AUTHOR’S NOTE: I’ve been wearily wading through Joe Monteleone’s Tarot Mysticism: The Psycho-Spiritual Technology of the Thoth Tarot. I’m not quite one-third of the way into it but I’ve run out of patience with his superficially profound verbosity. I mean, I’ve been accused of being an over-the-top “word guy” myself, but there are big words and then there are the right big words, and in my opinion Monteleone misfires on that score much of the time, waxing eloquent when he should be economizing and periodically coming across as strangely opaque in his choice of words. Originality is no excuse for obscurity; even when it is being insufferably arcane, Aleister Crowley’s Book of Thoth is both erudite and deeply thought-provoking.

It’s not that I disagree with what Monteleone is saying, it’s how he says it that fries my hypercritical ex-Mensan brain. Far too often, I find myself scratching my head and saying “Huh? Howzzat again?” I would rather spend my intellectual capital on mainlining Crowley directly (which I’ve been doing for more than five decades) than fiddle around with modern reinterpretations that add little or nothing to the discussion. Furthermore, Monteleone feels compelled to honor gender-neutral pronouns in the most awkward ways. As I see it, the proper appellation for the Magus card (an inanimate object) would be “it,” not “they.” This curious stab at non-binary correctness lands squarely in “gimme a break” territory. Having been a professional writer in a technical and legal environment for over 30 years, I have little tolerance for corruption of the language no matter how socially mandated it might be.

I have no problem with his efforts to infuse the narrative with Hindu mysticism. But lacking the academic and experiential background to fully appreciate the symbolic inferences, I just kind of glide over them with very little comprehension beyond recognizing the underlying principles. I’m sure there is a great deal of wisdom to be found here, but I would have to read another primer or two before I can extract it from this work. As far as contributing to my tarot knowledge and practice, I just don’t see the relevance; I’ll re-read Crowley’s yoga essays if want that spin.

The occasional gems of tarot insight and inspiration I’m receiving from the book (and that I’ve been translating into blog posts) are too infrequent to justify spending any more time plowing through the murk. When reading becomes a dreary slog, it’s time to bow out of the marathon and buy a new book. I admit to reaching the same point with Benebel Wen’s beefy Holistic Tarot before signing off quite a bit short of the finish line (although rare, her random technical errors frustrated me), but her writing is much more elegant and, for the record, I found her I Ching volume to represent the high-water-mark of her metaphysical writing so far.

In short, while this is not a book for the Thoth neophyte, it also isn’t one for the Thoth aficionado who reveres Crowley’s thinking and writing. Although its heart is in the right place, I’m not quite sure where to peg it in the Thoth canon. I acknowledge that I’m still wrestling with its concepts and have barely dipped into the card-specific content, but thus far I find that as a Thoth companion it isn’t as valuable as the work of Lon Milo DuQuette or Hajo Banzhaf but it is marginally more useful than that of Michael Snuffin and miles ahead of Gerd Ziegler’s Thoth material.

As a dedicated student of the esoteric in general and of Crowley in particular, I was hoping for more than stylized word-smithing that outdistances lucid exposition by a country mile. It will never replace Crowley’s own work among those who have spent significant time and effort absorbing that. In Monteleone’s case, a little more thought and a little less clever but empty rhetoric would have been nice. You can load up a slider with all kinds of garnishes and condiments but it is still just a small hamburger.