I am compelled to defend myself, I see.
Greg Stanton said:
You've never presented EVIDENCE. You've only made statements like 40 pips represents this, and 16 court cards means that, and isn't it an interesting coincidence that in Kaballah 22=XYZ, etc. You've never once given us any actual proof that these numerical arrangements prove that the tarot had Kaballistic origins. In fact, no documentation exists that links the tarot to the Kaballah, or even the occult, until the 19th century -- which indicates to my mind that that was when the idea originated. Unless you can produce some documentation that dates from around the time Tarot was created (say 1400-1550) that shows conclusively that one was born of the other, you have nothing but interesting theories.
Look, I’ll be as tactful as possible here. You seem to have the idea that things of a temporal nature—specifically, an
historical question—are subject to ‘proof’. Proof implies certainty, whereas even to
live an event leaves all statements concerning it subject to doubt. The Pythagorean theorem is susceptible to proof, because it concerns relationships that are not capable of being
affected or in any way
altered by time. But even clear documentation of an historical event or process is susceptible to being brought into question, either by further documentation appearing to
contradict it or by inconsistencies found in the documentation itself.
As I have stated many times, Plato made this state of affairs clear in the 19th chapter of
The Republic, though translations obscure it a bit by translating with the word
exists what originally meant
abides (as is clear from the context). He said there is that which abides, that which abides and abides not, and that which abides not; and that that which abides (the eternal) can be
known, that that which abides and abides not (whatever has finite duration) can be thought or opined about, and that concerning that which abides not (the duration-less present instant) we will remain forever ignorant. (The reason for this last, of course, is that ere one can turn one’s attention to it it is gone, and only memories
of it—subject to all the vicissitudes of human perception—remain.)
Frankly, it's frustrating. Your mind seems to have a different standard for what constitutes proof and what qualifies as subjective theory.
I feel your frustration and believe you speak here in good faith. But to state categorically (as you are wont to do) that TdM has no real (original) connection to Kabbalah is
itself a thing that requires proof in order to be stated with such certainty. Now relative certainty (i.e. high probability, so to speak)
is achievable where temporal reality is concerned, I will grant you that. But to pretend that it
only consists in documentation is a bit pedantic, if you ask me. It would mean that no matter how compellingly detailed the internal evidence of conformity between two structures whose interrelation
cannot be ruled out on historical grounds (which is certainly true of 14th-to-17th-century TdM and 12th-century Kabbalah), one could never say that yes, there is good reason to believe there is a causative interconnection.
I utterly reject such a standard, as must anyone who is truly seeking to understand, that is, anyone who is not a sophist (which I do not think you are in the least, by the way).
BTW, Crowley has absolutely no credibility in my book.
I was certainly not accusing
you of said sin. Yet there are those on this forum whom I otherwise respect (and shall be nameless) for whom Crowley appears to have some credibility.
Whatever little of his corpus has practical occult value was cribbed from the Golden Dawn . . .
I heartily concur, and it is the Golden Dawn which I suspect of having indeed had
some sort of access to interesting source material (whence they got the letter-paths and the planet-Sefirah correlations), though they completely botched the letter-trump assignments from my point of view.