part0019

Crowley was initiated into the Order of the Golden Dawn in 1898. [78] The influence of the Order is woven through the Thoth Tarot, despite Crowley having vowed to destroy the group in 1904 following his reception of the Book of the Law , which we will cover in the next section. The Order provided Crowley teachings in Kabbalah, Alchemy, Ritual, and most importantly for our present book, Tarot. It was the Golden Dawn Book T , a set of materials on Tarot, that gave Crowley his grounding in divination. It was here he learnt the correspondences of the cards to Kabbalah and Astrology, which would later be represented in the Thoth Tarot.

Crowley was also quick to utilise the original teachings of the Order in his own philosophy and map of the universe. In his unpublished 1904 notebook is a piece of writing which makes a correspondence – through Astrology - between the Minor Arcana and biblical, ancient Egyptian and Arthurian myth, to create a unique cosmology. It was here that the seeds of the Thoth Tarot were planted, some thirty-four years later.

He was also to make amendments to the Golden Dawn system of correspondence, the cause of much confusion to later students. He reverted the numbering of the Strength and Justice card to their earlier places of VIII and XI whilst also swapping the positions of the Star card and Emperor on the Tree of Life, based on a line in the Book of the Law . We will look at these differences in separate sections following in this book.

In the previously unpublished original papers of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in 1888, is a series of typescript documents which list tarot descriptions and conclude with a note by one of its three founders, S. L. Macgregor Mathers. It is possible these descriptions are the foundation of Waite’s knowledge of tarot both for the Waite-Smith Tarot and the Waite-Trinick Tarot.

20. [Shin] JUDGMENT: Angel crowned with Sun. Surrounded by Rainbow in which leap Seraphim. Trumpet - influence of Spirit descending from Binah banner [Sketch of Banner with Cross]

Pluto emerging from Volcanic rock. ISIS Full face NEPTHYS profile coming from Water. HORUS rises from Cubic Tomb in [Sketch of arms in 2=9 sign]

It is during his intense immersion into this fervid blend of symbolism, end-of-times prophesy, tarot illustration, and masonic ritual that Crowley took a honeymoon with his first wife, Rose Kelly, and in Egypt, 1904, performed a ritual whose ensuing revelatory response would change his life and much later be illustrated by the Thoth Tarot.