Jeanne,
I love your explanation about The Star and Nuith. The Star is absolutely one of my very favorite cards in any deck. It is, as you pointed out, so full of hope. It had particular importance in Crowley's Thelema philosophy, as one of the opening lines of the first chapter of his Liber Al Vel Legis (spoken by Nuith, as you mentioned) says, "Every man and every woman is a star." Every star has its energy and its path and the biggest sin is to attempt to impede the path of another (although Crowley would say that's impossible if one is truly following one's path).
I've personally always found Crowley's changes to the Tarot to be very interesting. The Star in traditional decks is attributed to the Hebrew character Tzaddi, which means "fish-hook" and signifies The Star as representing meditation. A book I have describes it as, "The Initiate here [in meditation] casts the 'fish-hook' of the Hebrew letter Tzaddi into the Waters of Creation (pure consciousness) to catch a bit of Divine Knowledge." Crowley switched it around, based on a supposedly divinely-inspired command in Liber Al that said Tzaddi is not the Star, and made Tzaddi the Emperor and the Star the Hebrew letter "He" (meaning "window") instead. I guess that holds up with the meditation theme as well, considering meditation is a window into the Mind and the Higher Realms of existence. It's also the second and final letter of the Tetragammaton (Divine Name - YHWH) and represents manifestation.
I read once that you could leave a person in a jail cell with only a good Tarot deck and he or she would have all the tools at his or her fingertips to divine the secrets of the Universe. I really like to believe that. ?
yeah, this is fascinating, Matt! Glad you are here!
Jeanne, how did you teach Tarot to a blind person? I'm curious!
Matt, very interesting stuff. But please, could you translate the Hebrew letter stuff for somebody who really doesn't do Hebrew? I also find synchronicities with the cards, and I'm interested in magic. Maybe one day I'll be able to make strange things happen (good ones, of course), but for the moment, I'm happy when I can sense something ahead of time.
Some of the cards in the deck tell you more than others about the perspective of the people that made it. The Fool, the Magician and the World are in a way summaries of the whole deck. And the Sun, the Moon and the Star often show you ways that the deck makers bring a fresh view on things. The Star in the Thoth deck is a good example.
The Fool is probably my favorite card, so I don't blame Crowley for having 20 pages of things to say about it! A big reason it's my favorite, of course, is because that's exactly where I feel I'm at, on my low days. On good days, I think I surely must have progressed a little towards the Magician. I may say: "Hello, any spirit friends here?" And sometimes, I think I get an answer. Most of the time, I just pull my hairs out.
The great thing of the Internet is that you can check out what decks are out there. I only have two (Morgan-Greer and Marseilles) but I love looking at what else is there. I recently found out about a special deck done by Scarlet Imprint:
https://scarletimprint.com/publications/oculi-occultati-tarot
Like most of the stuff that Scarlet Imprint do, it's for people with advanced skills. (It was sheer luck and coincidence that I got to know about them in the first place.) Anyone can appreciate the artwork, though. The lines are harsher than what I usually like, and if you are one of those people who don't like black & white, you won't like this very much. But I like the compositions of the cards a lot. It's an interesting deck to look at, for sure.
Maria,
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm quite fond of the Fool as well! He is the epitome of innocence and blind naivete -- there's a certain joyful purity about that card. Although, going by traditional images, he really ought to look where he's going instead of up at the clouds... ;)
I'm not much of an expert in Hebrew, actually. What I do know is that each Hebrew letter developed out of a pictograph and that the meanings of the letters are tied into the meanings of the tarot cards themselves in various ways. (I'm hoping the Hebrew letters show up here!)
Aleph - א - "Ox" -- The Fool, Bet - ב - "House" -- the Magus, Gimel - ג - "Camel" -- the High Priestess
Daleth - ד - "Door" -- The Empress, He - ה - "Window" -- The Emperor/The Star, Vau - ו - "Nail" -- The Hierophant
Zayin - ז - "Sword" -- The Lovers, Het - ח - "Fence" -- The Chariot, Tet - ט - "Serpent" -- Strength/Lust
Yod - י - "Hand" -- The Hermit, Kaf - כ - "Palm" -- Wheel of Fortune, Lamed - ל - "Ox Goad" -- Justice/Adjustment
Mem - מ - "Water" -- The Hanged Man, Nun - נ - "Fish" -- Death, Samekh - ס - "Prop" -- Temperance/Art
Ayin - ע - "Eye" -- The Devil, Pe - פ - "Mouth" -- The Tower, Tzaddi - צ - "Fish hook" -- The Star/Emperor
Qof - ק - "Back of Head" -- The Moon, Resh - ר - "Head" -- The Sun, Shin - ש - "Tooth" -- Judgement/The Aeon,
Tau - ת - "Cross" -- The World/The Universe
The attributions do matter... for example, the path of Gimel connects the sphere of Kether ("Crown") to the sphere of Tiphareth ("Beauty"), which crosses over a part of the Tree of Life (here's a good image with cards superimposed over the paths: Tree of Life) known as "The Abyss", which could be likened to a spiritual desert of sorts. Part of the essence of the High Priestess card is reflective of a camel on that journey, I suppose. A great book for covering ALL the correspondences is Liber 777 but I think it would take a lifetime to memorize.
