So What's Up With the Thoth Tarot?
Feb. 18th, 2019 11:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anarfeaSo 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.
So, one of the reasons that I like the Thoth tarot is that great care has been taken to contextualize the tarot in other mythologies, like the Egyptian, Greek, Hindu, and Judaic ones. I find it easier to understand the cards, especially the minor arcana, when I discover that ever card has a position on the Tree of Life or the Rose Cross, and I can see everything in relation to everything else. So, let's start with the Rose Cross (which is actually on the back of the cards) and explain what that has to do with the Trumps.
The Rose Cross is associated with the Rosicrucians, Free Masons, and the Golden Dawn, an order of which Crowley was a member. Crowley actually kinda broke up the Golden Dawn, but he took a lot from it, and the Rose Cross is one of the things that stuck. I think the Rose Cross is really fucking cool. Let's take a look at it.
So the center most thing in this design is a white point, which represents the nothing that we all came from, surrounded by the Rose Cross of Being, which has some interesting symbolism attached to it, but doesn't really have anything directly to do with specific tarot cards, so we'll skip it for now.
The first row of petals around the rose cross represents the three primary colors which are associated with the three primary elements Yellow: Air: The Fool, Red: Fire: The Aeon, and Blue: Water: The Hanged Man (What about Earth, you ask? We'll get to Earth later).
The second row of petals symbolizes the seven planets of the ancients, Mars: The Tower, Sun: The Sun, Mercury: The Magician, Venus: The Empress, Moon: The Priestess, Saturn: The Universe, Jupiter: Fortune
The third row of petals symbolizes the 12 signs of the zodiac: Aries: The Emperor, Taurus: The Heirophant, Gemini: The Lovers, Cancer: The Chariot, Leo: Lust, Virgo: The Hermit, Libra: Adjustment, Scorpio: Death, Sagittarius: Art, Capricorn: The Devil, Aquarius: The Star, Pisces: The Moon
So it's here where we start to see the other differences between the Thoth tarot and the Raider Waite and why this is so. So, when we get to the zodiacal trumps, it was important to the members of the Golden Dawn to assign the signs of the zodiac in order to the trumps which were not already assigned to elements or planets in order. They wanted to assign Libra to Justice (which Crowley re-names Adjustment) since Libra is the scales and Justice holds the scales, and they wanted to assign Leo to Strength, because Strength is usually a woman pictured subduing a Lion and Leo is the Lion. But the Raider-Waite deck assigns Strength to Trump 8 and Justice to Trump 11. So, The Golden Dawn switched the order of the trumps to keep the order of the zodiac.
Crowley keeps this switch, and additionally, he re-names the cards Justice and Strength Adjustment and Lust, with slightly different meanings he thinks are more appropriate for the new Aeon. Adjustment isn't that different from Justice, though it seems to me, like the difference between Judgement and the Aeon, "softer," that it's more about bringing into balance than doling out punishment. Lust is significantly different from Strength. The Raider-Waite Strength card pictures a woman closing the mouth of a lion. Thoth's Lust features a naked woman riding a lion-like beast with multiple heads. This figure is meant to be the "Whore of Babylon," riding the Beast (666) from the book of Revelations. That probably sounds blasphemous and satanist and scary, but all Crowley really meant was that in the new Aeon, it's not the virgin but the whore who symbolizes the sacred feminine. Because the "whore" as he conceived her is indiscriminately accepting of everyone (I'm speaking here of a spiritual archetype, not of actual sex-workers who of course choose their clients). So according to Crowley, she absorbs the essence of everything, an because she's the servant to each she's the mistress of all. It's a pretty powerful image, I love this card, I identify with it as a Leo and as a sex-positive feminist, and that's why it's one of my icons.
Back to the Rose Cross. We've finished with the petals and can move on to the arms, which represent the four elements. Air, Fire, Water, and Earth, which appears for the first time. These elements are assigned to the four tarot suits: Air for Swords, Fire for Wands, Water for Cups, and Earth for Discs. Earth doesn't appear with the primary elements at the center of the Rose Cross because it's not "pure." The first three elements are associated with light, and Earth is light that has become matter. It's the lowest, longest arm on the cross because it's meant to be below the "abyss" on the Tree of Life. I won't get into the Tree of Life here because that's a HUGE topic, but earth appears below a white space on the Rose Cross which is occupied by a Star of David with the six planets arranged around Sol at the center. The Star of David has six points. Six is a number associated with the Divine, in contrast to five which is associated with the human (since humans have five appendages, four limbs and a head). The number five is represented by the pentagrams at the center of each arm. these represent the five elements of Air, Fire Water and Earth, crowned this time by the fifth element of Spirit.
At the very edges of the cross are the alchemical symbols for Sulfur, Mercury, and Salt. Again, we see the trinity of masculine, (sulfur), feminine (salt) and the nonbinary fusion (mercury). These symbols are associated with the Tarot cards the Emperor (the Father) The Empress (the Mother) and the Magus (the cool nonbinary trickster figure). But those cards are already represented in the petals, this is just like, an extra special additional meaning.
Finally, there are some rays coming out of the rose cross with the letters INRI, IAO, and LVX. These don't directly relate to tarot cards but they do have some meanings to Golden Dawn and Thelemic rituals.
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.
So, one of the reasons that I like the Thoth tarot is that great care has been taken to contextualize the tarot in other mythologies, like the Egyptian, Greek, Hindu, and Judaic ones. I find it easier to understand the cards, especially the minor arcana, when I discover that ever card has a position on the Tree of Life or the Rose Cross, and I can see everything in relation to everything else. So, let's start with the Rose Cross (which is actually on the back of the cards) and explain what that has to do with the Trumps.
