Thoth without the taglines?

Thoth Without Taglines?

I'm trying to tolerantly comprehend the circumcision of the Thoth Tarot. ( Artus 15 may be already circumcised, anyway. Joke .) Seriously now, doesn't the Tarot starting with the Marseilles conjoin Number, Name, and Picture in the Major Arcana? Did not Crowley and Harris intend to keep to this tradition? Did he not significantly change "Temperance" to "Art" and "Strength" to "Lust", etc.? Is there not an important interplay and combination of meaning through Number with non-verbal Image with Name? Possibly some see a need to expunge the words/names, like Akhnaton tried to do with "Amon-Ra". But isn't this editing a little too much? (Obviously, if you buy it, you can do to it what you will.)

Frank Hall said:

I'm trying to tolerantly comprehend the circumcision of the Thoth Tarot. ( Artus 16 may be already circumcised, anyway. Joke .) Seriously now, doesn't the Tarot starting with the Marseilles conjoin Number, Name, and Picture in the Major Arcana? Did not Crowley and Harris intend to keep to this tradition? Did he not significantly change "Temperance" to "Art" and "Strength" to "Lust", etc.? Is there not an important interplay and combination of meaning through Number with non-verbal Image with Name? Possibly some see a need to expunge the words/names, like Akhnaton tried to do with "Amon-Ra". But isn't this editing a little too much? (Obviously, if you buy it, you can do to it what you will.)

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I've not had the courage to give my deck the chop, but I can understand the attraction. (I wouldn't dare to write in the pages of a workbook, cutting the cards is too final for me)

I don't find the borders the best feature of the Thoth deck, and many people have commented how great the artwork looks without the borders (and the artwork is the reason I bought the deck after all). I'd be tempted to buy another large size deck, and trim it to be a smaller one, with just the pictures.

That's not to say I disregard the names, or the tradition (or changes to the tradition) they highlight. The decision is purely an aesthetic one. The drawback to this, is the spoiling of the artwork on the reverse of the card.

I've only recently gotten the Thoth, so this is an idea I might float again when I'm more comfortable reading with them. (And I've got something more technical than an old pair of scizzors to do the job)

Thoth Without the Taglines?

I can understand the aesthetic angle on it, but this really changes the whole symbolic complex. You have a good point about the backs being damaged in the process. Another whole pattern broken. It would be better if a publisher would take care of this with an alternative deck, complete backs and only-art fronts.

Frank Hall said:

It would be better if a publisher would take care of this with an alternative deck, complete backs and only-art fronts.

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I agree very much! Even a fine thin border would be OK, but I'd love to see the Thoth borderless. I've recently seen a couple decks without borders, and they are so much more appealing visually. With artwork like the Thoth I imagine it would be even more spectacular.

Even with the titles removed, I don't think I would see the cards differently, as I already know the titles, etc. Although if someone was learning the Thoth obviously the titles would be best to use initially.

The few times I've used the Thoth for others, they've found the titles quite confronting. So there is the appeal of them not knowing the name of the cards, so they have to wait for my interpretation to really react. (Although obviously much of the artwork screams the meaning to anyone who actually looks)

Looking around the forum it seems most people with the Thoth have both sizes, I can't see why the publisher would mind selling us three versions instead of two.

Rusty Neon said:

The Thoth deck is available in a number of different languages. If you buy a deck with keywords in a language that you're not familar with, the keywords might not be as distracting.

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I got my Serbian edition today. I think this was an excellent idea. Many thanks to Rusty Neon.

It has roman script which was a bit disappointing, as I was hoping for the traditional latin alphabet. (Looks like the west is taking over the world, and spreading the alphabet) It's printed by AG Muller so the quality is exactly the same as my American version.

Of to enjoy it now.

similia said:

I got my Serbian edition today. I think this was an excellent idea. Many thanks to Rusty Neon.

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You're very welcome. Enjoy!

It has roman script which was a bit disappointing, as I was hoping for the traditional latin alphabet. (Looks like the west is taking over the world, and spreading the alphabet) It's printed by AG Muller so the quality is exactly the same as my American version.

