Starting with the Mother Letters on the Middle Pillar

CallaEthropica

This is potentially a really stupid question, my apologies if that's the case (I hold my hands up as a novice), but I can't seem to find the answer no matter what search terms I use.

I've been chasing my tail on the Kabbalah/Tarot issue for a while now and I'm getting nothing but dizzy. I'm trying to "pin" the Tarot to my Tree of Life in a way that feels/looks right to me, having found no comfort with any of the well known methods. All of the history, the many debates on the subject - albeit very interesting in their own right - seem to take me further from any kind of resolution. Almost as soon as I started my research I discovered there would be no "correct" answer and, much further down the line now, I realise there will be no "perfect" answer either. In trying to find the most suitable compromise for my own purposes I've gotten thus far...

1) I have the three mother letters on the verticals of the middle pillar, such was my instinct before I knew any "better" and I just can't seem to shake it off. I had high hopes for Achad's restored tree because of it, but found I couldn't wholeheartedly embrace the rest of his design. Reading this forum also made me consider the mother letters on the three paths that join Keter, but I've filed that consideration away for the moment.

2) It seemed obvious to me that the seven double letters should go on the remaining verticals to make up the other two pillars and the horizontals between them.

3) The seven double letters were surprisingly easy to place when I looked at the planetary attributions (incidentally, I'm using the Sepher Yetzirah planetary order, which the Complete Magician's Tables finally sold me on)...but I'm finding the diagonals more troublesome.

My question is twofold, really: Can anyone point me in the direction of any similar trees/methods of attribution that it might help me to study and/or provide any inspiration/thoughts on how to proceed with the diagonals?

Um, or threefold: Am I missing something that makes all this totally "wrong" somehow, even just for my own purposes?
 

bradford

Hi
I haven't found much encouragement here for doing the same thing as you, for the same reasons, but the system I came up with has worked well for me for thirty years. And yes, I used the Sephirotic/Planetary attributions to locate the Doubles. And the twelve have a visible order too. I think if you are trying to find some meaningful order in the Hebrew alphabet that it will not be in its linear sequence. I'm not a big fan of Qabalistic numerology. It does make more sense to use the 3-7-12 breakdown, which is at least a Sepher Yetzirah doctrine, although to say that this has anything to do with good linguistics or phonetics is also a bunch of hooey. I'm currently working with a slimmer version of the International Phonetic Alphabet on the Tree, which is a much better and more natural fit.
The only published presentation of my system is found in the last several pages of my Yijing work at http://www.hermetica.info The data there still needs to be plotted onto the Otz Chayyim to really see the symmetries.
 

venicebard

bradford said:
I think if you are trying to find some meaningful order in the Hebrew alphabet that it will not be in its linear sequence. I'm not a big fan of Qabalistic numerology.
Yes, without a grounding in the more ancient (or at least more fundamental) bardic numeration of letters, one can discover little in Hebrew numeration of letters to 'hang one's hat on'.
It does make more sense to use the 3-7-12 breakdown, which is at least a Sepher Yetzirah doctrine, although to say that this has anything to do with good linguistics or phonetics is also a bunch of hooey.
The phonetic explanation extant in the Sefer Yetzirah is spurious, I agree. Yet the underlying phonetics of the 3-7-12 division is quite reasonable once understood, though it does not (obviously) originate with Semitic.

The 3 mothers are the most obscure, as they are based on the Logos AUM, with U replaced (i.e. shushed) by shin; since the spelling of the Logos is not commonly known, this remains opaque to most. Indeed the elemental attributions of shin=fire, mem=water, and alef=air and their placement at head, 'belly' (i.e. loins), and trunk are derived from the bardic tree-alphabet and thus opaque to all who deny the relevance of said alphabet to Hebrew.

The 7 doubles are so-called because they are the stops and thus divide time in two: the 7 represent the stations of the bottom half of the round of the surroundings (whose upper half is unmanifested sky) and correspond to the mythical Cauldron: its two rims or limits or horizons (outer and inner) introduce discontinuity, making the sounds thereon stops. Reysh is rolled (guttural) and thus a stop, albeit a light (and sometimes repeated) one. The simples that are stops in Hebrew (see below) would seem to muddy the waters, yet upon deeper understanding their becoming stops relates directly to the human condition.

