in the local sandstone. It is even more impressive when you realize that these  stones were cut and shaped thousands of years before the invention of metal tools. It is estimated  to have taken 100,000 hours of labor to construct.  

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The interior chamber of Maeshowe, illuminated by the sun of the Winter Solstice.

Maeshowe sits within one of the richest prehistoric landscapes in Europe. The four principal sites  are two stone circles - the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness - Maeshowe and the  perfectly preserved Neolithic village of Skara Brae. These sites are within a further constellation of  a dozen Neolithic and Bronze Age mounds, and other solitary standing stones.  

Aligned within this landscape like a vast sundial, Maeshowe is sighted so as to tell the time just once a year, at midwinter. For a couple of weeks at either side of the winter solstice the sun sets to the southwest and the rays of the run enter down the long passage and illuminate the wall at  the back of the end chamber. And this midwinter sun, at the zenith of its year, sets perfectly above the Barnhouse Stone some 700m away. The spectacle can be viewed live online every year.

Maeshowe and its sister sites are open to the public and well worth a visit. Because of their  remote location they get a fraction of the visitor numbers similar sites receive. There is something  deeply penitential about a visit there. The long passage is only a meter and a half tall and  archaeologists believe it was designed this way to force people to bow and submit as they walked  towards the center of the complex. 

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The Barnhouse Stone, on the left, aligns perfectly with the entrance to Maeshow, the mound on the right, so that on the day of midwinter, the sun sets above the stone and into the entrance to Maestowe.

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“The frequency for Maeshowe was a drum being beaten at 2hz creating an infrasonic frequency that, although  inaudible to us, could be felt as a physical or psychological sensations such as dizziness, raised heartbeat, and flying sensations. And that’s before we factor in the drugs.”

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As much as Maeshowe is a place of the dead, it is also a temple to sound. Dr Aaron Watson, an  honorary fellow from Exeter University, spent a number of years researching the effects of sound  at different prehistoric sites. He found that specific pitches of vocal chants and different types of drumming could produce strange, amplified sound effects known as ‘standing waves’. These are very distinct areas of high and low intensity which seem to bear no relation to the source of the  sound. In the case of Maeshowe, a drummer in the central chamber could be muted to those  standing nearby but the sound would be vastly magnified in the side chambers. The acoustics are  so powerful that the Neolithic builders must have known what they were doing when they built the structure. A recessed niche in one of the tunnel walls allowed a large stone to be dragged into the passageway blocking the passage and amplifying the sound.  

Even more impressively was the possibility that Maeshowe displayed elements of the Helmholtz  Effect - a phenomenon of air resonance in a cavity - but on a much larger scale. The frequency for Maeshowe was a drum being beaten at 2hz creating an infrasonic frequency that, although  inaudible to us, could be felt as a physical or psychological sensations such as dizziness, raised heartbeat, and flying sensations. And that’s before we factor in the drugs. These European  prehistoric societies made ample use of regular magic mushrooms and the red-and-white spotted  Fly Agaric. To the Neolithic visitors the acoustics effects of Maeshowe alone must have been  powerful but to combined with hallucinations it must have been one of the most profound and life changing experiences of their lives. 

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Viking runes carved into the walls of Maeshowe.

The tomb was rediscovered in 1861. I write ‘rediscovered’ because when the Victorian antiquarians began to clear soil and debris from the inner chambers, they came across evidence that they were not the first ones there since prehistoric times: the walls were adorned with Viking runes.  

We have a very good idea who these Vikings were thanks to the Orkneyinga Saga, a medieval  narrative history document woven through and embellished with myths. There appear to be two  sets of culprits. Firstly, in 1151, a group of Viking Crusaders led by Earl Rognvald on their way to the Holy Land. Then, a couple years later - Christmas 1153 to be precise - a band of Viking  looters on a raid led by Earl Harald.  

