Babylon_Jasmine
I greatly admire Crowley's work. Not only the Book of Thoth but also Magick in Theory and Practice, Book 4, 777, The Book of Lies and most likely more I have not read. I deplore his philosophy, having read his journals and also the Book of the Law and some of his commentaries I can easily see he was a selfish, arrogant, and in some ways satanic man. I think the Satanism was due to his having been raised in a very Christian environment, in order to purge this he sometimes moved in the opposite direction. However, irregardless of his philosophy he was a brilliant man who was exposed to almost the entire stream of European Hermeticism as well as a good portion of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy and then synthesized and wrote about this in a way that makes sense to me. I know many people find Crowley's writings hard to understand, perhaps it is just my personal temperament but I find his writings to be by far the clearest magickal writings of his era. That is one reason I love the Book of Thoth deck, he has written a book that explains in great detail a wide variety of influences that went into the deck's creation as well as a spread that I have not seen represented in the list of spreads (unless it is listed as the "if you've got all day" spread) It does offer a great deal of information although I don't personally use it often as I am not confident enough in my astrological knowledge. I have read AE Waite's Pictoral guide to the tarot and found it impenetrable and dense, Whereas the Book of Thoth seems to me to be lucid and clear. Crowley was indeed a heroin addict, as well as a user of drugs for both shamanic and recreational purposes. He did many things that were absolutely disgusting and mistreated many people. However he was still a brilliant Magickal mind and has served to modernize the Hermetic stream of Magick in ways that nobody else accomplished.