Barleywine's Astrological Correspondences (split from Astrology & Tarot in TB&M)

Barleywine

Fine work, Barleywine. I tend to think that putting Pisces at the High Priestess would be somewhat of a problem, though. Pisces is a sign of endings, or sorts. As the last sign it has all that has washed down over the year, so it has a little of everything, I once heard an astrologer call it "the garbage sign" (but in a good way!). Point is, it isn't very energetic, it probably wouldn't have the power to hold up the Priestess's duties high up there in the Tree. Also, being there would put its entire neighborhood out of sorts.

I like the idea of having the spiritual moon emanating from Keter, its best qualities; and the actual moon down below, and as you mentioned Crowley it really it a sort of lackluster, polluted card. Not the prophetic visions of the HP, but meaningless dreams and fantasies you can't trust.

I've thought about this some more. Aeon's comment gets to the heart of what I was saying about not wanting to "wreak havoc" on the Tree. But my comment about "throwing out the books" has some relevance too. My astrological vision of the Tree has more to do with Greek Hermetic philosophy than Hebraic rabbinical classicism, I guess.

Regarding Pisces, although I'm "devoutly non-religious" (one of my favorite oxymorons), I got going on "Christ consciousness" and the idea that the channel for Christ's manifestation and "repatriation" would have been from Keter to Tipharet and back, and Christ's was an eminently "Piscean" individuality, while Pisces is a sign of service and sacrifice. Rather than collecting psychic garbage (or at least not concentrating and holding onto it), the Piscean path at its best might be seen as a way of transmuting, purifying and sublimating it. (I hear the Pisces types out there cheering :)) Also, I kind of take issue with the "last sign" notion; astrology is perfectly circular so there is no "last sign." Pisces dumps all its waste right back onto the head of Aries. Or how about this: "The High Priestess (Pisces) makes the Emperor (Aries) 'lick her boots'." More cheering!!! :)

Also, in this life the principle value in the Tree would seem to be the Way of Return; thoughts on emanation come across as just that: an abstract mental exercise, however edifying and elevating. Leaving Tipharet by way of Pisces strikes me as a perfect expression of leaving the grosser aspects of the Ego beyond to continue the ascent.

Finally, back in the '70s when I first encountered Crowley's allocation of the modern planets to the Sephirot, I never liked putting Neptune in Chockma because it just seems too feminine to represent the Father. The deity Uranus, as "Father Sky" and father of Cronus (Saturn/Binah), and the planet Uranus as the modern "ruler of astrology" seem to make more sense as a replacement for the Wheel of the Zodiac.

With no argument about Pluto at Keter, that left Neptune to Da'at, which seemed to immediately resonate, since Neptune is an obscure and nebulous presence, "now-you-see--it-now-you-don't" kind of thing. Coincidentally, Pisces is ruled in modern terms by Neptune, and having Pisces on the path crossing the Abyss at just this point makes loads of sense to me. I like the "mystical" feeling of the combination. Also, the Moon as the astrological expression of emotions, moods, routines and habits doesn't have much of a "higher wisdom" dimension to it; it's more about urges and flows, a "tidal" presence in our lives.
 

Barleywine

I updated my graphic of the reallocated zodiacal features on the Tree in line with my last post.
 

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Barleywine

A Curiosity Question

Just a curiosity question related to our discussion here. I noticed that those who speak Hebrew tend to drop the "h" in the English translations ("Keter") while all of my English Occult Revival books retain it ("Kether"). I was conditioned to the latter, so that's what I've always done. Is the spelling keyed to the pronunciation?

By the way, to make all of this work to my satisfaction, I'm going to have to decouple the Hebrew letters from the astrological associations and just leave them on their original paths. They never did much for me as card correspondences anyway; the astrology is much more compelling. I've never really found a convincing key to open up their meaning for me in an interpretive sense. Case made a valiant stab at it, but he's a bit too esoterically profound for my purpose; I want something I can "chew on;" Case can be like having a mouthful of sand.
 

