I never noticed that before.

[ravenest]

It happened again. Doing a little Tarot workshop and my friend asks, 'How come on the Majors the Hebrew is on left and the planet,element or zodiac sign is on the right, except for Moon, Universe and Magus where it is reversed?"
"Huh, what?" I have a look and there it is! How long have I been checking out Thoth and not noticing. It wasnt my deck ... now I have to go and check mine.
It is a small (not tiny) AGMAMuller. [ Interesting because this is the same person that pointed out the '8th head of the Beast' on Atu XI

Does your deck have this!

 

[RLG]

I believe all decks have these three reversed, because Lady Harris reversed them on her original paintings.

 

[Aeon418]

Harris made a tiny mistake on three of the frames that the cards were photographed with. (Although I think there may only be one frame, with spaces for the card name and number to be inserted.) Even though modern reproductions don't use the original frames, they still keep it the same way. I'm not sure why though.

Maybe, even though it is a mistake, they aren't allowed to make changes to an original work? Or maybe it's to please the pedantic collectors, who want everything as close to the original as possible?

Of course the conspiracy theorists point to the mistake on the Magus card as a sign that it's not the real one. Yeah right.....

But the card trimming crowd should be happy if they look up the value of Beth Qoph Tav (502) in Crowley's Sepher Sephiroth.

 

[ravenest]

Ah, so you already knew ... has there been a previous post I missed out on?
I like doing workshops with this 'beginer' ... they keep finding things I never noticed before.

 

[ravenest]

Of course the conspiracy theorists point to the mistake on the Magus card as a sign that it's not the real one. Yeah right.....

So the other two Magi have it the other way around?

AHA! There is the proof!

 

[Aeon418]

So the other two Magi have it the other way around?

Nope. Only one of the reject Magi has the Hebrew letter on the sinister side. Unfortunately it's not the one most people like.

 

[Grigori]

I've just checked the new Urania version, and it has all trumps with the letter on the left and glyph on the right. Apparently an OTO sanctioned correction.

Interesting with the USG edition that not only is the swastica version the only one of the three that has the same directions as most of the other trumps, but also each version of the magus has a redrawn letter and glyph, so it seems that none of the trumps have Harris's lettering.

 

[Tarot Orat]

Of the three Magus cards that came with my deck, is there an "official" one? I gather there's some controversy about that to begin with....conspiracy theorists, yikes Why the heck did they give me 3 cards then? If I weren't trying to do right by the Thoth, I'd just pick the one I liked best...

 

[ravenest]

If I weren't trying to do right by the Thoth, I'd just pick the one I liked best...

Well ... lucky you - you can do that. Or, do right by what you like and use that one. Or ....

Just think, now you have 3 possible 'decks'.

 

[Grigori]

Of the three Magus cards that came with my deck, is there an "official" one? I gather there's some controversy about that to begin with....conspiracy theorists, yikes Why the heck did they give me 3 cards then? If I weren't trying to do right by the Thoth, I'd just pick the one I liked best...

This is the official one, the others are drafts there were rejected. There are many versions of several of the cards, Harris would paint them and if Crowley didn't like her work she'd have to do it again. They are included as a little present from the publisher, not meant to be used though of course they can be if you want

You can see some of the other alternates here.