what tree of life assocaitons do you follow

Thread originally posted on the Aeclectic Tarot Forum on 07 Nov 2002, and now archived in the Forum Library.

HOLMES	07 Nov 2002
there are many variations of the tree of life from the old jewish kabbalah,, to modern variation. which tree of life do you follow ? here is the link http://pws.prserv.net/leon/Kabbalah-articles/treeof.html i find the type one tree of life being the most ancient and the daath is included. there is a daath thread, and i been thinking which daath is it,, the most commond thing is it is nothingness. from which all other come from so it is the 0 minor and so the fool must connect to it. little extra information (i am goign to change it so justice goes through the daath,, and connects to the second sphere in accordance to my system, and so when it goes through the daath the other half of the justice will in my system be fool. :O) as fool is at the beginning and end of the major arcana in my system. to see what system i am refering too , check out my MAJOR TAROT REALIZATIOSN thread in using tarot forum) why did they change the tree of life to begin with ? every visionary has their own vision is the best theory i can come up without understanding, or researching. and since the ten minors must be in the ten spheres they pretend that daath isn't there (in many tarot books i never heard of no daath til just recently) as for the rest beats me.. but the first type of tree of life and the tarot assocaitons is the one i agree with the most. (to quote a expert that is the one that racheal is the one she likes in forest of souls,, but she never showed the assocaitons of the path,, so this is a big website for those who have read forest of souls and saw the luria tree ) so please check the website and tell me what yout hink.

jema	08 Nov 2002
i am really really new in learing about the qabalah. so i just hope you all won't laugh at me. but for me the version 4, the kircher tree is the one that feels "at home" so to speak. i won't ignore Daath but i won't count it as a sephirah either. Daath is the abyss and i see it just as in that tree, the void sort of "under" the tree, on another plane.

HOLMES	08 Nov 2002
i am not a kabbalah master only been into it for a few weeks now :O) i was all for the type four kabbalah system as it is in every tarot and kabbalah book,and so by understanding the system one get a basis in kabbalah, i myself had no problem with it,(stil don't eheh) but i saw the forest of souls and racheal saying she was drawn more toward the lucria tree which type one is also called so i jump on the band wagon :O) and to be differnt. as for it being the abyss i found a website where it says the daath is a portal to the dark tree where all the darkness spheres are ,, i have't read it much i just pasted it into word pad to study after i am still in the opnions,a nd information acquiring phrase

jema	08 Nov 2002
i wonder if perhaps the first book we learn from really is the one we then later stick with? i think it might be so in my case. but who knows, after i read more about it and can start to think freely i might change too. it's a bit like learning a new language where in the beginning your accent is coloured both by your own insecurity and by the accent of your teacher. it takes time to find ones own "voice" my "teacher" so far is Dion Fortune and i just don't know enough yet to question her auhority. so that is how new i am:) been reading for a few months, but i am a slow learner... thanks for the link by the way! it is bookmarked and will be studied more when i know more.

jmd	08 Nov 2002
The link you gave is one I hadn't come across before. It is great to see such varied views. On that site, as on so many others, the versions of the Tree of Life all have twenty-two paths. As I mentioned elsewhere, not all representations of the Tree have twenty-two paths - some have sixteen. The so-called Kircher version is based upon comments quite cohesive with the third of the great books on Kabalah, the Zohar. The first of the three great books, however (the Sefer Yetzirah), explicitly states that the letters are placed in circular fashion. One could therefore argue that all the ones depicted on the site are thus deviations from the Kabbalistic classic of classics - even though even A. Kaplan uses the Ari Tree and its letter associations in his own commentary on the Sefer Yetzirah. Another aspect of the site is the presupposition that the Fool heads the series and is linked with One-Alef! Certainly a presumption incorrectly associated with the number meanings of the Hebrew letters and the numerical attributions of the Major Arcana of the Tarot - but I understand how this Golden Dawn attribution has pervaded discussions. It is again worth mentioning that this, however, is certainly not universally accepted. As for myself, I prefer another version of the Tree not represented thereon. As the to card attributions I prefer, I place the cards in pairs in ascending order (I-XI in Malkut, and Fool-XXI in Keter), all minors in Malkut, and all letters in the non-sefirot Da'at, together with X-XX. In terms of investigating and deepening one's insights into either astrology, Kabalah or Tarot, I still maintain that their independent investigations yields deeper results - as each shines from the purity of its integrity, without the colourations of the others blending to wondrous rainbow overtones. Though these are marvellous, they may, I suspect, oft times mask important attributes.

