| Apr. 6th, 2009 @ 10:36 pm Thoth Tarot |
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Early tomorrow morning, I head off to New Orleans, where I will attend the annual convention of the American Culture Association/Popular Culture Association and participate in an academic tarot panel. I'll be presenting a paper on "Collaboration and Innovation of the Crowley-Harris Thoth Tarot." From my abstract:As one of the top-selling Tarot decks of all time, the Thoth Tarot has entered popular culture through appearances in movies, television, music videos, comic books, and other media. This richly detailed deck is the result of a five-year collaboration beginning in 1938 between occultist Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) and artist executant Frieda Lady Harris (1877-1962). Its creation will be documented with examples of the collaborators’ correspondence, dairy entries, rejected drafts, and finished cards, noting the influences that each brought to the project—from Crowley, a lifetime study of occultism and his philosophy of Thelema (Greek for “will”); from Harris, interests in Anthroposophy and projective synthetic geometry. The striking innovations in imagery, names, and sequence introduced by the Thoth Tarot will be examined within the larger context of the western esoteric tradition, including preceding works by Éliphas Lévi (1810-1875), Gérard Encausse (1865-1916), Oswald Wirth (1860-1943), and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, as well as subsequent artists and decks influenced by the Thoth Tarot. The deck thus succeeds not only as an intellectual and artistic achievement, but also as one that captivates the imagination of popular audio/visual artists and their audiences. One of the exciting things about this paper for me is that I get to include a decently researched and much-needed biography of Frieda Harris. Pending editorial acceptance, the paper will form part of an anthology to be published in 2010. |
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