New Age Thoth Clones: Split off from Crowley Biographies

Lela said:

Makes me wonder if they ever knew how popular their beautiful deck would become, and what they would think of it's prominence in the world of tarot today?

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I think they would feel both vindicated and gratified about the deck's success. I doubt they would be so pleased with modern day attempts to sideline and supplant their original intention for the deck though. To them the Thoth was a pictorial summation of an entire occult philosophy, not a mere fortune telling device.

I think it is a testament to the strength of the deck that it has managed to resist the onslaught of hippy dippy New Age revisionists and avoided the tragic fate that has befallen of the RWS deck. That thing has had so much pumped into it over the years. In an attempt to make it mean all things to all people, it's ended up meaning nothing in particular. All it's earned is the dubious honour of the Tarot 101 deck.

Not so the Thoth, which is highly distinctive and does stand for something definite.

Aeon418 said:

I think it is a testament to the strength of the deck that it has managed to resist the onslaught of hippy dippy New Age revisionists and avoided the tragic fate that has befallen of the RWS deck. That thing has had so much pumped into it over the years. In an attempt to make it mean all things to all people, it's ended up meaning nothing in particular. All it's earned is the dubious honour of the Tarot 101 deck.

Not so the Thoth, which is highly distinctive and does stand for something definite.

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Don't speak too soon.

The Thoth is next in line for dumbed down colonisation. I have no doubt whatseover that we are going to see the Thoth suffer exactly the same fate as the RWS. No doubt whatsoever. Within 5 years at most. Of course it won't be the Thoth as we understand it, but all the watered down fluffiness we see in RWS clones and their ilk is not the RWS as we understand it either. Crowley had better start practising the turns in his grave.

The Sun and Moon, with its cute little potato-headed people is just the start. Of course we know it isn't truly Thoth but it has to be made accessible and - well - fluffy - in order for it to be pallatable. I just got the hyperactive teenage gore-fest Vampyre tarot today and it is veering firmly Thoth-wards in its attributions. The accompanying book is not at all RWS. RWS is old hat, people want their decks to be Thoth style, but without all the difficult bits.

Hippy Dippy New Age Revisionism can onslay anything.

Eek... How apocalyptic, Le Fanu!!

The strength of the community that champions the Thoth will prevent a complete over-run. And the strength of Crowley's own book makes it difficult to anesthetize. It has set me on a journey that has changed my outlook. It can hardly be avoided. You either take it on or you don't and if you don't then you will always wonder but you cannot half do it. Things I thought I'd never read have been at the top of my reading list - although I have been too swamped lately - but the air has turned colder and my Thoth-fest book trough is full and waiting for October's cooler days and long nights...

Bat Chicken said:

And the strength of Crowley's own book makes it difficult to anesthetize.

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the world is full of RWS users who would never dream of reading Waite.

Hate to sound so ominous, but the Thoth is as easy to repackage and dumb down and sell as the next commodity...

I wish I had your optimism.

But - yes - I'm definitely with you on what you say r.e the journey it compels us to undertake!

Interesting takes on the fate of the Thoth. I hate to see it happen, but I think LeFanu is probably right. As with anything that is occult/esoteric in nature, eventually it gets dumbed-down for the new-agey masses to digest. Sad but true.

Le Fanu said:

the world is full of RWS users who would never dream of reading Waite.

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I agree with this, I'd say most RWS users haven't read Waite.

If you are right Le Fanu, and I suspect you are, then perhaps Angeles Arrien's 'The Tarot Handbook' might become a sought after classic..... I guess what she tried to do in that book is what you are talking about to some degree. Now it seems there might be actual decks to go along with the 'new age, touchy-feely, go-with-whatever-feels-right' type of approach.

I think the main difference between the Thoth and the RWS in regard to this issue is that the RWS is easy to 'clone' because the minors can just be re-drawn in a prettied-up version without really impacting on the way the deck is used. With the Thoth, if a deck is based on the Thoth but has scenic minors then it isn't so much a Thoth clone as a 'Thoth inspired' deck. Because most people seem to have a preference for scenic minors then there is always a need to depart from the very thing that makes the Thoth what it is in order to appeal to that market. I suspect this is the reason it's remained 'safe' as long as it has.

Anyway, just my musings on what has been a very long week so apologies if they make no sense at all.

So.....to get back on topic.....I'm still reading Perdurabo and enjoying it a lot.

Moderating Note

Hi folks, I think this is a really interesting conversation and wouldn't want it hindered by needing to stick to the topic of the Perdurabo biography, so have moved things into this new thread

The original location can be found here.

I wonder if its possible to dumb down the Thoth and have a deck that is still Thothy? My feeling is folks really have no idea what the difference is between the Thoth and the Golden Dawn decks it was based on, and in most cases when someone says Thoth-based, they would actually say GD-based if they knew better. Many people copy the GD structure via the Thoth, but that tends to reveal their ignorance rather than make their deck a real Thoth clone.