Hebrew letters can be divided into three categories. First, there are three mother letters: Aleph א, Mem מ, and Shin ש. These correspond to The Fool, The Hanged Man, and Judgement/The Aeon and have attributed to them Air, Water, and Fire. Next, there are seven Double Letters: Bet ב , Gimel ג, Daleth ד , Kaf כ, Pe פ, Resh ר, and Tav ת to which are attributed (in order) Mercury, The Moon, Venus, Jupiter, Mars, The Sun, and Saturn. Last, we have the Twelve Simple Letters: He ה, Vau ו, Zayin ז , Het ח, Tet ט, Yod י, Lamed ל , Nun נ, Samekh ס, Ayin ע, Tzaddi צ, and Qof ק, to which we attribute (again, in order) Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces. This ties back to a Tarot Deck like the Thoth Deck in that the cards I mentioned will reflect these elemental and astrological influences in the essence of the artwork.
I should be clear that I don't think you need to know any of this to effectively do magic or even to read the Tarot... I just find it fascinating to reflect on how "deep" this rabbit hole really goes! :)
And personally, I think the artwork on those cards is really neat! I personally quite like the black-and-white aesthetic!
Maria,
I didn't get a chance to check out the Marseilles and Morgan-Greer until just now (I was up way later than I had planned typing out that last post)... these are really neat decks that I might have to pick up myself. The Marseilles Trumps very much remind me of the Trumps in the B.O.T.A. Deck I mentioned above.
I started out with the Aquarian deck back in 1975. About 20 years ago, I found the Alchemical deck, which uses a lot of Jungian Archetypal imagery. LOOOOVE it! Today I am getting the Golden Tarot. I like the way the artist assembled medieval imagery-there is a lot of attention paid to lights and darks, which I find pulls up impressions for me.
Working on a series of needlefelted Tarot paintings....Starting with Ace of Cups.
R1
Jeanne, how did you teach Tarot to a blind person? I'm curious!
She put little electronic tabs on the cards so that when she pulled a card and touched her electronic wand to the little tabs, they spoke out the name of the card and a short meaning. She came to my Thursday Night Tarot group for about a year and learned to give readings. She is incredibly psychic and highly evolved, so when we gave each other readings, everyone stopped talking and listened closely to what she said. She speaks in a quiet thoughtful voice. She said she liked how the cards can structure the reading and give her grounding. Otherwise, she's just reading from her imagination. We have developed a long and close friendship since then. She is an amazing person.
Matt, whoever you are, wherever you are, I’m damn glad you exist in the universe. I’ve recently been delving more into Cabalistic tarot, and the Hebrew letters (and their profound numeric correspondences!) have always fascinated me.
Jeanne, the story of your blind student-now-friend is beautiful. And I was moved by your explanation of The Star imagery in the Thoth deck. I’ve been contemplating a new deck for a while, maybe waiting for a sign. Your post was it.
I agree with you both about Crowley. He was intense, autodidactic, and utterly willing to follow his curiosity wherever it led in his search for deeper knowledge; I can appreciate all those qualities. In a certain respect, I’m even a little grateful for his less-than-ethical excesses in service to that quest, if only for the way it shaped what followed him. His karmic story is instructive.
Were he living, I actually would want to know the man (I’m fascinated by all characters). But I’d never want to be enthralled to him.
The first tarot deck I owned, I bought in high school. It’s the Enchanted Tarot, and I still treasure it like something beautiful I’ve inherited from my younger self. More recently I’ve been using the Wild Unknown Tarot (in personal readings). I admire Kim Krans’ artistry, but this deck hasn’t entirely fitted itself inside me.
I’ve collected other decks over the years, and cards and their images are always finding me. I was living on my own at 18 (studying the Golden Dawn, incidentally) and struggling to overcome the toxic, sometimes terrifying family story of my upbringing, so that I could somehow thrive instead of falter. I was feeling defeated one afternoon, sobbing on a riverbank, when my foot found something in the sand.
I reached down to investigate and uncovered two cards: the Magician and Strength.
You have the power to re/create your reality.
You have the strength and resilience to overcome your hardships.
Talk about your instant state-change. I recall feeling simultaneously mind-blown and kissed by the universe. In all the years I’ve been enamored of tarot since, that feeling hasn’t left.
Those little cards were from a limited 1992 reprint of the Soprafino deck (only 2,000 were printed). It was originally commissioned in 1885 and engraved by artist Carlo Dellarocca. I still have them with me, and they may be the reason I’m most fond of Medieval imagery in tarot.
If I could get my hands on a pack of Le Tarot Noir, I’d make them mine.
VestraLux,Thank you so much for your kind words. You really have no idea how much that made my day.
While Crowley obviously reveled in being "the worst man in the world" (at a time when the fascists were rapidly rising to power, no less!) and seemed to delight in violating the mores of the era, part of me sometimes wonders if perhaps he had an ulterior motive of sorts. He received a strict Christian upbringing and the story of Christ appears to have had a huge impact on him -- so much so that he supposedly crucified a frog to break the programming. He had to be aware that "prophets" (and he did consider himself one) are always at risk of being deified and part of me suspects that he didn't want that and instead chose to live a life that would thwart those sorts of characterizations from ever arising. I don't know how true that is but it's something I like to believe when approaching his works.
I found your story about how finding The Magician and Strength touched your life to be deeply moving. I think that might very well be one of the most Magical things I've read. :)
And those decks -- wow! When I was younger and more conventionally religious I used to collect Bibles but recently I decided to collect Tarot decks instead and this thread has already given me some wonderful suggestions for building my collection!