Major Arcana and Six Days of Creation... opinion/insight?

Kaleidoscope Eyes

Here's a (hopefully) interesting question for those of you who may be Qabalistically-inclined. Today I was looking at some information about the "Cube of Space" glyph, and learned that the six sides of the Cube represent, among other things, the Biblical six days of Creation.

"Ah! Interesting!" I exclaimed, and scurried after my Spiral deck to pull the appropriate Majors, which I proceeded to lay out in the following order, based on the card numbering:

1st Day - 1) The Magician (Above); Hebrew "Beth"

2nd Day - 2)The High Priestess (Below); "Gimel"

3rd Day - 3) The Empress (East); "Daleth"

4th Day - 10) Wheel of Fortune (West); "Kaph"

5th Day - 16) The Tower (North); "Peh"

6th Day - 19) The Sun (South); "Resh"

The seventh day, or Sabbath, btw, is represented by 21) The World (Hebrew letter "Tav"), situated at the center of the cube.

Anyhow, it was quite enlightening to discover rather clear correspondences between the cards, the letters and the respective creation accounts in the 1st chapter of Genesis.

1st day: JHVH's initial creative act: extension of light and separation of light from darkness. The Magician... check!

2nd day: Separation of the waters. OK, I can see the The High Priestess here.

3rd day: Appearance of land, vegetation and overall growth principle. Oh yeah, this is for sure the Empress!

4th Day: The planetary and celestial bodies, marking of the seasons -- Time. Is this the Wheel of Fortune or what?!

I'll let anyone who cares to lay out the cards and compare these for themselves, along with the last three days. (As for Day 6, the Sun... well, that's when Adam was created, male and female; it's pretty straightforward to me, as is The World card for the Sabbath day.

My "problem" is with Arcana 16, The Tower, in the place of the 5th day. This is when the living creatures of the air and of the sea were made and blessed. And while the number 5 accords well with the symbolism of The Tower, I am having difficulty discerning how the dire aspect of this card can be related to the otherwise seeminglyinnocuous creation of flying and swimming creatures (literal or symbolic, whatever suits you!)

Hope I've made all this clear enough, and that someone might be up to offering an opinion and/or some insight on relation between the Tower and the 5th day of Creation.
 

jmd

In this reply, I take two considerations for granted: the first is that you are working from BOTA material (some of your earlier posts, as the very structure of the question, indicates such), and the second is that you want to restrict discussion to this framework.

The 'Cube of Space' is used in a particular way by Case and the BOTA. Also, the Hebrew letter Peh is, from memory, associated by them to Mars (this is not, of course, Kabbalistically universally the case).

One aspect of the Tower within a BOTA framework is of the impermanence of form or structures. With regards to form, each created being can be viewed as having particular forms. Through the act of creating the myriad living - and hence changing - creatures, we are reminded both that life here on Earth is but transient, and that form changes. To attempt to construct any permanent form is to be delusional, which will quickly be demonstrated through the Mars/Peh war-like de-construction.

When viewing either Golden Dawn material or ones which make use of such correspondences, it should be remembered that most authors slide from considerations made through one aspect to the next. With regards to this card, then, which they associate with the double letter Peh, which itself they associate with Mars (again, neither of these is universally accepted), there is an easy slippage from some letter/Qabalistic considerations (seven days of creation with the seven double letters) to card imagery, each of which is utilised to add to the understanding of the other.

In many ways, the tension created by the seeming paradox of the card representation and the fifth day of creation serves to accentuate the discrepancies between the creative act of the Divine, and the presumed usurpation of this role following the human presumption of 'becoming as one of the Elohim' (Cf Genesis and the Fall of ADM & HVH). The Tower of Babel cannot reach the heights of the creative act, and its form, unlike that spoken (Peh) by the Divine in its living and transient forms, will be simply demolished.
 

wetsheep1

I can't help thinking that there is a definite correlation between The Tower and the 5th day. The Tower is symbolic of the "Lightning Path" down the Tree from the Divine to the material worlds. On the Lightning Path, ya kinda hit all the branches on the way down ;) but nonethless....apparently, Plutarch therorized that lightning imparted fertility to the soil it struck.

