Robbiegirl
Lechem is bread... the translation for Chemach is flour.
How are HE - TETH - SAMEKH related? (5-9-15) What unifies them?Robbiegirl said:The TanaCH is actually comprised of the Torah which is the T or Tav, the NA is for the Nuun which stands for Niveeim which are the Prophets and Cis the Caf sofeet which is the end or last Caf which stands for Kituvim which means writings such as Psalms etc.
kwaw said:I am a magus of laws new,
A madman whom a star's made blind,
Who strayed far wide to bring to you
The stories of my land.
I among you my burden carry,
In dirt befouled and in laugher scorned,
For woe to him bereft of country
That begs his home to be returned.
(part of the poem 'With no Country' from 'songs without a country' by Octavian Goga, 1916).
Kwaw
It is a pity that one cannot find on the web (or at least I have not found) any laying-out of the 19th-century research on the Semitic alphabet's descent directly from Egyptian hieratic signs which had the same sounds and very similar shape to their proto-Phoenician descendents, as it allows people to think the only viable (as if it were viable, though I do not find it so) theory is the incomplete one (artificially fleshed-out on the website you cite) based on pictographs found in the Sinai and deciphered only in a single instance (the name of a goddess). Truth is that the 19th-century theory was nearly complete, and so I went ahead and completed it based on what I know of the widespread bardic (meaning poetic-prophetic) tradition surrounding letters, whose remnants can be found in Ireland.northsea said:After reading Mark Filipas' and other views on Hebrew letter-tarot correlations, I'm somewhat in the Alef~Magician camp. Here's my thoughts, using the following Ancient Hebrew Research Center website as a guide:
http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/28_chart.html
More specifically A represents the power to raise up: it is the fir (ailm) in Irish, which limits outward growth in order to redirect energy upward; it is the eagle (or Egyptian vulture) in hieroglyphics, which soars to great height; and the ox in arid Palestine was used to power the pumps which lift water up from the water table to irrigate the fields.aleph - Magician - the ox signifies willpower ( similar to Aries )
Rune 'peorth' (originally *pairthra, as I recall) shows the rune-cup turned on its side having spilled its rune-dice and thus stands for prophecy (or divination), hence poetic speech, just as peh's shape, mouth-and-tongue, does: these correlate to VII LeChariot, symbol for the deeper tradition which transforms speech from mere words into prophecy. Beyt, on the other hand, stands for dwelling/temple/offspring ('house of') and correlates with V LePape based on 5 being the number of digits one counts on the hands of the newborn: this trump shows a mother bringing her offspring to the Pontiff to be blessed (his hand is raised in blessing), as B-birch is the tree of birth or inception (first tree-month, beginning at winter solstice).beyt - High Priestess - tent,house,within - womb ( I ascribed the rune peorth before looking at Hebrew alphabet ; they're the same shape )
D-door-oak represents (in the bardic corpus) the doorway into manifestation, which is the outer horizon, and bears the number 12 originally, since it is where one sights the stars to locate which of the twelve signs currently rules (i.e. what part of the year it is).gimel - Empress - L for love, lol, dunno
dalet - Emperor - door is four-sided
In fact, heh is the letter added to Abram to make Abraham and thus stands for circumcision, which is done on the 8th day, not the fifth: originally it was the 8th sign (scorpio, the privates) but was moved to the first sign when alef-bet order was devised, the reordering of the 12 simple letters being based on a clear and simple code that shows where the four elements end up in three different methods of allocation. But heh is the counterpart of Greek epsilon and thus of bardic E, which is given the number 2 based in part on the fact that only 1/2 the newborns are subjected to circumcision (except in utterly barbaric cultures).hey - Hierophant - behold, adore - worship
Yes, but in reality vav, or bardic U (Greek upsilon), being ura-heather, is the bed of love, not the love itself, and thus given the number 17 -- that of coming-of-age in ancient Ireland -- and the trump XVII L'Etoille, which shows the mingling of fluids in coitus. Love itself is M-meym-muin-vine, the sweetness of the grape expressed by the consonant "mm" and ruling the atom carbon (atomic number 6), whose propensity for uniting with itself to make 'chains' forms the basis of life itself.vav - Lovers - hook - hooking up
Plausible, but incorrect. Zayin is the same as Greek zeta, which was the initial of Zeus based on corruption of D by Y in the original Dyaus: it can only have been bardic I originally (since yod, which hovers above the line, must stand for Ii, the mistletoe or loranthus), which was given the number 3. Zayin-beyt stand for pillars Jachin and Boaz, and indeed you will note that in the Tarot de Marseille zayin's trump III L'Imperatrice has the tail of the eagle on the shield embracing her about the middle while beyt's trump V LePape has the mother's arm entering the card from the side to present her two offspring (twins representing waxing year and waning year) for the high priest's blessing (early Semitic beyt shows the mitre of the high priest). The shape of zayin (our Z) evidently originally signified a cold front -- cold air moving in under warmer air -- as I is the vowel of winter.zayin - Chariot - weapon
Cheyt is H-huath-hawthorn, a hedge, and its shape shows that which separates: it is space or no-thing which separates things, hence cheyt is LeMat, which bears no number in bardic tradition.chet - Justice - wall, secular, separate - logic, discrimination
The Hermit is much more at home representing its bardic equivalent, coll (kaf) the hazel, which is wisdom gathered together in a nutshell (bardically). Teyt is the sign for the earth or equator (crossed circle) and thus XXI LeMonde.tet - Hermit - basket, conceal - lamp
Yud is mistletoe/loranthus, the 'Golden Bough', hence XVIIIILeSoleil.yud - Wheel - hand, work, do - activity, life
