Part two
Rosanne said:
Thanks VeniceBard for posting this thread as it is a subject I love and read about (Lots)
I didn't start this one, though its subject is the blood that flows in my veins, if by
astrological one mean 'zodiacal'.
Now I may have my thoughts totally askew here- but when talking about the Kabbalah- I think what are the influence and traditions? I believe Hinduism is there in the practice, Sufi writings, early Greek mysticism, and they all influenced the meanings of numbers and letters and words.
Hindu stuff is
very ancient (to the point of decay) and thus probably related on many levels, the Sufi more-or-less the Gnosticism of the Muslim world and thus potentially relevant as well (though beyond my intimate ken). But most interesting is that you list early Greek mysticism, for I am convinced (more than ever after commencing the book
Fragments of a Faith Forgotten) that Orphic tradition, submerged beneath the Homeric but resurfacing in the time of the philosophers, was the form the bardic took in that region (I must seek out more of its hymn-fragments to solidify the case), while the essentially poetic nature of Judaic tradition is fairly apparent from the SoS, psalms, the story of David, and the fact that Torah generally is in a sort of verse...
Sefer Yetzirah... had alot of other traditions within it. As I peel back the layers of the 22 images that are a major part of my Tarot pack and I step back in time I get back as far as the 22 letters of the Phoenician alphabet...
It was probably the Habiru (refugee Akhnatenists?) who gave Phoenicians the letters, not vice versa, though the latter had the temerity to bandy them about all over, thus letting the secret out to get profaned by those barbarians the Romans, necessitating it be restored, first in the runic futhark, and later by the confluence of British bardic and Judaic Merkabhah tradition that resulted in Qabbalah and tarot:
SY is Merkabhah tradition, meaning not Qabbalah proper but its forerunner, Qabbalah being the restoring of
this to an older, higher standard (the original trunk out of which both sprouted but then decayed).
Just sounds for words? Neh- they were a sacred rebus whose pictoral image evoked all the correspondances we draw out ourselves today. I look at The High Priestess/La Papesse I see the Number two in sequence- Bayt the house -our dwelling under the Moon- then the others just fall in place.~Rosanne
I forgot to add; That the reason for the order of the letters in the Phoenician Alphabet is based on three principles 1.the similarity of juxtaposed letter sounds 2.the meanings of their names and 3. and the forms/shapes of the letters/signs.
I agree with your first statement wholeheartedly and would add only that tradition makes the best arbiter in cases of symbolic ambiguity. And I will concede there is close relationship between trumps II and V, heh and bet, which interchange numbers in the two systems and are (in the futhark) the middle-two of mem's
first-half of the 3rd
aett just as Ii-G-I-P (iota-gamma-zeta-pi), or (B=bardic, G=Gr./Heb.) B19/G10 to B10/G3 to B3/G7 to B7/G80, are the middle-four of shin's
whole of the 2nd (middle)
aett, alef's first-half of the 1st
aett lacking such content (because of A-the-doer's fallen state, no doubt). But the 'falling into place' you speak of I strongly doubt (spoilt as I am by gold do I shun silver). Surely the phonetic simplicity and clarity of bardic ordering-of-sounds makes Phoenician look like a hopeless hodgepodge! which is not upon closer examination entirely true since the order of the simples in the alef-bet embodies a code striking in its simplicity, clarity, and perceptive humor... to which in a moment.
First, the varied (different-sourced) letter-orderings given in
Barddas chiefly revolve around phonetic principles, bardic numeration itself showing coherence therein, numeric order being (H)-A-E-I-O (U/V-5 displaced to 17, 5th-to-last), then labial B-M-P-F, then Kuh-Guh, then Tuh-Duh, then continuous sounds N-L-R-S (north-left-right-south), liquids (left-right) contained within...
Now: unfortunately, I am at a 'disadvantage of ground' here, in that I have not completely solved the problem of Hebrew-Phoenician ordering. I have, though, solved the ordering alef-bet-gimel-dalet and that of the twelve simples, these two solutions without doubt forming one of the cornerstones of my (multi-cornered) theory. Alef remains 1 in all traditions (1 being unity and thus united), except Paul Foster Case's and I guess GD's, I can never keep track (the modern ones all look alike to me after a while): bardic, Greco-Hebraic, and even ogham, A's
aett in the futhark also being first. Next, B-G-D are, on the Cauldron, the same signs yod-heh-vav are on the Egg, respectively, and in Lurianic Kabbalah it says yod extends down from 1 to 2, heh occupies 3, and vav encompasses 4-9 (10 being the final heh of the Name): indeed beth=2, gimel=3, and dalet=4 in Hebrew.
Now, the simples: what their ordering shows is how the four elements allot to the four cardinal signs or directions for each of the three parts of the self. The three methods of allotting elements are the primordial arrangement, based on their inner nature, the astrological, based on a sort of ‘gauge field’ compensating for man’s fall, and the diurnal, based on the doer’s being completely focused on the present (‘today’).
The first (knower’s) scheme is given in the
Zohar, that is, taking
up or aries for north (since man on average ‘points’ north of the equator),
down or libra for south, cancer or forward (out) for west (since the round descends there), and capricorn or back (in) for east (since the round ascends there): fire and water apply themselves where most needed, to cold north and arid south, respectively (just as flame, the burnt offering, goes up from below and water, the Torah, down from on high), while air and earth reside to east and west respectively (where the celestial bodies proceed towards them). Just so, earthly body faces forward, and back blows the wind in one's face (when moving).
The second (thinker’s) scheme is commonly known: fire is the only element in its original place.
The third (doer’s) scheme is based on the cardinal directions in the diurnal cycle: the sun’s light and heat issue from south of us, so south is like fire, north, being cold, like earth, east or morning the air-which-leads-to-fire, west or evening the water-which-leads-to-earth.
