NOVEMBER 2007

by Sue Taylor

Thoth Companion: The Key to the True Symbolic Meaning of the Thoth Tarot (Paperback)
by Michael Osiris Snuffin. Llewellyn Publications, November 1, 2007.

Many years ago, I was given a deck of the Thoth Tarot along with a book of instruction prepared by Aleister Crowley, the man who developed the deck, entitled The Book of Thoth. I was quickly overcome by the complexity of this textbook. I found it tedious and incomprehensible. I was clearly out of my league.

Llewellyn's new Thoth Companion explains, in detail, many of the reasons for my confusion. Crowley made a great many assumptions in regard to the reader’s level of knowledge in the field of magick. He assumed knowledge of the Golden Dawn society and "thelemic" magical systems.  I have no knowledge of or interest in either of these systems. Crowley also left out large amounts of information in regard to interpretation of the cards.

Despite all of this, I have used this deck almost exclusively for many years when I wish to utilize the knowledge of Tarot. The reason I use and like it is that I access the wisdom in the cards by the astrological symbols in each card.  I have, also, used Angeles Arrien’s wonderful book of interpretations for this deck titled The Tarot Handbook.

Now I have another option. With the Thoth Companion, I can choose to look at the question from the perspective of the magician, the astrologer, or an intuitive using the art of divination. 

This book is easily readable and mostly comprehensible (I still have trouble with the Quabala, Thelema, and Golden Dawn portions of the explanations and find them uninteresting and tedious). But in the fourth and final chapter, called Tarot Divination, I found a wealth of information on how to give a good reading, reading one’s own cards, connecting with the Universe, different spreads, exercises to develop skill as a reader, developing intuition (you don’t have to be born with it!), and “pathworking”.