Stairway To Heaven

Abrac

I was comparing Crowley's planetary correspondences with the Tree of Life today and noticed something interesting. The Moon corresponds with Yesod(9), then as you progress backwards up the Tree the correspondences are as follows: Hod(8)Mercury, Netzach(7)Venus, Tiphareth(6)Sun, Geburah(5)Mars, Chesed(4)Jupiter, then up to Binah(3)Saturn.

Arranged in a list from highest to lowest it looks like this:

Saturn
Jupiter
Mars
Sun
Venus
Mercury
Moon

This is the traditional arrangement of the spheres used by the old philosophers and alchemists that can be seen in many of the manuscripts and paintings. It's a stairway to heaven; each sphere representing the next step in the journey.

When you compare the planets with Crowley's corresponding tarot cards it looks like this:

Saturn -The Universe
Jupiter -Fortune
Mars -The Tower
Sun -The Sun
Venus -The Empress
Mercury -The Magus
Moon -The Priestess

My question is, has anyone else noticed this, and are the seven planetary cards a key to understanding the new Aeon as it unfolds? Are they a pictorial ladder that illustrates the process? Does anyone know if there's any written material on this subject?

-fof
 

Grigori

fools_fool said:
IThis is the traditional arrangement of the spheres used by the old philosophers and alchemists that can be seen in many of the manuscripts and paintings. It's a stairway to heaven; each sphere representing the next step in the journey.

Thanks for the topic Fools_Fool! I don't know anything about the stairway you are discussing. Do you know a link where more can be found? I would like to read more about it.

I would have thought anything reflecting the stairway idea as you described it would be in the order of the planets and their distance from Earth. This is clearly not the case though, so I am really curious about where the order comes from in the Stairway.

The order doesn't come from Crowley, but rather he copied it along with the rest of the Golden Dawn system. The order I assume started with Mathers, but I never actually checked.

They use the same order for the planets in the minors, if you lay them out in astrological order by sign.
 

Abrac

Hi similia

http://www.angelfire.com/wizard/regulus_antares/chaldean_planetary_spheres.htm

I did a quick search and got this site. It looks interesting, and it has an image. The image isn't exactly what I was looking for but it will serve the purpose. Normally it will be an image of the solar system with the earth at the center, the planets in their spheres around the earth, then the realm of the fixed stars beyond that. In Egyptian religion, and later in Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, and Alchemy, Paradise existed in the realm of the fixed stars.

Mercury and Venus do appear out of order based on what we now know of the solar system. I'm not sure why they appear this way in the old system. That's something I intend to investigate further. In any case, this is the traditional order, and appears to be the one Crowley used.

Interesting about the minors. I'm anxious to check it out.

Hopefully some of the brilliant AT minds can help shed some light. :)

-fof
 

thinbuddha

fools_fool said:
Mercury and Venus do appear out of order based on what we now know of the solar system. I'm not sure why they appear this way in the old system.

I suspect that the old system was not based on what we know about the solar system today, but rather what was once known about the solar system. Things like distance to planets (if known) were not necessarily the most important thing to those who set up the heirarchy in the first place.

There could be a number of factors not involving physical attributes that would have been looked at when ordering the traditional planets (someone with more astrology or mythology background will probably fill in the gaps for us).

-tb
 

MikeTheAltarboy

I *believe* the order of the ancient planets as moon, mercury, venus, sun, mars, jupiter, saturn was based on the speed of their orbit: how fast they travelled through the signs.

The GD arangement of planets in the cards, and thus crowleys arangement, seems to be sort of just "intuitive." Mathers scheme, based on the sepher yetzirah, required those cards to be planets; however, the planet order in the most *typical* yetzirah manuscripts just didn't make any sense at all when applied to those cards. Therefor, I believe, he just assumed it was a blind, and put the planets on the cards that looked best for them. The signs and elements, on the other hand, fell perfectly onto the cards with the yetzirah order, with the exception of swapping justice and strength.


The system on the minors assigns the 234s of each suit to the cardinal signs of that element, the 567s to the kerubic signs, and the 8910s to the mutables. Then, laying the cards out in sign order (starting with the 2 of wands for the first decanate of aries), you go decending from mars, and just repeat until finished. I'm not sure why mars - I *think* it has something to do with actually starting near regulus in leo with saturn or something, but that part I forget.
:)
 

rainwolf

MikeTheAltarboy said:
I'm not sure why mars - I *think* it has something to do with actually starting near regulus in leo with saturn or something, but that part I forget.
:)
Mars rules aries so that may be one reason. I feel it is more of a coincidence however, so there might be a more solid reason behind this. When you explore all of these astrological attributions of the cards, they make a LOT of sense, so I think the attributions may have become solid in theory after some trial and error.
 

