Vincent
One point might be; why would Westcott's skill, or lack thereof, in Hebrew, have any bearing on a book Westcott translated from Latin?Helvetica said:you're stammering Fulgour
What think you of this?
In 1642, Rittangel published the third Latin translation of the SEFER YETZIRAH, based on the 1562 Mantua edition. This was the translation used by Westcott who made his English translation in 1887. Wescott's Hebrew was somewhat less significant than Shakespeare small Latin and less Greek.
Sour grapes, or does he have a point?
There are many translations of the Sepher Yetzirah, and there are different versions of it to translate. Westcott's version seems better than some, and worse than others, but it can be highly subjective, even amongst highly qualified Hebrew scholars. So, yes he does have a point, but not much of one.
The Golden Dawn was based on a fraud starting with the Cipher Documents, so belittling Westcott for his lack of Hebrew scholarship seems a little like taking Erich von Daniken to task for spelling errors. Yes, the Golden Dawn version of Tarot was given arbitrary assignments of Hebrew letters to paths and trumps to suit their own tastes and needs, in the same as people have done before and after them. In the absence of anything even remotely resembling evidence, it must be assumed that all such assignments are arbitrary.
Once again, the point seems over-stated. Yes, Crowley made several anti-Jewish remarks, (I presume you mean anti-Jewish rather than anti-Semitic, which in Crowley's day meant something a little different than its common usage today), and even though Thelemites and the suchlike have tried, sometimes ingeniously, to defend these remarks, I, like you, have no doubt that they were anti-Jewish. The thing is that Crowley also made disparaging remarks about Christians, Hindus and many others. And despite the horrid way he abused Jews like Victor Neuburg, Israel Regardie and others, he treated many other non-Jews in the same way.Helvetica said:Crowley at least was anti-semitic; many of the English Anglo-Saxon educated class were antisemitic lite in those days. Bergson - and his sister of course - were Jewish, though integrated.
He was an equal opportunity abuser.
Vincent