Can't See the Wood For The Trees!

kwaw

I have already given an example elsewhere with Venus, Pe, Tower so lets go over to the opposite path between Hod and Din where I have placed for example here the Sun card [resh-mercury].

Mercury is called 'sun star' in SY and attributed to the letter Resh which corresponds with the Sun card. The Sun is 'Ra', not only the left, other or evil side [ra means evil in Hebrew] but a symbol of Egypt [and the Sun God Ra] which together with the Romans [romulus and remus, the twins below] are symbolic of the hostile nations who execute God's harsh judgment against the Israelites. ChMH the Sun is placed here on the path between the sphere of Mercury [Hod] and Mars [Din]. The fiery sefirah Din, the left hand of God is that which executes harsh judgment. The Sun as that which burns as a symbol of God's harsh judgment may explain its severe grimace in some decks of the TdM pattern;)

Kwaw
 

Rosanne

Well now I understand! Yes the grimace of the Sun-some Tarot artists get it right.
Behold the day is coming, burning like a furnace,then all the arrogant and evildoers shall be stubble and that day shall leave them without root or branch (Malachi)
Yea, the Sun on Judgement makes sense.(Back in comfort zone)

This from the short Kaplan SY
Ten Sefirot of Nothingness: The number of the ten fingers, five opposite five, with a single covenent precisely in the middle, like the circumcision of the tongue and the circumcision of the membrum.
Is this the placing of hands like in prayer do you think? ~Rosanne
 

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Rosanne

I forgot to ask Kwaw, which translation of the SY do you use? ~Rosanne
 

kwaw

Rosanne said:
I forgot to ask Kwaw, which translation of the SY do you use? ~Rosanne

Peter Hayman Sefer Yesira: Edition, Translation and Text-Critical Commentary (Mohr Siebeck 2004)

Leonard R. Glotzer [trans, & comment]THE FUNDAMENTALS OF JEWISH MYSTICISM: THE BOOK OF CREATION AND ITS COMMENTARIES . (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1992)

Aryeh Kaplan [ trans. & comment.], Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation. In Theory and Practice (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1990)
(Note: Kaplan offers what is basically the a fourth recension of the SY, the 18th century redaction of the Gra.)

Knut Stenring [trans. & notes] , The Book of Formation (with intro. by A.E. Waite), London, 1923

W. Wynn Westcott [trans. & notes] Sepher Yetzirah: The Book of Formation [with The Fifty Gates of Intelligence and The Thirty-two Paths of Wisdom , New York: Samuel Weiser, 1877 [Reprinted 1980].

Papus, Sefer Yesira [in English translation of his 'Qabalah'], 1888.
 

venicebard

kwaw said:
. . . with the higher and lower Sophia / Saturn reference (to which there are refences in very early kabbalastic commentaries to the SY).
References to the references? (yust yoking) If what you say is true, then it shows at least one issue with respect to which earlier-generation Merkabah and the Kabbalah of Luria's generation were in accord, since the latter's two hehs as feminine/receptive principle occupying 3 and 10 amounts to the same thing, presumably.

Where might one peruse some of these early commentaries in English? (My Hebrew still lacks the intricacies of grammar.)
 

venicebard

I finally have a moment to comment on your Tree-paths.
Rosanne said:
Keter to Chokmah = The Heirophant-Aries
Chokmah to Binah = Fire, The World
In my system, beyt-Hierophaunt is at aries's height (straight in from it), and beyt of course begins 'creation'. And teyt-World is the fire breath: your allocation makes sense in that this is the path which determines the descending pattern to be the lightning-stroke that follows the numbers in sequence!
Keter to Binah = Lovers -Taurus
Thou hast ripped mem from its calendar position libra to the other sign ruled by Venus . . . and in the process both taken it half-way up to where mem-sofit operates (as center of the Monad) and made it link 1 and 3 in the progression 1(/10)-3-7-12 on which Sefer Yetzirah is modeled, which as M in the Logos it indeed does: it is the unity of the self, and it 'begets' the 3 mothers. [Shin is (the center of) the Cauldron of 7 doubles, while alef makes the round of the 12 simples.]
Keter to Tipareth= High Priestess- Saturn
Binah to Tipareth =Justice -Cancer
? So you take justice as unbalanced and priestess as balanced: do we have a bias or what!
Chokmah to Tipareth=Chariot- Gemini
Chokmah to Chesed = Empress-Jupiter
Binah to Geburah = Emperor- Mars
So you throw it back in the face of the rabbis, who set the polarity the other way around, eh. Well, Empress could well be Jupiter IF she were dalet, as the new-agers would have it (and Kwaw, who was not necessarily included in the other term) . . . [continued next hour]
 

venicebard

venicebard said:
. . . [continued next hour]
Well, now that I look at your attached image -- a very clear one -- I see I cannot be of much help: where do you (or where does whoever you got it from) get off arranging the Sefirot themselves like that, throwing out their whole structural basis? although I 'admit' the arrangement in the Work of the Chariot version of SY I gave above isn't much better: it is based solely on the stimpulations of SY and ignores the Tree of which the Zohar speaks, which is the usual one for tacking on paths.