Aeon418

Just a curiosity question related to our discussion here. I noticed that those who speak Hebrew tend to drop the "h" in the English translations ("Keter") while all of my English Occult Revival books retain it ("Kether"). I was conditioned to the latter, so that's what I've always done. Is the spelling keyed to the pronunciation?
I don't speak Hebrew (so Zeph is probably gonna rip me ;)), but the English equivalents of Hebrew words are meant to be transliterations. Unfortunately a standard has never been settled upon. Many of the common transliterations come from older sources and have stuck with usage and age.

I constantly use the spelling "Kether" because that's what I'm used to. But I pronounce it Keter or Ket-er.

Likewise with Malkuth. I pronounce it Mal-khut, but with a short sounding "uh" on the out breath at the end.

Personally I still struggle with the suffix AL that ends a lot of angel names. Like most I started pronouncing it like the AL in Aleister. But apparently the correct pronunciation is closer to ALE, as in beer. I'll have a pint of Raph-ALE please. :D

I'm not a Hebrew speaker so I don't pick fault with other peoples pronunciation. But I do cringe when someone says Chokmah like Chocolate. :eek:
 

Zephyros

No ripping :)

But yes, many of the accepted transliterations are either plain wrong or simply betray evidence of someone with an accent having done them. But, part of that goes to how Hebrew is structured, which is quite different than English.

Tet and Tau in modern Hebrew have the same sound, that of a T. Originally though, they were different. Tet was a throaty kind of T while Tau was done with the front of the tongue. Many transliterations have adopted this difference, which is archaic today, with a differentiation of "T" and "Th." With Keter, however you choose to spell it, I haven't seen any set way of doing it. What does get me, though, is that I've seen some Youtube videos where people pronounce it as "Kay-ther" which is obviously a travesty and betrays simple ignorance about the source material, let alone the language!

Tau is also a funny one in itself, since it's mispronounced in modern Hebrew. Spelled properly Tau-Vau it means "mark" or "sign," but it's normally pronounced "Taf" instead of "Tav," which is wrong. The transliteration is even more wrong, so nobody's right. Vau is another such letter, it should properly have a V at the end, but is transliterated with a U. This isn't for any reason I can ascertain, unless it's the influence of Latin on whoever did the work of transliterating the letters.

Tzaddi is an odd one out because the transliteration is more correct than modern usage. The letter comes right before Kof, so modern Hebrew speakers often make the mistake of pronouncing the letter as Tzaddik, which is wrong. But, it's become so widespread that this is basically how it's referred to today. Kof is also one like this, since it's pronounced as Kuf more often than its proper name of Kof. Dalet is yet another, as in modern speech it is pronounced with a D sound at the end, although this is wrong.

So much for the letters themselves. I can't think of any now, but I remember finding all kind of head-scratchers in Sepher Sephiroth (another one there, since it's pronounced as a hard T!) that seem due to accent or simply not knowing enough about the language. Part of the reason for the discrepancies is that when all the material we deal with was compiled Hebrew was a dead language, and there were few scholars of it and even fewer outside the religious fold. The first dictionary was was published in 1908, which started its revival. So although an ancient language officially, it's quite new and things haven't been quite hammered down yet, and things were even more uncertain during GD times and on.

My own rule is to try and simplify things whenever I can, since there's no need to use archaic spelling. The more popular words I spell as is "traditionally" accepted, like Sephiroth and Tau and a few other things, but otherwise I try to use F in lieu of PH, T instead of TH, K istead of CK, etc. When you're dealing with phonetics I feel it's more important to make sure people understand you rather than having them struggle with what means what.

Now, unraveling the whole K(Q)ab(b)al(l)a(h) thing is a whole other kettle of fish. })
 

Barleywine

No ripping :)

But yes, many of the accepted transliterations are either plain wrong or simply betray evidence of someone with an accent having done them. But, part of that goes to how Hebrew is structured, which is quite different than English.

Now, unraveling the whole K(Q)ab(b)al(l)a(h) thing is a whole other kettle of fish. })

Aww, I thought you were going to put that one to bed! :)

Thanks for the lesson. I'm going to save it for future reference.
 

