Masonic & Occult Symbols Illustrate

The Equinox. Crowley worked with Freida Harris in the design of a new tarot deck to which he composed a commentary much like Waite’s The Book of Thoth. It was published in a limited edition in 1944, but the cards were not published until about 1960. Only after a new edition of The Book of Thoth appeared in 1969 did the Crowley deck begin to grow in popularity to rival Waite’s deck. In choosing to name his deck after the Egyptian deity Thoth, Crowley asserted both his own preference for Egyptian magical symbolism and his belief in de Gebelin’s claims as to the deck’s Egyptian origin.”

A Dictionary of Mysticism states: “Tarot: A deck of playing cards, based on a system of occult symbols arranged in a pattern of 78 cards; 22 of these are tarot cards (‘major arcana’), the other 56 are suit cards (‘minor arcana’). These cards can be used for divination. The term tarot is applied also to designate such divination.” [Italics in the original; Boldface added] We are further informed by an occult organization that the “Tarot has often been interpreted as a fortune telling device, but, as Gareth Knight reveals, it is also a profound and powerful system of High Renaissance MAGIC!” Since we’ve already covered the yin/yang symbol and the I Ching, I think it is interesting to note that The Occult Explosion states: “The occidental COUNTERPART TO THE I CHING IS THE TAROT CARD DECK. The most widely-spread OCCULT tradition about the origin of the Tarot is that it