Tarot/Kabbalah Connection (Another Thread)

venicebard

Curtis Penfold said:
Your article is almost too comprehensive. It's not for the average reader, just saying. There's some parts that I got a little confused on how it related. I'll have to re-read it.

. . .

I don't know. I'll have to hear this in layman's terms to completely understand everything mentioned.
Please feel free to ask any questions whatsoever, for clarification of obscure points—and don’t worry about me thinking them dumb or picky or critical, for first of all I realize both the tree-alphabet and my take on Kabbalah are new ground for most, and secondly I welcome discussion and feedback, both because I usually learn things and because I want others to understand what I consider to be the founding principles on which tarot (i.e. Tarot of Marseilles) stands.

I’ll just say, by way of bringing my take on Kabbalah into focus, that my main contribution to understanding the Sefirot is that whereas rabbinical scholars have traditionally tried to ‘explain away’ discrepancies between the descriptions of them given in the Bahir (12th-century Provence), Sefer Yetzirah (at least as old as the early centuries C.E.), and Zohar (13th-century Spain, though attributed to around the time of Christ), I take these as describing each a different world in which they manifest—Atzilut, the world of archetypes (suit of Clubs), Beriyah or ‘creation’ (suit of Swords), and Yetzirah or ‘formation’ (suit of Cups), respectively, the first three of the four worlds (in their order of generation). (And yes, I know SY is named after the third world, not the second, but this is demonstrably a blind—which is probably why its title is usually translated as ‘Book of Creation’.) These three correspond to—or represent the atmospheres of, so to speak—the three parts of a conscious self: knower (of things eternal or infinite in duration), thinker (of thought-forms with finite durations), and doer (to act in the present instant, which has no duration), respectively. [The doer or Son is the creator of the thought-forms (Brahma), the thinker or Holy Spirit is their preserver (Vishnu), and the knower or Father is the destroyer of illusion (Shiva, or Brahm).]

The fourth world (‘atmosphere’ of the body in which said self dwells) is Asiyah or ‘making’ (suit of Money, that is, of what one makes [ha, ha]), the world of physical time, whose correct hierarchy of planetary cycles, more or less, is preserved in ‘Hermetic Kabbalah’. It progresses from the eternal—1, the stellar heavens (fiery or radiant layer)—to the present—10, the diurnal cycle (earthy or solid layer), which stands for today—via cycles of descending length: 2, the sun or great year (airy layer’s receptivity to fire), 3 or Saturn (airy layer’s ability to act on water), 4 or Jupiter (airy layer’s ability to act on earth), 5 or Mars (watery or fluid layer’s ability to act on earth, 5 being numerologically -4), 6, the year (fluid layer’s ability to act on itself), 7 or Venus (fluid layer’s receptivity to itself), 8 or Mercury (fluid layer’s receptivity to air), and 9 the moon or month (fluid layer’s receptivity to fire).

The greater subdivision of tarot itself into three sections yields the purely numbered pips—which correspond to inner reality, desire, and ultimately the knower (which desire replaces in mere mortals such as ourselves)—the purely pictured-and-titled court cards—which correspond to external reality, feeling, and ultimately the thinker (which feeling replaces in mere mortals such as ourselves)—and the trumps, which are both numbered (ranked) and pictured-and-titled and thus the doorway between inner and outer, which is the Form Upright Sentience, whose various parts the letter-trumps represent (when I first started unraveling all this in 1972 I never dreamed I would be able to solve this aspect of it, but I did and can give all the correspondences if you’re interested). This third section corresponds to the body-mind and ultimately the doer (which the body-mind replaces in mere mortals such as ourselves).

The key to the solution of the ‘mystery’ of the trumps involves three main points.

