Phoenician letter correspondences & Astrological considerations

Rosanne

venicebard said:
I of course mean bardic as a technical term referring to the tradition of sounds (of speech) and their power over man and nature, which I think can be reconstructed in basic outline, which is what am trying to convey to those interested in the very tool that is most useful in that process, (early) tarot. The relationship between ancient alphabets, their tendency to become clearer as picture-symbols when analyzed according to the phonetically structured bardic calendar-sequence with attendant vowels (poetry’s most primitive form is alliterative, so the idea of individual sounds is certainly not dependent on ‘literacy’), makes it seem (as does common sense) that alphabetical characters arose from poetical knowledge, not vice versa: poetry precedes literacy in the development of cultures.
The Mist clears and I see what you mean now. Thank you for the prescis to your understanding, I have a stucture to follow. I guess I believe that before a written or even drawn/painted idea it was handed down orally..say as in counting games today for example..one two buckle my shoe etc. But why I look to the Phoenician for a Tarot basis in an image is this - I believe their writing, and not necessarily the message (for instance 'House' )was something spiritual as well. I think they used the Alphabet as a 'majic'. I think they incorporated in their alphabet a whole system of 'majic' Gods,our universe,beliefs and individual human characteristics. So I see it as their Tarot. I have tried to find an earlier version but I come to a halt at the Phoenicians. Perhaps the Hebrew development was clearer, and the Merkabhah more concise, and Ogham more poetic and all was more direct for when the images were printed in Medieval times or later in the Renaissance. I see a clear connection- I see the EVE of Tarot and I see it in the actual shapes of the letters- like Astrid O sees Water in Mem or I see a snake in Tet the Hermit's Hand (staff). Anyway it is all very interesting and I wish I had done Anthropology at University,but everyone helps with insight. ~Rosanne
 

venicebard

M. le jmd sometimes thinks I am unlearned, and Rosanne thinks me a mad Myrddin of the Caledonian Wood (I wish) only some of whose mutterings and wailings can be made out (just joking). By the way, I would probably be with the druids of both sides on a hillside somewhere observing, judging (intervening to stop the fight once we determine one side or the other has ‘made its point’, unless the other side is Roman, in which case annihilation is the only point), and working out the lay of the struggle for the winter halls.
Rosanne said:
When you get to the Futhark -you become Etruscan again...and I do not as yet understand 'Bardic numbering'
Bardic numbering? Okay (using symbolic ‘shorthand’):

B counts the fingers of the newborn’s hand.
L teaches the similarity of two manifestations (2 x 7).
N reaches for return-to-beginning (13).
F (spring) duplicates nature (2 x 4).
S (pollen?) duplicates that duplication (2 x 8).

H separates (no-thing or space).
D-of-midsummer (oak) has 12 merry men.
T (11) is the turning of one of them.
K’s nut is fallen from the nine hazels of wisdom.
Kk duplicates this (2 x 9).

Mmm is when one threefold thing encounters another of its kind (2 x 3).
G serpentine ivy climbs down the Tree as desire’s grasping-in-both-hands (10).
P is for poetry, meaning manifestation itself (7).
Ss is strife between two ten-fingereds (2 x 10).
R is fifteenth, completes the ogam consaine, and has an extra hand (15)

(Aa is 1’s outer aspect, three manifestations or 3 x 7.)
A begins the Logos and is 1 everywhere (can’t ‘defend’ the unassailable).
O is spring’s waxing moon, the elements flourishing (4).
U is summer’s full moon, nature’s quintessence (5).
E is autumn’s waning moon, or second thoughts (2).
I is onset of winter, the threefold death.
(Ii-yod is a spark generated by interplay of 10 and 9, where and = “+”.)

I take it R’s ‘extra hand’ represents what controls us from without (sense impressions and heredity), eventually bringing about our (and the year’s) demise.

Now for the futhark. In it there are two sequences where letters’ bardic numbers (first in each number-pair) match their predecessors’ Greek/Hebrew number (second in each number-pair): Ii(19,10) – g(10,3) – I(3,7) – P(7,80) in the middle aett and B(5,2) – E(2,5) in the 3rd aett, the former occurring right smack dab in the middle of the futhark. Look at the three aetts stacked on top of one another (in Keltic equivalents), w/ ‘mothers’ in bold and bardic-to-Greek number sequences in italics (g is the lesser or selfish desire, called ‘harvest’, G the greater or generous desire, called ‘gift’):

