Paul Foster Case - Occult Studies, Tarot Deep Study, the Rosicrucian and more

"Paul Foster Case was an American occultist of the early 20th century and author of numerous books on occult tarot and Qabalah."

"Paul Foster Case (October 3, 1884 – March 2, 1954) was an American occultist of the early 20th century and author of numerous books on occult tarot and Qabalah. Perhaps his greatest contributions to the field of occultism were the lessons he wrote for associate members of Builders of the Adytum. The knowledge lectures given to initiated members of the chapters of the B.O.T.A. were equally profound, although the limited distribution has made them less well known."

"A modern scholar of the occult tarot and Qabalah, Paul Foster Case was born at 5:28 p.m.,[citation needed] October 3, 1884 in Fairport, New York.

His father was the town librarian and a deacon at the local Congregational church. When he was five years old, his mother began teaching him to play the piano and organ, and later in his youth, Case performed as organist in his family's church. A talented musician, he embarked on a successful career as a violinist, and orchestra conductor. He had an honorary doctorate in music awarded to him.

Case was early on attracted to the occult. While still a child he reported experiences that today are called lucid dreaming. He corresponded about these experiences with Rudyard Kipling who encouraged him as to the validity of his paranormal pursuits.

In the year 1900, Case met the occultist Claude Bragdon while both were performing at a charity performance. Bragdon asked Case what he thought the origin of playing cards was. After pursuing the question in his father's library, Case discovered a link to tarot, called 'The Game of Man'. Thus began what would become Case's lifelong study of the tarot, and leading to the creation of the B.O.T.A. tarot deck, which Case called a "corrected" version of the Rider-Waite cards.

Between 1905 and 1908 (aged 20–24), Case began practicing yoga, and in particular pranayama, from what published sources were available. His early experiences appear to have caused him some mental and emotional difficulties and left him with a lifelong concern that so called "occult" practice be done with proper guidance and training.

In the summer of 1907, Case read The Secret of Mental Magic, by William W. Atkinson (aka Ramacharaka) which led him to correspond with the then popular new thought author. Many people have speculated that Case and Atkinson were two of the three anonymous authors of The Kybalion, an influential philosophical text, although the introduction to an edition of The Kybalion released in 2011 has presented considerable evidence for Atkinson as the book's lone author"

"Case reported a meeting on the streets of Chicago, in 1909 or 1910, that was to change the course of his life. A "Dr. Fludd," a prominent Chicago physician approached the young Case and greeting him by name, claimed to have a message from a "master of wisdom" who, the doctor said, "is my teacher as well as yours."

The stranger said that Case was being offered a choice. He could continue with his successful musical career and live comfortably, or he could dedicate himself to "serve humanity" and thereby play a role in the coming age. From that time on, Case began to study and formulate the lessons that served as the core curricula of the "Builders of the Adytum", the school of tarot study and Qabalah that Case founded and that continues today.

In 1916 Case published a groundbreaking series of articles on the Tarot Keys, titled The Secret Doctrine of the Tarot, in the popular occult magazine The Word. The articles attracted wide notice in the occult community for organizing and clarifying what had previously been confusing and scattered occult doctrines about the meaning of the tarot cards."

"In 1918, Case met Michael James Whitty (died December 27, 1920 in Los Angeles, California), who was the editor of Azoth magazine and would become a close friend.

Whitty was serving as the 'cancellarius' (treasurer / office manager) for the Thoth-Hermes Lodge in Chicago, which was one of the lodges of the Alpha et Omega. Alpha et Omega was S. L. MacGregor Mathers' group that formed in 1906 after the demise of the original Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1903. 

Whitty invited Case to join Thoth-Hermes, which was the direct American lodge under the A.O. mother lodge in Paris. Case joined, and quickly moved up initiations in the Rosicrucian grades (True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order).

 Case's aspiration name in A.'.O.'. was Perseverantia (which means 'perseverance').

Whitty republished Case's attribution of the Tarot keys (with corrections) in Azoth magazine. That same year, Case became the 'sub-praemonstrator' (assistant chief instructor) at the Thoth-Hermes Lodge.

