Tarot and Kabbala

I will study Beanu's and Kapoore's latest posts. Meanwhile, I have been reading Parmenides, and also Kwaw's link "The Garden of Love."

What a splendid poem that fragment of Parmenides is. The initiate travels in the "chariot of the sun," guided by the Heliades, daughters of the sun (seven according to pseudo-Hyginus, 3 according to others), to the gates of Day and Night, where they confront "avenging Justice" (seems to be more like Nemesis than Dike) and he obtains entrance to the Goddess. Yes, it sounds like Tiferet to me (or maybe the Fool: These Heliades are of course sisters of Phaeton, the unfortunate one. Perhaps the sisters are better charioteers!)

Kwaw's link "The Garden of Love" is about a scene in which one couple is shown in a garden in successively advanced stages of intimacy, ending in a rather supine position. It reminded me of another image, a miniature illustrating the poem Ci Commence del Arbre d'Amours, Paris 1277, in Michael Camille's book The Medieval Art of Love. This one is of a tree, and the couple is first on the ground and then on branches, on opposite sides of the tree trunk, just like in the TofL, except that the man is on the left and the woman on the right (as in the Gnostic hierarchies). Here is Camille's description:

"In the lowest level he kneels in supplication but the lady refuses even to look upon him, turning away with one hand on her heart. Still kneeling in the scene above he makes the gesture reminiscent of feudal homage we have seen before. On the third level he has reached the third stage of embrace or physical contact. Both are seated ona horizontal surface, a crucial equality that announces the possibility of intercourse, and he reaches out to touch her shoulder. Her own outstretched arm reciporoataes, moving now not as below with measured, ritual gestures but with impetuosity." (p. 122)

Then on the top level, substituting for the obvious next scene, the consummation, we have the god Amor, presiding over all with his bow in one hand and his arrows in the other.

There are only 7 figures here, but if we include the trunk as one (Tiferet), the roots as another (Yesod), and the ground as a third (Malkhut), we would have 10. (Or we could imagine another pair of branches below Amor, left out for modesty's sake.) It is highly unlikely that the illustrator knew anything of either Kabbalah or Gnosticism--they are all similar manifestations of a common tradition expressed in different ways.

This post is for Beanu. It is to explain the connection I see from the Gnostic version of Binah, Ennoea, to the Divine Comedy and the Star card. Bear in mind that this word "Ennoea," meaning "Thought," for the highest divine feminine Aeon, was left in Greek in the Latin translation of Irenaeus that was available during Dante's time.

At the end of the Purgatorio, Dante is confronted with two streams of water, and to enter Paradise he has to drink from both of them.

"Here Lethe, as upon the other side
Eunoe, it is called; and worketh not
If first on either side it be not tasted."
(Purgatorio XXVIII, 130ff. at http://www.online-literature.com/dante/purgatorio/28/.)

9. Eunoe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunoë.


Lethe, of course, is the water of forgetting (Lethe). The other, as it turns out, enables him to remember what he had just forgotten, as well as everything else he has seen more clearly. So it is Mnemosyne, as extolled in the Orphic Hymn to Memory:

"Come, blessed power, thy mystic's mem'ry wake
To holy rites, and Lethe's fetters break."
( http:www.theoi.com/Text/OrphicHymns2.html#76.)

But why didn't Dante just called it Mnemosyne? Everyone would know what he meant. Why did he use the name of an obscure river nymph? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunoë).

Jane Harrison (Prolegomena to Greek Religion, at Google Books) suggests that somehow Dante knew the name given to the stream in Orphic rituals, Ennoea.
This name turned up in a gold tablet found in an ancient grave:

Oops, I didn't mean to end that last post. I pressed the wrong key.

As I was saying, Jane Harrison thought Dante's word resembled a word in a verse on a gold tablet:

"But so soon as the Spirit hath left the light of the sun,
To the right-----------------------of Ennoia.
Thou must man--------------------being right wary of all things.
Hail thou who has suffered the suffering.
This thou never suffered before.
A kid thou art fallen into milk.
Hail, hail to the journeying on the right.
----Holy meadows and groves of Persephoneia."
(Harrison p. 584).

Dante just changed the vowels, Eunoe to Ennoia, Harrison says. Fair enough, although we don't have any record of anyone in Dante's time knowing about "Ennoia." But Harrison might not have known the other thing, the similarity of Eunoe to the Gnostic Ennoea, which would have been common knowledge for anyone who read Irenaeus on heresies. Dante's couldn't use that word, of course, because it would imply a sympathy for heresy, and his book would be banned.

