Was Aleister Crowley Inspired by the RWS Deck?

[RickInBakersfield]

I am aware that Aleister Crowley created his own deck Thoth, but just how was it inspired by the RWS deck?

 

I know that this is sort of a broad question, but are there similarities between the Thoth & the RWS deck?

 

Whatever you want to share I am all ears.

[RunningWild]

Where have all the tarot scholars gone?  On the old AT forum there was an entire section where you could pretty much find everything about the history of the decks.  

 

I would say that both were inspired by the Golden Dawn.  I couldn’t tell you if Waite/smith influenced Crowley/Harris.  I’m certain that someone on here has that answer.

 

I’m going to @DanielJUK to see if there’s a section on here like the one on the old forum or if he can provide a link for you to read it from the other site’s archives.

[gregory]

I would say - on the whole, not. @Aeon418 can answer authoritatively. But if you want old threads from AT - just go there and search; it's not hard.

[RickInBakersfield]

Okay, I will do that.

 

Thanks.

[DanielJUK]

I don't like to tag people but there are some scholars in this area around this place, they are more welcome to post if they want 🙂 

 

There is a good deck comparison thread about this and the differences here....

 

[Scandinavianhermit]

I'm neither an expert on Waite nor on Crowley, but I can say this much.

 

Crowley made fun of Waite in his magazine The Equinox. Waite was born in the 1850s, Crowley in the 1870s. Crowley was wealthy most of his life, while Waite lead a, sometimes frugal, lower middle class life. Crowley spent his childhood years as a Plymouth Brother (a British apocalyptic extreme Protestant denomination) and spent the rest of his life rebelling against his childhood, including founding his own religion, Thelema. Waite was a non-observant Roman Catholic posing as a non-observant Anglican, and developed a highly personal blend of Kabbalah,  Christian mysticism and general western esoterica (including Rosicrucianism and Martinism). Waite wished to be 'respectable', Crowley loved to provoke and cause scandal. In a sense, Crowley was a hippie 75 years before the hippie subculture existed. Waite hang around with authors – horror writer Arthur Machen, Tolkien's buddy Charles Williams, and the Anglican mystic Evelyn Underhill, for instance. Crowley and Waite belonged to very different personality types.

 

Both were members of Golden Dawn (founded 1888), though, and they both founded spin-offs from Golden Dawn. Crowley founded something called A:.A:. in 1907. Waite was involved in a spin-off from GD (under several names) beginning in 1903, and it was replaced in 1915 by the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross.

 

They were both familiar with the set of correspondences Golden Dawn used either from 1888 (lower degrees) or from the early 1890s (higher degrees). Practical magic was exclusively for the higher degrees in the original GD. Starting early is part of the revival GD movement (divided into many branches) that emerged in the 1980s. 

 

Golden Dawn didn't invent the use of correspondence systems applied to the tarot, and there were more than one such system in use before 1888. Several younger correspondence systems emerged after 1888. The book accompanying RWS, Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910-11), put The Fool between Judgement and The World, which is a French occult thing to do. The Hebrew letter Shin is faintly visible on The Fool in RWS, which follows French custom, not the GD system of correspondences. Crowley, on the other hand, reveal the GD system of Hebrew letters without hesitation, with a small modification involving The Star, because of a revelation received by one of his wives. Both RWS and the Thoth follows GD's elemental correspondences, thus:

 

Wands - fire

Swords - air

Cups - water

Pentacles - earth.

 

That's not Eliphas Levi's and Papus' way of doing it, nor does it follow Eudes Picard's system, so neither Waite nor Crowley follows French occultists on this point. The French correspondence system for the 36 decans, which is older than the GD system, differ considerably from GD's correspondence system on this point. 

[Scandinavianhermit]

As usual, I struggle with brevity. In short:

 

Both Waite and Crowley were familiar with the system(s) of French occultism and with the Golden Dawn system. Any similarities between the RWS and Crowley/Harris Thoth are caused by shared common influences, not an influence from Waite upon Crowley. 

[Raggydoll]

9 hours ago, Scandinavianhermit said:

As usual, I struggle with brevity. In short:

 

Both Waite and Crowley were familiar with the system(s) of French occultism and with the Golden Dawn system. Any similarities between the RWS and Crowley/Harris Thoth are caused by shared common influences, not an influence from Waite upon Crowley. 

Exactly. And I’d think that Crowley would make sure that his deck was NOT copying the RWS, given how he felt about Waite. 

[Deian]

They had Images they expected to view when traveling the paths, as far as I'm aware.  G.D. members that is.
So one goes out of the body, travels the paths then sees images and draws them on their own deck, as they all were suppose to draw their own decks.

That is the theory about it I think. So parts of the symbolism should be similar, yet is it, really...  The Fool seems clearly connected to Uranus and to the upper Sephirot of the Tree in Crowleys deck, but is it so in Waite... The high priestess shows the "longest path" in Crowley, no doubts there, yet doesn't seem to do so in Waite. So did Waite used different symbology and if he did where that comes from...
Long topics, and since people aren't interested in setting valid structure behind their practice, all that doesn't seem that important, anyway. A lot to travel before any of these will make any difference. Just historical info at this point still.

 

[Saturn Celeste]

16 hours ago, Scandinavianhermit said:

I'm neither an expert on Waite nor on Crowley, but I can say this much.

Thank you for such an interesting post!

