Tzaddi is not the Star
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"However, in this one instance - the alleged correspondence of Heh and Tzaddi to Aries and Aquarius respectively - it is wrong. I can take a sidewise approach to justifying this by (again and redundantly) pointing out that The Zohar asserted that the correct attributions of Tzaddi were intentionally withheld and distorted until a later era; but, mostly, I simply assert that The Book of the Law indicated an error regarding Tzaddi and its attribution.
You mistake my meaning regarding Waite (again, because I was quite brief on a matter explained repeatedly in the past). Waite and Crowley both recognized that there was an apparent error of some sort reflected in the attribution of the number 8 to the Lamed-Libra card, and 11 to the Teth-Leo card. Waite thought the correction needed was to swap their numbers. This was his error. Crowley eventually realized that the real error was that the complementary reversal - Aries and Aquarius, lying opposite Libra and Leo - also needed to be made. With that true correction, all the numbers, zodiacal attributions, and the rest feel correctly in place."
93
This was my issue with the swap. The attribution of Aquarius to ה and Aries to צ seems logical to me however the nature of the swap is not symmetrical.
The double loop diagram in and of itself seems correct - minus the tarot and hebrew letter attributions. The point of contention is this:
On the Leo-Libra swap the tarot number is swapped.
On the Aries-Aquarius swap the hebrew letter is swapped.On further meditation it seems that this asymmetry is implicit in the verse of Liber Legis: It states that "צ is not the Star", and so it is claimed outright that the hebrew letter/tarot attribution is swapped. This is already in opposition to the Leo-Libra swap, which retains the hebrew letter/tarot attribution.
Does it matter that this messes up the symmetry?
93, 93/93
P.S. Jim, I sent you a PM a few days ago and as yet you haven't replied- would it be better if I posted the question in the forum?
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@Jim Eshelman said
"You've misunderstood my intent concerning zodiac vs. Tarot cards. Of course the zodiacal attributions are more basic to the Qabalistic structure, and the Tarot cards were a slightly later representation of that. My main point, though, was that the zodiacal attributions of the Tarot cards are primary, and severing those is a mistake."
Dwtw
I see what you're saying, but the point is that without the hebrew letters, you wouldn't have the zodiacal assignments to the tarot in the first place. The only reason the zodiac is spread all over the tarot and not assigned to 12 sequential cards is because the zodiac is spread all over the hebrew alef-bet. Someone wanted to map one series onto the other, thus you have the 9th card, Justice, being attributed to the 9th letter, Teth. And this looks wrong because of the tarot imagery.
So I understand that you want to keep that zodiac with the tarot, but it only got there because of hebrew in the first place. With that being said, later changes were made precisely because hebrew doesn't seem to map 'sequentially' onto the tarot@Jim Eshelman said
"However, in this one instance - the alleged correspondence of Heh and Tzaddi to Aries and Aquarius respectively - it is wrong. I can take a sidewise approach to justifying this by (again and redundantly) pointing out that The Zohar asserted that the correct attributions of Tzaddi were intentionally withheld and distorted until a later era; but, mostly, I simply assert that The Book of the Law indicated an error regarding Tzaddi and its attribution."
I can see that, but TBOTL only mentions the attribution to a card, not a zodiac sign. You have to presume that the sign must stay with a given card. That's fine, except that it doesn't happen in the case of VIII and XI.
@Jim Eshelman said
"You mistake my meaning regarding Waite (again, because I was quite brief on a matter explained repeatedly in the past). Waite and Crowley both recognized that there was an apparent error of some sort reflected in the attribution of the number 8 to the Lamed-Libra card, and 11 to the Teth-Leo card. Waite thought the correction needed was to swap their numbers. This was his error. Crowley eventually realized that the real error was that the complementary reversal - Aries and Aquarius, lying opposite Libra and Leo - also needed to be made. With that true correction, all the numbers, zodiacal attributions, and the rest feel correctly in place."