Also during that year he finished a set of articles on the Mystical Rosicrucian Origins of Faust and published by Whitty. The following year, he began to correspond with Dr. John William Brodie-Innes (Fr. Sub Spe).

Between 1919 and 1920, Case and Michael Whitty collaborated in the development of the text which would later be published as The Book of Tokens. This book was written as a received text, whether through meditation, automatic writing, or some other means. It later surfaced that Master R. was the source. On May 16, 1920 Case was initiated into Alpha et Omega's Second Order.

Three weeks later, according to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn's bio-page on Case, he was named Third Adept.

In December 1920, Michael Whitty died. Case believed Whitty's health problems were attributable to the dangers that arise or may arise in the practice of Enochian magic. He later corresponded with Israel Regardie about those concerns."

Source and More
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Foster_Case

Paul Foster Case Timeline
http://kcbventures.com/pfc/documents/timeline.pdf


An Introduction to Tarot
http://www.hermetics.org/pdf/intro.pdf


The Tarot by Paul Case
http://www.pdfarchive.info/pdf/C/Ca/Case_Paul_Foster_-_The_Tarot_A_key_to_the_Wisdom_of_the_Ages.pdf

 The Builders of the Adytum

http://www.bota.org/

"The Builders of the Adytum (B.O.T.A) is a school of the Western mystery tradition based in Los Angeles which is registered as a non-profit tax-exempt religious organization.

It was founded by Paul Foster Case and has its roots in both the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Masonic blue lodge system.

It was later extended by Ann Davies.

The B.O.T.A. teaches by correspondence, covering esoteric psychology, occult tarot, Hermetic Qabalah, astrology, and meditation techniques. It also holds a variety of ritual services and study groups, some open to the public"

Source and More
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Builders_of_the_Adytum

Podcast 42 – The Life and Work of Dr. Paul Foster Case
http://occultofpersonality.net/podcast-42-the-life-and-work-of-dr-paul-foster-case/


"“IN whatsoever object thou perceivest,

Know me as the Essence,
As the Idea,
And as the Interior Nature.
Because of this the wise come easily to me
By many paths,
Yet in truth these different roads
Are but a single Way.
“If thou canst penetrate in the nature
Of the simplest thing,
There thou shalt find me.
This is the key to the mystery of the sacred letters.
Fix thy mind on the object set before thee by any letter,
And hold thy thought to meditate thereon.
Then shall the inner nature of that object
Be made known to thee,
And by this means shalt thou draw nigh
To some aspect of my being.

– from “The Meditation on HEH” in The Book of Tokens"

Writings of Case and his contemporaries

• Wisdom of Tarot
• Tarot Revelations
• Hermetic Science and Practice
• Fraternity of the Hidden Light PFC Archives
• An Introduction to the Study of Tarot, HTML
• The Oracle of the Tarot - A Course on Tarot Divination
• Occult Fundamentals & Spiritual Unfoldment - 1924 Sections (Courses) A & B of the first BOTA
• Esoteric Keys of Alchemy
• Tarot Fundamentals Volume One
• The Golden Dawn American Source Book (Golden Dawn Study Series 15) edited by Darcy Kuntz. Introductory Note by Anthony Fleming. This work contains the most significant letters and documents pertaining to the Order's history in America. The Paul Foster Case correspondence is most interesting. Holmes Publishing Group, 2001.
• The Secret Knowledge of the Neophyte (Golden Dawn Study Series 18) edited with an Introductory Note by Darcy Kuntz. This work contains the addresses given to members of the Neophyte grade by such luminaries as R.W. Felkin, Paul Foster Case, Lilli Geise, S.L. Mathers, and Harriet Felkin. Holmes Publishing Group, 2001.