3)... T – B – EM – L – Ng – O – Aa

2)... H – N – Ii – g – I – P – Ss – S

1)... F – U – D – A – R – K – G – Q

You see, the thinker, sagittary, is on the macrocosmic hexad (hexagram based on vertical axis), while doer and knower are on the microcosmic hexad (based on horizontal axis, which begins to curve away immediately upon leaving the vicinity of the body). The natural ‘enlargeability’ of the macrocosmic hexad is what makes the thinker the part of self that exerts influence on the macrocosm. Viewed from the fount whence all three aetts spring forth, namely backbone (which means we should probably turn the aetts around), M and A only reach out halfway, while the one letter of the Logos (AUM) which is significantly altered in sound when switching from Egyptian (w or ‘quail chick’) to bardic (mother-letter shin) reaches all the way ‘out’ (to the end), enabling its sound to be corrupted. The A of the fallen (off-balance) doer is the only one that does not contain a centered (balanced) bardic-to-Greek-number sequence: being one in all traditions, it denotes number-sequence-and-mother-letter-in-one. The central four embody the means of grasping the handle turned towards us in TdM’s X LaRoue deFortune: they show a mechanism involving the acquisitive desire (g or ‘harvest’) and the spark yod (Loki’s mistletoe): one must acquire ere one can bestow.
Can you say in a timeline what you think occurred? Like the mystics left here in.....? and went there in ..... and used this and it spread to ... ??? It would greatly assist me. Make it plain...
Boy, you don’t want much (just joking)! Here’s basic chronology, as I discern it.

First, my initial assumptions (more properly, deductions) are: that upright, sentient beings with ten fingers are as essential to the cosmos as atoms, that there was no beginning for either (“duh” for the cosmos, considering conservations laws), and that the zodiac of the human body has always existed. The figures constituting the zodiac at present are merely the current forms symbolizing man’s parts: ram as headbutt, bull as neck, twins as shoulders, crab who walks perpendicular to ram’s forwardness, the lion-hearted, the virgin whose womb is the issue, scales to weigh, then the division of paths – closed (whole) versus open-and-extended (S-shaped) – into serpentine (S-like) or scorpion-and-eagle-like (rising behind unto the apex of the round), then the thinker Sophia as half-man half-beast (link between knower and doer) acting at a distance (w/ arrows), and knower as goat capable of climbing the precipitous vertical back side of the round, then two more that, coming after (beyond) goat-like selfness (straight back), are a bit foggy to me, mere self that I am, though I take the sometime water-pourer water-carrier as primarily the latter, to symbolize the back-of-the-shoulders where a horizontal pole would rest, and the (two) fish as the feet (being odoriferous). Ankles as water-carrier points to their nature as bodily ‘extremities’ needing circulation, fish/feet being what the water/blood needs circulating to. To see these symbols in the stellar heavens is mere projection, though the heavens are the ‘hands’ of a clock whose face is the seasons, spring springing towards the ram, fall falling on the scales (and summer ‘busting out all over’, being nature’s ‘bosom’). (I know, the original was “Spring is bustin’ out all over,” but what can I say, the song got it wrong: spring bursts UP and summer OUT.)

Now, a timeline, hardest part of the whole thing really, as I have uncovered several facets of a lava-encrusted gem and now am asked to explain the forces that both formed it and encrusted it? which is what I’m trying to get help with (among other things) by talking to use guise in the first place... but here goes my best attempt:

WEATHERTIME, by G.K.Spain

in weathertime were proud birds
that beat their wings against the sky
long ago when unclouded rainstorms
still dwelt on the earth

they were the ancestors of sparrows
who speak to us in high shrill tones
melodies that echo
their ancient tongue

in the end every species
must inevitably see the world
as such a tiny simple thing
that tinkering with it lose all its glamour

and so they make of it
a single vast plaything
a huge canvas on which to sprinkle
colors as the birds have done

(Sorry, I got carried away.)

Now to specifics (though I need to read Graves carefully a third time to pin down anything approaching an accurate map of influences). Remnants of the last civilization – destroyed by vast inundations around the time Plato said it was, according to archeological evidence, and based partly on hydraulic works (?) often using stones of immense size moderns couldn’t even move without cracking I dare say – seemingly clung to NW Africa in its Neolithic phase then spread their lore with the amber trade to the British Isles and, by sea or land, east to Egypt, though its exact trace prior to Egypt is lost in the fog of time, things then being devastated chaos with little surviving of the former heights. But I take it knowledge underlying the bardic numbering system – understanding what form matter currently takes and why (chemical valence, biochemistry, particle structure), man’s task and importance in the scheme of things, and the moral basis of reality – decayed over time but the numbering system and arrangement of sounds persisted in Britain clear up till the Kelts came, to whom it was passed by the previous ‘wizards’ or ‘fairies’, the Sidhe, Britain being where druids went for their deepest training. It was also the probably place of Apollo’s ‘hyperborean’ priesthood, Apollwn (w=omega) a name reflecting bardic calendar principles when translated into numbers.