XI LaForce is discipline as well as strength and thus tinne (tav) the holly, which represents the disciplined cohesion of the phalanx which converts many little pricks into one big one.kaf - Strength - palm of the hand, subdue, tame -
Lamedh in Hebrew shows arms swinging while walking seen from above and symbolizes teaching (a child to walk), as befits luis the rowan, whose trump is XIIII Temperance, which is what teaching is.lamed - Hanged Man - staff, teach, yoke, bind - sacrificial savior
M or "mm" represents sweetness, not death, though N (trump XIII) is also a liquid.mem - Death - water, blood, turbulence - ripples of change
N-nun-nion-ash is negation-and-newness in Indo-European and Egyptian, and conveys that meaning even in Hebrew (though the consonant of negation there is lamedh): ash is the wood of handles and trump XIII, who holds his scythe like an (ash-wood) oar and represents the ultimate negation (having no name).nun - Temperance - seed, continue, perpetual life - alchemy, fountain of youth
While I do not agree that the arrangement of the alef-bet had anything to do with chance (which is an undefinable concept anyway), letter-order in existing alphabets is of course not the origin of letter-trump correlation. This is because there actually is a system of letter-number correlation that does have a "structural connection with some numerically based cosmology," namely that of the tradition that formed alphabets in the first place: poetic-prophetic tradition based on the sounds of speech and what these meant in the grand scheme of things. In fact this tradition shows (as I have indeed been able to demonstrate to my own satisfaction, the elements of which demonstration when presented here have yet to be successfully refuted) a greater grasp of the nature of things than the hodge-podge of theories 'gracing' our modern-day campuses. In fact, if you carefully study the atomic numbers in relation to the trumps of the Tarot de Marseille, you will find an uncanny connexion between what each atom-type means to man today and the images on the trumps: 10-neon is the Wheel of Fortune (think Las Vegas, the neon capital of the world); 16-sulphur (a main ingredient of gunpowder) is LaMaisonDieu, which shows a tower being struck by a cannonball; 5-boron (as in borax bleach, its ore) bears the number of Irish B-birch whose white bark symbolizes blessing/cleansing, which is what V LePape is up to; XVII L'Etoille shows someone pouring some 17-chlorine in her pool; 7-nitrogen, the main ingredient in wind, is LeChariot, which produces wind in one's face; and so on.bradford said:But it's important to remember that this is where the significance comes from, and that it has its beginning in the chance arrangement of the alphabets. There is no structural connection with some numerically based cosmology.
I am no monotheist, myself, but it is clear to me that the Hebrew letters do most definitely have 'cosmic significance', as they are powerful elemental forms embodying an ancient tradition descended from greater understanding than our own, an understanding that instead of seeing reality through a myriad of different disciplines was able to unite all knowledge into a finite system of symbols. At least this is what is apparent from what I have been able to deduce concerning their shapes and how these correlate with tree-letters and atom-types and particle physics and psychology and on and on. I do not expect to be taken merely at my word on this, but I can back up what I say in detail (as those on this site who think me long-winded can atest).Sure, some silly people think that since the Hebrew alphabet is the one used by g-d himself, that everything about it, including the random sequence of the letters, must have some holy or cosmic significance.
As Gershom Scholem points out, gematria is not part of Kabbalah proper, nor is what has survived of Kabbalah the complete underlying teaching itself. Rabbis have forgotten, for instance, that the 10 Sefirot derive from the ten stations of the wheel of 12 signs (13 middot, counting the return to the beginning as the 13th) that lead from the exalted -- aries, or straight up (towards the head, whither spring springs) -- to straight back towards self from other -- which is the Shekhinah, the presence of the divine in the individual.I agree that there is no historical development of the Tarot out of this part of QBLH or even Gematria.
Man-made only means artificial if the men producing it lack real knowledge, which, admittedly, most do lack.I think this keeps us free to do the testing and exploring that you get to keep doing when you know that you're playing with man-made and artificial systems instead of fighting over what was and wasn't handed to you by g-d or by history.
Surely you would not say this if you were to look at all that I have posted on this site, as I have done just that. Of course, my analysis is based not simply on the Hebrew alphabet but on a collection of several alphabets based on the same essentially bardic (poetic-prophetic) tradition: hieroglyphic, Tifinag (both Scandinavian and Berber), Libyan (closely related to Tifinag), Greek-and-early-Semitic, Meroitic, Ogham (the Boibel Loth), Irish tree-letters (the Bethluisnion), and Runic (based on tree-letters, as evidenced by the fact that the two runes retaining their tree names are the letters representing the pillars Boaz and Jachin, namely B-birch and I-yew). Admittedly it takes a great deal of thought to properly correlate all these, but I think in my 3 1/2 decades of struggling to do just this that I have succeeded admirably (not that anyone cares, apparently, though passengers in my cab often find what I have to say on the matter enlightening).I've yet to see anyone break and shuffle up the Hebrew alphabet completely, lay out the trumps and then ask ; where does Ox Goad really go? What about Tooth? I wonder if that could bear fruit.
If one goes only by Sefer Yetzirah, you are correct. But there was originally a very simple and direct (and accurate) phonetic principle involved, hence (since you are interested) I shall lay it out.Somewhat fewer people bother to play with the threefold division into mothers, simples and doubles given in the Sefer Yetzirah, or the scales of 3, 7 and 12, but this to me holds a lot more interest, even if the assignments are based on really really bad phonetic science.