The Tarot

The Thoth Tarot is one of several thousands of tarot decks. The tarot is a set of seventy-eight cards structured in forty cards numbered Ace to Ten in four Suits; Pentacles (Coins, Discs), Swords, Cups and Wands (Staves); sixteen cards arranged in four Ranks in each Suit; Page, Knight, Queen and King and twenty-two Major Arcana. The cards arose in this pattern, named tarrochi and later tarot , in Italy during the mid-15th Century and in the 18th Century became conflated with ancient Egyptian mysteries, occultism and fortune-telling.

By the turn of the 19th Century the deck was being used within the Western Esoteric Initiatory System and following the publication of the Waite-Smith Tarot in 1909, enjoyed a brief renaissance before fading again - until a revival during the mid-1960’s.

At the start of the 21st century, once again the tarot became prominent, through social media and increasingly accessible means of funding and publishing decks. [3]

The history of tarot can be studied in more detail through the bibliography at the end of this present work. Our interest in this book is to explore the specific tarot deck conceived between 1938 – 1943 by the notorious occultist, author, painter, mountain-climber, chef and poet, Aleister Crowley (1875 – 1947), which was co-designed and painted by Lady (Frieda) Harris (1877 – 1962).

We will briefly introduce the lives of both and in following sections, we will look at a few aspects of Crowley’s thinking about tarot, divination and magick.