Golden Dawn Tarot Deck: Robert Wang: 9780913866160: Amazon.com: Books

I liked everything about this deck.

I've purchased this deck as to have as a keepsake since I've a avid fan of the Golden Dawn Hermetic (black & white) deck. These cards are a little larger than other standard tarot decks. The art work is clear and easy to read. Note to the novice: This deck is only to be read from a positive/upright position. The card backing per this deck is not a continuous design. If this deck had a better finish/coating, I would give it 5 stars.

What I really wanted, and couldn't find until I found this deck, was pips (non-illustrated minors), along with a Prince and Princess instead of a Knight and Page. While I can see where this deck isn't for everybody (and definitely not for beginners) I was really excited to discover its existence and I've used it almost exclusively ever since receiving it.

I love this deck, and I love Robert Wang. I actually love his rendition of the pip cards too; there's something to calming and clean about his God hands. Those hands are on the the pulse of everything, from the universal to the psychic to the cosmic to the infinite. With the Tarot, your hands are on that pulse as well.Pair this deck with his book, the Qabalistic Tarot, and set off on a magickal journey through the esoteric visual language of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn!This deck is not for beginners. Neither is it the deck that packs the most Golden Dawn knowledge and associations into each card. But there's something about them that I find much more comfortable to read for others than decks like the Ciceros' Golden Dawn cards (LOVE that set too, by the way; it's an absolute must-have. I just tend to use it more for personal readings and self-study). These are beautiful without being busy, and they evoke the feeling of connection to the divine and mysterious.If you don't want a pip deck, don't get these. And if you do, consider returning them quietly for something you *do* want, vs enshrining your mistake in the product ratings. This deck is exactly what it promises to be. Pips are rich and interesting in their own way, if you take the time to learn about them!

