mythologically speaking...what does gnosticism have to do with tarot?

Umbrae

Diana said:
And the Mat is not card 0. It is considered, to most French occultists anyway, as card 22, although it doesn't have a number.)
It’s my position, that Le Mat was not a part of a sequence of a Teaching Board. Although included – it was not a beginning or end of the sequence, rather more like a title of the sequence.
 

jmd

[edited to add: the previous post was deleted by the member's request - my post thus properly followed what is not now there]

Greetings again...

A number of earlier authors claimed that there was a connection between the Apocalypse and the Tarot, based principally on the merit that each has that so important number 22.

Problem is, when one reads the Apocalypse, it seems a very long stretch to see any of the Tarot images therein - unless one looks at a deck specifically influenced in its designs by apocalyptic thought, as the RWCS. But then the deck is quite 'modern'.

With earlier decks, such as the Marseille, it is certainly the case that many of its imagery may reflect aspects found in that book of St John's - but more with a stretch than I would personally expect should there have been a principal or direct influence.

As to an indirect influence, this is undoubtedly likely, as it was very much part and parcel of the 'standard' world view of the times in which Tarot is likely to have arisen.

With regards to The Bible Fraud, thanks so much for that link. Makes for interesting reading.
 

pan

well, since the cards describe the evolutionary sequence,
and since armageddon is one possible end to that sequence,
the cards describe armageddon.

Then again; the cards describe the post death forces one
encounters after you die. (in the second half.)

The major arcana is funny that way.

you open with the fool...infant....
baby
person or civilization or
evolutionary process
or
any biological or evolutionary event....


you move through childhood into puberty with those lovers...

and then that chariot either takes you or breaks you...


that true and genuine capacity to discern chaos from order
right and wrong...
ethics...

two horses running your whole program of applied force
toward your own manifestation.


"death" then some time after.....

The second half begins...
we leave the physical and begin back up the tree via the paths.

An interesting side note; many commom attributions of
sefirot to tree are really in reverse once we go the other direction.

Which is to say that being an infant is like being an ambassador
from keter, and slowly materializing into a body and becoming
as adult like descending into malkut.

We then rise through the sefirot in reverse order of the normal
numeric function since the qabbalistic descriotion of the tree of
life is as gods creation; what emanates from the top down.

tarot is the mythical sequence of the life after death;
alternate universes and realities .....
times 4.

How we wake up at the end, how we face the moon; our shadow,
the sun; our inner angel, integrate them and surrendour to our birthright as gods to claim our own direct link and right to build our own tree and thus a basement universe ..."the world" or,
"the universe".....

thats the big question.
armageddon is certainly one way to wake up in big puff.
 

jmd

Thanks for that link, turtleback.

It would be interesting to have your comments and reflections on those attributions which the author makes with the Tree.

Briefly looking at it, what comes to mind is the obvious way in which the author has used Aryeh Kaplan's model (or a common ancestor) of allocating both those specific signs of the zodiac and the mother letters to the 'paths'. In the allocation of the double letters (or planets), the attribution is simply ingenious, with the path leading upwards from (or downwards into) the Sefirah 'carrying' the planet attributed thereto (with Saturn, as to be expected in such a case, from/towards Malkut).

But, as mentioned... I would be interested in reading your comments on the same. As mentioned elsewhere, I personally do not tend to prefer to allocate the cards (Majors or Minors) to any inter-sefirotic 'paths'. It is useful, however, to see work arising from Falconnier seemingly re-emerge. A book I will eventually order :)
 

jmd

...another reference for the 'Son of the Sun' may be found in Philo (in relation to the Logos) - though there more as the Sun of the sun, or the Sun beyond the sun.

Still, it is also worth bearing in mind that in those more gnostic orientations, the Sun, the Son, and the sun are all very much interconnected, both for their radiant light, but also often with numerological analysis, using either (and especially) Greek or Hebrew gemetria.

With this, there is also relation to Mirthras and Hermes... brings back to mind a book I would also highly recommend: David Fideler's Jesus Christ Sun of God (Quest books, 1993, isbn 0835606961)...

... by the way, the link to 1stBooks.com within the linked site returns a 404 message...