First, two extra letters (past the 20 of Irish ogham) were hypothesized by Robert Graves (in The White Goddess) as having been kept secret—a doubled A (Aa, palm) and doubled I (Ii, mistletoe)—which I can present further argument for, based in part on a fact which Graves overlooked: that Hebrew yod does indeed hover above the line on which one writes, just as mistletoe is rooted in a tree, not in soil. (Yod itself probably stood, rather, for the mistletoe-like loranthus, which by the way likes growing on oaks, unlike mistletoe, which had to be grafted thereonto.) This means single I must be zayin—Greek zeta being the initial of Zeus because of erosion of D by I or Y—which I deduced from runes, which has an I-shaped I for ‘icicle’ and a tilted-Z-shaped I for ‘yew’, the tree-name of Irish I. By process of elimination, then, Aa turns out to be consonant teyt or theta (the rune ‘day’) and thus a vowel only by bardic reasoning; yet this last must be true, I have reasoned, since the vowels are breaths, and A represents the doer’s breath or activity and O and U the parts of the breaths of thinker and knower that are in the doer’s atmosphere, leaving Aa-E-I-Ii to represent the breaths of fire-air-water-earth, respectively: Aa, palm, is thus the phoenix (which means palm), born in fire; E, quivering aspen, shimmers in the slightest breeze; I, yew, represents death and thus both the sea (the ‘death’ of rivers) and the barrier of water separating the living from the dead; and Ii, mistletoe, represents that which is purified out of earth, contact with which was carefully avoided in the druidic ritual of its harvest (according to Pliny the Elder). (It is interesting to note that palm in Hebrew is tamar, and although it starts with tav, not teyt, there are instances in other roots where the two become interchanged.)

Second, the numbers given the tree-letters in Irish medieval literature are known only for 0-16, thus necessitating the solution to the mystery of 17-21. Yet this puzzle turns out to be a very simple one to solve. A and I are 1 and 3, hence Aa and Ii are first- and third-from-the-end, respectively (as their trumps confirm). K is 9, hence Kk (Q the apple, which still pictures fruit-with-stem) is 18. U’s natural place would have been 5, since 1-4 are A-E-I-O and since V (U) is Roman numeral 5, so it naturally falls at fifth-from-the-end or 17 (which its trump easily confirms), and indeed U or heather represents the full moon and summer and symbolizes love’s consummation, one’s ‘coming of age’ (rune U is *uruz, aurochs, and pictures its horn, whose acquisition as drinking horn was a Germanic warrior’s symbol he had ‘come of age’), 17 being when one ‘came of age’ in Irish myth (mentioned in Ellis’s book The Druids). And this leaves 20 to be Ss, straif or strife, the blackthorn, 20 being the number representing ‘fair combat’—10 digits versus 10 digits, XV The Devil being unfair combat, in which one combatant has one hand tied behind his back or restrained in some way—and indeed XX Judgment or Judgment Day is the ultimate strife (i.e. between knowledge and illusion).

And third—the step necessary also to fathoming the court cards—the letters must be correctly assigned their places about the round(s), as the 7 doubles are unassigned thereto in Sefer Yetzirah and the order of the 12 simples was jumbled in forming the alef-bet. This last is easily confirmed by the shapes of the letters, since they only picture their respective parts of the body (as zodiac signs) once their order is corrected based on calendar-order (of tree-letters) and the intrinsic phonetic structure of the bardic alphabet. This last has a beautiful simplicity about it, in that the ‘Cauldron’ of the doubles, which is lower half of the surroundings, represents the mouth—with B and P on the inner and outer lip or rim, G and K with guttural R between them down at the throat or gullet (where the drain would be), and D and T in between—and the World Egg that sits in it—the zodiac of the seated body, with its twelve simples—represents the tongue. On the tongue’s top half are L-N-V/F-S-H, which go out the tongue voiced and back unvoiced: but whereas pagans had F on the tip—whose sound is formed out beyond the tip and stands for the Corn Spirit sprouting out beyond the seed—Semites had there instead an s-sound, samekh (whose shape is that of aries the head), which is actually on the tongue’s tip. And on the tongue’s bottom half (at the tongue-root) are U-O-A-Aa-E-I-Ii (from front to back, since U or “oo” involves pinching-off the front of the mouth and I or “ee” the pinching-off of the back of the mouth), with A replaced by Q at virgo (K’s sign) when A (alef) takes its place at the center of said wheel: for the mothers mem-shin-alef represent, respectively, the (knower’s) wheel centered atop standing Adam Qadmon (the Form Upright Sentience), the (thinker’s) wheel centered atop seated Adam (us), and the (doer’s) wheel centered at the heart of Adam (i.e. the zodiac of the seated torso). The reason for this assignment of the mothers involves the Logos, which I believe my article addresses at some point. The fourth wheel, then, is that of the womb, a baby’s rotation from head-up to head-down thereon signaling it is ready to be born.

