The Thoth Atu or Keys: Major Arcana in Brief
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This essay — the third and final installment of my Thoth “deep dive” series — is by far the most challenging. Crowley’s take on the Major Arcana was nuanced and complex, full of syncretic flourishes and just plain ol’ mystical ambiguity. But at least his rarefied excursions into occult profundity were a product of his unmatched erudition and his singular personality, not due to any vows of secrecy he may have taken. (I’m sure he pledged himself to nondisclosure as a Neophyte or Zelator in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and then promptly broke his promises when he was expelled and went his own way.)
The bulk of a lifetime (mine, that is) spent in studying the Thoth deck has been dedicated to the Major Arcana, and yet I still don’t feel entirely competent in rendering the Atu into prosaic language that is more than a series of quotes or a keyword stew. (Until a few years ago after multiple readings of The Book of Thoth, I often felt that “I’m not entirely sure what he’s saying but I love the way he says it,” particularly when it comes to the recondite “APPENDIX to the ATU.”) It goes without saying that the images and their interpretation were largely dependent on the Golden Dawn’s esoteric canon as compiled in Liber T, the Order’s tarot curriculum, except where Crowley introduced the tenets of his 1904 epiphany in Cairo that was recorded in The Book of the Law and that eventually led to the religion of Thelema. In turn, the Golden Dawn’s perspective was informed by the metaphysical genius of Eliphas Levi and his Continental contemporaries, and to some extent by the seminal work of Etteilla, the “father of the esoteric tarot,” that appeared later. (Mary Greer once told me that MacGregor Mathers’ early tarot writing was “all Etteilla.”)
The basic architecture of the Major Arcana comes down to us from even earlier decks like the Tarot de Marseille that yielded the card titles still in use today; however, those decks were not esoteric or specifically spiritual in nature, instead displaying religious, civil, social and cultural icons on the trump cards; the archetypes as we know them evolved long after. The Golden Dawn tinkered with a few of the designs — the Lovers card and its portrayal of the myth of Persephone is a prime example — and Crowley took it further with a number of even more dramatic departures from the tradition. In some cases he changed the title without substantially altering the intent, but in every instance he put his own personal stamp on their delineation.
Here are a few of his revisions to the Golden Dawn baseline. (I’m being a bit flippant here, but it strikes me that not all of the changes were really necessary.)
The Magician became the “Magus,” with little significant change in meaning;
The High Priestess became the “Priestess” for no obvious reason:
Justice became “Adjustment,” again with no perceivable shift in focus;
Strength became “Lust” to embrace his advocacy of the True Will and its execution;
Temperance became “Art” due to its association with alchemy;
Judgement became “The Aeon” to align with his dogma in The Book of the Law;
The World became “The Universe,” apparently just because . . .
Crowley exchanged the positions of Strength/Lust and Justice/Adjustment in the sequence of trumps, returning them to their Tarot de Marseille order, but his rationale involved esoteric astrology and not historical fidelity. Similarly, he swapped the positions of the Emperor and the Star at the behest of “Aiwass,” the disembodied messenger who in 1904 delivered the text of The Book of the Law via psychic communication with Crowley’s attendant medium, who then relayed it for transcription. While I don’t object to reinstating the TdM succession, Crowley’s reasoning in these instances has always seemed just a bit specious to me. It suggests the aphorism “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Regarding the location of the Major Arcana on the paths of the Hermetic Tree of Life, other than shuffling The Emperor and the Star I don’t believe Crowley departed from the Golden Dawn’s architecture. Nor, outside of his Thelemic revisionism, did he do a whole lot of creative re-engineering of the esoteric aim of the images and their correspondences; most of his tweaking seems to have been semantic and mystical, arriving in the form of intelligent (if sometimes abstruse) elaborations of what he was originally taught. My previous work of comparing and contrasting the key elements of the Golden Dawn’s Liber T, Waite’s Pictorial Key to the Tarot and Crowley’s Book of Thoth has shown me that, while they differ in their specifics, they are reasonably alike in their trajectory.
I admit to having a few favorites. As an astrologer, I’ve always appreciated the fact that Crowley, when contemplating the Devil, leaned hard into the exaltation of Mars in Capricorn as delivering creative energy in it most material form (although he took his customary stab at sexual innuendo in a veiled, procreative way). This is a much more encouraging definition than temptation and deception, which are primarily Christian in origin (Crowley wasn’t, nor am I), and potent creativity now forms the basis for my handling of this card in divination. The Hanged Man’s alternate take of initiation rather than sacrifice has long been my main meaning for this arcana, bringing with it all kinds of interesting insights. But Art was the most daunting challenge for me because I had trouble bringing its alchemical obscurities “down to Earth” for the purpose of practical divination. It took a careful comparison of Crowley’s essays and supporting symbolism on the Lovers and Art, with their depiction of the alchemical wedding (Lovers) and the consummation of the marriage (Art), along with a diligent reading of The Chymical Wedding of Christan Rosenkreutz, to set me straight on that score, making it clear that this is a card of exquisite finesse.
At this point in my long tarot journey, having turned resolutely toward divination as my main focus in 2011, I get the most value out of the condensation (perhaps crystallization is a better word) of Crowley’s thoughts in the brief vignettes from the section of the Book of Thoth titled “General Characters of the Trumps As They Appear In Use.” Not only are they memorable in many cases, but Crowley’s logic is generally impeccable (even though some of the keywords he uses seem to come straight out of Liber T rather than being derived from the essays in Part 2 of the book). A few that I get the most mileage out of are the Fool (“. . . an original, subtle, sudden impulse or impact, coming from a completely strange quarter”); the Wheel of Fortune (“Change of fortune. This generally means good fortune because the fact of consultation implies anxiety or discontent.”); and the Aeon (“Final decision in respect of the past, new current in respect of the future; always represents the taking of a definite step.”) This is a “ready reference” that I invoke frequently in my work.
Right now I intend to spend more quality time with the “APPENDIX to the ATU,” where I suspect much of the remaining undiscovered “gold” in the Book of Thoth lies buried. I’ve made inroads over the years, but much of Crowley’s more arcane, mystical euphoria still escapes my comprehension. I’m fairly experienced at penetrating mysteries (chalk it up to a strong Scorpio nature), having recently waded through the Kabbalistic labyrinth of The Tarot of the Bohemians, and having spent many hours in the past with Joseph Maxwell’s convoluted numerological “isomorphs,” so I don’t think the goal is unattainable. But it’s going to take some intellectual “heavy lifting” (it is, after all, a lifetime study).
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on February 12, 2024.
