Basic Pathworking Q: Fool on Shin vs. Aleph

Richard

If you are with B.O.T.A., you had better stick with their system of correspondences. If you become convinced that their letters are off (say, that the Star and the Emperor should trade places on the tree, or something) then it will be much harder for you to immerse yourself in that system. You'll see a star card and a little voice inside you will proclaim "Tzaddi is not the star!"
However, if it is not possible to keep different options serviceable without the intrusion of little voices, perhaps one is altogether too deeply immersed in a particular system. It is not necessary to allow oneself to be brainwashed in order to benefit from an occult system.
 

Aeon418

So yeah, you're right that if later renditions of the packs came out without that transition there's a fair chance that both Crowley and Knight shared a minority opinion on the matter (or they may consider it to cause more confusion than it's worth).

Knight does not completely agree with Crowley. He does switch the positions of the Star and the Emperor. But he does not move the signs of the zodiac.

Crowley:
15th Path - XVII The Star - Heh - Aquarius.
28th Path - IV The Emperor - Tzaddi - Aries.

Knight:
15th Path - XVII The Star - Heh - Aries.
28th Path - IV The Emperor - Tzaddi - Aquarius.
 

Breakbeat_Mystic

If you are with B.O.T.A., you had better stick with their system of correspondences. If you become convinced that their letters are off (say, that the Star and the Emperor should trade places on the tree, or something) then it will be much harder for you to immerse yourself in that system. You'll see a star card and a little voice inside you will proclaim "Tzaddi is not the star!"
I see the potential for that and I'm avoiding it like the plague. I just see a lot of really interesting decks out there and I know that while meditating on them, even if I don't agree with their Hebrew letter distribution, my subconcious will be drinking it in. The way I'm attempting to bridge this is just to remind myself that this is a mystic system and that the rules and elasticity are more gentle and gradual than one would have with math or chemistry per say.

There are subtle differences with the art based on the letter shift, for instance a couple of the Fool on Shin decks I have now put a serpent or serpents at the base of the Hermit's staff to drive the point that they believe Teth to be of value for this key. For these subtle difference in discriptive psychology I'm more curious to see how they'd manifest in the cards and, if they do pathworking, there also by extension.

With BOTA I'm still only in their primary seven, trust me when I say I'm a baby when it comes to tarot study - technically started in early August just that I've been infortunate to have a lot of time and motivation at my disposal in the interem. I would fully agree with you, BOTA having from what I hear 13 years of truly wonderful material I have no desire to look at the GD and Case distribution of cards as a past-tense thing.
 

Breakbeat_Mystic

Knight does not completely agree with Crowley. He does switch the positions of the Star and the Emperor. But he does not move the signs of the zodiac.
Good point. Crowley also seemed to handle the Strength/Justice swap a little differently from the mainstay GD by swapping the astrology and letters but leaving the key #'s in Marseilles format.
 

Breakbeat_Mystic

One of the things I love about Amazon.com and buyer-feedback/review is that one book you read can lead to another just by what people are discussing. With the Oswald Wirth deck I saw that someone recommended "Numbers and Letters: Or, The Thirty Two Paths of Wisdom" by Margaret Bloodgood Peeke. Somewhat on impulse I ordered that concurrently with the Wirth deck to see if it would host any answers to my question. Started this afternoon and I'm closing in on 1/3 completion and still dealing with the first ten sephira concepts but lots of info so nothing I'd regret even if it leads to no answer on my present question. Margaret was apparently Empirator of the Martinist order at the time and I've had some curiosity with respect to Martinism so between this and Louise-Claude de Saint-Martin's essays I might have a little more help in deciding whether I might look into TMO five or six years down the road.
 

Cheiromancer

I was trying to think of the stuff someone should know if they were going to embark on a study of Tarot as part of the Western occult tradition. BOTA, GD, Thelema, whatever. To get a head start on the homework.

I was thinking that ideally someone would have a few of the archetypical decks. RWS in an Anglo-American context, and probably the Tarot de Marseilles (or one of its clones). Be familiar enough with the major arcana that the name of the card could be produced, given the number. And vice versa. So you'd know the Empress was 3, and 9 was the Hermit. You might not remember every detail, but you'd have spent some time looking at the cards.

Also, a person should be familiar enough with the Hebrew alphabet that they could recognize the letters. Additionally, it would be good if they could distinguish the double letters from the simples and the mothers.

Knowing the signs of the zodiac would be necessary. Putting names to symbols, the order they appear, whether they are associated with fire, earth, air or water. Maybe whether they are cardinal, fixed or mutable? Oh, and to know the names and symbols of at least the 7 classical planets. And their order in a geocentric system.

None of this need be letter perfect. But if someone didn't know it, they should have a cheat sheet.

I'm not sure how familiar someone should be with the Tree of Life. It is not that hard to learn to draw, and memorizing the names doesn't take that long. What does everyone think?

What else is basic, beginner-level knowledge?
 

Richard

........What else is basic, beginner-level knowledge?
I think what you listed would cover the basics.

BTW. An easy way to remember the double letters is to make a word out of them. Something like: בגדכפרת = be-gad'-ke-phart' You can even do it with the mothers: אמש = Amish, but they're easy to remember anyhow.
 

