Hebrew letter Tarot correlations

northsea

venicebard said:
Truth is that the 19th-century theory was nearly complete, and so I went ahead and completed it based on what I know of the widespread bardic (meaning poetic-prophetic) tradition surrounding letters, whose remnants can be found in Ireland.

I am one who respects greatly Mark Filipas's theory but see it as a secondary strata overlaying the deeper, purely bardic system of numbering letters. But I offer my critique of your enumeration of correlations below, in case they may be of use to you. The numeration I give as 'correct' is based on bardic tradition, which allocates numbers based on symbolic equivalence, not simple letter-order.

Thanks for the input. I have almost nil understanding of Hebrew or ogham, so it's unfortunately beyond my comprehension.
 

bradford

venicebard said:
but if any of this is the least bit of interest to you, I shall be glad to return (in a few days' time) to discuss with you however much detail you wish to explore. (Much, of course, can be found already on this site if you chase down my various posts, but that would be rather a tedious chore, I should think.)

Hi-
I think maybe the reason we're on such different pages here is that so much of my studies are outside of the Western Mystery Tradition, into languages like Chinese that have no alphabets, and others outside the Indo-European family.
This has sort of set me in search of human universals instead of historical and cultural connections, doing work based more on phonemes than letters. It also has me outside looking in on the whole WMT mindset and set of assumptions. It really has nothing to do with "anything goes." But this approach has not obligated to take the Western belief sets seriously unless they can be empirically and not just tautologically or self-referentially verified.
We're just working in entirely different fields of endeavor with superficial similarities.
Still, I'd like to see someone ask - Where does Ox go? Where does Fish go?
 

jmd

What I find interesting with language groups such as Chinese is that so much of it appears to be based on visual phonemes (or are they better called 'concept-morphs', as the sound can vary from language to language that uses the same written form).

Still, there appears to be a basic set of these that both form the basis for building blocks of Chinese language groups, as well, as providing sound-oriented 'phonemes'.

Are there phonemes that cut across languages that are not causally inter-connected? (It's a genuine question, I have no not the answer).
 

venicebard

bradford said:
Hi-
I think maybe the reason we're on such different pages here is that so much of my studies are outside of the Western Mystery Tradition, into languages like Chinese that have no alphabets, and others outside the Indo-European family.
I'm half Buddhist myself (in an ancient rather than modern sense) and consider Gautama a true Gnostic. And incidentally my current research is in the area of (non-Indo-European) Biblical Hebrew and Chaldean (late Aramaic) terminology (which includes many Arabic and Syriac and a few Samaritan and Ethiopic roots as well) and the ancient Egyptian roots listed by Gardiner in his Egyptian Grammar, my quest being after how these support or refute my current understanding of the root meanings of the letter-sounds themselves.

While Indo-European appears to be one of the three most important strands of the bardic corpus, it is the Hebrew alphabet that preserves the 22 letter-symbols in their most potent form, and it is Biblical Hebrew whose language- or root-structure most completely reflects bardic 'guidance', that is, that is based on a deep understanding (i.e. one that at least approaches the universal) of the meanings of the individual sounds and a resistant to surrendipitous developments veering away from said meanings.
This has sort of set me in search of human universals instead of historical and cultural connections, doing work based more on phonemes than letters.
This is most laudible! It is the universals I seek as well, but I found that Chinese characters, since they express a language in such an advanced state of decay (much like ancient Egyptian), and since they are not wedded to phonemes but rather to meanings (unlike ancient Egyptian), did not suit my particular purpose. This in spite of the fact that some of the most profound insights I have come across concerning alchemy are the work of an 18th-century Chinese Taoist.

But I do not see how the simple fact that our capital B and miniscule m both show the lips touching in making these sounds can be construed as merely historical-cultural: ALL humans must put the lips together to make these sounds, n'est ce pas? Much of the bardic corpus does have a solid universal basis methinks, which is why the Keltic poet's grasp of human psychology had orders-of-magnitude more depth than that of modern academics, in my estimation (though the Jungian thrust of the last century did carry things perhaps within one order of magnitude, at least). Still, it is true that modern de-education (university and secondary-school deconstruction of what is inherent in the human condition, based merely on the hair-brained theories of the academics themselves) has produced generations of humans whose majority has a hard time relating to the heroic-versus-satiric (i.e. bardic) mold. A minority still does, though (which proves its resilience).
It also has me outside looking in on the whole WMT mindset and set of assumptions.
If you mean that of moderns, me too! as they appear to have completely lost touch with the root understandings that spawned the alphabet.
It really has nothing to do with "anything goes." But this approach has not obligated to take the Western belief sets seriously unless they can be empirically and not just tautologically or self-referentially verified.
Again, utterly laudible. Please carry on (and let me know what you find).
We're just working in entirely different fields of endeavor with superficial similarities.
I should think that if our fields are indeed as disparate as you suggest, then any similarities in what we find would be much more likely to point to universals than whatever differences we find, n'est ce pas?
Still, I'd like to see someone ask - Where does Ox go? Where does Fish go?
Yes, these are the kinds of questions that have fascinated me for my entire adult life.

