So glad this thread popped up! Im in the same position as you nicky. I have been picking the Thoth up, admiring it and then putting it down again for a while now. Ive read DuQuette and regularly consult Banzhaf´s Keywords for the Crowley Tarot. But I do think it is a deck which you can really just LOOK, LOOK and then LOOK some more.
Ive taken to carying my pocket Thoth around and just wallowing in it´s images, doing a daily draw and just thinking...
Scion´s posts in the "Working with one deck" thread have inspired me. The Thoth seems to me to be the obvious deck I would want to work with. Im not setting myself any rules or deadlines. All I know is that I want to know the Thoth better.
I think of it as excavation. I will enjoy the digging, may never uncover everything I want, but whatever I unearth will be enriching.
The problem I have with the Crowley Tarot is not the images (I hasten to add) but the references in the literature. The names which are referenced (Hadit, Aesculap, Abraxas, the list goes on) I never know who they are. Then there are the Kabbalah references. Then - to be honest - my knowledge of astrology is virtually non-existant (I mean, what does it mean that the Star is Aquarius?) and so I wonder just how much I can get out of it. And the concepts of fire in water, and air in fire or whatever... I have quite a few stumbling blocks.
But lock me in a sunlit room with the deck itself and I would be blissfully happy. O but the textual/mythological references just swamp me. Every time.