Reading the Thoth tarot

The Thoth deck, painted by Lady Frieda Harris to Aleister Crowley's design, looks and speaks differently from most tarot. Scenes give way to geometry, colour and force, and many cards carry their own names. If you learned on another deck, the key is to read those names and those energies, not to translate everything back.

Names that change

• Trumps: Lust is XI (Strength elsewhere), Adjustment is VIII (Justice), Art is XIV (Temperance), The Aeon is XX (Judgement), The Universe is XXI (The World), The Magus is I.
• Suits: Wands, Cups, Swords and Disks.
• Courts: Knight, Queen, Prince, Princess. The Knight is the highest, mounted figure; the Princess is the earthy beginning.
• Numbered minors carry a one-word title, such as Swiftness (8 of Wands), Love (2 of Cups), Ruin (10 of Swords) and Gain (9 of Disks). Always read the title first: it is the card's voice.

How to read it

Read the movement in the picture: what radiates, what is crossed, what is broken or balanced. Colour carries meaning, with hot reds for will and fire, blues and greens for feeling and growth, and greys and blacks for strain. Many Thoth readers do not use reversals and read how cards affect their neighbours instead: the same element strengthens, an opposed element weakens. Several trumps in one spread say the question touches something bigger than the day-to-day.

Have your Thoth spread read

Photograph your spread: we recognise Thoth names and titles as printed on your cards (in our tests, 86 of 89 cards correctly named, with the misses on untitled cards photographed at an angle) and read them in the deck's own language: Lust, not Strength; Swiftness, not just an eight. We never show the deck's artwork here.

The Thoth Tarot is published by U.S. Games Systems. This site is not affiliated with them.

Questions people ask

Is Lust the same as Strength?

It sits in the same family of meanings, but Thoth's Lust is more about joyful vitality and passion than about gentle control, and it is numbered XI rather than VIII.

Do you read reversals in the Thoth tarot?

Many Thoth readers do not. If you laid cards reversed, we honour that; if not, we read how the cards strengthen or weaken one another.