hmmm...I am not familiar with historical feuds or camps. What I have understood from this thread so far when mentioned is that a subjective interpretation of the Thoth is not so much about being wrong, but whether such interpretations are actually about the Thoth. That seems to me to be more of a factual issue.
If you search a little on this forum, you will indeed find fairly emotionalized threads on the question what counts as legitimate Thoth literature and what does not. It became a political issue, of sorts, not to say a small religious war in cyberspace.
Tarot interpretations necessarily always include subjective elements. Of course, we could (and do) discuss whether, or to what degree, an intuitive approach to Tarot is generally permissible. However, while hardly anybody objects to what writers (and readers) make of the TdM, there is a little less tolerance found among the RWS aficionados, and
much less among the member of the species of the Thothies.
To further illustrate this: Sallie Nichols chose the TdM as the object of her famous
Jung and Tarot not least because she felt she could freely develop her own associations to it, whereas more modern decks come with elaborate texts explaining what the artist meant to express by this and that detail. Even though it is said that a picture tells more than a thousand words...
Well, Arrien, Ziegler, Fiebig dared to take in the pictures directly rather than to read them primarily as illustrations of the BoT,
Book of the Law and Crowley's other writings (which, anticipating your next question, I call the intellectual approach). I think this is perfectly respectable because Tarot (ancient or modern) is first of all a pictorial language. The symbolism of the Thoth must be able to stand on its own, even if the BoT were tragically lost. It should not be seen as separate from symbolism in general, which is forming a part of the collective unconscious that belongs to all humanity, as Jungian psychology understands. Otherwise, what we see on the Thoth cards would be downgraded from symbols to mere
signs, which have much more specific meanings than the latter.
I am not sure either what you mean by intellectual. I understand that as being the area of thoughts, ideas and concepts.
I hope that I have been able to clarify what I meant by that.
I can't see why those who like Jungian approaches to the Thoth would only use intuition switching off any thinking... maybe I am misunderstanding you?
Of course, those who take an intuitive/associative ("Jungian") approach don't switch off their thinking (although that's what some would like us to believe
![Emote: Laugh :laugh: :laugh:](https://www.tarotforum.net/images/smilies/laugh.gif)
). Angeles Arrien, Ph.D., as a cultural anthropologist, award-winning author, educator, and consultant to many organizations and businesses, was hardly prone to that. But, as I said, she didn't choose to base her take on the deck on Crowley's writings. What makes her transgression worse is that the Thoth deck, according to Crowley, is meant as an illustration of
The Book of the Law - the most sacred text of the Thelemic religion.
Among orthodox Thothies equally well deplored Ziegler however did, time and again, incorporate material from the BoT in his
Mirror of the Soul - but I doubt that any of the aforesaid traditionalists read the book thoroughly enough to even notice this.
For me I can find at times Crowley's descriptions of symbols and interpretations in the Book of Thoth cryptic, or overwhelming with lots of references from different sources, mythology etc,.However, maybe this is because while it is useful to have an informed (academic/intellectual) basis, too concrete meanings would limit and stifle personal, intuitive subjective understandings.
Yes, Crowley is often a rather heavy read. We have many excellent threads on individual cards on the Thoth forum, by the way.
I am not sure there is a need to take an either/or approach.
Why would it have to be? To value my BoT, I don't need to throw my Ziegler etc into the garbage bin. The concern of the purists seems to be that people's understanding of the Thoth would get tainted by reading those "unworthy" authors.
eta as an aside I find trying to read Jung like that too, he gives a mind boggling amount of references, names, myths, ideasl, concepts until I have forgotten what the point was or what he actually thinks or whether he is just laying out the table with an informed background to the topics he is discussing.
What we see in the aforesaid Thoth books I would rather call the practical application of Jungian psychology than a scholarly treatment of it.