But the so-called complementary reversal doesn't complement anything if its not the same kind of reversal. Crowley has both the letter and sign for Libra and Leo switched, but he only has the letter for Aries and Aquarius switched.
"If that's the case, then ignore the dubious double-loop argument."
@Jim Eshelman said
"Why? It's brilliant. More brilliant than even Crowley knew. It also encodes quite a number of additional things he didn't catch, including the fact that the diagram is a true Sidereal Pisces Age map. The horizontal split axis is Pisces-Virgo - the actual location of the equinox axis since 220 AD - and the apex and antapex of the diagram are Gemini and Sagittarius, the actual solstice locations in the same period. (And there's more besides solving the Tarot mystery, but that's a good start.)"
I understand the sidereal aspect, but the double loop implies reversals that were not made. Yes, the signs for Leo and Libra were swapped, but the signs for Aquarius and Aries are still in their normal order, assuming that Heh simply becomes the Star and Aquarius, while Tzaddi becomes the Emperor and Aries. You've yet to demonstrate how this part of the 'double loop' is actually a loop. It's only a loop in the letter order, not the zodiac order. Obviously I'm not the only one to see this fact.
When you break it all down, you have three sequences. Assume the tarot is inviolable, and is correct as in TBOT. Then the hebrew letters are swapped in two places, for this 'double-loop'. But the zodiac order, (which is originally based on the SY attributions of hebrew, and is meaningless without that correlation) is only swapped in one place, not two.
My only essential point is that the zodiac should be swapped in two places also, or else there really is no double-loop.
If you don't want to swap the signs, then fine, but that means there is no double-loop, and you have an asymmetrical alignment. Which is fine by me. I don't see that as a big problem. The real problem underlying all this is the fact that people think in such a linear fashion, when the universe appears to be radial and not linear
And isn't the point of a loop, double or single, to show this very fact?Litlluw
RLG -
"On the Leo-Libra swap the tarot number is swapped.
On the Aries-Aquarius swap the hebrew letter is swapped. "In my imagination, it has more to do with learning the lesson of the question of the swap.
With Leo-Libra, the question becomes which is better to have at the center of the Tarot Tableau (BOTA terminology). Libra there suggests that balance connects the symmetries of the tableau - it's more intellectual. When Leo is there, it shows the method of equilibrating - it's more practical. Another image in my mind is that of "gas" and "brakes."
The symbolism of Case's Leo vs. Crowley's Leo also emphasizes either the stimulating or equilibrating power of Leo.
With Aries-Aquarius, the question of gender/activity vs passivity as the symbol of Self as it is calculated in the new aeon according to the Hebrew gematria and spellings of the passing aeon. Comparisons of each could be performed and compared to understand the current changes of the age.
So, in my mind at least, the leo 11 serves more to teach the symbolism of stimulating and manipulating psychic energy, libra 11 of equilibrating it.
A.C.'s Aquarius-Aries switch presents this same sort of idea for the purpose of providing a second version of meditation on the old Hebrew names.
Our minds and spirits are exercised and developed by the alternation of the opposites in our minds. Think of it as a chess game played through time by Initiates. If I make THIS change, what meditation will that provide for students? Once that takes root, what other change will serve as a meditation to break up the old way of thinking and revitalize the conversation.
One serves as the original in the mind, the other serves as the new meditation. The changes don't have to be completely consistent precisely because they are to be compared with the other version.
I see Perdurabo and Perseverantia serving as the two towers of Key/Atu 18, as we head further into our development in Aquarius.
I also see the two version of Tarot as a sort of machine or logic circuit, with the changes being expressions of either moving pieces or on/off switches.
Peace.
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@PatchworkSerpen said
"This was my issue with the swap. The attribution of Aquarius to ה and Aries to צ seems logical to me however the nature of the swap is not symmetrical.
