Kabbalah/Tree of Life system... and Tarot

Moonbow

Fulgour, lovely to hear from you I was hoping you would drop by. But... I may need a little guided hand through your post. :)

I've read here on Aeclectic of some who would disagree with you Aeon. Not all systems align the Minors to the Sephiroth and the paths to the Majors. I believe Wirth was one who had a different system. But I don't mean to sound negative towards your post because I asked which systems people use. I am interested in why you chose the system you did, also whether after studying the Kabbalah, the system still works for you.
 

Aeon418

Moonbow* said:
I've read here on Aeclectic of some who would disagree with you Aeon. Not all systems align the Minors to the Sephiroth and the paths to the Majors.
That's true. There are a lot of different methods out there. But what I have found is that some are more fruitful than others and are thus more widely used. Some qabalistic systems come with a wealth of material that can be studied and drawn upon. With others you are going to have to scratch around for what little you can find.

4 worlds, 10 sephiroth, and 22 paths. Take your pick how you want to apply the Tarot, but I know what it suggests to me.
Moonbow* said:
I am interested in why you chose the system you did, also whether after studying the Kabbalah, the system still works for you.
Basically I use the Golden Dawn qabalah because I have always used the Thoth deck which is encoded with the G.D. qabalistic attributions.
I've found that Tarot and Qabalah go hand in hand. What you learn about one, you can apply to the other. Studying qabalah on it's own can be very dry and arid. Using the Tarot as a pictorial symbol of the qabalistic Tree of Life is a great aid to learning. For example, contemplating the abstract qualities and meaning of a number in the four worlds is a little difficult. But by looking at the tarot you have a ready made pictorial representation. And a picture says a thousand words.

When approaching the Tarot via qabalah, the Tarot suddenly gains new levels of depth and connections that weren't apparent at first suddenly manifest between the cards. Practically anything can be applied to the qabalah, from myths and legends to symbolism and the objects of the natural world. And what you add to qabalah you also add to the tarot.
 

Fulgour

Chris Mitchell's Tree of Life

Aeclectic's own Fluffmeister has a brilliant website,
very easy going and down to earth:

Chris Mitchell's Tree of Life
http://www.southville.net/chris/

Take note of his bit of advice about:

You may find the layout a little strange - see the site map
for general details, but you won't find all my links there -
I've hidden some away in little corners, waiting to be discovered!


:) It's an Adventure

*

Lately, I'm exploring the Chakra-Connection:

Chakras, Sefirot, and Chinese thought
http://www.kheper.net/topics/chakras/chakras_sefirot_and_chinese.htm

Here's the page on Chakras from Chris Mitchell:
http://www.southville.net/chris/chakras.htm
 

Moonbow

Hi Fulgour... thanks :D

I particularly like Chris' site. My son is currently at University in Bristol (UWE), and some of the scenes are most familiar to me. I will spend some more time going through all his links, as well as the other site you have linked.

I was reading more this morning from the book I received - which incidentally was chosen by my son while we were in Bristol a few weeks ago! It seems that the more I understand about the Kabbalah, the more it seems similar in some aspects to my Reiki practices, particularly the physical, meditation and visualisation side.
 

Fulgour

pathways like ripples on a pond

I've found that simply having this around, blank,
is helpful to meditation of the possible positions.
And then with copies, I can mix and match too!
 

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Moonbow

Fulgour that is almost exactly as I drew mine! But mine was prettier with colours! :)
 

Fulgour

free associations

Cool! :) By making copies of the plain version
I can colour or mark the design many ways...
 

jmd

I once tried to write a brief explanation of the Kabalah to provide some kind of background for those interested in this subject - I'm sure my introduction leaves much out, and would perhaps rewrite it differently to the time I wrote it, at a table in a small restaurant between courses.
 

Llynn

I was introduced to Kabbalah/Qabalah through my interest in Tarot and it so happened that I started my studies with the books by WG Gray and learnt his correspondences. From there I went onto read Dion Fortune and Gareth Knight. I am now in the middle of RJ Stewart's The Miracle Tree so can't give an opinion on this book at the moment, but I do like his Tree of Life work in the Merlin Tarot handbook (not GD). I could not work with the GD system, just not into ceremonial magic or high ritual, and always went back to Gray's basic teachings! As I've got older and more confident I now work with a Tree of Life glyph which is relevant to me (mostly based on Gray's work).

You don't have to study Tarot and Kabbalah/Qabalah together - and if you study the traditional Hebrew authors there will be no correlation with Tarot cards! However, you do get the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet in four worlds with ten (not nine or eleven!) sefirot and usually 22 paths linking those sefirot, but, even so, there are various schools of thought as to which letter goes with which path.

I think you do have to read and then compare and contrast various authors (both on-line and in print) to find a system which works for you personally.
 

bradford

Two cents-
I just want to second Aeon's view of the Number-Suit to Sephiroth-World
comparison. I think that, of all the Golden Dawn and Crowley correspondences, this is by far on the stablest ground (certainly far more than the Decans to Court cards, ptooey!). And Crowley has a pretty good handle on its inner working, particularly if you start with his Naples Arrangement before going systematically through the minors in the Book of Thoth. It's an informative walk through both worlds.