Surely in Adam Qadmon the cycle neutral-male-female-neutral or neutral-positive-negative-neutral (minus any connotations) simply repeats three times (in a spiraling whirl, so to speak), as in the first ten stations of the round (taking-as-I-do asstrology's 'fixed' and 'mutable' for an original 'male' and 'female'):

- - 1
3 - - - 2
- - 4
6 - - - 5
- - 7
9 - - - 8
- -10

Then, as hinted at in Lurianic Kabbalah, 4-10 are dragged 'kicking and screaming' down a notch, so that (probably) 4 straddles 4-5, 5 straddles 5-6, and so on with 10 dangling off 'into the night'. [Or one could replace '(straddles)' with is dislodged from its position to the next but remains attached to its original position via the aka cord, it being the nature of the Huna 'Low Self' (whose Tree this is?) to remain connected by aka cord even to the morsel of itself it leaves behind in some animal when it goes on to the after-death states. Or not.]

In fact, there's no 'probably' about it: the part of the doer that is still part of the three-part self would remain at its original station(s) -- the simple what is -- while the doer's perception shifts to the new 'demoted' stations -- the more complicated what seems to be.

You probably are as relieved as I, then, to hear that I can no longer help you much in this, as your paths on my tree 'jump dimensions'.

Carry on.
 

venicebard

venicebard said:
[Or one could replace '(straddles)' with is dislodged from its position to the next but remains attached to its original position via the aka cord, it being the nature of the Huna 'Low Self' (whose Tree this is?) to remain connected by aka cord even to the morsel of itself it leaves behind in some animal when it goes on to the after-death states. Or not.]
I just realized as I edited this (to give it its missing [/i]) that the dangling of 10 'off into the night' most likely is the aka-cord connexion with its animal after death. Who knew.
 

Rosanne

Hi VeniceBard. You give up on me? I do not give up on you! (I am pulling your leg)
Do you like a mystery? Here is mine.
My Great Grandfather was an enigma. It appears he was a staunch Catholic, with Celtic ancestry, who would go to Mass every Sunday with his family and then proceed to go to the Anglican Church by himself for the later service. He was a Freemason and attained GrandMaster status (I have proof) He as an amateur photographer, astronomer and lapidarist. He was also a Policeman who held a high position here in the Colonies. He had a Tarot deck, I thought might have been RWS, but is not, because his grandson, my uncle, built a Chariot like the card from the deck and took the card to school and was severely punished for it.(Catholic school) He also left behind some weird and wonderful 'things'. Some I have returned to the Lodge, because it felt right to do so. As you know I have been reading all the wonderful Kabalah/Letters/Paths and I was looking at an ornament that was his (GGF's) and I thought "was he also a Kabalahist?" So I set out to see if I could decipher his life and Tarot and or Jewish Mysticism or Christian Cabala. Now his home when I was growing up had old paintings of Angels everywhere, which I thought was a Catholic thing- one painting has a pole with a crown on top and the Zodiac signs winding down the pole starting with Aries. Around the edge of the picture were 10 angels some of whom I can see were Michael and Gabriel etc. This is not Catholic at all! What didhe believe? Jmd set me off on an Angel search, Kwaw on a Kabalah search, you on a Celtic search to put the puzzle together.
What I have ended up with is a Gra- type diagram of the Tree of Life- that is not Cabala- but Kabalah. The Angels are the sepheroth and the Zodiac winds around 1. Keter Metatron , 6 Tipareth Michael, 9 Yesod Gabriel, and ends at Malkuth-Sandalphon. From the ornament I get The planets.
I have the 22 Paths now- what I have to do is place Tarot Majors on those paths. With the diagrams setting out my paths, that I scanned below- where would you put the Majors? That is my constraint- it starts with Aries= He- who is Aries? I do not think it is the Emperor, I think it is the Heirophant/Le Pape- Card 5. I see a pattern, so the cards just cannot go all over the place on the Tree paths, I think they must show a pattern on the diagram. My G.Grandfather was clever it seems- I like his thoughts thus far and I would like to place the Majors where he might have put them. I am personally reeling from the fact that he might have been a Kabalist- it seems so strange. ~Rosanne
 

