Tzaddi is not the Star
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@Escarabaj said
"I know BOTA has a scheme called the Tarot Tableau, where the Fool is taken out, leaving 3 rows of 7 cards in consecutive order. The Emperor comes early on (obviously, #4) and is interpreted as an early stage of development.
Why would the Thoth tarot not relabel the Emperor's card number as 17, and the Star as 4? Isn't that only fair, to keep with the order of Path attributions? Weren't the card numbers of Strength and Justice swapped in the original tarot?"
Thelema has a similar tableau - in fact, it's the document that, I suspect, gave PFC the idea for his.
It's in Liber Tav, where the Hebrew letters Aleph through Shin are in three right-to-left rows and the whole is subsumed within the Tav. Comparisons to the 'hold Aleph out, and right left-to-right' BOTA variation are quite fruitful.
Your question cuts right to the root of a basic misunderstanding. You are asking Why aren't the Tarot card numbers kept consistent with the Hebrew letter sequence? That was a hard one for me, too, until I realized that in the whole of Tarot's history this was never the case except when Waite and Case separately tried to shoehorn it into being by reversing the numbers on cards 8 and 11. Other than with Waite and Case forced-fixes, for centuries 8 has been Justice/Libra (etc.), and 11 has been Leo/Strength (etc.), and that already breaks the pattern.
The necessary conclusion is that the two sequences tell a different story. The Tarot trump numbers tell of one sequential story (usually taken 0 throgh 21); the Paths tell a different sequential story (usually taken Tav through Aleph).
Additionally, each card has two numbers - its Hebrew letter and its face number - and these together communicate certain doctrines about the card. To give simple examples, with The Emperor, both 90 (Tzaddi) and 4 (face number) describe the same idea: a square. With the Star, 5 (Heh) represents a pentagram and 17 (face value) is coded to a traditional form of the whirling svastika.
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JAE,
That was such an excellent answer.
In L.V.X.,
chrys333 -
@Jim Eshelman said
"Other than with Waite and Case forced-fixes, for centuries 8 has been Justice/Libra (etc.), and 11 has been Leo/Strength (etc.), and that already breaks the pattern."
That line of reasoning cuts no ice with some TdM aficionados, who are insistent that the old image of Justice is a representation of the Archangel Michael and therefore Leo. And the Strength card is a balance of opposites working togther and therefore relates to Libra. That way there would be no disturbance of either the Tarot card sequence or the Hebrew alphabet. (Given that Heh and Tzaddi keep their old places too.)
I prefer the Justice/Libra, Strength/Leo correspondence, but I can also see how it works from the TdM perspective as well.
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@Her said
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@Jim Eshelman said
"Other than with Waite and Case forced-fixes, for centuries 8 has been Justice/Libra (etc.), and 11 has been Leo/Strength (etc.), and that already breaks the pattern."That line of reasoning cuts no ice with some TdM aficionados, who are insistent that the old image of Justice is a representation of the Archangel Michael and therefore Leo. And the Strength card is a balance of opposites working togther and therefore relates to Libra. That way there would be no disturbance of either the Tarot card sequence or the Hebrew alphabet. (Given that Heh and Tzaddi keep their old places too.)
I prefer the Justice/Libra, Strength/Leo correspondence, but I can also see how it works from the TdM perspective as well."
Well, personally I don't give a fig whether it cuts ice with them. My job is to deliver the teaching and explain the system.
What is TdM?
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@Her said
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@Jim Eshelman said
"What is TdM?"TdM - Tarot de Marseilles."
Ah. Thanks.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"The necessary conclusion is that the two sequences tell a different story. The Tarot trump numbers tell of one sequential story (usually taken 0 throgh 21); the Paths tell a different sequential story (usually taken Tav through Aleph)."
