Tag Archives: Egyptian Tarot

In every true act of divination, in every true act of magick, something of the soul is born into the world. This book focuses on the structure of the Tarot and the system of Qabalistic correspondences that transform it from a card game or fortune telling device into a spiritual, intellectual and magical vehicle of the highest order. The major arcana cards each have a chapter to describe them; a complete method of divination is provided. Unique to the Egyptian Tarot is the use of British surrealist artist and occultist Ithell Colquhoun’s interpretation of the colour correspondences. This enabled us to produce the first figurative Tarot that is fully colour-integrated as according to the schema of the Golden Dawn. The book features 78 full colour illustrations of the Tarot.

Any set of Tarot that carries the proper traditional elements speaks directly to the soul, even when the person has no clue as to the internal keys or Tree of Life basis. And that is because it carries knowledge that pre-dates the religious, classical and Homeric eras, even while it includes the ideas and cultural contexts of the latter. In the same way, some very old churches contain stones and carvings that can be traced back to prehistoric times when the greater part of our whole land was covered with thick forests. The ancient Egyptians recycled building materials from much older temple structures and built them into newer structures, perhaps after two thousand years or more had passed, retaining some of the hieroglyphs and reliefs of the older works.

Clearly understanding the esoteric symbolism of the Tarot cards requires that we first liberate our minds from the baneful curse of modernism and of post-modernism within the occult, which has loudly suppressed all genuine tradition. When we refer to an ancient Egyptian source we are not speaking of the Egyptian civilisation as such. We are alluding to that Great Mind, whose heirs preceded the race of humans and established their divine image on the earth in times of unimaginable antiquity.

More information on the Egyptian Tarot and book may be found on our Ordo Astri ‘Books’ page here.

Capricorn: Egyptian Tarot Set XV

Posted on 18th December 2025 by Metamorphosis

The Capricorn Solstice is here depicted by the god Set-Typhon. The Devil XV is the traditional title of the trump, while the esoteric title is Lord of the Gates of Matter: Child of the Forces of Time. The Egyptian god Set is no devil as such but is the Opener of the Year and Lord of Initiation.

All tarots on this website are from our Egyptian Tarot and Guidebook.

Set is shown here as God of the South, wielding the was sceptre of sacerdotal authority in his left hand and the Ankh of Life in his right hand. His colour is black, his nemyss and apron of blue-black and indigo. His ornaments, sceptre and ankh are black, gold and grey as according to the key-scale colours of the path of Capricorn and the ancient Egyptian title that was afforded Set, ‘the black and gold one’ (Set-Nubti). His peculiar ass-head with truncated ears has caused much bafflement. Some have thought he was modelled on a creature that has long been extinct. Whether this is true or not, Set is certainly among the most ancient of gods. Like Sokar, Lord of the Necropolis, Set is older even than the Pyramids. Perhaps he is older than the vast wilderness of the desert itself.

Most descriptions of Set focus on the later dynastic periods of Egypt, where he was demonised and known only as the slayer of Osiris. However, Set is the first and only begotten son of Nuit, the goddess of the night sky. His birth is by divine parthenogenesis. No paternal intervention is required for a star to manifest the mother, for this comes about through the mysterious power of Neïth, or Maya in Hinduism, and which is without beginning or end. To discuss Set-Typhon in terms of Osiris is a diversion from understanding Set’s true nature and function.

Set is the most difficult of gods to ‘pin down’; his very nature forbids it. He is on the other side of wherever we happen to be in terms of point of view. Thus, the Egyptians tended to think of Set as Mercury, called the shapeshifter in Western or Druidic traditions. In northerly locations, typical Setian totems are corvids—the raven, crow, jackdaw and magpie. The function of Set is dual. Firstly, Set veils the invisible in an almost infinite variety of forms. Secondly, he destroys the illusion of the appearance of things. Small wonder then, that Set is not only the ‘First before the Gods’, but is also the most misunderstood of all gods.

