Hebrew letter Tarot correlations

Robbiegirl

Lechem is bread... the translation for Chemach is flour.
 

Robbiegirl

Now the flour is the base..the basics of the bread. More substantial is the bread than the flour. The flour can be made into many different things. perhaps there is a deeper meaning.
 

Pocono Platypus

Flour is bread and bread is money. It means you need to make a living.

As I am in the coffee shop this morning on my way to work, I will bring this thought with me -- to go landscaping and be hacking the blackberries, which we love, becaused of their fine fruit, and because we can hack them back all day and for them it's just like being tickled.
 

Fulgour

I've been wondering...

Robbiegirl said:
The TanaCH is actually comprised of the Torah which is the T or Tav, the NA is for the Nuun which stands for Niveeim which are the Prophets and Cis the Caf sofeet which is the end or last Caf which stands for Kituvim which means writings such as Psalms etc.
How are HE - TETH - SAMEKH related? (5-9-15) What unifies them?
 

venicebard

True, the Habiru didn't invent tarot, but...

There is direct correlation between the complete ancient bardic alphabet, of which Hebrew is a version, and the trumps. To be brief, it arose as follows.

Hebrew letters and Brito-Irish tree-letters both branched from the same trunk: in Robert Graves’s reconstruction of an original 22 (from the 20 commonly known), doubled I or mistletoe is reflected in yod’s not touching the line on which one writes, even though Graves himself missed this and identified idho, yew, as yod. The problem with all modern methods of number-correlation is that they are based on alphabetical order, not tradition. There IS a tradition uniting letters to numbers SYMBOLICALLY: bardic numeration. In it, spring vowel O yields months F-S-H, O-F-S-H being 4-8-16-0, spring’s explosive sacrifice of itself. And so on.

When Arthurian romance arose in Continental literature British bardic lore was on the Continent mixing with Judaic Gnosticism in the Provence (Languedoc) of the Troubadours and Cathars to produce a wondrous blossoming: decayed copies of the same system, they filled each other's holes and allowed reconstruction of the original, pristine understanding (minus some of the particle physics and chemical valence aspects known to its creators?), called Qabbalah. What that pristine original was transcends anything rabbis today even suspect. Later, with Cathars driven underground to become 'kazars' or witches and Gnosticism of all kinds driven into the shadows by Inquisition's ire, it was embodied in a set of cards: the Tarot of Marseilles.

In a nutshell, as fifth(?) alternative to consider, take what was probably in the minds of the creators of the Tarot of Marseilles, beginning with Le Mat:

H-hawthorn(hedge)-cheyt-space (what separates)
A-fir(yule)-alef-action (what upraises)
E-aspen(autumn)-heh-sensitivity (to a second entity)
I-yew(winter)-zayin-death (of the second in turning to a third)
O-furze(spring)-ayin-nature (power over the elements)
B-birch(birth)-beyt-young (blessing, cleansing [borax. boron being 5])

[numerologically, 5 is a new 4, being minus-4 in all digital summation]

M-vine(continuity)-mem-Ark (mem-sofit, mem being the worshiper)

[the Lover, singular, uniting with others like itself, hence carbon, 6]

P-whitten?(poetics)-peh-speech (runic dice-cup, prophecy, merkabah)
F-alder(corn-spirit)-samekh(+feh-sofit)-uprightness (oxygen)
K(C)-hazel(nutshell)-kaf-condensation (formation)
G-ivy(wandering)-gimel-desire (branches into runic ‘harvest’ and ‘gift’)
T-holly(discipline)-tav-crossroads (to square with)
D-oak(compass)-dalet-doorway (into manifestation)

[swinging Hanged Man is inverted image on back of eye; D has been a door since tifinag writing was first used by Scandinavians (four millennia ago?)]