This has long been a source of befuddlement and bewilderment to my benighted mind. In the first sequence, the Fool is the unenlightened soul at the beginning of its long journey, and the World is the "Crown of the Magi", the reward at the end. But in the second sequence, you begin with the World, where it then represents the material world or the base lead to be turned into gold, and the Fool is the highest manifestation of spirit before it blinks out into Union with God. I have a hard time reconciling the two views.
@Jim Eshelman said
"both 90 (Tzaddi) and 4 (face number) describe the same idea: a square"
How do you get a square out of 90?
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@Jim Eshelman said
"... in the whole of Tarot's history this was never the case except when Waite and Case separately tried to shoehorn it into being by reversing the numbers on cards 8 and 11. Other than with Waite and Case forced-fixes, for centuries 8 has been Justice/Libra (etc.), and 11 has been Leo/Strength (etc.), and that already breaks the pattern."
Oh, and maybe this is the place to record an observation I made the other day. (I'd call this my two cents, but probably this is worth no more than one cent.)
In the Vision and the Voice, LIL, there is a paragraph about the tarot (which, to be sure, a footnote in my edition calls "quite spurious, a vague and false reflection of the true voice") beginning with the words, "Thou shalt laugh at the folly of the fool." This paragraph puts Strength in the position 8 and Justice in position 11 (counting the Fool as zero).
It also partitions the trumps into a group of 8 (0 - 7) a group of 9 (8 - 16), a group of 4 (17 - 20), and the World at the end.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"Well, personally I don't give a fig whether it cuts ice with them. My job is to deliver the teaching and explain the system."
Really? I find it more rewarding to go after the Truth of things, rather than just deliver another's teachings (that is, without any care if they carry Truth or not).
I myself as well do not find Crowley's teaching, nor your regurgitation of it, very enlightening on this matter. Here is a bit of a comment on Crowley's order:
First note that there is a flaw in logic to assume two Hebrew letters are out of place. Nuit states “All these old letters of my Book are aright; but Tz is not the Star.” To switch the two letters of Heh and Tzaddi of the Hebrew alphabet around, such as to put Tzaddi in the 5th place and Heh in the 18th place is logically incompatible with the statement “All these old letters of my Book are aright” portion of the verse, as by so doing two letters are misplaced and thus not “aright” by definition. One can superficially get around this by sticking with the common serial progression of the Hebrew Alphabet, and switching their corresponding Tarot attributions to where Heh = Aquarius and Tzaddi = Aries. The two options are:5 = Heh = Key IV The Star = Aquarius, & 18, 90 = Tzaddi = Key XVII The King = Aries, or
5 = Heh = Key XVII The Star = Aquarius, & 18, 90 = Tzaddi = Key IV The King = Aries.*The first assigns Heh to Aquarius as Key IV The Star, then assigns Tzaddi to Aries as Key XVII The King. This does not seem sensible to me as now the common order of the zodiac is out of place as it unfolds through the Hebrew letters, the first zodiac sign being now Aquarius as Heh rather than Aries. Also now Aries is stuck in between Capricorn and Pisces, which seems out of place to me.
*The second assigns Heh to Aquarius as Key XVII The Star of the Tarot, then assigns Tzaddi to Aries as Key IV The King. This enables the Tarot to retain its sequential order of traditional names, but one is still assigning Heh to Aquarius and Tzaddi to Aries. Thus Key IV The King of the Tarot is assigned to Tzaddi, which is just incongruent with the place value positions of the Tarot compared to the Hebrew alphabet.
