Note on controversy
Crowley was highly controversial in his lifetime. His open drug use and libertine life drew fierce attacks in the British press, and a tabloid called him 'the wickedest man in the world'. In 1923 Mussolini's government expelled him from Italy, and his 'Abbey of Thelema' at Cefalù, Sicily, closed. We include him for the influence of the Thoth Tarot system; this does not endorse his conduct or views.
Life
Born in England, Crowley joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1898. In 1904 in Cairo he wrote The Book of the Law, the basis of the religious philosophy he called Thelema, and he later led the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.). Between 1938 and 1943 he designed the Thoth Tarot with the painter Lady Frieda Harris, and in 1944 published its companion, The Book of Thoth, which builds the correspondences of Kabbalah, astrology and alchemy systematically into the tarot. The deck remains one of the most influential tarot systems.
The system
- Systematic correspondences between tarot, the Tree of Life, Hebrew letters and the zodiac.
- Thelema's principle of discovering and following one's True Will.
- Ceremonial magic organized as a graded curriculum.
Key works
- The Book of the Law (1904)
- The Book of Thoth (1944)
- Magick in Theory and Practice (1929)
Where to start
- First a general history of tarot comparing the Waite and Thoth systems, then the Major Arcana chapters of The Book of Thoth.
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