Severed Heads in Liber T deck

Richard

Thoth is not really a particularly bleak deck. I don't know how it got that reputation. The companion book, The Book of Thoth, is very upbeat in its descriptions of the Pip cards. For example, Crowley explains that the Fives represent change, and this makes people uncomfortable because we tend to resist change. The description of Death is likewise upbeat, emphasizing the idea of change, transition, even resurrection.

Perhaps Crowley was a bit too successful in publicizing himself as a creepy amoral weirdo, a reaction to the climate of religious extremism in which he was raised, and this carries over into people's uninformed opinions of his Tarot deck.
 

Emily

Thanks GoldenWolf, I didn't know Scion's guide was online. I found it, wow, there's a lot of information there, and I'm looking forward to reading it.

Emily, yes, I did try reading both the Thoth LWB and the Liber T LWB with the cards. I've only just started, but it seemed to me that the Liber T description of some of the minors was even more bleak than the Crowley Thoth. I appreciate your description of the 2 spheres. On my first scan of the deck, I think that was the most gruesome-seeming card, so I'm very happy to hear more about the meaning behind it.

I just received the DuQuette book and Snuffin today, so I've got a lot of reading ahead of me.

I like the DuQuette and Snuffin books too. I know at first glance the Liber T artwork can seem bleak and a little depressing but it is a deck with layers. I like this deck because it was completely different from what I had been using, which were RWS and clone decks and it has its roots in the Thoth so if I get really stuck on a card, I have Thoth books to fall back on.

Its been my primary reading deck for around 7 years now and I still don't use it to its full potential. I keep meaning to learn more about the Decans and cabbalah but the Liber T reads
amazingly well at its most basic. I think the Liber T dumbs down for me :) that's probably why I love it so much, and why its kept my interest for so many years.

Edited to add

I also forgot to mention Scion's brilliant PDF - the kind of information that the average person i.e me, would never have found access to had it not been for Scion and his research and dedication.
 

Emily

There are quite a few animals in the Liber T too. :)
 

foolMoon

I think it is symbolism for making someone / becoming utterly powerless and incompetent, or kicking someone out from work / stage.

For example in some foreign languages of Far Eastern countries, for firing someone from his job due to his incompetence or mishandling some issues in work, they use expression "cut his throat off".
 

prg5001

Not sure if it helps but I expect it may be connected:

"In alchemy, one of the symbols of nigredo is the ‘decapitation’, and also the ‘raven’s head’ (caput corvi). Those symbols refer to the dying of the common man, the dying of his inner chaos and doubt because he is unable to find the truth in himself... (Johann Daniel Mylius, Philosophia reformata, Frankfurt, 1622)"

from http://www.soul-guidance.com/houseofthesun/alchemy 2.htm
 

Zephyros

Not sure if it helps but I expect it may be connected:

"In alchemy, one of the symbols of nigredo is the ‘decapitation’, and also the ‘raven’s head’ (caput corvi). Those symbols refer to the dying of the common man, the dying of his inner chaos and doubt because he is unable to find the truth in himself... (Johann Daniel Mylius, Philosophia reformata, Frankfurt, 1622)"

from http://www.soul-guidance.com/houseofthesun/alchemy 2.htm

This is very interesting, and ties into the raven on Art's pot that LRichard mentioned. In essence, what is happening inside the pot is Death, the "caput corvi" atop the "caput mortuum."
 

ravenest

Psychologically speaking:

" For Carl Jung, 'the rediscovery of the principles of alchemy came to be an important part of my work as a pioneer of psychology'. As a student of alchemy, he (and his followers) 'compared the "black work" of the alchemists (the nigredo) with the often highly critical involvement experienced by the ego, until it accepts the new equilibrium brought about by the creation of the self'.

" Jungians interpreted nigredo in two main psychological senses.

" The first sense represented a subject's initial state of undifferentiated unawareness, 'the first nigredo, that of the unio naturalis, is an objective state, visible from the outside only...an unconscious state of non-differentiation between self and object, consciousness and the unconscious'. Here the subject is '"too conscious"...in reality unconscious of the unconscious; i.e. the connection with the instincts'. "

[ One of the perceived aims of religion ... but often a problem as one cannot force suppression of the connection with the instincts . ]

" In the second sense, 'the nigredo of the process of individuation on the other hand is a subjectively experienced process brought about by the subject's painful, growing awareness of his shadow aspects'. It could be described as a moment of maximum despair, that is a prerequisite to personal development. As individuation unfolds, so 'confrontation with the shadow produces at first a dead balance, a standstill that hampers moral decisions and makes convictions ineffective or even impossible...nigredo, tenebrositas, chaos, melancholia'. Here is 'the darkest time, the time of despair, disillusionment, envious attacks; the time when Eros and Superego are at daggers drawn, and there seems no way forward...nigredo, the blackening'.

" Only subsequently would come 'an enantiodromia; the nigredo gives way to the albedo...the ever deepening descent into the unconscious suddenly becomes illumination from above'. "

[ Part of the way crowley's system works and the initiate's view - enantiodromia as opposed to what some , who only perceive in the 'first sense of Negrito' ... (as above) .

For a further look into this process (and the Art card);

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enantiodromia ]


" Further steps of the alchemical opus include such images as albedo (whiteness), citrinitas (yellowness), and rubedo (redness). Jung also found psychological equivalents for many other alchemical concepts, with 'the characterization of analytic work as an opus; the reference to the analytic relationship as a vas, vessel or container; the goal of the analytic process as the coniunctio, or union of conflicting opposites' . "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigredo