Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot Paperback – January 1, 2003

Lon Milo DuQuette's "Thoth Tarot" is *Excellent* in its discussion of symbolism, significance, historical context, and connections and insights into Tarot, Tree of Life, and Tarot as a spiritual journey or meditation practice.As other reviewers point out, Aleister Crowley managed to impart and condense a lifetime's study into 78 cards. Heady stuff, and not especially easy to get or master. Additionally, Thoth tarot cards have a way of unfolding (unpacking) more info and insights as you continue your relationship with them. DuQuette's book comes in handy for all these purposes.Divination: A section toward the back contains condensed descriptions or highlights of the individual cards for divinatory purposes. "Thoth Tarot" can be used to help understand cards in readings or spreads, though Ziegler's "Mirror..." is better for this purpose; it's more immediate or practical for an introduction or crib. Ziegler's "Mirror" is a fine Intro or go-to book.**A note about the Thoth Tarot deck by Aleister Crowley and Lady Freida Harris: It simply is the best, deepest, most "correct" deck you could have or want for insights, clarity, or social/spiritual understanding. The artwork (by Lady Harris) is beautiful and powerful, and enables you to enter the card / meaning from whatever orientation you have -- color, numeric (numerology), chakra-based, astrological, physical, ..., whatever. You can start with what you know and work from that, or build on that through reflection.Compared to other tarot decks, experience lends me the confidence to say THOTH is the BEST deck, ever, for high-level mastery and understanding of greater, highest good. Others, e.g. Rider-Waite, are anachronistic, patriarchal vehicles for fear mongering or are well intentioned but skewed/off.

I really wanted to find out about The Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn first to understand Crowley' s Thoth Tarot Deck. I am pretty sure that I did a good beginning. I will recommend to first try to read Tarot Decoded, then Women of the Golden Dawn, and finally Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot Book. You will may have a good quality of information to get Crowley's idea. Mr Lon Milo Duquette did an extraordinary job writing this book. His writing is very clear. He knows how to give the real concept about what he wants to let us know. I enjoy very much the book. I think that the book could have been more extensive regarding the amount of information. There would have been very well if Mr. Duquette would have tell us more about astrology to understand the correspondences of the Minor Arcana. Suffice to say, I really appreciate to have read this excellent book. Be aware, you need to know about the Golden Dawn System, the Tree of Life and Qabala to start to comprehend what the Thoth Tarot Deck is about. This is not a book for beginners. You will really enjoy it.

FINALLY!!!! What a spectacular achievement in daring to translate AC's intent. This is a scholarly work crafted by a wordsmith...one who does not need to self-indulge in fanciful wordy decorum because he writes naturally, beautifully & academically. This is no woo-woo book...nor one which will advise on how to infer this or that through intentional work...etc..etc...This is a scholarly text on the Thoth Tarot. I read 35 pages last night....slept in a waking state...& processed & reprocessed...masticating the cud of what was writ, like a content cow (which i assuredly am)...& God, I'm happy with this book! I'm going to purchase more of the author's writings & give him his own shelf with company such as: Khayyam, Bardon, Gibran, Grieve, Sadhu, de Bairacli-levy, Peterson, etc...As an aside...my most successful readings of Crowley's work are done out loud & with an English accent...his humour, which may fall flat, when read in your head...blooms like an exotic flower when read aloud...(which is likely how he would prefer things!). AC gets his props here...as the master occultist that he was...and is. As for Duquette...you rock it, brother.

Lon Milo Duquette is a very entertaining and knowledgeable writer. This book is fun to read and very informative if you are starting on the work of Aleister Crowley and the Thoth Tarot. Duquette provides all the tools to start diving deep into several disciplines related to tarot, however I must admit this is good only for beginners.I would have liked to read a lot more on several subjects from Duquette's "pen", because, as I said, he's really a great narrator and teacher.The second half of the book seems to rush a bit compared to the first.Either way, here you'll find all you need to start your studies: card symbology, meanings, brief biographies of Crowley and Freida Harris and more.I bought the Kindle ebook, and here's the down side to this review: the adaptation isn't that good. There are several typos, but, most importantly, the very precious charts Duquette designed to explain the relation between cards and astrology are so tiny and blurry as to render them useless on a Kindle. They should have been placed in a vertical format or towards the end of the book as large images. The way they are presented now is not respectful of the author's work.Thanks to Duquette's explanation we can re-construct these charts ourselves, but it's certainly a drag.