Mark wrote:Hi Michael,

Wow. This is why I love love Skyscript! Where else could you get replies of this quality?

Your clearly quite an authority on this topic. I assume some of this information comes from your own research rather than secondary sources?

Sounds like you should be writing an article or giving a conference talk on this.

Thanks for a really fantastic reply!

Mark

Michael's answer summarizes it well but if you are the reading kind here is the original:

http://www.hermetics.org/ebooks.html

http://www.hermetics.org/library/Librar ... _Dawn.html

I am forgetting but somewhere it was mentioned by Waite that Westcott had learned ( or was a pupil of Levi) from Levi about the Chaldean way of the Tarot and they started working on just not the Hebrew letters but also the Egyptian Glyphs- and that led to the re-ordering of Fortitude and Justice cards.
Crowley, did not follow this re-ordering.

Mark wrote:Hi Michael,

Wow. This is why I love love Skyscript! Where else could you get replies of this quality?

Your clearly quite an authority on this topic. I assume some of this information comes from your own research rather than secondary sources?

Sounds like you should be writing an article or giving a conference talk on this.

Thanks for a really fantastic reply!

Mark

Mark,

You are welcome! That's not least why you, I and others are on forums like Skyscript - to help each other out with our particular knowledge.

I am forgetting but somewhere it was mentioned by Waite that Westcott had learned ( or was a pupil of Levi) from Levi about the Chaldean way of the Tarot and they started working on just not the Hebrew letters but also the Egyptian Glyphs- and that led to the re-ordering of Fortitude and Justice cards.
Crowley, did not follow this re-ordering.

If you can find a reference for this, Pankaj, I would love to see it. For the re-ordering of those two Trumps was already hinted at in the Cipher MS which was (in all likelihood) not written by Westcott himself. The reason for the switch was this: By attributing the Trumps in their original numerical order to the Hebrew letters and their correlated signs, Justice (VIII) falls on Teth/Leo, and Strenght (XI) on Lamed/Libra. This was not seen as a good match, therefore the numbers of the two cards were switched. While Waite and others applied the change to their own decks, Crowley accepted both the traditional numbers and the Hebrew letters according to the GD system, even though the latter don't appear in their alphabetical order then.

It is indeed a matter of continuous debate in Tarot circles which one is the "right" order. Based on my own research, I find that there is a kind of "resonance" between the numbers 8 and 11 and therefore between the two Trump cards. I won't go into this further right now as I am still working on this theory.

Let's take a look at the GD correlations between the Major Arcana and the signs:

Aries - The Emperor. Yes, this makes sense. Aries figures prominently in the charts of leaders in general (my short study on another thread last year supports this). And emperors were often enough also (Martian) conquerors in history.
Taurus - The Hierophant. This one is more difficult to comprehend, as Taurus is not exactly known to be the most spiritual of signs. However, The Hierophant is also the keeper of traditions.
Gemini - The Lovers. Makes more sense if we consider that this Trump also stands for decision making. Furthermore, in Hellenistic Egypt, the sign/constellation was a male/female pair pair as shown i.e. in the Dendera zodiac (okay, it may have been a brother/sister pair, however, the Egyptians were not touchy about incestuous marriage).
Cancer - The Chariot. Requires some out-of-the-box thinking. The Chariot can refer to an inner journey (more obviously in the Thoth Tarot), then the attribution makes sort of sense.
Leo - Strength. Good, provided we switch VIII and XI.
Virgo - The Hermit. Good, as Virgo tends to be withdrawn, aloof and frugal.
Libra - Justice. Good, again with the switch.
Scorpio - Death. A good match.
Sagittarius - Temperance. Well, Sagittarius is anything but modest. But this correlation makes sense if we understand Trump XIV as Art (its title in the Thoth Tarot) - meaning the Art of Alchemy or synthesis (Jupiter).
Capricorn - The Devil. Fine in regard of the goat in the sign/constellation. Plus, contrary to popular opinion, Capricorn does have a lustful side (Liz Greene talks about the God Pan in this context). Also, Saturn and Satan seem to have something to do with each other.
Aquarius - The Star. A good match, given the well known visionary and idealistic side of Aquarius.
Pisces - The Moon. A pretty good match, as both have a connection to the ocean, and Pisces tends to be imaginative, fearful and confused.

As to the correspondence between the planets in the signs (according to the Chaldean system of the decans) and the numbered suit cards, well, again, it's a matter of perspective. The matches are certainly not of the 101 Astrology textbook kind. Even reading The General Principles of Astrology, authored by Crowley, was not very conclusive. But the little known, albeit brilliant book written by Crowley's apprentice Phyllis Seckler, The Thoth Tarot, Astrology, & Other Selected Writings, is more revealing in this regard.