The Norse traditionally held such ancient places with dread and it is not known what drove them to risk their mortal souls and enter the mound: a terrible storm is mentioned, but it may have been the legends of treasure too. The saga records that two of the Earl Rognvald’s men went mad with fear of the mythical Hogboon, from Old Norse hiagbui, or mound-dweller. 

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There are some 30 runes in Maeshowe, the largest collection outside Scandinavia. Here is a  sample:  

Crusaders broke into Maeshowe. Lif the earl's cook carved these runes. To the north-west is a great treasure hidden. It was long ago that a great treasure was hidden here. Happy is he that might find that great treasure.  

Ofram, the son of Sigurd carved these runes.  

Haermund Hardaxe carved these runes.  

Thatir the weary Viking came here.  

Ingigerth is the most beautiful of all women (carved beside a picture of a slavering dog). 

Thorni fucked. Helgi carved.  

All too often historians and archaeologists concern themselves with official inscriptions left by kings and emperors and other fevered egos but I don’t think that anything quite says ‘Look on my works ye mighty and despair’ than a Viking warrior getting laid and then recording it on the rock of ages with his axe.

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Ben Timberlake is an archaeologist who works in Iraq and Syria. His writing has appeared in Esquire, the Financial Times and the Economist. He is the author of 'High Risk: A True Story of the SAS, Drugs and other Bad Behaviour'.

Death (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Death or Nameless
Number: XIII
Astrology: Scorpio
Qabalah: Nun, a Fish

Chris Gabriel June 14, 2025

Death is undoubtedly the most feared card in the deck. He is a skeleton looking down at the bodies and souls of the dead below. While this card pertains to mortality itself, we shall see that death is far more than the failure of our bodies.

In Rider, Death is depicted Biblically, as the horseman on the pale steed. 

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.

Revelation 6:8

The skeletal rider is clad in black armor with a red plume atop his helmet. He holds aloft a black flag emblazoned with a white rose, a symbol of purity. His horse is pale white with red eyes. Before him a bishop prays, a child kneels, his mother swoons, and a king lays dead, his crown fallen. Behind them is an island, a ship, and, on the horizon, the Sun, that sets between the two towers featured in the Moon.

In Thoth, Death is a black skeleton wearing the Atef crown of Osiris. He weaves the karmic tapestry of souls before him with his scythe. Above him is the phantom of an Eagle, below there is a serpent and a scorpion, all symbols of Scorpio, and  a fish to symbolize Nun. This is the Grim Reaper.

In Marseille, we have a notably nameless card, the only one in the deck. Here Death is a skeletal Grim Reaper in a field of hands, feet, bones, and two decapitated heads. One is crowned, the other is shaggy.

A primary image that arises is that of the dead king, a symbol which Diogenes the Cynic expresses best. Alexander, having heard that Diogenes was the wisest man in the world, came to hear his wisdom. When he arrived, Diogenes was digging through the waste of his trash can home. Alexander asked him what he was doing, to which he replied “I am trying to distinguish the bones of your father from those of a slave.”

As Shakespeare says, “Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service—two dishes, but to one table. That’s the end.”

Death is the great equalizer: beneath masks and costumes, beautiful and ugly flesh, lays a pale skeleton. The skull is a profound truth, and death’s head has always been used to terrify. Nearly every ancient culture revered it, pirates raised it as their flag, even today American police officers wear it on their uniforms.

Death in occultism, however, is more akin to the death of Paul, who says “I die daily”. The Scorpion willingly kills itself when surrounded by flames. This card invites us to “Die”, transform our body through terrifying alchemical processes and, like the white flower, be made purer. Our essence is distilled through this continual cycle of life and death. The given number of 13, an unlucky number, signifies this very thing. After the 12 hours, the 12 months, the 12 signs of the Zodiac, what comes next? What comes after the end?

When we pull this card, we must not be afraid. Instead, willingly put an end to what is limiting you,nand to the stilted, decaying structures that you cling to. People spend their whole lives avoiding change and, in doing so, die long before their body. When we decide to shed our skin like the serpent, we can have absolute confidence that we are becoming a stronger, greater version of ourselves.

