Thoth Tarot – Spirit of the Wolf

I don’t think there will ever be a last tarot deck.

I’ve come to realize that as much as I love reading tarot and delving into the different facets of myself, I love collecting new tarot decks and other tarot related creations that call to me. With each one I find, be it a deck of Tarot, Oracle, Kiper or Lenormand cards, it’s like I’m finding a part of myself.

Tarot has become a part of how I breathe and that breath changes focus over time. There are times when I feel like I need strong guidance and wise counsel and other times when I need a soft and gentle hand to guide my way. I always find myself going to different decks for different situations. I’ve tried to stick with only one deck, and I did for a while. My first deck was The Ancient Egyptian Tarot by Clive Barrett. I love the mysticism that Egypt holds and using those cards was like communicating with a deeper part of my spirit. The Ancient Egyptian Tarot was with me during one of the most difficult times in my life and is part of me.

After a break from card slinging, I learned to read tarot again with the Thoth Tarot and after I spent a lot of time with those cards, I needed to find a different path for myself. My path with the Thoth Tarot ended badly, though this had nothing to do with the cards themselves, but the person who taught me to read with them. I wanted to find comfort after a difficult time and knew that I had to walk away from the Toth Tarot. It was too wrapped up in who he was. I backed away from Tarot because of my experiences with the deck and my teacher. I still felt that I needed some kind of guidance and found myself turning to Oracle cards.

I found myself drawn to The Enchanted Map Oracle by Colette Baron-Reid. They were a revelation at the time and provided me with soft comfort and much needed advice that I needed to turn my mind around and to not just focus on the positive but find a way to let go of the negativity so that I could see the path in front of me clearly. I had no idea that my path would lead me to meet Colette with my friend Christine. I consider myself lucky that I got to meet Colette, but the shine that I felt followed her dulled after meeting her and so did my love for her cards.

There were other Oracle cards that were able to guide me through what I was going through, but I was itching to find another Tarot deck. I love Oracle cards, but Tarot would always be my first home.

When a friend gave me The Wild Unknown for Christmas, it was like I had found a piece of myself that I had given away a long time ago. I was hesitant picking up another tarot deck after what had happened with the Thoth Tarot. However, after a time with so much darkness, it was like finding light in the shadows, and Kim Krans uses colour to great effect within the art of The Wild Uknown, using the shadow to show how powerful a spot of light or colour can be.

It is the deck that I always return to, no matter how many decks I own. It’s where I feel most at home. The Wild Unknown is the deck that somehow gives me breath in a world where I sometimes don’t feel like I can breathe. I have three cards tattooed on my right shoulder so that I can carry them around with me: the Ace of Wands, Strength and the Ace of Swords. Every day, they remind me what I can create, how I can overcome and what I need to cut away.

Even so, as much as The Wild Unknown holds a part of my spirit, it likes to wander and find itself in new places. I’m always drawn to find a part of myself in something new and if it has gilding on the edges, I’m gone. I have always been a sucker for shiny things. After experiencing The Wild Unknown, I was drawn into the world of Prisma Visions. The Wild Unknown Tarot helped me through a period of growth where I became completely myself and opened me up to what was possible. The world of Prima Visions Tarot was an explosion of colour that lit up the dark and showed me what my world could look like, and it was a world that I wanted to explore. I felt like with each card that I was being drawn into a world where there was finally balance between the light and the dark. I found those cards when I needed to let myself shine because I didn’t want to hide who I was anymore. Those cards showed me that it was okay.

I could go on, but we would be here for a while. When people ask me how many decks I have, I truthfully don’t know the answer. I would wager somewhere between one-hundred or two. There have been decks that have been sold to others or given away to one of my friends who were in need of a little bit of wisdom, but other than that, they have stayed.

I’ve always thought of Tarot cards like doors, they invite into a world of the artists creation. The person who has created the deck is alive within each card, each pigment, each sword, pentacle, cup or wand. The decks that call to me are often at random or ones I’ve been told about, or I spot them on my journeys in stores (both mortar and online). If I know that the store sells Tarot decks, that’s the first thing I go to look at. I almost always find something to take home.

