Golden Dawn Etz Chaim

So I've been looking back around at the Golden Dawn arrangement of the Tree of Life trying to reconcile the differences between more traditional Kaballah and the GD arrangement, and it seems... Somehow less than an intuitive rearrangement of the Etz Chaim. On the GD tree, the paths seem to be more or less arbitrary, arranged primarily in alphabetical order. Take a look at more traditional views of the Etz Chaim, and the letters are arranged precisely due to the type of letter they are, each type having a specific way of traversing the tree, and serving a specific function in the transference of energy throughout the tree. Not to say that the GD arrangement does not refer to the transferal of energy, just that the letters are not arranged on the paths in accordance with their form and function in the hebrew language. For instance, we can see the three mothers according to the GD are, respectively, arranged from Kether to Chokmah (A diagonal path), from Gevurah to Hod (A vertical path), and from Hod to Malkuth (Another diagonal path). However, there are 3 horizontal paths within the tree, would it not make more sense to place them on the horizontal paths, therefore showing the three mothers as a reconciliation of opposing energies, serving to balance them. This makes more sense when we consider that within hebrew, there are the 3 mothers, 7 doubles and 12 elementals. On the tree, there are 3 horizontal paths, 7 vertical paths, and 12 diagonal paths. Each of these has a different experience in traveling the paths, and different ways to do it. For instance, with the 7 double letters on their vertical paths, one would meditate upon the letter while pronouncing one of the two possible ways in order to ascend the path, and the other in order to descend the path.

I do tend to agree with the older arrangement of the paths which is used in the GD system. I think it makes more sense that the connection between the 3rd plane and the 2nd plane does not have any direct paths. There's a reason that Daath is a pseudo-sephira and could not find a place upon the tree, but I find that the designation of the letters are difficult to reconcile. It was a complaint of Crowley's that the placement of the letters was arbitrary and did not seem to fit numerically. This makes even less sense when we consider the importance of number in the kaballah. Why would the letters (Which are also inherently numbers) be placed entirely randomly with no consideration for the meanings of the numbers at all?

Another thing which I have less of a problem with, but still is a strange difference, is the designation of the pillars of force and form. Within the Sepher Yetzirah, it is fairly clear that the Pillar of Chesed is associated to Mem (Water) and the pillar of Gevurah associated to Shin (Fire) with the pillar of mildness being the balance of Aleph (Air). It appears repeatedly within the different chapters of the Gra version especially (The long version goes into even more depth to explain this, but it is widely considered the inferior version). The reason for this is that Chokmah consciousness is considered to be beyond form, and water is formless, flowing according to the form it is contained within. The paths are said to be as canals where the water of Chokmah flows into the rest of creation. As Binah designates form, it is compared to the canals which allows the formless water of Chokmah to permeate reality. I understand that in the GD system, Water is receptivity and Fire is the active forces of reality, but this primarily relates to the tetragrammaton and the four worlds. The three pillars are more indicative of the three primary elements (As earth condensed from water.) The pillars are not really designated in association with the three directly, but Chokmah is stated as mem (Water), Binah as shin (Fire) and Kether as aleph (The breath which desides between them). Since these are the heads of the pillars, the rest of the pillars also are typically found to follow this designation. This is supported by the statement "Mem hums, Shin hisses, and Aleph is the breath which decides between them." It is said that when one wants to bring the aspects of Chesed to come to bear on one's self or another, one pronounces the Mem. When one wishes to bring the elements of Gevurah to someone (For instance, so that an enemy should be judged harshly for their deeds) then one pronounces the shin. When one wants balance to permeate their life, one should simply breathe therefore pronouncing the silent aleph. This is also intuitive: When one is in good spirits they tend to hum, when one is confronted with a foe and his/her deeds then one hisses, and when one is in neither you will simply breathe.

There are also more discrepancies, but I think these do a good job of illustrating the differences. So the question is, why the differences? More importantly, why do the differences seem so unintuitive, especially in relation to the main system. Could the principles of hermeticism not be displayed properly within the traditional system, and if not, why use it as a framework for the whole thing? The system as it stands makes perfect sense, and seems to operate in a superior way (At least for me) when using the system in a practical way. Why the changes, what was the purpose, and what does it bring that the traditional system did not sufficiently do?

Thank you!
~ST

Nevermind, some of the questions still apply, and so I would love to know any more anyone has to share, but I have found a good amount of information in the kabbalah forums. Yay! I get to sift through more information. How I love study so utterly immensely!

A convincing case can be made for each variant of the path assignments. I think many of those of the Golden Dawn and Thelema traditions are simply satisfied that their system is satisfactory for their needs within the context of their traditions. I am aware of some of the variants considered in Aryeh Kaplan's Sefer Yetzirah book, but I have not delved very deeply into the matter. I'm still in the process of assimilating the traditional GD assignments as explicated by P. F. Case in The Tarot, and The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order, and further amplified in The Book of Tokens. So I suppose I'm okay with the status quo in this regard and not Kabbalistically adventurous.

