Do the card meanings of Crowley’s Thoth deck correlate well with the typical Rider-Waite-Smith meanings?

[Jessica]

I received my first Thoth deck in October, and I’ve struggled to find resources to help me learn how to read Thoth properly. I know that the Thoth deck (or at least the one I received) comes with one of those tiny white booklets, but the information seems very cryptic to me. I find it hard to ascertain ANY meaning of the Thoth cards when I refer to the booklet that came with the deck. I also can’t seem to find many online resources on the Thoth deck. This leads me to wonder if it’s fair to “translate” the Thoth card meanings using Rider Waite Smith guides. Does anybody find this to be an accurate assumption?

Discussion

[RudigerX97]

RWS and Thoth have a common ancestor. It’s probably easiest to say the RWS illustrations and meanings fall within the range of meanings of the underlying system. This provides compatibility to an extent, but Thoth is different enough that you will want Thoth-specific resources. One good, free reference resource is Liber Theta available on the College of Thelema website.

[sihouette9310]

From what I’ve read it’s way more esoteric and kind of requires the reader to have some stronger knowledge of astrology and qabalah. Both of them as one of the other commenters said were directly inspired the golden dawn tarot which you can buy really cheap but it’s not the tarot itself they based it off of it has way more to do with the golden dawn style of reading which is written in a book called Book T which from the bits and pieces I’ve read relies on qabalistic numerology , color meanings, and what’s called zodiacal deacons. Also there are no reversals in the traditional golden dawn and also the Thoth system. Whether a card is ill dignified or not has to do with its relationship to the other cards elements. Kind of like a paper covers rock sort of thing.

[tsuranoth]

Start by buying the “Book of Thoth” by Crowley. It’s a different system, and relies on the imagery more than RWS. Make sure you learn on a standard Thoth deck before moving on to any Thoth-style decks.

[honorthecrones]

If you want to understand Thoth, you have to read Crowley.

[sovietlasertank]

Thoth and RWS both are based in the Golden Dawn system of Tarot; so they’re not inherently different. Astrological and kabbalistic associations stay the same for the most part as well. Crowley however put a lot of his own philosophy into the Thoth deck, which makes it different to other Golden Dawn based decks. I suggest starting with the “Book of Thoth” by Crowley, which explains the deck.