Problem with Aleph & Beth

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 14 Oct 2003, and now archived in the Forum Library.

mehrdad	14 Oct 2003
I was recently reading Seventy Degrees of Wisdom and on page 31 I saw these words: “ The fool often receives the first letter Aleph. (Aleph bears no sound. It is a silent carrier of vowels, and therefore symbolizes nothingness.” And in another part of the book on page 17, it says, “. And God in kabbalah is often described as ‘nothingness’ because to describe God as any thing would be to limit Him to some finite fixed state.” My first question is, does ‘nothingness’ is both God and Fool? Again on page 31, this is what it says, “ …Hebrew letter, Beth, the first letter with an actual sound…” My second question if someone bothers to answer is: does the second word in Hebrew looks like ‘Beth’, or Beth is what we pronounce when we see the actual word in Hebrew alphabet? And finally my last question is: Does ‘alphabet’ which we use in English to describe a meaning have been build by putting together the first two words of ‘Aleph & Beth’ in Hebrew language? How Aleph look like in the actual Hebrew form? Thank you!

Galiana	14 Oct 2003
I'll take a shot at answering your questions: The first question is a bit difficult. The Fool starts out on his journey knowing nothing, or at least that's my take on the card. He is often depicted as stepping off of a cliff into nothingness. I don't know houw to answer your question about God. The word "alphabet" come from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, Alpha and Beta (which, come to think of it, is very similar to Aleph and Beth.) The Magician in the RWS deck poses with his right arm up and his left arm down, which resembles the Hebrew letter Aleph. I'm not a really big expert on Tarot, but I hope I answered some of your questions.

Marion	14 Oct 2003
Quote: Originally posted by mehrdad “ The fool often receives the first letter Aleph. (Aleph bears no sound. It is a silent carrier of vowels, and therefore symbolizes nothingness.” And in another part of the book on page 17, it says, “. And God in kabbalah is often described as ‘nothingness’ because to describe God as any thing would be to limit Him to some finite fixed state.” My first question is, does ‘nothingness’ is both God and Fool? I couldn't begin to answer your second and subsequent questions and only take a stab at this one. I think that The Fool is like an empty slate, a state of mind where the world is poised to write. Complete innocence. The silent carrier of potentiality. In the wonder of the English language, when God is described as 'nothingness', it means more or less everything-ness. God is immanent in all things, all things are an expression of God. So God is 'no-thing-ness', that is, God cannot be any one thing because God is everything. Probably comes out as two different words Hebrew. Though I don't know that.

jmd	15 Oct 2003
The third question has already been answered by Galiana, in that it comes from the Greek. Interestingly, however, there appears to be close connections or reflections between some early developments of Greek and Hebrew letters. At one stage, some clearly semitic letters were also added to Greek ones for numerical values. With regards to the second question, I am not sure what the question is actually asking. The letter 'B', in Hebrew and Greek, has a name (Beyt/Beth/Beyth in Hebrew, Beta in Greek). It is also the first letter which begins the Old Testament/the Torah in Hebrew (Berashet = 'In the beginning...'), and with which much has been made Kabalistically. With regards to Alef, it is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which remains, it is said, in the Mind of God. It is the opening of the throat which permits the creative word to emerge. Quite different to God as Ain Sof - sometimes translated as nothing-ness, but better rendered as 'without limit'. This is different to the Alef, which heads the sequence of the letters. As mentioned in your quote, Alef is at times allocated to the Fool - but as many, if not more in terms of varieties of traditions, allocate it to the Magician (for three obvious reasons: its heading the sequence of the Major Arcana; its visual similarity to the letter; and its common numerical value of 'one'). I hope this helps a little, rather than add to the confusion.

MeeWah	15 Oct 2003
Numbers are to have originated from the primordial sound of "OM", the Ain, non-existance or the spiral, a symbol which represents eternity or the Divine because it has no beginning nor end. Zero is symbolic of God, also known as Ain Sohr Aur, the Absolute. Zero is the Ain moved or fallen; the serpent biting its tail, the spiral contained in matter. This reminds me in part of "creation"--Chapter 1 in the book of Genesis from the Old Testament (King James Version): "...And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the the darkness..." Zero or the circle contains great power because it most closely reflects the God consciousness or the super conscious. It also expresses the first symbol of materiality. Thus, Zero seems indicative of no-thing-ness: the genderless, infinite non-being of God& the raw potential of The Fool. Btw: in the Osho Zen Tarot, I thnk the card that is representative of 5-The Hierophant is titled "No-thingness".