It’s not about just buying a new deck. There must be some kind of spark or story, waiting to be unravelled and lived in. I’m a firm believer that Tarot decks are spirit keepers. I write and paint. I know that a little bit of the magic that I create lives inside each of my paintings. My books always hold characters that are parts or pieces of me, every writer does this. Our lives and imagination inspire the rest.

I think that tarot decks are like that, too. The decks always hold the spirit of their creator. They’ve had that vision, that idea, that story that had to be told with tarot cards. They are world creators, giving their idea a canvas to live out their tale, to hold the energy that they want to imbibe the deck with. Every time I open a new tarot deck that called to me, I am opening a door within myself that has either remained closed, or I didn’t know was there in the first place. I usually sit with a tarot deck, flipping through the cards and letting what I see tell me a story. Then I sit and read the guidebook, so that I can see further into the forest. The guidebook gives me the bones of the deck. It is, after all, the deck creators’ story and vision. They take the forest of cards and help to bring them to life.

My tarot collection of tarot decks has become something more. It’s like each deck is a page in the book that tells my journey, mirroring a different part of my path. It’s a large book that I have compiled, much like a tarot deck that is really a book filled with mirrors. I’ve always used tarot for personal reflection and growth, and each card is a reflection of who I am, that’s how I’ve always seen them at any rate. These decks that have been created with care by so many different deck creators and artists. They may have created a forest to lose myself in, but it’s my intuition that gives me the light to shine through.

Either way, I’ve come to realize that there will always be a new deck that catches my eye and tugs at my spirit. I know this and I’ve come to a good place with it. I know that with each year that passes, there will be many more pages to add to the book of my life.

I recently donated upwards of sixty decks to a charitable foundation. This frees up space a little and it was good to go through the decks that I have and I was able to say goodbye to them and thank them for helping me find different facets of myself. I know that even though I just got rid of a lot of decks, that there will never be a last deck. There is always something that I can learn about myself and the road that I am on in this life.

I can’t wait to see where the cards will take me next.

I have a love and hate relationship with the Thoth Tarot.

Back in 2013, I was introduced to the deck and was immediately taken with it. I had been reading tarot for some time but wasn’t enamoured by it. When the Thoth Tarot came into my world, I was going through a life change.

I was dealing with the end of an abusive relationship and struggling against my own body as I tried to figure out a path ahead. I had been diagnosed with relapse remitting multiple sclerosis and my body was completely different to me now. I no longer knew my body or myself as I once had. I needed guidance to find my way in the world and I had so many questions about what lay ahead.

When I saw a post by one of my good friends, I thought this was the answer that I was looking for. She had been learning to read the Thoth tarot at a local shop and all the people in the class were giving tarot readings that evening on Halloween. I knew that I had to go and discover what spirit had in store for me and I thought it would be a wonderful way to spend Halloween.

The reading was a gorgeous experience and I fell in love with the Thoth Tarot as soon as I lay eyes on them. The cards were so vibrant and full of colour. The man who had taught her to read with the cards was giving another run through of his workshop and I signed up right away and got my own copy of the deck before I left the shop. It didn’t hurt that there was a spark of something between us. He asked me what my zodiac sign was and I told him that I was a Leo born on the cusp of Virgo. He looked up my birth date and time and confirmed that I was a full Leo.

Over the next six weeks, he taught a group of us to read the Thoth tarot with an intuitive focus and delve into the mysteries that the cards offered to us. He was a gifted teacher, pulling from the cards a world that I hadn’t known was possible. The cards became a part of my daily life and so did he in a way.

It didn’t take me a long time to realize that he wasn’t a very nice person. I noticed how he was in the workshop and how judgemental he could be with the other students and their interpretation of the cards. At the beginning of the workshop, he told us that there were no wrong interpretations of the cards, however he relished pointing out to a student that they were wrong. He got a joy from that, I think.