Eh, I guess I've always been more connected to Kabbalah itself, and the Hermetic views on it has primarily been more of an afterthought to me overall. I do connect to Hermeticism in relation to the tree in some respects, but not in others. I think I'm more of a middleman much of the time. I'm certainly no traditionalist though, and though I quote Aryeh Kaplan liberally in the above post, this is primarily due to my inability to phrase/translate better than what is found within his translation/commentary. My studies of the gra/lurianic trees are not as extensive as my studies of the kircher tree, but I have been looking into and studying the other trees for about a year now (mostly through meditation and repeated study of SY, I cannot find much more other than the zohar, which I'm not diving too far into again until I feel satisfied with my SY studies... Might take a while ). They just seem to make more sense to me when coupled with my current understanding of the universe/god. I'm currently thinking about developing my own system currently, founded on the basis of Shin-1:3, Mem-1:2, Alef-2:3. I'm doing my work on it currently, and it may or may not result in a coherent system, but the basic ideas I'm operating off of make a lot of sense currently. It would also be roughly based on SY, but is very different conceptually from any tree I've seen so far. Seems like the GD was, as you said, more interested in fitting the tree to their systems (and/or vice versa) in a coherent way than to any real sense of hisorical/kabbalistic accuracy. I would love to hear a convincing argument for the kircher from a non-GD/Thelemic standpoint though. I'm fairly familiar already with the argument from those worlds, but considering it as a system divorced from that, I would be curious to understand its merits.

Well, The Golden Dawn had a different agenda than traditional Jewish Kabbalists, their view of creation was different. They also used Kabbalah for different purposes. Whether their, or anyone else's, view is true or not is anybody's guess. Point is, they had a story to tell, and their Tree does this, in my opinion, very well. Still, that's a subjective opinion, and I haven't made a study of the traditional Tree, so I really can't comment if it is more correct or not. All I can say is that it doesn't seem arbitrary to me, and study of it does reveal a pattern and symmetry and even logic. Paths that parallel each other have semantic connections, sometimes in very surprising ways.

In the end I think it is a question of comfort, belief and results.

For me, the Hermetic Tree gradually came into focus after working with its interactions with the GD Tarot correlations. The Tree did seem arbitrary at first, but not after I had sufficient familiarity with it. This was not the result of brainwashing, as I was not affiliated with any esoteric organization.

For me, the "big picture" helps put things in perspective.

The first Hermetic, Neoplatonist, Kabbalistic synthesis was done by Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, and Reuchlin (for example), the last two excellent Christian Hebraists who studied with Jews.

Then came a rupture. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation led to this kind of Christian Kabbalism going underground, since both sides of the religious conflict rejected "Judaizing" influences. Kabbalism itself was radically transformed in the 16th century by Isaac Luria. The underground, ecumenical prisca theologia, which for both sides of the Christian divide at least provided a bridge that transcended dogmatic wars, emerged in the Rosicrucian Manifestos at the beginning of the 17th century.

The second synthesis of Christian Kabbalah, in the late 17th century, comes with Knorr von Rosenroth and Francis Mercury van Helmont, on the Protestant side, and Athanasius Kircher on the Catholic side. By the beginning of the 18th century, Rosicrucianism, predominantly Protestant, had mixed with political secret societies and emerged in Freemasonry, which attracted both Protestants and Catholics and taught ecumenism.

By the beginning of the 18th century a second rupture was complete - that of "Natural Philosophy" (Science) from the body of speculative philosophy that it had belonged to in the 17th century, including the Neoplatonic, Hermetic and Kabbalistic synthesis of the previous two centuries. From then on the scientists and the mystics parted company.

The mystical Prisca Philosophia had its swan song in Antoine Court de Gébelin's Monde Primitif (he was a Protestant). By the end of the 18th century, it was already anachronistic. For our purposes, however, he is the crucial link - into his vast assembly of reconstructions of the Original Language and common roots of all mankind, he swept up the Tarot as not only an example of this Prisca Philosophia, but its core text. It appears as an afterthought in the context of Monde Primitif, but of course it had huge ramifications.

The third synthesis comes with Eliphas Levi, a Catholic, whom I consider a kind of orphan from the main traditions of Freemasonry and Roscrucian groups, both of which had sectarian and political allegiances (the former under political persecution in Catholic countries). He single-handedly reinvented magical philosophy and Christian Kabbalah, and put Tarot into the middle of it. From his influence comes the culmination of the third synthesis, the Golden Dawn, which brought together the Christian Kabbalism of both sides of the Catholic (Kircher - hence the Tree of Life) and Protestant (Rosenroth's translations of Kabbalistic texts) divide. In the heart of these two stands Levi's philosophy of magic, and of course Tarot, which is just a branch of the esoteric philosophy of this third synthesis.

It is probably no coincidence that it happened in England, where the Anglo-Catholic movement was in full swing, and Celtic-Christian mysticism was having a revival.

So the Tree of Life of the GD represents a grand synthesis and compromise of three and a half centuries of Christian Kabbalistic growth and rupture. The Golden Dawn closes the circle.

First Synthesis - Renaissance
Rupture (religion) and evolution
Second Synthesis - 17th century
Rupture (science) and evolution (Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry)
Third Synthesis - 19th century
Levi and Golden Dawn

Ross G Caldwell said:

For me, the "big picture" helps put things in perspective.