N-ash(handles)-nun-negation (back of neck, pivot of shaking one’s head)
L-rowan(shelteredness)-lamedh-learning (swung arms seen from above)
R-elder(devil)-resh-growl (shamanic journey, runic 'ride')
S-willow(weaving)-shin-thought (quiet weaves what alef spins [sh])
U-heather(summer)-vav-conjunction (‘and’ in Hebrew)
Q(Kk)-apple(fruit)-qof-womb (refuge from hounds)
II-mistletoe(purity)-yod-seed (the Golden Bough)
St(Ss)-blackthorn(strife)-tzaddi-banner (Gabriel destroying Sodom)

[and, by process of elimination yet glove-like fit]

Th(Aa)-palm(victory)-teyt-serpent (alchemical symbol for earth)

I would stake my life on these being the correct attributions, however poorly I have condensed the considerations feeding thereinto... that is, as long as no-one reverses VIII Justice (two weights or fourfoldnesses) and XI Force (one reality plus one ten-fingered).

There are important ways in which this numbering and Graeco-Hebrew numbering interface. One example is the way vapors of mercury spread to engulf the upper half (spring) of the outer side (spring-summer) of the vessel (year) once heated at its base (leo's month, the hottest, in the belly of summer): 8 being the number associated with the column of planetary cycle Mercury (column connecting months of taurus and leo on the round, which thus rules the following signs gemini and virgo), it expands into aries's month via F's (aries's) bardic numeration (8) and into gemini's month via cheyt's (gemini's) Hebrew numeration (8), taurus's month being the roof of 8's column (20, calcium or strife, which is mercury's valence, as is leo's, 4-beryl, and dalet's, 12-magnesium, which concurrently swings to the outer side of things from its voiced, inner perch to become the horizon without or before (midsummer's Janus, facing both waxing and waning year). Interplay of letters' valences with Ezekiel's four wheels or worlds is a structure of real beauty once grasped and confirms me in my above suspicions (Luck begrudge me not such nostalgic utterances).

Feedback welcome.

PS. There is a relationship to the Greek alphabet too, both through letter-names of the bardic Boibel Loth, suggestive of a Greek original (see Graves's WHITE GODDESS), and through Phoenician letters, which bear obvious relationship to early Greek. It is through this latter relation that the bardic vowels can be securely identified and Qabbalah reconstructed, but altogether Greek letters are an intricate subject whose borders I have breached but whose heartland has not yet fallen to my army of surmise. I do know omega was restoration of the U of the Logos (AUM), which were the three bird signs in the Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet (yes, they had one) of which U (w), 'quail chick', was hardened into shin: the three 'mothers' in Hebrew are alef-shin-mem. Thus the Logos is alpha-omega-mu, or 'the alpha and the omega' culminating in M, the sweetness of the grape. (M, muin the vine, has deep Christian significance, as well as Hebrew.) Interplay of the two numbering systems is again apparent in that shin or S is bardic 16, number of court cards, while M or mem is Hebrew 40, number of numbered cards, with A or alef, 1 in both systems, standing for the 22 that emanate out of it.
 

kwaw

kwaw said:
I am a magus of laws new,
A madman whom a star's made blind,
Who strayed far wide to bring to you
The stories of my land.

I among you my burden carry,
In dirt befouled and in laugher scorned,
For woe to him bereft of country
That begs his home to be returned.

(part of the poem 'With no Country' from 'songs without a country' by Octavian Goga, 1916).

Kwaw

Image of the wandering jew from 14th century jewish haggadah:
 

Attachments

  • WanderingJew.bmp
    212.6 KB · Views: 226

northsea

After reading Mark Filipas' and other views on Hebrew letter-tarot correlations, I'm somewhat in the Alef~Magician camp. Here's my thoughts, using the following Ancient Hebrew Research Center website as a guide:
http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/28_chart.html

aleph - Magician - the ox signifies willpower ( similar to Aries )
beyt - High Priestess - tent,house,within - womb ( I ascribed the rune peorth before looking at Hebrew alphabet ; they're the same shape )
gimel - Empress - L for love, lol, dunno
dalet - Emperor - door is four-sided
hey - Hierophant - behold, adore - worship
vav - Lovers - hook - hooking up
zayin - Chariot - weapon
chet - Justice - wall, secular, separate - logic, discrimination
tet - Hermit - basket, conceal - lamp
yud - Wheel - hand, work, do - activity, life
kaf - Strength - palm of the hand, subdue, tame -
lamed - Hanged Man - staff, teach, yoke, bind - sacrificial savior
mem - Death - water, blood, turbulence - ripples of change
nun - Temperance - seed, continue, perpetual life - alchemy, fountain of youth
samech - Devil - support - he stands on it
ayin - Tower - eye, watch, know - revelation
pey - Star - mouth, scatter - feed, water the earth
tsade - Moon - (Crowley was right :D ) lay down on side, wait, hunt - crawfish waiting in pool, hounds hunting (Diana)
quf - Sun - sun on horizon, circle - horizon is the wall
resh - Judgment - head of man, first - new life, renewal
shin - Fool - teeth, sharp, eat, cliff - animal nature
tav - World - mark, signal, monument - fame leaving your mark on the world

