While I appreciate that the pip cards are drawn per the specifications of Mathers and in the Golden Dawn tradition, the compositions are a bit flat and lack visual interest.

Once Mathers realised that reconciliation was impossible, he made efforts to reestablish himself in London. They had also become anxious to make contact with the Secret Chiefs themselves, instead of relying on Mathers as an intermediary. Gareth Knight, Britain’s most respected contemporary occultist, established his own organization, The Servants of the Light, in 1973.

Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Anthony Louis, author of several books, including Horary Astrology and the new Secrets of Predictive Astrology.

Written and created by internationally known adepts Chic Cicero and Sandra Tabatha Cicero, this is ideal for the beginning student but equally appealing to expert Tarot readers. The Celtic Cross is considered by many to be a little too complicated for a daily reading, but I appreciated this reminder of the depth and insight it offers. These of course correspond to Tarot suits: Fire is Wands, Water is Cups, Air is Swords, and Earth is Pentacles or Disks. It did take me a while to follow the Horoscope spread as the two images show different card placements, so I followed the card placement as described in the commentary. Why, for example, is the vertical path on the Tree of Life from Tiphereth to Yesod associated with Temperance and not the Devil?The dreamwork section will be a challenge for me as I never seem to remember my dreams, but I shall rise to that challenge! As part of the training students had to create their own tarot deck to demonstrate understanding of the complex systems. E. Waite and Blackden joined forces to retain the name Isis-Urania, while Felkin and other London members formed the Stella Matutina. The reason for this is that the Tarot of the Golden Dawn assigned a suite of colours for each card depending on which of the Qabalistic Four Worlds it belongs to, rather than designing the cards for visual appeal. In a secular society the Establishment may think your ritual to invoke the Guardians of the North is foolish or deluded, but the Inquisition won’t haul you in for a date with the Iron Maiden.

The three founders, William Robert Woodman, William Wynn Westcott, and Samuel Liddell Mathers, were Freemasons and members of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia. The Knight Scale gives us the ‘natural essence of colour’, the Queen Scale gives us ‘the colours we perceive from reflected light and are taken from nature’, the King Scale is a blend of the Knight and Queen scales, and the Princess Scale is a variety of combinations and shades of the colours that have come before. According to occultist Israel Regardie, the Golden Dawn had spread to the United States of America before 1900 and a Thoth-Hermes temple had been founded in Chicago. First are the knowledge lectures, which describe the basic teaching of the Kabalah, symbolism, meditation, geomancy, etc. Key 13: Death also bears a relationship with Key 15: The Devil– “They are two great controlling forces of the Universe, the centrifugal and the centripetal, destructive (Key 13) and reproductive (Key 15).

I would recommend this text for starting out on a Golden Dawn Tarot journey; it would give a good solid grounding. Created under the guidance of Israel Regardie and Chic and Sandra Tabatha Cicero, the Golden Dawn Magical Tarot is the only deck to incorporate the Golden Dawn s understanding of color. The Aspirant to a Grade received instruction on the metaphysical meaning of each of these Elements and had to pass a written examination and demonstrate certain skills to receive admission to that Grade. The design of this deck is thus attributed to the notes and writings of Mathers, with the original paintings for the deck done by Moina MacGregor Mathers, who was herself an artist from the Slade School of Art in London. What that has to do with the colors is that as the initiates did in working through their tarot decks (again, from what I have read) was to use certain colors for each of the major arcana.