The "RWS Path" vs. the "Thoth Path"

[a_gnostic]

I feel like I'm beginning to progress in my understanding of the tarot and looking for some advice about how to continue this journey. This is a kind of a "which deck" question, though more generally, "which type of deck(s)".

I was initially drawn to the intricacies and artwork of the decks themselves in loose alliance with my young daughter's interest in Wicca. A few weeks ago, I dived headlong into the available resources and find myself drawn down what seem to be two different paths. (It may turn out that these paths aren't, for me, all that different.)

What I think of as the "RWS path" involves learning enough about conventional interpretations of Rider-Waite (and derivative) decks to feel comfortable enough to read with them without feeling like I'm following a recipe, developing my intuitive sense and taking the cards more or less at "face value" along with whatever esoteric details I manage to pick up.

The "Thoth path" seems, of course, far more involved and intricate and involves learning about a lot of stuff that before now wouldn't have held my interest (Hermetic Qabalah, Astrology, and particularly Alchemy). To my surprise, I'm finding it fascinating, on the one hand holding hope that there's more than meets the eye and on the other hand worried that I'm spending an awful lot of brainpower on something that may ultimately prove unworthy -- to me.

I do have an embarrassment of resources: tarot decks, books both electronic and print, and an substantial quantity of original source materials (mystical in nature) that I've scavenged online.

It seems pointless to ask anyone else to decide what the value of any of this stuff should be to me: that's something I need to determine for myself. But for those of you who may have been down both the "RWS" and "Thoth" paths, can anyone give me some feedback or opinions on whether it makes sense to try one first then the other or both at the same time?

My guess is that following the (much longer) Thoth path first would equip me well for whatever level of intuitive capabilities I might hope to acquire. Does it make sense to stick with RWS first and then tackle Thoth, or is it feasible to do both at the same time?

Something that strongly influenced me to even ask this question is a tutorial video that one of our members, princeofcups518, recorded a year or so ago. (You can easily find the video yourself on YouTube by searching for "thoth vs waite", and it should pop up at the top of the search result.) The information he imparted impressed me, and it impacted my mind-set so much, that I actually transcribed it (and I'm considering posting that transcription here shortly, because it's interesting, and his reasoning seems valid.)

I have searched for and benefitted from other threads here that more or less deal with some of these issues. They're fairly old threads, though, and I thought it worthwhile to begin a new discussion than to dredge them up and shift their topic to my liking.

I will surely appreciate whatever you more experienced denizens might care to say about this.

 

[velvetina]

well, there is the third path of course!

an infinate number of paths, all very twisty (even the ones that appear straight & level)
.....I'd just pick your favourite deck, or a favourite card & see where it leads you.

there is a HUGE amount of material out there, & I wouldn't be too worried by that. Its just like having access to the most fabuous libary...You might do a bit of cherry-picking then you find yourself entirely absorbed by something...it doesn't really matter, you're finding your own way.

see what works, what doesn't.

There 2 systems you describe compliment each other, they aren't isolated. I've been involved with the Tarot for over 30 years my understanding continuosly changing, back-tracking..I mix systems quite shamelessly....the analogy I'd use is that I am mixed heritage myself and so is my approach to Tarot, to cooking, to life!

 

[cmarie]

I started with the Thoth deck, then I got a RWS clone and worked with that for a while. Now I switch back and forth, and sometimes use both together. I find that they each compliment each other, and this, more than anything has helped me learn card meanings. It is a never ending journey and there is no need in my opinion to commit to just one. Sometimes I put the Thoth away, and then I get it out and fall in love again using it non stop. Same with my other decks.

I find Thoth very helpful in learning Qabalah, astrology and even now I am starting to learn some alchemy. Then I apply that knowledge to the RWS.

I have read a slew of books, studied like mad(I enjoy it!), and watched countless videos on you tube - but nothing beats actually playing with the cards. By playing with the cards I mean looking at and handling them, making comparisons, grouping them and then noting similarities and differences. (just a few things I do in playing)

Hope that helps you a little, best wishes!