Ennoea or Grace is the start of a series of feminine emanations, all on the "love" side of the series, a stream of grace and forgiveness of sins, just the ticket for admission into Paradise, as it is in the Zohar, which says, after referring to Venus, that all punishments are annulled above there.

The other stream, Lethe in Dante and the one headed by Only-Begotten or Will in the Gnostic systems, is that which sends one back to a new incarnation, as in Plato's Myth of Er in the Republic. It is the stream of punishment and judgment: you haven't learned your lesson, so back you go to try again.

This is not to deny that Dante was also thinking of Orphism. The two streams, issuing from two springs, was known from Pausanias, describing an initiation into an ecstatic state for prophecy purposes:

"He is led by the priests, not at once to the oracle, but to certain springs. Here he must drink what is called the water of forgetfulness, in order that he forget everything he has hitherto thought of. Then he drinks from another water, the water of Memory, that he may remember what he sees below..."
(http://www.theoi.com/Titan/TitanisMnemosyne.html)

But there is no "Ennoia" here. Another interesting thing for Beanu is the password the soul must give in order to be allowed to drink from the all-important spring of Memory, on the gold tablets. "I am the son (or child) of Ge (Earth) and starry Ouranos (Heaven)." This is a sentence that occurs repeatedly in Paul Christian, too, in his analysis of the tarot trumps (Paris 1863). He might have gotten it from the gold tablets already translated--or more likely, from Hesiod, who uses it.

Well, more later. I have to go.

Jane Harrison's book, which I quoted from above, is on-line at Google Books.

Now for the relationship to the Star card. It goes in 3 stages. Stage 1 is the Cary Sheet, the first known proto-Marseille deck (many sites on-line), c. 1500. It has a naked lady pouring liquid out of 2 jars into one body of water below her where there are 2 fishes. There are 4 small stars and 1 large star above her, plus 1 star on her shoulder. She is both Venus and Aquarius. We know she is Venus because the 5 small stars are the 5 planets (excluding Sun and Moon), and 1 is on her shoulder. And of all the various goddesses, Venus is the one most often presented nude. That she is Aquarius is indicated by the 2 jars and also the fishes, which would indicate the constellation of Pisces next door. How Venus got to be Aquarius is a story for another time, relating to other details on the card as well as events of the day. Several feminine or feminine-looking Aquariuses survive from that time period, but not earlier or much later.

Stage 2. In the Hall of Psyche, Mantua, in one corner of the large mural is a scene of a nude young lady, probably a nymph, pouring liquid out of 2 jars into a crack in the ground. A stream seems to be flowing downhill toward us. Behind her is the figure of a bearded old man with two similar jars, pouring liquid into one side of a large lake. This fresco is the product of Giulio Romano, c. 1527. Vitali has a reproduction of it in his analysis of the Star card at http://trionfi.com/0/i/c/17/v/, fig. 7.

Vitali says that what is being illustrated is a scene from the Odyssey analyzed by Porphyry, in an essay then only recently translated into Latin, "The Cave of the Nymphs." The scene is of a cave with two doorways, one of which goes to the immortals and the other back to earth.

Vitali has the right idea but the wrong reference, as there are no caves and no doors in Romano's fresco. What I think is being represented is the two springs of the Orphics, the two streams of Dante. The front one goes to the River Lethe, the back one to the Lake of Mnemosyne. Those who drink of the first go back to earth, the others to the immortals.

Stage 3 is the Noblet Marseille card, c. 1650. This has the same one maiden as in the Cary Sheet, but with 7 small stars, all above her. She is still Aquarius, feminine as a leftover from the Cary Sheet. What is interesting is that one jar flows into rivulets on the ground, like the River Lethe in the Hall of Psyche, while the other flows into a large body like a lake. I submit that the two bodies of water are the River Lethe and the Lake of Memory, and the two jars are their sources, like springs. They also correspond to the two sides of the Kabbalist Tree, streams of energy flowing down, one of Judgment, sending souls back to earth, and the other Love, forgiving sins and raising them to immortality.

So if you want to get off the Wheel and join the immortals, remember to say that you are a child of Ge and starry Ouranos! Even better, have it written down on a gold tablet in the grave with you so you can look at it when the time comes.

