“Lust” by Lady Frieda Harris, commissioned by Aleister Crowley.
Remembering The Red Lady.
Part of the difficulty of talking about details in regards to my first forays into witchcraft is that my records from those times were either badly kept, or completely lost during my first move from my parent’s house into the group home.
But some things are hard to forget. Witchcraft makes it hard to forget.
I would like to think that my spiritual initiations into the Craft didn’t start until the summer of 2010 when I performed my first dedication ritual to the compass directions. Make it all nice and neat you know?
But today I remembered something that occurred before that.
… Or was it the Candlemass after that?
My memories blur around the edges, time is often transient and un-pinnable in the spiritual worlds.
A couple of snaps of the original watercolour paintings by Frieda Harris of the Adjustment and Tower cards from the Crowley Thoth Tarot Deck – taken at The Venice Biennale 5 Sept 2013.
New Thoth … odd how a new deck can revitalise your work. This is the 2008 restored version of the Thoth Deck; available from Germany. Comes in a nice gold box in both standard and pocket. The colours are subtly different and the whole feel of the deck is somehow revitalised.
The Thoth Tarot (first full publication was by Ordo Templi Orientis in 1969) is a divinatory tarot deck painted by Lady Frieda Harris according to instructions from Aleister Crowley. Crowley referred to this deck as The Book of Thoth, and also wrote a book of that title intended for use with the deck. (Wikipedia)
“The true Tarot is symbolism; it speaks no other language and offers no other signs.”
~ A. E. Waite
“Tarot embodies symbolical presentations of universal ideas, behind which lie all the implicits of the human mind, and it is in this sense that they contain secret doctrine, which is the realization by the few of truths imbedded in the consciousness of all, though they have not passed into express recognition by ordinary men.”
~ A. E. Waite
“There is a Secret Tradition concerning the Tarot, as well as a Secret Doctrine contained therein.”
~ A. E. Waite
“There are many methods for developing the “sense of symbols” in those who are striving to understand the hidden forces of Nature and Man, and for teaching the fundamental principles as well as the elements of the esoteric language. The most synthetic, and one of the most interesting of these methods, is the Tarot.”
~ P. D. Ouspensky
“Yes, the Tarot contains and expresses any doctrine to be found in our consciousness, and in this sense it h a s definiteness. It represents Nature in all the richness of its infinite possibilities, and there is in it as in Nature, not one but all potential meanings. And these meanings are fluent and ever-changing, so the Tarot cannot be specifically this or that, for it ever moves and yet is ever the same.”
~ P. D. Ouspensky
“In order to become acquainted with the Tarot, it is necessary to understand the basic ideas of the Kabala and of Alchemy. For it represents, as, indeed, many commentators of the Tarot think, a summary of the Hermetic Sciences–the Kabala, Alchemy, Astrology, Magic, with their different divisions. All these sciences, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, really represent one system of a very broad and deep psychological investigation of the nature of man in his relation to the world of noumena (God, the world of Spirit) and to the world of phenomena (the visible, physical world).”
~ P. D. Ouspensky
“They are psychological images, symbols with which one plays, as the unconscious seems to play with its contents. They combine in certain ways, and the different combinations correspond to the playful development of events in the history of mankind.”
~ C. G. Jung
“The cards of the Tarot are living individuals.”
~ Aleister Crowley
“Remember that the Tarot is a great and sacred arcanum – its abuse is an obscenity in the inner and a folly in the outer. It is intended for quite other purposes than to determine when the tall dark man will meet the fair rich widow.”
~ Jack Parsons
“The tarot is sacred.”
~ Alejandro Jodorowsky
“In essence, there are not really twenty-two trumps, there is only one—the Fool. Al the other trumps live inside (and issue from) the Fool.”
Occult Aspects 