Tarot/Kabbalah Connection (Another Thread)

venicebard

Curtis Penfold said:
I noticed you put stuff up in other threads related to this subject. However, this thread is specifically for evidence and the validity of evidence. I would love for you to repost anything you've written about the subject.
Okay, I relent. It will take me a week or more to assemble enough in one post (or series thereof) to constitute true evidence, since the readers of this forum lack my familiarity with the subject (of Kabbalah or its relation to bardic tradition and through that to tarot), and thus only in bulk does it constitute a true argument. I presume that is what you are after (since there is no documentation to be had, obviously, which makes Greg's constant request for it seem a bit odd to me).

If it is only documentation you are interested in, then please say so and I will post my argument in its own thread (just so my effort over the next week or so might not be completely wasted).
 

venicebard

I am compelled to defend myself, I see.
Greg Stanton said:
You've never presented EVIDENCE. You've only made statements like 40 pips represents this, and 16 court cards means that, and isn't it an interesting coincidence that in Kaballah 22=XYZ, etc. You've never once given us any actual proof that these numerical arrangements prove that the tarot had Kaballistic origins. In fact, no documentation exists that links the tarot to the Kaballah, or even the occult, until the 19th century -- which indicates to my mind that that was when the idea originated. Unless you can produce some documentation that dates from around the time Tarot was created (say 1400-1550) that shows conclusively that one was born of the other, you have nothing but interesting theories.
Look, I’ll be as tactful as possible here. You seem to have the idea that things of a temporal nature—specifically, an historical question—are subject to ‘proof’. Proof implies certainty, whereas even to live an event leaves all statements concerning it subject to doubt. The Pythagorean theorem is susceptible to proof, because it concerns relationships that are not capable of being affected or in any way altered by time. But even clear documentation of an historical event or process is susceptible to being brought into question, either by further documentation appearing to contradict it or by inconsistencies found in the documentation itself.

As I have stated many times, Plato made this state of affairs clear in the 19th chapter of The Republic, though translations obscure it a bit by translating with the word exists what originally meant abides (as is clear from the context). He said there is that which abides, that which abides and abides not, and that which abides not; and that that which abides (the eternal) can be known, that that which abides and abides not (whatever has finite duration) can be thought or opined about, and that concerning that which abides not (the duration-less present instant) we will remain forever ignorant. (The reason for this last, of course, is that ere one can turn one’s attention to it it is gone, and only memories of it—subject to all the vicissitudes of human perception—remain.)
Frankly, it's frustrating. Your mind seems to have a different standard for what constitutes proof and what qualifies as subjective theory.
I feel your frustration and believe you speak here in good faith. But to state categorically (as you are wont to do) that TdM has no real (original) connection to Kabbalah is itself a thing that requires proof in order to be stated with such certainty. Now relative certainty (i.e. high probability, so to speak) is achievable where temporal reality is concerned, I will grant you that. But to pretend that it only consists in documentation is a bit pedantic, if you ask me. It would mean that no matter how compellingly detailed the internal evidence of conformity between two structures whose interrelation cannot be ruled out on historical grounds (which is certainly true of 14th-to-17th-century TdM and 12th-century Kabbalah), one could never say that yes, there is good reason to believe there is a causative interconnection.

I utterly reject such a standard, as must anyone who is truly seeking to understand, that is, anyone who is not a sophist (which I do not think you are in the least, by the way).
BTW, Crowley has absolutely no credibility in my book.
I was certainly not accusing you of said sin. Yet there are those on this forum whom I otherwise respect (and shall be nameless) for whom Crowley appears to have some credibility.
Whatever little of his corpus has practical occult value was cribbed from the Golden Dawn . . .
I heartily concur, and it is the Golden Dawn which I suspect of having indeed had some sort of access to interesting source material (whence they got the letter-paths and the planet-Sefirah correlations), though they completely botched the letter-trump assignments from my point of view.
 

Curtis Penfold

Even evidence that proves there MIGHT be a connecton between Kabbalah and the origins of Tarot is enough to be of interest here. It doesn't have to be absolute proof. People are going to discuss the validity, but ANY evidence is still worth posting.
 

Yygdrasilian

synchronicity II

Curtis Penfold said:
Even evidence that proves there MIGHT be a connecton between Kabbalah and the origins of Tarot is enough to be of interest here. It doesn't have to be absolute proof. People are going to discuss the validity, but ANY evidence is still worth posting.
Being an artifact of ‘Pythagorean Tuning’, the Tarot’s 'similarity' to Kabbalah may be due to Pythagoras’ reputed travels in Chaldea coinciding with the Babylonian exile.

However, Crowley’s attributions would seem to indicate the ancient Egyptians were quite aware of the 'relationship' between our regular solids and the geometric properties of harmonics (music).

It is, after all, the Book of Thoth.
 

Curtis Penfold

Yygdrasilian said:
It is, after all, the Book of Thoth.

I don't think we have evidence that the Book of Thoth is more than a myth. Crowley's Book of Thoth is completely unrelated.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your statement.
 

