B.O.T.A. tarot deck

The B.O.T.A. Tarot was created by Paul Foster Case, founder of B.O.T.A. and artist Jessie Burns Parke. Though the B.O.T.A. Tarot for the most part closely resembles the Rider-Waite deck[1], Paul Foster Case corrected what he felt were mistakes or "blinds" in the Rider-Waite edition.[2][3][4]

In "The Tarot," Case published the Hebrew letter attributions of the Golden Dawn for the first time. Also made public was the Tarot tableau, a pattern for laying out all of the Tarot Keys which reveals certain relationships and dissimilarities among them. This tableau was used by the American branch of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn when Case was Praemonstrator of that Order. This was the first published book to reveal almost all of the Tarot attributions on the Qabalistic "Cube of Space" diagram. Of course the Sepher Yetzirah is the source of the link between the Cube of Space and the Hebrew letters.[5]

Until the publication of this book, most English speaking occultists had never heard of the "Cube of Space" and were not aware how it related to the much better-known "Tree of Life" diagram[6]. In fact, until the mid-1990s there were almost no other books in print which even mentioned the Cube of Space. The ones that do refer and defer to Case's pioneering and authoritative work on the subject.[6][7]

B.O.T.A. repeatedly emphasizes that Tarot is primarily a tool for meditation, not fortune-telling. After explaining the B.O.T.A. method for Tarot divination in his book "The Tarot, A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages," Case specifically explains the differences between divination and fortune-telling and closes with a warning, "Finally, let me reiterate the thought that this is not to be used for vulgar fortune telling, or to amuse a party of friends. If you yield to the temptation so to abuse this information, you will pay for it in the loss of all power of true divination, and probably in the loss of ability to control the higher rates of psychic vibration."[8]

Contents

See also

References

  1. ^ White, Douglass A. Thoth and the Tarot, pp. 13-14
  2. ^ Case, Paul Foster. The Tarot, A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages.
  3. ^ Case, Paul Foster. Highlights of Tarot.
  4. ^ Case, Paul Foster. The Book of Tokens, Tarot Meditations.
  5. ^ Kaplan, Aryeh. Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation in Theory and Practice.
  6. ^ a b Townley, Kevin. The Cube of Space: Container of Creation
  7. ^ Hulse, David Allen. New Dimensions for the Cube of Space: The Path of Initiation Revealed by the Tarot upon the Qabalistic Cube.
  8. ^ Case, Paul Foster. The Tarot, A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages. pp 223

Bibliography

Writings of Case and others regarding the B.O.T.A. Tarot deck

External links

Online resources

Online resources discussing or using the B.O.T.A. Tarot deck