Tarot: the Lovers

Crowley's altar

read Crowley's altar instructions here

Jayne Mansfield and Anton LaVey

“It’s nice to be a devil when you’re one like me.”

Leila also played violin for Crowley's "Rites of Eleusis" in 1910.  

The names of the seven Rites are The Rite of "Saturn", "Jupiter", "Mars", "Sol", "Venus", "Mercury" and "Luna". Crowley claimed that the Rites were designed to inspire the audience with 'religious ecstasy', and that merely reading them would help people "cultivate their highest faculties". Some in the popular press thought otherwise, and considered the Rites an immoral display, riddled with 'blasphemy and erotic suggestion.'

L.A.Y.L.A.H.

Leila Waddell (magickal name LAYLAH or L.A.Y.L.A.H.), Aleister Crowley's lover/Scarlet Woman/Unlimited Lou

Prudence

A statue representing Prudence, from the tomb of Francois II in Nantes Cathedral.  It shows the figure of a young girl - with the face of a wise old man on the back of her head.  Fulcanelli believed the statue symbolised nature in all of her aspects, and also the final stage of the alchemical process, in which opposites combine to produce the perfect, androgynous being.

William Burroughs, part 2

It is to be remembered that all art is magical in origin-music, sculpture, writing, painting-and by magical I mean intended to produce very definite results. Writing and painting were one in cave paintings, which were formulae to ensure good hunting. Art is not an end in itself, any more than Einstein's matter-into-energy formula is an end in itself. Like all formulae, art was originally functional, intended to make things happen, the way an atom bomb happens from Einstein's formulae. Take a porcelain stove and disconnect it and put it in your living room with ivy growing over it: it may be a good-looking corpse but it isn't functional anymore. Or take a voodoo doll full of pins-authentic West Africa, $500 on 57th Street-and hang it on the wall of your duplex loft. It isn't killing enemies anymore, and the same goes for a $5,000 shrunk-down head, which a fashionable shrink bought for his consultation room.
-William S. Burroughs

William Burroughs

"First of all, I recognized writing as a magical operation, and since such operations are designed to produce specific results, this leads us to an inquiry as to the purposes of writing. Remember that the written word is an image; that the first writing was pictorial, and so painting and writing were at one time a single operation. [...] The original invention from which writing developed was quite simply to create on a cave wall images and scenes: hunting, and often so-called pornographic drawings. The purpose was originally ceremonial or magical, and when the work is separated from its magical function, it loses vitality. That is, when some tribe starts making dolls for tourists, it's gone. And that is what bestsellers are doing - whole valleys of dolls and shark teeth for the tourists. It may make money but it isn't magical. I know Dali says the measure of genius is gold, and I agree that artists should be at least as well-paid as plumbers."
-William S. Burroughs, "Ten Years and a Billion Dollars"

Star of Babalon

conjunction