Liber LXXVIII - A description of the cards of the Tarot

*Liber LXXVIII* is a systematic occult reference text by Aleister Crowley, written in the tradition of Hermetic Qabalah, that catalogues and describes all 78 cards of the Tarot deck. The work assigns each card precise attributions — Hebrew letters, astrological signs and planets, elemental correspondences, and elaborate titles drawn from Qabalistic cosmology — situating the Tarot within the broader system of ceremonial magic associated with the Golden Dawn and Crowley's own Thelemic framework. For the Minor Arcana, numbered pip cards are mapped to specific decans of the zodiac and planetary rulers, producing a detailed grid linking each card to both a zodiacal segment and a governing planet; for the Major Arcana (called "Keys"), each card receives a Hebrew letter, an astrological body or element, and a poetic title such as "The Daughter of the Mighty Ones" for The Empress or "The Child of the Great Transformers" for Death. The Aces are treated as the most fundamental forces, described as occupying the North Pole of the universe and acting as the "Radical Forces" connecting spiritual and material planes. Distinctively, Crowley frames divination itself with contemptuous irony — the epigraph likens it to a blind man seeking sight by getting drunk — yet proceeds to present an exhaustively systematic divinatory and meditational framework, suggesting the work is less about fortune-telling than about mapping a complete magical cosmology onto a deck of cards.

Liber LXXVIII - A description of the cards of the Tarot

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