Set’s hieroglyphic name is shown at the top of the Tarot picture. The first two letters are phonetics (‘s’ and ‘t’) while the rectangle provides a further clue to Set’s mysterious origins. The rectangle means ‘stone’. This has agricultural and building connotations, as well as that of the graven image. Some of the earliest Dynastic kings of Egypt were Setians, and were noted for their great feats of architectural magnificence as well as introducing irrigation canals.[1] Esoterically, Set is the layer of the foundation of the universe from ‘before the beginning of things’. Likewise, Capricorn or winter solstice is the natural opening of the year. Capricorn is also the ‘height’ or summit of the Zodiac, figured as the tenth house of the midheaven. As height, the mountain upon which Capricorn leaps has its basis buried deeply in the earth—or in fact, as according to the ancient glyphs of the sign, the goat has a fishy tail, indicative of a more cosmic intepretation.

The Iset throne of Isis typifies the foundation stone. Set and Isis, though portrayed as enemies in more recent times, are inseparable. Set is the elemental nature of Isis and is, through her identification with Nuit, her only begotten child. Turning to stone, as recounted in folk legends, can be an analogy for the petrification of the psyche, which amounts to being impervious to learning or knowledge. That, however, is only the most outward interpretation, for the ‘men of stone’ or Stone Age as it is termed, bore no relation to what historians have made of it. The great stone monuments and earthworks around the world testify to an ancient civilisation whose ways were utterly incomprehensible to people of modern times. In terms of knowledge, modernity is vastly degraded and is not in the slightest way superior to what is supposed to be ‘primitive’; if we use that word at all we should use it to denote what is primal or principial.

Tales of people being turned to stone are common in myth and legend. It is notable that in Cornish folklore, the origin of prehistoric megaliths and stone circles that abundantly populate the land is illustrated by stories of the petrification of men, women and giants. For example, the Merry Maidens and the Nine Maidens of Boskednan, the Tregeseal Dancing Stones and the Hurlers. A further version of the petrification is given among the legends of King Arthur. The wizard Merlin, in one account, is seduced by the witch, sorceress or nun—she is all these things—Morgan Le Fay. To impress her with a feat of magick he enters a group of standing stones, or a stone enclosure but is unable to leave. Thus, the knowledge of the ‘men of stone’ or old times was withdrawn at a certain point in time.

Capricorn, Set and the Eye of God

The twenty-sixth path of A’ain and Capricorn connects Tiphereth, the sphere of the Sun, with Hod, the sphere of Mercury and mind. It is called the Renewing Intelligence. It is called thus because ‘thereby God renews all the changing things that are renewed by the creation of the world’ (Westcott). This indicates the cosmic renewal through perpetuity of all manifested forms.

Most depictions of the ‘Devil’ are a monstrous representation of the pre-religious Goddess of life and love, variously named Qutesh, Asherah, Lilith or Ashtaroth. For example the scarlet or golden girdle worn loosely about the waist of the Devil XV in early Tarot decks such as the Marseilles Tarot was the signature of Asherah and other primal dancing goddesses. Note that ‘Scarlet Woman’ (AShH ShNI) counts to 666, a number often associated with the Devil or Antichrist, though it is also a symbol of the Sun and of Spirit, and therefore of Christ. It must be said though that the Renewing Intelligence links the Sun with Mercury, and that Mercury is also the abode of Set.[2] The very confusion of symbolism over time might owe something to the Setian power to obfuscate through shapeshifting.

The magical powers of the twenty-sixth path of Capricorn are said to be the Witches Sabbath (so-called) and the Evil Eye. The former symbolises the degraded remnants of long forgotten rites, while the latter is the protection against the hostile forces thus unwittingly evoked. The Witches Sabbath is fictional, owing to the paranoid imaginings of fifteenth century clerics, but the symbolism is peculiarly apt.[3] The backwards dance of the revellers, for example, is a recollection of exceedingly antique rites as well as the whole underlying theology of ancient Egypt. Egypt recognised no ‘progress’ or ‘evolution’; the ideal was always to go back to the source, before the beginning of things. This return is not literally a going back to the past, or the ways of the past. It is a return to the principial origin, which is metaphysical. This spiritual truth is known by every yogin; it is certainly not in any way a symptom of a reactionary disposition among the Egyptians, as profane commentators have supposed.[4]

Notes

All tarots on this website are from our Egyptian Tarot and Guidebook.