 

[Cassandra022]

im sure someone will come along and articulate this far better than i can, but the two really aren't all that different. both waite and crowley were essentially coming to tarot from the same golden-dawn influenced-tradition, albeit from differing perspectives.

up until about a year ago or so i'd only worked with RWS based decks, and I had NO trouble reading with the thoth. you don't need to understand all the intricacies of a deck to read with it either - if hardcore study does it for you, work those books. if you rather just go with intuitive reading of the pictures, that can work too. if you are somewhere in between on the spectrum, again, that's fine. whatever works for you. tarot should be enjoyable and fulfilling, and that means different things for different people, both in terms of which decks they use and in approach to work with tarot.

Edit - for my own biased opinion, if you really want to focus on one particular deck of the two, I'd say I find I get much more out of the Thoth, personally.

 

[a_gnostic]

well, there is the third path of course!

an infinate number of paths, all very twisty (even the ones that appear straight & level)
.....I'd just pick your favourite deck, or a favourite card & see where it leads you.

I am highly susceptible to that which is part of the dilemma: once on a track, it feels like a freight train that can't stop!

I've been involved with the Tarot for over 30 years my understanding continuosly changing, back-tracking..I mix systems quite shamelessly....the analogy I'd use is that I am mixed heritage myself and so is my approach to Tarot, to cooking, to life!

I love your attitude. It would be great if I had 30 years left to do this! Who knows, maybe I will.

I appreciate your perspective, thank you.

 

[Cassandra022]

i just had a peek at your profile. for sheer novelty value, perhaps you might enjoy one of these:

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/silicon-valley/
http://www.tarotgarden.com/boutique/onlinecatalog.php?view_title=physics
http://www.etsy.com/listing/105796498/the-mathematics-tarot-limited-edition

 

[a_gnostic]

i just had a peek at your profile. for sheer novelty value, perhaps you might enjoy one of these:...

I had seen two of those, and yeah, they do have a strong novelty appeal!

 

[a_gnostic]

What you've all said about the RWS and Thoth decks being similar makes sense, considering they both have a Golden Dawn lineage, but princeofcups518 suggests that Waite may not have intended for his deck to facilitate intricate readings while Crowley may have intended his to be a "teaching deck". What I get out of his video is that if you're serious about becoming (pardon the expression) adept with any of these, your best course is to buckle down and wrestle with Thoth, even if it takes a year or so to make it through.

Here's the transcription I mentioned in my original post, above:

Hi again. So, I got a comment today from a new subscriber… and it was a really interesting comment, and I wanted to make a video about it. He has been reading Tarot for a few years, and he only uses Rider-Waite and is looking for something different, possibly using the Thoth tarot. He asks whether it's really as complicated to read as people say, that it's kind of a stigmatized deck (a comment I found interesting), [so] why do I pick that deck rather than any other, and is it important to have a special kind of deck?

Well, my feeling on it is that I don't get much from the Rider-Waite [deck], either, and it doesn't speak to me in any way, and I think the first thing you have to do as a Tarot reader is to find the deck that speaks to you the clearest. I also think that the intent on the part of each deck's creator is wildly different. Arthur Edward Waite, when he was making his Tarot deck, basically said in his [book], A Pictorial Key to the Tarot, which he wrote in response to this deck – he said, basically, "Look: y'all aren't going to get all this symbolism, and I'm not even going to try, but I'm going to give you this deck so that you can say that you use Tarot, and it's going to be a dumbing-down of all these deep, esoteric symbols." And so that's why it's a pictorial deck, and he calls it a pictorial key.

Prior to Waite's deck, in every other deck, the minors always were depicted by whatever number of symbols for that suit, so the Five of Wands would just be five wands in certain colors. If you were in the Golden Dawn, you would make your own deck, so Waite and Crowley would each have had their own decks when they were members. There are different Golden Dawn rules for color attributes and Kabbalistic attributes and all this stuff. Waite canned all that with Pamela Colman Smith and just gave us, basically, a bunch of pictures and admitted that he didn't expect anybody to really get very far with it. He expected it to be a very basic introduction.