This means the simples are in the order (starting at aries) samekh-tzaddi-cheyt-vav-ayin-qof-teyt-heh-zayin-yod-lamedh-nun (which their shapes verify). And this means that of the letters of the Name only vav is on the outer or female side of the round (where the breasts are), the other three (yod and the two hehs) being on the inner or male side of the round (where the backbone is). Judging from the fact that the right pillar Jachin appears on the throne of the King of Clubs, to be joined by the left pillar Boaz on that of the Queen of Swords, and that the Knight of Cups is the Grail Knight, and that the Knave of Money is the one with two coins (one lying on the ground next to him), these four represent, respectively, the yod, the vav, the first heh, and the second heh in their elements (which ‘Hermetic Kabbalah’ also seemingly got right, though their assignment of elements to the middle two worlds is actually reversed, for reasons I won’t go into here [unless asked]).

I hope this clarifies somewhat (and I’ll stop here, hopefully short of making things too complicated-seeming).
 

Curtis Penfold

You explained why the order is what it is.

I kind of want a card by card explanation. I mean, you kind of do that, too. But something simpler.

Like, the Fool represented this because of this, this, and this. The Magician represented this because of this, this, and this.

It is tough, because it doesn't appear that you have what constitutes real evidence. You know, it seems like we really can't know for sure. There's some speculations that I think we can consider upfront, like the grail myth. But it doesn't seem like we can really know for sure the exact connections between Tarot and Qaballah.

I mean to say, are there documents of the Irish bard tradition connection to Qaballah? Pictures and graphs and such made by bards outside the Tarot that reveal a connection between their tradition and Qaballah?

Do you know what would make your article a little simpler, if possible? Well, you explain the shapes of letters, but I'd like to actually see the letters in the first place. And even though I can see the Marseille cards online, it'd be nice for them to be standing side by side.
 

conversus

Systematic explanations of this sort are always problematic. One simply cannot say everything in one sitting. One cannot receive everything in one sitting. Parts have to be assembled. It simply takes time and ink and reflection before an argument or theory or point-of-view begins to hang together.

This is especially true with matters related to the Kabbalah, and well the Tarot.

I hope that venicebard will continue to try to unfold his current position.

CED

Happy Christmas!!!
 

venicebard

conversus said:
I hope that venicebard will continue to try to unfold his current position.

CED

Happy Christmas!!!
Thank you, Conversus, and Happy Yule to you!
 

venicebard

Curtis Penfold said:
I kind of want a card by card explanation. I mean, you kind of do that, too. But something simpler.

Like, the Fool represented this because of this, this, and this. The Magician represented this because of this, this, and this.
Okay, here goes:

The Fool (no-thing) is traversing space because H-huath-hawthorn (cheyt, square-Hebrew ח, the shoulders) occupies the place of gemini in the calendar, which is the direction out-and-a-bit-up—sign preceding straight out, the breast(s) or sign of the crab—that is, what is above the horizon—space—which precedes manifestation, the horizon itself, which is manifested fire (that is, linked to us by sight). Space separates, as does hawthorn, the quintessential hedge, and our H still shows a section of fence, n’est ce pas? LeMat represents WHAT SEPARATES.

The Prestidigitator (unity) has as his chief trick levitation, yes? Thus A-ailm-fir curtails outward growth in order to apply all its effort towards shooting its central trunk upwards—just as alef the ox, when limited to a tight circle, moves water upwards for irrigation, and just as its hieroglyphic equivalent, the eagle, confines itself to a circle (or spiral) to soar upwards on thermals. I LeBateleur represents WHAT ARISES.

The Papess (duality) represented the cloister, woman’s means of withdrawing from sexuality or duality—usually with advancing age—and sexual restraint generally; for E-eadhe-aspen, vowel of waning moon and autumn (“The autumn winds blow chilly and cold,” Simon & Garfunkel), is also the heh added to Abram to make Abraham and signify his circumcision—indeed a circumcised male member is the shape assumed by the thing which holds her cloak closed in the front. Also, she is reading—perhaps out loud (though quietly)—and indeed aspen is called ‘quivering aspen’ because its shimmering leaves (dark on one side, light on the other) reveal the slightest breeze. II LaPapesse is the RESTRAINT represented by the WANING PHASE of a cycle (2 in the sense of ‘second thoughts’).

