Various planetary attributions...

[thantifaxath]

I don't know if this has been posted before but :
Version/Letter Bayt Ghimmel Dallet Kaf Pay Raysh Tav
Suares Saturn Jupiter Mars Sun Venus Mercury Moon
WoC Saturn Jupiter Mars Sun Venus Mercury Moon
Short Ver Saturn Jupiter Mars Sun Venus Mercury Moon
Long Ver Saturn Jupiter Mars Sun Venus Mercury Moon
Saadia Saturn Jupiter Mars Sun Venus Mercury Moon
Zohar Moon Mars Sun Saturn Jupiter Venus Mercury
Gra Moon Mars Sun Venus Mercury Saturn Jupiter
Donash Saturn Jupiter Mars Sun Venus Mercury Moon
Shiur Komah Saturn Jupiter Mars Sun Venus Mercury Moon
Golden Dawn Mercury Moon Venus Jupiter Mars Sun Saturn

Adapted from Aryeh Kaplan, Sepher Yetsira, 1990 and other sources

i do believe there are more variations floating around internet land..
Makes you wonder if there is a correct one ..
Also planets on the tree , a few variants there also , jeez can't folk just agree. How am i gonna be satisfied with my tarot planet/tree/letter/sephiroth attributions when those in in the 'know' don't seem to 'know' ..i suppose thats what I get for being a layman.

[jmd]

That there are various Hebrew double-letter planetary attributions has certainly been mentioned a number of times in various posts, but I do not recall any specific enumeration of the many possibilities as even found in various versions of the Sefer Yetzirah within these boards.

For the sake of explaining why the most common form is likely to be the most common, the order is simply the ptolemaic order, and reflects the apparent increased motion of each planet against the background stars:

Saturn - 'moves' the slowest against the 'fixed' stars;
Jupiter - next in relative fixity;
Mars - moves more quickly through the zodiac;
Sun - takes exactly one year;
Venus - moves through the zodiac more quickly than any of the above;
Mercury - quite an eccentric fellow, really;
Moon - talk about changeable!

The order of the double letters in the Hebrew alphabet ('double' because of their dual vocalisation - eg, bet as plosive 'B' and fricative 'V') are hence simply allocated the planets in order:

• B - Saturn
• G - Jupiter
• D - Mars
• K - Sun
• P - Venus
• R - Mercury
• T - Moon

Given that even different renditions of the Sefer Yetzirah were inconsistent with letter attributions, and that the above order did not seem to 'match' well the cards against which the GD attributed Hebrew letters, the planetary correlation was altogether altered.

Personally, and outside of any Tarot consideration, my personal preferred letter-planet correlation is according to the Raavad, and as given above, with the following also important attributions:

• 2nd - B - Saturn - life
• 3rd - G - Jupiter - wisdom
• 4th - D - Mars - peace
• 8th - K - Sun - grace
• 17th - P - Venus - wealth
• 20th - R - Mercury - seed
• 22nd - T - Moon - dominance

[thantifaxath]

see that order that you prefer , i like that to , it goes reasonably well ( understand , not ideal )with the tarot cards if put in the order of the steele manuscript...you know, aleph as magician etc...

[venicebard]

I have been stumped by this problem, recurrently, for decades. I only recently came up with even a tentative 'correct' version of Greek vowels to planets. Still, some small light might be shed on the matter by the thread I am about to post concerning Ezekiel's wheels, explaining how I think the seven doubles became so.

Shalom.

[thantifaxath]

I think the answer may lie in added dimensions.
I haven't explored this enough to give some solid theory for you to get your teeth into , but i believe if you throw the tree of life out the window and take the cube with a pinch of salt the differing attributions make no difference ....but as i say , need to work more on this theory , out come the math books...!!

[venicebard]

(Adding dimensions is the last resort of a failed physics.)

If I had to come up with a set of correlations today, I would probably say:

D-dalet-duir-oak-Jupiter (XII)
T-tav-tinne-holly-Mars (XI)
K-kaf-coll-hazel-Mercury (VIIII)
[thus far Graves]
R-resh-ruis-elder-Venus (XV)
G-gimel-gort-ivy-moon (X)
P/F-fehsofit-fearn-alder-Saturn (VIII) [also Graves]
B-beyt-beth-birch-sun (V) [also Graves]

In defense of R, Venus as morning star is called Lucifer or Phosphorus, the former corresponding to its trump, XV The Devil, the latter to its atom type, phosphorus (atomic number 15), and this would make G-gimel-gort-ivy the moon BY PROCESS OF ELIMINATION.

[Dave's Angel]

I was having a look at this myself (esp. as someone mention Gk vowels and planets). Has anyone got "The Greek Qabalah" by Kieren Barry as it touches on things like this.

There is one point where he expresses his misgivings that Resh belongs with double letters. He believes that someone wanted to fit letters to planets, found themselves one dual letter short, and strained the pronunciation of Resh to scrape a seventh dual letter.

