"6 of Cups. Pleasure" represents Aleister Crowley's fascination with the 10th Century Tantric or more specifically Kāmakalā sexual practises to evoke a meditation towards attaining "Godhead", by ingesting the transmission of the "Bindu" (sacred fluid) from the male and female Hindu deities, also seen in Tibetan Buddhism between Yogini female 'Buddhist' cults and their sexual rituals in understanding and freeing oneself from the restriction of transcendence, that being of the material body and its realm of suffering. Sexual interactions in unorthodox Buddhism were also seen as a way of attainment. Crowley during the 1900s traveled extensively throughout the Middle East and Asia, as from era that was the 'Age of Enlightenment', the West began to draw in ideas from the East. However, antinomianism had already been prominent throughout the Christian domination of Europe and America even as its theology began to split. So, it wasn't a new practice in challenging the taboo within Christian/Judaic and Muslim theocratic belief structures. Yet, it was the Hindu/Buddhist/Taoists that took it further as a ritual of sexual alchemy, to which Crowley was heavily influenced by, reverting the ritualized ingesting of sexual fluids into his "Sex Magik" requirements from his own Thelema religion. And interestingly, as discussed with numerous studies of Crowley's Thoth tarot, is his contradiction of aligning himself with Proto-Fascist metaphor of strength and control under a masculine guise. As Tantric and Kāmakalā were very much in revering the power of the feminine deities, combining the masculine seminal fluid, with her sacred elixirs (Bindu) into an alchemical potion.
As also mentioned in this analysis of the Thoth Tarot, is Crowley's influence by Occultist and Western/Russian mystic Helena Blavatsky (d1891), who devised the Theosophical society in 1875, which later petered out in the 1920s, was very influenced by Eastern religions. But, criticized the Tantric, by deeming it as a transgressive "Left Hand Path", possibly showing up as Western Colonisation and its moral standards over the East. This can also be seen with Crowley's Thelema beliefs, which may have been a way of selling these Occultist practices/societies to a conservative 1800s and early to mid 1900s, pre the countercultures of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
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Reading:
View the Six Lotus flowers tilted South, as they point towards the divine transgression, that is the Earthly realm. Allowing the flow of the feminine elixir to fill the equal amount of ceremonial glasses, but also see, that they are never overflowing. As Six is the perfect number, equal to itself. Balanced between the infinity of Three, that is both of the masculine and the feminine, combined it is of the most powerful fluid. Created by the mortal, like a primordial Earth, it gives life. So, do not waste it, and do not take it for granted. The ritual of joining two, to create the flow of one from the eros, is metaphoric in its action. A practice of mediation, may pleasure be attained, but not for its own sake. This is of the highest calling, and it is from the self, a release from the material realm and its burden of the material body. Enjoy the sexual transcendence, the pleasures of meditation, albeit fleeting in its climax, it is however sustained by flowing back into body. Taste its desire, be released and nourished.
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"Prince of Cups" is one of Aleister Crowley's anti-hero or antithesis cards, which may have aligned, and I am being speculative here, with what he wanted to be, albeit in a theatrically manifestation, which was later stipulated by French psychiatrist from the early 18th Century Philippe Pinel, who described patients exhibiting a "madness without delirium" or later the "moral insanity" to which one could have, according English psychiatrist, James Cowles Prichard in 1835, characteristics that are morally antithetical to society, without the hallucinations or delusion. Yes, what we now know today, as a term which has been over used in an overstimulated world of digital media relays from the many keyboard 'armchair' therapists, based more myth than not, that being; Psychopathy. But, the early mythology of the 'mad one' who shows no delusional fears, may have been attractive to Crowley, as the ultimate rebel. From Crowley's own analysis of the card:
"The moral characteristics of the person pictured in this card are subtlety, secret violence, and craft. He is intensely secret, an artist in all his ways. On the surface he appears calm and imperturbe, but this is a mask of the most intense passion. He is on the surface susceptible to external influences, but he accepts them only to transmute them to the advantage of his secret designs. He is thus completely without conscience in the ordinary sense of the word, and is therefore usually distrusted by his neighbours. They feel they do not, and can never, understand him. Thus he inspires unreasonable fear. He is in fact perfectly ruthless. He cares intensely for power, wisdom, and his own aims. He feels no responsibility to others, and although his abilities are so immense, he cannot be relied upon to work in harness."
Am I close? As mentioned, I am only speculating on the correlation of 18th and 19th Century psychoanalytic theory on the said, so called, disorder. Yet, it is a clever card, with a plethora of poignant symbolism, from a lotus flower, pointing down, held in the left hand of the male figure, and a ornamented cup, held in the right hand, with a serpent in it, to which the figure is looking directly at the snake. The figure is naked, except for the helmet with a eagle atop, while sitting at a chariot, flown by an eagle, as it looks down. Symbolic in its intensity, with the bird of prey and its eagle eyes. As the figure is also looking downward. The "Prince of Cups" represents water, and the flows of rain and is serene in its presence, according to Crowley the card is ruled by Libra and Scorpio.
Reading:
Be paradoxical, ride the eagle in all its metaphor, the eagle's eyes maybe sharper than yours. Yet, you can craft your intuition to be even shaper. Naked to the world, your armour is only what you'll wear, in its symbolism, to shield the mind, not from the external, but to ensure ambiguity is maintained. You may never know, what you do not see coming. As you tilt the flower downward, towards the Earth, to which it came from, it is now part of the left hand path, where even weeds are valued, and the moss covers the arrogance of mankind. The rain is persistent, the air pure. You hold the cup, with your right hand, staring into the serpent's eyes, and you will know no fear, nor delusion, no hysteria. Be calm in your actions, without the moral standard. Therefore you have no one to blame for your actions, your past, your parents and the greater society. What you do, you do by being aware of the self.
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