Hi Ash,
Please don't bury the deck deep. It's a good deck.
Basically the story of the Hebrew letters and the tarot cards goes like this -
In the late 1700s, some people began to equate the 22 trumps to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. In 1781, two essays mentioning this equation were published. The second essay started with Aleph=World and worked down to Tau=Fool.
During the early 19th century, this equation became popular, but people preferred to reverse it. Thus Aleph=Magician. The Fool was a problem, and they attributed him to the letter Shin - standing for the Holy Spirit.
There were apparently a lot of arguments about the true attribution. The European Continental tradition stayed with the Aleph=Magician, Shin=Fool, and World=Tau position, but some thought that the Fool should be Aleph, and the rest should follow in order.
This attribution made its way into a document called "The Cipher Manuscript", which became the founding document of a Secret Society named "The Order of the Golden Dawn."
The Cipher Manuscript attributed the Hebrew alphabet to the tarot cards based on astrological and elemental properties derived from an old Kabbalistic work, the Sefer Yetzirah. The Sefer Yetzirah attributed the elements (except for Earth), planets, and Zodiac signs to the Hebrew alphabet. The Cipher Manuscript took over most of these attributions, but was inconsistent with the edition of the Sefer Yetzirah that it was based on in some places.
In particular, the Cipher Manuscript insisted that the cards Strength and Justice were switched in ancient times, because Strength shows a lion and should be Leo=Teth, and Justice has scales with should be Libra=Lamed.
Therefore the modern tarot pack was out of order - not the alphabet. Thus Waite's pack makes Justice card 11, and Strength card 8.
So, the whole issue of the Hebrew attribution was controversial, not only because of the Continental origins of the system and the 19th century conventions, but also because of the Cipher Manuscript's authority for the English Order of the Golden Dawn.
The Golden Dawn was founded in 1888, and by 1900 it was suffering a schism based on rumors that the Cipher Manuscript, and thus the whole authority for the order, was fraudulent. The legend of the Cipher Manuscript was based on its originating with "Secret Chiefs", which were the same as the "Hidden Masters" of Theosophy. Thus, some of the people in the Order of the GD interpreted the crisis as one involving getting in touch with the Secret Chiefs behind the Order, and getting new instructions as to how to move forward.
Aleister Crowley was one of those, and during a magical working in 1904 he received a text which he called "Liber Legis", the Book of the Law. He didn't know at the time that he would consider this received text to be the communication that everyone was looking for. In his commentary on the text, Crowley said that he mentally asked a question of the Secret Chief - his Angel Aiwass - about the attribution of the Hebrew letters. The response was "All these old letters of my book are aright; but (Tzaddi) is not the Star." "Tzaddi" is in parentheses here because in the text it is the Hebrew letter.
In the Cipher Manuscript and GD tradition, Tzaddi WAS the Star, so this was a revelation to Crowley. For many years, Crowley worked on this riddle, and finally came to conclusion that the attributions of the letters Heh and Tzaddi had to be switched on the Tree of Life. Thus Heh now had the Star and the sign Aquarius, and Tzaddi had the Emperor and the sign Aries.
The point of all of this is to say that the Hebrew alphabet and its order don't change for Crowley, only the attributions of these letters to the tarot cards. The Emperor now mediates the path between Netzach and Yesod, while the Star mediates the path between Chokmah and Tiphereth. Previously, it was vice-versa. But the order of the letters and the paths don't change - only the cards and astrological attributions of the path.
Crowley found further, even final confirmation, for this switch when he compared it to the previous GD-Cipher Manuscript switch of Strength=Leo and Justice=Virgo. He found that the astrological attributions of Star=Aquarius and Emperor=Aries made a perfectly symmetrical loop at the exactly opposite side of the Zodiac to the previous one. He considered this symmetry on both sides proof that the same hidden masters were behind both attributions.
Ross