We must appreciate that the Tarot is a system that stand on its own, yet each card can be characterized by way of reference to various other systems (Astrology, Aristotelian elements, Numerology, Kabbala, Mythology etc.). Or with the words of Aleister Crowley:

This is no more than saying that a Dry Martini has got some juniper in it, and some alcohol, and some white wine and herbs, and a bit of lemon peel, and some ice. It is a harmonious composition of various elements; once mixed, it forms a single compound from which it would be very difficult to separate the ingredients; yet each element is necessary to the composition.

The Book of Thoth, p. 43.

Michael Sternbach wrote:

Mark wrote:Hi Michael,

Wow. This is why I love love Skyscript! Where else could you get replies of this quality?

Your clearly quite an authority on this topic. I assume some of this information comes from your own research rather than secondary sources?

Sounds like you should be writing an article or giving a conference talk on this.

Thanks for a really fantastic reply!

Mark

Mark,

You are welcome! That's not least why you, I and others are on forums like Skyscript - to help each other out with our particular knowledge.

I am forgetting but somewhere it was mentioned by Waite that Westcott had learned ( or was a pupil of Levi) from Levi about the Chaldean way of the Tarot and they started working on just not the Hebrew letters but also the Egyptian Glyphs- and that led to the re-ordering of Fortitude and Justice cards.
Crowley, did not follow this re-ordering.

If you can find a reference for this, Pankaj, I would love to see it. ....

Glad you asked.
Actually, it was in Mathers book on Tarot and I got confused if he was writing about Westcott but Mathers discussed Westcotts book in one paragraph and then mentioned on Page 22 of 23

Christian, a student of Levi....

http://www.golden-dawn-canada.com/pdf/m ... 0tarot.pdf

Pankaj

Michael Sternbach

We must appreciate that the Tarot is a system that stand on its own, yet each card can be characterized by way of reference to various other systems (Astrology, Aristotelian elements, Numerology, Kabbala, Mythology etc.). Or with the words of Aleister Crowley:

Yes I completely agree with you.

Regarding the Golden Dawn (GD) astrological associations, I am not guided by the Qabalah to determine card meanings/associations, so I find myself diverging quite fundamentally with the GD system.

Anyone who has studied Tarot knows the Major Arcana are much more powerful in influence in a reading than the Minor Arcana. The former usually picks up the bigger , more dramatic themes in a person's life while the latter reflect more mundane , prosaic, everyday affairs. You know with a lot of Major Arcana cards in a reading a person is going through quite a dramatic phase in their life. Quite literally the Major Arcana are the trumps of the Tarot.

I personally take the line that as trumps the Major Arcana cards are all better tied into planetary archetypal symbolism rather than the more limiting symbolism of signs. I prefer those for the court cards. I therefore dont rely on signs. Even when I do I look at sign associations its often possible to see other associations that often seem to be as good if not better than the Golden Dawn system.

For example, The Hermit personifies the traditional symbolism of Saturn perfectly.
The imagery is even closer in the Visconti-Sforza Tarot from the 15th century where the figure is carrying an hour glass (Time) not a lamp.

Still, like any approach there are bound to be some more controversial judgement calls which will be more contentious. That is divination for you. I am less interested in convincing the world than working out a system of astrological associations that is logically self consistent and makes sense to me.

No time to really explore this further here at present but I will feedback at a later date when time allows.

Mark

A small point, and not really to do with the astrological associations of the tarot.

The transposition of Justice and Strength.

As is often the case, Crowley is nearer to the spirit of the Golden Dawn than Waite. Crowley retains the traditional numbers for Justice and Strength. So does the GD's "Book T", wherein Trump 8 is given as Justice and Trump 11 as Fortitude (Strength). After the Trump name is written, in brackets: At one time 8 Justice and 11 Fortitude were transposed. But at this stage the cards were not numerically reassigned.

When he had departed the GD, Crowley came to believe that the Star corresponded to Aries and the Emperor to Aquarius. Seems strange to astrologers, but the point I want to make is that Crowley did not exchange the positions of these two cards or alter their numbering. He continued in the spirit of the GD as he had experienced it and let the traditional numbering stand.

Waite exchanged the places of Strength and Justice in the Waite-Smith tarot without explaining why he had done so. Others have followed his lead.

Melissa

pankajdubey wrote:

I am forgetting but somewhere it was mentioned by Waite that Westcott had learned ( or was a pupil of Levi) from Levi about the Chaldean way of the Tarot and they started working on just not the Hebrew letters but also the Egyptian Glyphs- and that led to the re-ordering of Fortitude and Justice cards.
Crowley, did not follow this re-ordering.