The website has an extra letter, ghah, which I'll leave alone.
 

bradford

Hi all-
I'm for one glad there are no settled opinions or final answers on this.
Since both the Greek and Hebrew alphabets served for considerable lengths of time as shorthand for numbers, at least until replaced by Roman and then the far superior Arabic numerals borrowed from India, it's natural that they eventually came to have a sort of numerological significance associated with that and with the sequence of the numbers to which they were assigned.. But it's important to remember that this is where the significance comes from, and that it has its beginning in the chance arrangement of the alphabets. There is no structural connection with some numerically based cosmology. The fact that something is item C on somebody's list does not give it some cosmic resonance with the metaphysical properties of the number three. Sure, some silly people think that since the Hebrew alphabet is the one used by g-d himself, that everything about it, including the random sequence of the letters, must have some holy or cosmic significance. Others might as plausibly suggest that to insist on significance in everything is a symptom of paranoia.
I agree that there is no historical development of the Tarot out of this part of QBLH or even Gematria. I think this keeps us free to do the testing and exploring that you get to keep doing when you know that you're playing with man-made and artificial systems instead of fighting over what was and wasn't handed to you by g-d or by history. I've yet to see anyone break and shuffle up the Hebrew alphabet completely, lay out the trumps and then ask ; where does Ox Goad really go? What about Tooth? I wonder if that could bear fruit.
Somewhat fewer people bother to play with the threefold division into mothers, simples and doubles given in the Sefer Yetzirah, or the scales of 3, 7 and 12, but this to me holds a lot more interest, even if the assignments are based on really really bad phonetic science.
As far as I know I'm the only one playing with the physical properties of the international phonetic alphabet and its basis in the structural properties of human speech, but this, when graphed, bears an uncanny resemblance to the Otz Hhayim or Tree of Life. Maybe the Qabalists saw a hint of something there and ran with it in all the wrong directions. I have not yet, however, seen anything similar that suggests a structural relationship to the sequence of the trumps. Still looking there.
Still there remains that tease in the trump sequence suggestive of Astrology, at least with the presence of a lion, a pair of scales, some goaty horns and a water bearer, which does hint that at least a scale of twelve might be buried in there somewhere.
 

venicebard

northsea said:
After reading Mark Filipas' and other views on Hebrew letter-tarot correlations, I'm somewhat in the Alef~Magician camp. Here's my thoughts, using the following Ancient Hebrew Research Center website as a guide:
http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/28_chart.html
It is a pity that one cannot find on the web (or at least I have not found) any laying-out of the 19th-century research on the Semitic alphabet's descent directly from Egyptian hieratic signs which had the same sounds and very similar shape to their proto-Phoenician descendents, as it allows people to think the only viable (as if it were viable, though I do not find it so) theory is the incomplete one (artificially fleshed-out on the website you cite) based on pictographs found in the Sinai and deciphered only in a single instance (the name of a goddess). Truth is that the 19th-century theory was nearly complete, and so I went ahead and completed it based on what I know of the widespread bardic (meaning poetic-prophetic) tradition surrounding letters, whose remnants can be found in Ireland.

