Thoth Preliminaries (and a Few Particulars)
AUTHOR’S NOTE: In yesterday’s post I set myself the task of “taking a deep dive” into the Thoth Tarot, an esoteric deck I’ve been using since 1973. I will approach it more systematically in future essays, so here I’m only going to outline a few important details. My ultimate goal is to avoid repeating the observations I’ve made several times in the past while producing input that furthers an appreciation of the deck and its Golden Dawn roots.
Aleister Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris labored over the watercolor paintings for the deck from 1938 to 1943 (he advising and she painting in what was supposed to be a six-month project), but — although the Book of Thoth was published in 1944 — a full-color commercial version of the cards was not issued until 1969, long after their deaths; it was printed in Hong Kong and published by Llewellyn, and is known as “Box A.” My own large-format “Box B” editions were printed in 1973 and distributed by Samuel Weiser; they contain the two famous errors on the Ace of Disks (upside-down) and the 8 of Cups (missing numeral). As noted in various articles about this deck, the colors are frequently muddy and the card borders are a mismatched light-blue of various shades. The last “official” edition I bought was the 1983 U.S. Games standard-size deck with the three “Magus” cards. There is considerable controversy over whether all three can be used at the same time in a reading, but Stuart Kaplan made it clear in the accompanying material that it wasn’t intended to be done. More recently, I heedlessly purchased the Retro Thoth, an unauthorized knock-off of decent quality that ran afoul of copyright law and was pulled from the market after I advised the creator that it might be illegal. (I believe AG Muller has a like-sized “pocket” edition for those who want a smaller deck).
Both the Thoth deck and the classic Waite-Smith pack are direct descendants of the tarot of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn painted by Moina Mathers, of which no complete copy survives. Due to his vow of secrecy, Waite took great pains to conceal much of the esoteric knowledge he had gained from his involvement in the Order, so his deck displays only an incidental connection to Liber T, the Golden Dawn’s tarot curriculum. A few of his Major Arcana are Christianized approximations of the earlier designs and others draw their inspiration mainly from even older decks, while the keywords for some of them hark back to Etteilla’s seminal work; however, the Golden Dawn model is almost completely overthrown in the numbered Minor Arcana because Waite left Pamela Colman Smith to her own devices when illustrating them, a fact confirmed by several tarot historians. (Although she was an initiate in both the Golden Dawn and Waite’s own order, I’ve dismissed her prosaic images as delivering “canned narrative vignettes” of little value for more advanced metaphysical contemplation). The court cards alone demonstrate a faithful allegiance to the Tarot de Marseille progenitor that underlies nearly all modern tarot decks.
The renegade Crowley, however, had no such nagging reservations, and in 1912 he made an unauthorized release of the contents of Liber T in his Equinox periodical. For the Thoth canon itself he largely adhered to the Golden Dawn titles and definitions of the 40 minor cards and the 16 court cards, and — except for a little occult revisionism of his own iconoclastic imagining — was nearly as steadfast in his fidelity to the Order’s view of the Major Arcana. For this reason, many experienced readers revere the Thoth as the premier esoteric deck for almost any purpose. After using it for 50 years, I can personally vouch for its effectiveness in promoting self-awareness and self-development, as well as in practical divination.
Jim Eshelman of the College of Thelema performed a Thoth-based rewrite of Liber T named Liber Theta that is well worth downloading (the last I knew it was still free) as a companion to Crowley’s Book of Thoth. There have also been several attempts to “demystify” the book’s obscurities, most notably by Lon Milo DuQuette and Michael Snuffin, and one useful “keyword” book by Hajo Banzhaf. (If you’re seeking a profound study of Crowley’s masterwork, don’t bother with Gerd Ziegler, who won’t impress the discerning reader, or Angeles Arrien, whom I know only by her dubious reputation for “making stuff up”). But the best advice is to just “feed your head” with the Book of Thoth; to paraphrase author James Rickleff in a different context, “Let it simmer in your consciousness. It will eventually make sense.” For those interested, my “Tarot 101” series of posts on this blog includes brief card-by-card “thumbnail” comparisons of key passages from Liber T, Waite’s Pictorial Key to the Tarot, and the Book of Thoth along with my own commentary.
We have also seen a cornucopia of Thoth “clone” decks enter the market over the years, but in my estimation none of them remotely approaches the original with the possible exception of M.M. Meleen’s wonderful Tabula Mundi Colores Arcus, which I was fortunate to buy when it was crowd-funding. (I consider it “second among equals” to the Thoth.) The Hermetic Tarot by Godfey Dowson is a worthy competitor but its black-and-white presentation hampers its usefulness. The Haindl Tarot is another but my copy is dominated by sludgy browns and dull golds that leave me cold. Finally, in my own collection there is the quirky (and admittedly fun) Liber T: Tarot of Stars Eternal that directly mirrors some of the Thoth imagery but in a more “pop-art” style.
There have been fewer successful attempts to translate Liber T into a Golden-Dawn-inspired offering, and in most of them the visual quality just isn’t at the same consistent level of excellence as that of Harris. The one that arguably comes the closest to authenticity in its symbolism is the collaborative Golden Dawn Tarot by Robert Wang and Israel Regardie that is based on the latter’s recollection of his lost Whare Ra Temple version of Mathers’ deck; just don’t expect superlative draftsmanship. In practice I usually just turn to the “real deal” and grab the Thoth (although the recent release of Pat Zalewski’s Magical Tarot of the Golden Dawn with its accurate color scales does give me pause).
I would be remiss if I didn’t make special mention of the remarkable artwork of Frieda Harris. I understand that she studied the “projective geometry” of Rudolf Steiner and brought it to bear on her Thoth paintings in what has become known as synthetic projective geometry (apparently also used by Frank Lloyd Wright in some of his architecture). In many cases her vibrant and dynamic designs perfectly complement her evocative color palette in capturing Crowley’s mystical and intellectual vision. I can do no better than quote DuQuette from his book Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot:
“When we ask what makes the Thoth Tarot unique, the first and most obvious answer is the artwork. However difficult it may be to grasp the mathematical subtleties of projective geometry, we see it thrillingly manifested in Harris’s use of lines, nets, arcs, swirls, twists and angles combined to visually redefine the fabric of space.”
I will close with a quote from the “Thoth Primer” on the Gaia website:
“Every composition of the Thoth deck is multi-layered with meaning — some clear, others obscure or cryptic, based on Crowley’s interpretations. Every color, line, gesture, and object carries a symbolic message. A dive into Crowley’s Thoth deck is an immersive study of the occult, hermeticism, gematria, the Kabbalah’s Tree of Life, astrology, mythological gods and goddesses, and ritual magick.”
Originally published at http://parsifalswheeldivination.wordpress.com on February 9, 2024.
