Given the iconic status of the Book of Thoth, it is amazing that it has taken so long for anyone to write a serious commentary. Rumours of the imminent publication of such a book by the O.T.O have been going on for years.
Apart from my fascination in Thoth for many years, my interest was piqued in that the book was to be published at the same as my own offering, which includes many aspects of the Thoth Tarot. Lon Milo DuQuette has written many books on the occult, so I was hoping for some serious insight into the more obscure aspects of Crowley ‘s writings on the Thoth Tarot, but I was disappointed. Lon skates over all the ‘difficult ‘ sections with aplomb; after all, this book does not have many more pages than the original! At one point Lon says:
Had Crowley paid Harris anything for her labor, we would have to say that he certainly got his money ‘s worth.
Understanding Thoth Tarot by DuQuette
Indeed, except that of course the letters reveal Frieda Harris was sending regular payments to Crowley to keep him going. Is this sexism on DuQuette’s part, or does the O.T.O have problems with this fact? Even if she was paymaster, her role was still subservient to Crowley. At least the system of Projective Synthetic Geometry gets a mention, but he does not mention that Olive Whicher, the teacher of PSG to Harris was fully aware that she was painting the tarot for the ‘Great Beast’. The published Frieda Harris letters to Crowley (freely available on the net) make no mention of PSG, but of course he knew and approved of the geometrical designs, which would have had to have been at the start of the project.
DuQuette glosses over Crowley’s mathematical background, despite the fact that much of the introduction to the Book of Thoth covers geometry! The assumption that the Book of Thoth is Thelemic was a significant handicap to my own understanding of the Tarot. It was not until I started to read Blavatsky’s writings with an eye to Thoth that Crowley’s writings began to make sense. So, did Crowley transcend his own Thelemic doctrines in the Book of Thoth? I believe he did. He states that the Stele of Revealing should be on the Aeon card – except it isn’t. Why is that? Crowley made the Thoth Tarot an inclusive instrument of magick and spirituality, that encompasses the doctrines of Rudolf Steiner, a man who was on Hitler ‘s death list, on a deck that was created during the 2nd World War. My own belief is that the Book of Thoth was an important aspect to the magical war that was being waged against the Nazis. In the midst of this hellish situation, Crowley directed Frieda Harris to create a deck that is more faithful to the original Golden Dawn intents than any tarot deck with ‘Golden Dawn’in the title.
Where DuQuette’s book scores is the re-assembling of the vital statistics of each card that is scattered in the original. He assigns a page each for the Aces, but in the original Crowley devotes several pages to the Ace of Disks, which points to the importance of this card.
Chapter 8 is devoted to the back of the card and the Rose Cross. How many books on the Tarot can do that? Equally, the chapter on the Holy Guardian Angel makes the point that the Thoth is a magical and spiritual system in its own right.
If this book will inspire students to pick up the original Book of Thoth, and start to explore this most complex of Tarot systems, then Lon will have made a great service to the Tarot.
