Your opinions on Crowley?

wandking

my files indicate...

The Book of Thoth deck, with artwork by Lady Frieda Harris under direction of Aleister Crowley, although complete in 1944 CE, went into print posthumously in 1969 CE.

Crowley died 1 December 1947 and
Harris, after being executor of his will, died 11th May 1962.

What puzzles me is why the deck wasn't printed earlier. Certainly, between 1944 and 1969, they posessed the resources to invest in printing the deck. Crowley shows no aversion to self-publishing.
 

Driley

wandking said:
What puzzles me is why the deck wasn't printed earlier. Certainly, between 1944 and 1969, they posessed the resources to invest in printing the deck. Crowley shows no aversion to self-publishing.
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I seem to remember reading somewhere that there was some kind of technical issue in terms of the printing process that slowed things down considerably.

Let me look around for where I got that idea...
 

Cerulean

Was the technical issue being able to photograph the originals in color?

I believe a research thread on the Book of Thoth with black and white photos of the original paintings would be good shared idea!

Between be all of us here, perhaps the various editions of the Book of Thoth and research on the paintings being photographed (or stored) might be interesting to understand?

I'll be checking back after a family weekend to see what develops!

Regards,

Cerulean
 

Parzival

Driley said:
Wow!


I still interests me to note that Magus got more development, as far as we can tell, and ended up with three publishable images.

Was this the only completed set of three or several of the same arcanum? I understand that all three Magus-paintings were on display with the others at the Warburg Institute, which impressed the gentleman who proceeded to include all three in the pack.-- This may only be lore and not fact. Anyone know about this?
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rainwolf

I think his deck is great...especially without the borders :D If you think it is ugly, look at the cards when they are cut because they show a lot more passion.

Crowley did bad stuff, Crowley did good stuff.

I did bad stuff, I did good stuff.

We all have done 'bad' stuff but we had a consequence and his consequences matched his actions. He did however continue to practice and I admire that "facing the adversary" and he did have an impact on modern tarot. I bet we can all appreciate him to some degree.

There was a time when i did not like crowley, but his deck seemed to lure me after a time. I finally gave in and said "whats the worse that could happen? It has to be a famous deck for a reason." I think his deck is much more peaceful than I had previously interpreted it as "crazy" and "violent" because I did not understand his intentions or his past.
 

rainwolf

wandking said:
goodbye Darwin, goodbye Voltaire, goodbye Galileo, goodbye Copernicus and by the way goodbye Court de Gebelin, hence goodbye modern Tarot
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[SIZE=+2]GOODBYE F. SCOTT FITZGERALD!! :( :( :( [/SIZE]
 

Flidais

... and goodbye, Edgar Allen Poe... :(
 

wandking

a little Frank

After spending years in the print industry, I picked up a bit. If you notice, on other 78 card decks, there are often 2 extra cards with various stuff printed on them. It's due to sheet size in printing stock. In most cases it just isn't worth the extra money to create the additional images, although if you have something that fits, it's another story. Obviously in the case of the Thoth, Harris created 3 versions of The Magician, so instead of creating extra trash they created extra Magicians, with very little additional cost. If your printing a lot of cards two empty cut-outs makes a big pile of trash pretty fast and it costs something to process. Ink is not a big factor, it's not really reusable and there's always some left over to throw away in the well on a sheet fed press. I don't know of any web-press that could run that heavy card stock.
 

PlatinumDove

The first letter does not surprise me at all. I just finished reading the introduction to The tree of Life by Regardie, and in it, it says that after Regardie left Crowley's employ in Paris, Crowley had to move from Paris to England due to financial problems. At the same time, the publisher Crowley was using folded as well.
 
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