Sophie

Curtis Penfold said:
Well, beyond that, Kabbalah confuses me quite a bit. There's a lot to remember! I've been trying to study it, but I don't think I quite have it down. I think it's cool how the Golden Dawn was able to apply it to a lot of things, but I find the whole thing to be rather complicated.
Don't feel bad about that - it takes most people who tackle it a lifetime and then some. That's because Kabbalah is not "a subject" to be studied, like history, nor is it simply a system to be learnt and applied, like algebra: it is an entire worldview that needs to be lived, meditated upon, understood with the right as well as the left brain. It is a path towards the Divine, a path of self-transformation; the greater the transformation, the further you advance along the path. Dion Fortune called it the Yoga of the West and with good reason: Kabbalah demands practice, just as yoga demands practice, and just as yoga isn't simply a form of gymnastic, kabbalah isn't just mental gymnastics. Reading the books, memorising the tags, won't get you any further than learning to do the asanas mechanistically and describing pranayama verbally.

It also happens that some people - Hermetic Kabbalists - have made some interesting lateral associations between Tarot and the Tree of Life. That association will work for you if and when it captures your imagination. For many years, it didn't capture mine...and then one day... I was ready for it, and it for me. Now the association seems so self-evident and so exquisitely beautiful that I can no longer question it. But there is no doubt that the association is more likely to be one of analogy and creativity than a strictly historical (far less doctrinal!) one. Think art rather than Lego.
 

conversus

Fudugazi said:
Think art rather than Lego.

That is a really spot-on insight. Thanks!

CED

P.S. I haven't made that connection, yet. But if I do . . .
 

Yygdrasilian

pieces of TT

Curtis Penfold said:
I don't think we have evidence that the Book of Thoth is more than a myth. Crowley's Book of Thoth is completely unrelated.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your statement.
What is the system of Kabbalah composed of but Letters, set into a sequence reflecting their assigned numeric value. Their symbolic attributions derive from the hieroglyphs each letter was drawn from. Thus the origin of Semitic alphabets are literally in the ‘idea-pictures’ of ancient Egypt.

It is feasible that sometime during the several millenia that the scribes of Thoth were writing and drawing symbols on their papyri they might have come up with some clever means of assembling their ‘idea-pictures’ into more elaborate structures. We suggest that the formulation of alphabets in the ancient world may have been based on such a system.

What Crowley’s set of attributions provide is a means of ‘seeing’ how this system is retrievable by virtue of its basis upon specific mathematical constants rendered within the context of an architectural matrix integrating principles of music theory with geometry and the periodic cycles of our planets.

For instance, the ‘pathways’ in the Tree add up to 231, a figurate number of great versatility that, multiplied by 11 = the average number of days in the Mercury:Earth synodic cycle [22/7] = 22 mercury orbits : 7 earth years, a close approximation of the irrational number, pi (π). This is also reflected in the earliest numerated Tarot decks by the infamous shuffle of the Leo & Libra trumps, 11<--->8, one of the functions of which is as the undecimal TriTone (11:8), a music interval of 6 semitones (derived from the 11th Harmonic) approximating the span of half an octave (√2:1). It has been suggested that the figurate number 231, in its configuration as the 8th octahedron, is a model for the chromatic scale of 12 semitones & 13 intervals comprising an octave. In this context, the 11th harmonic (11:8) may be ‘seen’ to partition the octahedron into 2 ‘equal’ square pyramids of 115.5 each ≈ the average number of days between Mercury (Thoth) and Earth conjunctions.
 

venicebard

My apologies to Curtis Penfold

venicebard said:
Okay, I relent. It will take me a week or more to assemble enough in one post (or series thereof) to constitute true evidence, since the readers of this forum lack my familiarity with the subject (of Kabbalah or its relation to bardic tradition and through that to tarot), and thus only in bulk does it constitute a true argument.
Curtis, I find it would take quite a bit more than a week or so to compile enough of the argument to make any real difference to those who are the least bit cautious in their thinking (including you, I presume). But I can refer you to my tarotpedia article on the subject, which gives at least a detailed outline of the argument as of a couple years ago. (Many details are yet missing—I hope one of these days to have the leisure to update and expand it.) It is here:

Bardic_origin_of_Tarot

Sincerely,
VB
 

Curtis Penfold

venicebard said:
Curtis, I find it would take quite a bit more than a week or so to compile enough of the argument to make any real difference to those who are the least bit cautious in their thinking (including you, I presume). But I can refer you to my tarotpedia article on the subject, which gives at least a detailed outline of the argument as of a couple years ago. (Many details are yet missing—I hope one of these days to have the leisure to update and expand it.) It is here:

Bardic_origin_of_Tarot

Sincerely,
VB

You definitely present a possibility that Tarot could've been influenced by Bardic traditions that could've communicated Qaballah concepts.

Your article is almost too comprehensive. It's not for the average reader, just saying. There's some parts that I got a little confused on how it related. I'll have to re-read it.

You do share why it doesn't at first seem to match up in order letter by letter. You show a Bardic idea that could've been being presented with the cards.

I don't know. I'll have to hear this in layman's terms to completely understand everything mentioned.