Pardon my ignorance...

[BodhiSeed]

If Waite disagreed with the system of aligning the tarot trumps with the Hebrew alphabet, why did he use so many of the the Hebrew letters as symbols in many of his cards? Or was this PC Smith's idea?

Bodhran

[Fulgour]

In his brief pamphlet The Key to the Tarot (1910)
later republished in 1911 as The Pictorial Key it is
very significant to see that Waite puts "The Fool"
THREE TIMES between cards 20 and 21. Why so?

"Alphabetically" that means Aleph = The Magician.

[BodhiSeed]

So basically Waite was not opposed to the Hebrew letter/trump pairings, but didn't agree with the Golden Dawn's way of doing it? And if the Magician is Aleph, what letter was the Fool paired with?

Bodhran

[Fulgour]

Oswald Wirth's 22 Majors, created in 1889,
and reprinted in 1927 were the model here.

The Fool is "paired" with the letter Shin.
Shin is letter 21 ~and this is a mystery.

No one can explain why The Fool would be
Shin and not, properly, Tav (as letter 22).

I think it goes back to an old superstition
just tucking The Fool between XX and XXI.

[Fulgour]

...of worth noting, the "Wirth-Knapp"
Majors images may be found here...

http://www.green-door.narod.ru/halltarot.html

[Qofcups]

Originally Posted by Fulgour

Oswald Wirth's 22 Majors, created in 1889,
and reprinted in 1927 were the model here.

The Fool is "paired" with the letter Shin.
Shin is letter 21 ~and this is a mystery.

No one can explain why The Fool would be
Shin and not, properly, Tav (as letter 22).

I think it goes back to an old superstition
just tucking The Fool between XX and XXI.

I am currently reading Rober Place's book, "The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination" and in his discussion of Levi's tarot he says, "...Levi did not place the Fool Before the Magician; instead he chose to align him with th eltetter shin, the next-to-the-last letter. This would result in the Fool coming between Judgement and the World, as he appears in Waite's book. Perhaps Levi did not want to give the Fool, a madman, a place of importance at the beginning or end of the sequence."

This seems to support the idea of superstition, and Waite seemed to be very influence by Levi's work.

[BodhiSeed]

Fulgour,
Thanks for the link to the images of the Knapp-Wirth -- definitely worth waiting for!
QoCups,
Just got Place's book in the mail, and I'm looking forward to digging into it!

Bodhran

[Umbrae]

Shin, is the 21st letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

It is the letter of the Mezuzah. The Mezuzah is placed (and also translates to) “Doorpost”. Blessed and/or when coming in and going out (613 Mitzvot).

The Fool, is shown as being on the road…crossroads and doorways are both the realm of the trickster character; and are also important in initiation rites.

As I’ve said before – if the Fool is #21, he can serve as a ‘Chorus’, a pause point in the divine story, an ending – a set of instructions (as in, “Arise, go and…(salute, give, perform service)).

The World then is similar to the title page of a book, or name of a grade, the result of the change, and as Tau, your mark.

Waite was fond of his secret society rituals, wrote a few, and it makes sense from here…mind you this IS speculation, but he always said that stuff was to be understood by the initiated.

Just a thought – don’t get excited…

[Teheuti]

Waite writes in his introduction to Stenring's _Book of Formation_ (1923):
The correspondences of Lévi are, however, arbitrary." And, "Now, it is to be observed that the Fool = 0 in the Tarot sequence, but the letter Shin = 300 in the numerology ofthe Hebrew alphabet, so that in Lévi's arrangement the correspondence is to this extent voided."

He also acknowledges that the Golden Dawn version offers a strange analogy. Stenring places the Fool with Ayin. By this time, Waite had conceptualized a completely new and different Major Arcana for use in his Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, placing the cards are totally different paths on the Tree, although he doesn't mention this in any of his public articles.

However, when Waite was Chief of the Independent and Rectified Rite (1910), he used the Golden Dawn system as shown in a teaching paper on "The Tarot and the Rosy Cross" in which he identifies the High Priestess as being on the path of Ghimel. That would place the Magician on the path of Beth and __?__ on the path of Aleph?

If that's not perfectly clear, he says in the same paper: "“For the beginning of the Zodiacal arrangement there is authority in the Cipher Rituals, while the allocations of the Tarot cards throughout the paths of Yetzirah being founded also on the Ciphers it follows almost certainly that the Fool is at the summit of the Tree, because it has not been placed at the foot according to the usual procedure.” The path at the summit of the Tree is that of Aleph.

It seems to me that Waite worked with what was expedient for the task at hand - while staying open until he had devised his own ceremonial deck (called the Trinick deck) which reorders and renames many of the cards.

Mary

[BodhiSeed]

Umbrae, I'm definitely not on Waite's "initiated" list. Reading Waite's works (though I'm sure he was an intelligent man) is like slogging through a field full of molasses on a winter morning for me. Too bad I can't channel Pamela C. Smith and get her take on it all.
Mary, Umbrae, and Fulgour, I do appreciate your patience in trying to decipher Waite's reasoning for this babe in the woods. It is wonderful to have such wisdom to enrich my tarot study.

Bodhran