Book Review: The Occult Timothy Leary: The Tarot, Magical States, and Post-Terrestrial Evolution

• Author: Joseph L. Flatley
• Publisher: Destiny Books (Inner Traditions)
• Publication Date: 2026
• ISBN: 979-8-88850-084-2
• RRP: USD $19.99 | CDN $24.99 | GBP £15.99
• Reviewed by: Gwen Enstam @goldenpomt on IG

You might know Timothy Leary as one of the leading figures of the American counter-cultural movement in the mid-twentieth century; you might be familiar with his Harvard research on Psilocybin; you might know that he successfully arranged for a dramatic escape from prison in California and voluntary exile in Algeria; and you are quite likely to have heard his motto, ‘Turn on, tune in, drop out’.

But did you know he created a Tarot deck? I don’t suppose we should be surprised. It seems that everyone investigating higher states of consciousness gets here eventually. And with someone as brilliant as Timothy Leary, we can be sure that, while his Tarot deck might not break us free entirely from the world of appearances, it does offer us the chance to know the path a bit better.

The Occult Timothy Leary is divided into two parts. Part I, ‘The Many Lives of Timothy Leary’, is a fascinating biography of an intellectual genius. He saw humanity as being on the edge of a massive upgrade, we might say, if only we could learn to see and understand our circumstances and our destiny. Easier said than done because our cultural/social training starts early and has deep roots. Leary’s approach to bypass this programming was to use Psilocybin and LSD (legal at the time) to access higher states of mind. This is where the ‘turn on’ part of his motto comes in, i.e. contacting and awakening the inner consciousness:

When you’re operating at this level, you can perceive your subconscious programming and modify it. Aleister Crowley and other figures in the Western magical tradition were aware of the utility of psychedelics for this purpose, as are Indigenous people the world over.’ (p.22)

In fact, Leary was obsessed with Crowley and the Thoth Tarot. He considered himself to have inherited Crowley’s responsibility to prepare humanity for the new Aeon that will bring ‘cosmic consciousness’ (p.95). Leary was also an excellent Qabalist; his innovation – as far as I’m aware, it was his – is to mix the periodic table in with the usual correspondences of Astrology, the I Ching, the Hebrew alphabet, etc. It’s a fascinating idea that perfectly suits his approach to consciousness awareness as rooted in the physical.

In Leary’s neurologic system, consciousness evolution is represented in a total of twenty-four stages (eight circuits containing three stages each), and each stage is said to be represented by a tarot Major Arcana (or trump) card […] p.116

Leary’s Majors-only Tarot deck is based on his eight-circuit model of consciousness – a developmental structure that mirrors the evolution of life on earth. To give you an idea of scale, the first four circuits are what we might consider the usual human experience. Any experiences past circuit four are only temporary excursions. At least for now.

Each of Leary’s eight circuits is divided into three stages, which gives us a total of twenty-four. There are only twenty-two Majors, of course, so Leary adds two ‘rediscovered’ cards. And what a synchronistic treat those cards are, just having completed TABI’s Art Competition Challenge this past spring to create a Major that follows The World! I’m not going to tell you about the new ones Leary includes – their impact comes from seeing them for the first time yourself.

The Occult Timothy Leary reproduces the cards in his Tarot from Leary’s book The Game of Life (the deck is unpublished) and aside from the two cards that he adds in, the illustrations are taken from the Rider Waite Smith deck. I don’t get the feeling that the illustrations matter that much. It feels more like a reading done using Elemental Dignities, where you might not consider what’s going on in the cards at all. What is important here are the correspondences Leary assigns to each one, and the new levels of meanings he attributes to them, based on his eight-circuit model.

Leary makes a couple of changes to the Tarot Majors: the elemental, planetary, and zodiacal correspondences; to the numbering; and to the order of cards. And then he adds new meanings to the traditional interpretation.