This makes sense, then: the descent from divinity into material being, perpetually fertilized by the endless cycles of death and rebirth.

Hmmmm....

:) -- k
 

Laurel

For meditation and reflection on ideas like the correspondences between Hebrew Letters and the days of creation or the Cube of Space, I like to use the artwork of Yaacov Kaszemacher: http://www.artcnet.com/Yaacov_Kaszemacher/ARTcnet_Presents_Yaacov_Kaszemacher.html has pictures of some of his prints.


http://pws.prserv.net/leon/Tarot-articles/Jewish-Tarot.html is an attempt to create a tarot deck that offers a very interesting perspective and offers another school of thought on how and why Hebrew letters should correspond to tarot cards.


My personal view with both the Hebrew letters and tarot is that they are archetypal enough that almost any pattern or system can be explored using them, but to not expect that if a=b and b=c that a=c invariably. That's the trickyness of correspondences.

My advice is to chose the 6 tarot cards that seem to you to fit the 6 days and reflect on the other relationships these 6 cards have numerically, astrologically, Hebrew letters, etc and let your mind take things from there.

Laurel
 

Thirteen

rosicrux said:


1st day: JHVH's initial creative act: extension of light and separation of light from darkness. The Magician... check!

Don't forget that the Magician is also all about speech, about communication. "And God said 'Let there be light'" and there was light." It is that magical ability that Qubala is so interested in, creating something with a word or with writing. Communication, expressing what you mean so exactly that it becomes a reality, is the highest and greatest magic, the power of magican kings, whose word is not merely law, but truth. This is certainly related to that first day of separating light and dark.

My "problem" is with Arcana 16, The Tower, in the place of the 5th day. This is when the living creatures of the air and of the sea were made and blessed. And while the number 5 accords well with the symbolism of The Tower, I am having difficulty discerning how the dire aspect of this card can be related to the otherwise seeminglyinnocuous creation of flying and swimming creatures (literal or symbolic, whatever suits you!)

Good question. I'm in agreement with you that this one is difficult to discern. Peh means "The mouth" and we're back to the power of words--and the babble of the tower of babble where words lose their power to even communicate, let alone create. But I don't think that has anything to do with creatures of sea and sky.

So what else might it relate to? The Tower is also a card about false structures, false appearences--with the implication that there are other worlds, truer and more universal, beneath or beyond. It's about transformation though sudden insights. And about destroying false ego.

Relating to flying/swimming creatures: the dynamic of the card is always a tower trapped between the stormy sky and the stormy sea. The creation of flying and swimming creatures is a constant reminder to us humans of our limitations--and the tower is a limited structure. We can't swim like fish or fly like birds.

One might well ask, why didn't God give us fins or wings? More, why create fish and birds, which make us wish we had fish tails or wings? Our stories of mermaids and angels are little more than a wish that we did, to explore those worlds very much out of our reach. Worlds with a very, very different perspective.

I don't know that this is the real answer--likely I'm stretching it here, as I have to really reach to get to this conclusion, but *to me* this card is emblematic of that lightning bolt of realization from sky and sea. We see a fish or a bird, and that superior construct of ours, that Tower, which is our ego, our pride in being human, crumbles. We can't swim, we can't fly. And we have to work very hard, and be very ingenious in order to explore those vast worlds even a little. Vast worlds that fish and birds explore so effortlessly. It's very humbling. And when we do get a glimpse at those other worlds, very illuminating, very transforming.

Just a thought.
 

abarrach

I realize that this thread is over 3 years old, but I thought it was interesting and wanted to add my 2 cents. As to how I got here? I searched for the Cube of Space.

The first thing I thought when I read about the correspondence between the 5th day and the Tower was that on this day creatures of the sky and the sea were created, creatures that could survive the destruction of the Great Flood on their own. These creatures would not need Noah's Ark to live past the Deluge. The Tower, in this scenario, could be being destroyed by the Flood.

This also begs the question, did the Creator plan for destruction? Does relating Peh or the Tower to the 5th day of Creation indicate anything about premonition/prophesy?

I don't know... the more I think about it, the less I think it's a good theory. But it's there for anyone else who wants to add or dissect it further.