Sinister Tarot: A Theory of Archetypal Resonance

[Sinister101]

In the Sinister Tradition as espoused by the Order of Nine Angles, the early part of an Initiates training involves creating or obtaining a Tarot Deck. In most cases this Deck is that created by Christos Beest specifically for the task.

The initiate seats themselves before each of the Major Arcana, one a night. And meditates on the image on the card. They attempt to diffuse themselves into the card, imagine themselves exploring the contents, speaking with the characters, following a path and letting the mind run free. This has the effect of making the individuals projections conscious to them – with the ultimate goal being the withdrawl of those projections in order to unveil what is really there beneath the plaster of forms.

For 21 Nights consecutively, the Initiate takes a journey with each card, building a magical foundation of archetypes in their head and with luck allowing natural connexions to form. This is the easy part – the secondary aspect of learning the Sinister Tarot involves summoning in turn, 21 weeks in total, each of the Dark Gods/Goddesses depicted via their own sigil in an isolated outdoor setting.

Following on from this, the Initiate immediately begins an Insight Role – a role that challenges the present ego and engages the individual in living the opposite way to the way they are or feel they are. Such might be a sexual person entering a convent, or a passive person entering the police force. Each role must be lived with demonic intensity – so that not even ones closest friends know it is a role, and indeed many go wrong here and let the role consume them.

What should happen from the sum effect of all these measures, is the alchemical dyssolving; not just on a personal intellectual conscious level of understading – but a deep knowing, even sadness/sorrow of insight – into the tension between opposites and first-hand knowledge of how they dance with one another, falling into one another but never quite fully forming – observing life and its merry manifestations as they shift into the formative, the plateau, the disintegrative, and the flux…

By actually Living the archetypes depicted, projecting them outward, inward and then outward in a synthesis of the first two methods and via extended heartfelt roles that challenge the ego and the identity and encapsulation of self – one can gain great control and connexion with the forces of life and the repeating cycles that govern it.

Thus is the theory of the Sinister Tarot.

ISS,
RA