Thoth vs Toth, whats the deal?

hmmmm...

well, since no explanation seems to be forthcoming, i'll take the lead and post evidence as to why i feel that these cards were meant to be a complete tarot pack all along (as opposed to merely illustration for the book).

the following are excerpts from various correspondences between Lady Harris and AC from here...
http://www.hermetic.com/crowley/crowley-harris.html
i have to thank whomever it was from this forum that turned me onto this wnderful site, and i apologise for forgetting your name (it's been awhile ).
so, here we go then...

from FH to AC - Sept. 18, 1939

I do not find the names of the Cards in the Index you have sent at all illuminating in fact it took me hours to sort which was which. They are much too flamboyant, & I prefer the old names don't you. I hate all those rushing words & feel I've alighted in Taliesom. What am I to print in the surrounds, because I won't do them wrong, it is very hard work.

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same (undated)

I'm glad I was unintelligible, such a change round for you, & anyhow I don't care for just look at the stucco work you have planned out for me--"Push the Cups deeper! Twist the whole card round" Oh! but these things are all on 1 plane &, unless I start applique or sculpture, it can't be begun.

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from AC to FH - Dec. 19, 1939

I got the photographs with great joy. I do not remember the colours of the Three of Swords, but the centre of the rose should be deep crimson, and the veins of the petals black and very wavy. Ten of Cups. This is admirable, but I can't tell much about the background; it ought to look menacing. There is something very sinister about this card. It suggests the morbid hunger which springs from surfeit. The craving of a drug addict is the idea. At the same time, of course, it is this final agony of descent into illusion which renders necessary the completion of the circle by awakening the Eld of the All-Father.

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same

These notes on Justice, or as we have preferred to call her 'Adjustment'. Please note this title. In reading through my description of the card, I noticed a correction to be made, Phalax should be Phallic. There are several mistakes in spelling and punctuation, but no doubt you can put these right by your own ingenium. I suppose I was in a very bad temper when I made my criticism, but I do feel strongly that the plumes of Maat are too insignificant, and the Dove and Raven look simply stuck on; nor do I think that the tessellated pavement is quite right. The general criticism is that the card is a little too cold; Liber is the sign of autumn, season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, close-bosomed friend of the maturing sun. In your card you have got the idea of balance static, whereas it ought to be dynamic. Nature is not the grocer weighing out a pound of sugar; it is the compensation of complicated rhythms. I should like you to feel that every adjustment was a grande passion; compensation should be a festival, not a clerk smugly pleased that his accounts are correct.

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same

What an extraordinary thing to say! To retain one card may be different from all the other cards. The great difficulty of this whole work is to make a completely harmonious pack; that is why I wrote so strongly about the private Private View.

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the letters go on, and there are many more references to the "cards".
but i think the most telling evidence is in that last quote...
"The great difficulty of this whole work is to make a completely harmonious pack".

this seems point conclusively to the fact that Crowley intended all along for this to be a complete deck of cards, and not just illustrations for the Book of Thoth.

Hi Alobar,

I looked and couldn't find where I'd read it. But like you I have read the letters from Crowley and Lady Harris regarding the cards but I wish the deck could have been published while they were both still alive.

So it does seem like the illustrations would have been published as a complete tarot deck.

Emily said:

But like you I have read the letters from Crowley and Lady Harris regarding the cards but I wish the deck could have been published while they were both still alive.

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yes, it would've been interesting to see his reaction to the decks acceptance (or lack of).

my teacher said her first Thoth deck was black & white, and was Xerox'd from the book. that was in the late 60's.
the oldest one i've seen was from the early 70's, and very poorly produced. many of the images were doubled and mushy, and while it was in color (barely!) the whole thing had a heavy sepia tone that was very ugly. it actually made the US Games version look beautiful!
this i'm SURE the Master Therion wouldn't have approved of (although i'd love to find a copy of it, just for my collection).

Centaur said:

Hi Emily,

I never knew that! Very, very interesting. Have you, or anyone else, ever come across the pronunciation of Thoth as advocated by Crowley himself? I think it would be interesting to see how he would have pronounced it.

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This is a great question! I never thought of it...

The best place to find out would be in his poetry, but in the few instances he seems to use Thoth, it is not as a rhyme. I'll certainly keep looking.

