Alef = I-Bateleur or = Fou ?

firemaiden

What an interesting thread. From a letter point of view, it sort of makes sense for aleph to be the fool, if aleph is the only vowel in the series, and the vowel is the one who is supposed to migrate, and travel around and go between all the other letters...

I was surprised to read here that the Golden Dawn people made the equation "zero = one": I thought it was, as Aleister Crowley explains in the Book of Thoth, "Zero equals Two".
 

Umbrae

ohhh...as to WHY attribute the letters to the Majors?

I’ll take a stab.

Grab your Visconti copy. Get a magnifying glass. Look at the hem of the The Star’s Garment.

Now.

What letter is it?

You’re right.

So why would they do that? Why would they put it there? Accident? A blind? It has to be there for a reason. Nobody would be so careless as to put something so obvious yet at the same time such a cul-de-sac. Mistake? Error? And on THE STAR?

Always begin at the beginning. And work out from there.

:smoker:
 

Sophie

firemaiden said:
What an interesting thread. From a letter point of view, it sort of makes sense for aleph to be the fool, if aleph is the only vowel in the series, and the vowel is the one who is supposed to migrate, and travel around and go between all the other letters...

I was surprised to read here that the Golden Dawn people made the equation "zero = one": I thought it was, as Aleister Crowley explains in the Book of Thoth, "Zero equals Two".
Alef is not a vowel - there are no vowels in Hebrew. But it is something more interesting: it is a letter without a sound, something like an inbreathing, a preparation for a sound. Of all the explanations I have read for alef=Fool, that is the one I find more convincing. If the GD Fool is the state of man before incarnation, the preparation for being - and the first step into being - then he fits well with alef as the letter-before-sound. The Marseille Fool is not really that, as I understand him, but Le Bateleur is. This means we might never reach a resolution between these two traditions (Marseille and GD).

Still seeking...;)
 

jmd

Is it an in-breathing, or, rather, is Alef more the opening of the throat allowing the sounds to emerge...

... a little like ABRA K'ADaBRA: as I speak so I create.

It seems to me to be closer to the instant just as one begins to intone, for example, AUM - not yet sound, yet magic opens.
 

firemaiden

(I thought Aleph was a glottal stop.)

If le Bateleur can said to be the one who does the wandering .. well then, let him have Aleph! By all means! LOL.

Is the Bateleur the divine nothing from which all emanates? Is that why he has all the elements with him?
 

Umbrae

firemaiden said:
Is the Bateleur the divine nothing from which all emanates? Is that why he has all the elements with him?

No, le Bateleur (and the Magician) is not Ein Soph. He would represent Aleph, which translates to Ox (who pulls the plow, aerates the soil which makes it fertile, clears blockages, demonstrates tenacity), Aleph also means ‘learn’.
 

Sophie

Umbrae said:
No, le Bateleur ... would represent Aleph, which translates to Ox (who pulls the plow, aerates the soil which makes it fertile, clears blockages, demonstrates tenacity), Aleph also means ‘learn’.
I think Le Bateleur must be the ox-farmer's youngest son, the prodigal one, who ran away to the circus, or perhaps skipped his father's attention at a county fair, to take up with a performing juggler...oh, he's learning all right! He is also, not Ein Soph (but surely alef is not that either), but the silent breath it takes to toss a coin and have it reappear behind Molly's ear, the breath he filches from his spectators when he talks & twirls his stick & gets them to open their purses with a smile. Perhaps alef is that smile? Both stolen & given freely?
 

firemaiden

So if the Fool were not to be Aleph, what should he be then, and what is its numerical value? Shin?

Kabbalah: Fool=Shin ~ Why?

And if it is indeed Shin (which means tooth?)... (what number is that) is that why the little doggie is biting his pants off?

And if that is why the little doggie is biting the Fool's pants off... in the case of Crowley who announces loudly that he attributes Aleph to the Fool - why does he put the alligator and the tiger to bite the Fool's pants off if he did not have underneath it all the idea after all that the Fool's attribution should actually be ....
 

jmd

With numbering, a distinction needs to be made between its cardinal and its ordinal value. For example, Peh has an ordinal value of seventeen, and Shin and ordinal value of 21.

I have at various times mentioned that, at least in my personal view, if there is going to be an early or historically based correlation made between letter value and Hebrew letter, it is the ordinal value, rather than its cardinal, that is important.

To only number twenty-one of the twenty-two cards makes sense, especially if one also has interests in the Sefer Yetzirah, for then the addition of those numbered cards gives the triangular number of 231 (1+2+3...+21) - also, therefore, the number of 'gates' between each two letters, and hence between any two adjacent cards selected.

In such a case, I would suggest that it makes more sense to have the Fool as final card, allocated Tav, for then, each card number can be also seen as ordinal representation of letter value. Of course, we need to simultaneously remember that early extant decks were left, in any case, un-numbered.

Having it placed between cards XX and XXI breaks the 'obvious' ordinal value of the final two letters, and placing it before Alef breaks the ordinal value of all letters.

Yet, there is also no doubt that many have quite effectively seen sense and sensibilities in placing the Fool either as first card, as penultimate, or, as mentioned, as final.

In my personal view, and as mentioned elsewhere, it is neither Bateleur nor Fool who 'does the journey' (a concept in any case expounded more over the past thirty years than with early decks), but, rather, each individual.
 

John Meador

a certain unpublished deck...

jmd said:
In my personal view, and as mentioned elsewhere, it is neither Bateleur nor Fool who 'does the journey' (a concept in any case expounded more over the past thirty years than with early decks), but, rather, each individual.

Protanthropos as Itinerant Fool -possibly? ;]

-John