Tree of Life. Up or Down?

augursWell

For me it helps to learn the sefirot in their own context as the 10(11) ideas/concepts/meanings that they are and in the order from top to bottom or bottom to top, whichever makes sense to you currently. The "lightning flash" is specific to the order of the sefirot and trying to add the tarot cards to that needlessly complicates things, I think. If you look at the sefirot as one inside of another like the layers of an onion and go from outside to inside, or vice versa, then the ideas expressed by each sephira make more sense.

Adding the Tarot cards/Hebrew letters to the pathways has many variations and to me becomes simply a memory system for organizing the letters. Each card/letter ends up with a sephira at each end of its pathway which becomes a matter of opinion. There may be a correct and true way to do it but a widely accepted one is hard to come by.
 

Rosanne

Ups and Downs

I have been trying to come to grips with Tarot and the Tree of Life myself.
The clearest descrition for me was this-
The descending Lightening Flash and the ascending Path of the Serpent when placed side by side, may be seen as the Archetypal blueprint and its mirror image, the heavenly design and its reflection in Human strivings.The first Ten Major Arcanum starting Le Bateleur on Kether going down the Ten Sephirot and Major Arcanum 11 through 21 going up the tree on the paths.
The Serpents Tail on path 32 The Path of Tau. Gosh I don't know if that sounds right to you, but it is a whole new World to me and I am just starting to see it myself; forgive me if I burble. ~Rosanne
 

hoomer

Lillie said:
Maybe this has beencovered before, but if it has I don't know.
It has bugged me for years and years.
Ok. The tree of life. Assuming that all the paths are the major arcana, as many would have it.
Now assume that the initiation of someone into a group such as the GD entails moving up the tree from Malkuth, a journey of enlightenment, let's say.
Well, the tarot trumps are also said to be the fools journey to enlightenment, moving through the cards in order. (you know what I mean)
Well, that's going down the tree, toward malkuth, isn't it?

See what I'm getting at?

I never could reconcile those two things.

Does anyone have any answers?

wg grays' tarot/kabbalah involved moving up the tree......which imo makes more sense...as personally I am on earth....ha....
 

venicebard

It helps to know their origin

Interesting question you raise. You won't find this in books, I guess, and the rabbis appear not to be aware of it, but the Sefirot, I am sure, originate(d) as follows.

1) The wheels of Ezekiel are four in number, from that resting where standing Adam Qadmon’s feet rest centered atop the head, to the fourth and last, the round of the womb resting in the belly of the third (zodiac of seated torso).

2) In each of these four 'worlds' is etched out the path whereby we, as individual units, 'evolved'. Beginning in the One, which is the Exalted (straight up, towards aries the head) or first sign, we develop on the nature or outer (forward) side of the wheel(s), then cross over to the inner or intelligent side to eventually get to where we are currently, an ‘inner horizon’, straight back (from the outer horizon straight ahead): this is the tenth sign or stage (capricorn), namely Malkut, wherein is the Shekhinah or Presence (of the Unit).

Aside: given the above, I for one would not wish to ‘climb’ back to the beginning by undoing all the progress thus-far made. Rather might one aspire to continue on round by the three remaining steps (aquarius, pisces, and return to aries) to complete the thirteen middot or divine qualities.

3) Orientation of the seasons according to the signs arises FROM the physiological attributions, since spring is when things spring up (towards aries the head), fall when things fall down (leaves, fruit), summer nature at her most forward (cancer, the breasts), winter nature at her most held-back (capricorn, builder of backbone lest we be ‘weak in the knees’).

4) These four worlds appear to be suits Clubs, Swords, Cups, and Money, respectively. Numbered cards are Sefirot, and court cards the Name, of four letters.

Postscript: as for paths, there are supposedly two different patterns of them, depending on purpose envisaged. The only light I can shed is that all the Hebrew letters said to correspond to paths (as normally allocated in occult circles) which connect to Tiferet (gimel-heh-zayin-yod-lamedh-nun-samekh-ayin) except the last (ayin) are sounds to the active or inner side of the wheels, the simples (all except gimel being ‘simples’) IN THEIR ORDER of occurrence on the original wheel of twelve simples (whose order was jumbled in an intelligible manner in the alef-bet itself). The paths appear to be a somewhat old tradition in Hebrew circles, yet whether Lurianic Kabbalah delt with them I would be interested to find out, as that is about the latest date at which any solid knowledge of the deeper (unspoken) Qabbalah would have been extant.