Gonna learn Thoth if it kills me - Majors

Go Nicky Go!

I envy you "Gonna learn Thoth if it kills me"
I feel the same way.
If I don't do it this year, maybe yet another.
I just can't get it together with the Thoth and
God knows I've tried!

I'll be learning from your threads.
Best of luck!
ros

ros said:

Go Nicky Go!

I envy you "Gonna learn Thoth if it kills me"
I feel the same way.
If I don't do it this year, maybe yet another.
I just can't get it together with the Thoth and
God knows I've tried!

I'll be learning from your threads.
Best of luck!
ros

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Come join me come join me ... misery (or enlightenment) loves company !

As per learning I am counting on the wise souls (wise fools? har har) at AT who are kind enough to comment.

Nicky

nicky said:

Having been to a few OTO events, I know I don't want the whole shebang LOL.

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I guess it all depends what sort of group one encounters, they can be VERY different as regards flavour, work and competency.

nicky said:

That said I have been knocked over each time I re-pickup this deck. I know it is not the art. LF did a fabulous job etc but this wouldn't be the reason I want so much to work with the Thoth. It is the astounding correspondences and layers of meaning this deck has that is the appeal. If tarot holds keys to opening up new understanding, enlightenment as it were, then this deck has plenty of jumping off points.

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That's what got me second about it.

nicky said:

Regarding the different takes on the 'flowering plant' I can understand the chakra information, and it will cause me to recall yet another correspondence system that was included in this deck. As per the Arrien suggestion, that too has merit for me in that if I choose this deck to read for others, that may be an additional and easily understood reference if needed for the sitter.

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I used to like to find how the client could best relate, a mythological, psychic, qabbalistic. astrological or I-ching take, and give them that as a main focus and way of understanding the energy of the reading.

nicky said:

Thus, two different reasons for using the (or any) deck. There are probably as many different reasons to be involved with tarot as there are people involved.

I appreciate everyone's comments.. I am of course the buffoon on a quest.

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Now now, dont sell your self short ... unless you are deliberatly evoking the buffoon ... but we have enough of those already

nicky said:

Ok so next question... the children embracing near the bottom of the card...could they be the future prince/princess who will come later?

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They could very well be.

nicky said:

big fat thelemic hugs,
Nicky

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FAT Thelemic hug? ... it feels like a nice hug with no secret agenda ... a natural spontaneous exprexxion that probably means nothing more than the sheer joy of the experience ... ahhhh!

ravenest said:

The 'chakra' that relates (or feeds) the sexual centre is actually three chakras that make up one. The basic difference in the psychic body of men and women (in this area) is that 2 of the the three are are pretty similar but the third is different. Crowley decribed the male one as being full of short active lines or bars, red and black, moving in agitation and they seemed 'angry'. The woman was different but in the centre but had a different extererior or outer zone as well. A type of fuzzy wall that broke down and apart and and allowed outside influences into the middle (during menstruation).

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May I ask where exactly Crowley gives this description? It doesn't seem to be in his description in The Book of Thoth.

My brain just exploded ... read The Fool from Book of Thoth only about a dozen times today. I am off to the Magus tomorrow... I have digested a smidgen of the available information from the Fool card and will let that congeal for a while. I am confident I will be able to handle the Thoth by 2012.

Love is the law,
Nicky

Really really love this deck

So glad this thread popped up! Im in the same position as you nicky. I have been picking the Thoth up, admiring it and then putting it down again for a while now. Ive read DuQuette and regularly consult Banzhaf´s Keywords for the Crowley Tarot. But I do think it is a deck which you can really just LOOK, LOOK and then LOOK some more.

Ive taken to carying my pocket Thoth around and just wallowing in it´s images, doing a daily draw and just thinking...

Scion´s posts in the "Working with one deck" thread have inspired me. The Thoth seems to me to be the obvious deck I would want to work with. Im not setting myself any rules or deadlines. All I know is that I want to know the Thoth better.

I think of it as excavation. I will enjoy the digging, may never uncover everything I want, but whatever I unearth will be enriching.

The problem I have with the Crowley Tarot is not the images (I hasten to add) but the references in the literature. The names which are referenced (Hadit, Aesculap, Abraxas, the list goes on) I never know who they are. Then there are the Kabbalah references. Then - to be honest - my knowledge of astrology is virtually non-existant (I mean, what does it mean that the Star is Aquarius?) and so I wonder just how much I can get out of it. And the concepts of fire in water, and air in fire or whatever... I have quite a few stumbling blocks.

