Is The Planet Order Really a Mess?

Rosanne

I have read often that the Planet order of Golden Dawn does not fit in the sequence of 22 properly. I have been trying to work out if I can can see why it is OK. I think it is about colour.
Lets see if I can explain, without boring everyone to tears, what I mean.
Seven Planets, Seven colours to the rainbow, Chaldean order, Alchemical order
and colours on the Rosy Cross lamen.
Rainbow
Red.......Mars
Orange..Sun
Yellow...Mercury
Green....Venus
Blue.......Moon
Indigo....Saturn
Violet.....Jupiter.
On the Rosy Cross the colours run anticlockwise from the top in the rainbow order.
The Chaldean order goes Saturn, Jupiter,Mars,Sun,Venus,Mercury and Moon.
The Alchemical order goes Mercury, Saturn, Jupiter, Moon, Venus, Mars and Sun.
The Golden Dawn goes Mercury-Moon-Venus-Jupiter-Mars-Sun and Saturn.
The Magician-Mercury-Yellow -I am
The High Priestess-Moon-Blue -I think
The Empress-Venus-Green (yellow+Blue)-I create
Wheel Of Fortune-Jupiter- Violet - Therefore things change
The Tower-Mars-Red- I am transformed
The Sun-Sun-Orange- I have achieved
The World-Saturn-Indigo- This is what I wanted- completion.
In one of the Golden Dawn grades called I think the Flying Roll XV11 the Seven sides- The person stands with Violet at their left hand and Red at their right looking towards the east at Venus- so I put the seven colours on the seven pointed star and it all looked fine to me........ so can someone tell me why everyone gets upset at this Golden Dawn Planetary Order? ~Rosanne
 

Rosanne

I am not convinced that Tree of Life is connected to Tarot, but conversely agree that TdM has a Judaic(Original Christianity) origin of a pattern of ideas as an aid to memory. So along comes the Golden Dawn whose members, namely Waite,Mathers,Crowley rectify the Tarot packs of those before- Court de Gebelin (What Tarot deck did he see used?)-Etteilla- Levi (who was the first to slot the whole of Tarot into the Quaballa); yet rectified again by Oswald Wirth, then Papus. Now it is a given that Golden Dawn in regards to Tarot was strongly influenced by Levi- there is also the amalgamation of other disciplines like alchemy and visionary experience. I am wondering if this visionary experience had a greater influence than I have found discussed.
I for example see Mercury the Planet in the Card Judgement, more easily than I do in The Magician- except in meditation of the colours of planets and cards- I can see Mercury as the Magician then. So it leaves me wondering if the Path 2 on the Tree and that argument is misplaced. Can someone enlighten me? ~Rosanne
 

Satori

Well Roseanne, I cannot enlighten you because I am still on the path myself, ;), but I wonder where the Earth is in all of this?

I don't want to take your thread off topic, but is it because we are on the Earth that it doesn't show up in the list?

This is new stuff to me, so I figured since the discussion hadn't really started yet I would come over and ask my ignorant questions. And, I'm not afraid of you! You nice lady.
 

Ross G Caldwell

Satori said:
Well Roseanne, I cannot enlighten you because I am still on the path myself, ;), but I wonder where the Earth is in all of this?

I don't want to take your thread off topic, but is it because we are on the Earth that it doesn't show up in the list?

This is new stuff to me, so I figured since the discussion hadn't really started yet I would come over and ask my ignorant questions. And, I'm not afraid of you! You nice lady.

You are absolutely right Satori, the Earth isn't there because we are on it. In the old system, the Earth was considered the centre of the Universe, and it did not move. It wasn't a planet. Planet means "wanderer." Up in the sky there were objects that moved - the seven planets - but Earth was fixed, immovable. The Sun went around US - and so did the Stars.

Roseanne -

so can someone tell me why everyone gets upset at this Golden Dawn Planetary Order? ~Rosanne

Who do you mean that gets upset?

All of those orders are different - there's even another one (not to confuse you further) - the days of the week! Sun-Moon-Mars-Mercury-Jupiter-Venus-Saturn.

Then there's one closer to home (esoterically), the Sefer Yetzirah -
Beth-Moon
Gimel-Mars
Daleth-Sun
Caph-Venus
Peh-Mercury
Resh-Saturn
Tav-Jupiter

The GD didn't use this one, but they used the Sefer Yetzirah's Zodiac attributions. Go figure.

