Lillie
Scion said:
I know I have been joking on this thread, but I am serious too.
I believe that the plague of Thoth clones and Crowley for the masses could happen.
I have made exaggerated and (hopefully) amusing examples of how it might be done and the point of it is the opposite of what Scion says above.
The attack of the Thoth clones would consist of veiling the Thothy goodness in various inane ways. All under the guise of 'making it easier to understand'.
The thoth has a notorious reputation for being 'difficult', for needing loads of learning and study and all that.
I've banged on often enough about that and about how it isn't as difficult or impenetrable as people think, but still so many people would like to get into the Thoth but say that it is 'too difficult', or they 'haven't studied enough yet'.
There is very little that can be added to the Thoth, the Liber T added the symbolism of the decans, and maybe there is other stuff, but on the whole it is (as has been said) a very complete and explicit system.
However, there is a hell of a lot that can be taken away.
That's where I see it going, (if it ever happens).
Imagine Arrien's book, then imagine a deck done by someone who has learned the Thoth using Arrien's book...
Not, I must say, that it is a particularly bad book. It's a bad book as far as understanding what Crowley intended with the thoth is concerned as it seems to pick and choose the symbols it wishes to see in the cards and relates them to whatever it wants to relate them to (anything but Crowley). But on the whole it's a fairly straight forward new age 'understand yourself' type tarot book.
I had a lot of fun doing the number thingies at the back.
Anyway, my point (finally). If the attack of the Thoth clones ever happens there will be loads of decks using bits of the symbolism, taking something from here and there, putting them together to form something that is vaguely thothish, but which misses most of the point of the deck. Or decks which skim the surface of meaning and take most of the difficult stuff out.
On the whole what we would be looking at is the Thoth without Crowley.
For instance the word 'Thelema' on the Ace of Swords. Either it would be ignored (as Arrien did), absent from the clone, or reinterpreted to mean something vague and new agey such as 'if you visualise it hard enough it will come true', or perhaps something deeper like Nietzsche's 'Will to Power'.
Anything but what Crowley really meant by it.
A further thing would be if the new deck did relate the word 'Thelema' to Crowley, but went on to interpret in an incorrect manner, saying that Crowley had not meant what he meant by it, but had in fact meant something else. Something more palatable, something easier to grasp, something that more people want to hear, like it is your true will to have whatever you desire most.
This is just an example based on one thing on one card, but I hope it serves as an illustration of what I can see coming should the new age writers ever decide that the Thoth is the next big thing for revisioning.
Thoth lite.
And what a sad empty thing it will be.
