Rosanne said:
. . . one painting has a pole with a crown on top and the Zodiac signs winding down the pole starting with Aries.
I'm impressed just by its having aries in the correct direction: one seldom sees this, and it indicates that one is looking beyond the veil of astrology, into the heart of Hermetic science rather.
What I have ended up with is a Gra- type diagram of the Tree of Life- that is not Cabala- but Kabalah.
You know, I was about to type in that I don't accept your Gra arrangement (any more than I accept his other reputed correlations regarding
SY), but now that I think about it it is not so far-fetched,
as long as one not discard the traditional arrangement alongside it, which fulfills the primary purpose of explaining that it is a Tree of
forms (of upright sentience, based on logical analysis). But it
is important also to recognize that the offspring
may turn out greater than the parents, so that
6, offspring of
4 & 5, might manage to devolve (the
preferred direction in all metaphysics based on the concept of a Fall, including the shamanic I should think) into the
1 type, or
9, offspring of
7 & 8, devolve into a
4 or 5 type -- it is a little strange to see their
second offspring placed below them, but I suppose you could visualize
9-10 as a single span somehow.
From the ornament I get The planets.
Yes, and they look correct to me (for the Tree in Asiyah).
I have the 22 Paths now- what I have to do is place Tarot Majors on those paths. With the diagrams setting out my paths, that I scanned below- where would you put the Majors?
This in itself I might be able to offer tentative solution to (since I acknowledge there may indeed be more than one correct path-arrangement, each shedding light on the others), were it not for what follows:
That is my constraint- it starts with Aries= He- who is Aries? I do not think it is the Emperor, I think it is the Heirophant/Le Pape- Card 5. I see a pattern, so the cards just cannot go all over the place on the Tree paths, I think they must show a pattern on the diagram. My G.Grandfather was clever it seems- I like his thoughts thus far and I would like to place the Majors where he might have put them.
It is not the Emperor, I can tell you that: Emperor and Empress are happier where I put them, on equal levels (at leo and sagittary, respectively, of the wheel
alef), with
Justice at its proper station above (aries).
Now if you mean "Aries= heh" in the 1st sentence above, then I would tell you that it is probably based on (what I call) the exoteric arrangement using alef-bet (and
SY) order, in which case I would presume that the natural alignment of alef-bet and trumps be used, with heh-the-4th-letter at IIII L'Emperor and so on [edited to say: sorry, didn't get much sleep night-before-last, yes of course, it is the Pope, and heh fifth] . . . which is best
understood in the
context of the rearrangement of the simples and their original phonetic symmetries. For example,
putting the Emperor [edited to say: no, of course you ar right, V Pope] at aries, as this arrangement does, should immediately invoke (or evoke) the understanding that he is there because of the patriarchal bent of modernity, that is, has been
placed there by an imperfect society made up of imperfect men-and-women [edited to say: and Pope, then, understood, as it is today, as patriarchal, ignoring the mother's arm which
defines it as Boaz]. For originally (in bardic tradition) it was VIII Justice that held the ruler's seat (aries), with male Emperor at the hottest month and Empress at onset of winter (where Hallowe'en is), at equal levels in other words.
[This pushing of Emperor back down to his proper station echos the
s-z symmetry (sibilancy unvoiced-versus-voiced), wherein samekh's
s sound runs down the front side of fire's triad as zayin's consonantized
y-eroding-
d-ending-up-as-
z sound is crawling up the back of it: this symmetry is broken by the wrenching of samekh back four signs to sagittary (
all four signs from [cardinal sign] capricorn to [cardinal sign] aries are wrenched back exactly four, that is, kept on the
same triad), which allows heh to follow Mars's rulership from its proper station scorpio (as Covenant, or circumcision) to aries, where it hooks up with IIII L'Empereur to 'lord it over us'. [Edited to add: aries being Pope, of course, means the trump does not actually follow the path of the put-down, so to speak -- I gotta get more sleep!]
]
As for my contention of there being multiple blinds in
SY, consider for
yourself: why in the world would they tack the chopped-up parts lefthand-righthand-leftfoot-rightfoot-cow'sstomach[according-to-Aryeh-Kaplan]-and-so-on onto the zodiac when it
already encompasses the twelve stations of both seated torso
and standing (fallen) Adam. In fact, the icons
themselves prove this: aries/ram
symbolizes a hard head, taurus/bull
symbolizes a strong neck, gemini/twins
symbolize the shoulders-and-arms, cancer/crab
symbolizes being at right angles to 'ahead' (a head), and so on (time constraint).
Then, consider why the voiced and unvoiced equivalents never line up in any arrangement (save in Luria's path arrangement, perhaps).