different path systems: WHY???

kwaw

rebecca-smiles said:
A friend of my mums said "the trouble with the kabbalah is it is like a hat stand; you can hang anything on it!"


I always considered that its virtue :)

Kwaw
 

job

ah, ha!

rebecca-smiles said:
Thank you Venicebard for your input. It is much apprieciated.

A friend of my mums said "the trouble with the kabbalah is it is like a hat stand; you can hang anything on it!"

- i guess it is a matter of finding a system that hangs well?

I got the sefer yetsirah today, and will look you the four wheels etc too.

cheers :)

This is a fantastic thread! Thanks :)
 

Llynn

Hello rebecca-smiles, thanks for starting this thread. I started learning Tarot in my teens and only came to study Kabbalah in my late thirties. My first books followed the Golden Dawn System but somehow their attributions did not grab me, but then I read WG Gray and something clicked. I followed on with RJ Stewart's works and it's to their systems and correspondences that I relate. When I read the history and found even more ways of placing Tarot on the Paths then I felt at liberty to use a Tree and Tarot correspondence that worked for me. I don't feel any need to join any order to pursue my studies - I have a deep seated reluctance to embrace bureaucratic or hierarchical organisations - therefore I don't have to follow their system. (There are Hedge Witches and Hedge Druids, can you have a Hedge Kabbalist/Qabalist/Cabalist?) That's not to say that you can't learn from all the variations - it keeps you on your mental toes - but it's to Gray and Stewart that I return.

The Tree and Kaballah are for personal use and development and it only matters that you feel comfortable with your Tree; let it grow, and be amazed at what develops.
~Llynn
 

venicebard

rebecca-smiles said:
A friend of my mums said "the trouble with the kabbalah is it is like a hat stand; you can hang anything on it!"
Kwaw may like this, but I agree with your mom's friend, at least about Kabbalah in its modern guise.
I got the sefer yetsirah today, and will look you the four wheels etc too.
As far as I know, the four wheels are not discussed much: they were the concealed understanding underlying much of what is spoken about: the four worlds of Lurianic Kabbalah are the wheels themselves, but this is not overtly stated anywhere that I know of.

The only mention of the four Ofanim (spirit-wheels, as I sometimes call them) is in the first chapter of Ezekiel, the chapter that formed the basis of the Work of the Chariot, that is, the Merkabah tradition out of which Kabbalah sprang once it made contact with the Brito-Irish bardic lore that accompanied Arthur and Tristan to Provence-Languedoc (the land-and-era of the Troubadours) in the 12th century . . . or at least that is the only explanation I can find for the form the Kabbalah took on the surface. Indeed no-one has ever presented me with a better one, considering the provable kinship between Irish tree-letters and early Hebrew/Phoenician, and between the former and square-Hebrew letters once one accepts the two letters (bringing 20-letter ogham up to 22) which Robert Graves hypothesizes (in The White Goddess) were concealed letters, Aa-palm and Ii-mistletoe. For yod is suspended above the line to represent the fact that the latter (or loranthus, its eastern counterpart) is rooted in a tree, not in the ground.

I just didn't want you to be surprised not to find much directly discussing the wheels: Ezekiel 1:1 is the ultimate source (that and reason).
 

rebecca-smiles

Lynn, thank goodness i'm not the only one! it's good to know there is someone to relate to!

Venicebard: thankyou for pointing that out. I think i'm too bewilldered to notice anyway! all that alphabet stuff goes clear over my head :)