When we outgrow our old life, we must die and be born again.

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Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

CHANNEL, SOCIAL, THOUGHTS

Footnotes to Plato (c.428-347BC)

Rafael's School of Athens, 1511.

Nicko Mroczkowski May 9, 2024

Ancient Greece was the cradle of Western civilisation. Art, agriculture, and commerce had progressed to the point of creating, apparently for the first time, a culture of intellectuals. Many of the things that we now call ‘institutions’ – democracy, the legal process, the education system – had their start in this period. It was even here that ‘Europe’ got its name.

In this flourishing new culture, thinkers began to try and understand the world in a more organised way. From this, Western philosophy was born, and science came along with it. These thinkers asked themselves: what is the world made of, and how does it work? This was not a new question, most likely every culture before had asked it in some way, but what made the Ancient Greeks unique was their systematic approach. Because they also asked a secondary question, which, arguably, is still the starting point of any scientific inquiry: what is the correct way to talk about what something is? 

L. Vosterman, after Rubens. c. 1620.

Each of the very first philosophers answered this question with one thing: ‘substance’, or stuff. They believed that the right way to understand the world is in terms of a single type of matter, which is present in different proportions in everything that exists. Thales of Miletus, perhaps the earliest Greek philosopher, believed that all things come from water; solid matter, life, and heat are all special phases of the same liquid. For him, then, the true way to talk about an apple, for example, is as a particularly dense piece of moisture. Heraclitus, on the other hand, believed that everything is made of fire; all existence is in flux, like the dancing flame, of which an apple is a fleeting shape.

We don’t know much more about these thinkers, as not much of their work survives; most of the accounts we have are second hand. We only know for sure that each proposed a different ultimate substance that everything is made out of. Then, a little while later, along came a philosopher called Plato.

Despite its prominence, ‘Plato’ was actually a nickname meaning ‘broad’ – there is disagreement about its origin, but the most popular theory is that it comes from his time as a wrestler. His real name is thought to have been ‘Aristocles’. Whatever he was really called, Plato changed everything. Instead of arguing, like his predecessors, for a different kind of ultimate substance, he observed that substance alone is not enough to explain what exists: there is also form. In other words, he more or less invented the distinction between form and content.

One could spend a lifetime analysing these terms, and there are whole volumes of art and literary theory that address their nuances; but it’s also a common-sense distinction that we use every day. The form of something is its shape, structure, composition; the content, or substance, is the stuff it’s made of. So the form of an apple is a sweet fruit with a specific genetic profile, and its content is various hydrocarbons and trace elements. The form of a literary work is its style and composition – poetry or prose, past or present tense, first- or third-person, etc. – and its content is its subject matter, what it describes and what happens in it.  

An attempt at a classification of the perfect form of a rabbit. (1915)

We can already see Plato’s influence on modern knowledge in these examples. The correct way to talk about something, for him, was primarily in terms of its form, and only secondarily in terms of its substance. This is still the case for us today. There is a powerful justification for this preference: it allows us to talk about things generally. This is basically the foundation of any science; we would get absolutely nowhere if we only analysed particular individuals. There are just too many things out there. No two animals of the same species, for example, will ever have exactly the same make-up – even if they’re clones. They have eaten different things, had different experiences; they also, quite frankly, create and shed cells so rapidly and unpredictably that differences in their substance are inevitable. What they do have in common, though, is their anatomy, behaviour, and an overall genetic profile that produces these things. 

Forms are peculiar, however, because they don’t exist in the same way as substances do. While there are concrete definitions of substances, the same cannot be said for forms. There are, for example, no perfect triangles in existence, and we could probably never create one – zoom in enough, and something will always be slightly out of place. So how did Plato come up with the idea of something that can never be experienced in real life? The answer is precisely because of things like triangles. Mathematics, and especially geometry, is the original language of forms, and it can describe a perfect triangle or circle, even though one may never exist. The success of mathematical inquiries in Plato’s time allowed him to recognise that the concept of forms which worked in geometry can be applied to understand the world more generally. 