1. Even Seti I, the grandfather of Rameses II in the relatively late Middle to New Kingdom, was named after the great god and ensured the continuance of his cult—in spite of the fact Set was demonised by that time.

2. When a ‘star’ determinative (seba) is added to the name of Set then the hieroglyphs spell ‘Mercury’. Thus Set and Mercury, and the qualities of Mercury, are identical. See Budge, An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary Vol I, p. 707 A.

3. Malleus Maleficarum, or ‘Hammer of the Witches’, which pretended to be the product of fact-finding research, was a bestseller in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Propaganda was one of the first uses of the invention of the printing press.

4. One such profane commentator writes books on esotericism!

Books by Oliver St. John

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Unicorn of the Stars

Posted on 23rd October 2020 by Metamorphosis

The Practicus of the Golden Dawn has the eponymous title, Monokeros de Astris, ‘Unicorn of the Stars’. This is best explained through the name of the Titan, Astris (Αστρις), which means, ‘Starry One’. Astris was born from a marriage of the Sun and the ocean (Moon or sea-foam), alchemical types of fire and water. The Practicus degree corresponds to Hod (Mercury), the Water Temple that receives the fiery solar influence from Netzach (Venus).

The Initiate of Hod, Unicorn of the Stars, has first to traverse, at least symbolically, the fiery paths of Shin (thirty-first) and Resh (thirtieth) before entering Hod, the Water Temple. Hod is thus seen in every way as a sphere of transmutation. Although Hod sometimes symbolises the concrete mind, as ‘form-building’, it is not the goal of Initiates to become detained by the limits of ordinary reason. In fact, Hod, the 8th path or sephira from the Crown or root of the Tree of Life in heaven, is traditionally called the Stellar Light, and is also the ‘Seat of the Primordial’. This is usefully affirmed by the Greek value of Monokeros de Astris, which is 1,175. As 29 x 75, the unicorn’s horn corresponds to the ‘Divine Pillar of Nuit (or the sky)’. The twenty-ninth path corresponds to the Hebrew letter qoph, which is the ‘head’ or ‘pinnacle’, while 75 is a number of Nuit (NVIT).

This article is abridged from Nu Hermetica—Initiation and Metaphysical Reality [Ordo Astri books].

While it is true that the letter qoph is more frequently referred to as the ‘back of the head’, owing to the shape of the letter, it is a misleading and possibly incorrect attribution. Qoph is not merely the ‘back of the head’ as the complement of resh as the ‘front of the head’. Resh refers more to the ‘chief’ or ‘leader’, which is also the ‘first’ or ‘highest’ in an order of hierarchy. But qoph (or quf in Arabic) is more specifically the skull or cranium, and as such it has a special meaning of indicating the gate of egress from the cosmological sphere to the heavenly or primordial sphere. For this reason Christ-Jesus was crucified on a hill called ‘Place of the Skull’ (Golgotha).

