Liber 777 correspondences and card-path assignment

JackofWands

Crowley's Liber 777 is more or less the seminal work on magickal correspondences with the paths of the Tree of Life. While I don't practice magick, I do occasionally like to use some of the symbolism in the 777 in my reflective work with the Tarot and the Tree of Life.

But here's my problem: I loathe the way that Crowley has assigned the Major Arcana to the Tree of Life starting at the top and working numerically down. As I've mentioned elsewhere, my solution to this and other qualms regarding the Tree of Life is generally just to work with multiple iterations of the glyph depending on my needs at a given moment; however, when I'm working with a Tree that has different card-path assignments or even a completely different structure, I'm not sure what the best way is to apply the correspondences from the 777 that I still want to use.

Part of me thinks that the best thing to do is to take each card's set of correspondences as a complete unit, regardless of which path the card occupies. (e.g., the Hermit's plant association, the snowdrop, remains linked to the Hermit, and not to path 20.) This makes sense with a number of the correspondences, particularly the astrological ones.

However, there's also part of me that sees the logic in holding the correspondences to the paths, not to the cards associated therewith. This is especially true with something like geometrical symbolism, which is explicitly derived from the paths themselves and not from the symbolism of the Tarot. I can also see an argument for retaining the aesthetic structure of the various color scales as-is, rather than rearranging the colors to suit a different arrangement of the cards.

As with all things, the solution here is probably a happy medium--going by card for some correspondences and by path number for others--but I can't figure out where the dividing line is on which should be which. For example, I can see the "Precious Stones" table of correspondences, swinging either way. Has anyone else come up against this difficulty? Do you have thoughts on the matter?
 

Grigori

The attributions don't actually come from Crowley, other than a couple of tweaks it's all from the Golden Dawn and was just edited by Crowley into a single document. I'd suggest if you're more comfortable with a personalized system, it would be better to expend that personalization into all areas.

If you're primarily utilizing astrological attributions I guess it makes sense to maintain them as they're often quite obvious and mostly long predate the Golden Dawn. Perhaps just ignore the tree structure and focus on the signs is a safe bet also.
 

JackofWands

Thank you for the advice. My sincere apologies for the mix-up regarding the source of the correspondences. Really and truly, I ought to have known that they came from the GD initially, but I have a bit of a beef with Crowley and sometimes end up giving him more smack than he deserves.
 

delinfrey

I have seen a thread with a similar concept here on AT, but rather focusing on "do I really need to follow the attributions".
I realize this is an old thread, but perhaps this is useful for someone who studies - Kabbalah is a system, and whereas not always too orthodox (meaning you can "feel" your own attributions as well), working with the Kabbalah and Tarot means exactly that - you choose a school that you feel comfortable with and work within its framework. That is not to say you -cannot- make any amendments; for sure we all have a personal addition to whatever we learn or use, but I feel it is a little unfair to use "Kabbalistic Tarot" and then not use a cohesive system with it.

So, by all means, use whichever attributions you feel comfortable with, but keep them cohesive. And I would also be quite diligent in letting people know what kind of system I am using. Just an example: I prefer intuitive Tarot for my readings, but I am always clear which system I am using. So I would not do a "Rider-Waite-Smith" reading to someone and then say that I actually really don't agree with the meaning of the Magician, I abhor the representation of the Judgment and actually all pentacles mean Air. But I -would- do a reading -with- the RWS, just being clear that in MY system (which is not the RWS system), the meanings are different.
 

Hythlodaeus

Has anyone else looked at Frater Achad's "Restored" Tree? It's been around for awhile and presents a compelling arrangement of the letters and trumps to the paths that is based on their astrological attributions as they ascend the Tree. For example, The Magician connects Malkuth to Hod because he represents Mercury.
There is at least one Tarot based on this arrangement, The Kingdom Within Tarot by Juno Lucina. However, I don't see Achad's system referenced very often.
 

JackofWands

Achad's system was very interesting; thanks for bringing it to my attention!