Forms are perfect specimens of imperfect things, are exemplars, or things we aspire to – they are the way things ought to be, in a perfect world. ‘Form’ in Plato’s work is also sometimes translated as ‘idea’ or ‘ideal’. And so, Plato’s answer to the question of how to conduct scientific inquiry was this: the correct way to talk about something is in terms of how it should be. Despite our imperfect world, rational thinking – the capacity of the human mind for grasping things like mathematical truths – can do this, and that’s what sets human beings and their societies apart from the rest of nature. 

Perfect Platonic Solids

It gets a little strange from this point on: Plato believes that forms really exist, but in a separate, perfect world. Our souls start out there and then make their way to the material world to be born, but still have implicit knowledge of their original home, and this is where reason originates. Improbable, yes, but not completely absurd. Plato was clearly trying to explain, to a society that was just beginning to understand the importance of perfect knowledge, how it could exist in our imperfect world of change and difference. Two millennia later, Kant would show that it’s due to the way the human mind is structured, but we don’t really know how this happened either.

Really, we’re still playing Plato’s game. The basic realisation that to know the world, we must study the general and the perfect, and ignore the non-essential characteristics of particular individuals – this is his legacy. Of course, this way of thinking is so deeply ingrained in Western culture that it can be hard to grapple with; it’s so fundamental that we take it for granted. But what we call knowledge today would not be possible at all without it. Seeing this, we can imagine what the influential British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead meant when he wrote that ‘the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists in a series of footnotes to Plato’. 

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Nicko Mroczkowski

Gwyneth Paltrow

The Devil (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: The Devil
Number: XV
Astrology: Capricorn
Qabalah: Ayin, the Eye

Chris Gabriel June 7, 2025

The Devil is amongst the most feared cards in the tarot, he is the enemy of mankind. Each depiction shows a horned Devil alongside entrapped humans, but the cause of their  entrapment varies greatly.

In Rider, we are given the most moral portrait. The Devil is in a traditional form - a man’s body with hairy goatlike legs and clawed feet. His goat horns are topped by a Pentagram, and they arch downwards to his bat wings. He holds his right hand up, while his left holds a flaming wand towards the ground. His face is bearded and monstrous. At his feet, a man and woman are chained to a column. They too are horned, nakeded, and tails protrude behind them. The woman has grown a tail tipped with a cluster of grapes,  the man’s is tipped with flames.

In Thoth, the Devil is not a humanoid at all, but a goat replete with great spiralling horns, a third eye, and a bough of blue flowers. The stands in front of a great phallus crowned with a nimbus, and the entrapped souls are not chained, but are the sperm within the immense testes. They are not trapped in the way of the other two cards, rather, they are held in potentia, not yet actualized, but awaiting their future.

In Marseille, the Devil is the strangest of the three: a blue skinned beast with breasts and a penis. While the Rider Devil took on the pose of Baphomet, here we have the full hermaphroditic figure. The Devil differs greatly in different Marseille decks, often having a face in his stomach or eyes in his knees. His body is schizophrenically split into many organs and parts, each one conscious of itself, but the sum total of the Devil is unconscious as he uses his upheld flaming wand to light his way through the dark. The imps beside him have asinine ears and tails. Their horns are stick-like. They are chained to the pedestal of the Devil.

The Devil invites us into the depths of the Unconscious, the root of our desires and fear. This Hell is his home. Marseille and Rider clearly show that these wants are the sinful roots that sprout vice in our lives. The vices controlled by the Rider Devil are wrath, symbolized by the flaming tail, and drunkenness, symbolized by the grape tail. The Hell of this Devil is shown best in Disney’s Pinocchio as Pleasure Island, where ‘naughty boys’ go to smoke, drink and gamble, but soon are turned into asses, growing ears and tails, until they are enslaved and forced to work deep in the mines.

