Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot [Paperback]

For this is yet another attempt to make Crowley, and particularly Crowley's Thoth Tarot, warm and fuzzy, something Crowley himself would personally have found revolting.

The author, in an attempt to make Crowley's deck more accessible to more (less ready) readers, bowdlerizes Thelema and particularly Crowley to the point of cuddly parody. For example, while liberally quoting Crowley's text from "Book of Thoth"---in fact that's the ONLY virtue in DuQuette's book---we get supposedly heart-warming glosses like finding out that the author's wife is upset that her birthdate falls into the decan of the Eight of Cups (Indolence---a "downer" DuQuette tells us). Meanwhile, Crowley's fascinating comparison of this card, and the Seven of Cups, to characters from Wagner's "Parsifal", are ignored, perhaps because the author hasn't seen the opera, or maybe he doesn't understand Crowley's point well enough to explain it to civilians. DuQuette constantly misses such opportunities to truly clarify Crowley's comments and the card essays in DuQuette's "Understanding" add little if anything to the understanding or discussion of Crowley's Tarotic ideas.

Much has been said about the "lighthearted" humor provided by the author, apparently some comic relief much welcomed by people who find Crowley's words a little too serious to take straight up. However, DuQuette's jokes, whose humor seems well occulted, are provided mainly at the expense of the reader, who is begged over and again to make (very) lite even of Aleister Crowley's darkest and most interesting sides.

Finally, the author seems at times to have only an amateur's acquaintance with English as a literary tool, sometimes misunderstanding the meanings of English words and often writing in a style that so offends the memory of Crowley's that the quoted sections of "Book of Thoth" seem entirely out of place in DuQuette's book, framed as they are by the author's pedestrian prose.

Best, by far, to look for the richness of tradition, which is where Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot
can be found. Unfortunately, the book Crowley wrote to elucidate the meaning of the cards so brilliantly
painted by Lady Freida Harris - The Book of Thoth - requires a patience and supplemental knowledge
quite a few readers do not possess.

That is where Lon Milo DuQuette's latest comes in. He looks at the history of not only Crowley,
but of Harris, the historical situation surrounding the Thoth deck's creation, and the myriad magickal
components inherent to the deck. And he does it in plain English, with touches of his delightful humor,
so the door can be thrown wide open for more Tarot enthusiasts to come to an understanding of what
Tarot is really about, especially the Thoth deck.

The extensive research which went into this volume, as well as DuQuette's own considerable
experience on the subject, make this a text to be valued and read time and again - just as DuQuette
himself recommends reading The Book of Thoth on a regular basis. But now, because of DuQuette's
incredible efforts, the latter will be better understood by a broader audience, and the Thoth Tarot more
comprehensively used for spiritually enlightening purposes, as it was meant to be.