Hebrew Alphabet & Tarot

Alan Ross said:

I believe that a connection with the Hebrew alphabet was grafted onto the tarot by a succession of occultists from the 18th Century on, who devoted a lot of ingenuity and imagination to make it work. And when they couldn't quite get the shoe to fit, they altered the foot.

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Too true. It is ironic that their abortive attempts to claim trumps conform (with adjustment) to Hebrew letters by Hebrew-Greek numbering has made it so that almost no-one is willing to even consider whether or not they conform to letters via the method that was, I feel certain, actually used in creating the trumps. After all, the Semitic alphabet is almost as easily shown to be related to Irish tree-letters as Germanic runes are, and the runes were (evidently) a direct offshoot. Oh well, no point in trying to milk a dead horse (I keep telling myself and trying to anyway).

Alan Ross said:

[...] And when they couldn't quite get the shoe to fit, they altered the foot.

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I love this statement.

So what evidence do we have of Tarot in Ireland?

Greg Stanton said:

So what evidence do we have of Tarot in Ireland?

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tarah is an old irish word meaning among other things, laws, engraving, inscriptions, scribes, thin pieces of bark upon which engravings are made; it is etymologically related to the arabic/french for dots/points/discards things that are cut out, holes etc (see previous threads on subject).

however, this is no evidence of Tarot in Ireland.

kwaw said:

however, this is no evidence of Tarot in Ireland.

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I didn't think so. Also, "tarot" is a French word, and I have not been able to find a link between the word "tarot" and the Irish word "tarah" (or the Hebrew word "torah", for that matter).

more to history than meets the Eye

I have a dream today...

Teheuti said:

In fact, I once had a dream in which I experienced a three-dimensional Tree of Life as the DNA of the universe. It was an incredibly powerful and meaningful dream that words can't convey (numinous is the Jungian term). To me it was a kind of gnosis that doesn't need any external validation or explanation.

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Crescent - Circle - Cross
001 : Sun
100 : Moon
111 : Mercury
011 : Venus
110 : Mars
001 : Jupiter
101 : Saturn
000 :

6 pyramids fit together form a Metatron...I mean, Hexahedron...
Turn them inside out and make a Hodatron...or, Octohedron, if you prefer.

DNA, like the I Ching, also utilizes a triple codon, binary system.
And, as in the Caduceus, constellation 2/ARROW formulates the double helix.

Sooner than later you may accept these "coincidences" as something more than chance. Am I dreaming?

MLK Lives!

A completely different reason for "NO"

As well of as the correspondence between 22 cards and 22 Hebrew letter, there are also 22 paths on the Tree of Life. Many people relate all three.

I however, believe that the cards are related to the Kabalistic Tree of Life,
but not to the 22 Hebrew Characters. A completely new form of heresy.

My system puts the 22 cards onto the 10 spheres, mostly, with usually two cards per sphere.

My belief is that the Trumps images come from an attempt at amalgamation of Christian, Hebrew and Moorish(Alchemy) esoteric systems.
The development of the modern Tree of Life form of Kabalah is usually attributed to one Moses de Leon :

Moses de Leon
c.1240-1305
Born Leon, Spain.
Lived in Guadalajara, Valladolid, and Avila
Moses de Leon is generally attributed as the person who modified the Jewish Kabalah (consisting of 4 worlds, each having 10 concentric spheres) into the Tree of Life (10 spheres on a tree-like structure, not concentric) employed by Christian philosophers for many years, and by occultists to the present day.

So there is a gap between Moses, say 1300, and early tarot cards (Gringoneur @ 1393) of only about 100 years.
Images with visual similarities to the Trumphs can be seen appearing in Splenour Solis 1532-35, another century or so later on.

"The Splendor Solis is one of the most beautiful of illuminated alchemical manuscripts. The earliest version, considered to be that now in the Kupferstichkabinett in the Prussian State Museum in Berlin, is dated 1532-35, and was made in the form of a medieval manuscript and illuminated on vellum, with decorative borders like a book of hours, beautifully painted and heightened with gold. The later copies in London, Kassel, Paris and Nuremberg are equally fine.
The work itself consists of a sequence of 22 elaborate images, set in ornamental borders and niches" http://www.levity.com/alchemy/splensol.html


The question really is one of whether the integrated system of Moses de Leon influenced Tarot and Alchemy, or did Tarot develop separately and then become adopted by the occultists?
I have no evidence either way.
I can think of only three alternatives:-
1) The Trumps describe the dominant philisophical systems of the period - tree of life and alchemy which is now lost or overlooked
2) The Trumps describe a different philosophical system
3) The Trumps don't describe any system. they are just 22 images taken from the life or imaginiation of the original designer.

My money is on #1

Add to this that Gutenberg developed his printing press in 1450,
and we can see reasonable time for the Moses de Leon work to gain popularity, perhaps with hand-drawn cards or just drawings, spread to Italy from spain, and flourish with the printing press and the art boom or the Renaisance.
Personally, I have made my decision based on similarity of images between alchemy and tarot, and having found a way to map the tarot onto the tree of life while maintaining consistency of meaning between all three.

Beanu

Beanu.

Greg Stanton said:

So what evidence do we have of Tarot in Ireland?

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There are stores there that sell the decks. and we have members from there.

No offense intended...just my poor humour.

beanu said:

So there is a gap between Moses, say 1300, and early tarot cards (Gringoneur @ 1393) of only about 100 years.

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Hello Beanu,
current research suggests that the so called Gringonneur / Charles VI deck was painted in Florence circa 1450. See this thread for more information.

There are no documents suggesting that Tarot existed before 1425 ca.

Thanks Doc,

I've had a bit of a read of the thread - its very long and complex.
I take it the basic argument is that the artwork is almost certainly of later than 1393.

The older references claim some basics:-
1) A play, from which came the majors added by Gringonneur, and
2) documentary evidence of the purchase of a deck of some sort by King Charles VI.

Have these also been discredited? I thought I saw a translation of 2) somewhere, but can't be sure and can't find it again.

One possibility that springs to mind is that the deck itself may be a different deck to the one referred to in 2) - a later deck that has been confused with the one referred to in 2)

B