The vices of Marseille are bodily: lust, hunger, and the desires of the flesh. The Marseille Devil calls to mind the delusions of schizophrenics, as described by Victor Tausk, in which one's organs are felt to be foreign, and dominated by outside forces. This tends to be localized in the genitals, but can often spread throughout the whole body. The Devil is the embodiment of that eternal outsider who controls the bodies of the unwilling. As well described vividly by David Foster Wallace in Big Red Son, and typified by Origen, many will castrate themselves to overcome sin and grow closer to God. 

Thoth shows us this is not necessary.  The card shows the wisdom that Crowley received in the Book of the Law, that “the word of Sin is Restriction”, and that these unconscious forces need not fester down below, but demand to be expressed and brought forth into reality. The souls of the damned are not chained to the ground, but held as sperm awaiting their future fertilization. 

Freud has shown that it is only when the drives are repressed, forced down into Hell, that they grow sick. As Blake writes in the Proverbs of Hell: He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence. 

The Devil of Thoth is but an animal, and though he has a mystic third eye, he is driven by his sexual urges. He is the long maligned sexual drive at last given the freedom to create.

When the Devil comes up in a reading, we must be careful not to overindulge in our vices and follow our simple urges down, but instead to exalt, raise, and utilize them for greater creativity.

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Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

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Jack Clark

Temperance (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Temperance or Art
Number: XIV
Astrology: Sagittarius
Qabalah: Samekh

Chris Gabriel May 31, 2025

Temperance is the image of spiritual attainment. This is the card of the Guardian Angel, the embodiment of the individual divine Will. It is the Godlike function in man: Creativity.

In Rider, we are shown an angel in white robes. They pass water between two golden cups while their robe is marked with a golden triangle. They have great red wings, their flowing blonde hair is topped with a little sun, and their head is surrounded with radiance. Their bare feet stand in two worlds: one dips into the pool before them, the other is on the ground where irises grow beside them. They stand in front of a long path which leads to a radiant light in the distance.

In Thoth, we have an angel as an alchemical Hermaphrodite. The Emperor and Empress married in the Lovers card, and here become one. Their skin is blue and white, they have six breasts hanging out of a large green dress adorned with bees and serpents. Their royal mantle is the rainbow, which flows down their chest, as an arrow sits in it. Their crown is silver and gold and they hold fire and a cup of water, both of which are being poured into the cauldron which sits before them. A white lion and red phoenix sit in the flames around the cauldron. Two crescent moons form a lunar bow atop the card, and behind the angel is a golden disk adorned with an acrostic Latin motto of the alchemists::

Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem-

Visit the interior of the Earth, rectification will reveal the hidden stone

VITRIOL.

In Marseille, our angel wears a red and blue robe. They have blue wings and blonde hair with a five petaled flower. They smile as they move water between the two cups they hold.

Temperance is self control, which in its truest mastery is the craft of alchemy. Alchemy, in its most basic form, is the transformation of substances, and through the true alchemy, wise men sought to transform their bodies of lead into divine bodies of gold. The beakers, alembics, vessels and metals were but ceremonial tools to visualize the interior process they were undergoing. 

This process is the source of all art: the transformation of external input into sensory impressions and ideas, which are again transformed, distilled, and ultimately externalized to create a work of art.

In Genesis, man is described as being made in God’s image, but at that point, there were no physical descriptions, the only thing one knows about God at that point is that they create. We are, therefore, godlike only in our ability to create and transform.

The Angel of this card is the embodiment of the Divine in each individual, the Guardian Angel, the higher Soul that is simultaneously in contact with God and you. It is the rainbow and the Greek god hermaphroditus, the divided colors and sexes unified. Through magick we can make contact with this higher part of ourselves and begin to follow that great path,symbolized by Sagittarius, the Arrow. 

