Basic question on double-letter/planet attributions

terroin

Please save me some time in ploughing through the text of Oedipus Aegyptiacus and the like. Did Kircher (or any other pre 19th century scholar) give an attribution of elements, planets and signs of the Zodiac to the paths of the Tree of Life which looks anything like Eliphas Levi's or the Golden Dawn's? By that I mean the 22 paths between the Sephiroth, not the Sephiroth themselves.

I am particularly interested in the planetary attributions of the Hebrew “double” letters (Beth, Gimel, Daleth, Kaph, Pe, Resh, Tau). Early versions of the Sepher Yetsirah simply put them in Ptolemaic “outside-in” order, viz: Beth=Saturn, Gimel=Jupiter…Tau=Moon.
Later (traditional Jewish) Kabbalists give some variant orders.

However, Eliphas Levi, who draws extensively on Kircher, enunciates a completely different order, in his The Key of the Mysteries
“THE DOUBLE LETTERS: BETH. Reflection, thought, the moon, the Angel Gabriel, Prince of mysteries [High Priestess].
GIMEL. Love, will, Venus, the Angel Anael, Prince of life and death [Empress].
DALETH. Force, power, Jupiter, Sachiel, Melech, King of kings. [Emperor]
KAPH. Violence, strife, work, Mars, Samael Zebaoth, Prince of Phalanges. [Strength (Trump 11)]
PE. Eloquence, intelligence, Mercury, Raphael, Prince of sciences [Star].
RESH. Destruction and regeneration, Time, Saturn, Cassiel, King of tombs and of solitude [Judgement].
TAU. Truth, light, the Sun, Michael, King of the Elohim [World].”

The Trump names are my additions, based on Levi’s well known alphabet-trump correspondence, beginning with aleph as the Magician, beth the Popess…etc.

This looks to me very much like a retrofitting exercise. Levi seems to have looked at the Tarot trumps to which the double letters corresponded in his system and arbitrarily re-sorted the planets to indicate some resemblances, eg the Emperor as Jupiter and Mars as Strength.

The Golden Dawn apparently re-sorted them again to accord with its (beth=Magician, gimel=priestess…) correspondences. Notably, the Priestess stayed with the Moon and the Empress with Venus, but attributed to different letters.

I would love to learn that Levi wasn’t just arbitrarily reshuffling, but had his letter(path)-planet correspondences from an older source; one that wasn’t concerned with Tarot.

If there is such a source, the nice match with the Trumps would require an explanation.

Apologies for the length of this post. Can anyone plase advise?
 

terroin

Basic question on double-letter/planet attribution

KariRoad said:
The 22 Trumps on the Tree
http://www.spiritone.com/~mfilipas/Masquerade/Esoteric/Tree/
courtesy of Mark Filipas

Thanks, KariRoad. Comprehensive, if not exactly clear. It's sometimes hard to make out which Trump is intended, just from the picture. I wish they'd been numbered or labelled.

Correlating his Athanasius-style Tree with what I've found in Athanasius (see below), the planet-Trump correspondences (eg Magician-Sun, Wheel-Moon ) don't look at all supportive of any awareness by him of Tarot-Tree parallels.
 

terroin

terroin said:
I would love to learn that Levi wasn’t just arbitrarily reshuffling, but had his letter(path)-planet correspondences from an older source; one that wasn’t concerned with Tarot.

If there is such a source....

...then Athanasius Kircher ain't it. I found (just before bed last night) the key table in Oedipus Aegyptiacus Ch IX, P335.

http://www.twitpic.com/3kvlw9

Kircher seems to have simply put the alphabetical order of the paths against the planets in the order in which the Sepher Yetsirah first lists them, viz: Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars - ignoring (or not knowing of) the "Supplement to Ch IV" of Sepher Y, which gives the correspondence: Beth/Moon. Gimel/Mars, Daleth/Sun, Kaph/Venus, Phe/Mercury, Resh/Saturn, Tau/Jupiter!

So Levi didn't get his correspondences from Kircher. Any other candidate sources? Or are we to conclude he did just make them up to yield persuasive Tarot trump parallels?
 

KariRoad

how about?

terroin said:
Beth/Moon. Gimel/Mars, Daleth/Sun, Kaph/Venus, Phe/Mercury, Resh/Saturn, Tau/Jupiter!
Beth : MOON
Gimel : Venus
Daleth : Mars
Kaph : Mercury
Phe : SUN
Resh : Jupiter
Tau : Saturn