Tarot of Ceremonial Magick by Lon Milo DuQuette Review by Michele Jackson
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This book, while written to accompany the Tarot of Ceremonial Magick deck, is good enough to stand on its own. The information provided can be applied to other decks as well. The book starts with an introduction to Qabala. A quick and dirty coverage of the four worlds, the ten Sephiroth and the thirty-two paths is provided.The tetragrammaton, Crowley's Naples arrangement, and the Hebrew alphabet are also covered. The section on the Major Arcana provides divinatory meanings for three areas of interest: spiritual matters, matters of the heart and intellectual matters. Several correspondences for each card are provided. Specifically:
Finally a quote from Aleister Crowley is provided under the title Crowley's Mnemonic.
The next chapter covers the four aces. DuQuette proposes that the 5th element, Spirit, is covered by the four aces and the court cards. He assigns these to the Enochian Tablet of Union, developed by Dr. John Dee. The Chapter on the Court Cards proposes a means of assigning the court personalities to the I Ching. I found this section quite interesting. The chapter on the remaining Minor Arcana cards provides a general divinatory meaning followed by several correspondences which would be of interest primarily to those interested in Ceremonial Magick. The last Chapter covers Tarot Divination. There are 5 Appendixes:
This book was recommended to me as a good introduction to esoteric Tarot and the Qabala. The information on the Qabala was very basic, but it was too skimpy to be of much use as a practical introduction to the subject. Overall the book did a good job of describing the Golden Dawn and Crowley systems in an easy to understand manner, but the prime thrust of the book was Ceremonial Magick. The book flows very well, and I had no difficulty following the authors theories, nor did I get overly bored, even though I have little interest in Ceremonial Magick or the Enochian system. This book would make an excellent reference work for those who are interested in these subjects, and provides some introductory information on esoteric Tarot and Tarot and Magick.
The Tarot of Ceremonial magick does not announce any new discoveries or revelations. All of the information incorporated into the cards and discussed in this book have been available for years to the diligent student fortunate enough to possess an extensive occult library and the considerable time and direction necessary to correlate, memorize, and digest the material. What I have simply done is to place pertinent data relating to astrology and the two most widely practiced varieties of Qabalah based magick, (Enochian magick and Goetic evocation) upon the appropriate tarot cards themselves. This offers the opportunity for the student to painlessly absorb large amounts of technical and symbolic information simply by working with the cards.
Tarot of Ceremonial Magick pgs. 36 - 37
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Copyright 1996/97 Michele Jackson