According to ancient tradition, The Book of Thoth was the legendary repository of the Egyptian mysteries; as such it is forever connected with occult knowledge, mystery schools and the esoteric secrets and magical systems that these schools taught. The Book of Thoth has long been associated with the tarot, which is said by many to be the embodiment of its teachings.

Crowley was undoubtedly one of the finest occult minds of our time and soon realised that despite the historical interest in the tarot that occultists harboured, there was a distinct lack of authentic texts that explored the cards, let alone develop them. He resolved to rectify that omission by creating one definitive text that would make the Tarot accessible to everyone who had the desire to learn. Guided by the intelligences that had directed him throughout his life, Crowley penned a legend, an extensive treatise on the tarot, which he named The Book of Thoth, after the tradition of wisdom itself.

Crowley’s Book of Thoth incorporates the wisdom, philosophy, science and magick of Egypt, melding eastern and western mystery traditions to create the most complete method of studying the tarot and finding self-knowledge that there is in existence. Occultists such as A.E. Waite have written their own studies of the tarot, but none of the succeeded in imparting the occult wisdom of Crowley’s classic text. It has to be said that the Book of Thoth is not usually recommended for newcomers to the tarot and to the occult. It unites Cabbalistic tradition, Tarot, philosophy, science and magick to create a complete yet multi-faceted tradition creating a tool that can be used to explore the magickal and mystical elements of both microcosm and macrocosm.

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'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law'

Aleister Crowley (Edward Alexander Crowley) was born 12 October in the same year as the foundation of the Theosophical Society (1875), at Leamington Spa at 11.30pm. He was therefore a Libran with Pisces moon and Leo rising. Contrary to popular legend, he died on the 1st December 1947. A review in Cambridge University magazine Granta of 1904 provides some guidance on the pronunciation of the great man's name: 'Oh, Crowley, name for future fame!/(Do you pronounce it Croully?)/Whate'er the worth of this your mirth/It reads a trifle foully.'

The myth of the magus has grown to prodigious proportions in the half century or more since the old man's death. Crowley is now firmly established in the popular mind as a folk hero (or anti hero?), transmogrified to an icon on a spectrum somewhere between 'the sandman' (Clive Barker version) and 'the gringe'.

To many, Crowley's magick (I am using the archaic form of the term as popularised by AC for technical reasons), provides a neat dividing line between some kind of urban high magical tradition and the supposedly more earth centred styles of neo-paganism. The truth is, as always, a lot more complex. Crowley's magick draws all of it's power from nature, see for example an ancient Egyptian formula: 'so that every Spirit of the Firmament and of the Ether: Upon the Earth and under the Earth; on dry land and in the Water: of whirling Air; and of rushing Fire and every spell and scourge of God may be obedient to Me.'

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It was in 1904 when the English magician Aleister Crowley wrote the the Book of the Law. It was dictated by a praeter-human intelligence calling itself Aiwass. The book consists of three chapters written down in Cairo on 8th, 9th and 10th April at noon.

33 years later, Crowley met the artist painter Lady Frieda Harris. He had decided to create a new Tarot deck and asked Harris to paint the cards according his ideas, that is according to his instructions. Harris agreed, became a member of the O.T.O. and they began their work. A lot of the cards had to be painted several times. The drafts still are in private possession while the final originals can be found at the Warburg Institute London, a part of the University Library.

The Library Warburg was founded in 1903 by the jewish son of a banker, Aby Warburg in Hamburg. At the beginning of the Nazi regime in 1933, the complete collection (80,000 books) was sent to London where the Warburg Institute now was founded. There, I was able to study the original Tarot paintings. I also saw the unpublished drafts of earlier versions, in private ownership. Lady Frieda Harris painted far more versions than the published ones. All in all, she worked five years on them.

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The Tarot deck contains archetypal symbols that can be related to the analytical psychology of the Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung. The Tarot deck, especially the major arcana or trump cards, can be used effectively in therapy. The client, with the assistance of the therapist, conducts a reading or uses several cards to tell a story and then discusses possible meanings of the symbols in his or her own words. The therapist then relates the symbolic meanings given by the client to the client's problem in much the same manner as in Jungian dream analysis. This therapeutic process can be explained by using a chaos model. Using a chaos model of therapy, a period of psychic instability is deliberately induced by the therapist through stimulation of the imagination via the Tarot symbols. Concentration on the Tarot symbols induces bifurcation points that the therapist then uses to direct change toward desired attractors. This is similar to the well-known techniques of paradoxical communication, paradoxical intervention, and prescribing the symptom, all of which induce a temporary condition of psychic instability that is required for a bifurcation.

Loye and Eisler (1987) see the roots of modern chaos theory, as it pertains to social science, extending all the way back to the ancient Chinese Book of Changes or I Ching. The I Ching, the oldest oracle still in use today, (Bannister, 1988) was used to make predictions by casting stalks, straws, or sticks. Today, this is usually done by throwing coins (Cleary, 1986). In the West, the oldest oracle still in use today is the Tarot card deck.

The Tarot is a deck of cards which can be used for meditation, psychic stimulation, or divination. It also can be used as a psychological tool to look inside the unconscious (Bannister, 1988; Nichols, 1984). The Tarot is medieval man's equivalent of today's highly respected Rorschach and Thematic Apperception tests (Schueler & Schueler, 1994). Wang (1978) describes the Tarot as "a system accepted by many respectable sources such as the school of Carl Jung, which views the Tarot images as agreeing perfectly with the archetypes of the collective unconsciousness" (p. 8).

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