Anatomy of a Deck

[TheFeeLion]

(Not sure if this is the right place to put this thread but it seemed appropriate)

 

I posted this over in another forum but thought I would see what other information I could get...

 

I don't know much when it comes to tarot. In fact I don't know much about a lot of things, but I am working to remedy that 

 

I am curious to learn about the differences between deck styles (is that the right word?) such as Thoth, TdM, RWS, and any others that may be out there that I am unaware of.

 

Are they read differently? In what way?

 

How does the symbolism differ?

 

Do card meanings change?

 

Do they have different card orders? Why?

 

Sorry if I have gone really wide with my questions, I'm not entirely sure how to make them less so!

 

♡ Fee

[RavenOfSummer]

Following this post...I would love to hear what others have to say about this!

 

My knowledge in this area is very limited, and I have only worked with RWS-style decks (I do have ONE Thoth-style deck), but I will tell you what I know...hoping some of the experts on here will chime in and give us the real low-down though!

 

What I know is that the Tarot de Marseilles is much older than the RWS and Thoth. I think maybe 1700s? Could be older than that though. I don't know much about TdM, except that in TdM decks the majors and court cards are fully illustrated, while the minors are "pips", i.e. they don't have full illustrations but instead just a symbolic representation of their suit and number- i.e. the 4 of Coins just has four coins on it. This is in line with the earliest tarot decks, which date back to the mid-1400s. The early tarot decks did not have illustrated minors.

 

Ok, the RWS, this one I know a bit more about (though not nearly as much as many here I know!!). Arthur Waite created this deck in 1909, and Pamela Coleman Smith illustrated it. Waite wanted fully illustrated minors. So although I think one or two decks might have had illustrated minors before Waite's deck, this deck is really where the idea of fully illustrated minors got popularized. Many/most of the fully illustrated decks today are RWS-based. Waite also switched the order of Strength and Justice in the major arcana. At the time he was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which was a highly influential esoteric group based in the UK. The Golden Dawn had ascribed certain astrological correspondences to the tarot deck (this is something I DON'T know much about, but maybe someone else can chime in), and the switched Strength and Justice matched up with those correspondences.

 

Aleister Crowley, the creator of the Thoth deck, was also a member of the Golden Dawn, and indeed a much more influential and well-known member than Waite. At some point Waite and Crowley had a falling out. In any case, Crowley also had his ideas about tarot, and some years later he created his own deck, the Thoth. I believe it was first published in the 1950s. I really don't know much about the Thoth, but I believe it went back to pip-style minors (although in a rather psychedelic fashion), and switched Strength and Justice back to their original order. He also renamed Justice "Adjustment." Not sure if other cards in the deck are renamed.

 

What I'm not really sure of is whether the ascribed meanings change among these three families of decks. I don't believe they change much, but as I said I've really only worked with RWS. This is a great question, looking forward to hear what others say!

[Trogon]

I would like to add that in Rachel Pollack's book "The New Tarot Handbook", and I think in "78 Degrees of Wisdom" as well, she has a brief discussion of the history of the Tarot (briefer in "Handbook" than in "78 Degreees"). As I expect she has done far more research than I, I'll defer to her.

 

Anyway ... she states that "... playing cards came into Europe from North Africa, probably via the Crusaders (not the Gypsies) around the end of the fourteenth century. The earliest known Tarot decks appeared some forty to fifty years later, around 1430, in norhtern Italy, in Ferrara or Milan." So, the Italian decks and the French decks are the oldest decks of the design that we are used to (22 Major Arcana or Trumps and 56 Minor Arcana including the Court cards).

 

A. E. Waite's deck was first published by the Rider company in 1910. And, according to him, Waite changed the number of Strength and Justice for his own reasons (I do not remember the exact quote, but in his "Pictorial Guide to the Tarot" he said something along the lines of changing it for his own reasons, but never did explain what those reasons were).

 

The Thoth Tarot was published in 1969 after both Aleister Crowly (1947) and Lady Frieda Harris (1962) had died. I'm afraid I can't now recall what Crowley might have said, if anything, in any of his writings about restoring Strength and Justice to their original positions in the deck. (I do have the book, just haven't worked with it in many years.)

 

As you've already commented, RavenOfSummer, these seem to be the three main Tarot lineages which most decks are descended from. As far as meanings, I personally find that the RWS (which I learned on) and the Thoth seem to be pretty similar and where there are differences, the Thoth (and many of it's clones) have key words which help to guide you in the right direction. They are, of course, both based in the traditions of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn - so one would expect there to be similarities.

 

I am working with Dame Fortune's Wheel Tarot this week as one of my choices for the DotW thread. I have found that this deck uses interpretations which are based in the older, historic, French and Italian Tarots. With the Major Arcana, this does not present much of a problem, as the meanings are quite similar. However, I have found that meanings of many of the Minor Arcana cards are significantly different. But, the DFW Tarot does use "scenic pips", so there are illustrations to help one's intuition to move in the right direction.

 

I hope this has been of some interest. Like you, I haven't studied the history of the Tarot nearly as much as I would like.

[Guest]

I'm intrigued now about what the fight Waite and Crowley has was about.