The Unicorn and Sokar

The primordial is variously symbolised as a pillar, mound or mountain—for there is nothing beyond the peak of a mountain except the sky or heaven. The unicorn’s horn points straight upward to heaven, and is spiralic. The Arabian white oryx is the original type of the fabled unicorn. The higher end of the ancient Egyptian hennu sky-boat of Sokar is fashioned in the shape of the head of an oryx. The unicorn’s singular horn is not descriptive of the beast itself, which has two horns, but is an esoteric assignment for the Primordial Pillar, as well as the upward ascent of consciousness, as in yoga. Sokar, it may further be noted, is frequently depicted as the head of a black hawk, a symbol of the primordial in the very particular sense of the unmanifest or ‘dark’ state, which necessarily comes first, or is greater than, all dual manifestation. Both the unicorn and the yearly rite of carrying the wooden boat of Sokar around the temple’s location, symbolises the circumpolar revolution of the ‘seven’ around the ‘eighth’ or Pole Star. The Pole Star marks the visible axis of the universe and the height of the visible heavens.[1]

The Unicorn and the Flower of Mind

The oryx is reputed to dig a bed out of the desert sand with its hooves, to lie in and keep cool. This explains the attribution of the one horn, for the shifting sands of desert dunes have always symbolised the Abyss that lurks on the upper limit of human reason. The penetrating horn of mind (reason) must be made concave, so to speak, on the abysmal threshold that closes in upon the limits of human reason. Over time, through yoga, contemplation and devotional Tantras, the Flower of Fire (or Mind) is cultivated as the ‘fruits’ of the flower are rejected in favour of pure receptivity to the intelligence from beyond.[2]

It should be noted that the Gnostic term, ‘Flower of Mind’ or ‘Flower of Fire’ is not the mind or intellect in the ordinary sense; it may be likened to an essence that is drawn out and upward. The Egyptian ‘flame’ hieroglyph has both a physical and a metaphysical level of interpretation. It carries all the meanings of a fire, flame or luminosity, and that of a ‘flame of flames’. The latter is comparable to the yogic realisation of atmadarshana of Advaita Vedanta.[3

Veritably, the threshold to the post-abysmal Mind of Minds is fiercely guarded and barred. The role of guardians or ‘watchers’ such as Anubis, and other Setian creatures including the crocodile and jackal, as well as the Cherubim in various traditions, is complex. They are guardians of the gates, ferociously attacking or even devouring those who would enter. At the same time, they symbolise the drawing forth of the bolt, which is the means by which the gates are opened.[4] The action of the bolt symbolises both ‘opening’ and the image-making or phallic power withdrawn or inverted, which is a reversal of the usual flow of consciousness.[5]

The door of the sky or of heaven is not opened by any mortal man but, for example, it was the office of Ankh-af-na-khonsu, the priest and scribe of the Stele of Revealing, to literally ‘open the doors to the sky’. He performed the ritual of opening the doors to the roof of the temple at certain times of the year, so the image of the Goddess, taken from the subterranean vault below, could observe Sirius rising.[6] Sirius (Σθις), the Star of Egypt and of the Order, symbolises both Isis (or Hathoor) and her ‘son’ or divine child, born of the ascent of consciousness arising from the depth. Hathoor was also known as the ‘Divine Pillar’ at Iunet in Egypt, which has the same meaning.

Notes

1. The three-yearly Jubilee of the Pharaoh coincided with the rite of the ‘round’ of Sokar, proving an identification between Sokar and Set or Saturn, and also the primordial mound. Thus the unicorn, as a horned creature, has an association with both Saturn and the Pole.
2. See G.R.S. Mead, The Chaldean Oracles.
3. It is impossible for Egyptologists to construe ancient Egyptian sacred texts, as they cannot admit to the existence or even the possibility of an esoteric level of interpretation. They are thus dogged by the limitation of their reasoning faculties. They then produce nonsensical ‘translations’ of the texts, and say it is nonsense because the ancient Egyptians were themselves confused and irrational!
4. See John Anthony West, Serpent in the Sky, pp. 149–157 (on Spell 316).
5. Phallus (Greek φαλλος) literally means, ‘image’ or ‘image-making’.
6. This is explained in detail in ‘Star and Snake of Egypt’, pp. 150 Babalon Unveiled.

This article is abridged from the book Nu Hermetica—Initiation and Metaphysical Reality.

The hennu boat with oryx illustration is a detail from the Egyptian Tarot.

Books by Oliver St John
Oliver St. John YouTube Channel