The double loop diagram in and of itself seems correct - minus the tarot and hebrew letter attributions. The point of contention is this:
On the Leo-Libra swap the tarot number is swapped.
On the Aries-Aquarius swap the hebrew letter is swapped."On both of them the numbers are switched. That is, by straight zodiac sequence, with the Tarot card numbers 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, and 18, one would expect (by straight sequence) that Heh is 4, Teth is 8, Lamed is 11, and Tzaddi is 17. But, instead, 4 and 17 are interchanged and 8 and 11 are interchanged. It's exactly the same.
What makes this confusing is that the Teth-Lamed issue was never out of whack (until Waite "broke" it). The early Kabbalists (or God, if you take the word of the early Kabbalists) had need to veil and obscure Tzaddi's meaning, but not that of Teth or Lamed. It was only the Heh=Aries and Tzaddi=Aquarius blind that had to be pierced; the other pair was always correct.
"Does it matter that this messes up the symmetry?"
See above. It doesn't. It perfects symmetry.
"P.S. Jim, I sent you a PM a few days ago and as yet you haven't replied- would it be better if I posted the question in the forum?"
I avoid looking at PMs whenever possible and keep wishing I could turn them off - but others like them a lot. But yes, if the matteri s appropriate for public posting, then I recommend that.
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@hreefold31 said
"I can see that, but TBOTL only mentions the attribution to a card, not a zodiac sign. You have to presume that the sign must stay with a given card. That's fine, except that it doesn't happen in the case of VIII and XI."
See my post of a few minutes ago about 8 and 11. Yes, it all works just the same in both pairs.
I don't have to presume that the sign must stay with the card - Liber L. says that the Prophet will communicate this, and he has. It's res judicata, so to speak. The rest is all confirmation from experience.
"But the so-called complementary reversal doesn't complement anything if its not the same kind of reversal. Crowley has both the letter and sign for Libra and Leo switched, but he only has the letter for Aries and Aquarius switched."
No no no no no. You're missing the picture entirely.
I laid this out in one way in the post that probably will be right above this present answer; but let's try it even more explicitly. We won't start half-way through (where the Leo-Lamed pair was always correct until Waite "broke" it), but we'll start back at the beginning, as if we were designing the Tarot ourselves back in the 12th Century.
Write down the 12 Simple Letters: Heh, Vav, Zayin, Cheth, Teth, Yod, Lamed, Nun, Samekh, A'ayin, Tzaddi, Qoph.
Now, immediately under these, write the Tarot card numbers that are available for them: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18.
This would be the expected attribution list if the pattern were linear. However, someone made the decision back at the beginning to represent this differently. (I have theories on why, but the Why doesn't really matter. Just the What.) The variance from linearity is exactly matched. Instead of Heh=4 and Tzaddi=17, switch them. Instead of Teth=8 and Lamed=11, switch them. It's exactly matched.
"When you break it all down, you have three sequences. Assume the tarot is inviolable, and is correct as in TBOT. Then the hebrew letters are swapped in two places, for this 'double-loop'. But the zodiac order, (which is originally based on the SY attributions of hebrew, and is meaningless without that correlation) is only swapped in one place, not two."
No. See above. The loop is done by plotting the Hebrew letters and the Tarot card numbers. You're confusing yourself by introducing the zodiac to it.
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@Frater_AVV said
"With Leo-Libra, the question becomes which is better to have at the center of the Tarot Tableau (BOTA terminology)."
Thelemites have their own Tarot tableau implicit in Liber Tav. Change the arrangements: Instead of pulling Aleph out of the set, pull Tav out. Then put the cards (the pages of the Book of Thoth, so to speak) right to left and top to bottom; that is, Aleph, Beth, Gimel, etc. right-to-left across a top row, Cheth etc. on the second row, etc.
With this elegant, simple shift, the center becomes neither 8 nor 11, but 10 - The Wheel, or rota (R.O.T.A.) from which Tarot got its name - and it sits in the very center so that the entire rest of "the wheel of Tarot" spins about it.