Hi Mike,
I'm lost by your entries. I think you are trying to cover too much ground.
I would like to return to the proposition of reviewing the Pope card. I have given an entry on the Pope card as I would analyse it according to Pseudo-Dionysius. How would you analyze the picture information on the Noblet Pope card?

OK, Kapoore, the Pope it is. First, about your post. I totally agree that the two acolytes are candidates for initiation, the Pope-figure is blessing the initiation that is commencing, and that many other cards feature the same candidates. I would say they are the two young people on the Lover card, the horses on the Chariot card, the two animals going up and down on the Wheel, the two heads on the Death card, the two minions on the Devil card, the two figures on the Tower, the two jars (or maybe liquids) on the Temperance and Star cards, the two dogs on the Moon card, the two figures on the Sun card, and the two figures facing us on the Judgment card. In fact, I think one or both is on every card: but let's not go that far yet.

As to what the difference is between the two acolytes, well, that is a question to raise as we go along, starting with the Pope card. On the other cards, blue and red are often used to distinguish them, also light and dark. Pseudo-Dionysus might be a start. I have not yet read the relevant letter that you cite. I have read the section in Celestial Hierarchies. I don't know if the translation I have is the same as yours, but here is how the Luibheid translation goes:

"2. Someone fired by love of transcendent reality and longing for a sacred share of it comes first to an initiate, asks to be brought to the hierarch, and promises complete obedience to whatever is laid upon him. He asks him to take charge of his training and of everything connected with his future life. The other is moved by the desire for the man's salvation but when he compares the human situation with the heights confronting the enterprise, fright and uncertainly lay hold of him. But his goodwill eventually overcomes him and he agrees to do what is asked of him, and he takes him to the one to whom the hierarchal title is given.
3. The hierarch is delighted with the two men. It is like a case of the lost sheep carried on the shoulders... (393C)

The translator adds a footnote after "given": "This longing and humble approach through a sponsor are [sic] interpreted in 400BC 25-40. Regarding the sponsors of infant candidates for baptism, see EH 7 586BC."

It seems to me that Ps-D is not talking about two candidates for initiation, but rather one candidate and his sponsor. The sponsor hesitates, because he wonders whether the one who approached him is capable of the enterprise, given the human condition. Probably he also fears the responsibility that he would encur as sponsor. The candidate is like a sheep, the sponsor the one carrying him. This is one difference between Ps-D. and the Pope card, where the two acolytes seem to be on the same level vis a vis the Pope-figure.

The text goes on to give a ritualistic question and answer session between the hierarch and the postulant: "..he kisses the sacred table and he comes toward the man standing in waiting and he asks him why he has come.
5. He, filled with the love of God, replies in accordance with the instructions given him by his sponsor." (393C-D) Then:

"When the postulant says "yes" he places his hand upon his head and marks him with the sign of the cross. He then instructs the priests to enroll the man and his sponsor." (396A: I don't know why after two sentences of 393D total the text suddenly jumps to 396A.)

By "enrolling," I think what is meant is that one is enrolled as candidate and the other as sponsor. Here we have a second difference between Ps-D and the Pope card: the Pope-figure on the card simply makes a papal blessing sign, without approach the candidates. It is not even clear who he is blessing, as his face and eyes are turned to our right, as though looking off the card. Later versions of the TdeM show an arm reaching behind the two candidates. The Conver even has a knife in the hand of that arm. It is pretty clear in these later cards that the Pope-figure is looking at that figure, of whom we see only the arm and hand. That off-card person is probably the initiation-master, or one of them. I don't know much about initiations, but in Mozart's Magic Flute, based on Masonic rites, the hierophant accepts the two postulants (Tamino and Papageno) and other priests perform the initiation. Also it is made clear that death is one possible outcome.

After that, in EH, the candidate's garments are removed and he is made to face west and to renounce Satan. Then comes a profession of faith and unction with oil, followed by a baptism in water. Then:

"The priests then bring the man back to his sponsor, to the one who had brought him for introduction, and together they reclothe the man and bring him back once more to the hierarch. Using the most potently divine ointment he makes the sign of the cross on him and proclaims him ready to participate in the sacredly initiating Eucharist." (396D)

So far I cannot find much in common betwen Ps.-D and the Pope card, except a very standard procedure for initiation. It looks more Masonic (not that I am saying it is that) than Ps.-Dionysian. I will continue looking at your exposition when I have read the 9th letter.

