Thoth Court Card "Moral Characteristics"

Barleywine

I've been getting tired of having to wade through the Book of Thoth every time I need insight on potential meanings for a court card in a particular situation. So I decided to boil everything down into a straight-forward table of brief terms for each card. Where Crowley's "moral characteristics" were given in "keyword" form, I recorded them verbatim; where they were more rambling and convoluted, I paraphrased them or, in extreme cases, improvised by economizing on what I think he meant. Note that I didn't attempt to modulate or sanitize Crowley's often ruthless bluntness: if he said "hopelessly stupid," that's what I captured. In addition, I attempted to incorporate his "Yi King" commentary in a way consistent with his more standard interpretations.

I'm providing this first draft here as a community service. I now have to go back through and validate everything one more time, after which I will update this post.
 

Attachments

  • Court Card Base Meanings.pdf
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DDwarks

Fabulous!
I've got a Thoth on a transatlantic flight to me at the moment and you've just made learning it easier!
Keep it coming :thumbsup: The community needs it :thumbsup:
 

Zephyros

I've been getting tired of having to wade through the Book of Thoth every time I need insight on potential meanings for a court card in a particular situation. So I decided to boil everything down into a straight-forward table of brief terms for each card. Where Crowley's "moral characteristics" were given in "keyword" form, I recorded them verbatim; where they were more rambling and convoluted, I paraphrased them or, in extreme cases, improvised by economizing on what I think he meant. Note that I didn't attempt to modulate or sanitize Crowley's often ruthless bluntness: if he said "hopelessly stupid," that's what I captured. In addition, I attempted to incorporate his "Yi King" commentary in a way consistent with his more standard interpretations.

I'm providing this first draft here as a community service. I now have to go back through and validate everything one more time, after which I will update this post.

Thank you Barleywine, both your posts are very informative! When I am perplexed by a Court I go back to basics and build them up by their attributions. For those not in the know, I mean that the Knight, Queen and Prince are each attributed to three Minor cards plus a place in the Tree of Life. The Princess are rather more unwieldy, but can still be broken down.
 

Barleywine

Thank you Barleywine, both your posts are very informative! When I am perplexed by a Court I go back to basics and build them up by their attributions. For those not in the know, I mean that the Knight, Queen and Prince are each attributed to three Minor cards plus a place in the Tree of Life. The Princess are rather more unwieldy, but can still be broken down.

I was reading Liber Theta on the court cards the other day, and noticed that it refers to the first ("cross-sign") decan for each card as the "shadow decan." I've already used the idea in my own way before, but this will help to codify it in my thinking. It works kind of like "cross-sign" aspects in astrology, seems to me.
 

Zephyros

I was reading Liber Theta on the court cards the other day, and noticed that it refers to the first ("cross-sign") decan for each card as the "shadow decan." I've already used the idea in my own way before, but this will help to codify it in my thinking. It works kind of like "cross-sign" aspects in astrology, seems to me.

Yes I used the same idea in my essay about the Courts here, with each one having dominant and recessive attributes. Ultimately the system of the Courts is so great because taken together it makes them into complete, fleshed out people. All the attributions in the other cards somehow fit well, and all lead to the same kinds of ideas. But with the Courts there are contradictory attributes and good and bad qualities that really help them take on a life of their own.
 

Barleywine

Yes I used the same idea in my essay about the Courts here, with each one having dominant and recessive attributes. Ultimately the system of the Courts is so great because taken together it makes them into complete, fleshed out people. All the attributions in the other cards somehow fit well, and all lead to the same kinds of ideas. But with the Courts there are contradictory attributes and good and bad qualities that really help them take on a life of their own.

I think I'm going to reformat my keyword table to add a column for decanic associations. But rather than using the Minor Arcana as its basis, I think I'll just give an "astrologer's eye view" of the planet and sign combinations. I have Crowley's General Principles of Astrology as a reference, which should provide a similar tone across the "mash-up." I've never been happy trying to correlate the small card meanings with the courts (it just seems a little too artificial), so I generally go straight to planet-and-sign correspondences for additional insight. That's something I understand well.
 

Zephyros

I agree that's the best way to go about it. The Minors "work" for me but when analyzing the personality of each Court it is astrological attributions that really pack the punch. I'm curious as to how you would do it.
 

seedcake

Thank you so much, Barleywine. And Zephyros too for the great essay.

When I've started to work with Thoth, I really felt the connection with the courts (finally). They make so much sense and your efforts to break it down even more, thank you again.
 

Barleywine

I'm attaching the second draft of the table. I added all of the decan meanings for each court card. I used The Astrologer's Handbook by Sakoian and Acker, one of the best basic astrology books in my library. Their approach has a psychological slant which perfectly complements Crowley's idea of "moral characteristics." The sections were structured such that I could easily extract simple keywords and brief phrases from the sentences. The only ones that are a little squirrely are the Aquarius decans since the writers used the modern rulership of Uranus. The text for the Scorpio and Pisces decans was more traditional.

Not all of the trio of decan meanings will apply equally to a given card, and not all at the same time. The idea is to use them as background information where they fit the circumstances of the reading. While building this, it seemed that the third decan for each court card came the closest to aligning with the card's meanings. I've only done a cursory editoral clean-up on this and I still have to revisit the Book of Thoth extracts to validate and correct my own interpolations from Crowley's less straight-forward observations. That will be tomorrow.
 

Attachments

  • Thoth Court Card Characteristics.pdf
    82.2 KB · Views: 1,119

foolMoon

Just what I needed in my recent Thoth tarot studies. Will print them out and staple into the last page of my Bot. Thanks. :)