20 LongTengHuYue 龍騰虎躍

Dragon and Tiger Leap into Heaven

XI: Lust

Great Beasts

This movement has, a striving, a reaching, a rapturous exercise of power. These two poles, matched but different.

Aleister Crowley renamed Strength to Lust in a revolt against Strength's traditional image of chaste control in a celebration of desire. Of desire's power as a steed on the spiritual journey, and the joy of this power's exercise.

(And, true to form, Crowley expressed a polemic against conservative Christian values, a depiction of, well, himself, really, starring in Thelema, the religion he received/invented. And got extremely horny about it.)

In the Golden Dawn's (somewhat goofy) appropriation of Kabbalah and mapping of the Tarot, this card is associated with the path connecting Geburah and Chesed, Severity and Mercy. It functions, maybe then as a conversation between these principles, embodied as the right and left hand pillars reaching skyward. As Babalon reaches to exalt the Grail, we strive toward the Divine.

There is a balance here, but a dynamic balance emerging from joyous, competitive, reach, desire.