This is not to dismiss it as naive, Moon-Gimel-Priestess makes sense, as does Beth-Mercury-Magician. The others do to, according to their own logic.

I wouldn't hang up on it - just try to figure out the logic behind each one, and go with it.

Ross
 

sweet_intuition

A little note to remember,

The three outer planets (Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto) were rediscovered during the time of the GD, hence that caused the change in the planetary correspondences. The older continental correspondences never took these into account as they didn't "exist" back then. Hence that's one of the many reasons why there is a significant change in attributions, especially planetary ones.
 

venicebard

[Whispered:] (He's here . . .)
Rosanne said:
The Alchemical order goes Mercury, Saturn, Jupiter, Moon, Venus, Mars and Sun.
In my understanding, the opus proceeds by the four stages lead-mercury-silver-gold, the three transitions being black-white-red: the black is recognition of lead's blackness, allowing transmutation, which is mercury, to take place, which then allows whiteness or purity to produce 'silver' (calm reflection), which then allows the fullness of color (red) to produce out of said purity that which is incorruptible (symbolized by gold). Now that you mention it, I suppose each step from one stage to the next might be correlated with a planet to produce a full 7-planet order, yet black would normally be Saturn/Kronos/Krishna, which is already taken by lead. Yet each stage may be helped by a planet. Perhaps recognition of one's initial blackness requires that one truly love oneself, Venus/copper, which is then hardened to bronze by addition of Jupiter/tin, which is then outdone in hardness by Mars/iron: yet this only leads to better weaponry, not wisdom.

Hence it would more likely be the courage or martial discipline that is required to see one's initial blackened state and allows transformation to take place, which must then be 'relaxed' to accomplish true reflection, it being Venus/copper that does the 'relaxing' (the warrior in us softened by love, so to speak), which is then hardened to a happy medium by Jupiter/tin: the upshot of this would be the bronze of statues (perhaps explaining the legend of the golem as having originated in a metaphor concerning statuary).
Rosanne said:
I am not convinced that Tree of Life is connected to Tarot, but conversely agree that TdM has a Judaic(Original Christianity) origin of a pattern of ideas as an aid to memory. So along comes the Golden Dawn whose members, namely Waite,Mathers,Crowley rectify the Tarot packs of those before- Court de Gebelin (What Tarot deck did he see used?)-Etteilla- Levi (who was the first to slot the whole of Tarot into the Quaballa); yet rectified again by Oswald Wirth, then Papus.
Don't mean to intrude (or do I?), but shouldn't rectify and rectified have single quotes? (And Levi would of course have only been the first to so 'slot' if the designers of, say, the Marseilles had not beat him to it!)
I for example see Mercury the Planet in the Card Judgement, more easily than I do in The Magician-
Interesting that you say this. Knowing I shall bore everyone to tears, let me say that in the [proto-]bardic (scheme masked underneath) Kabbalah, XX LeJugement (calcium, which shares mercury's valence), as Ss-straif-blackthorn-tzaddi or taurus (in the tree-calendar, ere its alef-bet shift to aquarius), marks with its month the part of Mercury's column (of the seven) which extends to the top of the alchemical vessel (round of the year, aries-the-head being up): it is this part of its column that is expanded by Mercury's number (8) in Coins or rounds to become its poisonous vapors, that which forces the alchemical vessel to be a round (that is, closed so that the 'puffer' might not breathe said fumes). The expansion is brought about by the fact that tree-calendar 8 is fearn-the-alder or aries, while Hebrew 8 is cheyt-the-shoulders or gemini (ere its alef-bet juggling), thus spreading mercury out to encompass the whole of spring (symbolizing filling-out of tree's foliage in spring). [Fearn's place is taken by samekh-the-head in the square-Hebrew of the prophets, and no doubt by samekh the ogam-consaine Ng in old north Semitic.]
 

venicebard

Ross G Caldwell said:
You are absolutely right Satori, the Earth isn't there because we are on it. In the old system, the Earth was considered the centre of the Universe, and it did not move. It wasn't a planet. Planet means "wanderer." Up in the sky there were objects that moved - the seven planets - but Earth was fixed, immovable. The Sun went around US - and so did the Stars.
Yet as I see it in the oldest way of looking at things (meaning the original correct way, before its 'corruption by inexactness'), saw the whole as anthropocentric, hence earth-centered only in that man is fulcrum (point of balance between outer and inner horizons) and man's average position is nearer earth's center than the sun's or galaxy's. And indeed it is true that the great year, whose physical or proximate cause is gyroscopic precession, results in the entire physical heavens revolving once about the zodiac-of-the-body (meaning the link between spring's springing up and man's head pointing up, between summer's filling-out and woman's breasts doing the same, and so on) every (what-is-it) 25-some-odd-thousand years.

