Is this stuff necessary or was it all piled on by those kooky Golden Dawn fellers?

I've been reading comments today from Thoth fans and feeling that there's a suggestion that the RWS is a 'lesser' or 'dumbed down' tarot deck. So that feeling led me to search the internet for a bit more of this debate, which is 'better'--Thoth or RWS? And I found this little video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7EBJEHIgw4

The speaker states that Waite himself calls his deck a dumbed down version of tarot because most people wouldn't be able to understand the deeper meanings. He argues that Crowley had more faith in people's ability to rise to the occasion, as it were, and learn the background material. He goes on to insist that in order to read the tarot, one must have knowledge of kabbalah, astrology, and Thelema, and that one should read the Book of Thoth 'at least three times'. It is all of this background stuff, he argues, that makes Thoth superior to Waite.

Now, my thinking is...what about the first tarot decks. They consisted of majors and pips. (As the Thoth deck does). BUT--did the first readers know kabbalah? Did they assign astrological correspondences to every card? Did they steep every card with occult meanings having a nebulous and murky lineage? Or did they follow traditional meanings that they had learned from other readers, or possibly even made up themselves?

Is all this so-called superiority (and yes, I know Waite was Golden Dawn, I'm including him), all this 'necessary extra material' REALLY necessary? Or is it something that them there Golden Dawn fellers just decided to tack on to tarot?

What about readers who know NO astrology, NO kabbalah, nothing about Thelema, who either learned to read from something like Sarah Bartlett's Tarot Bible, or just by pure intuition, who still manage to give insightful and useful readings? Are they inferior? Or are they actually reading in an older tradition?

Carla said:

Is all this so-called superiority (and yes, I know Waite was Golden Dawn, I'm including him), all this 'necessary extra material' REALLY necessary? Or is it something that them there Golden Dawn fellers just decided to tack on to tarot?

What about readers who know NO astrology, NO kabbalah, nothing about Thelema, who either learned to read from something like Sarah Bartlett's Tarot Bible, or just by pure intuition? Are they inferior? Or are they actually reading in an older tradition?

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Very interesting question, Carla. Me, personally, I have not the slightest idea of Kabballah (starting with how to spell it!), Astrology, the Book of Thoth, the Golden Dawn and all this... since I never read with anything else than TdM or historic decks. Still I am doing not too bad with readings, I think. So my answer is clear: the whole "occult" extra material is not necessary.

Still I wouldn't say I read from PURE intuition, since I read a lot about the history and iconography of the TdM majors, their sources in Renaissance and Medieval culture, etc... Then there is numerology... It helps having background knowledge when your intuition won't sparkle, to fall back on it. Or to guide your intuition.

All just my point of view of course, I am not saying it is better or other ways are wrong!

In my case I think all Golden Dawn and any esoterist like Lévi created all that from thin air and associated them (astrology, quabalah, etc) to tarot. It's quite fascinating but all false. These all are based on false premises like that tarot came from Egypt containing lost wisdom. We all know now tarot truer history which is much more simpler and mundane. Nonetheless that does not stop me from using astrology or quaballah which I have learned recently with tarot. They add layers to tarot.

Carla said:

Now, my thinking is...what about the first tarot decks. They consisted of majors and pips. (As the Thoth deck does). BUT--did the first readers know kabbalah? Did they assign astrological correspondences to every card? Did they steep every card with occult meanings having a nebulous and murky lineage? Or did they follow traditional meanings that they had learned from other readers, or possibly even made up themselves?

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I don't think we can really know who the first readers were, or what they knew. But my guess is no, they did not know all these things. They were people who turned ordinary playing cards into a fortune telling device, the same way people have used everyday things like bones, cowrie shells, or bird guts to tell the future.

BUT-- since playing cards and especially tarot have a particular structure, it seems natural for people to begin to assign correspondences. I believe this is the root of occult tarot.

Carla said:

Is all this so-called superiority (and yes, I know Waite was Golden Dawn, I'm including him), all this 'necessary extra material' REALLY necessary? Or is it something that them there Golden Dawn fellers just decided to tack on to tarot?

What about readers who know NO astrology, NO kabbalah, nothing about Thelema, who either learned to read from something like Sarah Bartlett's Tarot Bible, or just by pure intuition, who still manage to give insightful and useful readings? Are they inferior? Or are they actually reading in an older tradition?

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Is it really necessary? No.

Did they just tack on all those correspondences? No. The GD, building on efforts by earlier occultists, used the tarot as a means to organize a vast amount of hermetic knowledge --which may not have been present in tarot to begin with, but which fits remarkably well. This knowledge was NOT created from thin air, but has a long, fascinating history going back to 2nd and 3rd century Neoplatonism (look into the work of Frances Yates if you're interested in learning more about that, particularly her Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition and Art of Memory).

Are readers who know nothing about astrology, kabbalah, etc. -- or those who are just not interested -- inferior? No, not in my opinion.

