Towards the end of his remarkable life, Aleister Crowley published a seminal work on the Tarot of the Egyptians. The title of the work was The Book of Thoth and it comprised an analysis of the Tarot deck painted by Lady Frieda Harris to Crowley's design.
The seventy eight cards of this deck, made up of twenty two Key Cards, or Atu, forty numbered cards in four suits, and sixteen Court Cards, each contain a compendium of symbols derived from Astrology, Kabbalah, Alchemy, myth and history. Together, the symbols on each card make up a coherent personality, an entity rooted in the reality of the cosmos. This is critical, because without a solid metaphysical substructure, the Tarot would be no more than a set of pretty picture cards; which is exactly what a great many of the available decks are. In contrast, Crowley's deck was designed from the start as a representation of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.
The small cards, numbered one to ten in suits of Pantacles, Swords, Staves and Cups, reside on the ten Sephiroth (emanations) of the Tree. The royalty of the Tarot, the sixteen Court Cards, The Knight, The Queen, The Prince and the Princess, reside on the Sephiroth of the Middle Pillar of the Tree of Life. The quaternity of suits and of Court Cards corresponds to the Yod Heh Vav Heh of the Tetragrammaton and the metaphysical quaternities of Air, Fire, Earth and Water, and also of the fourfold Kabbalistic worlds of Atziluth, Beriah, Yetzirah and Assiah.
The twenty two Atu reside on the paths between the Sephiroth, and may be identified with the anabolic and catabolic forces that define the stresses and relationships between the Sephiroth, which themselves may be considered as fundamental emanations of reality.
The Atu have names that may be considered glyphs of the combinations of the metaphysical powers that drive both subjectively and objectively perceived experience. For instance, when we look upon The Fool, we immerse ourselves in the innocence of spring, the mad creativity of unconstrained nature and the chaos of natural being. With The Magus, we feel the immense power that binds blind force into natural law and custom, without which the universe could not exist. And so it is with each of the Tarot's personalities.
As any metaphysician or magician will testify, when we meditate on these Tarot cards, when we use them in acts of divination, we are dealing with the very real but often subtle and abstruse powers of nature bound up in comprehensible living entities that speak directly to our minds and spirits. These personalities comprise a gateway between worlds; they are conduits of wisdom and folly, of reverence and mockery: it is up to us to know the difference within the course of our magickal discourse. Use these tools wisely then, and do not underestimate their power.
and the Thelema Trust
Keith Rowley is an engineer and practitioner of Kabballah and Magick. He is the author of The Aquarius Key - A Novel of the Occult and the architect of the Thelema Trust web site [http://www.magick.co.za] On the Thelema Trust web site a wide range of original and unique Occult Artwork by South African artist Hettie Rowley may be purchased, commissioned or simply viewed. There is also a selection of poetry and short stories by Keith Rowley and a range of pages containing insights into Magick, the life and work of Aleister Crowley and much else. A Blog for Tarot students and practitioners has recently been added, along with the first parts of deeper discourse on the Tarot for serious students. This begins on [http://www.magick.co.za/TheCrowleyTarot.html]
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