#thoth deck

your next adventure in your dr/adventure ideas

divider credits: strangergraphics

To the Sun, Eternal Witness

O great golden eye who rises without asking, pouring memory through bone and root, I stand in the hush of your first breath and feel the shadows flee.

You do not speak— yet every leaf leans to listen. You do not judge— yet you uncover all that hides.

I have wandered under moons and behind veils of cloud, but still your flame writes my name in the silence of my cells.

Burn away what is not truth. Unmask the spirit clothed in sleep. Teach me how to open without fear of being seen.

What makes the Thoth deck different? And why are people afraid of it?

Most tarot decks focus on divination, including the well-known Rider-Waite deck. It follows the Fool on his journey through life and the world in order to help you understand yourself and your own journey more deeply. The Rider-Waite deck was imbued with esoteric mysticism and symbolism by Pamela Coleman Smith, then stamped with Christian mysticism by Arthur Edward Waite. It’s the most influential and widely used tarot deck in the world today.

Aleister Crowley and Lady Freida Harris’s Thoth deck is a creation myth. The Fool still jaunts through the cards from the birth of the elements to the death of the universe, but the focus isn’t on divination - it’s on a meditative exploration of who you are and where you’re at in your life right now. It asks you, quite brutally and directly, what’s working and what isn’t, then offers advice drawn from science and then combined with esoteric and occult wisdom from all around the world. 

Deck: Thoth

Question: What advice will help me today?

Card: 10 of Swords

Resources used: Esoteric Meanings (website)

Maaaaan

It’s back! Let’s try to define it first.

The ten of swords is called ruin and is about fear of madness, hitting rock bottom, betrayal, digging yourself into a hole and having nowhere to go but up. I can’t remember what else.

To interpret it, maybe I have reached the logical conclusion of something and I need to let it go now. It’s brought me nothing but potential ruin or defeat and I oughta turn my attention to more worthwhile things.

Let’s look at Esoteric Meanings.

It talks about negative thinking disrupting the heart and the potential for loss of possessions and financial ruin. And a lot of stuff about mars and saturn and the symbols on the swords that I skimmed. It says there’s still hope because the solar influence rules.

Looking back, this pull for the new year for me from Eu on 01/02 has been extremely correct:

ooh fun question, thank you for including tarot!! i like to remind everyone periodically that's where i have my real roots :) i have been doing astrology for a little over 8 years but i have been doing tarot for much, much longer, and my whole entire family is a tarot family - my mom has been doing this since she was quite young so it predates my existence in my genes. i am the only one who does astrology though lol.

those associations are actually what got me into astrology in the first place. i was a tarot-only girl for a long time and scoffed at such frivolous pursuits as astrology ;) (now look at me, lol)

they are usually meant to be the sign itself, not any particular planet in a sign and not any querent's sign. most, not all but certainly most, of these correspondences come from golden dawn and similar ceremonial esoteric traditions, with some deviations from that system like crowley's (although such deviations are still very similar).

so the chariot for example has the correspondence cancer. for at least the RWS deck and arthur waite's plans for it, that was just cancer, not the sun in cancer, not anything in cancer. just that sign, cancer, and its energies.

now, crowley's thoth deck is layered and layered and layered with extra symbolism. the chariot is still cancer. but you have things a little more specific in the minor arcana, like off the top of my head the four of wands in the thoth deck is called completion, and it is associated specifically with venus in aries.

so it's going to depend on what deck you are using, and whether you are comfortable applying eg the crowleyan themes to other decks. nothing stops you from doing that and it can be useful, but it's not necessarily the intended use, and purists might frown on it. i am not a purist.

a lot of modern artists who make their own decks don't necessarily include any such associations. you could choose to read them utterly without the astrology, or you could project one of these systems onto the deck.

personally when i read cards i don't delve into those astrological correspondences UNLESS something pings in my intuition that reminds me to do so. then it turns out to be relevant. but those are strictly intuitive choices i make on a reading by reading, card by card basis. AND in my head/intuition it changes somewhat. i may draw like, a king of cups, and be like oh, some water sign man. could be any of the water signs. at other times i may have the thoth deck in mind or be holding the actual thoth deck, in which case crowley's intended meaning was specifically the degrees in the last decan of aquarius and the first two decans of pisces, and lady frida harris drew a crab on the card, so i might think more specifically of cancer.

there is a story i think from rachel pollack? about drawing the chariot and a diagnosis, medically, of cancer - a weird association with that card but a valid one. (rachel pollack was a very cool lady btw, if you aren't familiar with her, look into her life and work!)

it's all so situational!

just for fun though, with no particular deck in mind and going strictly based on vibes for the big three you mentioned (some folks may disagree with my picks here) i would say page of cups for pisces sun, the high priestess for scorpio moon, three of wands for leo rising. (but there's not really any tradition applied here. just vibes and my brain.)