So What's Up With the Thoth Tarot?

So both eloquated and pangodillo had some questions about the Thoth tarot and what makes it different from other decks. I'll compare it to the Raider-Waite, which is one of the other decks I own and which is one that a lot of people are familiar with and which a lot of other decks are based on.

Okay so the first thing you probably need to understand is that the Thoth tarot was co-created by Aleister Crowley and Lady Harris (she illustrated the deck, it's based on his ideas). Crowley was an occultist who founded the OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis) an order which practices the religion of Thelema. They regard him as a prophet. I am not affiliated with the OTO and do not practice Thelema, but I know people who do and have been to a couple of services.

I don't want to get deep into Thelema here, but to understand why Crowley changed certain cards from the traditional Raider-Waite Major Arcana, you need to understand a couple of basic things. Basically, Crowley divided human history into three ages, or Aeons. The first Aeon is the Age of Isis. This is associated with Earth Goddess worship. Basically, humans didn't fully understand how reproduction worked and they thought that women became spontaneously pregnant and gave birth and worshiped women in general and mother earth/nature as the all-mother. The second Aeon is the age of Osiris. This age is associated with Sun God worship. Humans realized that agriculture is dependent on sunlight and the seasons, and that the sun rises and sets every day, and also that the days get longer and shorter with the seasons. They made these myths about dying and resurrected God, like Osiris and Christ. They worship a Father god and see life as originating from the Father and women as a mere vessel for carrying that life. According to to Crowley, the age of Osiris is now over, and we have entered a third Aeon, the age of Horus. In the Aeon of Horus, humans will come to understand that the sacred feminine and the sacred masculine create life together, and the great mystery is about the fusion of those two energies into one which is both and neither. The deities of the age of Horus are Nuit, the sacred feminine and infinite "out-ness" "Hadit," the sacred masculine or infinite "in-ness," and Ra-Hoor-Khuit, who is the child of these two and is the fusion of both. Crowley believed that this third Aeon would result in the "complete emancipation" of humankind.

What does this mean for the Tarot? The biggest difference is that he got rid of the Judgement card (trump XX) and replaced it with The Aeon. This is because according to Crowley, Judgement or the Last Judgement represents not the end of the universe but the end of the Second Aeon, and this has already happened (in 1910, I think?). So there's no more Final Judgement to look forward to, and the importance of The Hanged Man (trump IX), or the sacrificed god, is greatly reduced and becomes more about sacrifice for spreading knowledge to the uninitiated, like Prometheus, rather than a redeemer sacrifice like Osiris or Christ. Also he changed trump XI "The World" to "The Universe," I think just to make it bigger since of course the oldest tarot decks were created before people understood that the earth revolved around the sun and that the heavens were much bigger than we ever imagined.

There are other changes to the deck which have to do with more complex, occult reasoning, which I will put under a cut.

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