All of this may sound very lofty, but more mundane forms of alchemy are performed every day. In nature, fire and water are opposite, when fires start, rain puts them out. It is extremely rare to find boiling water in nature, outside of a few geysers and hot springs. But through our genius, we developed technologies with which we could overcome nature, we gained control of fire, and placed water over without dousing it. Every cup of tea is an alchemical work.

When we pull this card, we are soon to have a great deal of creative energy, we may begin a serious undertaking, this may be the start of a huge project. When we create, we are engaging directly with the divine, and this card lets us know that forces greater than ourselves are by our side. 

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Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

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Benedikt Taschen

Knight of Disks (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Knight of Disks
Number: 1 or 3
Astrology: Virgo, Fire of Earth
Qabalah: Yod of He or Vau of He

Chris Gabriel May 24, 2025

The Knight of Disks is a man with a plan. He sees the cyclical movement of the world and contemplates his movements within them. He is agricultural intelligence, for he knows when to plant seeds, when to harvest, and when to allow a field to remain fallow.

In Rider, we have an armoured knight, his helmet topped with a sprig, and a pentacle resembling the sun is held in his gloved hands. His black horse also bears a laurel, and they both wear red garments as they stand atop freshly tilled farmland.

In Thoth, our knight is in black armour and his helmet is topped with the bust of a stag. He carries a flail, and a shield in the shape of a disk   that radiates solar light. His curious horse looks at the wheat field they stand in.

In Marseille, we have an unarmoured knight following his celestial disk. He rides a blue horse over barren ground and carries a large green wand, the only Knight in the deck to involve two weapons. It is fitting, as he is the Fiery part of the Earth, the active part of nature, the impulse that pushes vegetable life out from the depths of the Earth.

Where the Virgo ruled minor arcana  us images of investment, returns and bounty, here is the investor himself. He is not bold or quick like the Knights of Wands and Swords, but he is also not the hesitant coward of Cups. The Knight of Disks is patient and content to wait. We can think of the Battle of Bunker Hill, when Colonel William Prescott insisted his rebels conserve their ammunition, and only fire when they see the whites of their enemies' eyes. This kind of dangerous investment is the bread and butter of the Knight of Disks.

To take action years in advance and at the penultimate moment is the nature of agriculture, an effort of regular immediacy, and a plan that will outlive the farmer. This sort of thinking ahead was absent in America, when farmers destroyed their land by overfarming and led to the Dust Bowl. A good image to keep in mind with this card is a Planter’s Clock. Which notes the solar and lunar cycles, and gives the proper time to plant a given crop.

The Knight of Disks embodies the wisdom of King Solomon in Ecclesiastes, aware of three maxims. 

1. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: 

2. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; 

3. A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

He takes heed of the great cycle and moves accordingly, allowing for great development and power.

When we pull this card, we may be dealing with questions of investment or dealing with an investor. This may also indicate a Virgo directly. When faced with this, look to your cosmic clock and see what time it is, and what the proper action is.

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Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

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David Avocado Wolfe

Queen of Disks (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Queen of Disks
Number: 2
Astrology: Capricorn
Qabalah: He of He

Chris Gabriel May 17, 2025

The Queen of Disks is the Earth Mother. In each rendition she cradles the world, embodied in a coin. This is her child, and through her energy and eternal fertility it retains its form.

In Rider, the Queen is crowned with a long green headdress, and is dressed in red and white. She looks down upon the coin happily. Her throne is ornately carved with imagery of fruit, children, and the head of a Goat. These are all symbols of fecundity:ripe swelling fruit, the libidinous goat, and the children which are produced. The environment around her is verdant, and a bunny rabbit sits in the corner.

In Thoth, we find the Queen at a different stage of motherhood altogether. Her crown topped with great spiralling goat horns as she wears an armoured top and holds a crystal-tipped, spiral scepter. She cradles her disk close to her breast. Her throne is atop a palm tree, and a goat stands beside her. Here the Queen is Capricorn, the goat at the top of the mountain; she looks to the vast desert before her, spotted only with a few palms and a dry river. There is much work for her to do.

