To delve once again into Crowley’s Book of Lies, is to begin to completely unravel the hidden secrets of the Thoth tarot and is this author’s beginning point in deciphering the initiated meanings of the cards. Reading the book for the third or fourth time, after years of yoga and a week long initiation ritual with an offshoot of the Ordo Templi Orientis, the following poem triggered the realization that most of the Trumps and a few smaller cards were hinting at very different meanings than the traditional divinatory definitions of the cards.
[107] 49 {Kappa-Epsilon-Phi-Alpha-Lambda-Eta Mu-Theta} WARATAH-BLOSSOMS Seven are the veils of the dancing-girl in the harem of IT. Seven are the names, and seven are the lamps beside Her bed. Seven eunuchs guard Her with drawn swords; No Man may come nigh unto Her.
In Her wine-cup are seven streams of the blood of the Seven Spirits of God. Seven are the heads of THE BEAST whereon She rideth. The head of an Angel: the head of a Saint: the head of a Poet: the head of An Adulterous Woman: the head of a Man of Valour: the head of a Satyr: and the head of a Lion-Serpent. Seven letters hath Her holiest name; and it is Babalon (Drawn upon this page is the Sigil of BABALON.) This is the Seal upon the Ring that is on the Fore- finger of IT: and it is the Seal upon the Tombs of them whom She hath slain. Here is Wisdom. Let Him that hath Understanding count the Number of Our Lady; for it is the Number of a Woman; and Her Number is An Hundred and Fifty and Six.(Aleister Crowley, The Book of Lies)
In this card, and its mischievous renaming from Strength to Lust Crowley finally shows his hand. He states in this card the equivalence between the yoga system he had been following and its identity with the western mythological system favored by most editions of the cards. His replacing the card upon the paths of the Tree of Life is also indicative of his belief that this card was the lynchpin of his system and may be his biggest contribution to tarot in general. The heads of the Beast in Crowley’s system are an enumeration of the Chakras in order from top to bottom. The poetic names for the heads of his Beast of the new Aeon, succinctly describe the character of each Chakra in order. Who cannot think their sexual Chakra to be a Satyr or their heart an adulterous woman?
Anyone who has been a student or even a fan of Crowley’s system knows the importance of the Beast to his mythology. Originally the curse of his mother, Crowley ended up adopting the moniker and literally announced himself to the world as the Antichrist of the Bible. In this card, he gives his justification for the claim as someone who has performed the Kundalini awakening and has fully opened all the Chakras along his spine, translating them from energy centers to the heads of a mythical creature. He furthermore assigns the role of the Whore of Babylon, to the physical body that rides upon those Chakras. This is one of the two main keys to the system of Thoth. Crowley equated the traditional card images of Hercules and the pillar, or a woman taming a lion and defined them as the arousal and completion of the Kundalini awaking, the traditional pillar being understood as the spine. This shows not only the syncretism of Crowley’s work, but his central thesis of the equivalence and complementary nature of eastern and western systems and his desire to include yoga and meditation in the initiatory -magical systems coming from Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism.
Make no mistake, Crowley very much wanted this equivalence to be understood, and hence his many repetitions of the symbolism of the number seven. The fact that he returned to this symbolism to create the Thoth deck, despite being decades after publication of The Book of Lies shows that he never gave up on this particular interpretation. In Crowley’s system Strength is identified with Kundalini. The same female identified as Babalon in this card shows up again in The Universe card explicitly with a serpent, as his final statement upon the Trumps.
Crowley had commented that in his renaming of the card from Strength to Lust, he was indicating the joy of strength exercised, that is in motion rather than a distinct act of strength. This may have been a ploy at further confounding the critics and enjoying his own humor. The actual design of the card shows that he believed the source of strength was the energy channel running along the spine and the drunkenness of the body once it discovers this strength. Babalon is always drunk, and she’s drunk on her source of power: the Sushumna channel of Kundalini, the primary goal of many types of yoga. It is yet again another exhortation from Crowley for the practitioner to practice, practice, practice.
This card alone shows that many images of the Thoth deck must be considered with an eye to their symbolism in the Hindu system and yoga. Crowley’s insistence that his more private cult the A.:A.: should be largely yoga based should not be ignored either. The upshot of this card image is that within this system Strength is based on Kundalini and the Biblical imagery Crowley employed should be referenced back to yoga systems before being dismissed as Satanism. For the new initiate, upon unpacking the image this realization can also be used for unpacking the symbolism of the entire deck.