The Empress (triplicity), as I-idho-yew, tree of cemeteries, vowel of old moon, winter, and death, rules cycles because she is that which brings and end to them, limits them, 3 being the number of water (the 3rd element), which is form or limitation. III L’Imperatrice is RULE as LIMITATION or FORM.

The Emperor (quadruplicity) rules the 4 elements (the 4th element being earth, the physical): O-onn-furze is the vowel waxing moon and of spring (the ‘furze fires’ of spring), when nature blossoms forth. He is also campaigning (that is, he is not in his throne room but in a field), this being spring. IIII L’Empereur is RULE as PHYSICAL POWER.

The Pope (quintessence) is blessing a pair of twins (gods of waxing and waning year, to be exact) presented to him by their mother (the moon), whose arm enters the card from the right. This is because B-beth-birch is the month of the year’s birth (beginning right after the winter solstice or ‘extra day’), when waxing and waning year are born (the waxing to be sacrificed at summer solstice and there supplanted by the waning): birch represents infancy by its diminutive size and the clean slate of infancy by its white bark, which also conveys the idea of a blessing, as does the use of birch in whipping ‘evil spirits’ out of little tykes. (Old Semitic beyt—a word meaning ‘house’, ‘temple’, or ‘house of’—even pictures the mitre of the High Priest!) V LePape is the power of BLESSING, of NEW BIRTH.

The Lover (the six directions of space), as M-muin-vine (as in “mm”), stands (obviously) for both the sweetness of the grape and the interconnectedness of the vine (“Heard it through the grapevine”). VI L’Amoreux is SWEETNESS, INTERCONNECTEDNESS.

The Chariot (the seven steps of initiation) is P-peith-whitten (or water elder), a letter which—by its name’s similarity to the archaic Welsh term peithynen (‘wheel divination’) and its rune’s shape (rune-cup on its side, i.e. having cast its rune-dice for divination) and its Semitic forms (old Semitic ear or spiral, square-Hebrew mouth with tongue)—stands for the poetic-prophetic mysteries themselves: thus it pictures the throne-chariot (since the driver wears a crown), the Merkavah, which is the name (and symbol) of the poetic-prophetic mysteries within Judaism. VII LeChariot is INITIATION. (Remember Krishna posing as Arjuna’s charioteer in order to initiate him?)

Justice (two things made of four elements), wielder of the scales (aries, straight up from libra, as opposed to libra, the scales themselves), has a slightly complicated ‘pedigree’. For 8 was to pagans the letter F-fearn-alder and stood at aries the head—the direction straight up, meaning balance (8 being the atomic number of oxygen, the one atom-type without which there is no ‘up’)—being the tree of Bran or Vran, the spirit of vegetation (Corn Spirit), chief spirit for pagan bards. This sign sits on the tip of the ‘Egg’ (world-egg), the round of the zodiac of a body seated in meditation within the bowl or ‘Cauldron’ of the surroundings extending from horizon without (ahead) to horizon within (behind): phonetic distribution of sounds on Egg and Cauldron (that is, melding calendar-order with the division into 7 doubles and 12 simples) makes it clear the Egg stood for the tongue and the Cauldron for the mouth, so the f sound represented the Corn Spirit’s sprouting out beyond the tongue or seed. But Semites replaced this (the argument is intricate but clear on this) with the sound on the tip of the tongue, namely samekh, which is the only letter in square Hebrew shaped like the head (though mem in some fonts looks like a fat head). VIII LaJustice is BALANCE, EQUILIBRIUM, POISE, what allows one to remain ON TOP.

The Hermit or Old Man (nine being the number of months that makes us ‘ripe’), being K-coll-hazel, represents both the wisdom of age and its concentration in a single soul (‘in a nutshell’)—the Nine Hazels of Poetic Art fed the salmon from which Fionn Mac Cumhail acquired poetic inspiration (the oldest form of the rune pictures the open mouth of the poet). Square-Hebrew kaf shows the cupped hand (or a cave), which is linked to the hazel by Aesop’s fable about the boy who stuck his hand in a narrow-necked jar and grabbed some hazels, only to find he could not extricate it without letting go, which he refused to do (being a headstrong lad). VIIII L’Hermite is CONCENTRATION (which IS wisdom).