First Synthesis - Renaissance
Rupture (religion) and evolution
Second Synthesis - 17th century
Rupture (science) and evolution (Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry)
Third Synthesis - 19th century
Levi and Golden Dawn

Click to expand...

If for convenience we put Ficino, Pico and Reuchlin as the first intellectual generation of the Christian Kabbalah, of synthesis, then Agrippa and Paracelsus are the second and Postel the third generations, of rupture (due to religious polarization; Hebrew becomes a polemical issue, with grammar teaching being split from references to Kabbalah to justify learning it); Giordano Bruno and Valentin Andreae, probable author of the Rosicrucian Manifestos, are representatives of the fourth generation, of synthesis. The fifth generation, of von Rosenroth and Kircher, continues the synthesis, but with the sixth, at the end of the end of the 17th century, comes the second rupture, with science leaving the fold (no authors in the "prisca philosophia" of the early 18th century jump to mind, I'm sure someone will inform me soon enough); the prisca philosophia goes to ground again. The seventh generation is Court de Gébelin. Both generations six and seven are generations of rupture, with the prisca philosophia trying to find its place in the new ideological world. The eighth generation seems to have no genetic (i.e. direct intellectual connection, instruction, or teaching) connection with the seventh. Eliphas Levi is an orphan, a lone genius, who nevertheless represents a generation of synthesis, since he recombines all that came before and presents it in a new form fit for the modern age. He and his followers in the new synthesis, including the Golden Dawn founders up to Crowley, constitute the eighth and ninth intellectual generations since Ficino. So people since the Second World War, which resulted in a new ideological world, constitute the tenth and eleventh generations. Have they and we continued the synthesis, or is it rupture? I think it is rupture. If rupture is defined as rejection, by choice or compulsion, of the previous synthesis, then the rejection by the postwar generations of the authority of esoteric or secret teachings - by their very publication the secrecy has been destroyed - as well as the tendency of people to try to return to the sources or create their own systems, or to reject all systems althogether, along with the attempts of writers in the prisca philosophia tradition to keep up with science (appeals to Quantum Mechanics is a favorite), then I think it is fair to characterize the last two generations as generations of rupture, rather than synthesis, of the tradition of Christian Kabbalism begun in the 15th century.

It's history, and history is hindsight. So if the prisca philosophia survives - and I am sure it will - for another hundred years, or two hundred and beyond, what will historians find in this, our current, generation? They will find a lot of Crowley and Waite and the centrality of Tarot to our generation's esotericism, they will see the Golden Dawn and Levi, and from there they will see Kircher and Postel, and from them they will see Pico and Ficino. Those are representative of the three groups of what I call the generations of synthesis. So what author will dominate the years 1950-2010? Who, in one hundred years' time, will be seen as the representative of the great synthesis of the esoteric tradition in the post-World War Two generation? I myself think there is no one who has made their mark upon the tradition in these latter years in the same way that Crowley, Levi, Kircher, Andreae, Postel, Reuchlin, Pico and Ficino have. Therefore I am confident that in one century, if a future historian looks back and uses the model of generations and my characterization of cycles of synthesis and rupture, that he will characterize our generations, the two post-war ones so far, as generations of rupture in the tradition, a time where it was searching for a new relevance, a new model that will justly be called the fourth synthesis.

I agree with you conceptually in many respects Ross. I think that the GD systems of correspondences and the connections they represent are utterly important to the generations which have been able to hold them. I still think we are in a synthetic time coming from my current perspective on your system of thought on the matter. We have to realize that occultism has always been... Well, occult. There have never (in my understanding) been an immense amount of esotericists and mystics, and even in the time of the Golden Dawn, it was essentially anathema to be associated with "Magic". Victorian England was, at least partially, an extension of the "Age of Reason" and the "Industrial Revolution". It's not like it was some golden age of acceptance from my understanding. We are currently existing in a time where there is still research going on, but I think the true achievements of this generation are yet to come. I mean, have you SEEN some of these kids that are growing up right now? I think we are entering a period which will be filled with immense insight, not a century after this last "Synthesis".

LRichard, I'm not necessarily immensely studied in GD/Crowleian, but it HAS been a major system of study for me over the last several years. I see the beauty in it, and regardless of its original merits it has developed into one of the most brilliant, beautiful and cohesive systems I've ever had the delight of coming across. I just can't help but to wonder, what if they HAD used the Gra or Lurianic Etz Chaim as their basis rather than the Kircher arrangement. I mean, as a system primarily removed from the meaning which the gd attached to it, what are its base merits? Compared to both of the other trees, it just seems lackluster.

Closrapexa, all systems, I think, are more or less lent merit based on their practical usages and personal connections which are typically interrelated at the very least, possibly identical. More or less "Correct" is primarily a matter of what works for you and is secondarily what works for others in these subjects. I agree with your last statement immensely. I guess I misrepresented my views in my original post. The GD system of correspondences is incredible, and the systems they built onto their foundations are immensely insightful. When I said "GD Etz Chaim" in the first post, I meant "Kircher Tree".