Nice colors, nice illustrations taken from original Golden Dawn notes, good size for both study and giving readings, mellow vibe - neither "heavy" nor "too light." Deck is now printed in China, good quality but not quite as nice as the original Belgian printing, handle and shuffle well. Drawn by a serious, sincere Tarot student/master under the guidance of the second most important occult figure in Western Magick from the last century.It's not clear, from histories of the Tarot, whether the cards were initially devised by "initiates" and made their way into the public eye in a corrupted or disguised form, or whether they were produced for card games at the royal courts and through a happy accident of fate had a numerical arrangement that made them outstanding for occult work based on QBL aka Kabbalistic (Qabala / Kabbalah) teachings and numerology.What is clear is the amazing occult arrangement of every Tarot deck:The four suites with cards numbered 1-10 (Wands, Cups, Swords, Pentacles or Disks) correspond, by suite, to the classical "elements" of the Greeks, Fire / Water / Air / Earth (sometimes ordered Fire / Air / Water / Earth). Wands are Fire, Cups are Water, Swords are Air, and Pentacles are Earth.There are four "court cards," not one (King only), not two (i.e., King and Queen / Yin Yang), and not three (i.e., King / Queen / Prince). Rather, King and Queen are matched by Prince and Princess, which incorporates balance and gives recognition to the feminine despite the Tarot's historical origins during the patriarchal nigh misogynistic Middle Ages / early Renaissance. There is not one set of court cards, but four, one for each Tarot suite, for a total of 16 court cards. The court cards can be attributed elementally and Qabalistically: elementally, Kings are Fire, Queens are Water, Princes are Air, and Princesses are Earth, so that you start with the King of Wands (Fire of Fire), and move downward through each court (Queen is Water of Fire, Prince is Air of Fire, Princess is Earth of Fire) and across the suites (King of Cups is Fire of Water, King of Swords is Fire of Air, King of Pentacles is Fire of Earth) for movement through the sub-elements from Fire of Fire (King of Wands) all the way through Earth of Earth (Princess of Pentacles). The Qabalistic attributions are to the Four Qabalistic Worlds (Atziluth, Beri'ah, Yetzirah, Assiah).Within the Tarot, the court cards are generally accepted as representing people in your life or in a client's life, while the suites represent situations, and the trumps (0-21 cards standing apart from the suites) represent initiations or life lessons/insights/visions.The number suite or "small" cards correspond to the 10 Sephirot on the Tree of Life. You can mentally stack all the Aces on Kether, all the deuces on Chokmah, and so on, or attribute each suite to one of the Qabalistic Worlds.The trumps (or triumphs or atus), the 22 cards of the Tarot which depart the most from ordinary playing cards, correspond to the "paths" between the Sephirot on the Tree of Life. There are also, not by coincidence, 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and each or the trumps is assigned one of these letters.As you explore the Tarot, you will be struck (if you stick with it) by the hierarchies; by the correspondences; by the patterns; by the organization; and above all by the Hermetic principle "as above, so below"). If you study the Tarot, you will learn a lot of "occult" knowledge, which initially will be "useless" in the same sense that the often-mocked medieval question "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" seems useless. Later, as the Tarot hones your intuition, that occult knowledge will actually take on some practical overtones.So the pressing question: who can use the Tarot? Is the Tarot intrinsically good or bad? I know when I first learned of the Tarot in the '60's, I grave doubts as to whether God or the Devil authored it.This is something you will have to explore in your own conscience. I do know that evangelical Christians have been known to read the cards; esoteric Christians study it for esoteric knowledge; pagans are happy as clams with it; and occultists who are culturally Christian or Jewish dive into it (which usually means contacting BOTA, Builders of the Adytum, for their renowned correspondence course on Tarot). I do know some Freemasons in England at the end of the 19th century put together a Masonic order (technically not quite a Masonic order since it admitted women on equal standing with men), the Golden Dawn, which has only been rivaled by Madame Blavatsky's Theosophy in its impact on occult / "new age" studies in the West. The Golden Dawn embraced the Qabala so whole-heartedly and religiously agnostically that the "non Jewish Qabala" now rivals the orthodox Qabala in the occult / new age.*****And what of the Tarot decks? What of Robert Wang's Golden Dawn Tarot?Technically the Golden Dawn Tarot by Robert Wang is far superior to the AE Waite "Rider" Tarot Deck (with Pamela Coleman Smith's magnificent artwork) although the Rider Tarot is probably the most popular Tarot deck ever published. I have to admit that certain cards in the Rider Tarot just knock me out - the Fool, the Magician, the Chariot - ok almost all the major trumps - Waite and Smith were "inspired" in the design of the illustrations and symbolism. However, the history of the "occult" Tarot (as opposed to tarocchi decks like the Marseilles) is one of partial information, blinds, and deliberate misinformation - the truth took almost a hundred years to emerge, starting with Papus, then Eliphas Levi, then Waite (Rider Tarot), then Paul Foster Case, then Crowley, then Robert Wang, and finally the Ciceros (the "other" Golden Dawn Tarot deck).The Rider Deck is the first to be reliable enough for occult (highly technical, Qabalistic, as opposed to intuitive) cartomancy. The Rider deck also has illustrations for the suites, which is a big comfort for clients who otherwise think the counselor is just making up meanings. Some of the Rider cards are very suitable for path working (trying to "dream" the card at night, or visualizing the card as a doorway and taking an imaginative journey into the card during a light trance state). However the "errors" in attributions, symbolism, colors, numerology, and assigned Hebrew letters make it less satisfying for deeper, richer work.Paul Foster Case devoted a huge amount of his off-shoot Golden Dawn order, Builders of the Adytum (still active out of Los Angeles) to Tarot work, but he adamantly believed that each student needed to color his or her own Tarot deck and refused to issue a colored deck; finally his students, long after his death, issued his Tarot book with colored trumps. Case corrected the deviations in Waite's Rider Deck from Golden Dawn orthodoxy. Case followed the Golden Dawn system of NOT having pictures for each of the 1-10 suite cards. The Case book is The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages but the current edition only has black and white line drawings for the cards, you will have to search for an out of print hardcover and specifically look for