As part of TABI’s month of Thoth, I thought we could take a look at the court card structure of the Thoth deck because it can be a bit confusing when you encounter it for the first time.
The Thoth, created by Aleister Crowley (rhymes with Holy) and Frieda, Lady Harris*, is one of the most beautiful and well thought-through decks in the Tarot universe. Crowley was a Golden Dawner – and one of its most colourful characters (and that’s saying something, when you know who else was in the Golden Dawn!). Once referred to by the press as ‘the wickedest man in the world’ he was, I think, just 50 years ahead of his time. Today he would be hanging out in clubs with Lady Gaga and regularly papped for all the Celebrity pages in newspapers.
But for all his over-the-top antics (chiselling off a discrete fig leaf from Oscar Wilde’s tombstone in Paris’s Père Lachaise cemetery, for example), he was utterly sincere in his pursuit of The Great Work. Cajoled (and paid) into creating a Tarot by Lady Harris the two of them hammered out this magnificent deck. If you get a chance to read their sometimes affectionate, often bad-tempered, but always sparkling correspondence please do!
In the Rider Waite Smith Tarot and its derivatives, we have a court that is structured like this: The Page is the lowest rank….then Knight….then Queen….then King. The story *I* tell myself about them is that the King and Queen have two children – the Knight is older and taking on some of The Firm’s responsibilities and the Page is really just learning her place in the world.
Other people have a slightly different story – the King and Queen are right up there at the top of the pack, the Page is not their child, but just a Page, a little servant; the Knight is not their son, just a courtier. A very FLASHY courtier though.
But the structure is the same – Page, Knight, Queen, King.
Not so in the Thoth.
In line with Golden Dawn thought, we see a change in the Court Card structure in Crowley’s deck. There are no Pages and Kings here, instead we have Princesses and Princes.
In Crowley’s story, there is no King. It is the Knight who is consort for the Queen. And the Queen is the old King’s daughter. The Prince is the Son of the Queen and the Knight. The Princess is won by the Prince and set upon her mother’s throne. Crowley says: ‘She thus awakens the Eld of the old king, who becomes a Knight and so renews the cycle.’‘She is not only the perfect maiden,’ continues Crowley ‘but (also) the lamenting widow’of the Prince.
I know, confusing AF, right? It’s like an episode of the real Game of Thrones. Only even harder to follow!
Although it’s confusing, this transformation of King into Knight, Knight and Queen unity, the production of a Prince, the son’s union with his Princess sister, his transformation into the Knight, her morphing into Queen…..it’s hugely dynamic and exciting, much more so than the static positions of the RWS, don’t you think?
What adds to this swirling confusion is that the Princes are all in Chariots of some description and the Knights are on horseback – just as they are in the RWS – and it is SO easy to lapse into thinking of the Knights as Ye Olde Waite Knights and thus a more junior role in the courtly hierarchy. And if a Knight and a Prince both come up in a reading? It’s easy to find yourself gasping like a guppy as you try to recall which guy fulfils which role. So how can we avoid this thinking?
Here’s my ‘story’ tip on how to remember who stands where in the Thoth Court:
A Prince is ALWAYS a Queen’s son and therefore the Prince is one rank down from Queen. In the line of accession to the throne, he’s always ahead of his sister, the Princess. And who’s the daddy? That sexy Knight, of course!
Hopefully that will keep those unruly Thoth courts straight in your head when you start working with them.
And just look at the colours in these cards – aren’t they magnificent? These gorgeous colourways didn’t just happen by chance….but that’s a story for another day.
*Calling herself Lady Frieda Harris was just a little affectation that she took for herself. According to Lon Milo DuQuette in his book Understanding Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot (and I cannot recommend this book highly enough if you are planning on a bit of Thoth Dabbling) the correct way to address this estranged wife of a Baronet is Frieda, Lady Harris. She should only have been calling herself Lady Frieda Harris if her father had had the title. Debretts? Who needs it. You’re welcome!
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