Deep in the past, people of the Nile River valley created a rich and beautiful civilization, for they believed that amongst them moved luminous beings with powers to guide the human race to Paradise. The deities of the ancient Egyptians dwelt invisibly in their world, and in timeless dimensions of mind and spirit as well. We find, amidst the compelling remains of that lost age, that they revered Thoth as the God of Writing, Lord of the Moon, and Master of Time.
Thoth was the wisest of the gods, a powerful deity of wisdom and magic, learning and medicine who protected and guided those working with knowledge and the word—scribes, teachers, and writers. Thoth was also the patron of astronomy, languages, mathematics and accounting—major arts in that sophisticated culture so remote in time.
Egyptians portrayed Thoth with the head of an ibis, a bird
that, dwelling on the shore between deep water and the land, symbolizes
communion between the conscious and subconscious minds. Other
representations show Thoth as a lunar deity with a moon headdress, and
also as a wise-looking baboon.
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The Egyptians considered their system of writing to be of divine origin—the gift of gods to humanity. “Hieroglyph” means “god’s word,” and scribes were accorded high status in the culture’s religious sphere. Thoth would have guided them in creating the sophisticated symbols so complex and layered that modern scholars are still decoding their meaning.
The Grecian deity Hermes (Mercury to the Romans) is a counterpart to the Egyptians’ Thoth. The Greeks revered Hermes as the god of communication, an intermediary between deities and mortals. Hermes was invested with strong magic, and bore the caduceus, a staff with intertwined snakes symbolizing the power to unite those divided by conflict. As with Thoth, his domain was that of words and writing, when to capture ideas and thoughts in symbols was still a mysterious, even divine act.
The powers of Thoth were so great that legends tell of a book of secret wisdom, written by the god himself, which would allow a person who read it to become the most powerful magician in the world. In The Book of Thoth, one could learn “the language of the beasts, how to see the wind and how to hear the sun, the secrets of the gods and the songs of the stars.”
Aleister Crowley studied the occult knowledge of the ancient Egyptians, perceiving the illumination of inner realms and “all that is hidden in the stars.” After creating the Thoth Tarot deck, a path to self knowledge and transformation, Crowley wrote The Book of Thoth—A Short Essay on the Tarot of the Egyptians.
Tarot for the New Aeon brings the skills of Thoth into the 21st Century, by offering you a method to illuminate your thoughts, understand your emotions, and consciously clarify your will and intent.
Original work on this site: Copyright 2007 P.C. Tarantino |
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