The Wheel of Fortune is G-gort-ivy and thus what you might call vine’s interconnectedness without grape’s sweetness attached to it (though they did make an ivy wine back in the days). Simply put, it is desire, the ivy symbolizing one’s wandering in search of something (legend has it English ivy will turn into a tree if it finds just the right mixture of light, soil, and moisture). Desire, of course, is what feeds commerce—Hebrew gimel means ‘camel’—but it is also the source of unhappiness—not desire itself, but the fact that mortals direct it towards objects beyond their grasp. X LaRoue deFortune is DESIRE.

Note concerning VIIII and X: These are the months containing the signs virgo and scorpio, respectively, in the tree-calendar, which lead to and on from libra, straight down, one’s contact with earth—which means the present instant, in symbolic terms—and what leads to the present is what a doer’s passive aspect, feeling, tries to determine, while what leads on from the present is what a doer’s active aspect, desire, tries to determine: notice the shift in the meaning of the word determine. Anyway, these two turn out to form a fundamental polarity in the deeper ‘mysteries’ of Qabbalah: 9 is minus-1 in valence (fluorine) but zero numerologically (i.e. leaves a digital sum unchanged by its addition), while 10 is zero valence (inert neon) but plus-one numerologically (digital sum of 1). These two (on the Cauldron) are straight down from the horizontal limits of the Egg, which are vav and yod respectively and represent the same polarity as expressed in the Name (yod-heh-vav-heh): by my reckoning (not at all difficult to demonstrate), vav or U-ura-heather is 17—minus-1 both numerologically and in valence—while yod or Ii-(Gr. ixias)-mistletoe is 19—plus-1 both numerologically and in valence.

Strength, being T-tinne-holly—whose lesson is the power of discipline, that is, of the phalanx, since each prick is small but together with myriad others becomes formidable—pictures a woman manipulating the jaws of a lion: this is the power inherent in pinching a hose to make the water emerge with more force, and that it applies to the mouth means that it is a power wielded by the poet or bard, whose task in battle is to articulate the purpose of the fight and remind the warriors that the men to left and right of them depend on their steadfastness. XI LaForce is SELF-DISCIPLINE. (Its month encompasses sign leo, the heart, and thus stands for one’s conscience.)

The Hanged Man is not suffering, he is dancing a jig for Krise sake! at least in one sense. For he is D-duir-oak, whose reach or compass signifies the horizon without—its month encompasses the sign of the crab, which is straight ahead or out, the breast(s), but being a double its station is on that sign of the Cauldron of the surroundings, not on the Egg or zodiac of the body—and we are connected to that horizon by sight, making him the inverted image on the back of the eye. Yet as oak, the tree of the ‘king of the waxing year’—the heroic or upper side of the round—he does also represent that spirit’s sacrifice at summer solstice, yet his cheerfulness embodies the heroic as northern peoples pictured it (in their epics), that is, total lack of self-pity. XII LePendu is SELF-SACRIFICE, which is linked firmly (if esoterically) with COMPASS. Hebrew dalet means ‘door’ or ‘page’, things that swing (Tifinag D has had the shape of a door with open threshold since the early Bronze Age); and Phoenician dalet pictured a boat’s jib, which also swings; for oak’s forte (which is pronounced the same as fort, by the way, being French not Italian, Italian forte being a musical term meaning ‘loud’) is its reach or compass—the limit of the ‘swing’ of the surroundings (i.e. the outer horizon).

The Grim Reaper holds his scythe like an oar, because N-nion-ash (n being the sound of negation) was the wood of oars, and also of spear-shafts and tool handles: Aesop’s fable about the wood yielding up the ash to be the axe-handle only to have it then turn into the forest’s ‘Grim Reaper’ sums up this card (N’s rune’s name is ‘need’). XIII (Death) is the NEWNESS won at the expense of the NEGATION of what went before. (E.g. clearing a space in the forest on which to erect a dwelling.)

Temperance represents teaching and its resultant learning: L-luis-rowan shelters young of other species that will eventually supplant it and was used to make whips to tame bewitched horses, reminiscent of the meaning ‘ox-goad’ connected with L’s Semitic name; and lemedh (L’s name lamedh with slightly altered vocalization) means ‘learning’. XIIII LaTemperance is LEARNING or ADJUSTING.

