I read the favorite tarot decks thread w/ great interest. I've only been reading Tarot about a month but already have come to find it extremely useful and therapeutic. I tend to look on it as a combination of magic and Jungian therapy.
My mother has some serious misgivings about divination and has urged me to be careful what I let 'in' so to speak. This seems like good advice, in many things, actually. She was excited and curious to find out what I was doing w/ Tarot until I mentioned that the deck that really speaks most to me is the Crowley-Thoth deck.
To be completely honest, I knew nothing about Aleister Crowley before I picked up US Games' 'Complete Tarot' box which comes w/ both a CT and an RW deck plus a book by Susan Levitt and various other doodads. When my mother heard that I liked the CT deck a lot, she became very agitated because of Crowley's... er.. dubious reputation.
What I've found out about my mom, recently, is that she isn't the most thorough research fellow. After she expressed her misgivings, I did quite a bit of research and though I probably won't become a disciple of Mr. Crowley's, I could find nothing that gave me a bad vibe of any kind concerning his deck.
I've thought about it a lot and talked about it w/ a few people I respect and have continued to use the CT deck. My rationalization has been that the deck is a tool, it's not a representation of the person nor does it contain the energy of the person who created it. Furthermore, though again I'm not likely to follow in Mr. Crowley's path, I think a great deal of what my mother read has been exaggerated or misrepresented.
To me, a deck is a tool and I put my own energy into my readings as well as that of any querent I might take on eventually. I might not necessarily agree with everything it's creator did in his life, but that shouldn't preclude my use of a tool he created if it happens to be what works for me. I guess my question is, what do others w/ more knowledge and experience feel about this deck?
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