Divinatory Thoth meanings seem so mundane

Freddie

Hi All,

I am in the midst of reading 'Understanding A.C. Thoth Tarot' for the second time. I must say it is a grade A book and it is worth every cent that I paid for it (about 11.00 on Amazon new). I have added about five of his other books to my basket since getting this one.

I expected to find divinatory meanings that more closely resembled my own in this book, but this hasn't happened. I have recently began to attain a basic understanding of Themela and HGA and this has led to my seeing the cards in a different light than before.

I wonder why the Thoth seems to be a new vision of Tarot, but the divinatory meanings still reflect the traditional ones?

Any opinions?


Freddie
 

Barleywine

Freddie said:
Hi All,

I am in the midst of reading 'Understanding A.C. Thoth Tarot' for the second time. I must say it is a grade A book and it is worth every cent that I paid for it (about 11.00 on Amazon new). I have added about five of his other books to my basket since getting this one.

I expected to find divinatory meanings that more closely resembled my own in this book, but this hasn't happened. I have recently began to attain a basic understanding of Themela and HGA and this has led to my seeing the cards in a different light than before.

I wonder why the Thoth seems to be a new vision of Tarot, but the divinatory meanings still reflect the traditional ones?

Any opinions?

Freddie
Click to expand...

It looks to me like DuQuette just copied the divinatory meanings for the Major Arcana directly out of the back of the Book of Thoth, without any additional keywords or commentary, and Crowley's versions were themselves largely a reworking of what he had assimilated from the Golden Dawn. As I see it, there were two different uses for the tarot in the Golden Dawn system: the more important one was path-working on the Tree of Life and the lesser one was divination. Neither one was intended to be used for long as the candidate advanced in grade. It would seem apparent that, given the more exoteric focus of divination, the card meanings for that purpose would naturally be more mundane. Also, there was really no third "psychological" school of tarot interpretation at that time that might have produced a more metaphysical spin. The Thoth tarot doesn't really fall that far from the GD tree, despite Crowley's several innovations, and he was thoroughly steeped in the Order's method of divination. I tend not to use the divinatory meanings verbatim since, as you've noticed, they don't always have a meaningful connection to the deeper qabalistic associations; instead I consider the more esoteric correspondences and build my readings from those as much as possible.
 

Grigori

DuQuette's book is intended as a primer, to assist in understanding the bigger picture about the Thoth, so you can dive into Crowley etc. with a firm foundation. It's also intended to convey only Crowley's work, and not DuQuette's personal approach. So DuQuette devoted almost no time to divinatory meanings, giving only the brief summaries that Crowley included in the BoT. At this time using tarot for divination was still largely frowned on, it was seen by GD members as a tool for higher pursuits.

If you want divinatory meanings, Banzaf's work may be more useful, though less accurate to Crowley's vision of course.
 

Barleywine

Grigori said:
DuQuette's book is intended as a primer, to assist in understanding the bigger picture about the Thoth, so you can dive into Crowley etc. with a firm foundation. It's also intended to convey only Crowley's work, and not DuQuette's personal approach. So DuQuette devoted almost no time to divinatory meanings, giving only the brief summaries that Crowley included in the BoT. At this time using tarot for divination was still largely frowned on, it was seen by GD members as a tool for higher pursuits.

If you want divinatory meanings, Banzaf's work may be more useful, though less accurate to Crowley's vision of course.
Click to expand...

I can also recommend Keywords for the Crowley Tarot by Banzhaf and Theler.

And here are a couple of good websites:

http://www.tryskelion.com/tryskelion/ (look under The Arts/Tarot/Major or Minor Arcana)
http://hermetic.com/crowley/book-of-thoth/court-cards.html

Other sites were recommended in threads here but I found these the most useful.
 

Barleywine

MsRed said:
I already knew Tryskelion, but your second link, Barleywine, was new to me - so thanks for sharing!

I also like Raven's Tarot Site (http://www.corax.com/tarot/) and recently I discovered Supertarot (http://supertarot.co.uk/major-arcana/fool.htm) but I didn't have time yet to really get into it. But it looks like it holds lots of information.
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I have Raven's site bookmarked but don't go there much since I have a hard time reading small tan text on a black background. I discovered Supertarot through another thread here where Paul Hughs-Barlow was comparing various Thoth companion books in a YouTube video.
 

Laura Borealis

Barleywine said:
I have Raven's site bookmarked but don't go there much since I have a hard time reading small tan text on a black background.
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Your browser may have an option to help with that. In Mozilla Firefox, for instance, I can go to the View menu and choose Page Style > No Style. The page then appears as black text on a white background. And it's easy to reverse when you leave the page.
 

Always Wondering

Freddie said:
Hi All,

I am in the midst of reading 'Understanding A.C. Thoth Tarot' for the second time. I must say it is a grade A book and it is worth every cent that I paid for it (about 11.00 on Amazon new). I have added about five of his other books to my basket since getting this one.

I expected to find divinatory meanings that more closely resembled my own in this book, but this hasn't happened. I have recently began to attain a basic understanding of Themela and HGA and this has led to my seeing the cards in a different light than before.

I wonder why the Thoth seems to be a new vision of Tarot, but the divinatory meanings still reflect the traditional ones?

Any opinions?


Freddie
Click to expand...


My new favorite.

James A. Eshelman's, Liber Theta: Tarot Symbolism & Divination
http://www.thelema.org/publications/

AW
 
Symbols of Thelemic polarities Crowley & Fortune book