As I started to attend more workshops given by him over the next few months, I learned more about tarot, manifestation and reiki. I also began to learn a lot about him as a person. He arrived in my life when I was vulnerable and, though there was an initial attraction, it wore off pretty quickly for me. I could see shadows around him when he spoke.

The end for me came when he told me he loved me.

It was so out of the blue and completely unexpected. I had begun dating someone and he knew this. I’m not sure what his reasons were for telling me he loved me, but they had the reverse effect that he wanted. I was put off by it. There had been no discussion of love or lust and we had never been on a date or anything of the sort. Though I had tried to find love before, I had come to realize that I had been going about it the wrong way. I had to love myself first.

It didn’t take me a long time to realize that his professions of love were just a way to manipulate me. I had survived an abusive relationship a year before and knew the signs of someone who was emotionally unavailable but wanted to claim a person. He didn’t want to be with me, he wanted to possess me.

It didn’t escape my notice that he had only professed his love for me after I had begun to fall in love with someone else. I think he could see that spark of light that had begun to glow within me, and he wanted the light that for himself. We had never gone on a date; he had told me previously that he didn’t to date me, so this talk of love had come out of nowhere.

I did the only thing I could think of doing: blocked him on all social medias. Blocking him on social media seemed like a reactive and sure fire way to establish a boundary. It was something that I had not done with my previous boyfriend or my ex-husband. I hadn’t taken the time to protect myself and I had let them take so much from me. I would not let him take any more of me than he had.

I wanted to set the boundary and that wall that he had to cross should he realize what he had done. It was my rock wall, thorny hedge, moat and ring of fire around myself as I blocked him on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and text. It was a way that I could build a barrier around myself. With each social I blocked him on, I realized why there was something about him that had felt comforting.

After three abusive relationships, his behaviour had seemed like a home I could find comfort in. It would have been an easy habit to fall back in. It had been my MO, really. To let these men latch on to me and take everything that they could from me, and I was left wondering what had gone wrong. I didn’t want that for myself. In choosing to act and protect myself, I took away a part of his voice.

I started to draw cards about my feelings about him and the way he made me feel. All the cards I drew were the tough cards like the 8 of Swords (Interference) or the 10 of Swords (Run), the ones that asked me to really think deeply about why I needed and wanted this relationship with someone who was so obviously toxic he could be distracting (Prince of Cups). There was one reading there all the cards I drew were Sword cards and he had taught me to see the suit as bad.

During one class, one of the other students asked, “What do we do if we draw three sword cards?”

He had given them a grin and said, “Drop the cards and run like hell.”

And yet, every time I asked the cards a question about him, I always drew Sword cards.

I feared the suit of Swords for so long because of him. They had become everything bad in my life, everything that hurt, cut, burned, or maimed. He had filled me with that much terror of the Sword suit.

During one of the classes, he had all of the students pick out which card represented themselves. I chose the Ace of Wands, ready to sparkle and shine bright, to look into the shadows of my life and see those shadows’ part. Within the light that the Ace of Swords came clarity and creative opportunity as well as hope for a future for myself. A new path that was free from darkness.

My good friend who had given me that first tarot reading was in this class with me. She compared me to the Ace of Swords. I was and always have been writing something. My words were and are the way that I show myself to the world. Parts of me are tucked or sewn into everything that I write.

My good friend knew this, and to her the Ace of Swords, the cards of writers and words smiths, seers and crafters of the written word, suited me perfectly. However, my fear of the Swords suit, what they could take away from me, held so much fear (It was only when another friend gave me a copy of The Wild Unknown Tarot deck by Kim Kranz when I realized that Swords, while sometimes cold and others fierce, also had their softer side as well).

I knew that the cards were really asking me to take a look at my own thoughts and perceptions of who he was and what his motivations were. The cards wanted me to make my own mind up about him and I did. Even though it was hard, I cut him off completely from my life and held strong.