In Marseille, the Queen is in royal robes, crowned, and bears a scepter that looks like an ear of corn, or a fleur de lys. She is focused entirely on the disk she holds aloft. In it is the heart and seed of her world, the material reality that she inhabits. Qabalistically, she is the water of the Earth. She is mud, the great sign of civilization.

When we think of the Queen of Disks let us think of the great title of Mesopotamia: the Cradle of Civilization. What allowed civilization to flourish was mud. A close proximity to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and then the Nile for Egypt. The water of these rivers turned deathly desert to fertile mud, which allowed for agriculture to flourish. This is the nature of the Queen -she is the union of water and earth as fertile mud.

Mythologically, she is Gaia, Mother Earth, the great globe itself, a union of land and sea in herself, and the endless processes which maintain the world. In humanity, we can think of the hardworking women who raise what is around them. In Thoth, the Queen is a domineering mother who coldly looks at what is around her, and needs to exert her will to ascend to her lofty place. This is softened in Rider and Marseille, where it is the maternal love which cradles the world and keeps it growing.

When we pull this card, we can expect something to take care of. Just as the environment has lovingly given us life, we must give life to the environment. This may be directly a project, an investment in something that will grow and profit. This can also directly relate to a Capricorn in our lives.

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Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

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André 3000

Page and Princess of Cups (Tarot Triptych)

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Name: Page of Cups, Princess of Cups
Number: 4
Astrology: Earth of Water
Qabalah: He of He

Chris Gabriel May 10, 2025

The Page of Cups is the lowest court card in the suit of Cups. This is the cup bearer, the waterboy, the servant, and ideal helper. The Page and Princess take pleasure in pleasing, they happily refresh and heal those in need.

In Rider, the Page is a young man with black hair and a blue, squid-like turban. His blue tunic is adorned with blooming lotuses, and his undergarments are wine red. He smiles, hand on his hip, and holds a cup with a fish inside. He stands on a shore with waves behind him.

In Thoth, the Princess is a young woman with a great flowing pink dress adorned with crystals. She holds a huge shell within which a turtle sits. Her head is topped with a swan whose wings are spread out. The background is reminiscent of a Georgia O’Keefe painting and a fish leaps out from behind her.

In Marseille, we find a young man with whitish blond hair. He is the only hatless Page, in its stead is a garland of flowers. He moves to the left, and carries a cup in one hand, and in the other its lid. He is sensitive and at risk of closing off his receptive cup.

The Page of Cups is the image of Ganymede,  the most beautiful mortal whose name translates literally to “taking pleasure” and “mind”. He was so beloved by Zeus that he seized him to serve as the cupbearer to the Gods, making him immortal and eternally beautiful, but forever submissive. This is the role of the Page of Cups. The Latin form of his name, Catamitus, became an epithet for young homosexual men, equivalent to today’s “twink”. The receptivity of Cups here takes on a clear sexual significance. 

We see this role paralleled with the daughter of Zeus as the Princess of Cups. Hebe (literally “Youth”) also acted as cupbearer to the Gods and was the Goddess of eternal youth. We see a more mature form of this figure in the American Revolution’s many “Molly Pitchers” who braved the battlefield to bring water and munitions to the soldiers, often joining the fight when needed.

Materially, we can see versions of the Page and Princess of Cups in nurses, bartenders, and baristas and. We are tended to and pleased by these people, often literally given cups. Service jobs like these generally rely on tips to make them worthwhile, so the server takes up a charming and kind persona. This is one of the few daily niceties that many people have access to, the kindness of service. This is also a role many of us take on, especially as children, fetching things for family members.

When we pull this card we may feel more sensitive than usual, and can have a heightened receptivity to others. You may be called on to serve someone and be rewarded accordingly, you may also find someone willing to serve you.

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Chris Gabriel is a twenty four year old wizard and poet who runs the YouTube channel MemeAnalysis.

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David Mamet