Via

Susan Jameson is an internationally exhibited printmaker whose usual media are mezzotint, oils and watercolor; for the Via Tarot she worked in colored pencil, and the choice reads as deliberate humility before a demanding system. This is a Thoth-based deck from 2002, the full seventy-eight cards, and it belongs to the small company of Thoth-lineage decks made by working fine artists rather than esoteric illustrators. The pencil work gives Crowley's severe architecture a softer, more approachable surface without loosening the underlying correspondences. That combination defines its audience. Thoth students get familiar landmarks rendered with an artist's hand; art-side collectors get a serious printmaker's take on the tradition's most intellectually demanding deck. As a first Thoth deck it is arguably gentler company than Crowley's own. It suits students wanting a second voice in the Thoth lineage, admirers of traditional printmaking discipline, and readers who found the original's intensity worth softening without abandoning.