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Liber XXXII · Thelema

Liber XXXII · Thelema · Chapter III: Tarot & Qabalah in Thelema

The Thoth Tarot: Crowley and Frieda Harris's Deck Explained

The Thoth tarot explained: how Aleister Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris made the deck in 1938–1943, its renamed trumps, courts, minor titles and Book of Thoth.

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The Thoth tarot is the seventy-eight-card deck designed by Aleister Crowley and painted by Lady Frieda Harris between 1938 and 1943, and explained in Crowley's The Book of Thoth (1944). Built on the Golden Dawn's system of correspondences but revised in the light of The Book of the Law, it renames several trumps, reorders the courts and gives every numbered card a one-word title. It was published as a printed deck only in 1969, and it has since become one of the most influential tarots of the twentieth century.

Crowley, Frieda Harris and the Origins of the Deck§

Crowley had studied the tarot since joining the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1898. The order's teaching on the cards, contained in a manuscript known as Book T, attributed each of the twenty-two trumps to a Hebrew letter and a path on the Tree of Life, and each numbered card to a ten-degree decan of the zodiac. Crowley published his own tables of these attributions in Liber 777 in 1909, but for three decades he produced no deck of his own.

The opportunity came through Lady Frieda Harris, a painter born in 1877 and married to Sir Percy Harris, a Liberal member of Parliament. She met Crowley in London in the late 1930s and became his pupil in magick. Harris had an independent interest in esoteric ideas, including the projective geometry taught in anthroposophical circles, and her training as an artist gave Crowley a collaborator able to realise his symbolic designs. She also helped support him financially during a period when he had little income.

From Revision to Reinvention, 1938–1943§

The project, begun in 1938, was first conceived as a modest update of traditional designs, perhaps in a few months. It grew instead into five years of work. Crowley sent Harris detailed instructions, sketches and criticism by letter and in person; she painted, repainted and sometimes argued back. Several cards went through multiple versions, and Harris produced more than one painting of the Magus, which is why some later editions include additional Magus cards.

The resulting style is unlike any earlier tarot. Harris used interlocking planes, spirals and lines of force, influenced by projective geometry and by modern art, to show energies rather than static scenes. The imagery draws on Egyptian religion, alchemy, astrology, Greek and Hindu myth and Thelemic doctrine, often several at once. Crowley named the deck after Thoth, the Egyptian god of writing and wisdom whom earlier occultists, following Antoine Court de Gébelin in the eighteenth century, had imagined as the author of the tarot; the history of tarot shows that the cards in fact originated as a card game in fifteenth-century Italy.

The paintings were shown publicly in 1942, in exhibitions held in Oxford and London. Harris's name appeared as the artist, and the cards attracted interest as works of art as much as occult objects.

The Major Arcana: Renamed Trumps and the Tzaddi–Heh Exchange§

The Thoth trumps keep the traditional twenty-two subjects but rename and reinterpret several of them. Crowley explained the changes in The Book of Thoth as corrections suited to the new Aeon announced in The Book of the Law.

  • 0 The Fool shows a green-clad figure surrounded by symbols of Dionysus, Harpocrates and the Green Man, as the spirit of pure potential.
  • I The Magus replaces the Magician, depicted as Thoth-Mercury juggling the instruments of magick.
  • VIII Adjustment replaces Justice, shown as a masked female figure balancing the scales of Maat.
  • XI Lust replaces Strength: the woman riding the lion becomes Babalon astride the Beast, holding a flaming cup, an image of ecstatic energy drawn from Thelemic doctrine and the Book of Revelation.
  • XIV Art replaces Temperance as an alchemical figure who completes the union begun in the Lovers (VI).
  • XX The Aeon replaces Judgement. Instead of the angel's trumpet and the rising dead, it shows the sky goddess Nuit arched over the hawk-headed Horus, adapted from the Stele of Revealing.
  • XXI The Universe replaces the World, and X Fortune drops the words "Wheel of".

"Tzaddi is not the Star"§

The most discussed change is the exchange of Hebrew letters between IV The Emperor and XVII The Star. A verse in the first chapter of The Book of the Law states that Tzaddi is not the Star. Crowley therefore gave Tzaddi to the Emperor and Heh to the Star, while each card kept its zodiac sign of Aries or Aquarius. He noted that the exchange forms a loop on the zodiac that mirrors the Golden Dawn's earlier swap of Strength and Justice, a symmetry he took as confirmation. For the traditional attributions see The Emperor, The Star and the survey of the Major Arcana.

