Cards - The Golden Dawn Tarot (U.S. Games Systems)

The Golden Dawn Tarot. U.S. Games Systems, USA. Full divinatory tarot deck, Mediterranean suited, 79 single-headed cards + divinatory-meanings booklet.

Deck make-up:
Trumps: 0-21.
Pentacles (i.e. coins), wands (i.e. clubs), cups, swords: A, 2-10, princess, prince, queen, king.
Extras: title card.

Israel Regardie (born 1907) was a member of an esoteric group called Stella Matutina, a descendent outfit of the Order of the Golden Dawn. Feeling the group's procedures were wrongly limited to such a small set of people and that, over time, the order's secrets could even be lost, in the mid 1930s he broke his oath and started publishing the group's secret internal documents, collected in volumes. One of these documents (though this particular one had actually been published in part by Aleister Crowley in his Equinox periodical in 1912) was Book T (subtitled A Description of the Cards of the Tarot with their Attributions; Including a Method of Divination by Their Use) and dealt with the Golden Dawn's thinking behind tarot. Book T had been anonymously written, in the main, by Samuel Liddell Macgregor Mathers, the head of the Golden Dawn.

Though Mathers and the Golden Dawn had one or two internal specimen decks (probably illustrated by Mathers' wife, Moina), the usual procedure for Golden Dawn's members was to make and colour their own tarot deck using the instructions (presumably also devised by Mathers) contained in Book T (and, for the trumps, a couple of other documents).

For example, the instructions given for the eight of pentacles are: "A WHITE Radiating Angelic Hand, issuing from a cloud, and grasping a branch of a rose tree, with four white roses thereon, which touch only the four lowermost Pentacles. No rosebuds even, but only leaves, touch the four uppermost disks. All the Pentacles are similar to that of the Ace, but without the Maltese cross and wings. They are arranged like the geomantic figure Populus:

      ✪       ✪
      ✪       ✪
      ✪       ✪
      ✪       ✪

Above and below them are the symbols Sun and Virgo for the Decan."

In 1978, Regardie decided to supervise the creation of a tarot deck following closely to the recipes outlined in Book T. The illustrator of the cards was Robert Wang, a medievalist art-historian-cum-artist. The deck followed the Book T specifications far more closely than earlier decks overseen by members of the Golden Dawn, such as Arthur Waite's and Aleister Crowley's. Wang: "We submit that this deck is the only published deck which includes all of the correct attributions of a secret oral tradition, and that these materials have been passed down for centuries. We believe that the Golden Dawn Tarot is the result of Macgregor Mathers' intensive research into the history of Tarot, correlated with, and affirmed by, his contacts with this secret oral tradition."

There are two main criticisms of the resultant deck. Firstly, that the imagery is rather simplistic and child-like; this fact causing a falling out between Wang and Regardie. Wang said later, in his autobiography: "...it took me quite some time to realize that the real reason for my rift with Regardie was that I had done a terrible job of painting the Golden Dawn Tarot cards. I did my best at the time, but whenever I look at these badly drawn, strange little wooden figures I cringe in embarrassment. It's no wonder that Regardie didn't want to talk to me after the cards were published."

The second problem for the purists is that the pictures on the cards do not follow the recommended colour scheme of the Golden Dawn. This problem inspired at least two notable subsequent decks: The Golden Dawn Magical Tarot by Chic & Sandra Tabatha Cicero, which again was approved by Regardie; and The Magical Tarot Of The Golden Dawn by Pat & Chris Zalewski, Skip Dudchous and David Sledzinski.

Despite these issues, the deck has stayed in print for over forty years, and remains very popular. An accompanying book An Introduction To The Golden Dawn Tarot by Wang was also published; this included most of the original Book T specifications.

Trumps

Pentacles (i.e. coins)

Wands (i.e. clubs)

Cups

Swords

Extras

Documents

The deck on this page is one masterminded by a Golden Dawn (or its offshoots) member, or designed to adhere to their concepts of tarot. A list of other major such decks is given below (scroll/swipe to the right if needed):

Deck	Author/s	Artist/s (if diff.)	Release year	"Official" guide book	Notes
Marseilles tarot / Tarot de Marseille	unknown	various	15th century	The Tarot: Its Occult Signification, Use In Fortune-Telling, And Method Of Play, Etc.	The booklet cited (written in 1888 by Samuel L MacGregor Mathers of the Golden Dawn) gives "official" Golden Dawn divinatory meanings when using the Marseilles tarot (referred to at that time as the Italian tarot). In 1889, Swiss occultist and artist, Oswald Wirth, designed a well-known tarot specifically for esoteric use with his own versions of the trumps in the Marseilles pattern.
The Rider-Waite[-Smith] Tarot	Arthur Edward Waite	Pamela Colman Smith	1909	The [Pictorial] Key To The Tarot
Builders Of The Adytum (BOTA) Tarot	Paul Foster Case	Jessie Burns Parke	1931	The Tarot: A Key To The Wisdom Of The Ages or Highlights Of Tarot [NB doesn't cover pip cards]	Revised version of Rider-Waite with some "corrected" trumps and courts, and simple pip cards. Trumps also issued in colour form; full deck is b&w.
Thoth Tarot Deck	Aleister Crowley	Lady Frieda Harris	1972 (painted 1938-43)	The Book Of Thoth (Egyptian Tarot): A Short Essay On The Tarot Of The Egyptians
The Golden Dawn Tarot (aka The Whare Ra deck)	Israel Regardie	Robert Wang	1978	An Introduction To The Golden Dawn Tarot
The Hermetic Tarot	Godfrey Dowson		1979	Only the Little White Booklet that comes with the deck.	Black & white.
Golden Dawn Magical Tarot (aka The New Golden Dawn Ritual Tarot)	Chic Cicero & Sandra Tabatha Cicero (with Israel Regardie)		1991	Golden Dawn Magical Tarot / The New Golden Dawn Ritual Tarot	"Ritual" was the earlier name. Do not confuse this deck with the one below – they are different!
The Magical Tarot Of The Golden Dawn	Pat Zalewski & Chris Zalewski	Skip Dudchous & David Sledzinski	2022	The Magical Tarot Of The Golden Dawn: Revised Ed.	Earlier editions had art by Jonathon A Pierce instead. This deck is not to be confused with the similarly named deck above!