The Devil (15 is the atomic number of phosphorus, another name for Lucifer, the morning star) has a double meaning: it is both the ‘little devil’, meaning the newborn infant that enslaves its parents (as apparent from the card), and the actual devil, meaning sensuality. For it is R-ruis-elder, to burn which, in English folklore, is ‘to bring the devil into the house’ (meaning it burns poorly and creates much smoke): this is both a medicinal tree and a tree of death, since it is the last month of the year—the one that lacks a sign of its own, since the twelve tree-months preceding it have used them all up. And the sound r has two placements, on the tip of the tongue, as in Arabic, or at the base of the tongue, as in Hebrew, these two being linked by its liquid form: R and L are the only non-nasal liquids and therefore stand quite obviously for right and left (the argument for which, though, is somewhat involved). Since man’s lot is an unhappy one in the long run, the side that is stronger in him is his sensuality, which is what leads to death (that is, confusing one’s body for one’s self). XV LeDiable is SENSUALITY. (Phosphorus, by the way, is the key or pivotal ingredient in DNA, so reysh—whose shape in square Hebrew shows the path of semen as it joins the ejaculatory stream—stands for the body-mind, that is, the thinking having to do with procreation, the making of new bodies.)

The ‘God-House’ or Tower of Destruction is really a pussycat compared to its frightening first impression, for it represents the font of spring—the dots scattered by it are simply pollen—since S-saille-willow is shaped like a fountain and its month falls in early spring. Yet its Hebrew equivalent, shin, does stand for the polarity of ‘evil’ balanced against mem’s ‘good’ in Sefer Yetzirah, this again expressing the fact that man’s lot is not a happy one (in the long run, or even the short run if we take Buddha’s teaching to heart and realize that even having what one desires entails the fear of losing it and even not having what one desires not entails the fear of getting it) and therefore what springs up inevitably leads to suffering. After all, the flower lives but a brief moment in order to spread its pollen and regenerate the species. XVI LaMaisonDieu is the FONT OF INSPIRATION, what shakes one’s crown. (It is that which leads to creation—“shush! let me think . . . ”—for in a deeper sense it is the Holy Spirit or Sofia, S being the initial of the latter and shin being the final letter of ruach ha-qodesh, ‘spirit of holiness’.)

The Star shows the mixing of two fluids by a buxom nude, for it is U-ura-heather, vowel of summer and the full moon—love’s consummation, one’s ‘coming of age’ (17 being that age in Irish myth and rune *uruz, ‘aurochs’, showing its horn upended as a drinking horn, the Germanic warrior’s symbol of ‘coming of age’). Indeed one may connect ura—both its tree-name and its name in the Boibel Loth (an alternate set of letter-names for the ogham letters)—with Urania, ‘Queen of Heaven’, since heather was/is the bed of lovers out under the summer stars. Since bardic U or vav can also be seen as that part of the noetic breath (activity of the knower) that is in the doer’s atmosphere (i.e. a simple, a letter on the Egg, which is the doer’s round), XVII L’Etoille is KNOWING, in the biblical sense.

The Moon shows a face taking refuge in the moon’s orb from the hyena-dogs laughing-barking at it from their twin towers (i.e. from the world of duality); for it is Q-quert-apple, glossed in the Book of Ballymote as ‘shelter of a hind’. Ultimately, being the ‘fruit’, it stands for the womb, the original physiological attribution of virgo—what leads to libra, libra (the present) being one’s physicality (straight down, direction of the pull of gravity)—as can be seen from the shape of square-Hebrew qof, ק, which shows the womb in cross-section (from the side) and the two openings related to the womb (navel and birth-canal). The womb protects the developing fetus from the ridicule of the world. XVIII LaLune is life’s ripening FRUIT, its REFUGE from being plucked too soon.

