IDS: The Thoth. (We are not afraid of you!)

so far so good.

PeterS said:

I trimmed away the border, the keywords and the numbers. It was straight down to the image. Now at first I was confused about which card was which because I was still new with the deck. I had to count cups, and wands to figure out what card I was looking at each time I used them.

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The more I look at my cards, the more I find the border not very appealing at all.... the cards are so beautiful that I really feel like that is all I want to see.

I had a realy issue with the courts and only now that I have been using the Liber T that has essentially the same courts have I got them down.

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I've just gone through my deck and taken out all the courts, put them in suit and with that I can see how each suit has a certain amount of the same colours within the images and colours that tie in with their elements too ie; Wands = Fire = lots of red, orange and yellow... Disks = Earth = browns & dark green 'earthy' colours... Cups = Water = Aqua blues & greens, giving the 'feeling' of water.... Swords = Air = Sky blue & white plus they give me a cold feeling which to me is how I see 'Sword' types..... this will help me to remember and recognise these cards.

I am only now just getting the keywords down as well. That is one of my goals for the IDS.

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I don't really know a great deal about this deck other than it took Lady Harris over 5 years to paint all of the images and it wasn't printed until after both of them had passed so I am wondering who came up with these keywords? Was it Aleister or the people who bought about the printing of the first deck? I find keywords can be distracting and I sometimes wonder if they are a good thing or a bad thing?

The keywords are from the Golden Dawn's Book T... which is the source of Crowley's fundamental Tarot structure. He modified the titles (actually just reducing multiple word titles to single word titles) but they're straight Golden Dawn.

The most likely authorial candidate for the titles in Book T is Mathers...

Thanks for that Scion....

I'll have to find a way to get my hands on a copy of that book..... I didn't even know who Mathers was until I just googled him D) and clearly I didn't know he had that much input into the deck.... like I said this is all new to me and all the other outside information that is coming up with it, is really interesting..... I thought I was just trying to learn as much as I can about the images of this deck, but there is so much more to it.....

It's kind of a flower that keeps blooming with bigger and stranger petals...

Book T is available LOTS of places online. But here's a link to a page at Tarotpedia with some histoorical info AND with a link to a place where you can find the document for perusal: http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Book_"T"

And here's a PDF copy you can download: http://www.arcaneadvisors.com/archives/t.pdf

Scion said:

It's kind of a flower that keeps blooming with bigger and stranger petals...

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Ain't that the truth!

Thank you for the PDF download...... downloaded and saved

Just out of curiosity, do you trim? and have you trimmed your Thoth?

LOL I don't trim... BUT I have a beautifully trimmed Thoth loving sliced by Valeria and given to me on one of the earliest AT Trade Trains. It's magnificent. The deck started out as the biggest size available and the final result is a real treasure. Valeria is a stickler for details (like me) and she uses a fresh blade on the cutter when trimming a deck... unbelievable precision. And she's so skilled that when she finished the final product looks like it was printed that way: perfect edgesevery scrap of art saved, etc.

Truth be told, I don't mind the keywords (because they're a mnemonic for the original magical context of the design), but those borders are distracting. Also, reading with a trimmed Thoth can be deeply eye-opening, ESPECIALLY when you're wrapping your head around Lady Harris' projective synthetic geometry (great articles about PSG on the web btw)... when you start to realize that the deck isn't just perfect card by card, but that ALL of the cards actually are painted to interact explicitly when laid against each other in various positons. Studying the Thoth for a while makes most modern deck "design" look pretty feeble.

For my own IDS , I have a trimmed Liber T (courtesy of Rainwolf, another generous, scrupulous trimmer) which I've been using off and on. It's tiny because LS decks start out so slender, but it's really useful for seeing the connective geometry between cards, much of which Serio has preserved to a degree... and since I know the Thoth well, the links seem clear even in this "reimagined" version.

I could never trim my Thoth!!! *hugs the deck tightly* My precious!!!

Scion said:

The keywords are from the Golden Dawn's Book T...

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Oh, Scion!!! Shame on you. They are not keywords, they are the actual names of cards.

scion said:

I don't use reversals with any Crowley-based deck.

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That's funny cause when I first started studying the deck I decided not to read reversals for this one (when I do finally get down to reading with it) and I'm not sure why. Something just tells me it's not necessary. This would be the first time in 8 yrs of reading tarot that I've ever not read reversals.