one with COLOR illustrations if you want to see Case's take on the Tarot. Nevertheless, Case's book is essential for a classic Golden Dawn-based understanding of the Tarot trumps.Crowley made two additional modifications in the accepted Golden Dawn attributions: he switched the positions of the 8 and 11 trumps, and he switched a pair of Hebrew letter attributions. Most subsequent occultists see the logic of Crowley's changes, but the majority of Golden Dawn followers stick with the original Golden Dawn attributions (the OTO, Ordo Templi Orientis, is the major group that adopts Crowley's changes). Crowley's deck is available in several sizes on Amazon, and there are two books which give an excellent explanation of the deeper meanings of his deck, the first being his own book, published towards the end of his life and incorporating a life's worth of blood, sweat, and tears, The Book of Thoth: A Short Essay on the Tarot of the Egyptians, Being the Equinox Volume III No. V, and a "for dummies" edition (though not so named!) by a great student/teacher, Lon Milo Duquette Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot. While Case's book is essential for it's classical, historical perspective, Crowley's is far more inspirational and visionary, and Duquette's the least exhausting / tedious / boring of the three to get through. Be advised, however, that the Golden Dawn wasn't trying to start a new religion, it was trying to provide its members with tools for advancing within the framework of their own religions, while the Crowley material is hell bent on converting its student's to the Thelemic creed. (It's like the difference between reading a study on Egyptian death rites vs. reading a tract enthusing about why you should adopt Egyptian death rites). So long as you have more mental backbone than a jelly fish, you aren't likely to be "converted" against your will and both Thoth books are "must haves."When Case corrected Waite's deliberate "mistakes," he didn't depart much from the artwork that Waite had drawn by Pamela Coleman Smith, even though Pat Zalewski and others (including Israel Regardie, Robert Wang's mentor for this Golden Dawn Tarot) have pointed out that the accepted Golden Dawn written descriptions don't match the pictures used for the trumps in the Rider Waite Tarot.Crowley departed significantly, in his Thoth Tarot Deck, from both the Rider Waite / Case illustrations and also from the Golden Dawn descriptions. Widely recognized as one of the finest Tarot decks, it's unique vision of the Tarot makes it less accessible to conservative cartomancers and students.It wasn't until Robert Wang's groundbreaking Golden Tarot Deck that the public finally had a Tarot deck actually based on Golden Dawn descriptions. For that matter, Golden Dawn students did not have such a tarot themselves, since no Golden Dawn lodge ever privately commissioned the printing or old-fashioned hand copying of a master deck, so that each student was expected to paint their own from scratch, though the students who did this usually copied another student's deck. Since Robert Wang was guided by Israel Regardie, who published the seminal Western Tradition work of the last century - The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites & Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order (Llewellyn's Golden Dawn), my expectations were high for this deck. When it came out in the late '70's, however, I was pretty disappointed in it. It just didn't have the "punch" for me of either the Rider Waite deck OR the radical Crowley Thoth Tarot deck. I was much more mesmerized by the Thoth deck, although to this day I swear the colors in the Thoth Tarot are dark and it seems like the photographs used to produce the deck were horrible (maybe the originals were the same way! but the Swiss printings seem a little brighter and clearer).I pretty much tabled my "printed in Belgium" Wang Golden Dawn Tarot deck for a few decades, and when as second Golden Dawn-based Tarot interpretation came out, the the Cicero Golden Dawn Tarot deck Golden Dawn Magical Tarot, I was sure I would like it much more. However, I tabled that one too. Although the proper number of colors were used, and the colors "flash," it just didn't click for me.So why am I reviewing the Wang Golden Tarot Deck now?Well principally because I have a friend who wishes to study the Tarot, and that has forced me to pull out my old decks and order some new ones and try to come up with some rational suggestions.What I came up with are these:1. You can't go wrong with the Rider Waite deck for lightweight study and cartomancy. For learning something of the occult and for reading cards for friends in "light" situations..2. Recommending the Thoth Tarot to a friend is like recommending that an Asian friend, new to Western pop music, start with Lou Reed instead of the Beatles for an introduction to rock and roll. It is just too intense! And despite the central motto of Thelema / OTO "Do What Thou Wilt", is rather dogmatic (albeit also visionary, compelling, brilliant).3. The Golden Dawn will never let a new student down. It is so fundamentally sane and complete that absent mental aberration, most people should be able to make it through a self-study program without major problems.4. The Cicero's Golden Dawn deck is brilliant, but for advanced students.5. Which leaves us with the Robert Wang Golden Dawn Tarot, which has the accuracy the Rider Waite (and variations like the Radiant Rider-Waite Tarot, Universal Rider-Waite, and Albano-Waite) lacks, while having a nice mellow "vibe." Safe for entry level cartomancy, deep enough for advanced pathworking meditations and magic rituals.But how do _I_ feel about the Wang Tarot now?To be honest, I don't know why I was such a dork and didn't appreciate it 30 or so years ago. It is actually quite good. So good, in fact, that while the current China printed deck is quite adequate for personal work and cartomancy, I would recommend finding an original Belgium printed deck (the picture on the Amazon webpage is of the original deck, the box is different on the current deck) if you fall in love with this design. The colors are slightly more vibrant on the Belgium printed edition I have vs. the new deck I just bought for my friend. Also some of the colors actually shift slightly, and the original deck has a very useful extra card illustrating a colored Tree of Life. These are minor nitpicks, and I am grateful for US Games getting this back in print. It is an underappreciated jewel.If you plan on some minor cartomancy with your friends, I recommend purchasing the Thoth Tarot Deck if only to get the Celtic spread layout sheet of paper, which you can set down on a table and will guide you laying out the cards. In terms of interpretation, the small booklet from Robert Wang that is included with the Wang Golden Dawn Tarot deck is more than sufficient. For study and meditation, I would recommend the somewhat daunting Tarot of Ceremonial Magick: A Pictorial Synthesis of Three Great Pillars of Magick which has the most comprehensive list of attributions and correspondences, plus the books mentioned above.