I am one who respects greatly Mark Filipas's theory but see it as a secondary strata overlaying the deeper, purely bardic system of numbering letters. But I offer my critique of your enumeration of correlations below, in case they may be of use to you. The numeration I give as 'correct' is based on bardic tradition, which allocates numbers based on symbolic equivalence, not simple letter-order.
aleph - Magician - the ox signifies willpower ( similar to Aries )
More specifically A represents the power to raise up: it is the fir (ailm) in Irish, which limits outward growth in order to redirect energy upward; it is the eagle (or Egyptian vulture) in hieroglyphics, which soars to great height; and the ox in arid Palestine was used to power the pumps which lift water up from the water table to irrigate the fields.
beyt - High Priestess - tent,house,within - womb ( I ascribed the rune peorth before looking at Hebrew alphabet ; they're the same shape )
Rune 'peorth' (originally *pairthra, as I recall) shows the rune-cup turned on its side having spilled its rune-dice and thus stands for prophecy (or divination), hence poetic speech, just as peh's shape, mouth-and-tongue, does: these correlate to VII LeChariot, symbol for the deeper tradition which transforms speech from mere words into prophecy. Beyt, on the other hand, stands for dwelling/temple/offspring ('house of') and correlates with V LePape based on 5 being the number of digits one counts on the hands of the newborn: this trump shows a mother bringing her offspring to the Pontiff to be blessed (his hand is raised in blessing), as B-birch is the tree of birth or inception (first tree-month, beginning at winter solstice).
gimel - Empress - L for love, lol, dunno
dalet - Emperor - door is four-sided
D-door-oak represents (in the bardic corpus) the doorway into manifestation, which is the outer horizon, and bears the number 12 originally, since it is where one sights the stars to locate which of the twelve signs currently rules (i.e. what part of the year it is).
hey - Hierophant - behold, adore - worship
In fact, heh is the letter added to Abram to make Abraham and thus stands for circumcision, which is done on the 8th day, not the fifth: originally it was the 8th sign (scorpio, the privates) but was moved to the first sign when alef-bet order was devised, the reordering of the 12 simple letters being based on a clear and simple code that shows where the four elements end up in three different methods of allocation. But heh is the counterpart of Greek epsilon and thus of bardic E, which is given the number 2 based in part on the fact that only 1/2 the newborns are subjected to circumcision (except in utterly barbaric cultures).
vav - Lovers - hook - hooking up
Yes, but in reality vav, or bardic U (Greek upsilon), being ura-heather, is the bed of love, not the love itself, and thus given the number 17 -- that of coming-of-age in ancient Ireland -- and the trump XVII L'Etoille, which shows the mingling of fluids in coitus. Love itself is M-meym-muin-vine, the sweetness of the grape expressed by the consonant "mm" and ruling the atom carbon (atomic number 6), whose propensity for uniting with itself to make 'chains' forms the basis of life itself.
zayin - Chariot - weapon
Plausible, but incorrect. Zayin is the same as Greek zeta, which was the initial of Zeus based on corruption of D by Y in the original Dyaus: it can only have been bardic I originally (since yod, which hovers above the line, must stand for Ii, the mistletoe or loranthus), which was given the number 3. Zayin-beyt stand for pillars Jachin and Boaz, and indeed you will note that in the Tarot de Marseille zayin's trump III L'Imperatrice has the tail of the eagle on the shield embracing her about the middle while beyt's trump V LePape has the mother's arm entering the card from the side to present her two offspring (twins representing waxing year and waning year) for the high priest's blessing (early Semitic beyt shows the mitre of the high priest). The shape of zayin (our Z) evidently originally signified a cold front -- cold air moving in under warmer air -- as I is the vowel of winter.
chet - Justice - wall, secular, separate - logic, discrimination
Cheyt is H-huath-hawthorn, a hedge, and its shape shows that which separates: it is space or no-thing which separates things, hence cheyt is LeMat, which bears no number in bardic tradition.
tet - Hermit - basket, conceal - lamp
The Hermit is much more at home representing its bardic equivalent, coll (kaf) the hazel, which is wisdom gathered together in a nutshell (bardically). Teyt is the sign for the earth or equator (crossed circle) and thus XXI LeMonde.
yud - Wheel - hand, work, do - activity, life
Yud is mistletoe/loranthus, the 'Golden Bough', hence XVIIIILeSoleil.
kaf - Strength - palm of the hand, subdue, tame -
XI LaForce is discipline as well as strength and thus tinne (tav) the holly, which represents the disciplined cohesion of the phalanx which converts many little pricks into one big one.
lamed - Hanged Man - staff, teach, yoke, bind - sacrificial savior
Lamedh in Hebrew shows arms swinging while walking seen from above and symbolizes teaching (a child to walk), as befits luis the rowan, whose trump is XIIII Temperance, which is what teaching is.
mem - Death - water, blood, turbulence - ripples of change
M or "mm" represents sweetness, not death, though N (trump XIII) is also a liquid.
nun - Temperance - seed, continue, perpetual life - alchemy, fountain of youth
N-nun-nion-ash is negation-and-newness in Indo-European and Egyptian, and conveys that meaning even in Hebrew (though the consonant of negation there is lamedh): ash is the wood of handles and trump XIII, who holds his scythe like an (ash-wood) oar and represents the ultimate negation (having no name).

