Crowley Thoth Tarot (Premier Edition - Small): Premier Edition with Small 78-Card Crowley Thoth Tarot Deck by Aleister Crowley, Painted by Lady Frieda Harris, Astrological & Qabalistic Symbolism, Includes Booklet & Full-Color Spread Sheet

This is really an excellent tarot deck. I've been a tarot reader for some time and have a number of decks, all of which I love, but this one is unique. For starters, shipping was quick. Pros: - the version I ordered was pocket sized, so it's the same size as your average playing cards. The card stock is nice and they shuffle quite well. This is great for beginners who aren't great at shuffling or small hands, also will fit in a card shuffling machine. - The artwork is intricate, beautiful, and rich with esoteric symbolism, as expected. I find a lot more freedom of interpretation with these cards, instead of relying on what the cards are supposed to be. -This is really a brilliant beginner's deck: traditionally, it was designed for the cards to be read upright (no reversals), which can help with learning. The focus to learn is more on the Major Arcana and the Court Cards -Crowley added in a couple extra to the Major Arcana, which while not necessary, are really a lovely and unique addition -each card has an identifying descriptor to help portray its strongest characteristic -I have been working with these daily for a little over a week since I received them, and they're spot on accurate. It's honestly a little ridiculous, considering I've spent time looking at my other cards wondering between interpretations. -They came packaged in a nice outer box, and then another box within, it's not hardcover nor would I expect it to be for the price. It does come with a full booklet on the cards. -Cons: They came wrapped in cellophane and had a very strong plastic -new card print smell. A bit of incense and a couple of days got rid of it. That's it, no other cons, get this deck.

I had been reading tarot for twenty-seven years when I began to hear warnings about this deck and how people got all kind of spooky vibes from it and felt the need to steer clear of it. I had never owned a copy, but I'm not much for basing my choices on the anecdotes of ill-informed and frightened people. That was twenty-nine years ago. There were plenty of pretty decks and cute decks and simple decks and cartoon-like decks and while some of them appealed to me on a very basic level, none affected me spiritually. None cut through the layers of emotion and intellect that surround this common yet frequently misunderstood tool for divination, magick and meditation. This one did. It might be said that there's no such thing as bad press and all the warnings had simply awakened me to a source of power I had overlooked. If I bought a copy, which I did, I didn't expect Aleister Crowley to jump up from the other side of the table accompanied by high winds and lightning, but neither did I anticipate how sometimes brutally honest and alarmingly accurate this deck might be. It cut through the fog and offered clear and unambiguous advice. You might wish it was wrong. You might live in denial until its prognostications came true. Somehow, you could not deny the uncanny truth it delivered without fluff, equivocation, and fairytale explanations so many other decks offered. How many tragic choices have been made because cutesy decks felt it kinder to soften the blow and blur the truth? This deck will not lie to you. It will not cushion the blow. It will not blur the truth. Even if you are only minimally competent in tarot reading, it will offer you clarity. Whether you are wise enough to follow the advice given is up to you. But this isn't only a divinatory deck. Its carefully cultivated imagery by Aleister Crowley and artist Lady Frieda Harris literally draw you into the deck. In swirling patterns, your soul and mind are drawn. You move through the layers of the multiverse to a place within the deck from which you can learn and unlock secrets of the world and your life. You can also control them in accordance with Will and you can meditate upon them, comingling with the beings therein and taking knowledge from them. These are not easy beings or pleasant beings or nice beings, but wise beings who are not there to serve you, but who are ready to assist the worthy. Whether you are worthy or not depends on you. Here, the deck becomes a psychopomp, an initiatory guide. In the absence of reliable guidance in this day and age, the spirits of the deck can not merely take you on the Journey of the Fool, but on campaigns of understanding and enlightenment throughout your many lifetimes. This is a living deck and the aforementioned beings are very, very real whether you choose to acknowledge them or not. They care not what your opinion of them might be. Wisdom is for the strong and the strong are those whose eyes and minds are open and waiting to receive.

