Thoughts on Thoth

It's funny that this card from Thoth Tarot is called 'Science', because the other day I conducted a little experiment with the deck. I handed the deck to my hubby, who knows nothing about tarot other than I am very interested in it and have a lot of decks.

'Look through these cards,' I said, 'And just say words that come to mind.'

Now, hubster is not the most intuitive or emotive person (his review of 'Les Miserables': 'They all should have died in the first half hour, then they could have used the screen to show 'Sky Fall' or 'The Hobbit' again'). He's very matter of fact and practical, so I wasn't expecting poetry or much in the way of emotional reactions. He is amiable, though, so obligingly started looking through the cards and blurting words:




Cold
Aloof
Distant
Precise
Scientific
Geometry
Mathematic
Like schematics
Formal
Masonic (this having noted the eye at the top of the Tower card)

He just kept repeating the word 'Scientific' over and over. And so I asked him how the deck made him feel, and had to prod him by asking if any of the imagery was disturbing or did he get a sense of anything sinister, or whatever. 'No, it doesn't make me feel anything. It is cold.'

I told him that the first time I looked at the deck, it reminded me of ice. He nodded.

So I took a look through the deck and tried to do my own list, which was harder because I know a bit more about tarot, this deck and the deck creator. (Just a tiny bit!). But my list is not dissimilar:

Crystalline
Ice crystals
Lacks human warmth
No humanity, no human beings
Heavy in occult symbolism
Stylized
Angular
Prickly
Not connected to the natural world
Mysterious
Oppressive
Decadent
Rigid
Controlled
Precise

It is probably because of these gut reactions that I have picked this deck up and put it down so many times. Having worked with it every day for two weeks now, the images are becoming familiar, and therefore less frightening (if that's the right word, which it isn't). I am able to look beyond my instinctive disconnect to try to see what's going on behind the cards. Some of the most distasteful ones begin to take on meaning. Like that horrible green-dripping 7 of Cups. Ewww.

I just wonder how different my reaction would be if a different artist had been commissioned to paint this deck. I wonder how much of the 'coldness' is Aleister Crowley's Thelema, and how much is Lady Frieda Harris's deco stylings. Don't get me wrong, I usually love deco. I'm just taking a stab in the dark here.

I have all fingers and toes crossed that the Lon Milo DuQuette book turns up today, because I am chomping at the bit to read more about this odd deck.