Of to enjoy it now.

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If it's in Latin, i.e., Roman alphabet (rather than Cyrillic alphabet), it might be Croatian rather than Serbian, although Serbs sometimes also write Serbo-Croato-Bosnian using the Latin alphabet. Is there any Serbian or Croatian city named on the box or LWB? If so, that might give a clue as to which of 'language' (Serbian vs. Croatian) it is. Maybe AG Muller is trying to cover both off with the one version.

Rusty Neon said:

If it's in Latin, i.e., Roman alphabet (rather than Cyrillic alphabet), it might be Croatian rather than Serbian, although Serbs sometimes also write Serbo-Croato-Bosnian using the Latin alphabet. Is there any Serbian or Croatian city named on the box or LWB? If so, that might give a clue as to which of 'language' (Serbian vs. Croatian) it is. Maybe AG Muller is trying to cover both off with the one version.

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Tarot Garden thought it was a Serbian deck, possibly Yugoslavian.
The bottom of the box says:
Izdavaci: BGL & Synergie, Czech Republic

I think my geographic ignorance has also contributed. I just spotted this website with a comparison of Latin and Cryillic http://www.writingsystems.net/languages/serbocroatian/serbocroatianboth.htm

I had thought the Cryllic and Latin were a similar script, and Roman was what we commonly use.

How far of base am I?

similia said:

Tarot Garden thought it was a Serbian deck, possibly Yugoslavian.
The bottom of the box says:
Izdavaci: BGL & Synergie, Czech Republic

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Hmm ... I wonder if this is a Czech deck, versus being a Serbo-Croatian deck distributed through the Czech Republic.

Here's what the Czech alphabet looks like:

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/czech.htm

Here's what the Serbo-Croatian Latin alphabet looks like:

http://www.ask-group.co.uk/publish/croatianalph.htm

There are slight differences in the Czech vs. Serbo-Croatian alphabets, because of the differences in types of accent marks.

Looking at the cards in the deck, which language's alphabet do you think it's in?

I think my geographic ignorance has also contributed. I just spotted this website with a comparison of Latin and Cryillic http://www.writingsystems.net/languages/serbocroatian/serbocroatianboth.htm

I had thought the Cryllic and Latin were a similar script, and Roman was what we commonly use.

How far of base am I?

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The Cyrillic alphabet is like the one used to write Russian. The Latin (also known as Roman) alphabet is like the one used to write English.

This link compares the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet with the Serbo-Croatian Latin alphabet:

http://www.writingsystems.net/languages/serbocroatian/serbocroatiancyrillic.htm

Mm, well certainly its not Cyrillic.

I can't really differentiate between the other two with any certainty. The only accent marks in the text appear above the letters "s" and "c"

In both cases its the small v shaped tick, that seems to be common to both. There are no accents above any of the "z" if that is significant. (shrugs)

I wish I could scan the box and show you, but my new XP OS refuses to talk to my Win98 scanner. (Must do something about that!)

I can't think of any Serbian, Croation or Czech people I could ask. A few Russian I know might be able to help me out.

The interesting thing I noticed is the language looks a phonetic. Thoth is spelt "tot", Aleister Crowley is spelt "Alister Krouli" etc.

I've just had the idea to look at the domain name for the email address on the publisher. http://web.volny.cz/

Looks like a Czech deck in light of that.

Thanks so much for you help!!

This may have been mentioned in some thread before, but I thought it would be worth bringing up just in case...

I recently purchased "the large icky green" Thoth in the white box from eBay, and I really love it--because the keywords/card titles are unnoticeable unless you are looking for them. They just fade into the green border, and don't jump out at you at all. I had orginally wanted to get a large version of the Thoth just so I could trim the borders, get rid of the keywords, and still have decently sized cards...but I'm so happy with this deck that I really don't need to trim it. True, the colors are a bit sharper on my smaller, purple box Thoth. But in my opinion, the colors are still okay on the "icky green" Thoth, and the hard-to-spot titles are a big plus.