This edition of the Crowley Thoth Tarot has "standard" size cards smaller than the usual large edition, measuring 2-7/8" x 4-3/8". This is probably a better size for doing readings. The larger size cards are fine for meditation and ritual use, but too cumbersome for reading purposes. Also, this edition comes in a large box, with the deck in its own smaller box, a 20" x 17" Celtic Cross layout sheet, and a small 48 page instruction booklet. Although this edition is printed in Belgium, it comes with the two extra Magus cards normally found in the Swiss decks, and does not include the OTO cards. The Thoth deck was designed by Aleister Crowley, and painted by Lady Frieda Harris. The project spanned some five years, from 1938 to 1943, and it might be instructive to think about what was happening in the world during that time. Crowley was a member of the Golden Dawn, a secret society that pursued occult studies and magickal workings based in part upon the ancient Hebrew Cabala. The GD had its own Tarot deck, based upon its cabalistic teachings, which was given to initiates who were required to make their own copies, and who often did so with their own embellishments -- not surprising, since at that time there were no copy machines. Members were sworn to secrecy regarding the deck itself, but several members, including Crowley and Arthur Edward Waite, later designed and published decks based on the order's symbolism. Crowley eventually split with the GD, founding several orders of his own, among which the OTO -- Ordo Templi Orientis -- still exists and operates. In 1904, Crowley had a mystical experience of sorts, which fundamentally changed the way he looked at the world, and influenced all of his writings thereafter, including his Tarot. For this reason, there are significant differences between Crowley's Tarot and other Tarots based on the GD system. The deck itself is of the usual Tarot structure, having 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana. The court cards are rearranged to suit the esoteric GD interpretations. The court cards are Knight, Queen, Prince, and Princess. The Kings of the old packs are renamed Princes, and shown seated in chariots, to reflect the GD's assignment of them to elemental Air. What makes these cards truly unique is their abstract imagery. While the deck is fully illustrated, the cards do not have the "personalized" illustrations found in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. With the exception of the court cards, the Arcana in the GD system were never intended to represent persons, or their personal characteristics. They were intended to represent the impersonal forces and energies described by the Cabala, as understood by the Order's initiates. The design of the Crowley deck helps to avoid the trap into which readers of the Rider-Waite deck all too often fall -- projecting one's personal beliefs and characteristics into the cards, and winding up believing the cards are all about one's own personality and beliefs. It is easy to fall into that trap using cards that are illustrated with human figures, as are the Rider-Waite. Whether Waite did that intentionally, to hide the true meaning of the cards from the uninitiated, or because he really was the mental baboon Crowley thought he was, is difficult to say. I suspect neither -- Waite probably thought he was doing everyone a real favor by making the Tarot accessible, while at the same time honoring his Oath of Secrecy. In any case, the effect has been to lead readers and students down the very path the GD sought to avoid. The Tarot, at least in the initiated system of the GD and its offshoots, is an esoteric system that yields insights into otherwise invisible forces and events. It has nothing to do with "counseling," "personal growth," "empowerment," or any of the other absurdities with which the nihilism of modern revisionists has associated it. That makes the Thoth deck one of the best to learn with, assuming one wants to learn the Tarot as its designers in the esoteric tradition intended it. Its imagery is abstract, symbolic, suggestive, and evocative. Lady Harris is often given short shrift in terms of her esoteric knowledge, but any serious study of the deck will show that her ability to translate the abstract and complex ideas of both the Order's teachings, and Crowley's elaborations thereupon, is nothing short of genius. The booklet that comes with the deck is, in actuality, an excellent introduction to the cards and how to read them. It contains the original essay by James Wasserman, accompanied by two essays written by Lady Harris herself, which together give some excellent insights into the cards and their interpretation. The title page indicates that it has been "edited and updated" -- uhh-ohh, when I read that, I can't help thinking of the Grand Inquisitor's "We have corrected thy work!" There is a little of that, but no real harm done. Those who would like further information on the use of the Tarot in the Golden Dawn tradition will find Introduction to the Golden Dawn Tarot and The Qabalistic Tarot: A Textbook of Mystical Philosophy , both by Dr. Robert Wang, excellent sources. The definitive guidebook to the Thoth Tarot is Crowley's own Book of Thoth A Short Essay on the Tarot of the Egyptians, Equinox Volume III, No. V which contains detailed historical and theoretical analyses, descriptions, and suggested interpretations.

With so many questionable counterfeit decks available now for Thoth, it’s nice to see one that aligns with the description. You receive what you order. While this is not my favorite size I’m happy for this quality replacement of my original large US Games deck with something comparable.

I am a fairly respected demon sorcerer and occultist, and I was given a suggestion by a fellow occultist that I should try out the Thoth Tarot by Crowly. I am, by no means, in any way a practitioner of any of Crowley's magick or legacy, though I do believe many of his fundamental ideas are essential to understanding the world of magick and the occult. That being said, I am intuitive, I work magick with Demons, chaos currents and more. However, I was never a big fan of Tarot, and prefer mirror scrying or fire gazing, or ball gazing. And I have always found regular Tarot to be a bit... off for me. A bit... Complicated... a bit... stifling. There is an endless number of decks, all with muddled symbolism but really pretty artwork, or terrible artwork and more apparent symbolism. The various meanings of the cards are skewed depending on who makes the brand, and whose websites you read. However, the Thoth deck is utterly fantastic for the intuitive who prefers to SCRY into the reading, not simply draw cards and read or memorize meanings from some website or the decks instructions. The suit cards have the basic broad meaning in big bold letters, and the major arcana (trump) cards are pretty self-explanatory just from the name and imagery. Reading the manual shows several different collections of similar or the same meanings for each chard, and they can be used to enhance the reading if the card doesn't speak to you. But most of the time, even if you never picked up this deck before, the cards meanings will be clear enough. I have spent a week doing various readings and my confidence in this deck and my ability to read it has skyrocketed. Using similar methods to gazing or scrying, I work the cards and evoke various relevant forces, and draw my cards. And so far these cards have not failed me, provided I not fail them. Now, that isn't IMHO a sign the cards are magick, anyone who knows the occult knows the cards are just slips of paper or cardboard, that we use to give our psychic mind something to latch on to and work with via association. The fact that cards tend to come up exactly in the right way to inspire a psychic reading is mostly a factor decided by our subconscious ability to know when the cards are shuffled right to deploy a series of relevant cards. Any power the cards have is the power you give them in ritual or by using them for long enough. The artwork of these cards is great, I love the Art Deco style, and some of these cards are truly amazing (2 of disks AKA change for example, with the yin-yang elements as featured on the cover of the box, is probably my favorite looking card). Bottom line, if you are an intuitive like I am, and you normally like to scry and gaze, and tarot often feels clunky or overly complex... or If you ever wish you could just stare at the cards like you do a mirror or ball, or scry bowl and get visions or ideas pop into your head based on the symbolism of the cards to inspire you?? This deck is for you. The cards are about the same size and consistancy of normal playing cards. I like this better as I begin every reading with a good old fashioned card shuffle like a dealer at a poker table, then proceed to fine tune it with other methods. So these respond well to normal card manipulation without excess wear from what I can see.

