Crowley ThothTarot Reading

 

Golden Dawn Spread

Golden Dawn Spread

 

 

Card Positions

  • This 15-card spread breaks the cards into 5 groups of 3. The middle card of each group represents the core. The flanking cards add meaning. The top 2 groups show chronological progression based upon your current path and a possible change of your course.
  • 2-1-3 represents You
  • 14-10-6 represents your psychology
  • 7-11-15 represents karmatic influences
  • 4-8-12 represents your current path
  • 13-9-5 represents an alternate path, or possibly a continuation to be added to your current path
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    Your Golden Dawn Reading

     


    The Alternate Path
    (or Extension of Current Path)
      Your Current Path
     

    The Universe

    7 of Wands

    Princess of Cups
     
    9 of Cups

    10 of Cups

    6 of Wands
             
        The Querent    
       
    Queen of Disks

    Lust                 

    The Hermit
       
                 
    The Psychological Basis   Karma

    Queen of Swords

    Queen of Cups

    8 of Wands
     
    2 of Cups

    10 of Swords

    The Fool

     

     

    This spread is set up to read a certain way with the Court cards. Princes and Queens represent actual men and women connected with the matter, while Princesses generally represent ideas; thoughts or opinions, and Knights represent arrival or departure of a matter depending on the direction faced.

    In this spread particular attention should be payed to a card's exact position in relation to its neighbors. Whether the neighbor cards bear the same energy (suit) determines whether a card is considered well- or ill-dignified. Opposite suits ill-dignify each other, while other suits are considered friendly. Cards of the same suit strengthen each other.

    Also it is important to count the cards' tendencies, such as whether there is a lot of one particular suit or number pattern. Patterns reveal special messages. Lots of trumps means higher forces at work, lots of cups means strong emotions, etc.

     

     

    The Querent

    Cards represent the querent and the nature of the topic at hand. The first card (in the center of the spread) represents the very core of the matter, and the other 2 cards around it are added to it in order to further comprehend the nature of the topic.

     

     

    Lust

    Leo

    Mitigate Energy with Love; but let Love devour all things. Worship the name _______, foursquare, mystic, wonderful, and the name of His House 418.

    Courage, strength, energy and action, une grande passion; resort to magick, the use of magical power.

     

     

    Queen of Disks

    Capricorn

    The Queen of Disks represents the watery part of Earth, the function of that element as Mother. She represents passivity, usually in its highest aspect. The Queen of Disks is throned upon the life of vegetation. She contemplates the background, where a calm river winds through a sandy desert to bring to it fertility. Oases are beginning to shew themselves amid the wastes. Before her stands a goat upon a sphere. There is here a reference to the dogma that the Great Work is fertility. She thus represents the ambition of matter to take part in the great work of Creation.

    Persons signified by this card possess the finest of the quieter qualities. They are ambitious, but only in useful directions. They possess immense funds of affection, kindness, and greatness of heart. They are not intellectual, and not particularly intelligent; but instinct and intuition are more than adequate for their needs. These people are quiet, hard-working, practical, sensible, domesticated, often (in a reticent and unassuming fashion) lustful and even debauched. They are inclined to the abuse of alcohol and of drugs. It is as if they could only realise their essential happiness by getting outside themselves.

     

     

    The Hermit

    Virgo

    Wander alone; bearing the Light and thy Staff. And be the Light so bright that no man seeth thee. Be not moved by aught without or within: keep Silence in all ways.

    Illumination from within, secret impulse from within; practical plans derived accordingly. Retirement from participation in current events.

     

     

    Your Current Path

    Cards represent your current path as it would unfold naturally. These cards are read in chronological order from left to right.

     

     

    9 of Cups

    Jupiter in Pisces – Happiness

    The Number Nine, Yesod, in the suit of Water, restores the stability lost by the excursions of Netzach and Hod from the Middle Pillar. It is also the number of the Moon, thus strengthening the idea of Water.

