tarot
B.O.T.A.
Mystery tradition deck from Paul Foster Case's B.O.T.A. occult order.
by Paul Foster Case · 1909
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The Canon's read
Tarot Canon's own assessment, written for this catalog.
Adytum is the innermost room of a temple, the chamber only the priest enters, and Paul Foster Case named his mystery school for it: Builders of the Adytum. The B.O.T.A. deck is that school's working textbook, descended from the Golden Dawn current Case systematized, its line work built to carry precise Qabalistic and astrological correspondences rather than decorative mood. The order's famous practice is that students color their own deck by hand as part of the curriculum, turning the cards from a purchase into an apprenticeship.
That is the right frame for deciding whether it belongs on your table. As art it is deliberately austere; as a system it is one of the most rigorous in the canon, every choice on the card arguing a doctrine. It suits committed students of the Western mystery tradition and readers who want their tarot as a course of study. Casual readers will find it dry precisely where it is being most exact.
From the archive
An excerpt from a review at the Aeclectic Tarot archive, in the original reviewer's voice.
To start with, I had to look up "adytum" in a dictionary, which defines the word as the innermost room or shrine in certain old temples, to be entered only by a priest, or a sanctum. So, there is a...
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