Working with multiple trees

La'al quiet fella

I will have to check out Samael Aun Weor's attributions. Eden Gray once made a stab at a "three-dimensional Tree" with sephirotic major arcana that I found rather profoundly unsatisfying, sticking the Universe in Chokmah (which I felt completely missed the point) and the Wheel of Fortune in Malkuth (again off the mark IMO). At least giving the Fool to Kether agreed with my personal system, but I know others would quibble. (See the "Systems of Occult Thought" section of her A Complete Guide to the Tarot.)

Regarding multiple trees, I have an academic interest in other versions but don't really feel a compelling need to adopt a substitue for the Kircher. Of course, nearly all of my work with it is Golden-Dawn-based, so I'm probably just biased; at my age I doubt I have enough years left to get deeply involved in anything else, since it took me several decades to get where I am with the Kircher tree.

You must have a relationship with the cards and esotericism that I can only imagine. Unfortunately I discovered all of this stuff a little late on.

In relation to Samael Aun Weor, I just wanted to mention that he often provides correspondences with no explanation (for example fool card with Sagitarious) and he tends to deliver his information as self help guides. He a,so tends to scatter his info so it can be hard to correlate in my experience. that said, I like to use him to shake up a set model now and then, but I just wanted to give a word of caution too.
 

Zephyros

I think it is important to keep in that no Tree is an objective reality but, like anything else, reflects the views and beliefs of whoever created it. Isaac Luria, for example, operated under the assumptions of his faith about which some things were unqueestionable. His Tree operates best when viewed under the lens of Jewish dogma, and not necessarily for Hermetic or magickal practices. He was also influenced by the collective trauma of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain only forty years earlier.

Other Kabbalists have also been influenced, obviously, by their contemporary experiences. I myself do prefer the Kircher Tree because it works for my purposes (whatever those are) and is the basis I use when looking at other Trees.
 

La'al quiet fella

I think it is important to keep in that no Tree is an objective reality but, like anything else, reflects the views and beliefs of whoever created it. Isaac Luria, for example, operated under the assumptions of his faith about which some things were unqueestionable. His Tree operates best when viewed under the lens of Jewish dogma, and not necessarily for Hermetic or magickal practices. He was also influenced by the collective trauma of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain only forty years

From what little I know, I agree with this. I think it is perhaps these subjective beginnings that allow the various trees to be described as arbitrary.

In the same way that the ain, ain soph and ain soph aur allow for trains of thought to be developed that cannot be had if one's starting point is that creation cannot be explained, I feel the various trees allow for wider explorations.

In Blake's terminology 'everything imagined is a portion of truth'.

if something works, I feel sometimes the proof can be in the doing, and the humblest of beginnings does not always diminish the value of the product. In Crowleyism he uses the example of chess being originally an assimilation of battle for bored warriors, but the game has evolved into something much more, whether the seed was there or not in the original game.

For me the Kabbalah, the trees and the varying perspectives from differing kabbalists give us an amazingly generous, varied and complex set of approaches that act as a kind of magick tool kit for those wanting to explore these things.
 

Richard

.....For me it helps in a 'you must create your own system or be enslaved by another man's' kind of way.

I don't think I have any kind of enslavement to anyone else's viewpoint.I have read Aryeh Kaplan's fascinating book on the Sefer Yetzirah, which discusses the various Trees. However, my interest centers on the Kircher, which has been brilliantly adapted to Tarot. However, I am by no means enslaved to it. My preference is entirely pragmatic, not based on considerations of symmetry or aesthetics.
 

La'al quiet fella

I don't think I have any kind of enslavement to anyone else's viewpoint.I have read Aryeh Kaplan's fascinating book on the Sefer Yetzirah, which discusses the various Trees. However, my interest centers on the Kircher, which has been brilliantly adapted to Tarot. However, I am by no means enslaved to it. My preference is entirely pragmatic, not based on considerations of symmetry or aesthetics.

I am sure you don't. It was a quote from William Blake and meant to be applied to myself not to others.
 

Zephyros

For me the Kabbalah, the trees and the varying perspectives from differing kabbalists give us an amazingly generous, varied and complex set of approaches that act as a kind of magick tool kit for those wanting to explore these things.

I completely agree. Of course, the Tree is only a projection. When initiates of the Golden Dawn reached a certain grade, it was only a rough estimation, the Tree as a type of curriculum, not as a kind of "you are here" kind of thing.
 

Michael Sternbach

Crowley presented a modified ToL with 24 paths, but I am not sure where. Maybe one of you can tell me?
 

Zephyros

Crowley presented a modified ToL with 24 paths, but I am not sure where. Maybe one of you can tell me?

I think it's the one with all possible paths marked, and where the Unicursal Hexagram was derived from. If I'm not mistaken.
 

Michael Sternbach

I think it's the one with all possible paths marked, and where the Unicursal Hexagram was derived from. If I'm not mistaken.

Where can I find it?
 

Aeon418

Crowley presented a modified ToL with 24 paths, but I am not sure where. Maybe one of you can tell me?
There's a diagram in 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings. But it's not a modified Tree. The usual 22 paths are clearly marked, but with the addition of various geometrical patterns that can be formed between the Sephiroth.