Breakbeat_Mystic

I was trying to think of the stuff someone should know if they were going to embark on a study of Tarot as part of the Western occult tradition. BOTA, GD, Thelema, whatever. To get a head start on the homework.
I found Paul Foster Case's 'The Tarot' to be something I was really able to sink my teeth into and go geek-crazy on. Having some time right now between jobs I was able to memorize the letters and paths, the colors per his assignment, the 8 principles (including fool) of which are a split consciousness type/related principle (such as with Pope - Subjective Consciousness/Intuition), following from that the Laws in keys 8-14, the results in 15-21, also the aspects of man's faculties and the seven double effects of the planets. Case makes this super easy.

BTW, I'll review the Margaret Peeke book later and give some of the bullet points and contrasts I'm finding in philosophy. She clearly is connecting cards to paths and putting Magician on Aleph, Fool on Shin, and going the whole route. As I had a feeling its a very different way of looking at the emanation story from what I'm used to with the GD diaspora authors and the ramifications she's giving also seems to be painting a significantly different cosmological idea with respect to what present challenges are.

One of the reasons why I was somewhat hesitant on Martinism is that certain aspects of it smacked of material pessimism, I'm not sure what I'll see and who knows what I'll think if I really have a chance to weigh out the evidence, just that my reading of history as well as current politics with Christian Gnosticism (ie. the Nag Hammadi stuff) have left a bad taste in my mouth. Ironically one of the same people who puts the Nag Hammadi to major test, Michael Heiser, is also a big advocate of a Divine Council of seven Elohim which is a concept that Margaret Peek likes to identify with Chesed thru Malkuth. At least on the bright side Peeke doesn't seem to make claims that a stutter in the divine feminine or the coffee-girl of the pleroma created matter and archons, rather the claim seems to be evolving that the more things thinned by distance from the creator into lower plains the more disorder became inherent - that at least falls closer in line with the rest of mystery tradition.
 

Cheiromancer

Wow, Breakbeat. You've covered a lot of material. I don't think you can classify yourself as a beginner if you know the letters *and* the colors assigned to the paths. I assume you know the tarot cards assigned as well. Of course you do - given what you said you've read.

As one beginner to another, may I ask a few questions? Like, *have* you done meditation on those assignments? Do they ring true to you? Some more than others? I have been thinking about how to get intuitive verification of assignments. Trying to distinguish between what is merely arbitrary (like driving on the right), and what is a little deeper. Basically I don't trust the assignments I have seen between the tree/tarot/astrology/Hebrew, and would like some experiential verification.
 

Breakbeat_Mystic

Wow, Breakbeat. You've covered a lot of material. I don't think you can classify yourself as a beginner if you know the letters *and* the colors assigned to the paths. I assume you know the tarot cards assigned as well. Of course you do - given what you said you've read.
I've had a year and a half between about nine months in various depths of new age, NDE, Seth Material etc. research last year, a jump back to the bible followed up by MP Hall and Agrippa this spring, I had some knowledge of Levi's claims by spring but really didn't pick up the mystery traditions of the tarot until late July or early August, so I'm beginner-ish but yeah, probably in a split category in ways.

As one beginner to another, may I ask a few questions? Like, *have* you done meditation on those assignments? Do they ring true to you? Some more than others? I have been thinking about how to get intuitive verification of assignments. Trying to distinguish between what is merely arbitrary (like driving on the right), and what is a little deeper. Basically I don't trust the assignments I have seen between the tree/tarot/astrology/Hebrew, and would like some experiential verification.
I had some running attempts at staring at and going into the cards just based on internet advice on how to do it - had a few times I was somewhat successful albeit I was really just taking the scenery on from first-person vantage point which rattled some symbol connections occasionally but not a whole lot new.

Right now I suppose I'm cheating a little with the pathworking - I ended up getting Tabitha Cicero's audio tracks for everything up through Netzach and the 27th path. Other times I'm taking advice that's probably closer to Rudolph Steiner's for engaging imaginative vision - he had a decent example of symbol meditation at the end of Outline of Occult Philosophy that I tried for a while and I've dialed it back to somewhat simpler religious symbolism (trying to position a ring of seven roses on a black cross can be a challenge to keep track of). With the tarot I just line up Key 0 above key 4, then keys 1-7,8-14,15-21, and either stare at that or grab one card (The Star fits since I'm looking for meditation/revelation type stuff) and look at that for a while.

The only psychic sense I really have that I'm continuously aware of is something that, I don't know if I'm coining a term here but I'm doing my best - clairtactile? I'll physically feel a lot of energies, I can sense presences as well as localized energy flows in my body, feel emotions and intent, and my heart chakra feels like it's lit up like a floodlight sometimes that's raying out the front of my ribcage. It's interesting, I suppose it helps me stay reminded that this stuff is legit, albeit it only takes me so far in terms of education.

I'm sure that once the initial tarot lessons with BOTA start next month they'll ease it in with relatively basic stuff - I'm fine with that actually. I should also add that I joined AMORC not too long after, so I have two organizations in the past month and a half - both seem to be great and it doesn't look like it'll be an excess of overlap or repeat. I'm just at one of those positions where I want to do everything I can to let my subconscious mind know I'm serious and when I have a question and want to get the best answer I can I'll jump on Amazon's Kindle store, buy a paperback if I have to, and read. Forums can be a great help as well. :)