Are they reading in an older tradition? I don't know, because I haven't made much of a study of the early documented card meanings. Mary K. Greer made a blog post about the oldest cartomancy meanings in English (1729) but of course this is 4-suit playing cards, not tarot. But there doesn't seem to be any astrology or kabbalah involved in the meanings. It would be interesting to find more material on how early fortune tellers actually read tarot cards.

Everyone creates their own necessity, I think.

In another thread, a poster kind of casually threw out that if you weren't using Kabbalah, you weren't utilizing Tarot to its full potential. I was like: . Well damn, guess I'll always be a babby, cuz eff that noise.

It certainly seems that it must be that way for that reader, but Tarot is such a personal thing. We all have our own systems. We draw in from the large body of knowledge out there, but we're all seeking and finding different things.

For me, an essential part of reading Tarot is having an understanding of the historical and cultural evolution of the card. I can't imagine not taking that into account, unless I'm purposefully doing some kind of narrative or experimental reading. It's "necessary" to me. But it's definitely not necessary for other people!

I don't think you need astrology, kabbalah or any other esoteric stuff to make a deck a really good reading deck. I've been using the Tarot de Marseilles more and more over the past few months and one of the reasons I like it so much is because it doesn't have any esoteric stuff added on; it's tarot in it's purest form.
Even when reading with RWS based decks though I never bothered with 'extras'.. Thoth isn't for me and I think that's because of all the Golden Dawn and astrology in it.

I think they both have their strengths and weaknesses. Personally, despite my current obessive love of the thoth, i really dont like that kind of haughty 'well I LIKE this deck therefore it must be better' attitude which, despite all the intellectualizing and bringing talk of other systems into things, I feel like that's what it really comes down to...

if you want to learn other systems, thoth is nice in that it's there to do so, but if you don't its a fine reading deck too. for me, i like the symbolism, color stuff, and astrology; i have no interest in really learning qabbalah or thelema stuff. i like the thoth because it really meshes with...my tastes, perception, whatever. RWS never really did...i spent years working ONLY with decks based OFF of it, but the actual original deck...its only in the last year or so that I've gotten ok with it...

but i wouldn't try to claim that makes thoth better. I mean, I really do like the RWS system and the many interesting RWS based decks out there. They are just...different. I've never been a big fan of the art syle of TdM decks, but I do like the TdM system and unillistrated pip decks as well. They are just DIFFERENT, and i like that you have to think/read differently...reading RWS isn't quite like reading Thoth which isn't quite like reading TdM. And what is the point of trying to "prove" that such and such deck/system is "better" than others anyway? seems like a waste of intellectual effort to me....

Cassandra022 said:

And what is the point of trying to "prove" that such and such deck/system is "better" than others anyway? seems like a waste of intellectual effort to me....

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Quoted for truth, yo.

Needing to feel superior to other tarot readers is an extremely unattractive trait. Snobbiness just blinds you to reality. Everyone has something to offer, each system has something to offer.

WolfyJames said:

In my case I think all Golden Dawn and any esoterist like Lévi created all that from thin air and associated them (astrology, quabalah, etc) to tarot. It's quite fascinating but all false. These all are based on false premises like that tarot came from Egypt containing lost wisdom. We all know now tarot truer history which is much more simpler and mundane.

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I agree, as all things had to start somewhere and in that respect all things were created out of "thin air" or someone's fertile mind. For me it is not that it is "made up"... so are religions in my mind, it is the time, and followers that gives it weight...but rather look at the sincerity of the inventor, did they believe in their own dogma? What was their sincerity level? 100% and you have something that may make it past your lifetime. It adds to the sub paths of tarot history, interesting off shoots, worth exploring

Sulis said:

I don't think you need astrology, kabbalah or any other esoteric stuff to make a deck a really good reading deck. I've been using the Tarot de Marseilles more and more over the past few months and one of the reasons I like it so much is because it doesn't have any esoteric stuff added on; it's tarot in it's purest form.
Even when reading with RWS based decks though I never bothered with 'extras'.. Thoth isn't for me and I think that's because of all the Golden Dawn and astrology in it.

Click to expand...

I never liked the TdM art or the pips, but I've found a pip deck that I love, the Davis Celtic, and I've been reading with it a lot for the last three months. I believe I love it for the same reasons you are loving your TdM! It's so freeing.

And for the same reasons as you, I don't think I'll ever love the Thoth. Plus, I am just really not attracted to Miss Frieda's art.

I've always thought in the back of my mind that the 'extra stuff' was added layer upon layer, but it seems to me (and I am not knowledgeable in this!) that a lot of it was organised (created? embellished? built upon?) in the Victorian period by the Golden Dawn. And while it might add something to my readings to match up cards by astrological correspondences, I don't think it's necessary to do a good tarot reading.

And I find it really uncomfortable to read remarks about how people who've learned Thoth have finally 'broken out of the RWS rut' or 'finally moved on from RWS', etc. Like RWS is a 3-wheeler and Thoth is a Lockheed Martin fighter plane, or whatever.