First, Leary shifts the numbering so that The Fool is Atu I. I think this works well (not just in this deck, of course) because The Fool can be seen as that nebulous energy that simultaneously precedes the Divine One and is the Divine One, i.e. The Fool is already both 0 and I. Leary is not the first person to do this – in fact there is a tradition in Tarot that uses this numbering. You can see how strongly you associate Trump cards with their numbers when you shift everything along one! How do you feel about the Hanged Man at XIII? Perhaps this discombobulation is why Leary made the change.

Second, Leary changes the order of the Majors. He switches The Priestess and The Empress, who he names The Earth Empress. I don’t think anyone would argue with that clarification, since The Empress is so strongly associated with Demeter and the Earth. He changes these cards because of the grouping of his eight-circuit system – The Fool, Magician, and Empress are the three stages in the first circuit, which relates, essentially, to our basic needs and functions.

Finally, Leary uses only the zodiac signs. Traditionally, the Major Arcana are divided into three groups for their correspondences: the Elements, the planets, and the zodiac. And Leary starts with Pisces for The Fool, then moves to The Magician and Aries, and The Empress in Taurus (still Venus – isn’t that perfect?). I usually don’t like it when deck creators rearrange correspondences like this, because usually it feels random and unsupported, so I was surprised to really love Leary’s arrangement. The Fool suits the last, mutable decan of the previous year, preparing and edging into the launch of the next year which starts with Aries. And Aries suits The Magician, with the keywords ‘willpower, manifestation, skilful action, conscious creation’. It sounds familiar, and it is – because Leary’s reading is such a natural progression from what we are used to from the RWS.

So, I hear you ask, what happens when we get to Aquarius? There are only twelve zodiac signs and now twenty-four Majors. Leary repeats the zodiac. Starting with Pisces and The Fool, we work our way through the signs until we get to Justice/Adjustment and Aquarius and then, with the Hanged Man, we start again with Pisces. The Hanged Man is traditionally associated with the Element of Water, and Pisces is Water – another meaningful pairing.

But the repeating of the zodiac is more than just finding something to do with the second half of the Majors. The point after Justice and before the Hanged Man marks the end of the fourth circuit and the start of the fifth – and this is important. The first four circuits are what Leary calls ‘larval’, and the second four, ‘stellar’. It is at this transitional point that humanity will evolve from our physical lives here on earth and into a substantially higher kind of existence. Specifically, Leary was thinking of the beginning of what will eventually lead us to a reunion with God, which he describes in terms of a voyage through space.

In Chapter 10, ‘Behaviour of the Tarot’, we get into spreads. And what a joy this section is, allowing us to really get to grips with Leary’s ideas. Flatley gives us four spreads to practise with:

• Leary’s Seven-Circuit Spread
• Flatley’s Single-Circuit Three-Card Spread
• Flatley’s spread for Analysing a Situation Using a Minor Arcana
• Flatley’s spread for Working With the Terrestrial Circuits

The latter spread is based on Crowley’s Opening of the Key, and all are accompanied by correspondence charts. Flatley walks us through everything in detail. A vast wealth of resources in just a few pages!

There is a lot more I could say about this fascinating book, and Leary’s re-interpretation of the Tarot Majors, but for the sake of space, I will just say that if this review intrigues you, you will love the book as much as I did.

More on the Author:

Joseph L. Flatley is an investigative journalist, author, and publisher of the Failed State Update newsletter. His short films have been featured at Three Rivers Film Festival (Pittsburgh), NonPlussed Fest (Los Angeles), and Desert Daze (Joshua Tree, CA). He is also the author of New Age Grifter: The True Story of Gabriel of Urantia and His Cosmic Family. Flatley specializes in conspiracy culture; he’s spoken with (and written about) Jonestown survivors, realtors for deluxe doomsday bunkers, and Julian Assange, to name only a few. His stories have appeared in a number of publications, including The Verge, Pando, and CounterPunch.

The Occult Timothy Leary is available from Inner Traditions: https://www.innertraditions.com/the-occult-timothy-leary and all good bookstores.