"With Aries-Aquarius, the question of gender/activity vs passivity as the symbol of Self as it is calculated in the new aeon according to the Hebrew gematria and spellings of the passing aeon. Comparisons of each could be performed and compared to understand the current changes of the age."
Let's start with simple ones, then. Heh has, from the foundation of Kabbalah, been the letter of the Mother. End of story. (Supplementally, Tzaddi is a sound related etymologically to words pertaining to paternal authority.)
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@Jim Eshelman said
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No. See above. The loop is done by plotting the Hebrew letters and the Tarot card numbers. You're confusing yourself by introducing the zodiac to it."Dwtw
haha, that's a good one. When my point all along has been that the zodiac is not switched to effect any balance. It's no wonder you think I'm misunderstanding you when you keep ignoring my main point.
I GET that the letters switch. That's obvious. Its the whole point of the exercise. The whole question is whether the zodiac goes with the letter or the card. And as you say the zodiac stays with the card. Right? except that when it stays with the card, it is out of order.
Isn't it true that Libra is VIII and Leo is XI in TBOT? Yes. And that is not zodiacal order. Since Aries stays with IV and Aquarius stays with XVII, that *is *zodiacal order. The two switches are not symmetrical.
Yes, the letter switch, by itself, is symmetrical. But divorcing it from the zodiac means that the zodiac is not symmetrical.
I'm not sure why you ignore the fact that there are indeed three sequences at work here. Of these, two of them have elements that switch; the letter sequence and the zodiac. The letter switches are symmetrical. Anyone can see that. But the zodiac signs that switch are not symmetrical, (unless the zodiac goes along with the letter).
Okay, I shan't waste anyone else's time here. There's no point in both of us continuing to repeat what should be obvious to anyone with a modicum of intelligence. Thanks for the discussion. Sorry if it was redundant for you.
Litlluw
RLG -
"Isn't it true that Libra is VIII and Leo is XI in TBOT? Yes. And that is not zodiacal order. Since Aries stays with IV and Aquarius stays with XVII, that is zodiacal order. The two switches are not symmetrical. "
Nope. In BOTA tarot, Leo is 8, Teth, and Libra is 11, Lamed.
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@Frater_AVV said
"
"Isn't it true that Libra is VIII and Leo is XI in TBOT? Yes. And that is not zodiacal order. Since Aries stays with IV and Aquarius stays with XVII, that is zodiacal order. The two switches are not symmetrical. "Nope. In BOTA tarot, Leo is 8, Teth, and Libra is 11, Lamed."
Dwtw
Perhaps I should not have abbreviated. TBOT stands for The Book of Thoth, which is the Tarot I was discussing.
Litlluw
RLG -
Has anyone noticed the pattern created by overlaying the rose of 22 petals on top of the zodiac circle in the Universe card?
The beam of light from the eye seems to strike the circle where the letter Heh would be. And the thing that looks like a Fish Hook enters the circle in the location of the letter Tzaddi. And then they both join up in the double loop in the snakes body. Interesting.
I'm not sure what significance the snakes head has in Lamed. But the two loops on the snakes body would correspond to the letters Heh and Aleph - HA.
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This thread has been done to death, but:
After discovering a minor proof yesterday evening (MeLeKh = 90 = Tzaddi), I re-read the section of The Book of Thoth on the Emperor trump and found this:
"...It is finally to be observed that the white light which descends upon him [the Emperor] 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."
Despite his earlier assertion in this paragraph that Tzaddi refers to the signs of Aries in the zodiac, Crowley now blatantly suggests that it (Tzaddi) leads from Chokmah to Tiphareth, and not from Netzach to Yesod.
and I thought I'd brought this mystery to a close...
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@PatchworkSerpen said
"This thread has been done to death, but:
After discovering a minor proof yesterday evening (MeLeKh = 90 = Tzaddi), I re-read the section of The Book of Thoth on the Emperor trump and found this:
"...It is finally to be observed that the white light which descends upon him [the Emperor] 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."