The head of the Masonic group that holds or held the copyright to the deck says he personally re-photographed the paintings used for the deck and I believe him. However AI/the internet indicates that the owner of the physical paintings, Warburg Institute, did a subsequent professional cleaning and then scanned them (early digital cameras have a hard time matching later scan technology, and of course cleaning helps). So it’s not clear where the tea lies in term of best possible reproductions on the marketplace; I’ve seen internet images of some Atus that are startling, but without provenance, I can’t tell if they are more accurate than this edition, or just simply jazzed up. These issues having been noted for the sake of pedantry, it’s a fine, clear, beautiful deck lovingly photographed and loving printed (by famous AGMuller). So if you have an earlier version, by all means get this version too, you’ll notice stuff you missed before or thought was just due to the artist’s bad hair day. But wait there’s more! Resident OTO scholar Wm Breeze has put together a Little White Booklet (aka LWB), as the free skeletal instruction pamphlets packed in tarot card boxes are called, and is it ever a doozy. It’s a micro opus. An occult education and teaser all in one. While you don’t even have to know who Crowley was to enjoy and use this deck, arm chair observers like myself will probably tell you that the deck and the booklet are excellent PR pieces for the outfit that follows AC’s system (which is called “Magic” not AA), the fraternal/sororal OTO. No patronizing holier-than-thou agenda. And, unlike hide and seek efforts by shy magicians in the past (Levi et al), everything is laid out without “blinds and double blinds”, tricks and deceptions for the uninitiated - outsider or member, the same truths. The only comment I would make is that I find this deck so tantalizing close to “sacred” that I use mine just for meditations and rumination, and pull out an old Rider/Waite/Smith deck to dazzle my friends with readings that are so consistently backwards, I’m tempted to say “of course just reverse everything I tell you, and you’ll be amazed!”. & you do know that meditating on these or other good Tarot cards can usher energies into your life? Or help you cope with inner plane energies, if you are already feeling them.

But they are large and awkward to shuffle. I really enjoy how easy it is to see the details on the larger card. I also purchased the next smaller size which are essentially the same size as a deck of playing cards. To me they are too small, but definitely are usuable. What's needed is a size in between the two!!! (Goldilocks here. Hehe) What would really be great is if they made a deck where the artwork goes all the way to the border and they didn't have the names printed at the base. The deck itself is amazing and A.C. and LFH really created a masterpiece. I feel blessed to have them. I highly recommend this deck!

Received these tarot cards very quickly. Same as described. Large deluxe cards that are beautifully colored. Comes with booklet. Would purchase again,

Fiyatı yüksek ama güzel bir deste

I am very satisfied with this set of cards, first of all the excellent quality and what really surprised me was that the cards are from 2023 with a new design of shades and back. Above all, a new booklet from AMG Urania. Excellent purchase

This is the deck you are looking for.

Premetto che non sono un erudito dei tarocchi di Crowley. Sono bellissimi, molto grandi e di ottima qualità. Non ho mai avuto l'opportunità di tenere in mano le stampe più antiche ma l'impressione è un po' plasticosa data la forte lucentezza, in foto sembrano più pastose di quello che sono. La scritta sullo sfondo "Triumps" mi da molto fastidio perché confonde la lettura del vero nome dell'arcano sovraimpresso, ma probabilmente fa parte del disegno originale. Sono corredate da libretto con istruzioni. Sono talmente dense di simbolismo e dettagli che nonostante la grandezza si sente l'esigenza di portarle molto vicine agli occhi, come se la stampa non fosse molto definita. Ad ogni modo sono entusiasta dell'acquisto.

the deck is so nice, just bought it and I’ll learn to read it later :)