    In this card is the pageant of the culmination and perfection of the original force of Water. In the symbol are nine cups perfectly arranged in a square; all are filled and overflowing with Water. It is the most complete and most beneficent aspect of the force of Water.

     

     

    10 of Cups

    Mars in Pisces – Satiety

    This card represents a conflicting element. On the one hand, it receives the influence of the Ten, Malkah the Virgin. The arrangement of the cups is that of the Tree of Life. But, on the other hand, they are themselves unstable. They are tilted; they spill the water from the great Lotus which overhangs the whole system from one into the other. The work proper to water is complete: and disturbance is due.

     

     

    6 of Wands

    Jupiter in Leo – Victory

    This card represents Tiphareth of the suit of Fire. This shows Energy in completely balanced manifestation. The Five has broken up the closed forces of the Four with revolutionary ardour, but a marriage has taken place between them; and the result is the Son, and the Sun.

    The reference is also to Jupiter and Leo, which seems to imply a benediction on the harmony and beauty of this arrangement. It Will be seen that the Three Wands of the Three Adepts are now orderly arranged; and the flames themselves, instead of shooting out in all directions, burn steadily as in lamps. They are nine in number, in reference to Yesod and the Moon. This shows the stabilisation of the Energy, and its reception and reflection by the Feminine.

    There is no circle to enclose the system. It is self-supporting, like the Sun.

     

     

    The Alternate Path

    Cards represent the alternate path that you could choose to take in lieu of the Current Path. However, if the cards that come up seem to indicate that they go along with the Current Path, these 3 cards should be interpretted not as an Alternate Path, but as a chronological extension of the Current Path (also read from left to right).

     

     

    The Universe

    Earth

    Treat time and all conditions of Event as Servants of thy Will, appointed to present the Universe to thee in the form of thy Plan. And: blessing and worship to the prophet of the lovely Star.

    The matter of the question itself, synthesis, the end of the matter, may mean delay, opposition, obstinacy, inertia, patience, perseverance, persistent stubbornness in difficulty. The crystallisation of the whole matter involved.

     

     

    7 of Wands

    Mars in Leo – Valour

    This card derives from Netzach (Victory) in the suit of Fire. But the Seven is a weak, earthy, feminine number as regards the Tree of Life, and represents a departure from the balance so low down on the Tree that this implies a loss of confidence.

    Fortunately, the card is also attributed to Mars in Leo. The army has been thrown into disorder; if victory is to be won, it will be by dint of individual valour – a 'soldiers' battle'.

     

     

    Princess of Cups

    The Princess of Cups represents the earthy part of Water; in particular, the faculty of crystallisation. She represents the power of Water to give substance to idea, to support life, and to form the basis of chemical combination. She is represented as a dancing figure, robed in a flowing garment on whose edges, crystals are seen to form.

    For her crest she wears a swan with open wings. The symbolism of this swan reminds one of the swan in oriental philosophy which is the word AUM or AUMGN, which is the symbol of the entire process of creation. She bears a covered cup from which issues a tortoise. This is again the tortoise which in Hindu philosophy supports the elephant on whose back is the Universe. She is dancing upon a foaming sea in which disports himself a dolphin, the royal fish, which symbolises the power of Creation. The character of the Princess is infinitely gracious. All sweetness, all voluptuousness, gentleness, kindness and tenderness are in her character. She lives in the world of Romance, in the perpetual dream of rapture. On a superficial examination she might be thought selfish and indolent, but this is a quite false impression; silently and effortlessly she goes about her work.

     

     

    The Psychological Basis

    Cards shed light upon the psychological undertones of the current problem.

     

     

    Queen of Swords

    Libra

    The Queen of Swords represents the watery part of Air, the elasticity of that element, and its power of transmission. She is enthroned upon the clouds. Her helmet is crested by the head of a child, and from it stream sharp rays of light, illuminating her empire of celestial dew. In her right hand, she bears a sword; in her left hand, the newly severed head of a bearded man. She is the clear, conscious perception of Idea, the Liberator of the Mind.

