Alchemy, Hermeticism & Tarot?

[venicebard]

Let me say I certainly do not think it is hijacking the thread to discuss evidence (since this is a history forum) clarifying genuine Hermetic tradition, the subject that started it . . . so I shall proceed.

Originally Posted by Bat Chicken

Compelling epigraphic evidence? If you are referring to the Ogham, there is little evidence to substantiate any claim previous to the first century CE. If the contact with the Judaic people was ancient - why does the Ogham only trace back to a time that is post Rome?
. . .
(I am also familiar with Fell)

Then you should be aware that ogam consaine or consonants-only ogham goes back to the early norther-European bronze age.

I am truly curious to know what your sources are so that I may follow you here.

The bethluisnion, the calendrical tree-alphabet B-L-N-F-S-H-D-T-K-M-G-P-R / A-O-U-E-I, of Graves and O'Flaherty (only slightly changed in modern Irish), but including Kk/Q-quert-apple, Ss/St-straif['strife']-blackthorn, both included in ogham itself, and the two double-vowels Graves hypothesizes to have been secret but necessary to complete things (since it includes the rather important mistletoe), Aa-ailm-palm and Ii-[ixias? runic has *is]-mistletoe/loranthus, based not just on Graves but on square-Hebrew: Ii can only have been Hebrew yod, since this is the only letter not rooted in the ground. Graves failed to note this last and linked yod rather to I-iodhe-yew, but I figured out I-yew is zayin/zeta [initial of Zeus from erosion of D by I/Y], based on runic, which has I-'ice' and I-'yew' and shapes the latter like Greek zeta with horizontal strokes made diagonal to carve across grain. (Aa-palm seems to have been a consonant in all alphabets but the Keltic, being teyt-theta-'day'[i.e. equator or earth, as per its Phoenician shape].) The bethluisnion is linked directly to Tarot of Marseilles through its letter's number-representation in medieval Irish literature, according to Graves (WG, p. 295), substantiated by one of the (uneven) versions of alphabetic order given in The Barddas of Iolo Morganwg (controversial, yet useful in that it also gives an account of three circles conforming in essence to the three 'mothers' of Jewish Merkabah) -- 5-14-13-8-16-0-12-11-9-5-10-7-5-15 / 1-4-[17 or 5th-from-the-end]-2-3, with Aa=[21], Ii=[19], Ss=[20], and Kk=[18], brackets indicating my own surmise but easily provable using tarot and quite logical even without it.

So again - I struggle to see the Hebrew connection.... are you suggesting that Hebrew was only used for 'mystic writing'? And if so - what's the connection to the Celts? Why go through the Greeks? When does that contact with the Hebrews supposedly take place?

What I don't see is your evidence of the connection between the Celt and the Judaic traditions.

I get the sense you are seeking a 'unifying theory of culture'.

I am suggesting that many ancient alphabets -- bethluisnion, Egyptian hieroglyphic, ogam consaine, Tifinag (coeval with o.c.), Libyan, Hebrew-Phoenician-Greek, and Meroitic -- arose out of essentially the same pan-ethnic bardic or poetic tradition of letters that had survived -- oft perhaps in oral form only (but oral traditions thrive on sound-figures and thus are quite aware of the individual sounds) -- probably from the time of the destruction of the last civilization (roughly 11th millennium B.C.E.).

Consequent to the bethluisnion -- and even without its number-representation, though with the presumption of the four doubled letters Aa-Ii-Ss-Kk to make 22 altogether -- we find (based on the revered Sefer Yetzirah encapsulating surviving Merkabah alphabet tradition) all the Hebrew 'double-letters' associated with the bottom half of the wheel of the year (side opposite aries-the-head), along with 'mother-letter' M -- D-T-K-M-G-P-R-B. (Outta time, must post, then edit.) And S-shin-saille-willow is at the head -- actually taurus, but backed up in ogham to aries -- and M-mem-muin-vine at the 'belly' (libra) opposite the head, while A-alef-ailm-fir is the winter solstice halfway between -- just as Sefer Yetzirah stipulates.

[venicebard]

To continue:

Originally Posted by Bat Chicken

I am truly curious to know what your sources are so that I may follow you here.