The system of phonetics, of letters (evidently tree-letters), spread though the Mediterranean: it can be seen to be a body of water with distinct currents but one fluid. The currents are trees with branches: Hebrew and Meroitic branched off from Egyptian, Libyan and perhaps ogham itself (I’ve not yet determined) from tifinag, the Orphic or pre-Homeric Greek perhaps a ‘trunk’ in itself, but all showing relationship to the central figure of Cauldron and Egg, though whether druids’ “serpent’s egg” was the third or the fourth wheel and whether the Orphic egg might not be the second wheel in a sense (it is spoken of as dividing into sky above and ground below) I’m not sure. I don’t KNOW the exact meanderings and confluences in their intricate temporal development, I simply see strongly outlined traces of the bardic system in every original alphabet, though later developments distort, such as Latin’s development of gamma into our c (which makes Irish preference for hard C over K idiotic!) and the earlier hardening of bardic I into zayin or zeta.

It is possible that Egypt itself was the fount for all this, but I do not press that case, as it seems more likely it was seafarers that spread it, not Nile-worshipers. For the horizon on a calm sea is flat (like Texas) and ogam consaine, tifinag, AND Phoenician were all seafarers’ scripts. But it could well have been an order based at Pharos that later disappeared, so I’ll not pass judgment. The Egyptians wielded great power, certainly, and the geodetic arrangement of letters based on Giza=libra shaped even Gnostic thought, Egypt being considered ‘the body’ or prison of the soul (it symbolized the sensual or earthly).

Twelfth-century Provence/Languedoc saw confluence of the two most well-preserved (both no-doubt considerably decayed) branches of this ancient tree on which Aesop and others had fed, the only possible explanation I have found for the sudden emergence of Qabbalah in that culture – a renewal of Merkabhah but with a new, deep understanding or teaching that was never revealed, despite moderns’ claims that what WAS written down is Qabbalah, which is absurd and contradicted by those writings themselves (which is why I distinguish the spelling and call the flotsam Kabbalah).

Concurrence of Markabhah and bardic stipulations include: S as head and M as ‘belly’ (loins) with A the bridge between them, confinement of the seven ‘doubles’ of Merkabhah to the manifested, satirical half of the year (as double entendre?), the not-rooted-in-the-ground nature of yod (Ii being mistletoe), and numerous individual symbolic ‘hits’, happy agreement between tree-symbol and Hebrew letter, as with vav (ura the heather or marriage bed) meaning ‘and’ in Hebrew, or B (birch, birth-tree) being bet, ‘house’ (as in ‘house of’), and so on (think of a house as man’s ‘nest’ and you’ll get it).

Having reconstructed much of the old science through contemplation of the two systems, bardic and Markabhic, some group or other that were fundamentally Gnostic and thus not specifically Jewish OR Xian (to which Masonry is related somehow) preserved the knowledge embodied in commonly understood symbols formed into the very specific and intricate structure of the TdM trumps – with or without a ‘tooling-up’ period represented by earlier not-quite-so-complete versions such as the Cary sheet. Perhaps I was the perfect candidate for fitting the pieces together because I too am neither Xian nor Jewish yet have deep respect and love for both halves of the Judeo-Christian ‘ethic’ and revere the ancient strands both preserve.

Does any of this help? (Feel free to question or attack me on particulars.) The worlds were the basis of Ezekiel’s vision but ‘God’, not Ezekiel, invented them: they are part of the science that is so VERY old and decayed it needs renewing from time to time: it has survived a dozen millennia since the Disaster so far, if one consider me alone knowing it (seemingly) a ‘survival’. Oh well, perhaps SOMEone out there is listening... (hopefully you)

[Edited to correct 4th line of pome, which I finally remembered how went]
 

venicebard

Rosanne said:
I think they used the Alphabet as a 'majic'.
Absolutely, if by they you would mean the Habiru. Percival (p. 592 of current edition of ]Thinking and Destiny) says:

“The present Jehovah religion shows that the Jewish Jehovah is a sexual nature God, a spirit of the physical earth and its subsidiary earths, water, air, and fire. The Hebrew letters are elemental forms, magical figures, through which nature elementals may be used. The vowels are the breaths and the consonants are the forms through which they work.”

