透特塔罗

The Lust card represents the most critical of all operations of magick and alchemy: the act of the original marriage as it occurs in nature, portraying the pure, unbridled energy of the New Aeon.

• The Woman (Babalon): She rides astride the Beast. She represents the Scarlet Woman, the representative of the Lord of the Aeon, fully illuminated by the Sun and intimately united with the Beast. She is shown in a state of divine drunkenness or ecstasy, completely independent of the criticism of reason.
• The Lion-Serpent (The Beast): She rides upon a magnificent beast, which is not merely a lion, but a Lion-Serpent (attributed to the letter Teth, which means serpent). This creature is the active, solar, fiery energy of Leo. It is aflame with lust and primitive, creative power.
• The Holy Grail: In her right hand, she holds aloft the cup, the Holy Grail aflame with love and death. In this cup are mingled the elements of the sacrament of the Aeon.
• The Bloodless Saints: In the background are the bloodless images of the saints. The woman travels upon them, for their entire life force and blood has been drawn up and absorbed into the Holy Grail she holds.
• The Ten Luminous Rayed Circles: Behind the figures of the Beast and his Bride are ten circles. They represent the Sephiroth, but they are latent and not yet in order, indicating that every new Aeon demands a new system of classification of the Universe.
• The Emblem of the New Light: At the very top of the card is shown an emblem with ten horns of the Beast, which are serpents, sent forth in every direction to destroy and re-create the world.

Crowley changed the name of this card from the traditional "Strength" to "Lust" because it implies far more than mere strength; it implies the joy of strength exercised, the rapture of vigour.

The card is the ultimate rejection of the "Osirian" formula of the Dying God (where the spirit must sacrifice the flesh to attain purity). Instead, it embraces the formula of the New Aeon of Horus: the ecstatic integration of the animal and the divine. The woman and the beast are not fighting; they are united in a passionate, sexual sacrament. This sacrament is the alchemical process of distillation, operated by internal ferment and the influence of the Sun (Leo) and Moon (the Grail).

The card interprets the terrifying imagery of the Book of Revelation (The Beast and the Scarlet Woman) not as an evil apocalypse, but as a profound spiritual awakening that the previous, restrictive Aeon could only view with intense horror and fear.

Lust is the archetype of the Integrated Shadow and the psychological triumph of the Dionysian Principle. In traditional psychology (and traditional Tarot), the Ego (often represented as a virgin or an angel) is shown carefully taming or suppressing the "beast" of the lower instincts. The Thoth deck radically rejects this suppression.

Here, the Anima (the Woman) is not suppressing the Id (the Beast); she is riding it, intoxicated by its power. Psychologically, this represents the realization that the primitive, "animal" drives—sexuality, aggression, hunger, and passion—are not evil forces to be conquered by reason. They are the actual engine of the psyche. By completely embracing and riding these raw instincts without shame or moralistic guilt (the divine drunkenness), the Ego achieves a state of massive, radiant creative power. It is the terrifying but ecstatic moment of self-actualization where the individual stops apologizing for their own life force and allows their True Will to manifest through the body, not just the mind.

The Hebrew letter Teth, meaning "Serpent," is the primal symbol of instinctual energy — the kundalini, the libido, the coiled life-force that dwells at the base of the psyche. In Jungian terms, the serpent is the oldest and deepest archetype of transformation: it sheds its skin, it moves without limbs, it bridges the world above and the world below. The Lion-Serpent of this card is not merely a lion or merely a serpent but the fusion of both — solar pride and chthonic power, conscious will and unconscious drive, united in a single creature. Teth teaches that the serpent does not need to be killed (as in the myth of St. George) but ridden — its energy channeled, not destroyed.

Leo, ruled by the Sun, is the sign of the Self in its most radiant, creative, and sovereign expression. In Jungian terms, Leo represents the moment when the Ego becomes fully identified with its own vitality — not inflated by it (which would be the shadow of Leo) but genuinely animated by it. The Sun is the source of all light and life; Leo is the sign that receives this solar energy most directly and expresses it most fully. The woman riding the beast is the Ego that has achieved what Jung called Selbstverwirklichung — Self-realization — not through renunciation of the body but through its ecstatic embrace. The "divine drunkenness" is the Dionysian state that Nietzsche recognized as the complement to Apollonian reason: the intoxication of being fully, physically, passionately alive.

Path 19, connecting Chesed (Mercy, the benevolent Father) to Geburah (Severity, the destructive Mother), is the horizontal path that bridges the two great pillars of the Tree above Tiphareth. In Jungian terms, this path represents the integration of the psyche's expansive, generous, meaning-giving function (Chesed/Jupiter) with its equally necessary destructive, purgative, limit-setting function (Geburah/Mars). Lust achieves this integration not through careful balance (as Adjustment does) but through excess — through the overwhelming, intoxicating rush of energy that dissolves all boundaries between creation and destruction, mercy and severity, love and death. The Grail she holds contains both: the sacrament of the New Aeon is the recognition that these apparent opposites are one.