Back to front Duquette?

I recently finished reading Lon Milo Duquette's book on the Thoth tarot, and followed it up with his book on qabalah.

I noticed that in the qabalah book, although he describes the court cards of the Thoth (prince, princess, queen, knight) he uses the non-Crowley concordances for the majors with the Crowley titles (e.g. Strength 8, Adjustment 11, Tzaddi Star, Heh Emperor).

Does anyone know which concordance are used in his Ceremmonial Magick tarot?, or what the OTO now uses?

Or any input on your own opinion of the differences.

Thanks

Mmm, perhaps I need a more provocative title. Or maybe no one wants to tell me...

Surely someone must have bought the Cerommonial Magick tarot. Or even one of the Golden dawn ones might shed a little light.

In DuQuette's Tarot of Ceremonial Magick, the following are the correspondences on the majors in question:

Trump / # / Zodiac / Hebrew:

Emperor / 4 / Aries / Tzaddi
Justice / 8 / Libra / Lamed
Lust / 11 / Leo / Teth
Star / 17 / Aquarius / He

These seem to match with Crowley's Thoth deck.

Not sure about the OTO correspondences for these.

similia said:

Mmm, perhaps I need a more provocative title. Or maybe no one wants to tell me...

Surely someone must have bought the Cerommonial Magick tarot. Or even one of the Golden dawn ones might shed a little light.

Click to expand...

I was waiting to see what else might be written here, but in the meantime I began putting something together. Then when I read some of Bill Heidrick's comments, I realised I was just paraphrasing (poorly) what he had to say;

So here are Bill's comments;

{1}
"Crowley retained the Golden Dawn reversal of Strength
and Justice, using it to justify his reversal of Star and Emperor in one
system. He did restore the Roman numeral sequence to the Trumps in the
Thoth Deck, but treated the cards as though the sequence for purposes of
correspondence on the Tree of Life and in Astrology was that of the
G.'.D.'. switch of Justice and Strength + his new switch of Star and
Emperor. There is a three-loop diagram in the middle of _Book of Thoth_
to illustrate this."

{2}
"In reckoning the correspondences between Hebrew Letters and Tarot, there are several points to remember. The dominant correspondences are to the Hebrew Letters, and changes in Tarot attribution do not affect other correspondences to the Letters. Tarot Trump titles vary in different styles of decks, but most can readily be identified. The numbers of the Justice and Strength Trumps were reversed by the Golden Dawn authors to make a better fit to the Hebrew. Older decks show Justice as VIII and Strength as XI. This reversal does not affect the correspondence of Lamed for Justice and Tet for Strength. Aleister Crowley came to advocate switching The Star and The Emperor Trumps, and that switch does affect certain of the correspondences of the those Trumps. Switching Star and Emperor does not affect the correspondences to the Hebrew Letters Heh and Tzaddi beyond the Trumps themselves. Thus: Heh---Aries---Emperor, or Heh---Aries---Star, but not Heh---Aquarius---Star. There are other systems of attribution between Tarot and Hebrew, as well as alternative approaches to the Heh/Tzaddi switch. The system used here is that introduced by the Order of the Golden Dawn.

Ordo Templi Orientis favors the Hay/Tzaddi switch, but not officially in the manner I have presented here. The present OTO approach includes other correspondences in the switch."

I hope that helps, but my suspicion is it can only lead to more questions, which may, or may not, be answered here;
http://www.billheidrick.com/works/mcor.htm



Vincent

Hrm...

I just got this deck and the book today, and while I haven't looked into it thoroughly, there are a couple of hesitations that I have about the deck. Namely, the fact that he shoved the I Ching in with systems as different from it as Enochian, western astrology and the goetia really are. That, and the deck's pictures are VERY heavilly Thelemic. Personally, I think that when working with a deck that tries to encompass so many different systems, it would have been a lot better to not have such heavy leanings towards any one particular system of magick. Personally, I would have left the I Ching out of it all together, as I feel the pictures on the cards need to represent the systems used in this deck, and it'd be impossibly confusing to intersperse eastern images (to better reflect the I Ching) in with ones containing more western symbolism, as would be appropriate for the Enochian and Goetia systems he uses in it. That, and the I Ching represents such a different view of the universe than the cosmology represented in the Goetia, western astrology, and the Enochian system, that it seems like he's trying to stretch out too far and too thin by throwing an eastern divinatory method in with systems that come from a western standpoint. This said, though, I am making this statment based purely on having simply skimmed over the cards. I'll be curious to see what he has to say in terms of why he threw the I Ching in there. His reasons may, after all, turn out to be good ones, at which point I'll have learned something.

Hahahaha...besides that, have you noticed how many times his face appears as different characters in the various major arcana cards? *scratches head* Now, why does the word "egotism," come to mind here? ;-)

All that said though, the deck does seem to hold alot of merit. I'm looking forward to delving into it, and using it as a way to really get to know the tarot in general on a level far deeper than one I've been working with it on, as I do think he has a lot to offer here, with this one. I want to start a study group on the Ceremonial Magick Tarot on the forum, but am not sure if I have to somehow drum up interest for it first, to see if there's enough people interested in studying the deck to warrant starting a group, or if I can simply just start a thread on it and see if people answer. I'm fairly new to the board...does anyone out there know the rules of etiquette for starting a study on this deck up here on the forum?

Namaste,
Ankhy

AnkhGoddess said:

I just got this deck and the book today, and while I haven't looked into it thoroughly, there are a couple of hesitations that I have about the deck. Namely, the fact that he shoved the I Ching in with systems as different from it as Enochian, western astrology and the goetia really are. That, and the deck's pictures are VERY heavilly Thelemic.

Click to expand...

I don't mean to sound rude, but you do know who Lon Milo Duquette is... don't you?


Vincent

Yay, responses. Thanks very much for your input Strange2, AnkhGoddess, and especially Vincent how is always helpful on my questions lately! It seems strange to me that Duquette would use correspondances different to those of the Thoth, as well as his own deck.

I can understand him using "more traditional" correspondances as the book is really about Qabalah, and not Thelema (perhaps a publishers decision?), but to use them along with the Crowley titles is a bit peculiar.

Either way I'm enjoying both books immensly, and have learnt a lot from them.