The Sun shows the twin gods of the year again, for Ii-(Gr. ixias)-mistletoe stands where Yule is in the calendar, at the sign capricorn (winter solstice) where the birch-month begins. Here the same twins we see being blessed in V LePape are at play, wrestling for supremacy (the winner wins the dubious distinction of ruling the waxing year and thus being sacrificed first). Its Hebrew equivalent is yod, which hovers above the line on which one writes (just as mistletoe is rooted in a tree, not in soil) and is numbered 10 in Hebrew: it begins the Name and there stands for the joined hands at the root of its male half (yod-heh or Yah), that is, for the spirit in the male which desires union with the female (his hand of 5 joined with her hand of 5) to produce offspring (that which follows 9, the nine months of gestation, and can be held in one’s 10 fingers). The folklore making it innocent to kiss under its boughs represents the innocence of conjoining with the opposite sex for procreation, as opposed to out of lust. For the Name represents the divine creative power, which in man has fallen from the head to the loins and become the procreative power: the commandment not to take the Name in vain conveys the same message. And capricorn is straight back, meaning straight in, that which is completely purified of all outwardness, and mistletoe was Virgil’s Golden bough, so XVIIII LeSoleil represents WHAT IS PURIFIED or PRISTINE. (Hebrew yod is a speck or seed, purified of all ‘trappings’, its Greek name, iota, being used in the expression ‘not one iota’.)

Judgment is the Day of Judgment, the ultimate strife (between reality and illusion), because it is Ss-straif(strife)-blackthorn, called ‘The Mother of the Wood’ because it is the forest’s vanguard in retaking fallow land back from the farmer. The number 20 means two sets of 10 digits locked in fair combat or competition: the trump shows an angel blowing the trumpet from within the smoke and dust of battle and a forest of spikes, causing either the death of children or their resurrection, depending on how one looks at it. XX LeJugement is the ultimate CONTEST.

The World is the spoils of victory, being Aa-ailm-palm (which by process of elimination corresponds to the letter teyt or theta), and shows the wreath of victory surrounding someone dancing obviously in a warm climate: to the bards of the British Isles the palm represented tropical climes as seen from the deck of a ship (hence its Tifinag form, like an E lying on its back, which Barry Fell has suggested bore the Low German name thili, meaning ‘planks’ or ‘partition’). In the phonetic sweep of the vowels across the bottom of the Egg, Aa lands on libra or straight down, and indeed square-Hebrew teyt, ט, shows ones legs folded beneath one when meditating. Essentially, XXI LeMonde is PHYSICAL LOCATION.
It is tough, because it doesn't appear that you have what constitutes real evidence.
Well, the way I would put it is that the ‘real evidence’ simply involves such a vast collection of facts—any dozen or hundred of which by themselves fail to make a complete argument—that said evidence is not easily conveyed. Yet that does not mean it does not exist.
You know, it seems like we really can't know for sure.
Well, as I tried to explain to another critic recently on some thread or other (maybe this one), what involves temporal reality cannot be known with complete certainty: only what is eternal can be known (since it alone is unwavering and solid). Still, there are degrees of certainty, and my doubts with respect to where tarot came from have dwindled over the years to a little speck next to a great big tree.
I mean to say, are there documents of the Irish bard tradition connection to Qaballah?
The only evidence of said kinship resides in the coinCIdence (as opposed to coINcidence) of form between the two systems of understanding. The two are close enough as to be able even today (after much has been lost that was still preserved in the 12th century) to ‘fill each other’s holes’ to reveal a system of understanding of great beauty and integrity—a system of understanding far beyond my puny ability to create from whole cloth, my own understanding of my own limitations being the best evidence I have that I didn’t make it up. For the Qabbalah once put back together in this way unifies the various disciplines—psychology, ethics, chemistry, particle physics, (plasma) cosmology, and so on—into a single model, something not even dreamt of in the modern university—where even GUTs, or grand unified theories, which only deal (and that poorly) with the physical, escape capture.
Do you know what would make your article a little simpler, if possible? Well, you explain the shapes of letters, but I'd like to actually see the letters in the first place. And even though I can see the Marseille cards online, it'd be nice for them to be standing side by side.
Yes, I have the shapes of letters in many different alphabets embedded in graphics in MS Word; but I know nothing about how to incorporate them either into that forum or this one. IF ANYONE UNDERSTANDS SUCH THINGS and would be willing to help me accomplish this, I would be eternally indebted.

Thank you, by the way, for your interest, Curtis.
 

barbaragraver

Has anyone here read Dovid Krafchow's book Kabbalistic Tarot? He puts forth arguments for a Jewish origin of Tarot. I can't say that I'm convinced but I do like the fact that he presents Tarot in a spiritual light.