Both of the above attribution sets skew either the common order of the Hebrew alphabet or the traditional Tarot order, and I maintain that each must logically fit over each other according to place value. So if we accept that “all these old letters of my Book aright” implies the Hebrew alphabet is in its correct alignment to place value, the only option within Crowley’s vein of thought is to switch the traditional Tarot attributions where Aquarius becomes Key IV in the 5th place as Heh and Aries beomes Key XVII in the 18th place as Tzaddi (again if we use my interpretation of the Tarot as an Alphabet Order that must overlay the Hebrew Alphabet).However as I above detail (in my original posts), I deny that this is the logical intent of the verse in the first place: that Nuit is rather implying that the Tarot name of Tzaddi = Aquarius is not “The Star,” not that any attributions need switched. To recap briefly I think the English names are what Nuit is referring to, and that Tzaddi as Aquarius is "The Sun" as Qoph as Pisces is "The Moon," with Resh as Sun being "The Star." The sequence has a nice flow to it:
THE SUN = Aquarius
THE MOON = Pisces
THE STAR = SunThus I switch the common Names of Keys XVII & XIX for my preferred solution (as well as others as contained in my Liber DCLXVI).
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@Wizardiaoan said
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@Jim Eshelman said
"Well, personally I don't give a fig whether it cuts ice with them. My job is to deliver the teaching and explain the system."Really? I find it more rewarding to go after the Truth of things, rather than just deliver another's teachings (that is, without any care if they carry Truth or not)."
Obviously there is an interrelationship. But we likely have different jobs. Mine is to deliver a specific body of teachings to accomplish a particular, predictable set of results.
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Speaking of which, Eschelman, any chance you'll take a crack at a follow up book which details Crowley's writings on, about, and for the grades 8=3 and up?
I understand that work in the highest grades of the A:.A:. system might be more secretive (?), but Crowley has a bunch to say on the grades scattered throughout his writings, (like the bit about a person being able to attain the level of Magus in his system and how that works within the structure of the current Aeon as he defines it), and I really appreciated your work and effort to provide a reference source and interprative piece which has helped me to better grasp the lower/middle grades... so I think we'd all benefit if someone with your inner knowledge put together a piece for the higher grades. Crowley can be tough, especially because his ideas developed over time, and because he wrote sooooo much that bits about a magus are scattered over this liber, that book, and these diarys, etc. Maybe even include The Urn??? etc.
For the Ips-I-missed, you could include his bit from his autobiography, etc. and maybe give an interpretation on why he wasn't telling anyone but Leah (was it?)... and what it might mean... and how the Fool Atu might imply it.
I really enjoy your "blue book", and would be more than happy to shell out some hard earned dough for the companion piece?
So...
any chance? Make some money and some people happy
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@gmugmble said
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@Jim Eshelman said
"The necessary conclusion is that the two sequences tell a different story. The Tarot trump numbers tell of one sequential story (usually taken 0 throgh 21); the Paths tell a different sequential story (usually taken Tav through Aleph)."This has long been a source of befuddlement and bewilderment to my benighted mind. In the first sequence, the Fool is the unenlightened soul at the beginning of its long journey, and the World is the "Crown of the Magi", the reward at the end. But in the second sequence, you begin with the World, where it then represents the material world or the base lead to be turned into gold, and the Fool is the highest manifestation of spirit before it blinks out into Union with God. I have a hard time reconciling the two views."
This is hard to go into in a brief response, but the following may help:
There is a model common in Western occultism, wherein a Path of Incarnation is seen as descending curve which is complemented by a Path of Return. Like all models, it's important with this one to remember that "the map is not the terrain." In the present case, the two-phase idea ("down and back") is actually pretty misleading.
It's misleading because both phases are continuous. It's actually all a continuing process of incarnation, which only seems to "circle back" because the story's point of view changes.
Unconditioned spirit incarnates, i.e., veils itself in progressive densities. (There are several different ways to say this, of course, but I'm sure you get the idea.) At some point in the process it not only has formulated matter (as known in Assiah), but has begun to evolve that matter where it can contain primitive levels of consciousness. The process continues, the matter becoming progressively more sophisticated so that it can contain progressively more sophisticated levels of consciousness. At some point in the process, the bare trace of consciousness inhabiting the matter becomes self-regarding and deludedly thinks of itself as a separate being - which is useful, because this accelerates the process of the original Aleph-idea progressively incarnating more deeply.
