using the thoth vs. knowing it

Zephyros

This reference to dryness surprised me a little.

I guess I didn't explain myself properly. When you're adding up ideas, it can seem dry and restrictive to someone who is used to purely intuitive reading. That's a complaint that comes up here a lot, and why many people fall to the Dark Side and go the route of Angeles Arrien. My point was that behind the outward appearance of adding up attributions lies a very real emotional connection that is just as intuitive and exciting (in my opinion more so) as any intuitive reading, because the symbols deal with actual stuff; applicable real-world ideas.

2+5 is just abstract on its own, but it gains an emotional impact when you're counting two oranges and five apples. The 5W is exciting not because of GeburahxSaturn in Leo. It is exciting because it is violent desire and passion and motion and Will times Cronos and structure and cold and Time times fire and the Nemean Lion and August and Lust.
 

Barleywine

It is exciting because it is violent desire and passion and motion and Will times Cronos and structure and cold and Time times fire and the Nemean Lion and August and Lust.

Nicely summarized! I think this one visionary sentence goes farther to reveal the "aliveness" of the ideas than paragraphs of purely logical explanation. Both are needed for a well-rounded understanding, of course, but as you said elsewhere, you have to "get them in the door." These are the sort of images that will appeal to the more imaginative and thoughtful of the "intuitive" set. They can't just swallow these thoughts and excrete them whole as fodder for their readings, they will really have to digest them. Personally, I think Frieda Harris did a superlative job of conveying the essence of Crowley's "magickal imagination" into the minor cards through color, dynamics (motion or stagnation), mood (heavy or light), tension (balance or imbalance), and suggestively sparse pictorial elements. If you're open to all of these factors, they speak volumes before you read a single line of text. The Thoth 3 of Swords, for example, is just as evocative as the RWS version, but brings so much more to the table if you have eyes to see it. That's where the study comes in - absorb the "feeling" of the cards first and then explore in more depth why they make you feel that way.