The Minor Arcana of the Thoth Tarot all have "esoteric" titles that for the most part hark back to their Golden Dawn roots. While these titles have academic connections to the Order's tarot curriculum or to Crowley's Thelemic elaborations, they often invoke visceral reactions in the viewer due to their evocative imagery and compelling color … Continue reading Crowley’s Emotional Roller-Coaster
Thoth Material
Chickens, Eggs, Carts and Horses
I just had an interesting but perplexing conversion on one of the Facebook tarot pages regarding the provenance of the tarot material associated with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. There is apparently a widespread popular opinion that "Liber T," a compilation of the Order's tarot "knowledge papers," was actually written after Aleister Crowley's … Continue reading Chickens, Eggs, Carts and Horses
Weather or Not: An Event-Planning Spread
This spread serves two purposes: its more obvious aim is to forecast the likely weather conditions for a planned outdoor event or travel situation. Its more abstract objective is to serve as a data-collection tool for determining how effective prediction is with the cards. One of the chief weaknesses in cartomantic prognostication is that so … Continue reading Weather or Not: An Event-Planning Spread
Omar’s Picture Book, Episode #3
Here is the third installment of my "Rubaiyat as Tarot Cards" visual narrative. I have a hunch this is going to get difficult due to the sheer number of iterations. As expected, I'm finding more situations where the pictorial story-telling vignettes in the RWS minor cards dovetail at least as vividly with the text as … Continue reading Omar’s Picture Book, Episode #3
Omar’s Picture Book, Episode #2
This is the second of my episodic attempts to translate the quatrains of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam into the visual language of the tarot cards, approximately one card per quatrain. I'm looking for logical transition points in the flow of the text so I can limit these posts to four or five related paragraphs … Continue reading Omar’s Picture Book, Episode #2
“Better a Live Sparrow”
In my ongoing (and lately intermittent) attempts to transform classic English-language poetry into visual narrative via the tarot cards, one work stands out as the "Holy Grail" of my lofty aspiration: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. It is one I have been reluctant to tackle because it is so heavily laden with metaphysical imagery (the … Continue reading “Better a Live Sparrow”
Air Apparent
I put the Book of Thoth's slant on elemental Air under the microscope next. In his discussion of the Ace of Swords, Crowley called Air "all-embracing, all-wandering, all-penetrating, all-consuming." He also said "In nature, the obvious symbol of Air is the Wind, 'which bloweth whithersoever it listeth.'" Taken together, these observation could be seen as … Continue reading Air Apparent
Water, Water Everywhere
Expanding on my analysis of elemental Fire as described in The Book of Thoth, I examined Crowley's observations regarding the other two "primal" elements ("completely spiritual forms of pure energy"), Water and Air, and the special case of Earth, which represents a "crystallizing out" or coalescing of the other three in order to effectively impinge … Continue reading Water, Water Everywhere
The Inner Flame
In re-reading The Book of Thoth for what is now the fourth time, I'm constantly being enriched by fresh insights and epiphanies regarding the esoteric underpinnings of the modern tarot. I've long appreciated Crowley's statement regarding the Hebrew letter Shin (relative to Judgement in the Golden Dawn system of trump-card correspondences) that "The element of Fire … Continue reading The Inner Flame
Ulalume and Thoth: A Perfect Pair
Edgar Allan Poe's somber, stately poem, To -- -- --. Ulalume: A Ballad may represent the peak (or pit, depending on your opinion of Poe) of tarot symbolism above all his other works. It embraces the Moon foremost, but also the Star, the Tower and the Devil, as well as many of the harsher Thoth Minor Arcana … Continue reading Ulalume and Thoth: A Perfect Pair