jmd	09 Nov 2002
I don't know how many have noticed, but Solandia has wonderfully expanded the Study Groups section by placing all the previous threads related to Kabalah in its own new special forum: Qabalah! Thanks Solandia :)

jema	09 Nov 2002
a qabalah forum sounds great! but somehow i don't have access to it. and i am a subscriber. but i can't find it on the list of forums and the links to it do not work.

Ravenswing	09 Nov 2002
Hi All- I use the type II tree of life. But I don't associate the Majors the way they are depicted in the link. That's something I'm still working out. Here's the reasons for my preference: 1. The pathway of the Lightning Flash of Creation is still in existance (you can go through the sephirah in order on pathways. 2. It agrees with the sepher yetzrah in that there are 'ten and not nine, ten and not eleven' sephirah. 3. Da'ath is placed and acknowledged, but is not a sephirah. 4. You must be balanced to begin ascending the tree. You begin your climb up the center pillar. So, what is the Da'ath? The Da'ath is neither sephirah nor pathway. If you look at the position of it, it lies at the crossing point of the three longest pathways. They are also pathways originating from the supernals, one path from each. I consider the Da'ath then to be the crossroad where the three Supernals meet and intermingle their energies before decending into the world of creation. Da'ath is the portal between the creator and creation... Da'ath is a point. In a sense, it can be likened to Kether. Kether is the portal between Non-existance and undifferentiated unlimited potential energy. Da'ath is the portal 'beneath' which form exists. As to the pathway connecting yesod with malkuth: This pathway connects the 'unmanifest' tree (from yesod on up) with manifestation as we can know it (malkuth). So it can be considered an 'identity principle' which takes the 'raw form' and solidifies and stabalizes it, bringing it from potentiality into manifestation. I consider a consonant grouping to be similar to the 'raw form'. Therefore, a 'proper' placement of vowels manifests a word. For example, the consonant grouping 'THR' can mainfest as "THRee", "THeRe", "THeiR", "oTHeR".... So therefore, I place the group of vowels (a, e, i, o and u) on the pathway between yesod and malkuth. Furthermore, we can look at the Fool in the same manner. The Fool runs through the Tarot, his encountering with a card giving it meaning by interaction. So, I place the Fool on this path also. If you notice, by equating the Fool with the set of vowels, you are left with the group of consonants. There happen to be 21 of them. At the moment, one of my workings is to equate these with the remaining Trumps and place them on the tree. An English-based Qabalah..... just my view. it does not necessarily agree with the managment's policy. and may have little to do with 'reality' slowly climbing back to the tree tops ravenswing

AmounrA	09 Nov 2002
I like JMD, don't place the trumps on the 22 paths for my own study, prefering to have two trumps for each postion/sephiroth. I Don't place the minors in malkuth, but link there numerical order to the tree. So 5 cups would relate to Geburah, 6 to Tiphareth. My goal when doing a reading is to get as many of these minors as possible on there corrosponding sephiroth. Jema, I am in the same postion alas.

jema	09 Nov 2002
jmd, i can see the post announcing this new group in the general forum, but when i click the link http://www.tarotforum.net/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=55 i only get a page telling me i do not have persmission to access this page. i think it might be set up so only admin and mods can see it now.

Laurel	09 Nov 2002
I can't wait to see the new Kabbalah forum when its public. I've been gone from Aeclectic for two weeks due to IRL crunch and this was a happy thread to return too. I personally favor the Luria Tree, and have studied the Ari extensively. A number of Luria's concepts resonate very deeply with me and I like the symbolic stylizing of the paths upon his tree. Since its an uncomon design as far as Kabbalistic art goes, I'm also well used to the 'standard' tree as utilized by the G.D. and its successors. I move card attributions around a great deal, however. Laurel

The what tree of life assocaitons do you follow thread was originally posted on 07 Nov 2002 in the Using Tarot Cards board, and is now archived in the Forum Library. Read the active threads in Using Tarot Cards, or read more archived threads.