northsea,
Sorry for being allowed to get off track. ;-)
I prefer the GD scheme because it makes more sense to me. It seems that *if* one is going to assign hebrew letters to the trumps, they should go in order (aleph=fool, beth = bataleur, etc.), and then a system of assigning those letters to the tree should have some cohesion. The GD system is one, though not the only one. In fact, I kinda prefer the Mothers (A, M, Sh) on the horizontals, the doubles (B,G,D,K,P,R,T) on the verticles, and the singles on the diagonals. But I haven't really tried laying my trumps out in different formations yet. Therefore, I won't say that I think the GD system is "right", (though I might well say others are wrong. ;-) however I find it *plausible*.
As to the article you refered to, "The Demise of the Golden Dawn," I do disagree with him. First, in regards to the planetary associations, he rearanges the planets from their "ancient" order in order to fix the *gender* assignments to the pillars. But he then forgoes the fact that mars is severe and venus is merciful.
I don't like his implication that Emperor and Empress should cross at da'ath, because that implies that *sex* still matters above the abyss, rather than simply being *one symbol* we use below. (And I prefer the empress and priestess as being two faces of the Woman of the Apocalypse - The face of the divine crossing the abyss.) Even in the GD tree, there *are* balances, though they aren't the sort of balances he's looking for - opposites, primarily gender based. A cursory glance over them again didn't show me any that I felt were *unbalanced*.
I would almost say that it's better to find a system that "works" for you - and then figure out *why* it works, rather than trying to find a "perfect" system - because I don't think there is one. We're mixing card game with hebrew mysticism. The connections can be made - and they can be fruitful - but I don't think they're intrinsic.
In regards to the IPA, I don't understand what you're saying. It's certainly superior to the Hebrew script for purposes of linguistics, but it's over the top and and vastly inferior for writing any one language for normal purposes. Suppose we used it for english (and I presume you'd want things spelled phonetically). We would note that stops are aspirated initially, but not medially - but since there's no phonemic distinction it would be a needless complication. It would also make written comprehension almost impossible between dialects, since where British Recieved Pronunciation has a t, Americans have a flap, and Cockneys have a glottal stop. And how would you map it to the tree? There are over a hundred sounds, ignoring diacritics to modify tone, intonation, phonation, and articulations!