It took bardic lore to explain what he meant by ‘vowels’! He goes on:

“There was a class among the Jews who could use these letters to produce magical results with the aid of nature spirits. They knew a great deal about the workings of the body, and so could build up strong, healthy bodies for the worship of their God. Their time was beforew Christianity.

“After Christianity a class among the Jews developed a system, the remains of which are known as Cabala. They claimed that this Cabala was the secret knowledge of their sacred books. Each of the twenty-two letters represents a particular organ or part of the body and is an opening to reach elementals and for elementals to come into the body. The elementals build the body, change it and destroy it. By knowing the use of each letter a Cabalist acquired psychic powers. He could evoke and use these elementals through the letters and thereby bring about changes in his body. He could in the same way learn about the structure of physical nature and so bring about changes in it. These may be magical phenomena. The Cabalists had an opportunity of raising the Jewish religion. Because they guarded this knowledge too selfishly and would not give it out, they lost it. Only fragments, which are ineffective, remain to them.”
...like Astrid O sees Water in Mem...
The Habiru evidently agreed with Astrid O, calling M ‘water, seas’. Yet the actual origin of its shape is more likely the top of the owl’s head, through hieratic.
 

Rosanne

venicebard said:
and Rosanne thinks me a mad Myrddin of the Caledonian Wood.
Does any of this help? (Feel free to question or attack me on particulars.) The worlds were the basis of Ezekiel’s vision but ‘God’, not Ezekiel, invented them: they are part of the science that is so VERY old and decayed it needs renewing from time to time: it has survived a dozen millennia since the Disaster so far, if one consider me alone knowing it (seemingly) a ‘survival’. Oh well, perhaps SOMEone out there is listening... (hopefully you)
Firstly I do not think you mad. I once told Helvetica that I am a plodding literal. I do very slow a waltz through the maze of influences with Tarot. Your dance is of a higher tempo and all your research and thoughts are inspiring. I am listening as are others I am sure. Until these posts, you had become the Bard of Babble for me; now I can hear you, I am sorry I am so pendantic- thats the way I walk :D. I have always believed that this group of humanity was not the first to walk here and I have looked for remnants of the previous
History. And I am still plowing through Percival with my marker pen (the first time I have ever marked a book.) I will not rush forward to refute or agree. I do add I read a snippet about the sound of birds and the bird flight patterns inspired a language in Africa. I will try and read about the Merkabhah I love the Tarot and I love early History and I can indulge in both hopefully with both feet on the ground. When I rush I tend to fly straight into brick walls. Thank you for all the trouble you took to be clear. ~Rosanne
 

Rosanne

Taking a bit at a time - I have questions to ask. The fixed stars are really not fixed are they? Do they move through the Zodiac, be it slowly? I have taken Sirius as the fixed star in question. If they do move I would like to know how many years since Sirius was in Pisces? (am I presuming the direction would have been Pisces- Aries-Taurus etc. I know Sirius is seen in Canis major- which is not a sign.
In reading VeniceBards Post I was under the belief that the Zodiac was a 'circle of animals' but it was the Greeks who thought of the Zodiac being a body-the head was Aries and the feet Pisces with all the bits between. I thought the Phoenicians thought of it as animals and not Gods andGoddesses-tho they thought the Moon a goddess?
When VeniceBard talks about the 15 letters of Ogham I wounder if it has any thing to do with the 15 fixed Stars that Aggrippa talks about in his 'Occult philosophy'? Oh my head hurts... This is enough for the moment- if anyone can answer me I would be grateful ~Rosanne
 

venicebard

Help for one flailing about in the surf...

