The Book of Thoth: Egyptian Tarot
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About this ebook
Aleister Crowley was a noted and controversial occultist, ceremonial magician and poet. He has been called "the wickedest man in the world" or "The Great Beast 666 " but he remained a highly influential figure over Western esotericism and the counterculture.
The Book of Thoth is an essay on the Tarot of the Egyptians. This book describes how to use the Thoth Tarot cards, a divinatory tarot deck. The Thoth Tarot is a classic in modern Tarot games, it has been one of the most popular Tarots for many years.
Excerpt: “THE TAROT is a pack of seventy-eight cards. There are four suits, as in modern playing cards, which are derived from it. But the Court cards number four instead of three. In addition, there are twenty-two cards called “Trumps”, each of which is a symbolic picture with a title itself. At first sight one would suppose this arrangement to be arbitrary, but it is not. It is necessitated, as will appear later, by the structure of the universe, and in particular of the Solar System, as symbolized by the Holy Qabalah. This will be explained in due course.
THE ORIGIN OF THE TAROT
The origin of this pack of cards is very obscure. Some authorities seek to put it back as far as the ancient Egyptian Mysteries; others try to bring it forward as late as the fifteenth or even the sixteenth century. But the Tarot certainly existed, in what may be called the classical form, as early as the fourteenth century; for packs of that date are extant, and the form has not varied in any notable respect since that time. In the Middle Ages, these cards were much used for fortune telling, especially by gypsies, so that it was customary to speak of the “Tarot of the Bohemians”, or “Egyptians”.”
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) was an English poet, painter, occultist, magician, and mountaineer. Born into wealth, he rejected his family’s Christian beliefs and developed a passion for Western esotericism. At Trinity College, Cambridge, Crowley gained a reputation as a poet whose work appeared in such publications as The Granta and Cambridge Magazine. An avid mountaineer, he made the first unguided ascent of the Mönch in the Swiss Alps. Around this time, he first began identifying as bisexual and carried on relationships with prostitutes, which led to his contracting syphilis. In 1897, he briefly dated fellow student Herbert Charles Pollitt, whose unease with Crowley’s esotericism would lead to their breakup. The following year, Crowley joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret occult society to which many of the era’s leading artists belonged, including Bram Stoker, W. B. Yeats, Arthur Machen, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Between 1900 and 1903, he traveled to Mexico, India, Japan, and Paris. In these formative years, Crowley studied Hinduism, wrote the poems that would form The Sword of Song (1904), attempted to climb K2, and became acquainted with such artists as Auguste Rodin and W. Somerset Maugham. A 1904 trip to Egypt inspired him to develop Thelema, a philosophical and religious group he would lead for the remainder of his life. He would claim that The Book of the Law (1909), his most important literary work and the central sacred text of Thelema, was delivered to him personally in Cairo by the entity Aiwass. During the First World War, Crowley allegedly worked as a double agent for the British intelligence services while pretending to support the pro-German movement in the United States. The last decades of his life were spent largely in exile due to persecution in the press and by the states of Britain and Italy for his bohemian lifestyle and open bisexuality.
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Reviews for The Book of Thoth
153 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book is indispensable for learning and knowledgeably using Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot deck. Written by Crowley at the end of his life, the book contains a magickal lifetime's worth of insights about the meaning of occult Tarot symbolism, as modified in light of Crowley's religion of Thelema. The book is an excellent introduction to Crowley's ideas, and at the same time it can be pretty baffling to newbies to those ideas, since Crowley so often references his other works to help clarify some of the more difficult notions he is discussing. In spite of its double-edged quality for beginners, "The Book of Thoth" is the most important book on occult Tarot ever written.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Crowley's introduction to occult Tarot, and particularly to his version of it, the Thoth Tarot deck. This is not an easy book, nor deck, for beginners, but it is still the best place to begin one's exploration of Crowley's ideas in the Tarotic language.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm not a Crowley fan, but this book does the job it sets out to do.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a book I keep near at hand. I use the Thoth deck for readings and sometimes I just open the book instead of getting out the cards.
The illustrations are in B&W, but the explanation of the cards is complete and includes esoteric information about each card that is not found in most tarot books. However, this book is written exclusively for the Thoth Deck and the symbols contained therein. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Indispensable. Anyone who studies the Thoth Tarot, or perhaps any tarot, should read this. It really brings out the mythos surrounding each card into full bloom, making a living form of divination that allows and encourages further personal introspection and commentary. The connection with astrology, which is my favorite divination and study, helped me understand and associate the symbols along with planets, colors and numbers.