Take Egg’s upper-right quadrant as the knower’s realm and upper left as the thinker’s, just as on the Cauldron knower’s B-P gather within (to the right) and thinker’s D-T without (to the left): these two realms share aries, since astrology leaves fire at its original station. The remaining five signs, Egg’s underbelly, represent the poor suffering doer.
Since the knower knows the original distribution of elements to stations, yod-lamedh-nun-samekh are each moved back one on the
same triad. Since the thinker weaves the doer-spun strands of destiny into nature’s ‘fabric’, samekh-tzaddi-chet-vav are each moved to a sign on the triad its element occupies in astrology: tzaddi takes air over to aquarius, chet takes water one sign on from itself to cancer, and vav, thus displaced, leaps back two taking earth to taurus. And finally, with the remaining five signs is perpetrated a joke at the expense of the ‘uninitiated’, those who believe man has five senses: earth, here, is represented twice, once for touch and once for smell. And the means here is ingenious: taking those forward-of or even-with the central vertical axis as the manifested elements they are as
signs (each triad manifests in nature as the element following), and those within or behind that axis as the elements on whose
triads they reside, yields ayin-qof-tet as air-water-earth and heh-zayin as earth-fire, with tet/libra representing contact as touch (being one’s contact with earth) and heh/scorpio representing contact as smell, earth’s triad being the archetype from which the nose arose, since it points forward and its two manifested signs determine there to be two nostrils just as water’s one (libra) determines there to be only one mouth (water flows or points down). So ayin/leo takes air to capricorn/east, qof/virgo takes water to pisces/west, tet/libra and heh/scorpio take earth to leo and aries respectively, both north, and zayin/sagittary takes fire to gemini/south.
I do not rest my case here, though, for consider physical resemblance to the parts of the body their original zodiac stations represent on the part of most simples in square-Hebrew:
Samekh is obviously a head (not the box-containing-the-Ark the other closed character, mem-sofit, portrays).
Tzaddi and tzaddi-sofit seems to represent the throat in breathing and swallowing, respectively. (The only other simple with a distinct final form is its inner counterpart nun/pisces, back-of-the-neck.)
Chet is obviously the shoulders, represented by the first heh of the Name, heh being close to chet in form.
Vav in the Name is associated with the trunk or breast linking first-heh’s shoulders-slash-arms and second-heh’s pelvis-slash-legs, while its older form IS a breast pouring forth milk, for kreiss sake.
Ayin’s shape requires deeper explanation, but its older form, a circle, certainly conveys the idea of the heart of something.
Qof shows the womb and the two openings connected with it (navel and birth-canal).
Tet conveys the serpentine nature of the digestive course ending at the bottom of the torso, its older form (crossed circle) the heliport marking where we are to sit (just joking, sort of).
Heh’s allusion to the male organ is (naturally) partly disguised (but discernible reaching across from the male on the right to the female with her opening on the left), yet heh’s connexion to the Covenant of Circumcision (being added to Abram’s name to indicate it) leaves no doubt it was the eighth sign (a gardener’s planting zodiac from the early 20th century in my possession gives scorpio’s human physiological attribute as “secrets”), circumcision being on the 8th day. (The second heh of the Name – where heh ends up in other words, that is, after the first heh transforms into chet to stand for the shoulders? – is said to represent the legs, which would put it where the male organ, and its female counterpart the clitoris, both are, these signifying desire, or that which leads on from the straight-down, from what physically IS.)
Zayin shows the terminal filament of the spine but could also pass for ‘thigh’.
Yod shows the midpoint of the spine but could also pass for ‘knee’ (being a joint, though zayin appears to descend from yod, implying capricorn’s originally
higher station). Its allocation to the head in the Name is in part because it completes the horizontal whose midpoint is aries-the-head on the 4th wheel (child in womb, man in physical world) and in part because of a reciprocal nature whereby 1st and 10th make the outermost layer of the Tree, 2nd and 9th the next layer in, and so on (the 1st sign being aries).
Lamedh is one of the most striking, being the arms swinging while walking seen from above: that is, it represents the complementary nature of the two arms. Geometry makes us how we are in this regard: consider how relations between 8-cornered cube-of-space and 4-cornered tetrahedron yield two tetrahedrons (to use up all eight corners), one forward-right-above to forward-left-below, one forward-left-above to forward-right-below, between which we oscillate when walking.
And nun as back-of-neck connects two bulges, while if you stand on square-Hebrew nun facing the direction the writing goes (to the left), you will find it fairly represents the feet (just as kaf, when so stood upon, fairly represents its station, the kidneys). One apparent fact that is quite interesting is: if we take the
SY simples-functions laughter and anger and give them to taurus and pisces we notice the curve of the throat circles round the axis across our path, as does the motion of nodding the head, while the curve of the back of the neck circles round the vertical axis, as does the motion of shaking the head. And XIII makes an excellent picture of anger-or-negation, N, a sound also associated with newness (replacing what is negated). Not completely sure yet whether I buy XX Judgement as laughter-or-assent, but it sorta works, especially when one considers the jovial spirit with which the true warrior must enter battle (20-straif-blackthorn being strife,
la mere du bois).
I could argue, then, for the bardic trump-correlations preempting the straight-across method (to which you evidently subscribe, placing LeMat, where, last?) from the point of view of the above considerations or (with less efficacy) from that of simply the history of letter-shapes and the symbolic lore naturally attaching to them (through their trees, the rune-names, and the Semitic letter-names), so I shall wait until I hear whether you think the above considerations valid before embarking on one or the other approach. (Sorry for the length of this post, but if the subject were much simpler, we would all surely agree on it, wouldn’t we... and please forgive if I have been too repeating of things previously laid out.)