The Devil is in The Details

He was vilified in the popular press as “the wickedest man in the world.”

He was also a writer, occultist, mountaineer, yogi, social critic, drug addict, sexual hedonist and possibly even a spy. His own mother referred to him as “The Beast.” If that weren’t enough, he was the subject of the first solo single by Ozzy Osbourne, who’s no slouch in the depravity department, either.

Yep, I’m referring to everyone’s favorite Satanist, Aleister Crowley! Funny thing, though. It was this proverbial swine that showed me where the esoteric truffles are buried.

Sometime in the mid-90’s, I was out in Denver visiting an old friend when I made a pilgrimage to The Tattered Cover, an enormous independent bookstore that, for a writer/reader like me, is the equivalent of finding the Holy Grail. As I ambled wide-eyed through floor after tome-stacked floor, I found myself in the “Esoteric” section, confronted by a shelf of tarot cards.

I’ve always been drawn to things of a mystical nature (blame my Sagittarius moon) but, as a former Catholic, I’d been adamantly warned off any and all forms of divination, even that miraculous modern-day oracle, the Magic Eight Ball. I’ve always flouted authority, too, (that damned Sadge moon again), so, with the naiveté of the novice, I chose what I thought was an interesting looking deck and made my purchase.

Thanks to the emerging Internet and its message boards, I soon found a tarot group that pointed out the error of my uninformed ways and turned me in the direction of the classic Rider-Waite deck. A scholar, mystic and one-time member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, A.E Waite toned down the Christian imagery of older decks and directed the illustrating of the whole 78-card deck with simple, almost fairytale images.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but leave it to a scourge like Crowley to put the truth to that lie. Although his “Thoth” deck is awash in almost impenetrable symbolism, ranging from Egyptian mythology to Chinese philosophy and the Hebrew Qabalah, the cantankerous Mr. C went Waite one better by adding an invaluable key to this pictorial cacophony – each of his minor arcana, or trump cards, is also represented by a one-word mnemonic. So while a card like the four of swords shows a quartet of these weapons pointed inwards towards a square (huh?), the title “Truce“ suggests an uneasy peace (ah!).

Accounts differ wildly about Crowley’s death in 1947. Lady Freida Harris, the artist who illustrated the “Thoth“ deck under Crowley’s supervision, claims that the notorious old bastard’s last words were “I am perplexed.“ Because of his crafty inclusion of forty simple words, I am less so.