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The Thoth deck was painted by Lady Frieda Harris to Aleister Crowley's instructions between 1938 and 1943 and explained in his Book of Thoth (1944). It was published as a deck only in 1969. Almost everything in it rests on a system worked out earlier by the Golden Dawn, and that system is what this wiki is built around.

How the 78 cards are built

22 trumps are the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the 22 paths that join the ten spheres of the Tree of Life. The Sepher Yetzirah divides the letters into three Mothers (the elements Air, Water and Fire), seven Doubles (the planets) and twelve Simples (the signs), so every trump also has an astrological meaning. See the letters and the list of hubs.

40 small cards are the ten Sephiroth in each of the four worlds: the Ace is Kether, the Two Chokmah, down to the Ten as Malkuth. The cards from Two to Ten are also the 36 decans of the zodiac, each ruled by a planet, which is where their keywords come from. See numbers.

16 courts are the four letters of the Name in each suit: Knight (Fire), Queen (Water), Prince (Air) and Princess (Earth). Twelve of them rule the year in thirty-degree arcs that straddle two signs; the four Princesses rule the four quadrants of the earth instead. See ranks.

How to read a card page

The header gives the title, the Golden Dawn title in italics, and, for the small cards, Crowley's keyword. The coloured bar is the card's colour from 777: the King-scale colour of the path for trumps, the Queen-scale colour of the Sephirah for small cards, the element's colour for courts. The row of chips is the card's correspondences; each one opens a hub page listing everything else that shares it. Below the chips, In a reading is the short divinatory meaning. The sections after it are the lenses: the picture, Kabbalah, astrology, number, depth psychology, and the differences from the Rider-Waite deck. Related cards at the bottom is generated from the correspondences.

Three things to know about this deck

• Crowley renamed several trumps (the Magus, Adjustment, Lust, Art, the Aeon, the Universe) and the court ranks (Knight, Queen, Prince, Princess for King, Queen, Knight, Page). The search box understands the Rider-Waite names.
• He exchanged the letters and paths of the Emperor and the Star, which no other major system does. See deviations.
• The deck is read without reversals. Strength and weakness come from elemental dignities, the neighbours of a card. See reading with the deck.

A study order

• The four elements and the four worlds, then the four suits.
• The ten numbers as Sephiroth, then the small cards suit by suit.
• The twelve signs with their trump and three small cards each, then the 36 decans.
• The seven planets and their trumps, then the three elemental trumps.
• The 22 letters on the Tree.