Golden Dawn Tarot

Introduction

In May of 2004, I received an unusual Tarot deck from an occult collector for digital preservation. I was told that it was from an original Golden Dawn temple, but not which temple or era. Since then, I’ve been holding onto the scans I made of this deck, searching for details that could shed light on the history and use of it within the Golden Dawn or its many later off-shoots.

Recently, through a random post on Reddit, I was finally able to find closure for this 20 year old mystery. Special thanks go to the contributions of the following Redditors on this post at r/GoldenDawnMagicians:

• Big-Faithlessness834
• seiryudo
• Simon–Magus

Brief History

For a more complete history with extensive details on temple dates and personages, please refer to the original Reddit post. My question further down prompts the exchange regarding this deck.

The Stella Matutina, one of the main orders that the original Golden Dawn evolved into, originally prepared blank tarot decks for members to color-in as part of their training. The designs for these may have had their origins as far back as 1916. Uncolored or blank decks were presumably preprinted in England and then distributed from the Amoun Temple to other temples within the Stella Matutina, including the Smaragdum Thallassus (Whare Ra, pronounced Far-Ay Rah) in New Zealand. For a chronology of the Golden Dawn and its off-shoots, you may refer to this link.

The current consensus is that this deck likely dates to around 1930 and probably came from the New Zealand branch of the Order. The location of origin may not be definite, however, as the collector (and his partner) who allowed me to borrow the deck for scanning had traveled extensively and had an impressive collection of 1st edition 19th c. (and possibly earlier) occult texts, amongst other rarities. Since I met him in Sydney, it is most likely that the deck came from ‘across the pond’ in New Zealand.

The Cards

The original cards were printed on yellowed rectangular notecard stock with square edges. I opted to use a black & white scan setting to make the images more visible. In hindsight, I should have saved both the photo scans and the prepared B&W, but storage space was more expensive in those days and the scanning process went faster in B&W.

Compared to modern decks, the images are merely outlines with simple, hand drawn, sometimes crooked, rectangular borders. Unlike later Golden Dawn inspired decks, there are no card titles, no planetary or elemental symbols, and no Hebrew letters present on any of the cards. My initial impression was that they were based on the Book T descriptions from the order documents and that they were meant to be copied out and/or colored in by hand for learning purposes. Most remarkable is how much they resemble Robert Wang’s Golden Dawn Tarot deck, which he made with direction from Israel Regardie. According to our Reddit sleuths, Regardie was once in possession of a deck such as this from the Stella Matutina, but it had been stolen.

The Major Arcana

The Minor Arcana

Wands

Cups

Swords

Pentacles

Tarot Coloring Books and Decks

For those in search of a commercially produced Tarot deck to color-in for learning purposes, this deck has been available for years from the B.O.T.A. website. Complete coloring instructions are located in the accompanying book Highlights of Tarot. I recommend the use of colored pencils for these rather than watercolors or markers. The paper finish isn’t really meant to allow for easy shuffling. This is an educational deck.

For a more immersive experience on a larger page, this coloring book uses Pamela Coleman Smith’s classic images on good quality paper. I recommend using a standard Rider-Waite-Smith deck for color examples so that you can learn the symbolism. This deck uses the more subdued colors of the original artworks for those who don’t care for the bright yellows of the standard Rider-Waite-Smith deck.

To learn more about the Qabalistic symbolism of the modern 78 card arrangement as laid out by the Golden Dawn and then added on to through Pamela Coleman Smith’s artworks for the Rider-Waite-Smith deck (1909), I recommend this book by Robert Wang. He compares 4 different decks throughout the book and goes in-depth in his analysis of the Qabalistic symbolism for each card.