Book of Thoth

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Summary: The Universe in a deck of cards...
Review: Brilliant! Eloquent and detailed exposition on the symbols of the Thoth Tarot deck, and the Universe itself. Not only an invaluable resouce for those studying magick and the occult but also those in the fields of anthropology, psychology and theology (Christian mystics may find the discussions of the Fool, The Hanged Man and Death in particular interesting.)
Familiar (and not-so familiar) symbols are discussed in-depth, revealing their origins, and true nature.
Contains detailed and tables of correspondences including the Qabala, I-Ching, Planets, Astrology etc

An absolute "MUST HAVE" for students of Magick and the Tarot
Can not reccomend this book highly enough.


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Summary: A Deeper Understanding
Review: For those who view the Tarot as a self-transformation tool or tool in magick, this is one of the books I would recommend that actually view the tarot in this way. Most people view the Tarot as a fun little fortune-telling device and do not take it seriously, and sadly most books on the market share this view. Aleister Crowley certainly was strange to say the least and while not all may agree with his way of seeing things, I believe this book will be of tremendous help to a serious student of the Tarot. Crowley covers every aspect of every card and illustrations are used from the Thoth Tarot which was commissioned by him and painted by Frieda Harris. The symbolism comes mainly from ceremonial magick and the Qabala, and for those unfamiliar with those systems re-reading will no doubt be required, but it is well worth it. Also, knowledge of Crowley's Book of the Law may be desired, because he refers to it frequently.

A great asset to those wishing to take their study of the Tarot one step further.

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Summary: This is real Tarot
Review: Forget everything you ever knew about the Tarot. This is the real deal. This is not the wishy washy watered down garbage that is so common in the so called "new age" tarot books. This book has the meat.If you really,really want to learn tarot study this book. Your life will become enriched in so many other areas in your life. You mind will grow. You will learn magick, qaballa, zodiac, and tarot all from this book.And you will get a pretty good lesson on Thelema. Open your mind, and buy this one.

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Summary: A Must for Serious Students of the Occult
Review: My rating of the book is subject to change depending on the type of knowledge you think it will impart. If you want a simple interpretory key for Crowley's Thoth Tarot, I rate this book a 1 and think the booklet that accompanies the deck coupled with studies of the Golden Dawn with better serve you. As a reference tool to aid your understanding of Qabalah and some of the deeper (and I do mean DEEEEEP) belief systems underlying the tarot, I rate it a 5. That's why my overall rating of the book is a 3.

To me, it's a must for any serious student of occult studies, especially if you're really drawn to the Tarot. The Book of Thoth is one of those books that can take a life time to read and its concepts can take quite awhile to digest. I'm a book junkie and I had a serious headache by the time I got a few pages into this one. Not that its content is not valuable - it is just very dense. Those already familiar with Crowley's work will probably have an easier time understanding it, but if you're a newcomer to metaphysics, I'd recommend waiting awhile before you pick this one up. Crowley chronicled so much metaphysical information in his lifetime and within his writing there is a lot of truth to be uncovered ... but then there's the chaff of his insanity to seperate from the grain of his experience. Having a background in some of the beliefs which influenced his own prior to immersing yourself in this book would probably aid your interpretation of it tremendously - I got it a year into my tarot studies and it was tooooooo much, but now, 14 years later, it's an easier read. Deciding whether or not you will purchase this book really depends on how deeply you want to scratch the surface of occult studies and that genius everyone loves to hate: Aleister Crowley. In closing, I strongly recommend that you read some excerpts from this book before committing to its purchase.

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Summary: Tahuti stands in his splendor at the prow
Review: Okay, first is a forewarning: those of you looking for a text on the tarot to use for the purposes of divination, this isn't it. Crowley's essay is an Initiated interpretation, which means the deck is meant to be used for the purposes of mysticism, not practical magick.

That said, this is still an excellent book. The drawings are perhaps the most beautiful I have ever seen in ANY deck. There is more detail in here than can be found in most other texts. The cosmology is very complete. However, in typical Crowley Class B style, all he does is give you the outline of the point--you have to supply your own information in some cases. This, to those not familiar with Cabala and the Hermetic Tradition, can be extraordinarily confusing.

There are some things here which I am sure will offend the person of average assosciation with the tarot. Namely, Crowley intentionally alters the attributions of a number of the cards. But, there is a purpose to this.

I'm not certain of the accuracy of the history of the tarot. I read one review which claimed it was innacurate--however, if you read the book, you realize that Crowley was working on only one theory, and at the same time it is entirely irrelevant WHERE it originated--as he states himself. The history is thoroughly inconsequential. As with most things regarding Crowley, literal truth is not important.

All said, this book (which is said to contain all of Crowley's knowledge) is certainly not for those looking for the tarot for the everyday purposes. The Atu are cosmological symbols in this case, and only that (even though he does give several methods of tarot divination in the appendix). To those willing to wade through what is at times completely confusing, eternally amusing, willing to view breathtaking artwork and in-depth writing, this book is for you. Buy it.

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Summary: Help with Tarot
Review: The Aleister Crowley Thoth Tarot comes with a booklet to help interpret the cards. The definitions are not very in depth and vague. I read a shorter book by a different author and helped a lot. This one is by Crowley himself. A few pages description of interpretation and commentary is included for each card. It was very helpful. Now whenever I do tarot readings from the Thoth deck I can have easy help. Recommended for more advanced students of both Tarot and Crowley. This one didn't take very long for me to read as I can read very well and liked the book a great deal so as to keep turning the pages. I could easily see how this could seriously disturb someone, but some thought it was funny.

