Every deck below works from the same specification, Book T. Here is what each one is, how it stands to Book T, and where it can be seen. This library reproduces none of them: the modern decks are in copyright, so they are named and linked, never shown.
"Reportedly" marks a claim that rests on a single secondary source. Where two accounts disagree, both are given. The deck in this library is Book T read through the Rider-Waite-Smith pictures.
The story behind this list, from hand-copied cards to the 1978 fire at Whare Ra and why it was lit, is a chapter of the Golden Dawn course: Where the cards went: from Book T to the decks we have.
The Order's confidential paper on the tarot, mostly by S. L. MacGregor Mathers: titles, attributions and a description of each card. Crowley printed it in The Equinox I(8) in 1912. It is the text this library puts on every Golden Dawn card.
One account, given in the Wang deck's published description, says it "would appear" Moina Mathers painted the original cards and that new Adepti Minores were lent them to copy by hand. Nick Farrell (2009) reads the record differently: the Outer Order had line drawings of some trumps, the Inner Order had written descriptions, and the Order never made a deck of its own. No pattern deck is known to survive.
The best documented member's copy. The cards vanished in the 1960s, reportedly stolen. Regardie kept photographs, gave them to Robert Wang as the guide for the 1977–78 deck, and Wang reportedly sold them to a private library connected with the O.T.O. Farrell writes that Regardie's personal cards are shown in Regardie's The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic (1984); his note cites pages 10–12, which were not checked for this page.
A Stella Matutina temple, one of the last descended from the Golden Dawn and the only one in a building made for it. Farrell asked older members and found no coloured deck: the only versions he saw were crude line drawings on small yellow cards, and many members took up the Builders of the Adytum cards in the 1960s. Most regalia and records were burned when the temple closed in 1978; by the account Nick Farrell gathered from members, one of the last chiefs decided it alone, to keep members' names from coming out. Pat Zalewski, who reportedly met former members around 1980, made line drawings of the Whare Ra trumps available online. Photographs of hand-painted Whare Ra decks were not found for this page.
Held by the National Library of Ireland, with a notebook of Golden Dawn and tarot material. Kathleen Raine's illustrated study Yeats, the Tarot and the Golden Dawn (Dolmen Press, 1972; revised 1976) works from them. Whether a full painted deck is among them was not confirmed.
A. E. Waite's scheme, drawn by Pamela Colman Smith, both members of the Order. It follows the Golden Dawn order of Strength (VIII) and Justice (XI). Its imagery is the one this library uses.
A Golden Dawn descendant, heavily changed: several trumps renamed, Crowley's own court scheme and attributions. Harris's original paintings are at the Warburg Institute, London; the deck was first printed in the late 1960s.
Painted by Wang from Regardie's photographs and the Order's papers, with Regardie sending comments on slides of each painting. Farrell calls it the first complete Golden Dawn deck. Listings give 1977 for the first issue and 1978 for U.S. Games; Wang's companion book, An Introduction to the Golden Dawn Tarot, is 1978. In his autobiography (2011) Wang called his figures "badly drawn, strange little wooden figures" and painted the Jungian Tarot as an "expiation" for them.
Black-and-white pen drawings, published by U.S. Games (some listings say 1979). It stresses the Golden Dawn astrological attributions and follows Book T's descriptions loosely in places.
First issued as The New Golden Dawn Ritual Tarot (Llewellyn, 1991), later as the Golden Dawn Magical Tarot (sources differ on the year). Begun with Regardie's blessing before his death in 1985; by the makers' own account the first deck to use the Order's flashing colours and the colour scales of the four worlds.
The Whare Ra line made public: Richard Dudschus redrew the Whare Ra cards with Pat Zalewski in the 1980s. The Zalewskis' book first appeared in a 150-copy run in 1997 with other drawings, by Jonathon A. Pierce; the 2008 Aeon edition used Dudschus's, and David Sledzinski coloured them for the deck issued in 2022.
Book T's own words, then the Whare Ra line drawings at the Hermetic Library, then the steve-p.org pages, which set the Wang, Dowson, Cicero, Wendrich/Farrell and Zalewski cards side by side. For a hand-painted member's deck, Regardie's photographs are the one documented route.
research/decks/golden-dawn-book-t-tarot.md.