Rosanne said:
The fixed stars...
Sign aries: point in heavens where sun’s course crosses equator going north, which gyroscopic precession makes go backwards around ‘zodiac of constellations’ every 26,000 years or so... which means the ‘zodiac of constellations’, and the celestial sphere to which it is attached, proceed in a forward sense about the true zodiac, that of the signs. The what-I-used-to-call magical view of the universe sees Man as its center: a point in the heavens on the ecliptic revolves about the primordial (from time immemorial) round or circuit called up-out-down-in-up, or spring-summer-fall-winter-spring.
In reading VeniceBards Post I was under the belief that the Zodiac was a 'circle of animals' but it was the Greeks who thought of the Zodiac being a body-the head was Aries and the feet Pisces with all the bits between. I thought the Phoenicians thought of it as animals and not Gods andGoddesses-tho they thought the Moon a goddess?
Surely all this is more than historians actually 'know' and much speculation, evidence being sparse (judging by my not being able to find much when I look, unless someone can point me to a scholarly source). All I can say is why do most of the animals chosen epitomize stations on the circle as they relate to physiology? Even the crab, whose primary meaning is ‘perpendicular to a-head’ (since it walks sideways), can be torn in half and made into two breast-plates I presume (I never ate one because, being one myself, it seemed cannibalistic). But certainly ram-head, bull-neck, twins-shoulders, lion-heart (blood being its ‘roar’, it being a carnivore), virgin-womb, scales-‘down’ (weight, one’s contact with earth, the crotch), the three-fold symbolism of scorpio (being physiologically where scorpion’s tail begins its ascent behind) since it involves choice (up spine or down to feet), the knock-kneed goat, the probable connexion betwixt and between water-carrier/water-pourer and circulation (being opposite lion’s bloody roar) to the little fishy-feet of man... seems pretty obvious to me the primordial round is the source, not the stars.
When VeniceBard talks about the 15 letters of Ogham I wounder if it has any thing to do with the 15 fixed Stars that Aggrippa talks about in his 'Occult philosophy'?
Don’t know. (I have him, so I’ll try to remember to grab him next trip to my library-in-storage, even though he puts me to sleep.)
 

kwaw

kwaw said:
And Saturn is exalted in Libra for example, but Libra is a fairly recently constellation not recognised as such at the time when the Phoenician script arose.

Kwaw

Correction: I have recently learnt that the classical description of Libra as a 'new' constellation is a misconception. The constellation of the 'scales' and its epiteth the 'star of justice' can be found in Sumerian tablets. That Libra was formed at a later period 'in honour of Julius Caesar' is a misconception. Apparently the scales were incorporated into Scorpio as its 'claws' in old babyonian period then taken into use again at the end of the classical period, giving rise to the common misconception that Libra was a new constellation of the classical period.

Kwaw
 

Fulgour

Libra...

I simply remind myself that "something" has always been there...
why quibble about names? Libra could as well be an ocean wave.
 

kwaw

Fulgour said:
I simply remind myself that "something" has always been there...
why quibble about names? Libra could as well be an ocean wave.

Well 'Stars' have always [relatively speaking] been there certainly, as have ocean waves, but the division of stars into 'signs' and 'constellations' are man made constructs, with little reality beyond man's own imagination. A 'star' is 'something', a 'constellation' is a relative and manmade construct, the 'stars' of which have little connection to each other beyond the imagination and relative viewpoint of 'man'. So yes the stars have 'always' been there. Their division into signs, constellations, has not. That is, the stars yes are 'something', constellations are an man made 'abstraction', artificial and apparently arbitrary. At least I suppose the 18 sumerian constellations was based upon apparent complexes of stars they could actually see as from our comparative viewpoint being 'clumped' together in groups of various sizes, rather than an artificial mathematical division of the sky into 12 equal divisions each with planetary rulerships and exaltations.

Kwaw
 

venicebard

kwaw said:
Well 'Stars' have always [relatively speaking] been there certainly, as have ocean waves, but the division of stars into 'signs' and 'constellations' are man made constructs, with little reality beyond man's own imagination. A 'star' is 'something', a 'constellation' is a relative and manmade construct, the 'stars' of which have little connection to each other beyond the imagination and relative viewpoint of 'man'. So yes the stars have 'always' been there. Their division into signs, constellations, has not. That is, the stars yes are 'something', constellations are an man made 'abstraction', artificial and apparently arbitrary. At least I suppose the 18 sumerian constellations was based upon apparent complexes of stars they could actually see as from our comparative viewpoint being 'clumped' together in groups of various sizes, rather than an artificial mathematical division of the sky into 12 equal divisions each with planetary rulerships and exaltations.
How so 'artificial'? How so 'arbitrary'? Spring springs up towards the head, summer fructifies outward like the breasts, fall falls down towards the loins, and winter builds backbone. When 'up' occurs (spring equinox), it is traveling forward (towards summer), and to get to forward it must depart 'up', approach forward ('out'), and arrive there. Once there, it is progressing down, towards fall, and to get there requires departing 'out', approaching 'down', and arriving there. Once there, it is progressing in, towards winter, and to get there requires departing 'down', approaching 'in', and arriving there. Once there, it is progressing up, towards spring, and to get there requires departing 'in', approaching 'up', and arriving there. Arbitrary? Nature gets its forms FROM man - get with the program! (you don't have to, but...)