The 12 simples form the complete or continuous round and are thus originally continuous sounds. The letters lamedh-nun-samekh-tzaddi-cheyt (originally the top half of the round) stand in place of bardic L-N-F-Ss-H; and the letters vav-ayin-qof-teyt-heh-zayin-yod (originally the bottom half of the round) correspond to bardic U-O-Q-Aa-E-I-Ii, of which only Q (replacing A in the sequence once A is made a mother and put at the hub of the wheel) is a stop, though because it represents the interrogative consonant it is not a stop in German (w, pronounced v), Old English (hw), English (wh), or Armenian (h).

But even taking qof and teyt as stops, there is a profound explanation for them becoming so. Originally virgo-libra, qof-teyt are therefore opposite pisces-aries, the break between the end and beginning of the broken-and-extended zodiac (where signs beyond libra go down the legs to the feet). This zodiac-of-the-body is the third of Ezekiel's four wheels and thus corresponds to the third element, water: the radii of the third and fourth wheels represent a reversal or reaction to radiative fire and air; so the discontinuity of the broken-and-extended zodiac projects itself onto the signs opposite where the discontinuity occurs.

In Hebrew itself, of course, these arguments fade to obscurity. But I did want to point out that the situation is not as hopeless phonetically as it at first appears. The explanation is complicated because of the time elapsed since these letters were formed and because of the overlay of much that was meant to obscure what was once held such a close secret that the understanding of it was completely lost (forcing me to reassemble most of the pieces of the puzzle myself).
 

HermeticQBLA99

I know you said you didn't agree with any of the familiar methods, but if you haven't already read it, a great book for Tarot specifically with Qabalistic views in mind, I'd recommend Robert Wang's "The Qabalistic Tarot." It's a great book that talks about the path attributions using four popular decks (Marsailles, RWS, Thoth, and Wang's own GD deck.)
 

t.town.troy

I went through a "rectify the QBL and tarot" phase.
I went with the Mother letters being the horizontal paths, Fire, Air, Water, top to bottom.
The Double letters, the vertical paths, something about "rising on the planes".
And the Single letters took the diagonal paths, in somewhat an involution/evolutionary order, top to bottom counterclockwise.
It was an interesting experiment.
 

t.town.troy

HermeticQBLA99 said:
I'd recommend Robert Wang's "The Qabalistic Tarot."
I wholeheartedly agree, it is a great textbook.
 

Αρσιησισ

I personally use the arrangement espoused by HOGD, but presence of 3 Mother letters, 7 Double letters, 12 Simple letters, & 3 horizontal paths, 7 diagonal paths, & 12 vertical paths is certainly a convenient coincidence, no?

729
 

t.town.troy

Αρσιησισ said:
I personally use the arrangement espoused by HOGD, but presence of 3 Mother letters, 7 Double letters, 12 Simple letters, & 3 horizontal paths, 7 diagonal paths, & 12 vertical paths is certainly a convenient coincidence, no?

729
I'm right there with you on this.

I wonder if the GD version is, as most old occult ideas, a blind.
Maybe the coincidence of how the letters fall on the paths is a nudge in the "right" direction?

There are definitely merits to both orderings. I tend to go with the GD version in general also; but for a different point of view, I'll use the Luria tree with this set of correspondences (that I previously posted, it helps keep the two systems from totally mixing together for me).
 

lucifall

CallaEthropica said:
My question is twofold, really: Can anyone point me in the direction of any similar trees/methods of attribution that it might help me to study and/or provide any inspiration/thoughts on how to proceed with the diagonals?

Hello CallaEthropica,
Very good challenge, that you want to make an own correspondence of the cards to the tree of life and try to make other connections and layouts than the familiar ones. I also feel "problems" with existing and well known correspondences.

This undermentioned site has the same input/idea (3 mothers horizontal; 7 doubles the vertical lines en 12 diagonal lines for th signs of the Zodiac)
It is a very complete site, where you probably will spent hours.

see the chapter:
http://www.psyche.com/psyche/tarot/RevivedTarot/index.html
Enjoy it!

Light Lucifall
 

graspee

t.town.troy said:
I wholeheartedly agree, it is a great textbook.

Does anyone know where I can a new copy of the Robert Wang in the UK for a reasonable price? Amazon.co.uk is quoting me 65 UKP!

I really want to get a new copy rather than 2nd hand as I'm very sensitive to smoky smell that you often get on 2nd hand.