Why did Eliphas Lévi link Le Mat with Shin?

Teheuti

Le Comte de Mellet explains the order thusly,

But like the Egyptian writing which reads to the left or the right,
the twenty-first card, which was not numbered with an Arabic numeral,
is nonetheless also the first, and must be read in the same way in
order to understand the history; as it is the first in the game of
Tarots, and in the species of divination that one performs with these
images.

Lastly, there is a twenty-second card without number as without
power, but which increases the value of that which it precedes; it is
the zero of magic calculations: it is called the Fool.

Huck

Teheuti said:
It's wonderful to have this original of Lévi's text; thanks for the link. The images are so clear. The description of the Fool says, "Day of abortion and failure in all things". And, yes, he's numbered 29, like your Momas card - which is suggestive that Lévi may have been familar with it.

However, your contention was that Momas was next-to-last, before the 30th card and therefore a justification for Lévi's placement of the Fool. Whereas, in Lévi's list 29 is the last number.

...

... yes, I know ... I wrote this for the comic of the situation. You wrote: look in the book. I wrote: Okay, I look. I searched the book, looked in the book, and the first thing that I saw, was the 29. ...

Also, this listing is a specialized one. It is not meant to represent the Tarot in its Kabbalistic form which is found a later chapter that Waite entitled "The Book of Hermes". The 29 items are, in Waite's translation, "The special characters of all days of the moon, distinguished by the twenty-two Tarot Keys and by the signs of the seven planets." [The days of the moon are 28+ (sometimes called 28 days and one-out-of-time).]

From full moon to full moon you have 29.53 days, so something between 29 and 30, which is solved in moon calendars by alternating months with 29 and 30 days. So I analyzed 29 = the second last in the 30-elements-system, which seems to have been used in the Poilly-II system.
Well. Look into I-Ching ... 29 Kan = Water = Moon. 30 Li = Fire = Sun.

If you speak of the time, when the moon has made a 360° circle, then it's less, 27.32

Well, in Moon astrology systems are often used 28 animals as "houses or places" . Here is one of them, Chinese:
http://astrolog.swifthost.net/astrology_book_script/chinese_astrology_moonhouses.html

Now here is what de Gébelin said about the card order, and he had played the game as a youth!

NO, that's wrong. He learned about it 1776 ... not very young.

Teheuti

Huck said:
NO, that's wrong. He learned about it 1776 ... not very young.

We are both partially right:

"I had occasion to see it when I was extremely young, but I did not have any knowledge of it."

Madame la C. D'H. had recently arrived from Germany or Switzerland. Antoine Court grew up in Switzerland. At that time, the game of Tarot was almost unknown in Paris.

Huck

yes, if you say so, it will be right.

DDD write at page 173, that Belgian Tarot had a XXII, Piedmontese a zero, Tarot de Marseille nothing, and Eliphas Levi placed it between XX and XXI and often he had XXI for Fool and XXII for World (page 173). And I might add since today, "and very seldom a 29" ....

... btw did you note, that the book (II) has 22 chapters? And book I also. ... Surely not accident.

But somehow the carnivalesque Momus has more sympathy ...

Teheuti

Huck said:
... btw did you note, that the book (II) has 22 chapters? And book I also. ... Surely not accident.

Sometimes I forget these things are not common knowledge. Yes - most of Lévi's works are built around the structure and concepts found in the Tarot and the chapters are a deliberate notation of this.

Huck

If it are 22 chapters, then it has a focus on 22 .... his theme might be Tarot cards, but also 22 letters.And maybe something others. What do you think, what has the larger meaning, 22 letters or 22 Tarot cards, for Western civilization ?

I think, that Book 1 has nothing about Tarot cards?

And the word Tarot appears not very oft in this text of book 2.

Actually the title promises something about magic and about rituals.

Teheuti

Huck, I suggest that you read Lévi. When I was young I was disappointed by how little he mentioned Tarot. Now I see it in the majority of his writing from 1856 (Vol 2) on. To see it involves learning his specialized vocabulary and following where he uses the same terms and concepts. It takes time and many re-readings.

If you read the "Clefs Majeures et Clavicules de Salomon" (see prior links) then you'll see that he does not separate the letters and the cards. He is the first to describe the Tarot in this way, and it marked a major turning point in incorporating Tarot into the Western Magical Tradition - in some ways with an even greater impact than de Gébelin (at least from the pov of the Tarot of Ceremonial Magic).

Mary

kwaw

Teheuti said:
Also, this listing is a specialized one. It is not meant to represent the Tarot in its Kabbalistic form which is found in a later chapter that Waite entitled "The Book of Hermes". The 29 items are, in Waite's translation, "The special characters of all days of the moon, distinguished by the twenty-two Tarot Keys and by the signs of the seven planets." [The days of the moon are 28+ (sometimes called 28 days and one-out-of-time).]

OT: Although his schema for the days of the moon are somewhat different to Levi, we may note that Yeat's too places the fool as the last crescent:

Hunchback and Saint and Fool are the last crescents.
The burning bow that once could shoot an arrow
Out of the up and down, the wagon-wheel
Of beauty’s cruelty and wisdom’s chatter-
Out of that raving tide-is drawn betwixt
Deformity of body and of mind.

The Phases of the Moon W. B. Yeats

For Yeats it is the 28th - but for Levi the 29th, that is the dark of the moon, between the last crescent and first crescent moon - neither beginning nor end - but in this lunar cylcle it does come before le bateleur (the first crescent moon - but not after XXI the world for the planets intervene, a bit like Etteilla's fool considered as 78/0 the end of the minors, beginning of the majors).

kwaw

kwaw said:
21. Shin. The sensory, flesh. blindness, matter left to itself, eternal life.
Hieroglyph, The Fool.[/i]

This phrase, which has always given me cause to pause in that 'eternal life' seems odd in relation to the other keywords, is different in different editions : in Chapter 22 of Volume II of Dogma and Ritual Huck links to 'the eternal life' is actually with Judgement, where it makes more sense, and 'material life' (la vie matérielle) is with the fool alone, which is also more consistent with the other keywords of the sensory and the flesh.

But in another edition (Rituel, 1861 chapter called Le livre d'Hermès) it says:

Le sensitif, la chair, la vie éternelle

I have not found together those given by Waite in any one edition as yet. . .

(Waite translates 'sensitif' as 'sensitive', rather than 'sensory' as I have.)

Huck

Teheuti said:
Huck, I suggest that you read Lévi. When I was young I was disappointed by how little he mentioned Tarot. Now I see it in the majority of his writing from 1856 (Vol 2) on. To see it involves learning his specialized vocabulary and following where he uses the same terms and concepts. It takes time and many re-readings.

If you read the "Clefs Majeures et Clavicules de Salomon" (see prior links) then you'll see that he does not separate the letters and the cards. He is the first to describe the Tarot in this way, and it marked a major turning point in incorporating Tarot into the Western Magical Tradition - in some ways with an even greater impact than de Gébelin (at least from the pov of the Tarot of Ceremonial Magic).

Mary

Well, perhaps another time.

...

... There's plenty of new stuff relating to 15th century, actually a revolution of NEW data, and I'm puzzled about the disinterest of the public for these topics. Yawning emptiness. But actually these topics are my preference. So I've enough to do to get this avalanche organized ...