Michael Sternbach wrote:

If you can find a reference for this, Pankaj, I would love to see it. [/b]....

pankajdubey wrote:

Glad you asked.
Actually, it was in Mathers book on Tarot and I got confused if he was writing about Westcott but Mathers discussed Westcotts book in one paragraph and then mentioned on Page 22 of 23

Christian, a student of Levi....

http://www.golden-dawn-canada.com/pdf/m ... 0tarot.pdf

Pankaj

Thanks, Pankaj. Gotcha now.

This story goes back to the French Egyptologist Antoine Court de Gebelin who wrote in 1781 that the Tarot was a complete summary of the ancient Egyptian spiritual knowledge. He called it The Book of Thoth, and the Tarot cards were "hieroglyphics" to him (this was over 40 years before Champollion started deciphering the actual ancient Egyptian language using the Rosetta stone). This idea gained great popularity among occultists. Thus Levi believed that the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet were derived from the 22 Major Arcana. Levi's student Paul Christian envisioned a hall of initiation with paintings of the Major Arcana. This article by Mary Greer has the full story:

http://www.shamanicjourneys.com/articles/egyptgreer.php

However, there is no historical evidence for any of this. But Mathers believed it, and so do some esotericists to this very day.

delaforge wrote:A small point, and not really to do with the astrological associations of the tarot.

The transposition of Justice and Strength.

As is often the case, Crowley is nearer to the spirit of the Golden Dawn than Waite. Crowley retains the traditional numbers for Justice and Strength. So does the GD's "Book T", wherein Trump 8 is given as Justice and Trump 11 as Fortitude (Strength). After the Trump name is written, in brackets: At one time 8 Justice and 11 Fortitude were transposed. But at this stage the cards were not numerically reassigned.

The Book T is not very clear about the matter. The online version that I linked earlier in this thread indeed gives on p. 23 f. the old order of the Major Arcana. But on p. 2 f. you find a list with Justice and Fortitude switched. Already the Cipher MS is ambiguous in this regard.

So, by switching the two Trumps, Waite definitely followed a GD teaching. The later Golden Dawn Tarot, created by Israel Regardie and Robert Wang supposedly according to Mather's original instructions, has the switch, too.

When he had departed the GD, Crowley came to believe that the Star corresponded to Aries and the Emperor to Aquarius. Seems strange to astrologers, but the point I want to make is that Crowley did not exchange the positions of these two cards or alter their numbering. He continued in the spirit of the GD as he had experienced it and let the traditional numbering stand.

Crowley maintained the attribution of The Star to Aquarius, and of The Emperor to Aries. But unlike Waite and other GD members, he also kept the traditional numbering that the Trumps already have in 15th century decks. He further diverged from the GD in switching the Hebrew letters corresponding to The Emperor and The Star, based on his interpretation of The Book of the Law whose text was mediumistically received by him in Cairo in 1904. So, what he altered was, in effect, the order of the Hebrew alphabet.

Waite exchanged the places of Strength and Justice in the Waite-Smith tarot without explaining why he had done so. Others have followed his lead.

While this was not Waite's innovation, surely his deck was the prototype for many others to follow.

I would like to raise another question relating to the astrological associations of the Tarot. Its a separate but not totally unrelated issue.

I have read that ''Etteilla", the pseudonym of Jean-Baptiste Alliette (1738 ? 12 December 1791) was the first writer to associate the elements with the suits and also to apply astrological links to the cards.

Does anyone know more about this?

Its well known that the Golden Dawn (or at least Waite) applied the sequence Air=Swords and Fire=Wands/Clubs. Did 'Etteilla" do the same or did he have the sequence of Air=Wands/Clubs and Fire=Swords?

More generally, what astrological associations did Etteilla apply to the other cards? Did he assign any planets or signs to the Major Arcana?

Mark

Ernst Wilhelm has a youtube video explaining how the Tarot came from the original playing cards system if anyone is interested.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_51ExPzB3k

He has programmed this entire system into his Kala software. Here is today's Queen Spread and you can see Mars connected to the 8 Diamonds, the Sun on Queen of Hearts, etc.

Mark, following our discussion of Neptune and Pisces on Phillip's thread on the "news" board, I did a little digging around today. My thought was that the Golden Dawn or some of the other theosophical and occult organizations of the late 19th/early 20th centuries might have had a hand in assigning Neptune as the ruler of Pisces; and if so, we should see something comparable in these occultists' other pursuits such as (but not restricted to) Tarot. To me, the Hanged Man (XII) with its Christ figure associations, seemed like such an example, given comparable meanings attributed to both Pisces and Neptune in modern esoteric astrology; but I admit that these links are suggestive, but not conclusive.