The Rose Cross is associated with the Rosicrucians, Free Masons, and the Golden Dawn, an order of which Crowley was a member. Crowley actually kinda broke up the Golden Dawn, but he took a lot from it, and the Rose Cross is one of the things that stuck. I think the Rose Cross is really fucking cool. Let's take a look at it.
So the center most thing in this design is a white point, which represents the nothing that we all came from, surrounded by the Rose Cross of Being, which has some interesting symbolism attached to it, but doesn't really have anything directly to do with specific tarot cards, so we'll skip it for now.
The first row of petals around the rose cross represents the three primary colors which are associated with the three primary elements Yellow: Air: The Fool, Red: Fire: The Aeon, and Blue: Water: The Hanged Man (What about Earth, you ask? We'll get to Earth later).
The second row of petals symbolizes the seven planets of the ancients, Mars: The Tower, Sun: The Sun, Mercury: The Magician, Venus: The Empress, Moon: The Priestess, Saturn: The Universe, Jupiter: Fortune
The third row of petals symbolizes the 12 signs of the zodiac: Aries: The Emperor, Taurus: The Heirophant, Gemini: The Lovers, Cancer: The Chariot, Leo: Lust, Virgo: The Hermit, Libra: Adjustment, Scorpio: Death, Sagittarius: Art, Capricorn: The Devil, Aquarius: The Star, Pisces: The Moon
So it's here where we start to see the other differences between the Thoth tarot and the Raider Waite and why this is so. So, when we get to the zodiacal trumps, it was important to the members of the Golden Dawn to assign the signs of the zodiac in order to the trumps which were not already assigned to elements or planets in order. They wanted to assign Libra to Justice (which Crowley re-names Adjustment) since Libra is the scales and Justice holds the scales, and they wanted to assign Leo to Strength, because Strength is usually a woman pictured subduing a Lion and Leo is the Lion. But the Raider-Waite deck assigns Strength to Trump 8 and Justice to Trump 11. So, The Golden Dawn switched the order of the trumps to keep the order of the zodiac.
Crowley keeps this switch, and additionally, he re-names the cards Justice and Strength Adjustment and Lust, with slightly different meanings he thinks are more appropriate for the new Aeon. Adjustment isn't that different from Justice, though it seems to me, like the difference between Judgement and the Aeon, "softer," that it's more about bringing into balance than doling out punishment. Lust is significantly different from Strength. The Raider-Waite Strength card pictures a woman closing the mouth of a lion. Thoth's Lust features a naked woman riding a lion-like beast with multiple heads. This figure is meant to be the "Whore of Babylon," riding the Beast (666) from the book of Revelations. That probably sounds blasphemous and satanist and scary, but all Crowley really meant was that in the new Aeon, it's not the virgin but the whore who symbolizes the sacred feminine. Because the "whore" as he conceived her is indiscriminately accepting of everyone (I'm speaking here of a spiritual archetype, not of actual sex-workers who of course choose their clients). So according to Crowley, she absorbs the essence of everything, an because she's the servant to each she's the mistress of all. It's a pretty powerful image, I love this card, I identify with it as a Leo and as a sex-positive feminist, and that's why it's one of my icons.
Back to the Rose Cross. We've finished with the petals and can move on to the arms, which represent the four elements. Air, Fire, Water, and Earth, which appears for the first time. These elements are assigned to the four tarot suits: Air for Swords, Fire for Wands, Water for Cups, and Earth for Discs. Earth doesn't appear with the primary elements at the center of the Rose Cross because it's not "pure." The first three elements are associated with light, and Earth is light that has become matter. It's the lowest, longest arm on the cross because it's meant to be below the "abyss" on the Tree of Life. I won't get into the Tree of Life here because that's a HUGE topic, but earth appears below a white space on the Rose Cross which is occupied by a Star of David with the six planets arranged around Sol at the center. The Star of David has six points. Six is a number associated with the Divine, in contrast to five which is associated with the human (since humans have five appendages, four limbs and a head). The number five is represented by the pentagrams at the center of each arm. these represent the five elements of Air, Fire Water and Earth, crowned this time by the fifth element of Spirit.
At the very edges of the cross are the alchemical symbols for Sulfur, Mercury, and Salt. Again, we see the trinity of masculine, (sulfur), feminine (salt) and the nonbinary fusion (mercury). These symbols are associated with the Tarot cards the Emperor (the Father) The Empress (the Mother) and the Magus (the cool nonbinary trickster figure). But those cards are already represented in the petals, this is just like, an extra special additional meaning.
Finally, there are some rays coming out of the rose cross with the letters INRI, IAO, and LVX. These don't directly relate to tarot cards but they do have some meanings to Golden Dawn and Thelemic rituals.
So, I realize that this is A Lot to take in. But it's one of the things that makes the Thoth tarot so cool. If you're a student of tarot, I'd recommend getting out your deck and arranging your trumps in the three concentric circles of the Rose Cross and seeing how that looks and if it helps you understand the story of the Major Arcana in a different way.
To understand the Minor Arcana, we need to understand the Tree of Life and the tetragrammaton (YHVH), which are Jewish Kabbalistic concepts, which I'll do another post on. We can also talk about how the Thoth tarot assigns every trump a letter of the Hebrew alphabet (and why Crowley switched two of these letters from the ones assigned by The Golden Dawn) in that post.
Pretty much all of this information I've posted here comes from Lon Milo DuQuette's book, Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot, Weiser Books, 2003. I was fortunate enough to meet Mr. DuQuette some years ago and I attended one of his tarot lectures.
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Date: 2019-02-18 09:36 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2019-02-19 12:22 am (UTC)This was an interesting flash back to that time in my life.
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Date: 2019-02-19 03:05 am (UTC)