The Book of Thoth

The Book of Thoth is Crowley's exposition of the Tarot as a system of magical, Qabalistic and Thelemic symbolism. It accompanies the seventy-eight-card design painted by Frieda Harris. The book discusses the structure of the deck, interprets individual cards and supplies correspondences and divinatory material. It is considerably more than a dictionary of predictive meanings.

The first edition's title page dates the work to 21 March 1944 and identifies it as The Equinox volume III, number V. It credits the Master Therion as author and Frieda Harris as artist. Its publication notice places it in Class B.¹⁾

The preliminary bibliographical note describes a project that expanded from an intended revision of older designs into a much more extensive collaboration. It emphasises Harris's role in encouraging the development of a new pictorial expression and the repeated reworking of cards. That account is a contemporary presentation of the project, with a celebratory tone, rather than a neutral biography of either participant.²⁾

The publication of the book and the production history of commercial card packs are distinct subjects. A date on a modern box should not be substituted for the book's first-edition date.

The bibliographical note describes the expansion of the project through its changing duration:

Yet the burden was sore: the anticipated three months’ work extended to five years.

— The “Bibliographical Note”, signed I.W.E., The Book of Thoth.³⁾

It has just explained that Harris found difficulties in adapting the older designs and pressed for a more extensive pictorial expression. The next sentences describe rough sketches, verbal descriptions and repeated paintings, with some cards reportedly attempted as many as eight times. These details present interpretation as part of the artist’s labour. The note’s concluding joke about the accompanying “booklet” also places the paintings prominently within its account of the completed work. The quotation belongs to the separately signed preliminary note, whose voice should remain distinct from the main treatise.

The twenty-two trumps, sixteen court cards and forty small cards total seventy-eight. The division is important because each group is interpreted through a different, though connected, structure.⁴⁾

The trumps are related to Hebrew letters and paths; the small cards combine numerical and elemental schemes; the court cards develop elemental combinations and relationships. A card's meaning therefore arises from more than its title. Number, suit, astrological reference, colour and depicted action can all contribute to the interpretation.

This structure explains why a passage sometimes directs the reader from one card to another. The Fool and The Universe, for example, are discussed as the beginning and completion of a process. The deck is presented as a connected whole, not seventy-eight unrelated emblems.

Crowley states the kind of explanation the book intends to pursue:

The only theory of ultimate interest about the Tarot is that it is an admirable symbolic picture of the Universe, based on the data of the Holy Qabalah.

— Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth.⁵⁾

The ensuing examples move through Hebrew words, numerical values and interpretations of their relationships. They demonstrate the book’s method of connecting symbols, rather than supplying a chronological history of the deck. “Picture” is also significant: a diagram or card can present relations together that prose must explain successively. The sustained commentary attempts to make that compressed visual organisation available to the reader.

Several familiar trump titles change: Justice becomes Adjustment, Strength becomes Lust, Temperance becomes Art, and Judgement becomes The Aeon. Their explanations reflect Crowley's particular interpretation rather than a change that applies to every Tarot tradition.

Trump XX is especially explicit. Crowley connects its image with the Stele of Revealing and the new aeon, explaining Nuit, Hadit and the double form of Horus. His discussions of The Star and The Emperor also address the letter attribution associated with Liber AL I:57. These passages are central to understanding how the book adapts an inherited symbolic framework.⁶⁾

The Description of the Cards of the Tarot in The Equinox I:8 (1912) supplies a substantial earlier point of comparison. It predates Harris's paintings and includes a symbolic frontispiece, card descriptions, correspondences and a method of divination. Its first four entries call the Aces the roots of the powers of their respective elements: Fire, Water, Air and Earth.⁷⁾

The frontispiece combines an ankh-like cross, elemental emblems and concentric colour labels. Its accompanying prose explains the symbolism and describes a rose of twenty-two petals bearing the names of the keys. The image therefore presents the cards as parts of an integrated scheme before the later Crowley–Harris project. It should be identified as an earlier diagram, not reproduced as if it were one of Harris's original paintings.

This comparison helps locate both continuity and change. Elemental and Qabalistic organisation did not begin with the 1944 book. The later work develops inherited material through a new artistic collaboration and an explicitly Thelemic interpretation. An account that treats every feature as either wholly ancient or wholly invented in 1944 misses that layered history.

The original plate is headed The Complete Symbol of the Tarot. It combines a looped cross, concentric colour labels, elemental emblems and two pentagrams containing solar and lunar signs. The labels remain in monochrome here, exactly as printed; the image has not been recoloured from a modern correspondence list.

The prose on pp. 145–146 describes a Crux Ansata and develops its interpretation, including a rose with twenty-two petals. Its verbal account should be distinguished from the precise labels visible in the plate. This is especially useful when comparing the earlier publication with the Crowley–Harris work: the plate documents the 1912 source, not a card painting made for the later deck.⁸⁾

The Complete Symbol of the Tarot, The Equinox I:8 (1912), plate facing p. 145. Original monochrome drawing and colour labels. Source and original. Public domain: original published 1912. Click to enlarge.

A useful comparison starts with the same category of card in each source. For a numbered small card, identify suit, number and title before examining its depicted arrangement. For a court card, retain the names used by the edition: the earlier publication's King and Knave labels cannot simply be carried over to the later Prince and Princess without explanation. For a trump, compare the title, Hebrew-letter attribution and account of the image.

These steps prevent a visual difference from being mistaken automatically for a change of meaning. The same symbolic assignment can be expressed through a new composition, while a familiar title can receive a substantially revised explanation. The text and the picture need to be read together.

The distinction is especially helpful with divination. A short predictive meaning belongs to one use of a card, whereas the extended discussion may concern a formula of creation, an elemental relationship or an initiatory problem. Consulting both the theoretical section and the individual entry makes the book's purpose clearer than reading the divinatory appendix alone.

The subtitle calls the work an essay on the “Tarot of the Egyptians.” That phrase describes an esoteric interpretive tradition; this 1944 book is not an ancient Egyptian manuscript. The deity Thoth supplies an image of wisdom and utterance, while the book's actual intellectual setting includes the Golden Dawn, Hermetic Qabalah and Crowley's own religious teaching.

Its speculative scientific and historical comparisons should likewise be identified as Crowley's arguments. A resemblance between symbols is not, by itself, evidence of historical transmission.

The paintings are integral to the subject. A transcription is useful for searching, but cannot settle a claim about colour or visual detail when it omits or degrades the plates. Card title, section and edition should accompany important references. Earlier Tarot illustrations are valuable for comparison only when clearly labelled as earlier material.

See the Thoth Tarot, Frieda Harris, 777 and the three aeons.

David Shoemaker discusses Tarot and initiation in this Living Thelema recording, drawn from programmes 27 and 28 of Speech in the Silence. Its wider subject complements the article's account of Tarot as a connected system of symbols and correspondences. It offers a contemporary perspective to compare with Crowley's exposition and Harris's images, rather than a chapter-by-chapter reading of The Book of Thoth.

Living Thelema - Tarot and the Path of Initiation — Speech in the Silence Podcast; 46:42. Watch on YouTube.