Goddess Worship History

"Goddess worship in ancient times:

Most researchers currently accept the belief that modern humans originated in Africa about 200,000 to 250,000 years ago. Until about 8000 BCE, our ancestors organized themselves into hunter-gatherer societies. Humans alone had developed the realization that their life was finite; that they would all die. This resulted in the development of the primitive religious beliefs. Societies which relied mainly on hunting by men naturally developed hunting gods to worship. Those in which gathering was more reliable generally created vegetative Goddesses. The importance of fertility in crops, in domesticated animals, in wild animals and in the tribe itself were of paramount importance to their survival. The female life-giving principle was considered divine and a great mystery. Some Goddess statues still survive from this era. One web site contains photographs of Goddess statues from circa 30,000 BCE to 1987 CE. 1

It is important to realize that many of these findings by archaeologists and historians are speculative in nature. For example, the interpretation that the old European culture stressed the female as divine is largely based on the number of carvings of a female shape found from this era. Some point to the relative lack of equivalent male statues as evidence of a Goddess culture. Others suggest that the female statues might have been the old European culture's equivalent of modern-day erotic photographs.

This "old European" culture lasted for tens of thousands of years in what is now Europe. They generally lived in peace; there is a notable lack of defensive fortifications around their hamlets. As evidenced by their funeral customs, males and females appear to have had equal status. Many historians and archaeologists believe that:

Their society was matrilineal; children took their mothers' names.
Life was based on lunar (not solar) calendar.
Time was experienced as a repetitive cycle, not linearly as we think of it.
Many academics believe that the suppression of Goddess worship in Western Europe occurred a few thousand years BCE, when the Indo-Europeans invaded Europe from the East. They brought with them some of the "refinements" of modern civilization: the horse, war, belief in male Gods, exploitation of nature, knowledge of the male role in procreation, etc. Goddess worship was gradually combined with worship of male Gods to produce a variety of Pagan polytheistic religions, among the Greeks, Romans, Celts, etc. Author Leonard Shlain offers a fascinating alternative explanation. He proposed that the invention of writing

"... rewired the human brain, with profound consequences for culture. Making remarkable connections across a wide range of subjects including brain function, anthropology, history, and religion, Shlain argues that literacy reinforced the brain's linear, abstract, predominantly masculine left hemisphere at the expense of the holistic, iconic feminine right one. This shift upset the balance between men and women initiating the disappearance of goddesses, the abhorrence of images, and, in literacy's early stages, the decline of women's political status. Patriarchy and misogyny followed."

Goddess Worship during Biblical times:

Further south, as Judaism, Christianity & eventually Islam evolved, the Pagan religions were suppressed and the female principle was gradually driven out of religion. Women were considered inferior to men. The God, King, Priest & Father replaced the Goddess, Queen, Priestess & Mother. The role of women became restricted. A woman's testimony was not considered significant in Jewish courts; women were not allowed to speak in Christian churches; positions of authority in the church were limited to men. Young women are often portrayed in the Bible as possessions of their fathers. After marriage, their ownership was transferred to their husbands. Yeshua of Nazareth (a.k.a. Jesus Christ) rejected millennia of religious tradition by treating women as equals. Women played a major role in the early Christian church. Later, epistle (letter) writers who wrote in the name of Paul, started the process of suppressing women once more.

A feminine presence was added to Christianity by the Council of Ephesus in 431 CE when the Virgin Mary was named Theotokos (Mother of God). But her role was heavily restricted and included none of the fertility component present in Pagan religions. A low point in the fortunes of women was reached during the very late Middle Ages, when many tens of thousands of suspected female witches (and a smaller proportion of males) were exterminated by burning and hanging over a three century interval. Today, respect for the Virgin Mary as a sexually "pure," submissive mother is widespread, particularly in Roman Catholicism."

Source and More
http://www.religioustolerance.org/goddess.htm

Goddess Movement

"The Goddess movement includes spiritual beliefs or practices (chiefly neo-pagan) which has emerged predominantly in North America, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand in the 1970s. The movement grew as a reaction to perceptions of predominant organized religion as male-dominated, and makes use of goddess worship and a focus on gender and femininity.

The "Goddess movement" is a widespread, noncentralized trend in Neopaganism, and therefore has no centralized tenets of belief. Practices vary widely, from the name and number of goddesses worshipped to the specific rituals and rites used to do so. Some, such as Dianic Wicca, exclusively worship female deities, while others do not. Belief systems range from monotheistic to polytheistic to pantheistic, encompassing a range of theological variety similar to that in the broader Neopaganism community. Common pluralistic belief means that a self-identified Goddess worshiper could theoretically worship any number of different goddesses from cultures all over the world"

Source and More
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goddess_movement