Scholarship has different answers. Here's something I wrote for another list awhile back -

From the consonantal Egyptian, we can't be sure of the vowel quality
or quantity (o or u, long or short). The five consonants are Dhwty
(each one pronounced) - it is often transcribed "djehuti". The Coptic
(Coptic is a dialect
of the Egyptian languages) name is "Thout", which in English sounds
like "t'oot'", although there is a slight aspiration after the "t"s,
making it more like "TeHOOT'" - emphasized on the second syllable.
(for the Coptic calendar see
http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/chronology/calendar.html )

The first vowel must have been either a long "u", or an intermediate
sound "eu", which might have become simply a long "o". In classical
sources which transcribe the name, it is spelled variously, with
the "u" predominant. The final vowel is clearly long, but in almost
all the classical sources, and the Coptic, this final vowel has
dropped off.

Plato in Philebus 18b and Phaedrus 274c spells it "theuth" (theta-
epsilon-upsilon-theta)
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text%
3A1999.01.0173&layout=&loc=Phileb.+18b

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text%
3A1999.01.0174&layout=&loc=Phaedrus+274c

Cicero, "De Natura Deorum" 3,56, spells it "theut" (sorry this isn't
online, but referred to in the lexicons, see the sources at
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cache/perscoll_Greco-Roman.html )

Lactantius, "Divine Institutes", spells it "thoth" - "The Egyptians
call him Thoth; and from him the first month of their year, that is,
September, received its name among them. He also built a town, which
is even now called in Greek Hermopolis (the town of Mercury)..."
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/07011.htm

The Greek lexicons give both theta-omega-theta and theta-epsilon-
upsilon-theta. Either way, it is a *long* U or O sound, not the
short sound pronounced by most modern speakers.

Interestingly, Pliny's "Natural History" transcribes the
name "thoti", apparently keeping the final long "i" sound
of "Djehuti." This is in a chapter on herb lore (Book 27, para. 105
(or 80, whichever system you are using) -
"tradunt Aegypti, mensis, quem Thoti vocant," (the Egyptians relate
the month which they call Thoti).
http://www.ukans.edu/history/index/europe/ancient_rome/L/Roman/Texts/P
liny_the_Elder/27*.html

(I'm sorry, there's no complete translation of the Natural History
online).

So based on the Egyptian consonantal spelling, thence to the
Coptic "Thout", and with the classical authors, I would personally
pronounce it "t'hoot'" or "t'hooti".

Ross

Sylvester says:

I like the rhyme idea, with ~ Spaghetti Sauce...

At the end of his explanation of the court cards, Crowley calls the Book of Thoth the "book of Tahuti" (BOT: 170). Sounds a little too much like tutti frutti to me

tuti frutti I love that

I have called the Thoth the Troth for years.
This is a confession.
I know it's wrong and yet it feels so right...
So easy to say...
Just rolls of the tongue.
So in my sad little brain it will always be the Troth....

thoth vs Toth

What is the most probable ancient Greek pronunciation? Long U or long O? Or is this going to remain a lesser mystery? I wonder how Crowley said it . And Frieda,too--- O or U ?

Re: thoth vs Toth

Frank Hall said:

What is the most probable ancient Greek pronunciation? Long U or long O? Or is this going to remain a lesser mystery? I wonder how Crowley said it . And Frieda,too--- O or U ?

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I tend to think long U. It was a difficult sound for the Greeks to write - the intention of writing Theta with an epsilon might be to render a sound like our "j" (hence "jeut" - note the modern transcription "djeuty" pronounced almost like "Judy"), or a "t" with any level of aspiration.

As for long "o", with omega, the difficulty is that Greek often used omega to represent the u sound in foreign words. But modern French (and German too I think) pronounces the word as "tote" - long O.

Since I don't say the name much lately, I haven't had to decide on a "public" way of saying it. But when I spoke of the "Book of Thoth" a lot, I got into the habit of saying "T'ot'e" (long o, slightly aspirated t, not a full "th").

Now I might go for "Judy" (or at least "je-udy").

But how many people are going to know what you're talking about when you say "The Book of Judy"?

I think I'll just stick with "tote" - at least, most English speakers will know what you mean, and you'll get all the other European languages' pronunciations too - and it seems some Greeks and Romans said it that way, so it reaches back to antiquity.

I imagine - at least this will be my bet - that Crowley said "tote"

Thoth vs Toth

Thank you for your consideration of my question. The long O makes sense; at least, it "sounds" clear and poetic. The long U gives a mysterious , almost eerie tone, unlikely for ancient Greek. By the way, Normandi Ellis' loose paraphrase of The Egyptian Book Of The Dead* includes a magnificent poem which invokes Thoth as the inspirer of life's journey ("Triumph Through The Cities").I've read this aloud to my students, hoping my long O was correct. The content of this invocation is astonishing. * her title: Awakening Osiris (Phanes Press,1988,recently reprinted)