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venicebard

Rosanne said:
. . . one painting has a pole with a crown on top and the Zodiac signs winding down the pole starting with Aries.
I'm impressed just by its having aries in the correct direction: one seldom sees this, and it indicates that one is looking beyond the veil of astrology, into the heart of Hermetic science rather.
What I have ended up with is a Gra- type diagram of the Tree of Life- that is not Cabala- but Kabalah.
You know, I was about to type in that I don't accept your Gra arrangement (any more than I accept his other reputed correlations regarding SY), but now that I think about it it is not so far-fetched, as long as one not discard the traditional arrangement alongside it, which fulfills the primary purpose of explaining that it is a Tree of forms (of upright sentience, based on logical analysis). But it is important also to recognize that the offspring may turn out greater than the parents, so that 6, offspring of 4 & 5, might manage to devolve (the preferred direction in all metaphysics based on the concept of a Fall, including the shamanic I should think) into the 1 type, or 9, offspring of 7 & 8, devolve into a 4 or 5 type -- it is a little strange to see their second offspring placed below them, but I suppose you could visualize 9-10 as a single span somehow.
From the ornament I get The planets.
Yes, and they look correct to me (for the Tree in Asiyah).
I have the 22 Paths now- what I have to do is place Tarot Majors on those paths. With the diagrams setting out my paths, that I scanned below- where would you put the Majors?
This in itself I might be able to offer tentative solution to (since I acknowledge there may indeed be more than one correct path-arrangement, each shedding light on the others), were it not for what follows:
That is my constraint- it starts with Aries= He- who is Aries? I do not think it is the Emperor, I think it is the Heirophant/Le Pape- Card 5. I see a pattern, so the cards just cannot go all over the place on the Tree paths, I think they must show a pattern on the diagram. My G.Grandfather was clever it seems- I like his thoughts thus far and I would like to place the Majors where he might have put them.
It is not the Emperor, I can tell you that: Emperor and Empress are happier where I put them, on equal levels (at leo and sagittary, respectively, of the wheel alef), with Justice at its proper station above (aries).

Now if you mean "Aries= heh" in the 1st sentence above, then I would tell you that it is probably based on (what I call) the exoteric arrangement using alef-bet (and SY) order, in which case I would presume that the natural alignment of alef-bet and trumps be used, with heh-the-4th-letter at IIII L'Emperor and so on [edited to say: sorry, didn't get much sleep night-before-last, yes of course, it is the Pope, and heh fifth] . . . which is best understood in the context of the rearrangement of the simples and their original phonetic symmetries. For example, putting the Emperor [edited to say: no, of course you ar right, V Pope] at aries, as this arrangement does, should immediately invoke (or evoke) the understanding that he is there because of the patriarchal bent of modernity, that is, has been placed there by an imperfect society made up of imperfect men-and-women [edited to say: and Pope, then, understood, as it is today, as patriarchal, ignoring the mother's arm which defines it as Boaz]. For originally (in bardic tradition) it was VIII Justice that held the ruler's seat (aries), with male Emperor at the hottest month and Empress at onset of winter (where Hallowe'en is), at equal levels in other words. [This pushing of Emperor back down to his proper station echos the s-z symmetry (sibilancy unvoiced-versus-voiced), wherein samekh's s sound runs down the front side of fire's triad as zayin's consonantized y-eroding-d-ending-up-as-z sound is crawling up the back of it: this symmetry is broken by the wrenching of samekh back four signs to sagittary (all four signs from [cardinal sign] capricorn to [cardinal sign] aries are wrenched back exactly four, that is, kept on the same triad), which allows heh to follow Mars's rulership from its proper station scorpio (as Covenant, or circumcision) to aries, where it hooks up with IIII L'Empereur to 'lord it over us'. [Edited to add: aries being Pope, of course, means the trump does not actually follow the path of the put-down, so to speak -- I gotta get more sleep!]]

As for my contention of there being multiple blinds in SY, consider for yourself: why in the world would they tack the chopped-up parts lefthand-righthand-leftfoot-rightfoot-cow'sstomach[according-to-Aryeh-Kaplan]-and-so-on onto the zodiac when it already encompasses the twelve stations of both seated torso and standing (fallen) Adam. In fact, the icons themselves prove this: aries/ram symbolizes a hard head, taurus/bull symbolizes a strong neck, gemini/twins symbolize the shoulders-and-arms, cancer/crab symbolizes being at right angles to 'ahead' (a head), and so on (time constraint).

Then, consider why the voiced and unvoiced equivalents never line up in any arrangement (save in Luria's path arrangement, perhaps).