But lock me in a sunlit room with the deck itself and I would be blissfully happy. O but the textual/mythological references just swamp me. Every time.

Le Fanu said:

The problem I have with the Crowley Tarot is not the images (I hasten to add) but the references in the literature. The names which are referenced (Hadit, Aesculap, Abraxas, the list goes on) I never know who they are. Then there are the Kabbalah references. Then - to be honest - my knowledge of astrology is virtually non-existant (I mean, what does it mean that the Star is Aquarius?) and so I wonder just how much I can get out of it. And the concepts of fire in water, and air in fire or whatever... I have quite a few stumbling blocks.

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I'm in the same boat. My knowledge of Qabalah is sketchy and my knowlege of astrology doesn't extend much further than what I need to occasionally read my horoscope in the newspaper. Struggling with the Thoth is giving me a good excuse to do lots and lots of homework. I doubt I will ever be comfortable with the Thoth, but I do enjoy the challenge of trying to wrap my brain around it.

So far, DuQuette's and Snuffin's books on the Thoth have been the most helpful to me. (The info on the three flowers and the chakras sounds like something from Snuffin.) With the help of those two books, I'm gradually making more sense of Crowley's own "Book of Thoth."

Alan

Even the chakras stuff. OK so there is a gold disc where one of the chakras is located. And?

Id always found something deliriously sexual about the Fool in the Thoth. Something intoxicated, pervy even. I love that gold disc, but I don´t know anything about chakras (except that there are 7). The thing with the Thoth (and Im not complaining) is that every fascinating detail has its own bibliography...

Maybe I really should get a basic astrology book. My local bookshop has The Astrology Directory (same series as Anne Lionnet´s Tarot Directory) Does anyone know it? Would it be any help? (*sigh*... more books...)

Alan Ross said:

I'm in the same boat. My knowledge of Qabalah is sketchy and my knowlege of astrology doesn't extend much further than what I need to occasionally read my horoscope in the newspaper. Struggling with the Thoth is giving me a good excuse to do lots and lots of homework. I doubt I will ever be comfortable with the Thoth, but I do enjoy the challenge of trying to wrap my brain around it.

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That's the spirit!

The Thoth can be a two-edged sword. It's deep, complex, and a challenge. Admitedly for some people that's a real turn-off. But for others it's an inspiration.

The Thoth isn't just some modern day, shallow, comercial deck that you can pick and master within a couple of months, get bored of and throw it aside crying "Next!". On the contrary, it's a deck for life. It grows with you. The more effort you put into it, the more you will get out of it.

The Thoth Tarot is the gift that just keeps on giving.

Le Fanu said:

The problem I have with the Crowley Tarot is not the images (I hasten to add) but the references in the literature. The names which are referenced (Hadit, Aesculap, Abraxas, the list goes on) I never know who they are. Then there are the Kabbalah references. Then - to be honest - my knowledge of astrology is virtually non-existant (I mean, what does it mean that the Star is Aquarius?) and so I wonder just how much I can get out of it. And the concepts of fire in water, and air in fire or whatever... I have quite a few stumbling blocks.

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I guess it depends a lot on what you want to get out of the deck. I found starting with the deck, it helped me to have a basic astrology book and an introduction to qabalah on hand. But, thats a personal preference, you can use the deck very well without any of that. And it seems you already are anyway!

Le Fanu said:

Even the chakras stuff. OK so there is a gold disc where one of the chakras is located. And?

Id always found something deliriously sexual about the Fool in the Thoth. Something intoxicated, pervy even.

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It seems you already have worked it out, even if intellectually your not familiar with the symbols. But you've seen that the Fool has a glowing sun at the level of his genitals, and translated that to mean that there is something very sexual about him. I would have said that the sun, a symbol of life giving power, at the level of the genitals (the 2nd chakra) means exactly that, a sexual creative power. You really don't need to know the sanskrit name for the chakra, or the attached information when you've already worked out the point. Good for you

But if you want a few books, then a basic astrology book will be easy to find cheaply. You don't need a lot of detail really, any basic starters one will give you what you need. I got one for $5 (ironically it came from the Avon catalogue ). Duquette's Chicken Qabalah is a good introduction to qabalah as it applies to the Thoth also. And of course if you see a name that you don't understand, start a thread here and ask. There's still heaps of stuff I don't get and it would be nice to have them explained to me at the same time. I don't know that anyone ever reaches the bottom of the Thoth excavation.