The Left Angle Cross of Distraction (Version 2)

Full breakdown

Here we meet the second variation of Distraction. In the first version, these people stand in the way of everything progressive — that's their path, distracting us from moving forward too fast. Recall what gate 60 does: it holds onto the old, unable to leap into the new. I carry gate 60 myself, and I'm always searching for the original law — once someone hands me a formula, I can finally go quiet, because I've seen it rests on an original law. That's an enormous limitation for me: I know the formula of duality, but whether that formula is progressing further doesn't matter to me — knowing it is everything, because it's a genuinely old law, as old as the universe itself.

These left-angle forces distract you from the progressive and pull you back toward the more traditional. The deepest ideological position of America's most Christian-oriented cults is exactly this: religion keeps becoming more progressive and, in their eyes, more contaminated by it. They feel the original is being lost and want to return to first principles, original law. Distraction can become a genuinely powerful obstacle to progress, and to the tribe's evolution — which, in the end, is what matters most, since it can make a tribe reject progress and cling to old traditions instead.

And yet there's real value in this. It can act as a brake, keeping us from throwing ourselves recklessly into something new that might be dangerous. You might want to run gladly toward those strange figures in iron helmets arriving on ships with white sails, but syphilis is a different story. Sometimes it really is worth saying, 'wait, hold on — let's stick with our old traditions and not get carried away by these new possibilities.' So there's a genuinely protective side to distraction. But if you're someone pushing progress — as I am, teaching a synthesis of spiritual traditions — these people can be a real thorn in your side, insisting on their dogma and traditions.

It's a joke, really, because I carry synthesis as my own message. If there weren't people clinging to the old ways, I wouldn't have students with any foundation for this knowledge — most students I've met in this work already know something of astrology, the I Ching, Kabbalah, the chakra system, and so on. That's the work of tradition-keepers, holding onto old paths even while being mocked for it — genuinely useful, in its way. But just as often, I meet people who can never step off their path — I've met more astrologers than I can count who simply cannot stop being astrologers; that's their road, and leaving it is very hard for them. There's a balance in all this — we need this influence, even while it can make it harder to bring us to a point of synthesis.