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As with fellow occultist and tarot deck designer A. E. Waite (1857 – 1942), Crowley held contradictory attitudes to divination throughout his life. He would state that fortune-telling was a debasement of the esoteric teaching held within the tarot yet used tarot and other forms of divination such as the I-Ching, Astrology and Geomancy as a regular method of guidance. We will examine many of the divinations and fortune-telling carried out by Crowley in the second book of this present series.

It is quite impossible to obtain satisfactory results from this [the Opening of the Key Spread] or any other system of divination unless the Art is perfectly required. It is the most sensitive, difficult and perilous branch of Magick. [16]

He goes on to refer the reader to Chapter XVII in Magick as indicating the “necessary conditions” for divination. [17] He even warns of “formidable and irremediable disasters” which will “infallibly destroy” those who neglect his warnings on the subject. [18]

It is in section IV of Chapter XVIII of Magick that we locate his writing on divination, fittingly corresponding to the Moon (card XVIII) and the chapter dealing with Clairvoyance and the Body of Light. In Section IV Crowley explains that divination is an important branch of magick but would require an entirely separate treatise. Be that as it may, he does offer very specific information, of the art and its dangers.

Firstly, he states that “transcendental information” is essential to the wisdom of any act of magick, and that the gaining of such information from “superior intelligences” through clairvoyance and ritual requires elaborate preparation and years of experience. He goes on to write that “it is therefore useful to possess an art by which one can obtain at a moment’s notice any information that might be necessary. This art is divination”. [19]

Secondly, he states that there is a particular state of consciousness that is required for a successful divination, and a particular attitude in responding to the oracle. His warning is that any bias on the side of the reader will “deflect the needle from the pole of truth”. [20] The correct state is precisely balanced between transcending the issue altogether yet focusing on it purely for its own sake. This difficult state is essential but requires a brutal self-honesty and experience; in fact, Crowley suggests that “in order to divine without error, one ought to be a Master of the Temple”. [21] This is an exalted grade of initiation, whose conditions we will examine in the Chariot card, and carries with it the state of having overcome the illusion of duality.

The tarot was often on Crowley’s mind as containing erudite secrets. In 1925, concluding his writing of his autobiography, he bemoaned ‘so much to do, so little done’ and particularly mentioned the Tarot:

The true significance of the Atus of Tahuti, or Tarot Trumps, also awaits full understanding. I have satisfied myself that these twenty-two cards compose a complete system of hieroglyphs representing the total energies of the universe. In the case of some cards, I have succeeded in restoring the original form and giving a complete account of their meaning. Others, however, I understand imperfectly, and of some few I have at present obtained no more than a general idea. [22]

It would be another twenty years that he would find time and opportunity to write his fuller understanding of the Tarot trumps as a complete atlas of the universe.

This is not to say that Crowley would not use tarot for everyday divination – he recounts a tale in his autobiography when “in Shanghai I brought off a very remarkable test of the value of the Tarot in divination”. [23] This was in 1901, within three years of his initiation into the Golden Dawn. He recounts that a German postmaster was visiting the woman with whom he was staying and was upset by the loss of a package of money. Crowley offered to investigate the matter with the cards – likely a European deck or even a deck of playing cards – and accurately described two people who were likely suspects.

His description of the two is certainly a description of two Court cards; the Senior Clerk being “a steady-going conscientious man, saving a fixed sum out of his salary, devoted to his work, free from vices and in no financial embarrassment”; the Junior being “a careless youth, mixed up with women and known to be gambling heavily on the races”. [24] It is the Junior who is then identified by the cards as the one responsible for the disappearance of the packet.

The story concludes with the cards apparently saying that there was no theft, and that no-one would be held responsible. Crowley cannot understand this but states that the cards insist on this matter. Of course, it later transpires that there was an honest mistake and the cards were accurate in both identifying the culprit and the outcome.

We will return to Crowley’s section on divination in Magick , in more detail, in the second book of this series, as it contains much of philosophical and practical advice in the performance of successful divination. The reader is advised to commence reading it now - ahead of the next book - as it is essential and useful material to the advanced practitioner. [25]