He came into my life when I was already vulnerable from an abusive relationship, and it took me a long time to realize that I had entered into another abusive relationship with him, even though it was non-romantic on my side. Though we never dated, that didn’t matter. Any relationship can be abusive.

If I was going to put a complete wall between us, that meant doing the hardest thing I could think of doing. I put the deck away and turned my back on tarot for a bit. I found solace in The Lost Map Oracle Cards by Colette Baron-Reid. I saw those cards as safety. They told a tale that could contain only my words and not the words and wisdom given to me by him. I would not have to hear his voice in my head once I turned my back on the Thoth deck.

I put my Thoth deck away. I wrapped the deck within its pink silk shroud and put it back in the wooden box that I kept them in, marked with a pentagram. He had become so wrapped around the cards in my mind that I couldn’t keep myself from associating the Thoth deck with him. Every once in a while, I would take the deck out and unwrap it and then put it away again. There was sill to much of his energy wrapped up into what the Thoth tarot represented to me. I even tried getting a new deck of the Thoth deck and had the same result. I didn’t think I would ever read with the Thoth Tarot ever again even though much of what I knew about tarot was from that deck.

When I heard that there was a new edition of the Thoth Tarot was published by AGM Urania in Germany and I had to admit that I was curious. I was also surprised about something else: they had named the artist on the box. In my years of using the Thoth Tarot, I never even knew the artist’s name. He had never mentioned Frieda Harris and I hadn’t thought to learn anything about her, quite different from the Rider Waite Smith tarot. Everyone knows about Pamela Coleman Smith. I didn’t know anything about Frieda Harris and her name intrigued me. He had not once mentioned her name, it was all about Alistair Crowley, a man of great power.

I’ve always viewed the true artist behind any tarot deck is the artist themselves. I mean, sure, the creator is the one that nurtures the seed into fruition, but the artist is the one that brings the cards to life. I don’t end up reading the guidebooks of many of the tarot decks I own. I don’t think I’ve ever read one cover to cover. I connect with the art and prefer to read my decks using what I see in front of me. It’s how I end up connecting to a card.

I ordered a used copy of the AGM Thoth Tarot off of Amazon, just to see how it would feel to have the deck in front of me. I still have the copy of the Thoth tarot that he taught me to read with. I decided against burying my original copy of the deck simply because he wasn’t a pack of cards, even if the Thoth tarot had become synonymous with him, at least in my mind. I’ve got it tucked at the back of my tarot collection. I could have gotten rid of my wooden box containing the deck very easily, but I wanted a marked or touchstone to remind me of where I’d been.

When the new copy of the AGM Thoth Tarot arrived, I was surprised to find that the deck was still wrapped in plastic, both the box and the cards. The deck wasn’t used after all, and I hadn’t paid that much for it. It felt like a bit of good fortune. When I got the deck out of the box and looked upon the face of Lady Frieda Harris, it was like greeting an old friend, I knew her art so well. I flipped through the Little White Book and found out a little bit about her and how she and Alistair Crowley met.

I read so many books about Crowley and the symbolism of the cards when I started reading with the Thoth Tarot, but I don’t recall one mention of Frieda and who she was. I was happy to finally meet her and to see her name on the box of the cards that she created.

As I made my way through the deck again after so many years, I focused not the mysticism that Alistair Crowley wanted in the deck, but the artistic skill used as Frieda tried to paint another person’s vision. Ever drop of water, ever tongue of flame was painted by her and she had to paint it to his specifications, but still, they are her paintings.

It was comforting to know that this was a new deck, unassociated with him. I can finally read with the Thoth Tarot again after so many years, and it has nothing to do with it. I can finally let his influence over the deck go and embrace the cards I know so well once more so that I can see them in a new light.

It’s wonderful to know that on one hand, I’m meeting and old friend again, but on the other, I’m also forging a new relationship with the cards and can’t wait to see what I learn about myself.

Thank you, Frieda, wherever you are.

Category: Thoth Tarot

The Forest in the Mirror – My Journey with Tarot

A Reflection on the Thoth Tarot