The goal is to create a construct in Assiah sufficiently sophisticated that it is capable of housing and actualizing the entirety of the original consciousness. But, during the process, the point of view changes in the story and is told from the angle of the projection. Each of the Paths, from Tav upward, represents the opening of a matured and strengthened lower vehicle to incarnate a higher band of consciousness.
But, all the way through, this is really the continuation of the originally unconditioned spirit extending itself into denser manifestation with the goal (one way of saying it) of eventually "fitting it all in."
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@Jim Eshelman said
"both 90 (Tzaddi) and 4 (face number) describe the same idea: a square"How do you get a square out of 90?"
A square is a 90° angle.
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@Scarecrow said
"Speaking of which, Eschelman, any chance you'll take a crack at a follow up book which details Crowley's writings on, about, and for the grades 8=3 and up?"
I made the decision, in writing The Mystical & Magical System of the A.'.A.'., not to do that. It would have been easy enough to write the chapters, but it would have been really bad idea to write them. Here are some of the reasons:
- There is, admittedly, some difficulty in meaningfully expressing the particular states etc. of those grades. This is just a matter of writing craft, of course, and could have been overcome for the most part, so it's a lesser reason; but it's a consideration.
2.The chapters on 8=3 and up would only have been of use to someone who was already a 7=4 and had already undertaken the practices and completed the tasks already laid out in Chapter 11 of the book. Yet such a person wouldn't need those chapters. They would already have everything they needed, and I didn't want to write just a theoretical work for those who didn't need it.
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As a sub-part of (2), the next stage past 7=4 is Babe of the Abyss. The nature of that grade is so individual that mostly I'd have had to leap right over it (punny imagery intended), and gone on, with a gap, to 8=3. That's not a very good model for the book.
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One of the greatest points of silliness (I might say idiocy) in Thelema for a long time has been the tendency of people to claim "crossing the Abyss" or equivalent - when they obviously haven't the slightest clue. I don't want to contribute to this tendency in any fashion by putting down words that some Ruach-laden ego could repurpose to claim his (it's pretty much always "his") achievement of this step. Remember, "By their fruits and nuts shall ye know them."
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And it's worth repeating number (2) - The people for whom such chapters would be intended wouldn't need them. To someone who isn't already an Adeptus Exemptus well-advanced in the work of Chesed, Zayin, and Cheth (already given in M&MAA), it would be of no real use at all.
I might eventually discuss them in another context or framework, as you hint. But I especially didn't want to include them in that book, and it is a very low priority compared to other things I need to do. The Appendices of M&MAA do give the basics.
I'm also happy to answer specific questions to the extent that I can.
"I understand that work in the highest grades of the A:.A:. system might be more secretive (?)"
Not really. That is, not in the sense of "oaths of secrecy."
"but Crowley has a bunch to say on the grades scattered throughout his writings, (like the bit about a person being able to attain the level of Magus in his system and how that works within the structure of the current Aeon as he defines it)"
Those quotes are already in the current book, since "One Star in Sight" is reproduced.
"and I really appreciated your work and effort to provide a reference source and interpretive piece which has helped me to better grasp the lower/middle grades."
Thank you
"Crowley can be tough, especially because his ideas developed over time, and because he wrote sooooo much that bits about a magus are scattered over this liber, that book, and these diarys, etc."
"Scattered." I love that. It's remarkably apropos.
"Maybe even include The Urn???"
Wouldn't do so. Just pick up The Confessions of Aleister Crowley for all of that information (with only slightly different editing).
PS - Are you aware that I've already posted the notes from which I might have written a chapter on 8=3? They're here: www.heruraha.net/viewtopic.php?t=339
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@Jim Eshelman said
"That was a hard one for me, too, until I realized that in the whole of Tarot's history this was never the case except when Waite and Case separately tried to shoehorn it into being by reversing the numbers on cards 8 and 11. Other than with Waite and Case forced-fixes, for centuries 8 has been Justice/Libra (etc.), and 11 has been Leo/Strength (etc.), and that already breaks the pattern.