mehrdad	15 Oct 2003
Thank you Galiana, Marion, Jmd, and Meewah for your insightful answers and I believe that more or less I got satisfactory answers for my last two questions, but not for my first. Perhaps if I explain why I need a very reasonable answer for the question of whether both God and Fool are nothingness, it might help to clarify my dilemma. I am trying to translate this book and my audience is not familiar with the wonder of English in which nothingness also means everything-ness. I want to remain honest with the English text of this book and at the same time explain how God and Fool can both be nothing and at the same time God remain as everything. I think by using the shape of number 0 and also by other philosophical explanations in the book and what you guys explained to me here, I would be able able to explain why God can be nothing and at the same time the creator of everything, but I do not know how I can differentiate between God and Fool while both have 0 as their number (according to this book.) I have to mention that in my country talking about God, as nothingness is not an easy thing to do and could be punishable by death. However, as I explained above, I believe that I am clear on that. But I need some help to clarify how God and Fool could both be zero and still have different connotation. This might seems a simple thing but in my culture you cannot equate God and Fool and be hopeful about your future existence. I also think that this concept of God being nothing is a very revolutionary thought (at least in my society) and I want that my people become aware of it, so they can get the same intellectual and spiritual satisfaction and benefit which I got from reading this book. Thank you all, and I appreciate any help

Major Tom	16 Oct 2003
Quote: Originally posted by mehrdad This might seems a simple thing but in my culture you cannot equate God and Fool and be hopeful about your future existence. Wow! :eek: Sometimes I take my freedom for granted. It's logic really. It might help to break down the words. God is every thing so God is no thing. God is.

Alissa	16 Oct 2003
Quote: Originally posted by mehrdad I want to remain honest with the English text of this book and at the same time explain how God and Fool can both be nothing and at the same time God remain as everything. I think by using the shape of number 0 and also by other philosophical explanations in the book and what you guys explained to me here, I would be able able to explain why God can be nothing and at the same time the creator of everything, but I do not know how I can differentiate between God and Fool while both have 0 as their number (according to this book.) Here are my thoughts : instead of thinking of God and the Fool as "nothing," consider them both concepts which embody "potential." They are nothing yet. Potential, in it's purest form, is unlimited possibility. God is unlimited possibility. God can stretch him/herself into anything, on any realm, anywhere, at any time, and manifest in any way. That's a WHOLE lotta possibility! The creation of a world can be seen as energy manifesting itself into matter over the course of a very long period of time (and "nothing" becomes something). To me, the Fool is the water drop from the same ocean, a tiny parcel of the same message. When we incarnate, we are partially of a Divine nature, our soul inhabits us even as it continues to retain its Divine nature. Our soul retains that element of potential, and it becomes up to each of us to decide how that Divine potential will manifest in our lives. In his simplicity, the Fool has realized his Divinity, his grand potential, his "nothingness" that has yet to be shaped into something. As for the number zero, remember zero was introduced by the Hindu culture. Zero carries neither a positive nor negative value, it is "nothing" ... but exists as the potential to become something more (any number, or "anything") when acted upon by another number. Doesn't God do the same -- exist within each of us and leave the forces of this world to work upon us, deciding the positives and negatives of what we become? To be "nothing," allows room for the unlimited possibility of anything to manifest because it has not yet been defined, nor categorized. Nothing then becomes EVERYTHING, because in it's current state, it *is* the potential to become anything.

mehrdad	17 Oct 2003
Alissa-, I totally understand and partially share your views regarding this concept of fool and God; however, my problem is how to explain this to an audience totally foreign to this type of thought. The dilemma is how to keep the totality of this book during the translation and at the same time try to explain that our divine nature, which is from God, is fool-ness. In any case, what is “the forces of this world” but God? So He is the one, which His laws are working upon us, and not anything outside of Him. He is the one that knows what was and what is and what is going to be, so our potentials have already been assigned by His knowledge about the future. If he knows that in the future I am going to be a killer so this is what I am going to be and there is nothing that I can do to change that, otherwise God is not all knowing and therefore cannot be a God. We are born into a specific culture, family, and with some set of predestine genetic make up outside of our control; what forces are more important to fashion our “potential” than these predetermined factors? Nothing. Is this that “nothingness” that both fool and God have come from? If God is the ocean of nothingness and Fool is a drop of this ocean, as you said, then God is nothing but a bigger fool. The problem here is if God is all knowing and nothing, then how fool, who is made up from the same nature, can be nothing and non-knowing? This is what I do not know how to explain in my translation to my audience.

The Problem with Aleph & Beth thread was originally posted on 14 Oct 2003 in the Talking Tarot board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Talking Tarot, or read more archived threads.