[RickInBakersfield]

Yes, indeed!

[Scandinavianhermit]

6 hours ago, Deian said:

The Fool seems clearly connected to Uranus and to the upper Sephirot of the Tree in Crowleys deck, but is it so in Waite... 

In the original Golden Dawn system of correspondences, Aleph, Mem and Shin were associated with the elements of air, water and fire – following Sefer Yetzirah. Associating these letters with Uranus, Neptune and Pluto was an invention by Paul Foster Case (1884-1954) after the discovery of Pluto in 1930. Waite and Colman Smith weren't able to associate any mother letter with Pluto in 1909, since this dwarf-planet wasn't discovered until 1930. 

[FindYourSovereignty]

10 hours ago, Raggydoll said:

Exactly. And I’d think that Crowley would make sure that his deck was NOT copying the RWS, given how he felt about Waite.

Yes, my thought was if there was any influence it would be that he wasn’t going to do what Waite did. 

[Scandinavianhermit]

10 hours ago, Raggydoll said:

Exactly. And I’d think that Crowley would make sure that his deck was NOT copying the RWS, given how he felt about Waite. 

That was my point when writing this description:

20 hours ago, Scandinavianhermit said:

Crowley made fun of Waite in his magazine The Equinox. Waite was born in the 1850s, Crowley in the 1870s. Crowley was wealthy most of his life, while Waite lead a, sometimes frugal, lower middle class life. Crowley spent his childhood years as a Plymouth Brother (a British apocalyptic extreme Protestant denomination) and spent the rest of his life rebelling against his childhood, including founding his own religion, Thelema. Waite was a non-observant Roman Catholic posing as a non-observant Anglican, and developed a highly personal blend of Kabbalah,  Christian mysticism and general western esoterica (including Rosicrucianism and Martinism). Waite wished to be 'respectable', Crowley loved to provoke and cause scandal. In a sense, Crowley was a hippie 75 years before the hippie subculture existed. Waite hang around with authors – horror writer Arthur Machen, Tolkien's buddy Charles Williams, and the Anglican mystic Evelyn Underhill, for instance. Crowley and Waite belonged to very different personality types.

 

[Raggydoll]

32 minutes ago, FindYourSovereignty said:

Yes, my thought was if there was any influence it would be that he wasn’t going to do what Waite did. 

So true 😆

[Aeon418]

On 1/16/2025 at 12:53 PM, RickInBakersfield said:

I am aware that Aleister Crowley created his own deck Thoth, but just how was it inspired by the RWS deck?

 

It wasn't. Both decks just happen to share a common symbolic structure derived from the Golden Dawn.

 

In correspondence Crowley referred to the RWS deck as a "grotesque and falsified parody," and a "crude, vilely drawn & coloured, ignorant, inferior pack." 

 

As a Thoth devotee, I believe that is a fairly accurate assessment of the RWS. 😄

[katrinka]

4 hours ago, Aeon418 said:

 

It wasn't. Both decks just happen to share a common symbolic structure derived from the Golden Dawn.

 

In correspondence Crowley referred to the RWS deck as a "grotesque and falsified parody," and a "crude, vilely drawn & coloured, ignorant, inferior pack." 

 

As a Thoth devotee, I believe that is a fairly accurate assessment of the RWS. 😄

And let's not forget, Waite concealed a lot of things from us unwashed masses. Crowley gleefully spilled the beans.
RWS will work for fortunetelling (though there are other systems that are arguably better.) But it won't tell you anything reliable about the Golden Dawn.

[Aeon418]

4 hours ago, katrinka said:

And let's not forget, Waite concealed a lot of things from us unwashed masses. Crowley gleefully spilled the beans.

 

Crowley's disdain for Waite's secretiveness stems from his belief that the real "mysteries" were automatically self concealing. Occult secrets are absurd nonsense until one is ready to understand them. The "secrets" can be hidden in plain sight and most people won't even know that they are there. Even though Crowley swore an oath to never openly divulge the central secret of O.T.O. (which he faithfully kept), he repeatedly used indirect methods to communicate the secret to those with eyes to see. The Thoth Tarot is one such method. But to the vast majority of people it is just a beautiful Tarot deck.

 

Waite, on the other hand, seemed to be enamoured with the romance of secret societies and the smug satisfaction that can come from hording "information" that other people can't access.

 

But it is clear that Waite did know the difference between mere information and gnosis. Before he joined the Golden Dawn a young Aleister Crowley read Waite's digest of grimoire material, sensationally titled - The Book of Black Magic and of Pacts. In the introduction Waite hints that he knows of a Hidden Church that preserved the secrets of initiation. Inspired by this the young Crowley wrote to Waite for more information about this Society of the Elect. Waite wrote a courteous reply to Crowley's enquiry, advising him to read The Cloud upon the Sanctuary by Councillor von Eckartshausen. Despite his merciless lampooning of Waite in later years, Crowley was forever grateful for this act of kindness. Crowley immediately understood that the Hidden Church and its "communion of saints" wasn't literally true. Instead it was pointing to a state of higher consciousness or mystical awareness. Inspired by this Crowley became determined to meet a master who could lead him to the Inner Church. Shortly thereafter Crowley met a member of the Golden Dawn and the rest is history

 

So in an indirect way A.E. Waite really did inspire the Thoth Tarot.           

[katrinka]

True, Waite did have his good points. As the old saw goes, never throw the baby out with the bathwater.