[One might make the case that Fish should be placed on the letter D, since Irish Dylan was a fish, and so was Semitic Dagon as I recall. But D's being XII LePendu only relates it to water's reflective quality, the sea itself being Mem (and its surface N, judging by the Egyptian hieroglyph n from whose hieratic version Semitic nun evidently derives).]
 

venicebard

jmd said:
What I find interesting with language groups such as Chinese is that so much of it appears to be based on visual phonemes (or are they better called 'concept-morphs', as the sound can vary from language to language that uses the same written form).
Precisely! as the characters express ideas whose sounding is different from region to region (though the Reds did eliminate much of the diversity of speech in the region, I hear). But what I wish modern academics would realize is that our alphabet itself is visual, that it originates in pictographs many of which remain intact. Our Q is still a fruit-with-stem (Irish quert-the-apple). Our B is still the pregnant torso in profile (or lactating breasts seen from above), as befits the consonant of the (winter-solstice) birth of the Sun (Irish beth-the-birch, first tree-month of the ancient 13-month bardic calendar). Our D is still a picture indicating girth or compass (in runic called *thurisaz, 'giant', being Thor-the-giant-killer's rune), as befits the consonant of the month (duir-the-oak, symbolizing compass or extent) that encompasses the summer solstice (extent of movement of the Sun from its birth-place). Our F is still quite close to the stalk of corn it is in runic (where the branches branch upward), as befits the month (fearn-the-alder) of the Corn Spirit (aries-the-head, whither spring springs). Our H is still in the form of what blocks the way (huath-the-hawthorn, an impenetrable hedge), hinting its doubling as the space or no-thing which separates. And so on. (Modern academics have swallowed the dogma that letter-shapes are purely arbitrary: tell their inventors that!)
Are there phonemes that cut across languages that are not causally inter-connected? (It's a genuine question, I have no not the answer).
I do not see how it could possibly be otherwise. After all, does not the sound "mm" signify sweetness or savoriness or a pleasing quality of some sort in all humans? as well as hesitation perhaps (as in "um"), since it is natural to wish to remain in a pleasing place. And I have found for instance that the sound n negates in both Indo-European and ancient Egyptian, and that this meaning even holds true in Hebrew in spite of the fact that the actual consonant of negation there has shifted to l (lamedh). But I do not know how far this meaning is spread, whether in non-related language-groups like Finno-Ugric or Chinese any trace of it can be found, for instance. But I hope to pursue such question some day (should I live so long).
 

bradford

Oops-
I guess if I had wanted to be clear, I would have said outside the Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic language families. Shouldn't slight the latter when talking about alphabets, huh? Sorry.
b
 

venicebard

bradford said:
Oops-
I guess if I had wanted to be clear, I would have said outside the Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic language families. Shouldn't slight the latter when talking about alphabets, huh? Sorry.
b
Understood.

Say, one quick question [perhaps slightly off topic?], the answer to which would fill a huge gap in my 'data-bag':

One Chinese character that I remember represents the term miaou in Chinese, which means 'mystic' or some such (and which I take to be the Logos (I)AOM with the M moved from last to first, as if in the midst of its repetition, though it could simply be the ancient Egyptian word that means 'cat'), and this character in Japanese is pronounced almost the same: myo (as in the mantra "nam myo-ho renge kyo"). Are there many other Chinese characters like this that retain virtually the same sound from region to region? (If so, then perhaps I should return to the subject in earnest.)
 

bradford

I don't know if much of this code will survive the posting process
but there are bunches of Miao's (myao or meeow). I only know
the Mandarin dialect in Pinyin.

Trad. Pinyin English
喵 miāo /meow (onomat. for cat's mewing)/
描 miáo /depict/to trace (a drawing)/to copy/to touch up/
瞄 miáo /to aim/
苗 miáo /(surname)/Miao tribe/sprout/
杪 miǎo /the limit/tip of branch/
淼 miǎo /a flood/infinity/
渺 miǎo /vague/remote/
眇 miǎo /minute (small)/subtle/
秒 miǎo /(a measure word)/second/
緲 缈 miǎo /indistinct/
藐 miǎo /despise/small/
邈 miǎo /profound/remote/
妙 miào /clever/wonderful/
廟 庙 miào /temple/monastery/
玅 miào /clever/wonderful/
繆 缪 miào /(surname)/
 

numbers

FoolIsShin Speculations

I've been in the Fool-Is-Shin camp ever since I started thinking about letter correspondences. Two types of reasons for this opinion besides those given so far on the site:
a. Shouldn't cards I through X be Aleph through Yod on the simple grounds that those *were* the symbols for the first ten numbers?
b. Some reasons I've stretched to find:
1. Yod is "hand". The Marseille wheel (X) has a handle but no hand. Doesn't this fit with some of the thinking that apparent coincidences are really the work of an invisible hand?
2. Kaph is "palm", also "pan." If it is Strength (XI), then there might be a visual pun on the pan of merit and pan of liability, with a tongue deciding between them (from Sefer Yetzirah).
3. If Samech is The Devil (XV) and Mem is Death (XIII), might this not fit well with the "Angel of Death" being Samech-Mem?
Given that I'm not a real qabalist, or even Jewish, these are quite wild speculations on my part, of course.
***********************
OTOH, I very much appreciate Kwaw's posts showing how much sense there can be in the Golden Dawn system. I had always thought it was arbitrary in the extreme, but now--maybe not.
***********************
This is a bit off-topic but here I've got the right audience. My idea for a new family of tarot decks would be one with Marseille-inspired majors and either scenic or Thoth-like minors intended to apply the ten sefiroth to the four elements (as the Golden Dawn artists intended to do, of course (and let me second the plug for Kliegman's Tarot and the Tree of Life.)) Sadly, I lack both the knowledge of qabalah and the artistic ability to do anything about this idea.

Regards,
"Numbers"
 

jmd

With your last suggestion, numbers, a number of points would first need to be resolved (or imposed):

Firstly, though I can see how a Sefirotic reflection in the pips can be attributed, the elemental attribution is not as clear-cut as may appear - except for those who already have a strong view one way or the other (so Cups is Air, right!?).

Second thing is why take away (or add, depending on your viewpoint) to the pips by scenic depiction? If using the Marseille-type as a basis, there is already therein much wealth!