Apologia del Libro de Thot

The Apologia del Libro de Thot from Editorial Barath is a Spanish twenty-two card majors deck whose title does the historical work: an apologia, a defense, of the Book of Thoth, the eighteenth-century legend that tarot descends from Egyptian initiation. Spanish-language esoteric publishing kept that genealogy alive with particular devotion, and a majors-only deck framed as the legend's defense is the tradition arguing its own case in its own format. The catalog's Hispanic shelf, the Egipcios Kier's Argentine curriculum, the Gran Tarot Esoterico's peninsular system, gains here its pamphlet: compact, doctrinal, the trumps as thesis. Majors-only suits an apologia; the argument concerns the arcana's dignity, and the pips were never the point of the legend. It suits students of the Spanish esoteric tradition, collectors of the Thoth-legend's artifacts across languages, and majors-only readers with a taste for decks that know their historiography. Readers who need the legend true rather than formative have a harder road than any deck can pave.