Surely you agree that the Tree in Asiyah or Coins delineates the temporal spectrum as eternity, great year, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, year, Venus, Mercury, month, day ('day' meaning today, the fleeting present instant)?
All of those orders are different - there's even another one (not to confuse you further) - the days of the week! Sun-Moon-Mars-Mercury-Jupiter-Venus-Saturn.
. . . where going forward by twos ascends and going back by twos descends (the Tree in Asiyah, taking 'Sun' as merely the year, rather than great-year/year/day or 2/6/10). I've never figured this one out myself (beyond what I just said).
Then there's one closer to home (esoterically), the Sefer Yetzirah -
Beth-Moon
Gimel-Mars
Daleth-Sun
Caph-Venus
Peh-Mercury
Resh-Saturn
Tav-Jupiter
There is no consensus on the order you give here for Sefer Yetzirah: it is more consistantly given in Chaldean order, is it not?
The GD didn't use this one, but they used the Sefer Yetzirah's Zodiac attributions. Go figure.
This is only natural, since they are based simply on alef-bet order (itself a jumbling of proto-bardic order but at least an agreed-upon jumbling).

Sorry to roil the waters (just bored, I guess). Cheeryo.
 

Teheuti

Ross G Caldwell said:
Then there's one closer to home (esoterically), the Sefer Yetzirah -
Beth-Moon
Gimel-Mars
Daleth-Sun
Caph-Venus
Peh-Mercury
Resh-Saturn
Tav-Jupiter
The oldest form of the Sepher Yetzirah did not specify which planets went with which letters - hence all the confusion and variations given since then.

Mary
 

venicebard

sweet_intuition said:
The three outer planets (Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto) were rediscovered during the time of the GD, hence that caused the change in the planetary correspondences. The older continental correspondences never took these into account as they didn't "exist" back then.
All very true, where exoteric science is concerned. But I would argue that existence of three non-manifest 'nodes' in the system is easily deducible once the inner (i.e. psychic or subtle) mechanics of the solar system are understood. You see, air is acted on by fire in the Sun (as 2, the great year), acts on water through Saturn (3) and on earth through Jupiter (4). Water is acted on by fire in the Moon (9), by air in Mercury (8), by [/b]water itself[/b] in Venus (7), acts on water itself via the year (6) and on earth via Mars (5). Earth (10) is acted on by all of the other three elements.

This leaves fire (the radiant layer, stellar mechanics being a matter mediated by electromagnetic forces, sayeth plasma cosmology, not gravitational, as is generally and naively believed) to act on air-water-and-earth via a single number (whereas 10 has the rest of number as its field, being the start of the numerological repeating of the 1/2/3/4/-4/-3/-2/-1/-0 pattern ad infinitum). As fire, it does act in a unified way (all energy being defined globally, not locally, as it is based on the system of which it is part). But as soon as things progress beyond 1's unity into the actual elements acted upon, meaning once unmanifested air is reached, we would expect three nodes to appear as the result of fire's activity, to act as channels of said influence just as all the other influences have their channels. The only difference (which I just now realized, while explaining this) is that each of these three are single planets (as befits fire's unity), while the rest flow from one planet to another.

I hope I've expressed thiings clearly enough. If not, bug me about it and I'll respond. (The reasoning behind the above dynamic structure for instance, omitted for brevity, can be explained should anyone here be interested in its origin).
 

kwaw

Teheuti said:
The oldest form of the Sepher Yetzirah did not specify which planets went with which letters - hence all the confusion and variations given since then.

Mary

We may I suppose reconstruct a speculative 'earliest recoverable text' as done for example by Peter Hayman, "identifying the textual material that all three recensions have in common - the lowest common denominator", that does not include reference to which planets go with which letters (because the majority of short version recensions do not include such).