Courts and Minor Arcana: Princesses, Knights and Decan Titles§

In the Golden Dawn system, the four court figures of each suit correspond to the four letters of the divine name YHVH and to the four elements. The Thoth deck follows this scheme with its own titles: Knight (Fire, the mounted figure and highest of the four), Queen (Water), Prince (Air, shown in a chariot) and Princess (Earth). Each court card also covers a portion of the zodiac, giving it a seasonal and astrological character as well as a temperament.

The suits are Wands, Cups, Swords and Disks, the last replacing Pentacles or Coins; Crowley explained the change as expressing the idea of a spinning, active earth rather than a static one. The Aces represent the root of each element.

The numbered cards from two to ten are attributed to the thirty-six decans of the zodiac, each ruled by a planet in a sign, and Crowley printed on each a one-word title derived from the Golden Dawn's descriptive names. In Wands the sequence runs from Dominion and Virtue through Strife and Victory to Oppression; in Cups from Love and Abundance to Debauch, Indolence, Happiness and Satiety; in Swords from Peace and Sorrow to Science, Futility, Cruelty and Ruin; in Disks from Change and Works to Worry, Success, Prudence, Gain and Wealth. Rather than the illustrated everyday scenes of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, Harris painted these cards as abstract arrangements of the suit emblems, coloured according to the planet and sign. A general account of these cards is given in the Minor Arcana.

The Book of Thoth and the Symbolism of the Deck§

The Book of Thoth: A Short Essay on the Tarot of the Egyptians was published in 1944 as a volume of Crowley's periodical The Equinox, in a limited edition illustrated with reproductions of the paintings. It is the authoritative commentary on the deck. The book opens with Crowley's theory of the tarot as a symbolic map of the universe, then works through each trump, the courts and the small cards, and closes with appendices on divination and on the attributions.

The commentary is dense with cross-references to the Tree of Life, astrology and the tables of Liber 777. Crowley treats each trump as a path between two sefirot and reads its imagery through the Hebrew letter, the astrological sign and the Egyptian or classical deity assigned to it. Many cards also encode Thelemic teaching: the Aeon depicts the transition from the age of Osiris to the Aeon of Horus, and the Lust card shows Babalon, the goddess of The Vision and the Voice. The wider system is surveyed in Tarot and Qabalah in Thelema.

Crowley regarded the cards primarily as instruments of meditation and initiation, with divination as a secondary use. The Book of Thoth nevertheless includes a method of reading, derived from the Golden Dawn's "Opening of the Key", and the deck has been widely used for readings ever since.

Publication History and Influence§

Crowley died in 1947 and Harris in 1962, without seeing the deck printed. The first edition, issued in 1969, was reproduced from photographs and was generally judged a poor rendering of the colours. A better edition, prepared under the auspices of the Ordo Templi Orientis from new photography, followed in the late 1970s, and the deck has remained in print since, chiefly from the Swiss publisher AGMüller. The original paintings are owned by the OTO and have long been kept at the Warburg Institute in London.

The Thoth deck has inspired numerous handbooks and derivative decks, and its titles for the minor cards have entered general tarot vocabulary. Historians of the tarot such as Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett treat it as the culminating work of the occult tarot that began with Court de Gébelin and Éliphas Lévi and passed through the Golden Dawn. For practitioners, it remains the standard deck of Thelemic tarot, studied alongside Liber 777 and used in A∴A∴ and OTO circles.

Frequently asked questions§

Who created the Thoth tarot?§

Aleister Crowley designed the symbolism and Lady Frieda Harris painted the cards between 1938 and 1943. Crowley explained the deck in The Book of Thoth, published in 1944.

How is the Thoth tarot different from the Rider-Waite-Smith deck?§

The Thoth deck renames several trumps (Adjustment, Lust, Art, the Aeon, the Universe), exchanges the letters of the Emperor and the Star, and uses Knight, Queen, Prince and Princess as courts. Its numbered cards carry one-word titles and abstract designs rather than illustrated scenes.

When was the Thoth tarot first published?§

The paintings were exhibited in 1942, but a printed deck appeared only in 1969. An improved edition from new photography followed in the late 1970s.

Is the Thoth tarot good for beginners?§

Many readers find it rewarding but demanding, because its symbolism assumes some knowledge of astrology, Qabalah and Thelema. The Book of Thoth and later handbooks explain the system for those willing to study it.

Sources and further reading§