Aeon418

Tzaddi is an odd one out because the transliteration is more correct than modern usage. The letter comes right before Kof,
This will make you laugh but actually illustrates some of the difficulties inherent in transliteration. I've been into Qabalah for roughly 30 years, but I still had to pause for a split second when I saw "Kof". Just for a brief moment I had to work out whether you meant Kaph-K or Qoph-Q. It's little things like this that can trip new students up.

My own rule is to try and simplify things whenever I can, since there's no need to use archaic spelling.
I'm in two minds on this issue. Sometimes the more archaic spellings still contain 'visual clues' to the original Hebrew spelling that allows you to reverse engineer a word. Some modern spellings lose this feature because they emphasise the phonetics. As a student of Qabalah I'm usually more interested in spelling than pronunciation.

I recently started reading The Hermetic Kabbalah by Colin A. Low. He's gone down the modern transliteration route. While reading his book I've kept thinking how glad I am that I already know the spellings of many of the Hebrew words.

A simple example is Low's use of "En Sof" in place of the more common "Ain Soph". The former is more phonetically correct, while the latter is closer to the original Hebrew spelling. If you were a new student with limited knowledge of Hebrew and wanted to look up the word in a reference work like Sepher Sephiroth, which spelling would you pick?

Edit: I've just taken a look at Low's K & Q.

K - Khaf.

Q - Qof.

More variations. I'm glad I'm not new to this stuff.
Personally I prefer accuracy when it comes to actual Hebrew spellings. But with transliterations I prefer consistency, even if it's not 100% correct.
 

Barleywine

This will make you laugh but actually illustrates some of the difficulties inherent in transliteration. I've been into Qabalah for roughly 30 years, but I still had to pause for a split second when I saw "Kof". Just for a brief moment I had to work out whether you meant Kaph-K or Qoph-Q. It's little things like this that can trip new students up.


I'm in two minds on this issue. Sometimes the more archaic spellings still contain 'visual clues' to the original Hebrew spelling that allows you to reverse engineer a word. Some modern spellings lose this feature because they emphasise the phonetics. As a student of Qabalah I'm usually more interested in spelling than pronunciation.

I recently started reading The Hermetic Kabbalah by Colin A. Low. He's gone down the modern transliteration route. While reading his book I've kept thinking how glad I am that I already know the spellings of many of the Hebrew words.

A simple example is Low's use of "En Sof" in place of the more common "Ain Soph". The former is more phonetically correct, while the latter is closer to the original Hebrew spelling. If you were a new student with limited knowledge of Hebrew and wanted to look up the word in a reference work like Sepher Sephiroth, which spelling would you pick?

I seem to encounter these vagaries in spelling more in recent works, like everyone is striving to get to the "pure" version, at least phonetically. I just gloss over them as long as I can make sense of them. But, in the end, my own astrological make-up gives me a traditionalist's sensibilities that make me want to absorb as much about the source as I can (well, short of seriously studying archaic Hebrew . . . ;)).
 

Zephyros

I think you're right, when it comes to Kabbalah where the letters are often what's important rather than the meaning or pronunciation of the words. An anecdote for this is Yod, both the word as well as the letter which, in its own way, illustrates the creation of dimensions. First the point then height then width. Yod itself is a poor example, since I haven't seen any contention about its spelling, but shows how the letters in a word affect its overall meaning and relevance. As you say, the word is pronounced En, but Ain's letters show a type of story in themselves, if illustrated by The Fool, The Hermit and Death

But, if we're really getting down and dirty, in a discussion about the letters of Keter I would use KTR, since Hebrew has no vowels.
 

Barleywine

But, if we're really getting down and dirty, in a discussion about the letters of Keter I would use KTR, since Hebrew has no vowels.

I sort of hijacked this thread into a new direction, but this comment had me drag out my copy of David Godwin's Cabalistic Encyclopedia, which I bought mainly for work with gematria. He has many examples of what you're talking about (he spells Beth "BYTh" in the numerical correspondences section), but otherwise seems to mingle both approaches. It's a useful book if you haven't seen it (although I can't say for sure whether it isn't - to use Godwin's own words - a "mere hotchpotch").