[Talal]

The impression is that Waite and Crowley were rivals.  Their personalities were quite different. Waite was soft-spoken, concerned with quiet spirituality. He had very little formal education, a fact for which he tried to adapt by doing a great deal of research, far more than was done by virtually any other person writing in the heyday of the Golden Dawn. That said, his only second language appears to be French. He wrote his monumental 636-page The Holy Kabbalah without being able to read a lick of Hebrew. This is one of the reasons why he knows next to nothing about Lurianic Kabbalah, the Kabbalah that is most prevalent among actual Jews. This wasn't because Waite was lazy, but because almost none of the text of the Lurianic Kabbalah were in translation into Western languages at the time. That said, my guess that Waite, who clearly prided himself on his scholarly efforts, probably would never publicly admit that he had any educational deficiencies. Moreover, he believed very strongly that mystical secrets should never be divulged to uninitiated. This gave him a cryptic style. Even reading through The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, you can see how he writes his way around divulging truths to the uninitiated by using fancy Latinate vocabulary and cryptic, veiled references. It makes his style fairly pretentious.

 

This is something that Crowley couldn't abide. In reviewing the Rider-Waite deck, Crowley is quite vicious. I lifted the text out of Katz's and Goodwin's Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot. It's worth reviewing:

 

Quote

Mr. Waite has written a book on fortune-telling, and we advise servant-girls to keep an eye on their half-crowns. We have little sympathy or pity for the folly of fashionable women; but housemaids need protection— hence their affection for policemen and soldiers— and we fear that Mr. Waite’s apologies will not prevent professional cheats from using his instructions for their frauds and levies of blackmail.

 

As to Mr. Waite’s constant pomposities, he seems to think that the obscurer his style and the vaguer his phrases, the greater initiate he will appear. Nobody but Mr. Waite knows “all” about the Tarot, it appears; and he won’t tell. Reminds one of the story about God and Robert Browning, or of the student who slept, and woke when the professor thundered rhetorically, “And what ‘is’ Electricity?” The youth jumped up and cried (from habit), “I know, sir.” “Then tell us.” “I knew, sir, but I’ve forgotten.” “Just my luck!” complained the professor, “there was only one man in the world who knew and he has forgotten!”

 

Why, Mr. Waite, your method is not even original.

 

When Sir Mahatma Agamya Paramahansa Guru Swamiji (late of H. M. Prisons, thanks to the unselfish efforts of myself and a friend) was asked, “And what of the teaching of Confucius?”— or any one else that the boisterous old boy had never heard of— he would reply contemptuously, “Oh, him? He was my disciple.” And seeing the hearer smile would add, “Get out you dog, you a friend of that dirty fellow Crowley. I beat you with my shoe. Go away! Get intellect! Get English!” until an epileptic attack supervened.

 

Mr. Waite, like Marie Corelli, in this as in so many other respects, brags that he cares nothing for criticism, so he won’t mind my making these little remarks, and I may as well go on. He has “betrayed” (to use his own words) the attributions of some of the small cards, and Pamela Coleman [sic] Smith has done very beautiful and sympathetic designs, though our own austere taste would have preferred the plain cards with their astrological and other attributions, and occult titles. (These are all published in the book “777,” and a pack could be easily constructed by hand. Perhaps we may one day publish one at a shilling a time!) But Mr. Waite has not “betrayed” the true attributions of the Trumps. They are obvious, though, the moment one has the key (see “777”). Still, Pamela Coleman Smith has evidently been hampered; her designs are cramped and forced. I am infinitely sorry for any artist who tries to draw after dipping her hands in the gluey dogma of so insufferable a dolt and prig.

 

Mr. Waite, I believe, is perfectly competent to produce indefinite quantities of Malted Milk to the satisfaction of all parties; but when it comes to getting the pure milk of the Word, Mr. Waite gets hold of a wooden cow. And do for God’s sake, Arthur, drop your eternal hinting, hinting, hinting, “Oh what an exalted grade I have, if you poor dull uninitiated people would only perceive it!” Here is your criticism, Arthur, straight from the shoulder. Any man that knows Truth and conceals it is a traitor to humanity; any man that doesn’t know, and tries to conceal his ignorance by pretending to be the guardian of a secret, is a charlatan.

 

Which is it?

 

We recommend everyone to buy the pack, send Mr. Waite’s book to the kitchen so as to warn the maids, throw the Major Arcana out of window, and play bridge with the Minor Arcana, which alone are worth the money asked for the whole caboodle.

 

The worst of it all is: Mr. Waite really does know a bit in a muddled kind of way; if he would only go out of the swelled-head business he might be some use.

 

But if you are not going to tell your secrets, it is downright schoolboy brag to strut about proclaiming that you possess them. Au revoir, Arthur.

In A.E. Waite: Magician of Many Parts, R.A. Gilbert argues, "Crowley's hostility centered on his awareness that Waite had perceived the true nature of magic and pointed to another way-that of the mystic. Unwilling to accept what he knew inwardly to be true; Crowley turned to verbiage and venom, at the same time belittling himself and ensuring that future generations of occultists should know of Waite and be curious."

 

I get the impression that Crowley was a charismatic, manipulative and self-advancing blowhard, but I've not read much about him directly.

 

Talal

 

Edited August 12, 2019 by Talal

[Barleywine]

4 hours ago, Talal said:

I get the impression that Crowley was a charismatic, manipulative and self-advancing blowhard, but I've not read much about him directly.

 

 

I recall Tobias Churton's biography as being pretty good (better than Regardie's anyway). I haven't read Kacynski's Perdurabo but I'm sure others here have.

Edited August 12, 2019 by Barleywine

[Talal]

Thanks!