New Age Thoth Clones: Split off from Crowley Biographies

Le Fanu said:

What better cachét to a publisher than something dangerous?

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Too niche. A de-fanged and de-Crowley-ed Thoth would be a bigger draw. You could sell that to anyone. Isn't that the whole point? $$$

Le Fanu said:

What matters is what you feel, and the Crowley Thoth, with its atmospheric concepts - ruin, satiety, success - can be abstracted into whatever we want, whatever we feel but with enough Crowley pointers for it to lay claims to something dangerous

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Oh no, not again!

How are ruin, satiety, and success in anyway unique to the Thoth? It's Golden Dawn.

I didn't think it possible, but you've officially made that Vampyre deck (it pains just to type that spelling) seem even more vile than it did from its scans and that awful thread about it...

But I wonder why, after decades of Waite clones, would now be the time to start in on the Thoth clones? If it were going to happen, wouldn't it have done already?

I've never really understood why everything needs to be a clone of one of the two. Can't the Haindl just be the Haindl without having to be a Thoth clone, or Thoth based, or Thoth inspired? Sure it borrows its structure to an extent, but the similarities basically end there. Not every work of impressionism is a Monet clone, or even Monet inspired, right? How did tarot get so stuck in those boxes?

I have to agree that it's really more about the Golden Dawn. Without the Golden Dawn, tarot as we speak about it here wouldn't exist. Almost all modern decks are 'Golden Dawn Inspired', and by that I'd say about 99%. I guess it's just that the Thoth is more obviously Golden Dawn than RWS. Mostly this is because the RWS has been treated for years with the whole 'go-with-whatever-fells-right' type of approach and so now any intended meanings are buried beneath all the new age stuff, and as nobody reads Waite then who would know any different? Also, I think it's because the Thoth has the titles which provide a clearer link to the Golden Dawn, despite some of the titles actually being different. In truth these same titles apply to Waite's deck too. The thing that makes the Thoth unique though is Crowley. His personality overshadows the deck and if you work with the Thoth, you work with Crowley.

Don't forget about invocations, Kabbalah, Enochian, Thelema and some eastern philosophies. Oh, and the Egyptians too.

Those who dwell in New Age culture, I assume, gets tired of doing some kind of mumbo-jumbo rituals that they don't understand and are too complicated. They simply see no point in doing all the complicated stuffs. Therefore, superficiality is a good thing, and good things are marketable.

Aeon418 said:

Too niche. A de-fanged and de-Crowley-ed Thoth would be a bigger draw. You could sell that to anyone. Isn't that the whole point? $$$

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Lord no! The whole point is that a fanged demonic Crowley (preferably with that shaven-headed photo nearby) is infinitely more marketable. People like bad boys. Bad boys (and girls) are the staple of the tabloids. Why on earth would the mainstream want Crowley de-fanged? How dull and unsellable is that? Surely you have your finger on the pulse of popular culture, Aeon

And for those who say "it's Golden Dawn, it's Golden Dawn". Maybe, but if it doesn't have the cachét of Crowley, it is something else.

And people don't need to get as far as the complicated stuff anyway. The tarot mainstream is very selective.

I don't agree zan either that it would have happened by now. "Satiety" (for want of a better word! ) with RWS is quite a recent phenomenon.

zan_chan said:

I've never really understood why everything needs to be a clone of one of the two. Can't the Haindl just be the Haindl without having to be a Thoth clone, or Thoth based, or Thoth inspired? Sure it borrows its structure to an extent, but the similarities basically end there. Not every work of impressionism is a Monet clone, or even Monet inspired, right? How did tarot get so stuck in those boxes?

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Totally agree with this. It drives me mad too...

Le Fanu said:

The whole point is that a fanged demonic Crowley (preferably with that shaven-headed photo nearby) is infinitely more marketable. People like bad boys.

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In a way your aiming this at completely the wrong person. 20 years ago I might have resonated with the bad boy, rebel image that "seems" to surround Crowley. But not today. I grew out of it.

Likewise some people become attracted to the Thoth or Thelema due Crowley's use of "seemingly" evil apocalyptic symbolism. The Great Beast 666 and the Whore of Babylon. I'm sure to some it does seem dark, exciting, and rebelious. A real two-fingered salute to the religion and moral values of the older generations. But to me there is absolutely nothing dark or demonic about any of it. It's all very positive and light as far as I'm concerned.

But then again.....

For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.

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The 'new age' can assimilate anything and spit it back out as a castrated, fluffy, love and light mess of nonsense.

Look at Wicca.
How many of the wicca people who think Crowley is too dark, to nasty for their delicate sensibilities know that he had a hand in it's creation?
Or that Gerald Gardner was a member of the OTO.

Chew it up, spit it out, make it pink, fluffy and palatable for the masses.

Love and light, Darlings, love and bloody light...

EDIT.
And also how many know that Wicca is not some ancient religion but was the creation of Gardner in the 40's, (with a little bit of help from his friends) to satisfy his desire for power and his fetishes for scourging, knives and nudity.

Right old pervert he was...

But there we go.

Personally I am already designing my own fluffy nonsense thoth clone.
If there is going to be a bandwagon I want to sit near the front.

Lillie said:

Personally I am already designing my own fluffy nonsense thoth clone.
If there is going to be a bandwagon I want to sit near the front.

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But in a more general sense the use of the word "clone" has always been a toughie for me. I have never quite understood what one of these actually is and whenever the subject comes up in threads everyone starts weighing in and questioning it anyway so I end up being none the wiser. But anyway - that's neither here nor there - what I keep coming back to is that to talk of "clones" makes something sound terribly organised and well-thought out. It doesn't have to be. In a pop culture world, references are tossed around and *sampled* and *referenced*. They don't have to be consistant, they don't have to be informed. What I think is that we are going to see more "nodding" towards the Thoth deck (maybe Golden Dawn, but only if it has Crowley lurking in the background for effect) in the future of tarot. Just a hunch of mine. More than a hunch actually.

Aeon418 said:

Likewise some people become attracted to the Thoth or Thelema due Crowley's use of "seemingly" evil apocalyptic symbolism. The Great Beast 666 and the Whore of Babylon. I'm sure to some it does seem dark, exciting, and rebelious. A real two-fingered salute to the religion and moral values of the older generations. But to me there is absolutely nothing dark or demonic about any of it. It's all very positive and light as far as I'm concerned.

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But something else has happened. In academic circles and perhaps a bit beyond, Crowley has become re-evaluated, reassessed and is now considered quite a seminal figure (not just written off as "wicked"), mixing with Clive Bell and the Bloomsburies & other 20th Century artistic luminaries in Paris. Of course this always was a part of his biography, but I think he is recognised as a more important figure in 20th Century cultural life than he was 25 years ago. I have academic friends who study his correspondence with important literary figures. He really is a part of that package. What I mean is that something else has happened in the way he is seen and this inevitably filters down...

Lillie said:

And also how many know that Wicca is not some ancient religion but was the creation of Gardner in the 40's, (with a little bit of help from his friends) to satisfy his desire for power and his fetishes for scourging, knives and nudity.

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Actually Wicca is an excellent example of what happens to a tradition that gets seized by the New Age movement. The original Gardnerian Wicca is quite daring. Ritual nudity, sexual initiation rites, flegllation, etc.

But it's not really the sort of thing you can market to teenage girls and stay out of prison. The answer is to completely gut Wicca and replace the origianl stuff with with a weird hybrid of eco-feminist goddess worship complete with revisionist history and love spells. It's instant money in the bank. Isn't that right Llewellyn? $ Ka-Ching $