"Jim, thanks a lot for the answer, that definitely clears things up! I see now how the 8/11 numbering-swap was contrived by HOGD members. However, if we're going to switch the cards 8 and 11 and keep them that way in the Thoth tarot, shouldn't 4 and 17 also be switched, to keep things strictly symmetrical? (or switch 8 and 11 back to original placements as Adjustment and Lust) I see how the number 4 may relate to the Emperor better than 17, etc., but even so, that doesn't seem to be a perfectly symmetrical switch which the *Book of Thoth *seems to boast.
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@Escarabaj said
"I see now how the 8/11 numbering-swap was contrived by HOGD members."
Not HOGD in general. Just Waite and Case. The GD itself preserved 8 as Justice and 11 as Strength.
"However, if we're going to switch the cards 8 and 11 and keep them that way in the Thoth tarot, shouldn't 4 and 17 also be switched, to keep things strictly symmetrical?"
We aren't switching the numbers. We're retaining them with Teth = Atu XI and Lamed = Atu VIII. The symmetry is brought about by the letter swap which has Tzaddi (now rightly recognized as The Emperor) = Atu IV and Heh (now rightly recognized as The Star) = Atu XVII.
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Jim,
I might have missed a post on this, but what do you think it MEANS?
What changes in the AA system by transposing the Star with the Emperor on the path that connects Chokmah with Tiphareth?
Have I mentioned how much it irks me (which wouldn't suprise me if it was his intention to do so) that of all the major arcana, one of the only time he talks about the paths specifically within a cards description is the Emperor card in which he says:
"It is finally to be observed that the white light which descends upon him indicates the position of this card in the Tree of Life. His authority is derived from Chokmah, the creative Wisdom, the Word, and is exerted upon Tiphareth, the organized man."
Bill Heidrick puts it this way in one of his online pages:
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Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh = is the secret force (Hermit) entering the organizing of forms (Emperor) to teach the true nature (Hierophant) of the order of creation (Emperor).or, using Crowley's correspondence between and The Star Trump:
Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh = is the secret force (Hermit) entering the totality of the creation (Star) to inform (Hierophant) all that exists (Star)."
I'm wondering if you have a summary-like take (such as this one) on the change and how it plays out in:
- Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh scheme
- Tree of life paths scheme
I note (and enjoy) your explanation within the Practicus Grade Guide that the Path of Tzaddi (which is now the Emperor from Netzach to Yesod) = Liber HHH's SSS Fire like raising of the Kundalini - however I, as I've already whined, am missing the accompanying expose on the new connection between the Star, Heh and it's accompanying tasks (lowley me-man ain't not he-man)
How does that link up to Liber Viarum Viae and it's placement as
- Heh, The Formulation of the Flaming Star. Liber V. in it's original position between Tiphareth and Chokmah
- Tzaddi, The Adoration under the Starry Heaven. Liber XI, NV (from
Liber CCXX) in it's position between Netzach and Yesod
Thanks much once again! Love having a person I can finally ask ridiculously eccentric questions like this to/at!
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@Scarecrow said
"I might have missed a post on this, but what do you think it MEANS?
What changes in the AA system by transposing the Star with the Emperor on the path that connects Chokmah with Tiphareth?"
I don't think it was a transposition. I don't think there was a change. I think this was always the correct pattern in (spiritual-psychological) nature, and was simply understood wrong.
Kabbalah anticipated this. The Zohar contains the message that Tzaddi contained a mystery that had to be kept secret for a later time. The experience of the opening of Tiphereth to Chokmah along the Path of Heh was always the mystery of the Cosmic Mother, the Lady of the Stars.
What did change was our knowledge of this; and it occurred at a time when humanity no longer needed (for its short-term psycho-spiritual development, the emergence of the Ruach) to mistakenly assert The Emperor in the place of Heh. - One reason the error was allowed to persevere so long was likely that almost none in the history of the world had crossed that Path in actuality and attained to Chokmah.
