B.O.T.A. tarot deck

The B.O.T.A. Tarot was created by Paul Foster Case, founder of B.O.T.A. and artist Jessie Burns Parke. Although the B.O.T.A. tarot is based upon, and for the most part closely resembles, Arthur Edward Waite's 1910 Rider-Waite deck, Paul Foster Case changed what he said were mistakes or "blinds" in the Rider-Waite edition. The BOTA tarot deck is presented in two forms: a standard-sized full deck containing both the Major and Minor Arcana; and a larger version containing only the Major ("trump" cards). P.F. Case often called the BOTA tarot trumps 'tarot keys'. Each of the BOTA cards has a border of a particular color, which is the color that is associated with the card in the writings of P.F. Case.

Every BOTA card has a hebrew letter written on it in the lower right corner, which is the letter that is associated with the card in the writings of P.F. Case. In contrast to earlier occult tarot decks, which place the fool card last in order, and associate it with the second-to-last hebrew letter, shin (such decks order the last hebrew letter, tav, before shin), the BOTA deck places the fool card first in order, and therefore associates it with the first hebrew letter, aleph. The BOTA deck also orders shin before tav, in the correct order of hebrew letters.

All of the illustrations on the cards of the BOTA deck differ in at least some minor way from those of the Rider-Waite deck, but some cards contrast much more than others.

The card that contrasts the most between the two decks is the death card. In the Rider-Waite deck, the death card depicts death as an armored knight on a horse, carrying a banner, whereas in the BOTA deck, the death card depicts death as a bare skeleton with a scythe, with a red sky in the background, being based upon the death card of the Marseille tarot deck.

In the Rider-Waite deck, the sun card depicts a nude child on a horse, carrying a dull-red banner, whereas in the BOTA deck, the sun card depicts two nude children standing in a field, being based upon the sun card of the Marseille tarot deck.

In his book The Tarot, Case published the Hebrew letter attributions of the Golden Dawn for the first time. Also made public was the tarot tableau, a pattern for laying out all of the tarot cards which reveals certain relationships and dissimilarities among them. This tableau was used by the American branch of Alpha et Omega when Case was the 'praemonstrator' (chief instructor) of that order's Thoth-Hermes lodge in Chicago. The tarot tableau is an arrangement of the 22 major arcana cards into 4 horizontal rows that span across 7 vertical columns. On the top row there is only the fool card, in the center of the row. Rows two through four consist of 7 cards each, arranged in sequential order, such that cards 1 through 7 are on row two, cards 8 through 14 are on row three, and cards 15 through 21 are on row four.

...
Wikipedia