Abrac

Interesting point about speed of orbit Mike.

Let's examine what Crowley says concerning the Sun card in The Book of Thoth:

"They are dancing in the light, and yet they dwell upon the earth. They represent the next stage which is to be obtained by mankind, in which complete freedom is alike the cause and the result of the new access of solar energy upon the earth."

"This is one of the simplest of the cards; it represents Heru-ra-ha, the Lord of the New Aeon, in his manifestation to the race of men as the Sun spiritual, moral, and physical. He is the Lord of Light, Life, Liberty and Love. This Aeon has for its purpose the complete emancipation of the human race."

Now consider the magic sun square:

6 32 3 34 35 1
7 11 27 28 8 30
19 14 16 15 23 24
18 20 22 21 17 13
25 29 10 9 26 12
36 5 33 4 2 31

All the numbers of the square totaled, equal 666. By identifying himself as The Great Beast, 666, Crowley clearly seems to be identifying himself with the Sun of the New Aeon. If this is the case it seems safe to assume we can attribute the Sun card to Thelema, The Book of the Law, and possibly the Crowley Tarot itself. If we take the Sun as our starting point on the stairway, all that's necessary is to consider the cards that come next. And what is the next card - the Tower(Mars), located in Geburah on the pillar of severity. This is the card traditionally known as the House of God. It's energy seems a bit chaotic.

Next is Fortune(Jupiter), about which, Crowley says:

"This card thus represents the Universe in it's
aspect as a continual change of state."

This step of the process involves change, but not of the type experienced in The Tower. Located in Chesed, on the pillar of mercy, Fortune brings a more benevolent form of change; a more orderly and organized system(order out of chaos).

Lastly, The Universe, the only one of the planetary cards located beyond the Abyss. The Universe represents the return of the Old One, Saturn.

-fof
 

Grigori

MikeTheAltarboy said:
Then, laying the cards out in sign order (starting with the 2 of wands for the first decanate of aries), you go decending from mars, and just repeat until finished. I'm not sure why mars - I *think* it has something to do with actually starting near regulus in leo with saturn or something, but that part I forget. :)

With 7 planets and 36 minor cards, there are 5 cycles of 7, with one card left over. So we have Mars on the 2 Wands (Aries) at the beginning (Mars being the ruler of Aries and Aries being Spring and hence the beginning) as well as Mars on the 10 Cups (Pisces) at the end of the year. So when ordered atrologically Mars occupies two cards that occur in sequence.

The reason I've heard is that the fire energy of Mars is needed doubly to start Spring and break through Winter.

Crowley starts his system at the 2 Wands with Mars in Aries, but in Book T the same system is started with the 5 Wands with Saturn in Leo. I know this is an older system, and an accepted place to start the year astrologically, but have no idea why.

fools_fool said:
I did a quick search and got this site. It looks interesting, and it has an image. The image isn't exactly what I was looking for but it will serve the purpose.

Thanks so much, that image is a very interesting one. I really must study more on the muses also, something I"ve been meaning to do for a rather long time...

I've been reading a bit about Thelemic Magick lately, especially in regards to sun worship. Its pretty interesting, though a little too much blood letting for me :D It did explain however why the rose on the unicursal hexagram is inverted, and why it was acceptable to Crowley to use the inverted Pentragram (besides for shock value). Each of us is a Star (from the Book of Law) and the Sun is "our" Star and something we are urged to connect with daily (or 4 times a day if you don't like to sleep as long as I do :D ). From the perspective of a Star/Sun there is no up or down, only centre. So on the unicursal hexagram, we have the inverted rose, in the centre (position of Tiphareth and the Sun).

Using the unicursal hexagram, you can re-arrange the planetary order in a variety of ways, depending on where you start and which direction you follow. Not sure what that could mean but interesting to think about I guess.

Also we have The Sun, 666 = The Beast, and the Sun rules Leo = Lust, which shows us Babylon and the Scarlet Woman.

If we travel up the three of life starting at Earth/Malkuth in the method of ascension described in the Stairway, we enact the reverse of the order of creation of the Sephiroth, and the same order as the Stairway. The ptolemaic order is also given in the Sepher Yizirah, but seems to be a late change. The notes on sacred-texts.com sugest the original order was Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, though the sections are ordered Moon, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Saturn, Jupiter.

I wonder if the order was simply the one in vogue at the time of Mathers, and he likely used it unquestioningly as it fit well with what he wanted...