The Mountain of Failure: The Seven of Disks ☶ AKA The Gap Year to YouTuber Pipeline

Tarot Thoughts

Here I will treat you to a more personal reading of a symbol.

The Seven of Disks qabalistically relates to Netzach and He² (ה) or Earth. This is a doubling, as Netzach is itself an Earthy sphere. It is given to Saturn in Taurus, a placement which I have in my natal chart, as such, it holds a special place in my life.

Crowley writes: In Taurus the heaviness of Saturn is accentuated by that of the sign, and so his obstinacy, pertinacity and dullness are accentuated. But as all this makes for steadiness, the moral character is firm and capable of overcoming obstacles by sheer determination; while, on the other hand, those obstacles themselves are not apt to be particularly violent. So we shall expect to find natives with the capacity to push steadfastly forward, and to conquer.

Save Yourself

In my high school years I had grown determined to avoid college, and avoid work for as long as possible. I wanted to dedicate myself to study and the creation of art. When high school was coming to an end, I practiced divination on my final day. I cast the I Ching, and did bibliomancy with the portable Nietzsche compilation. I asked both what I should do after high school.

My hexagram related perfectly to this card, a doubling of Netzach, which Crowley corresponded to the Mountain trigram ☶, or Hexagram 52 Keeping Still (The Mountain)䷳

The name is 艮

Which depicts a man with a large eye looking back, for he has reached a limit.

I took this quite literally, and allowed myself about a year to do absolutely nothing. This is of course what many students do before college: the gap year. Though I had no plans for what to do after this, other than win.

My bibliomancy affirmed the oracle. In my cap and gown, minutes before walking to receive my diploma, I flipped to chapter LVI ‘Old and New Tables’ p. 30, from Thus Spoke Zarathustra

So indeed, I decided to save myself for some future work. The product of this time is of course MemeAnalysis, which I began after that year of stillness.