That's also why he included the Celtic Cross as his main spread. It's the first spread you find in the Pictorial Key to the Tarot. He does have others, but they are so large that they are not really very useful. To be fair, they are more accurate as far as real spreads were like in the 19th century and 18th century. They're very linear and narrative like the Opening of The Key, but the Celtic Cross is not like that. The Celtic Cross is one of the first mainstream positional spreads ever invented. He did that so that you would be able to read the darn things, because he expected no one to be able to really read something like the Opening of The Key. Also, the Opening of The Key was a secret part of the Golden Dawn's teachings, so obviously he wasn't going to [divulge] that.

Now Aleister Crowley, on the other hand, when he made his deck, he made it more in response to his prophecies on the New Aeon and the so-called Revelation Thelema ["thelema" is Greek for "will"] of which he is the so-called prophet. I say "so-called", because I really still can't quite make up my mind on Thelema, to he honest. I think Thelema has a lot of strong tenets, and I think some of it is just absurd. That's just my opinion, and anyone could say that about any religion. For the most part, I do think it has a lot of strong and important things to say.

One of the things about Thelema is that it simultaneously has [both] a very egalitarian and a very elitist mode of thinking. I think it is very naturally elitist, because if you read any parts of The Book of The Law, the big sort of bible of Thelema that Crowley [claimed to have] channeled in Egypt in 1904, there are many parts of it that condemn the weak and say it's alright to stamp out the weak, that the law of "survival of the fittest" is sort of a Divine Right, and so it almost violently despises the weak and the effeminate and rallies us to be very strong, hot-blooded people.

With that, though, comes the famous saying, "every man and every woman is a star". The idea is that everyone is inherently equal, everyone at their core is a star, everyone is a pure representation of godhead at their deepest level, but some people are closer-connected to that than others, and that's sort of how we get hierarchy. If you understand that your egotistical action is an expression of your divine self, then it's okay if it supposedly crushes other people.

It also echoes Neitzsche's philosophy that coddling people keeps them thinking that it's okay to be weak: things like sympathy and pity are not good, that you have to continue to enforce rigor and authority and fear, almost, and violence against people in order to get them to improve themselves and to wake them out of their slumber. So Thelema very carefully balances itself between agression and respect of people: if you really respected the inherent divinity of someone, you wouldn't coddle them. (I think "coddle" is a really good word for it.)

With that in mind, when Aliester Crowley made his deck, it not only embodied the entire Thelemic philosophy, but it also was made with the expectation that everyone was going to be able to access these symbols – to an extent. He didn't necessarily believe, like Arthur Edward Waite, that everyone was going to, but I think he believed that everyone should have the opportunity to try. Therein lies the difference [in their approaches].

Because Crowley maintained a lot of the esotericism and the deep occult symbolism, images, and colors of that deck, it's a much more potent deck. It's far more powerful [than the Rider-Waite] and will get you far more profound and life-changing readings. The Rider-Waite deck just gives you a series of events. The Rider-Waite rarely has given me a reading that's particularly profound, and readings by people who use that deck that I have seen, either on here or in person, they aren't particularly deep or spiritual or counseling: they're very much like a laundry list of events, telling you what you've done, what you're doing, what you're going to be doing in a very chronological way, but they don't necessarily get into the real spirituality and prayerfulness of doing a Tarot reading.

And I do think Tarot as a form of divination, you know, Iamblicus in the third [or fourth?] century is writing that divination is the act of communion with a god so that the god actually enters the body of the diviner, and the diviner therefore actually experiences this great ecstacy and soul cleansing and – blah blah. So divination is not supposed to be just past, present, future.

Diviniation is work. It's supposed to be a plunging into your other selves and an attempt to figure out your multifaceted self and to help do that with others, too, and see how that's is reflecting into their current sitatuion. Every situation is a manifestation of something going on in here. I firmly believe that I think Crowley recognizes that. The Crowley deck operates more on energies and less on event-based stuff. It's easier to read that deck on a multiple string of levels. With Rider-Waite it is very easy to read each card in a block. (I have constantly tried to find ways of destroying that block through various reading methods, namely with my scientific way of reading—my first video talks a lot about that—and trying to break us out of that stream of doing things.)

