Thoth vs. Rider Waite

beginagain

I bought this deck with my training wheels firmly attached, before I even realised that there is a difference between the Rider Waite system and the Thoth system. When I got the deck I fell in love and it gives fantastic readings, provided I use the Phantasmagoria manual provided. Unfortunately, I soon hit a snag: all of my other decks are based on the Rider Waite. I had no idea that different systems were present until I tried to compare images and meanings from my other decks to the Vampyres.

This is by far and away my favourite deck but I'm worried that working with it will get in the way of learning the traditional Rider Waite, which would in turn block me from using any other deck I have and will have in the future.

My question is, should I attempt to study the two systems side by side, or put this lovely deck away until I'm ready to learn the Thoth properly?
 

Barleywine

Waite and Crowley both had Golden Dawn roots but Crowley diverged (rather widely in some areas) into his own "magickal philosophy" of Thelema. If you haven't yet, you could read Liber T (part of the Golden Dawn "Second Order" curriculum) in conjunction with both systems to see where some of the the common ground lay. A free pdf download is available.
 

Sulis

Hi Barleywine,

Which 'free PDF download' do you mean?

As for your question beginagain - I can't see any problem in learning with your Vampyres deck if that's the deck that you really feel that you connect with.. The Thoth and RWS systems are different but not that different; as Barleywine has said, they're both representative of the same system.
 

Barleywine

Hi Barleywine,

Which 'free PDF download' do you mean?

This is the one I downloaded from the College of Thelema website. The introduction by James Eshelman gives some historical perspective on its origin. It also appears to be the same material that Crowley published in the Autumn Equinox of 1912, much to Mather's displeasure (or so I understand). After downloading it I discovered that I already had it in a Samuel Weiser reprint from 1981.

http://www.thelema.org/publications/books/LiberT.pdf
 

Richard

There are a few changes (actually four) which must be made to Liber Theta in order for it to conform precisely to the Golden Dawn structure. (Liber Theta is a reengineering of Mathers' Book T.) Otherwise, it may be the best handbook there is for both Golden Dawn and Thoth decks.

By the way, Waite appears to diverge from the Golden Dawn in the order of the Courts, because the Waite Kings actually are the Golden Dawn Princes renamed, but don't worry about it.
 

Zephyros

By the way, Waite appears to diverge from the Golden Dawn in the order of the Courts, because the Waite Kings actually are the Golden Dawn Princes renamed, but don't worry about it.

Like I said in another thread; study the RWS and you know the RWS, study the Thoth and you know all GD decks. Study on one isn't wasted, as it is easily applicable to all the others. Although Crowley did seem to diverge more from the established traditions, the upshot is that by the time a student is ready to even try to understand what he did, they are in a far better position to understand how he diverged.

In my opinion it is Waite who went further away from the GD "spirit," transforming his deck into something quite different. Indeed, I find that the popular conception that it was Crowley who went further afield while Waite's deck is more "neutral" to be both preposterous and insulting, and that's on my good days. The RWS has a very distinct agenda, discussed to death in other threads, that is profoundly Christian in its presentation of ethics and morals. So many times I've seen depictions in the RWS, read the accompanying blurb in the PKT, scratched my head and thought "why is this so bad?" I recall a recent thread in UTC which embodies, for example, the simplistic misconceptions Waite encouraged about the Hierophant, fueled no doubt by his own contentious relationship with the Church but having little to no relation to the Kabbalistic blueprint his deck was based on (or even the ritualistic reason the Hierophant isn't called Pope in the first place!). His Devil is just as preachy, while the GD didn't go that far in (ironically) demonizing the Devil. Don't even get me started on the sublime horror that is the Hanged Man, which is practically a piece of pornography that exalts pain and suffering.

All these things subconsciously encourage a certain kind of reading, and the generations of Tarot readers who have so readily embraced this deck still spout Christian ethics of self-sacrifice and self-flaggelation. bleh. What could possibly be neutral about such a deck? Frankly, compared to all that, the mess he made of the Courts is just icing.

Anyway, I digress. Still, I do like the RWS, as it manages to sometimes translate some of the more abstract ideas of other sources into real life (I think LRichard mentioned this point in another thread). As a primary study deck, though, I would counsel anyone to stay as far away from it possible, unless they were Glen Beck.
 

sworm09

I bought this deck with my training wheels firmly attached, before I even realised that there is a difference between the Rider Waite system and the Thoth system. When I got the deck I fell in love and it gives fantastic readings, provided I use the Phantasmagoria manual provided. Unfortunately, I soon hit a snag: all of my other decks are based on the Rider Waite. I had no idea that different systems were present until I tried to compare images and meanings from my other decks to the Vampyres.

This is by far and away my favourite deck but I'm worried that working with it will get in the way of learning the traditional Rider Waite, which would in turn block me from using any other deck I have and will have in the future.

My question is, should I attempt to study the two systems side by side, or put this lovely deck away until I'm ready to learn the Thoth properly?

I'm going to admit by bias. Study the Thoth.

I created a thread like this a while back when I first started toying around with the Thoth, and it can be an extremely frustrating deck. But once you actively sit down and start studying the Book of Thoth, learning the symbolism, and understanding the Qabalah and Astrology behind the deck it will literally change your life. Once you understand the symbolism and message that this deck is trying to get at you'll start having some extremely profound readings.
 

Barleywine

In my opinion it is Waite who went further away from the GD "spirit," transforming his deck into something quite different. Indeed, I find that the popular conception that it was Crowley who went further afield while Waite's deck is more "neutral" to be both preposterous and insulting, and that's on my good days.

As one who has spent four decades with the Thoth and barely six (scattered) months with the RWS, I'm not really in a position to say how far afield Waite went, but I have a reasonably good grasp of Thelema. I do know they were both GD members at approximately the same time and presumably would have started from the same instruction. I tend to ignore Christian overtones as much as I can so Waite's "Christianizing" of the RWS hasn't really got under my skin. I certainly don't see it as a "GD-neutral" deck, and the PKT seems to make that pretty clear as well (as I recall, I haven't looked at it in years).

But I would argue that Crowley went well beyond Chrisianity to grasp a much broader encyclopaedic comprehension, bringing in sundry elements of Hindu, Buddhist, Egyptian, Hebrew, Babylonian, Celtic, Greek, Roman and Gnostic cosmology (and I bet I've missed a few :)), "Yi King," astrology, geomancy, numerology, alchemy, a little science and philosophy, and a variety of pagan notions he mined from Frazer's "The Golden Bough." If Waite went overboard into the Judeo-Christian realm and its monumentally exquisite "pretzel logic" (see http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pretzel logic), Crowley ranged rather loosely far and wide, high and low. I don't think I actually said that Crowley went "farther afield" than Waite but, upon reflection, that may just be so.
 

Richard

If I understand the OP correctly, the choice is not directly between Thoth and RWS, but between the Tarot of Vampyres (a Thoth based deck with the Phantasmagoria companion book) and RWS based decks. That being the case, I would suggest going with the deck you like best, which apparently is Vampyres. That would make it easier to move up to the Thoth itself, and it should not hinder a 'sideways' shift to the authentic RWS.