Of course, many would have crossed the Path of Tzaddi. The Star was masking what was really happening there. Why was it so easy to miss what was happening here? Mostly we have only good guesses. Surely not the least of the reasons was that few who were in charge of the formalized Mysteries really understood the Mystery of the Feminine during the last aeon; and the experience of Tzaddi-Aries was easy to confuse with an opening to the Fire of Netzach.
"Have I mentioned how much it irks me..."
Oh, get over it
The Book of Thoth is filled with typos and small mistakes."I'm wondering if you have a summary-like take (such as this one) on the change and how it plays out"
Again, just for the record, I don't think there was a change. I think a long-standing error was exposed. Nonetheless...
"...in:
- Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh scheme"
Easy. So easy I might be missing what isn't obvious to you. We finally have the feminine where it belongs, as both Mother and Daughter.
"2. Tree of life paths scheme"
Ask a more specific question. By now, this pattern of Heh = Aquarius = The Star and Tzaddi = Aries = The Emperor is so solidly engrained in me for so long that I've kinda forgotten what isn't obvious to anyone else. A more specific question would help.
"I note (and enjoy) your explanation within the Practicus Grade Guide that the Path of Tzaddi (which is now the Emperor from Netzach to Yesod) = Liber HHH's SSS Fire like raising of the Kundalini - however I, as I've already whined, am missing the accompanying expose on the new connection between the Star, Heh and it's accompanying tasks (lowley me-man ain't not he-man)
How does that link up to Liber Viarum Viae and it's placement as
- Heh, The Formulation of the Flaming Star. Liber V. in it's original position between Tiphareth and Chokmah
- Tzaddi, The Adoration under the Starry Heaven. Liber XI, NV (from
Liber CCXX) in it's position between Netzach and Yesod"
Earlier today I pointed to a post from 2-to-3 years ago where I was writing on the task of the Magister Templi (which includes working the Path of Heh). - In Chapter 10 of The Mystical & Magical System of the A.'.A.'., I gave an amended version of Liber Viarum Viae which shows "The Adoration under the Starry Heaven. Liber XI., NV (from Liber CCXX)" under Heh and "The Formulation of the Flaming Star. Liber V" under Tzaddi. This produces a quite interesting pattern, since Liber HAD, Liber NV, and Liber VIII (which might as well have been Liber Ra-Hoor-Khu in relation to the other to) are the three Paths opening to Chokmah.
Again, in reference to the Task of 8=3, there are several ways that The Path of Heh manifests according to published accounts. Aside from the symbolism of the Path itself, wherein Tiphereth opens to Chokmah - the Sun or single Star at our center finds its place in the context of the field of stars of Chokmah - "One Star in Sight" expresses the Task of the M.T. as three tasks attributed to the three Paths opening to Chokmah. Of these, the one corresponding to Heh is, "the renunciation of His enjoyment of the Infinite so that he may formulate Himself as the Finite." There is also native to 8=3 the Vision of Wonder, which is the Vision of the Path of Aquarius. There are any number of other correspondences, here, not the least of which is that Heh was always expected to be the Great Goddess, the embodiment of the five-lettered Elohim of Shekinah Herself. And... where do you think the symbolsim of The Urn came from in the approach to Chokmah if not from the Path of the Water Bearer?
Just a few thoughts off the top of my head at this late hour.
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Ahhh... the Urn... I had not associated that to the Path of the Water Bearer or to the Star card yet!!! And now that little star in the golden Urn takes on the meaning of the Word; which makes sense after reading your notes on the Master of the Temple:
"TO ATTAIN THE GRADE OF MAGUS he must accomplish Three Tasks; the renunciation of His enjoyment of the Infinite so that he may formulate Himself as the Finite [Heh]; "
Which makes me think that it's not the Woman figure that we must associate with if we're to understand the Star card (as it's associated downwards from Chokmah)... but that little star itself.
And now I must re-read the Urn