Dwtw
Switching Heh and Tzaddi to different trumps, without also switching their astrological signs, is a mater of selectively changing the attributions given in the Sefer Yetzirah.
When Mackenzie and/or Mathers swapped the positions of trumps 8 and 11, they did not separate the letters Lamed and Teth from their respective signs; in fact, they did this *because* of the signs associated with those letters. This is not the case with Heh/Tzaddi, where Heh is no longer Aries and Tzaddi is no longer Aquarius. Crowley's "double-loop argument" is specious at best, as the two loops are not of the same kind at all.
Eshelman hangs a lot on the thin evidence of a line from the Zohar about Tzaddi; he even goes so far as to change his translation of the Sefer Yetzirah to attribute Tzaddi to Aries, which is completely his own interpretation, and not part of tradition at all.
The question arises, if Tzaddi has a concealed meaning, why doesn't Heh have one as well, and if it does, why is this not mentioned in the Zohar? A similar question would be, how can "ALL these old letters of my book be aright" except Tzaddi? For tzaddi to be changed means that at least TWO "letters of my book" are not aright.
But the Heh/Tzaddi thing always end up in a mud-wrestling match, so anyone competent and interested can find out all they need to know, on the web, from better sources than myself. Suffice it to say that a simpler explanation of Liber AL 1:57 is that the name of the Trump XVII needs to be changed, not the esoteric attributions.
A separate problematic statement from the introduction is this one:
"there is not a single mention of this (qabalistic meanings embeded in the tarot) in any of the vast esoteric writings that have survived from those centuries.
The only sensible explanation for this seems to be that the correspondence was taken so seriously that it went underground – and that there has been a true secret tradition for centuries."
Seriously? The ONLY sensible explanation is that it was all hidden? I beg to differ; the much more sensible explanation is that there was no such qabalistic content in the tarot, since there is no mention of it by writers who felt free to write on many other topics of esoterica. It's easy to say that there is no evidence because it was all kept secret, since there is no way to disprove that. It's much more difficult to come up with positive evidence for such an assertion of qabalah being wedded to the tarot from the outset.
All the evidence we have so far points to tarot being a card game appropriated by occultists for their own purposes. there's certainly nothing wrong with that, and yes, the proof is in the use of the cards. one can train themselves to use any system of associations; that doesn't mean that they were intended by the creators of Tarot. So call a spade a spade and just admit that we're taking archetypal forms and using them in a flexible system to our best ability and trying to make it meaningful in our praxis.
The Golden Dawn invented some interesting correspondences to the Tarot. Many of them fit, and a few do not. I personally like the Star being attributed to Venus just as much as Aquarius; I have my own network of associations that work for me. But I don't presume them to be a priori correct, or to have been intended by the inventors of tarot.
Well, I'm drunk and probably shouldn't be writing today. Gonna go contemplate how the Emperor is actually the element of Air.
Litlluw
RLG