Restoring an Order's Own Card Attributions to Print

The Golden Dawn Tarot renders the historical Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn's own tarot symbolism, assembled from the Order's private notebooks by occult scholar Israel Regardie and painted by Robert Wang, published by U.S. Games Systems in 1978. Rather than following the later reading most familiar tarot decks use, it follows the Order's own Major and Minor Arcana attributions directly, restoring earlier Golden Dawn card titles and imagery that had circulated only within the Order's own initiatory material before Regardie's publication brought them into print for a general readership.

Its minor arcana cards are non scenic, carrying printed titles and astrological attributions rather than illustrated scenes, a structural difference that sets it apart from nearly every other deck in this catalogue and reflects the Order's own card designs rather than the fully pictured minor arcana the Rider Waite Smith deck popularised when it was first published in London in 1909, itself designed by two Golden Dawn initiates. The Golden Dawn's own attributions predate that 1909 publication, and Wang and Regardie's deck exists specifically to make the Order's original system available in the same trump ordering, Strength at eight and Justice at eleven, that several later decks in this catalogue also follow, without adapting the Order's own titles and imagery.