Relating the Major Arcana to the Tree of Life

Zephyros

A shame that the books haven't been translated. I wonder if there's a way to do a rudimentary translation with scanning techniques available today.
 

Abrac

I think it would be an enormous job but it could be simplified if you knew exactly which portions of the text to translate. Those volumes that Ross linked to have not been OCRed so you'd have to do that first, and looking at that old Latin it would be a nightmare. You could OCR with ABBYY Fine Reader (one of the best available for personal use and not cheap), but afterwards you'd have to spend a lot of time editing and fine tuning so you could run it through something like Google Translate. GT isn't always the greatest for old Latin either, you'd still have to spend a lot of time looking up definitions for individual words. It might be just as fast and easier to type the text into GT, but there would still be the translation issues.

A large library might have professional grade equipment that could do a better and faster job but I'm not familiar with that aspect of it.
 

kwaw

I've done it for several pages I was interested in (about 40 I think, have 'em on a disk round here somewhere), it is possible but a huge task.
 

kwaw

The Kircher pattern of paths is one of two described by Moses Cordovero in his 'Garden of Pomegranates' (the attribution of letters to paths however may be different). It is called the Tree of Emanation. The other described by Cordovero is that associated with Luria, and called the Tree of Return.

Kircher quoted several sections from the Garden of Pomegranates, albeit without stating his sources (we know he had a copy as there is a manuscript in the Vatican with Kircher's handwritten notes and annotations on it). However, his diagram, and the various trees and other diagrams, is adapted from that published in 1625 by Philippe d'Aquin.

Note though that Philippe d'Aquin's Tree misses out of a couple of paths that Kircher did include (and which are described in Cordovero's Garden of Pomegranates). For example d'Aquin misses out the diagonal paths between Netzach-Yesod and Hod-Yesod.

According to Moses Cordovero, Aleph is the source of all the other letters, the remaining 21 then form three septenaries under the rule of:

Love = beth - cheth
Grace = teth - samech
Judgement = ayin to tau
 

kwaw

Note though that Philippe d'Aquin's Tree misses out of a couple of paths that Kircher did include (and which are described in Cordovero's Garden of Pomegranates). For example d'Aquin misses out the diagonal paths between Netzach-Yesod and Hod-Yesod.

d'Aquin's Tree: published in 1625

PhilippedAquin.jpg


Kircher's Tree: 1652

640px-kircher_tree_of_life.png


Note in d'Aquin there is also no horizontal path between Netzach and Hod; also where there should be a horizontal path at the top, d'Aquin has two seeming diagonal paths going to ??? (daath?)

So while it is often said that Kircher copied the Tree from d'Aquin, while we can see this in the elements such as Moses Tablets, Candelabra, altars, etc., we see his Tree is significantly different, and is consistent rather with that described by Cordovero.

Cordovero's Tree is said to belong to the pre-Lurianic period of Kabbalah.
 

Libaws

There are a good deal more than a thousand decks, Aeclectic alone lists "only" about 1200, and there are many it doesn't have. Most modern decks follow the Golden Dawn structure even if they aren't strictly Kabbalistic decks.

However, although the Golden Dawn developed and expanded their Tree, it wasn't their invention. It was actually the Jesuit priest Athanasius Kircher who developed the Hermetic Tree in use today. I remember looking for texts of his, explanations for his Tree, but couldn't find any, although I admit I didn't look very hard. Does anyone know if he wrote some notes on his system?

Thanks Zephyros
Yes i even just saw there are over 1600 decks!
I am just getting online after a few days off the computer. I see that there are some links to Kircher below. this is all very informative :D However i must say that despite being intrigued enough to follow up on these books i still don't think the tarot is made for the paths of this particular tree. There are many types of Kaballistic trees and they could apply to another . In fact i made a breakthrough this weekend but will save it for another time. But if we want to keep the Supernals in the top triangle with the neutral column in the middle, then this system of Kirchner-GD just doesn't work for me.
 

Libaws

Note though that Philippe d'Aquin's Tree misses out of a couple of paths that Kircher did include (and which are described in Cordovero's Garden of Pomegranates). For example d'Aquin misses out the diagonal paths between Netzach-Yesod and Hod-Yesod.

According to Moses Cordovero, Aleph is the source of all the other letters, the remaining 21 then form three septenaries under the rule of:

Love = beth - cheth
Grace = teth - samech
Judgement = ayin to tau

This is great Kwaw . thank you. I even just found it on line: https://books.google.fr/books?id=MQ...dovero in his 'Garden of Pomegranates&f=false

I have given up trying to fit the tarot into ten sephiroths (see note above ...i am answering the whole thread after a weekend offline) but as i embark on deepening my studies of the Kaballah, i find this very enticing :)
 

kwaw


That book is his beginners Introduction to Kabbalah, which is very good, but I think only the Lurianic version of the tree is mentioned in it. The description of the two trees is in his 'Garden of Pomengranates', of which I think only a few of the first of its 27 volumes has as yet been translated. However, his description of the twe trees has been translated in several works, in a couple of those by Leonora Leet for example.
 

blue_fusion

Just sharing a link I discovered for those interested: http://www.esotericarchives.com/kircher/cabala.htm

I am not sure, however if he just used OCR or he actually manually typed the text from the scans. At least the text are highlight-able (for those who would want to do their own *manual* translations). The main site also has links to other esoteric texts.
 

Libaws

Versions of the Kabbalistic Tree

Kircher quoted several sections from the Garden of Pomegranates, albeit without stating his sources (we know he had a copy as there is a manuscript in the Vatican with Kircher's handwritten notes and annotations on it). However, his diagram, and the various trees and other diagrams, is adapted from that published in 1625 by Philippe d'Aquin.

Do you know what the earliest image of the "modern" tree is?

I have been working a lot with 3d projections of the Kaballah inspired by the Sepher Yetzirah instruction to see the Tree in 2-3 and 5th dimensional space. Here's an informative article with cool renditions of trees:
http://www.workofthechariot.com/TextFiles/Graphics/double-piramid.gif