I've thought about getting the Sun and Moon deck, its cute enough to make me curious about it. I'd never use it, but that is because its really not Thoth-y enough, I think its far more GD. I quite like and use occasionally the Vision Quest, which is again built with the Thoth in mind, but much more GD than Thelemic I think. But I think its a good deck for folks who would like the Thoth once they gave it a chance and get over some initial squeemishness.

The Haindl seems to borrow from both Thoth and GD among others, but isn't trying to be a clone or dumbing down. I think it has its own specific message, and just shares some structure. Other decks like the Via, Liber-T etc. are very strongly Thoth based, though not exactly a dumbing down.

I guess my bias is that if a deck is dumbed down enough to appeal to the new age masses, its necessary to remove everything that makes it "Thoth based" and so it no longer is a Thothy deck. It's more like an ignorant GD structured deck.

But maybe it is a positive thing, there are a lot more folks reading Waite now than there would be if we didn't have a million brainless Waite clones to choose from. Eventually some folks from our new-agey-thoth-bastardized-future will at least look at the source material surely?

There seem to be two different issues being raised here.

1) Attack of the Clones. Personally I'm not bothered about increasing numbers of Thoth clones. Everything gets imitated at one point or another. But as long as the original is still available it's no big deal.

Plus it's not altogether clear what exactly constitutes a Thoth clone. To me a clone is a deck that is based, more or less, on the visual style of the original. It's just a cheap knock-off.
But some people when they say Thoth clone or Thoth inspired, what they actually mean is Golden Dawn based. Ever since I joined this site I've been baffled by comments like, "the Haindl is a Thoth inspired deck". It is? Well it's news to me. It might share the same structure as the Thoth, but that structure is not unique to the Thoth. It's Golden Dawn. The Thoth Tarot is a Golden Dawn deck.

Take a look at the Aeclectic decks section. Why is the Via Tarot listed as a Thoth clone? The artwork is nothing like the Thoth.

Take a look in the "Thoth Inspired" section. How the hell any of those decks are inspired by the Thoth is a complete mystery to me. It should be called, Based on the Golden Dawn Tarot model.

2) Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

This is one of the more insidious attacks on the Thoth. Not content with merely copying, these people wish to claim the Thoth for their own purposes. They like the art, but they don't like the ideas and inspiration behind the art. Why? The ideas are deep, difficult, and require a degree of honest effort to even begin to get to grips with them. The New Age does not like this. "Deep" is too complicated. Shallow and no substance is better and easier. "Difficult" is too un-inclusive for the New Age and elitist as well because morons feel left out. "Effort" sounds too much like hard work. Why bother when you can be spoon fed some easily digestible slop that's makes you feel all warm and fuzy inside. Awww.

Also there's Aleister Crowley. While a castrated Thoth deck may be amenable to assimilation into the New Age collective, Crowley is not. Quite simply Crowley is too dangerous and disturbing for the New Age to handle. He is not the typical meek and mild, white light guru favoured by the timid and fainthearted. On the contrary, he's challenging, provocative, and controversial. To the New Ager's there is only one remedy. Get rid of him!

(Un)fortunately interest in Crowley in on the rise. Instead of being intimidated by the scare stories peddled by the ignorant and uninformed, growing numbers of people are having a look for themselves, and they are often surprised by what they find.
While Crowley's reputation my have been damaging during his life, it has been the saving grace of the Thoth and will be for quite a while yet.

Aeon418 said:

Quite simply Crowley is too dangerous and disturbing for the New Age to handle.

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What better cachét to a publisher than something dangerous? It gets better and better! And with the dawning of the "spooky deck" phase of tarot history (Aeon, where have you been?), what better messiah than a semi-threatening potpourri of wickedness/tabloid Satanism/that terrifying photo/ without having to read the difficult books? Llewellyn spotted it before we did.

As for whether it is possible to do with the Thoth what was done to the RWS. Does Kipling West's Halloween Tarot bear much of a resemblance to what Arthur & Pixie had in mind? It doesn't have to anyway. 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

The new Llewellyn Vampyre deck for example. The 7 of Grails (not Cups). Note in book;

Venus in Scorpio, Victory (Netzach) of Water. Kindred Spirits; Melohel, Chahaviah; Debauchery, Dissipation, Degeneration, "this card tells us to take hold of our dreams and indulge in sensual desires"

Cue card image; a gyrating GREEN gorgon, lit GREEN, stands over a brimming cauldron, a GREEN cupped-bra holding in her breasts, looking "DEBAUCHED" (as if she holds "obscene and shameful secrets of a guilty conscience"?) grasping a GREEN snake after coming out of a hole in the ground which seeps an eerie, poisonous GREEN half-light.

I don't think it has to be anything so official as "Thoth clone" or "Thoth based". Just the scarey diabolic bits to make the user feel special. They're not going to read Crowley's words anyway so it will never be wrong. Just as nobody reads Waite anymore before using the Hanson Roberts.