However, there are three extent recensions, known as the Short, the Long and the saadia, that have been recognised since the 10th century. There is an extent 10th century manuscript of the long version [Vatican Library (Cat. Assemani)299(8), fols.66a-71 b), the 1263 Baghdad copy of the Saadia Gaons text and commentary originally written in 931 [Oxford, Bodleian Library Pococke 256 (Cat. Neubauer 1533)] was the oldest extent copy of the Saadia known until the discovery in the 20th century of the 10/11th century copy of the same [The Geniza Scroll, Cambridge University Library, Taylor-Schechter K21/56 + Glass 32/5 + Glass 12/813]. These are the oldest extent manuscript copies of the Long and Saadia recensions and include the attributions of the double letters to the planets in chaldean order. While the letter to planet attribution is not present in most extent short versions the order as infered from para 62 [Hayman] is also extent in at least two short version manuscripts, including the oldest extent [Param 2784.14 (Bibliotheca Palatina 2784/14). De Rossi 1390, fols.36b-38b. 1286]. Manuscripts 'A', 'C', 'Z' and 'K' in Hayman.

Sefer Yesira : 41 [Gruenwald]

Saadia [Manuscripts C and Z Hayman]:
1 He made Bet King and bound to it a crown and combined one with another, and formed of it: Saturn in the universe, the Sabbath in the year, and the mouth in the soul.
2 He made Gimel King and bound to it a crown and combined one with another, and formed of it: Jupiter in the universe, Sunday in the year, and the right eye of the soul.
3. He made Dalet King and bound to it a crown and combined one with another, and formed of it: Mars in the universe, Monday in the year, and the left eye of the soul.
4. He made Kaf King and bound to it a crown and combined one with another, and formed of it: Sun in the universe, Tuesday in the year, and the right nostril of the soul.
5. He made Peh King and bound to it a crown and combined one with another, and formed of it: Venus in the universe, Wednesday in the year, and the left nostril of the soul.
6. He made Resh King and bound to it a crown and combined one with another, and formed of it: Mercury in the universe, Thursday in the year, and the right ear of the soul.
7. He made Tav King and bound to it a crown and combined one with another, and formed of it: Moon in the universe, Friday in the year, and the left ear of the soul.

Long [Manuscript A Hayman]
1 He made Bet King and bound to it a crown and combined one with another, and formed of it: Saturn in the universe, the Sabbath in the year, and the mouth in the soul.
2 He made Gimel King and bound to it a crown and combined one with another, and formed of it: Jupiter in the universe, Sunday in the year, and the right eye of the soul.
3. He made Dalet King and bound to it a crown, and formed of it: Mars in the universe, Monday in the year, and the left eye of the soul.
4. He made Kaf King and bound to it a crown, and formed of it: Sun in the universe, Tuesday in the year, and the right nostril of the soul.
5. He made Peh King and bound to it a crown, and formed of it: Venus in the universe, Wednesday in the year, and the left nostril of the soul.
6. He made Resh King and bound to it a crown, and formed of it: Mercury in the universe, Thursday in the year, and the right ear of the soul.
7. He made Tav King and bound to it a crown, and formed of it: Moon in the universe, Friday in the year, and the left ear of the soul.

Sefer Yesirah : 62 [Gruenwald]

Manuscript K [Hayman] Short recension {does not appear in majority of short version manuscripts, but does in this the earliest extent manuscript of the short recension}:
2: Saturn, Sabbath, the mouth. --- Jupiter, Sunday, right eye. --- Mars, Monday, left eye. --- The Sun, Tuesday, right nostril. --- Venus, Wednesday, left nostril. --- Mercury, Thursday, right ear. ---Moon, Friday, left ear: these are Bet, Gimel, Dalet, Kaf, Peh, Resh and Tav.

Manuscript A [Hayman] Long recension:
Saturn, Sabbath, the mouth. --- Jupiter, Sunday, right eye. --- Mars, Monday, left eye. --- The Sun, Tuesday, right nostril. --- Venus, Wednesday, left nostril. --- Mercury, Thursday, right ear. ---Moon, Friday, left ear: these are Bet, Gimel, Dalet, Kaf, Peh, Resh and Tav.

Manuscript C [Hayman] Saadia recension
Saturn, Sabbath, the mouth. --- Jupiter, Sunday, right eye. --- Mars, Monday, left eye. --- The Sun, Tuesday, right nostril. --- Venus, Wednesday, left nostril. --- Mercury, Thursday, right ear. ---Moon, Friday, left ear: these are Bet, Gimel, Dalet, Kaf, Peh, Resh and Tav.

The earliest extent manuscripts of the SY in all three recensions therefore do in fact include planet to letter attributions, and they are in the Chaldean order.

Kwaw
ref: Peter Hayman Sefer Yesira 2004 Mohr Siebeck, Tubingen, Germany.