Out of time this hour, sorry.
 

venicebard

bradford said:
But it's important to remember that this is where the significance comes from, and that it has its beginning in the chance arrangement of the alphabets. There is no structural connection with some numerically based cosmology.
While I do not agree that the arrangement of the alef-bet had anything to do with chance (which is an undefinable concept anyway), letter-order in existing alphabets is of course not the origin of letter-trump correlation. This is because there actually is a system of letter-number correlation that does have a "structural connection with some numerically based cosmology," namely that of the tradition that formed alphabets in the first place: poetic-prophetic tradition based on the sounds of speech and what these meant in the grand scheme of things. In fact this tradition shows (as I have indeed been able to demonstrate to my own satisfaction, the elements of which demonstration when presented here have yet to be successfully refuted) a greater grasp of the nature of things than the hodge-podge of theories 'gracing' our modern-day campuses. In fact, if you carefully study the atomic numbers in relation to the trumps of the Tarot de Marseille, you will find an uncanny connexion between what each atom-type means to man today and the images on the trumps: 10-neon is the Wheel of Fortune (think Las Vegas, the neon capital of the world); 16-sulphur (a main ingredient of gunpowder) is LaMaisonDieu, which shows a tower being struck by a cannonball; 5-boron (as in borax bleach, its ore) bears the number of Irish B-birch whose white bark symbolizes blessing/cleansing, which is what V LePape is up to; XVII L'Etoille shows someone pouring some 17-chlorine in her pool; 7-nitrogen, the main ingredient in wind, is LeChariot, which produces wind in one's face; and so on.
Sure, some silly people think that since the Hebrew alphabet is the one used by g-d himself, that everything about it, including the random sequence of the letters, must have some holy or cosmic significance.
I am no monotheist, myself, but it is clear to me that the Hebrew letters do most definitely have 'cosmic significance', as they are powerful elemental forms embodying an ancient tradition descended from greater understanding than our own, an understanding that instead of seeing reality through a myriad of different disciplines was able to unite all knowledge into a finite system of symbols. At least this is what is apparent from what I have been able to deduce concerning their shapes and how these correlate with tree-letters and atom-types and particle physics and psychology and on and on. I do not expect to be taken merely at my word on this, but I can back up what I say in detail (as those on this site who think me long-winded can atest).
I agree that there is no historical development of the Tarot out of this part of QBLH or even Gematria.
As Gershom Scholem points out, gematria is not part of Kabbalah proper, nor is what has survived of Kabbalah the complete underlying teaching itself. Rabbis have forgotten, for instance, that the 10 Sefirot derive from the ten stations of the wheel of 12 signs (13 middot, counting the return to the beginning as the 13th) that lead from the exalted -- aries, or straight up (towards the head, whither spring springs) -- to straight back towards self from other -- which is the Shekhinah, the presence of the divine in the individual.
I think this keeps us free to do the testing and exploring that you get to keep doing when you know that you're playing with man-made and artificial systems instead of fighting over what was and wasn't handed to you by g-d or by history.
Man-made only means artificial if the men producing it lack real knowledge, which, admittedly, most do lack.
I've yet to see anyone break and shuffle up the Hebrew alphabet completely, lay out the trumps and then ask ; where does Ox Goad really go? What about Tooth? I wonder if that could bear fruit.
Surely you would not say this if you were to look at all that I have posted on this site, as I have done just that. Of course, my analysis is based not simply on the Hebrew alphabet but on a collection of several alphabets based on the same essentially bardic (poetic-prophetic) tradition: hieroglyphic, Tifinag (both Scandinavian and Berber), Libyan (closely related to Tifinag), Greek-and-early-Semitic, Meroitic, Ogham (the Boibel Loth), Irish tree-letters (the Bethluisnion), and Runic (based on tree-letters, as evidenced by the fact that the two runes retaining their tree names are the letters representing the pillars Boaz and Jachin, namely B-birch and I-yew). Admittedly it takes a great deal of thought to properly correlate all these, but I think in my 3 1/2 decades of struggling to do just this that I have succeeded admirably (not that anyone cares, apparently, though passengers in my cab often find what I have to say on the matter enlightening).