*However*, Israel Regardie, in "A Garden Of Pomegranates" (p.56), gives a table in which there ARE seven letters with dual pronunciation, and Resh ISN'T one of them. He lists the doubles as:

Beth [B / V]
Gimel [G / J]
Daleth [D / Th]
Vav [V / U / O]
Kaph [K / Kh]
Pe [P / F]
Shin [S / Sh]

Based on that I came up with the following brainstorm:

B= MERCURY - Mercury as Magician, his dual nature, dual shape of caduceus
G = MOON - Lunar and feminine nature of High Priestess, G is a variant of the (feminine) C. {The Romans adapted G from C, and Crowley believed C to suggest many typically feminine things}
D = VENUS - The Empress. Fourth card / fourth letter. Isn't this Jupiter then? Perhaps, but Kaph matches better, and in the Tree the path of Kaph transmits Jupiter to Venus, hence Venus has same liberal nature.
V = SATURN - Saturn as Hierophant, threefold pronunciation of Vav equates with the 3 of Binah. Vav the nail = fixed, static nature of Saturn.
K = JUPITER - Both rule Wheel of Fortune, Kaph has four variants (with and without dogesh, ordinary and final forms). Kaph is open hand, symbol of Jovian liberality.
P = MARS - The blasted Tower, the devouring mouth, the plosive, sudden sound of P.
S = SUN - Shin as Fire, Judgment card as resurrection of which the rising sun is also a symbol (Malachi 4, Egyptian and Inca religions). Identity of Sun and S in other alphabets e.g. Runic.

What does everyone else think? Does anyone have any joy working with a revised set of letters?

[venicebard]

Originally Posted by Dave's Angel

Has anyone got "The Greek Qabalah" by Kieren Barry as it touches on things like this.

I read it quite carefully: interesting work. He does, however, make the common error of mistaking Gematria for Kabbalah.

There is one point where he expresses his misgivings that Resh belongs with double letters. He believes that someone wanted to fit letters to planets, found themselves one dual letter short, and strained the pronunciation of Resh to scrape a seventh dual letter.

If he said this, he does not understand the original rationale behind reysh: it is double because it can be guttural, as in Hebrew, or rolled on the tip of the tongue, as in Arabic.

*However*, Israel Regardie, in "A Garden Of Pomegranates" (p.56), gives a table in which there ARE seven letters with dual pronunciation, and Resh ISN'T one of them. He lists the doubles as:

Beth [B / V]
Gimel [G / J]
Daleth [D / Th]
Vav [V / U / O]
Kaph [K / Kh]
Pe [P / F]
Shin [S / Sh]

This is spurious. The doubles were originally the stops, voiced and unvoiced: B-P, D-T, G-K, and R, rolled R being considered a repeated stop, though it ALSO doubles as the other non-nasal liquid that pairs with L to signify right and left in Indo-European, and this has the deeper effect of linking the doubles to the solar or right channel of the breath and the simples to the lunar or left channel. [Alef and ayin, sort of glottal stops, were originally (and in Greek) the vowels A and O. The stop teyt is th in Greek (not a stop) and AA (double A), evidently, in bardic tradition (which the primary ancient alphabets all sprang from to begin with). The stop Q or qof, the Q of bardic tradition (dropped in eastern Greek, retained in western, whence Latin), is the interrogative consonant, hence not always a stop: it is wh in English (from Old English hw), w in German, and h in Armenian. English, of course, has Latin Q as well, as in the word question.]

Furthermore, linking all this up with tarot requires more than just lining Hebrew up next to the trumps offset by one (or not) and correlating straight across. For tarot itself also arises out of bardic tradition: trumps use the numbers bards referred to letters as, not those of Hebrew, as is readily apparent from the fact that bardic numeration goes 0-16, with 17-21 easily and straightforwardly recoverable (having been kept secret), while Hebrew goes 1-9, then 10-90 by tens, then 100-900 by hundreds. The doubles correlate as follows, in calendar order but with R restored to its proper original station, libra (Irish names in parentheses):

Dalet, 12-oak (duir): LePendu (oak = sacrificed hero).

Tav, 11-holly (tinne): LaForce (holly = martial discipline, what turns many little pricks into one big one).

Kaf, 9-hazel (coll): L’Hermite (hazel = wisdom gathered unto itself, ‘in a nutshell’).

Reysh, 15-elder (ruis): LeDiable (elder = to burn admits devil into house, according to English superstition).

Gimel, 10-ivy (gort): LaRoue deFortune (ivy = wandering in search of something).

Peh, 7-whitten, or water elder (peith): LeChariot (this tree is obscure, as it should be since this letter stands for the poetic/prophetic mysteries themselves, symbolized as a chariot—the Merkavah—in esoteric tradition, its runic form being the rune cup or rune bag on its side after having thrown runic dice for divination, which mimic speech or runes issuing from MAN’s rune bag, his mouth, which the Hebrew peh pictures, its old Semitic form being the ear the words go to).

Beyt, 5-birch (beth): LePape (birch = blessing or cleansing, the clean slate with which the year is born in the first or birch month, which starts at winter solstice).

[kwaw]

Originally Posted by Dave's Angel

*However*, Israel Regardie, in "A Garden Of Pomegranates" (p.56), gives a table in which there ARE seven letters with dual pronunciation, and Resh ISN'T one of them. He lists the doubles as:

Beth [B / V]
Gimel [G / J]
Daleth [D / Th]
Vav [V / U / O]
Kaph [K / Kh]
Pe [P / F]
Shin [S / Sh]

Based on that I came up with the following brainstorm:

Vau is not so much a double letter as a matronis lectionis, it is sometimes used, as Yod and He for example, as a vowel as well as a consonent [thus the Greek gnostic transliteration of YHV as IAO]. If you intend to add vau to the list, then why not 'yod' and 'he' too, giving you nine 'double' letters [or 10, if you wanted to include resh].

Kwaw

[Fulgour]

Originally Posted by thantifaxath

i do believe there are more variations floating around internet land..
Makes you wonder if there is a correct one ..

Just by looking out your window you will find
according to their distance from the Earth:

Moon II
Venus III
Mars IIII
Mercury XI
Sun XVII
Jupiter XX
Saturn XXII

Beginning with Beth=Moon you may find these work "Naturally!"