Seeing that there is exact coincidence of mother-letters and grouping of double-letters (as per my previous post), and having vowel-equivalents (meaning consonantized bardic vowels) mostly marked for us by Greek adaptation of Semitic letters (pre the turning of H into long E, i.e. as in western Greek, which became Latin), it is easy to pin down Phoenician equivalents to bethluisnion letters, and usually the shape confirms this (that is, becomes easily explainable once the connexion is made, as with square-Hebrew yod and mistletoe/loranthus). Furthermore, once the 12 'simple-letters' stipulated in Sefer Yetzirah are restored to their original calendar-order -- with vowels distributed along the tongue-root where the doubles were, since these are separated out to become the Cauldron of the surroundings -- the square-Hebrew shapes in virtually all cases confirm the sign-assignment (samekh looks like a head, cheyt looks like the shoulders, and so on), not to mention the fact (or to mention the fact, rather) that the phonetic laws governing their placement become laughably obvious, explaining how such a tradition could have survived -- even orally at times -- for thousands of years. (Extreme age is necessary, methinks, to explain how deeply it resonates with chemical atom-types, valence, and the particle-structure of sub-atomic matter.) For the round of 12 simples was the tongue -- samekh (peak of L-N-S-Tz-H[Ch], which is L-N-F-S-H to pagans, with F sprouting beyond the tongue or seed) on its tip, vowels at its root -- and the Cauldron (surroundings) in which it (the seated torso) sits is the mouth, with B and P on each lip or rim but with P and D later switched about (for symbolic reasons easy to reconstruct).

Thus Libyan begins with B as the symbol sol (circle with dot in center), birth of the sun, and ends with R as the same but with the central dot (lynch-pin of the sun's chariot) removed, returning for a 're-charge'. But the earlier (Scandinavian) form of Tifinag, in use in the far north, delayed the symbol sol till spring equinox -- S-shin-saille-willow in its ogham placement and as Hebrew mother-letter -- since the sun doesn't appear there till then. Thus both alphabets have D as the doorway into manifestation (oak's summer solstice month), while Meroitic makes it an eye-hieroglyph, to represent one's eye on the horizon (D-oak as compass, stationed on the Cauldron's outer rim, cancer [straight ahead]), while for T (30-degree angle down from straight ahead) it has a shaman-priest in bird-or-jackal headdress facing left seen from above with lines [or arms?] extending from his ears to the horizon before, to represent what approaches within earshot. And so on.

Poenician, or at least the proto-Canaanite from whence it sprang, has a circle with stem for Q-qof-quert-apple, for crying out loud! and a breast pouring forth milk for U-vav-ura-heather, the summer solstice (cancer-the-breast)! and a swinging jib for D-dalet-duir-oak's compass! and a crown for S-shin-saille-willow, since it sits on the head (and is the center of the Throne world, but that's another story)! and E-heh-eadhe-aspen has that tree's characteristic perpendicular branches! and I-zayin-idho-yew, vowel of winter, shows a cold front (cold air moving in under warm) or winter swan (the time they appear in Palestine)! and on and on. I know of no rabbinical theory that can come anywhere near the coherence of a bardic explanation for the shapes of letters.

And once the simples are arranged thus on the wheel -- samekh-tzaddi-cheyt-vav-ayin-qof-teyt-heh-zayin-yod-lamedh-nun -- whole worlds of meaning open up that show knowledge, for instance, of the fact that potassium controls fluids within cells and sodium those without, both by using chlorine (arrayed between these); or that oxygen is 'up' (aries the head), since it is the one atom-type without which there is no 'up'. Or: that fire's photons are spin one and neutral, air's leptons in the form of electrons spin one-half and active (positive charge, it being moderns that have this wrong), water-or-form's pi-mesons holding nuclei together spin zero and (on average) neutral, and earth's baryons in the form of protons (which even neutrons decay to once beyond the nucleus) spin one-half and passive (negative charge, according to the more coherent viewpoint of the very-ancients). Or: the three ways of assigning elements to the four cardinal points, which are coded into the alef-bet order of the simples. Or . . . okay, I'll let you up (just joking).

I like the idea that the Ogham was symbols representing an old knowledge.

(Very old, in my estimation, and only slightly tweaked, not completely rearranged as Hebrew is.)

I am not saying [Graves's] theories are outright wrong, but I fail to see any evidence that really supports them.

I am not concerned with very much of his theoretical side, only that which relates to the kinship of alphabets, and for this I have ample confirmation of my own (which I do my best to present here at Aeclectic, though it does not seem to generate as much interest as it would seem to merit, meaning I am a poor presenter).

I appreciate the dialog, by the way (most merely shun me).