Is there any Waite book actually explaining the RWS attributions?

closrapexa said:

I thought best to start from scratch, so to speak

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If you're working with Golden Dawn based decks it's not really necessary to start from scratch. A lot of the knowledge you aquire along the way is directly transferable between Golden Dawn decks, even if the decks look radically different.

The Thoth and the RWS might look like they are worlds apart, but the same system of qabalistic and astrological correspondences under-pins each deck. And it is from this system that the core meanings for the cards are derived. Once you understand this you will be able to see how a lot of information written for one Golden Dawn deck is directly applicable to another Golden Dawn based deck.

If you want an example take a look at the RWS Judgement and the Thoth Aeon cards. Radically different designs, but how come the core meanings for these cards are practically identical? Because each card draws it's core meaning from the Hebrew letter, Shin, and the element of Fire. The differences in the artwork are shading and nuance on top of the basic core meaning.

When I was researching the Hermetic I discovered that all GD members were asked to design their own decks. Waite was a GD member so the RW is his own deck for the GD with GD attributes. He published his personal deck.

As far as I'm aware Mathers' was the original GD tarot deck. A copy of his deck has never been found but all subsequent decks were based in part on his.

From comparing the different decks, they merely take different twists on the same version of the Hermetic Qabalah. Waites' is different to Crowleys in that his has more Free Masonary symbolism in each card for example. There are of course other differences but the primary sources of information are relatively similar.

An invaluable resource to the Waite as well as other GD based decks is the Tarot Library:
http://tarot.org.il/Library/English.html

It was through studying the Hermetic that I discovered Paul Foster Case whose writing proved very insightful on the Thoth as well as other GD decks.

Funny you should mention the Hermetic, I just came home from a New Age shop and I looked through the cards on the Hermetic and I notices some striking similarities between it and other GD decks I know, for example the sword on the Ace of Swords is the Thoth swords, and a few others I noticed but forgot on the way home.

Actually, I was kind of disappointed by it, it's been on my wishlist a while, but I didn't really connect with it, but I might get it for study purposes. Problem is, in Israel the average deck costs about $30-50 in stored so you can't just get a deck on a whim, unless you order it.

Aeon418 said:

The Thoth and the RWS might look like they are worlds apart, but the same system of qabalistic and astrological correspondences under-pins each deck. And it is from this system that the core meanings for the cards are derived. Once you understand this you will be able to see how a lot of information written for one Golden Dawn deck is directly applicable to another Golden Dawn based deck.

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That's actually one of the problems, I may know a few things having picked them up on the way, but apart from the Thoth study I'm doing currently, which like I wrote to caridwen helps me with other GD decks, I never actually read much GD literature, so I'm hoping to do it at least once.

I know the Thoth and RWS are similar, but some things confuse me, like the six of swords Thirteen mentioned in another thread, they're very different. But I suppose I'll find the answer to that in time. But, again, I wish Waite had written a Liber Pam or something or other like that.

closrapexa said:

Funny you should mention the Hermetic, I just came home from a New Age shop and I looked through the cards on the Hermetic and I notices some striking similarities between it and other GD decks I know, for example the sword on the Ace of Swords is the Thoth swords, and a few others I noticed but forgot on the way home.

Actually, I was kind of disappointed by it, it's been on my wishlist a while, but I didn't really connect with it, but I might get it for study purposes. Problem is, in Israel the average deck costs about $30-50 in stored so you can't just get a deck on a whim, unless you order it.

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The Hermetic isn't an original GD deck. It's based on the decks of Mathers, Crowley, Case, Soror and Levi.

There is a guide to how the GD members were expected to design their decks but they all added their own variations:
http://www.tarot.org.il/Library/Misc/The Tarot Trumps.html

An Introduction to the Study of Tarot by Paul Foster Case is a great place to start:
http://www.golden-dawn.com/goldendawn/UserFiles/en/file/pdf/intro.pdf

closrapexa said:

I know the Thoth and RWS are similar, but some things confuse me, like the six of swords Thirteen mentioned in another thread, they're very different.

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I don't know what Thirteen said, but I don't think they are all that different. In my experience a lot of people have a hard time reconciling the Thoth and RWS 6 of Swords because Crowley named the card, Science.

Actually, you're right, on further consideration, they aren't that different at all. Of course, one might argue as to right and wrong and intuition and such, but I always saw the RWS six as a kind of loss; the figures are hooded and seem to be in mourning, going to another shore but not by choice. But since we're talking about the GD here I cheated and looked it up in the PKT and saw that it's not actually that bad, as I thought

The Waite-Smith illustration for the Six of Swords seems to me to be more literal than that of Crowley, but they are both Mercury in Aquarius. The passengers in the boat may be dead. Charon is ferrying them across the river Styx to Hades. (I think I would be mourning too.) Mercury, as Psychopomp, brings the souls to Charon, and Waite may have actually conflated Mercury and Charon into the same character. Aquarius is an air sign, but it also symbolizes water (hence the astrological symbol for Aquarius).

Crowley went with the astrological interpretation of Mercury in Aquarius, which is associated with logical thinking, objectivity, originality, science.

ETA. The Waite-Smith illustrations in the Minors are not necessarily interpretations. They may be intended (at least in some instances) merely to jog the memory about the associated Decan of the Zodiac. I will always think of Mercury in Aquarius when I see the Six of Swords.

Think of A Beautiful Mind on the 6 of swords. One that is almost troubled by the need for logic maybe finding serenity in science

starlightexp said:

Think of A Beautiful Mind on the 6 of swords. One that is almost troubled by the need for logic maybe finding serenity in science

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Good one, starlightexp! In graduate school, the first paper I had to read in a seminar on partial differential equations was a paper by John Nash (Beautiful Mind) on the fundamental solution of elliptic equations. Aaaarrrggh!