If you are truly interested, we could discuss the letters in detail, but usually when people make the comments you make here they actually are merely trying to make the case for 'anything goes'. However, I will not simply assume that to be the case in your case, so I am open to detailed discussion if you are.
Somewhat fewer people bother to play with the threefold division into mothers, simples and doubles given in the Sefer Yetzirah, or the scales of 3, 7 and 12, but this to me holds a lot more interest, even if the assignments are based on really really bad phonetic science.
If one goes only by Sefer Yetzirah, you are correct. But there was originally a very simple and direct (and accurate) phonetic principle involved, hence (since you are interested) I shall lay it out.

The four wheels (of Ezekiel's vision) on which the entire system is ultimately based are "wheels within wheels" (according to the first chapter of Ezekiel). The first, I surmise, is that centered atop the head of standing Adam Qadmon (immortal, sexless archetype of Upright Sentience). The second, half its height, is centered atop the head of seated Adam, wherein archetype and us intersect. The third is half its height and centered at the heart: this is the zodiac of the body. The fourth, then, is half its height and is the round of the womb.

The first three each have lesser wheels in their 'bellies' and are thus the three 'mothers'. Based on the Logos AUM (all three birds in the Egyptian hieroglyphic alphabet), mem is the first wheel's center, shin (altered from Egyptian w as a silencing or shushing of the secret) that of the second wheel, and alef that of the third. (Explanation upon request.)

Now the second wheel represents the prototype of the surroundings, of which only the bottom half is manifest (as the ground). The seven manifested signs of this wheel were originally in the order P-T-K-R-G-D-B, with P and B on the lip or rim of this 'cauldron' and K-R-G at the gullet (the dregs). (P and D were later reversed, but that can wait.)

This cauldron, then, is taken to be the mouth, and the orb within it (zodiac of the body or seated torso) represents the tongue, as if speaking towards the sky (towards what is exalted). The top five signs of this latter are (in bardic) L-N-V/F-S-H, which go out the tongue voice and back unvoiced. But F is actually beyond the tongue and represents to pagans the sprouting of corn beyond the seed (tongue). Hebrew 'corrects' this, giving the top five signs (before reordering into the alef-bet) as lamedh-nun-samekh-tzaddi-cheyt, which is obvious in that samekh is the only letter shaped like the head (aries) and cheyt shows the shoulders-and-arms (gemini) and lamedh shows the shoulders-and-arms swinging while walking, seen from above (being aquarius, directly back from gemini).

The seven bottom signs begin by acquiring the seven bardic vowels in the order U-O-A-Aa-E-I-Ii. But A-alef is one of the three mothers and thus at the wheel's center, replaced at virgo-the-womb (originally) by qof, which shows the womb in profile with the two openings connected to it (navel and birth-canal), having in old Semitic been fruit-with-stem (our Q), since Q in Irish is quert the apple. This is because virgo on the second wheel is K and Q in bardic is Kk.

These then become, in Hebrew, the simples vav[upsilon]-ayin[omicron]-qof[qoppa]-teyt[theta, by process of elimination bardic Aa]-heh[epsilon]-zayin[zeta]-yod[iota], zeta's connection to bardic I being through its representation of the corruption of D (its sign on the second wheel, originally) by I or Y (Zeus originating from Indo-European Dyaus).

Even the consonantization of these vowels in Semitic (and Egyptian) conveys a wealth of meaning and is not arbitrary. For instance, the fire triad's two sides emanate from zayin and samekh, z and s (voiced and unvoiced equivalents).

Am running out of time, but if any of this is the least bit of interest to you, I shall be glad to return (in a few days' time) to discuss with you however much detail you wish to explore. (Much, of course, can be found already on this site if you chase down my various posts, but that would be rather a tedious chore, I should think.)