"Prince of cups", and "Princess of Disks" THOTH TAROT CARD READING/s. These cards were pulled as a double reading. The Order of the reading is from left to right.


 "Prince of Cups" is one of Aleister Crowley's anti-hero or antithesis cards, which may have aligned, and I am being speculative here, with what he wanted to be, albeit in a theatrically manifestation, which was later stipulated by French psychiatrist from the early 18th Century Philippe Pinel, who described patients exhibiting a "madness without delirium" or later the "moral insanity" to which one could have, according English psychiatrist, James Cowles Prichard in 1835,  characteristics that are morally antithetical to society, without the hallucinations or delusion.  Yes, what we now know today, as a term which has been over used in an overstimulated world of digital media relays from the many keyboard 'armchair' therapists, based more myth than not, that being; Psychopathy.  But, the early mythology of the 'mad one' who shows no delusional fears, may have been attractive to Crowley, as the ultimate rebel.  From Crowley's own analysis of the card:

"The moral characteristics of the person pictured in this card are subtlety, secret violence, and craft. He is intensely secret, an artist in all his ways. On the surface he appears calm and imperturbe, but this is a mask of the most intense passion. He is on the surface susceptible to external influences, but he accepts them only to transmute them to the advantage of his secret designs. He is thus completely without conscience in the ordinary sense of the word, and is therefore usually distrusted by his neighbours. They feel they do not, and can never, understand him. Thus he inspires unreasonable fear. He is in fact perfectly ruthless. He cares intensely for power, wisdom, and his own aims. He feels no responsibility to others, and although his abilities are so immense, he cannot be relied upon to work in harness."  

Am I close?   As mentioned, I am only speculating on the correlation of 18th and 19th Century psychoanalytic theory on the said, so called, disorder.  Yet, it is a clever card, with a plethora of poignant symbolism, from a lotus flower, pointing down, held in the left hand of the male figure, and a ornamented cup, held in the right hand, with a serpent in it, to which the figure is looking directly at the snake.  The figure is naked, except for the helmet with a eagle atop, while sitting at a chariot, flown by an eagle, as it looks down.  Symbolic in its intensity, with the bird of prey and its eagle eyes.  As the figure is also looking downward.  The "Prince of Cups" represents water, and the flows of rain and is serene in its presence, according to Crowley the card is ruled by Libra and Scorpio.

Reading:

Be paradoxical, ride the eagle in all its metaphor, the eagle's eyes maybe sharper than yours.  Yet, you can craft your intuition to be even sharper.  Naked to the world, your armour is only what you'll wear, in its symbolism, to shield the mind, not from the external, but to ensure ambiguity is maintained.  You may never know, what you do not see coming.  As you tilt the flower downward, towards the Earth, to which it came from, it is now part of the left hand path, where even weeds are valued, and the moss covers the arrogance of mankind.  The rain is persistent, the air pure.  You hold the cup, with your right hand, staring into the serpent's eyes, and you will know no fear, nor delusion, no hysteria.  Be calm in your actions, without the moral standard.  Therefore you have no one to blame for your actions, your past, your parents and the greater society.  What you do, you do by being aware of the self.

___

Princess of Disks is one of Crowley's (d1947) more interesting, paradoxical and liberating Thoth Tarot cards, probably aligning with Luciferian or "Satanic Romanticism"  (although Crowley was no Satanist) ala early 18th and late 19th Century poetry, writings and art as the anti-hero, or antithetical of order, and defiant against the omnipotent.  Usually depicted as an aesthetically beautiful figure, while being nonbinary in appearance, Lucifer was viewed ambiguously as a male.  To which Crowley has specifically made the imagery of the Princess of Disks to be just that, female in form, while part of Crowley's own depiction of women as unruly and chaotic, further alluding to why he outwardly defines the Princess of Disks to represent the antithesis, as quote from The Book of Thoth, "Her crest is the head of the ram, and her sceptre descends into the earth. There its head becomes a diamond, the precious stone of Kether, thus symbolizing the birth of the highest and purest light in the deepest and darkest of the Elements. She stands within a grove of sacred trees before an altar suggesting a wheatsheaf, for she is a priestess of Demeter. She bears within her body the secret of the future."  And in Christian literature, Satan was cast to Earth, detailed further in Gnostic and esoteric writings he becomes the 'Prince of the Earth', who rules from a diamond encrusted throne.   And relating to "Satanic Romanticism", the Princess of Disks holds the staff, in her right hand, with a diamond atop, pointing down to the Earthly realm, as the light bringer, in defiance to the Heavens, as she looks downward in the image, reiterating John Milton's idolization of Lucifer, from the epic poem 'Paradise Lost', that it is, "Better to reign in hell, than serve in Heaven" .

Also noted in The Book of Thoth reading, which remains ambiguously informative to say the least, is Crowley insertion of Taoist symbolism and its mishmash meanings overlapped with Western esoterica, be in the Yin and Yang, seen in the middle of the Disk, which she holds in her left hand, representing balance, but more so contradiction, rather than "balance", at least from Crowley's perspective, as noted, "She contains all the characteristics of woman, and it would depend entirely upon the influences to which she is subjected whether one or another becomes manifest. But in every case her attributes will be pure in themselves, and not necessarily connected with any other attributes which in the normal way one regards as symbolic. In one sense, then, her general reputation will be of bewildering inconsistency. It is rather like a lottery wheel from which the extraction of any number does not predict or influence the result of any subsequent operation." Which keep's, unfortunately, in tune with Crowley's sexist and damning elements of the feminine.  I will redeem the card.

Reading:

"What is above is below, and what is below is above" as the Princess of Disks, controls the Earthly realm, she is the bringer of chaos and the unsettler of arrogance, be it of the masculine, the mortal ruler, to which one may use this reading to evoke a curse against the King, who claims omnipotent over the collective, who dwell in ignorance.  She is already condemned, so therefore she doesn't need to justify, she does, her actions are to equalize the damned, so that they be released from torment.  She knows deception, and can read the King and his conjuring, as weakness.  To which she is unwaved in her defiance, and be it from below, she looks down on their authority, as she rules the darkness, the air and the manifestation of the Earth.   Bless her, and may she assist in toppling the mortal throne of man.    
___

(A.Glass 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026)

All Thoth Tarot readings to date:  chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/search/label/Thoth%20Tarot%20reading

Comments