I would like to second those who note that extravagant claims were made for the ancient origin of the tarot during the 19th century, and these claims do not seem to hold up to scrutiny. However, focusing on the latter part of the 19th century is a good idea. What seems important is not that the occultists' claims were objectively in/correct, but that they believed that their claims were correct and developed their Tarot decks and interpretations on that basis.

Also, as has been mentioned above, the GD, theosophists, and their kindred partook of an older Renaissance ideal that all esoteric knowledge was unified. The pursuit, therefore, was to "discover" the connections; which more typically meant creating connections but attributing greater antiquity to them.

It also has to be noted that historically, Tarot decks had different numbers of cards, and they didn't all have the same trumps. Also, some of their meanings changed significantly over time. The Hanged Man picture, for example, originally meant a traitor or thief, hung upside down as a mark of shame in Renaissance Italy. He morphed into the Rider-Waite Christ figure, possibly extending the idea of Roman crucifixion as a type of execution designed to bring shame on the condemned.

So it is unlikely to find one fixed, "correct" astrological meaning for the cards. Rather, the cards seem to change depending upon the objectives of their creators.

Finally, Waite (1910), The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, was highly critical of those who previously divulged the esoteric meanings of the cards, such as E. Levi, claiming they didn't know what they were talking about! So whom to believe?

In light of our discussion on the other thread about The Hanged Man signifying the element water (full stop) the following sites are of interest.

http://hermetic.com/gdlibrary/tarot/wha ... arot4.html

http://www.inner.org/hebleter/mem.htm

The first link, showing a set of Golden Dawn cards, gives the Hebrew letter Mem to the Hanged Man; which as the second link indicates, indicates water yet in a spiritual way. It also shows the astrological glyph for Neptune.

What further interested me, is that this Hanged Man appears to be at the mouth of a cave by the sea (Neptune-ish,) and wearing what appears to be the spotted leopard cloak of the ancient Egyptian magician-- as displayed on ancient Egyptian paintings that a European public infatuated with Egyptology might have recognized. None of the other Hanged Man cards that I've seen (and admittedly this is a small percentage) seem to show the ocean.

The water element would seem to invite one of three signs to choose from, and Pisces seems closer to the meaning of The Hanged Man than do Cancer or Scorpio.

With regard to Neptune ruling Pisces, I think that at some point, someone simply connected the dots. Connecting the sea god planet with the sign of the fish, in any event, seems like a reasonable leap.

When I have more time, I'll see if I can turn up anything on Etteilla.

Mark wrote:I would like to raise another question relating to the astrological associations of the Tarot. Its a separate but not totally unrelated issue.

I have read that ''Etteilla", the pseudonym of Jean-Baptiste Alliette (1738 ? 12 December 1791) was the first writer to associate the elements with the suits and also to apply astrological links to the cards.

Does anyone know more about this?

Its well known that the Golden Dawn (or at least Waite) applied the sequence Air=Swords and Fire=Wands/Clubs. Did 'Etteilla" do the same or did he have the sequence of Air=Wands/Clubs and Fire=Swords?

More generally, what astrological associations did Etteilla apply to the other cards? Did he assign any planets or signs to the Major Arcana?
Mark

According to Huson, Etteilla was not the first to assign Elements to the suits. But he iniitially assigned them to the suits of a playing card deck, only later transferring them to the tarot.

". . . Etteilla followed Court de G?belin in equating all Tr?fle (Trefoil) cards (and their meanings) with his Coin suit (contrary to many present-day cartomancers who identify Coins with Diamonds); he identified all Coeur (Heart) cards with his Cup suit; all Pique (Pike) Spade cards with his Sword suit; and all Carreau (Paving Tile) Diamond cards with is Baton suit."
Mystical Origins of the Tarot by Paul Huson (Destiny Books, USA, 2004), p. 56.

As the quote makes clear, Court de G?belin assigned Elements to suits in his seminal essay on the tarot in "Le monde primitif". De G?belin was responsible for bringing the tarot to the attention of occultists shortly before The French Revival of esotericism took off in the time of Eliphaz Levi. Initially, his opinions were adopted wholesale, even where they were no more than intuitive guesses, a product of the mental processes Michael Sternbach refers to in an earlier contribution to the discussion.

Melissa

waybread,

If you access the cards in color (there is a color version of the Hanged Man on this page:
http://becuo.com/golden-dawn-tarot-hanged-man )
you will see that it is indeed water outside, and coming into, the cave where the Hanged Man is hanging.

As you say, no other pack represents Trump 12 in this way. However, several Golden Dawn designs for Trumps have not been widely adopted. Waite redesigned the GD Fool and Lovers cards - and his versions of those Trumps have found favor with a wider audience.

Waite put his Hanged Man on a tau cross, it being believed by many occultists that Jesus was crucified on such a cross and not on what is called a Calvary cross, the now universally accepted symbol of Christianity.

Melissa