I'm back. Well, I'm an idiot. The hat is a clerical one, worn by someone already initiated. So that one could be the sponsor, and the hatless one the postulant, the uninitiated.

The 9th letter passage is about the contrast between the initiated and the uninitiated. That also fits. The initiated is on the left, with the hat, the uninitiated one on the right. Maybe that one will never be initiated. Maybe he will view the same outward signs as the other, but retaining them impassively, and only as "simple and interior images which have the shape of the divine." The other is the "passionate element of the soul," which "honors and rises up toward the the most divine of realities by way of the carefully combined elements of the representations," in other words complex symbols. The first uses logic, argument, and "imposes the truthfulness of what is asserted"--i.e., believe it or else. The other "by means of a mystery which cannot be taught, puts the soul firmly in the presence of God." The one is concerned with the visible, the other with the invisible. The one is from a "social and legal perspective," the other considers a theme "purely." One is in a human mode, the other transcendent. One reaches to broad humanity, the other is "kept free from the contamination of the mob." . Yes, exoteric vs. esoteric. It is like Tamino and Papageno, in a way: one is already initiated, and only needs the outer tests to prove it; the other will never be, even though he participates in the same trials.

I doubt if this contrast is original with Ps-D, but he certainly puts it well; it could certainly have influenced not only the Pope card but the whole deck. "Blue" fits "impassive"; red fits "passionate," as in Plato's rational and passionate horses.

Ps.-D. was much referred to throughout the 15th-17th centuries. Ficino wrote a whole book on him, and Pico refers to him several times in his Theses. I will try to put a few quotes in another post.

kapoore said:

So, to summarize my argument, I believe that the scene on the Pope card with the two cleric attendents is really the "hierarch" beginning the initiation of the two candidates--one who comes from the outer path and one from the inner. The inititates comes before the hierarch and "The hierarch is delighted with the two men." (EH 393C)

Click to expand...

Hi Kapoore,
I can handle all of that.Excellent stuff.

You've probably heard my theory, so I'll just recap as quickly as I can.
Although my viewpoint comes from a completely different direction, it seems to be compatible.

My interpretation of the Hierophant comes from the relationships with other cards as follows:
The Hierophant is to the Emperor,
as the High Priestess is to the Empress,

and the Emperor is the God (possibly Saturn)
and the Empress is the Goddess (possibly Gaea).

So the Hierophant is the priest to the male god.

I'll just summarise to say that the male attitude tends to build hierarchies.
"I'm the leader - you'll do what you are told. I'll initiate you if I see fit.
You must promise to do whatever I say" etc. (incorporating some of your ideas).
The Catholic Church is of course a perfect hierarchy, so the Pope is a perfect example of a Hierarch (but not the only hierarch).

I liked Mike's comments about the knife at the back - thats initiation all over. I must look up that image.

B

Mike - Star

Beautiful stuff, as usual. Would you like to rewrite my book for me?

Ok, the star is venus, and the two streams to forget and to remember, are analogous to death of the old life, and the beginning of the new life.

This does however mean that the Star is now on the Ascent, and I will have to figure out Temperance on the descent.

Or does it !?!?

When we incarnate (descent) we forget our past lives, and begin to accumulate memories of the new one. It is in the afterlife that we must cross the Lethe.

Your various legends seem to be revattempting to reverse that fact.

This is a bit like the Death/Rebirth sequence problem that I have.
Whether descending or ascending, you must die then be reborn, so the sequence of these to swaps depending on whether you are descending or ascending.
Similarly, the two streams must be drunk in the order of forget then remember, whether descending or ascending.
Is that what Dante meant? I found that hard to decipher.

In my system, the sequence goes
Devil/Hod/Mercury - a need to let go of the old "evil" emotional baggage that we accumulate through life,
Then the Star/Netzach/Venus
Then comes the Wheel/Tipharet/Sun.
This to me relates to the magical process of "rotation of the elements" which is a training process to balance one across the four elements - i.e. across all polarities. Justice is also here, and we are on the center pillar, so its all about balance and centre-ing.

So, we move from the emotional baggage, to the star, where we forget all that, then to the wheel where we are retrained in a balance rational way (Plato), and we remember the new stuff, forgetting the old.

Hows that?
B