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Summary: A MAGNUM OPUS
Review: The Thoth Tarot has become one of the most popular Tarot decks in the world, and The Book of Thoth is Crowley's last word on the subject. Anyone interested in Tarot or the western mystery traditions should read and study it. It's Crowley's Magnum Opus, and I'd give it six stars if I could. However, for the beginning tarotist or someone unprepared for the style and erudition of Crowley's writing it can be an impossible read, and so I also recommend in the strongest terms Duquette's "Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot" --not as a replacement for The Book of Thoth, but as a companion text. It's the only commentary on the subject by a real Crowley expert (a 30 year veteran of Crowley's O.T.O.) and a real tarot expert (a Certified Tarot Grand Master). No one can make Crowley understandable like Lon Milo Duquette, and for me his book is Rosetta Stone of The Book of Thoth and the Thoth Tarot.

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Summary: "...Nothing but a pack of Cards !"
Review: This book is hard. Its apparent murkiness, as some complain, is actually due to the fact that ACs Thoth book is to other tarot books, as an Advanced Calculus textbook stands to an Arithmetic primer.

A tarot deck, Thothian or otherwise, consists of 72 pieces of cardboard which even Crowley could never entirely understand, in any complete sense ...and that is the beginning of an understanding of Tarot.

Crowley's amusement in publishing this book, was, of course, throwing his 'monkey cards' in our face, during the years he was on his way off of this earth. Introductory material from his Confessions, also composed in a final form at the time of the 'Thoth' book, records a quote from AC: "I don't give a damn for the whole human race - 'You're nothing but a pack of cards!'"

Letters exist between Lady Frieda Harris and AC from the card-creation period. They are not essential.

We are told that, as lovely as the rerpresentative color prints of the few cards in the book may be, they can't begin to give an idea of the beauty of Lady Frieda Harris's original paintings. I am sure the grey plate section in ACs 'Thoth' book give even less of such an idea.

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Summary: The Book Of Thoth-The Egyptian Tarot
Review: This is one of my most FavoriteBooks.The tarot to me is a dailycompanion.I have had this bookfor about 12 Year's Now.Thework for anybody new to thisGenere.was done by The Eccentric,English Self Aggrandizing BeastAleister Crowley(1875-1947).Thiswas Originally suppossed to be aProject which was suppossed to takeabout 5 months.at that time 2 Masterpeices of Crowley's came out TheEquinox of The God's.A more in deptCommentary to the Book of The law,also includes the Stele of Revealing.And The Sublime Eight Lectures onYoga.The Project with His help ofOf Mrs.Lady Frieda Harris took about5 Year's.The Imagery of the Deck itself Has Beautiful imagery Thatfar surpassess any other knownTarot Deck.However for a BeginnerIt would be wise to have a CollegiateDictionary.

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Summary: The Map of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Review: Written near the end of his life, "The Book of Thoth" is often considered to be Aleister Crowley's last great masterwork. It ought at least to stand as proof that his decades-long addiction to heroin had not completely obliterated his mind (as often suggested) - for here we find Crowley in classic form, pithy yet poetic, verbose yet vivid, recklessly enthusiastic yet simultaneously scathingly cynical. And sharp as a tack. This is not a book written by some senile old degenerate.

Rather it is a typically abstruse amalgamation of sundry skeins of esoteric tradition under the aegis of this system of at-first-glance frivolous symbols derived from medieval playing cards. (Or, if we choose, we may accept the occult yarn that the playing cards themselves represent a degraded form of the original ancient symbolic system, of which "The Book of Thoth" is the modern rehabilitation. This question of origin is "irrelevant even if it were certain" - for the Tarot presented here "must stand or fall as a system on its own merits.") The 22 Trumps or "Atu," 16 Court Cards and 40 Small Cards of the conventional Deck are shown to resume the doctrines of the Holy Qabalah in pictorial form. Specifically, the 22 Trumps correspond with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the 22 Paths on the Tree of Life; the 16 Court Cards with the 16 sub-Elements, combinations of the original four (Fire, Water, Air, Earth) which also correspond with the four letters of the Divine Name IHVH; and the 40 Small Cards refer to the 10 Sephiroth of the Tree manifested through the four Elements. The evidence for this is built up in the course of a fascinating excursion through strange and forgotten byways of legend and folklore, all referred to and analyzed in terms of the correspondences embodied in the Tarot. "The Book of Thoth" is thus in one aspect an effort of anthropology and comparative religion, but Crowley makes rather a point of insisting that historical accuracy itself is ultimately subordinate to practical "magical" utility - in other words, it makes no real difference whether a given symbol be authentically descended from old Egypt, so long as it proves efficacious for the modern Initiate.

Thoth or Tahuti, the Egyptian correlative of the Greek Hermes and the Roman Mercurius, is of course the Messenger of the Gods, "the Wisdom, the Will, the Word, the Logos by whom the worlds were created;" thus it is fitting that this hieratic "Book," which "gives you the map of the Kingdom of Heaven, and also the best way to take it by force," should be attributed to him. And indeed the astonishing complexity of the system elaborated therein, with its sublime coherence and consistency over such a vast terrain of symbolism, inclines one to credit the claim that its creation must have been assisted by "superiors whose mental processes were, or are, pertaining to a higher Dimension." Yet (again) one needn't accept the least of Crowley's assertions on "faith:" all that is required is a willingness to investigate. For its very integrity and originality, "The Book of Thoth" must at first baffle the "uninitiate;" but if he persist in its study and allow its correspondences to penetrate to the unconscious, it shall unfold for him as the Rose gives its honey to the bees.