    The person symbolised by this card should be intensely perceptive, a keen observer, a subtle interpreter, an intense individualist, swift and accurate at recording ideas; in action confident, in spirit gracious and just. Her movements will be graceful, and her ability in dancing and balancing exceptional. If ill-dignified, these qualities will all be turned to unworthy purposes. She will be cruel, sly, deceitful and unreliable; in this way, very dangerous, on account of the superficial beauty and attractiveness which distinguish her.

     

     

    Queen of Cups

    Cancer

    The Queen of Cups represents the watery part of Water, its power of reception and reflection. She reflects the nature of the observer in great perfection. She is represented as enthroned upon still water. In her hand she bears a shell-like cup, from which issues a crayfish, and she bears also the Lotus of Isis, of the Great Mother. She is robed in, and veiled by, endless curves of light, and the sea upon which she is enthroned conveys the almost unbroken images of the image which she represents.

    The characteristics associated with this card are principally dreaminess, illusion and tranquillity. She is the perfect agent and patient, able to receive and transmit everything without herself being affected thereby. If ill-dignified, all these qualities are degraded. Everything that passes through her is refracted and distorted. But, speaking generally, her characteristics depend mostly upon the influences which affect her.

     

     

    8 of Wands

    Mercury in Sagittarius – Swiftness

    The card refers to Hod, splendour, in the suit of Fire, whence it refers to the phenomena of speech, light, electricity. The pictorial representation of the card shows the Light-wands turned into electrical rays, sustaining or even constituting Matter by their vibrating energy. Above this restored universe shines the rainbow; the division of pure light, which deals with maxima, into the seven colours of the spectrum, which exhibit interplay and correlation.

    This card, therefore, represents energy of high velocity, such as furnishes the master-key to modern mathematical physics.

     

     

    Karma

    - These cards represent the influences of karma and destiny that are beyond your control. They suggest adapting to this fate.

     

     

    2 of Cups

    Venus in Cancer – Love

    The Two always represents the Word and the Will. It is the first manifestation. Therefore, in the suit of Water, it must refer to Love, which recovers unity from dividuality by mutual annihilation. The card also refers to Venus in Cancer. Cancer is, more than any other, the receptive Sign; it is the House of the Moon, and in that Sign Jupiter is exalted. These are, superficially, the three most friendly of the planets.

    The hieroglyph of the card represents two cups in the foreground, overflowing upon a calm sea. They are fed with lucent water from a lotus floating upon the sea, from which rises another lotus around whose stem are entwined twin dolphins.

    The number Two referring to Will, this card might really be renamed the Lord of Love under Will, for that is its full and true meaning. It shows the harmony of the male and the female: interpreted in the largest sense. It is perfect and placid harmony, radiating an intensity of joy and ecstasy.

     

     

    10 of Swords

    Sun in Gemini – Ruin

    The number Ten, Malkuth, as always, represents the culmination of the unmitigated energy of the idea. It shows reason run mad, ramshackle riot of soulless mechanism; it represents the logic of lunatics and (for the most part) of philosophers. It is reason divorced from reality.

    The card is also ruled by the Sun in Gemini, but the mercurial airy quality of the Sign serves to disperse his rays; this card shows the disruption and disorder of harmonious and stable energy.

    The hilts of the Swords occupy the positions of the Sephiroth, but the points One to Five and Seven to Nine touch and shatter the central Sword (six) which represents the Sun, the Heart, the child of Chokmah and Binah. The tenth Sword is also in splinters. It is the ruin of the Intellect, and even of all mental and moral qualities.

     

     

    The Fool

    Air

    In spiritual matters, the Fool means idea, thought, spirituality, that which endeavours to transcend earth.

    In material matters, it may, if badly dignified, mean folly, eccentricity, or even mania.

    But the essential of this card is that it represents an original, subtle, sudden impulse or impact, coming from a completely strange quarter.

    All such impulses are right, if rightly received; and the good or ill interpretation of the card depends entirely on the right attitude of the Querent.