Manly P. Hall & J.A. Knapp deck and the hebrew alphabet

Thank you all for the replies and interesting references!

I misphrased myself saying the Tarot/Knapp were "wrong", I simply find it curious that the letters aren't continuous, maybe because I think of the major arcana of the tarot as a process - a transition from one phase to the next.

Thanks again for all the food for thought !

Which is their order? I'd like to know and I don't have that deck.

The Fool is Shin, and then The Magician is Aleph and from there on it goes continuous until the end: Judgment is Reish and The World is Tav (and also numbered both 21 and 22)

That is basically the Levi ordering, which Waite uses in his discussion of the Trumps in PKT.

Waite says in PKT that the traditional (Levi) ordering makes no sense whatsoever and that almost all the letters are assigned to the wrong cards.

It awkward to start by using Aleph for Magician because the Hebrew letters as cardinal numbers are base 10, and once you get to Yod for the Wheel of Fortune, the next letter, Kaph is not 11 but 20, Lamed is 30, etc. When you get to Shin - Fool you are you are up to 200, and Tav - World would be 300.

The Golden Dawn ordering dispenses with the cardinal number concept and instead uses the Hebrew alphabet for ordinality. The GD numbered the Fool 0, which mathematically is the integer just before 1. So the Fool becomes the 1st Trump, Magician the 2nd, Priestess 3rd, etc. Thus the 1st Trump - Fool - is paired with the 1st letter Aleph, the 2nd - Magician - is paired with the 2nd letter Beth, and so on, until finally the 22nd Trump - World - is paired with the 22nd letter Tav.

Here is a table showing the Levi and GD ordering. Note that they agree only at the World - Tav - 22nd letter.

LRichard said:

The Golden Dawn ordering dispenses with the cardinal number concept and instead uses the Hebrew alphabet for ordinality. The GD numbered the Fool 0, which mathematically is the integer just before 1. So the Fool becomes the 1st Trump, Magician the 2nd, Priestess 3rd, etc. Thus the 1st Trump - Fool - is paired with the 1st letter Aleph, the 2nd - Magician - is paired with the 2nd letter Beth, and so on, until finally the 22nd Trump - World - is paired with the 22nd letter Tav.

Click to expand...

Paul Foster Case exerts himself mightily - and convincingly - to defend the Golden Dawn arrangement over Levi's, as does James Sturzaker - in spirit if not explicitly - in Kabbalistic Aphorisms. I think they both succeed.

Barleywine said:

Paul Foster Case exerts himself mightily - and convincingly - to defend the Golden Dawn arrangement over Levi's, as does James Sturzaker - in spirit if not explicitly - in Kabbalistic Aphorisms. I think they both succeed.

Click to expand...

I agree with that assessment. Case thought that Levi must have known the "correct" (GD) ordering but suppressed it on account of secrecy oaths.

Double Headed Secret said:

Does anybody know why the hebrew letters in this deck are wrong?
The hebrew alphabet has 22 letters, so each card of the major arcana should have a hebrew letter of it's own (like in Paul Foster Case's B.O.T.A. deck)

Does anybody know if the new reprint by the Philosophical Research Society has the same error of the hebrew letters not being continuous ?

0 = aleph (א)
1 = beth (ב)
2 = gimel (ג)
3 = daleth (ד)

etc....

Click to expand...

It isn't wrong. It is just different (and follows an older system than the system beginning with 0).

Double Headed Secret said:

I misphrased myself saying the Tarot/Knapp were "wrong", I simply find it curious that the letters aren't continuous, maybe because I think of the major arcana of the tarot as a process - a transition from one phase to the next.

Click to expand...

But the letters in Knapp-Hall ARE continuous. Since Fool is an unnumbered card it could be placed anywhere in the sequence. The Magician is numbered 1, the numerical value of the letter Aleph in the Hebrew alphabet, so the French system is internally coherent.