Despite his earlier assertion in this paragraph that Tzaddi refers to the signs of Aries in the zodiac, Crowley now blatantly suggests that it (Tzaddi) leads from Chokmah to Tiphareth, and not from Netzach to Yesod.
and I thought I'd brought this mystery to a close..."
See my post on Page 2 of this thread (or search for it under "HRS") where I - half seriously - made exactly that suggestion, and did a piece of gematria around it that seemed to refer to April 10, the last day of the writing of Liber Legis.
As George Harrison said, "it's been done"; every possible combination of Tarot turmp, Herbrew letter, Tree-of-Life path and Zodiacal sign has been explored and this thread really is dead
But while I'm about it, the apparent fault in the "symmetry" which irks me a little is that with the Justice-Strength [Adjustment-Lust] switch, we have the neatness of yodh and kaph (closed and open hand; still-point [axle?] and wheel) between the "switched" symbols; while between Star and Emperor is a whole crowd of symbols all referring to different things: Moon-Pisces; Sun; Judgement[Aeon]-Fire; World-Saturn; Fool-Air; Magician-Mercury;High Priestess-Moon; Empress-Venus.
There may be only three Zodiacal signs on each loop, but all those planets and elements make it hard to see any overall symmetry.
OP
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@Oliver P said
"But while I'm about it, the apparent fault in the "symmetry" which irks me a little is that with the Justice-Strength [Adjustment-Lust] switch, we have the neatness of yodh and kaph (closed and open hand; still-point [axle?] and wheel) between the "switched" symbols; while between Star and Emperor is a whole crowd of symbols all referring to different things: Moon-Pisces; Sun; Judgement[Aeon]-Fire; World-Saturn; Fool-Air; Magician-Mercury;High Priestess-Moon; Empress-Venus.
There may be only three Zodiacal signs on each loop, but all those planets and elements make it hard to see any overall symmetry."
The loop is in the wheel of the Zodiac, not in the sequence of all 22 trumps.
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On page 40 of The Book of Thoth, while discussing the revolution of the signs around Virgo and Pisces, A.C. says:
"This is a reference to a peculiar secret of the ancients which was deeply studied by Godfrey Higgins and others of his school."
Does anyone know what this "peculiar secret" is?
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@Jim Eshelman said
"
@Redd Fezz said
"Cool! Do you know where I can read more about Sirius. It's still a bit of a mystery to me (hehe, yes, a "Sirius Mystery")."Well... There's always The Sirius Mystery. Also, R.H. Allen's Star Names and miscellaneous scattered writings of Cyril Fagan."
Also check out PKD's VALIS and RAW's Cosmic Trigger Vol. I.
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This might be stating the obvious, but there are some interesting things that happen when you align the Thoth deck to the Atbash Cipher.
(For example, Tzaddi and Heh are opposite each other on the Atbash Cipher)
Here are some superficial little notes I jotted down a couple years back about it
[lashtal dot com/nuke/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-t-1770.phtml] -
According to Paul Foster Case, "In all ancient copies of the Book of Formation (Sepher Yetzirah), the planetary attributions to the double letters are purposely mixed, in order to mislead uninitiated readers into whose hands the book might fall. The correct attributions were reserved for mouth-to-ear instruction."
Likewise, Eliphas Levi (as acknowledged by Case and Crowley) deliberately mixed the astro-alphanumerical attributions to the Tarot Trumps.
Also, the Golden Dawn kept the true attributions secret for their members of the Practicus grade, whilst exoterically promulgating incorrect information.Is it not possible that this practice has continued, that this whole Double Loop in the Zodiac issue is a "blind" with the correct attributions reserved for mouth-to-ear transmission?
To put it another way, has Crowley poured the castor oil of confusion into the tea-urn of the Tarot?