The other thing about Crowley's deck in The Book of Thoth his only divinitory method was the Opening of the Key. That's really interesting to me: Crowley wasn't ashamed of revealing secrets and occult workings and did it with the expectation that, again, not everyone would get it, but people should have access to it, for better or worse. And so I prefer the "vibe" of the Thoth tarot, it makes me feel like a more empowered indivudual who can use Tarot to make decisions that are empowering. And when I read it for others, it's the same sort of deal.

I don't get that from Rider-Waite. At the same time, you [the original questioner] mentioned it's stigmatized and also very complex. Well, yes, the stigma comes from the very great misconception that Crowley was the father of modern-day Satanism, which is total poppycock, because he didn't believe in anything like the Devil, as far as a specific entity. It's very true – the Devil doesn't exist, the Devil is you and I. We create our own Devils. That's the unfortunate reality. So ignore that, it's sort of pointless. There are many bad things that Crowley did, and there were many good things he did: sort of leave it at that. You have to be as impartial as possible with the man, because his magick and his actual esoteric writings were brilliant. He was a genius in that field, he really was, and that was a common conception even [though] people were terrified of him, even in this day.

At the same time, It does take a lot of work. It took me about a year and a half before I could really understand what I was reading. There's a lot of back[ground] reading you're going to need to do if you decide to take up the Thoth. Lon Millo DuQuette's book [Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot] a lot of people say is great. I didn't have a great experience with that, I thought it was very, very bland and didn't really tell you much about the actual deck.

To get the most out of the deck, you have to read The Book of Thoth at least 3 times – I am actually serious, at least 3 times – and you need to do a lot of meditation on the cards, a lot of just sitting and thinking about them, thinking about why they're designed the way they are, why certain colors are chosen, why he says certain things about them. And then you need go and read his other material, too, primarily The Book of the Law, Liber CCCCXVIII (418), The Vision and the Voice—very important—and try to understand what the purpose of Thelema is and what it's getting at, because a lot of its tenets are explained in it.

You need to know astrology and Kabbalah. and a bit of alchemy as well. Having some yoga knowledge is useful as well: the process of contemplation, the process of meditation, and the process of enlightenment. Certainly, magical ritual knowledge is good. I'm very rusty on that, but I know a basic working of it in order to understand some of the symbolism and allegory of these cards, particularly sex magic is important.

So there's a lot of background stuff, but I promise it is totally worth it. Take it slowly. It is one of the most rewarding decks to work with, because it's so wholistic. If you put the right amount of work into it, you'll find the same thing. I really do hope you make the shift, frankly [from Rider-Waite to Thoth]. I am totally biased toward the Thoth deck. It has single-handedly changed my life, and I will admit that.

Best of luck to you, and if you ever have any questions at all about the deck, how to read with it, anything at all, please let me know, and that goes to everyone. Thank you for your question and your comment, and I hope to hear from you again. Take care.

 

[vee]

I get a little annoyed sometimes at people calling the RWS cookie cutter or simplistic. I find the RWS to be a complex, rich, and earth shaking deck with deep symbolic meaning. I also see the Thoth deck that way.

Why pit them against eachother? They're hardly the only methods for Tarot, and as many posters have said, quite similar. I use both decks, both methods, appreciate and read both men's works.

If you want to further your tarot experience, learn them both. Learn them all. Integrate across methods. Keep your mind open. Order doesn't matter, just throw yourself into it. And enjoy it

 

[a_gnostic]

So far, I don't think of RWS as "cookie-cutter" or simplistic, but reading Waite's Pictorial Guide to the Tarot, there do seem to be cases in which he says, basically, "I didn't include that because you wouldn't have understood anyway".

One thing that strikes me about that book, though, is that it seems more a commentary on the deck than intended as an explanation of it. Waite assumes the reader is familiar with some background material, probably including some things that were in publication at that time.