Mikeh wrote:
If the Giotto Fool isn't carrying a trumpet, neither is the PMB Fool.

And if the CY female on the Chariot is holding a shield then all Chariots should hold the same, no?

Good God(-denying fool).

Phaeded

PS Don't forget to vote! viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1037

Phaeded wrote

And if the CY female on the Chariot is holding a shield then all Chariots should hold the same, no?

Only if the other Chariots have a female holding something that looks like a shield, from what can be seen, and if the CY depiction is of a well-known type.

I am not in general in favor of voting in matters of interpretation and pure research. Minority opinions too often turn out to be right over time, or partly right, or there is no clear right and wrong; we need to keep aware of different perspectives.

i have one more thing related to Lacroix and Dummett. It has to do with 15th-16th century cartomancy and another argument of Dummett's, this time in Game of Tarot.

Lacroix says (p. 158)

..Raphael Maffei, who lived at the end of the fifteenth century, has left in his "Commentaries" a description of tarots, which he says were, he says, "a new invention"--in comparison, doubtless, to playing cards.

Naturally I wanted to know about this description of tarots. In Vol. 1 of his Encyclopedia, p. 33, Kaplan says he looked in this work and found nothing about the tarot. Dummett also looked and found nothing. Ross looked and found nothing (http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?p=3925639). I look on the Internet for quotes from this source in scanned old books and find only a report of someone else looking and finding nothing (Rodolfo Renier, 1894, at http://www.tarock.info/renier.htm, trying to substantiate Lacroix).

What people do find is a remark by Garzoni in La Piazza Universale di Tutte le Professioni del Mondo, e nobili et ignobili (Venice, p. 574 of 1586 edition), and a corresponding remark in Maffei, although it does not use the word "tarocchi". Dummett, in Game of Tarot p.389, note 2, discusses these remarks at length, starting with Garzoni:

Garzoni's turn of phrase is curious: he says,'Alcuni altri son giuochi da tauerne, come la mora, le piastrelle, le chiaui, e le carti, ò communi, ò Tarocchi, di nuoua inuentione, secondo il Volteranno: oue si vedono danari, coppe, spade, bastoni, dieci, noue, ...', and continues by listing the remaining twelve cards of each suit, followed by the trumps in descending order and finally the Matto; after a mention of the French suits (as used 'con le carte fine'), he lists a number of card games, beginning with Tarocchi and Primiera. (In English, the quoted passage runs, 'Some others are tavern games, such as mora, quoits, keys and cards, either ordinary ones, or tarocchi, recently invented according to Volterrano: in which are to be seen Coins, Cups, Swords, Batons, the 10, the 9, ...'....)

Ross (http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=167088&page=2) observes that most of the passage that Dummett is citing comes from Citolini, La Tipocosmia (Venice, 1561); Garzoni has added only the phrase "of recent invention, according to Volterran" after "tarocchi". For his part, Dummett notes that "for some reason, Garzoni's reference to tarocchi is much the best known of the sixteenth century ones, and cited by a whole string of later writers". But what in Maffei (Volteranno) corresponds to it? Dummett says:

Garzoni's phrase 'secondo il Volteranno' appears, however, to relate, not to the list of trumps, but to the apparent observation that tarocchi are a recent invention. Even on this interpretation, the remark is baffling, since Tarot cards are nowhere referred to in the Commentariorum Urbanorum XXXVIII libri of Raffaele Maffei, called Volterrano after his place of birth, which were first published in Rome in 1506, nor, so far as anyone has discovered, in any other of his writings, as was observed by Robert Steele in 1900; moreover, the Tarot pack had existed for a hundred and fifty years when Garzoni was writing, and for at least fifteen when Maffei was born.

However there is one sentence in Maffai that might explain Garzoni's remark. It is unclear who found it; in Google Books the first mention I find is the Parma 1802 Materiali per servire alla storia dell' incisione by Pietro Zani, p. 172, at http://books.google.com/books?id=zu0TAA ... di&f=false. This text is quoting something even earlier. In any case, here is Dummmet's take on it:

The explanation appears to be that Garzoni meant that playing cards in general were a recent invention, and that he was alluding to the remark by Maffei that 'Chartarum vero & sortium & divinationis ludi priscis additi sunt ab avaris ac perditis inventi' ('To the ancient games have been added those of cards and of lots and of divination, invented by covetous and dissolute men'). This remark occurs in the section 'De ludo diverso quo summi viri quandoque occupati fuerunt' of book XXIX of the Commentaria Urbana (p. 421 verso of the Rome, 1506, edition, p. 313 verso of the Paris, 1511, edition, and p. 694 of the Basle,1559, edition; the second ampersand, present in the 1506 and 1511 editions, is missing from that of 1559). Maffei is meaning to convey by this observation no more than that the games he is referring to were not played in classical times. Garzoni was not, therefore, quoting him in support of any thesis that tarocchi were of recent[/] invention, only as saying that playing cards are of modern, as opposed to ancient, origin. (I am uncertain to what Maffei was referring as sortium & divinationis ludi, but I do not think the passage can be treated as evidence that cards were used for fortune-telling; we have in all three modern types of game, cards, lots and divination, and the mention of avari suggests that Maffei has gambling games principally in mind.)

There are two problems with this explanation. First, he says that he doesn't know what Maffai meant. If so, how can he be so sure that he wasn't talking about fortune-telling with cards, but Maffei's editor garbled the sentence? The sentence as it stands doesn't make much sense. Divination and lots were not new. Only cards were new. and even they only relatively so. Tarocchi is what, in 1480 when Maffei was writing, were new. Perhaps the 1559 edition (and also a 1544 edition) corrected a typographical omission.

The second problem is that, regardless of what we make of the earlier editions, there is still the wording of the later editions to deal with. Why would Garzoni, writing in the 1580s, necessarily have consulted the 1506 or 1511 edition, as opposed to later ones? According to Dummett, the 1559 edition has:

Chartarum vero & sortium divinationis ludi priscis additi sunt, ab avaris ne perditis inventi.

Kaplan (vol. 1 p. 33) cites what he calls the 1530 edition to the same effect (actually, it probably is the 1544 edition, because it is that which was auctioned off as part of the Kaplan Collection, http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/lot/ ... ID=4740403). As you can see, one ampersand has been removed. What this sentence means Dummett doesn't say. I found an old German translation (1878), citing the 1544 edition (http://books.google.com/books?id=9TIFAA ... di&f=false), which has:

die Wahrsagerspiele mit Karten und Loosen sind der frühern Spielen hinzugefügt worden.

I translate that as:

divination games with cards and lots have been added to the earlier games.

to which we should add, after a comma: "invented by covetous and dissolute men".

In other words, instead of "of cards and of lots and of divination, games ancient are added" (literal translation) which equals "games of cards and of lots and of divination to the ancient ones are added", we have "of cards and of lots of divination games ancient are added", which equals "games of divination, of cards and of lots, to the ancient ones are added."

This version is of course more interesting, as it says that divination games with cards were now being practiced, as well as divination games with lots, both of which are newly added to the ancient games. In other words, it is not games with cards and games with lots that are new additions, but divinatory games with cards and lots. In 1480, when Maffei was writing, that makes sense. Card games had been around for a century, but lot books were new--and so, apparently, was the use of cards for the same purpose, divination.

It looks to me as though the 1544 and 1559 editions correct a typographical error that was present in 1506 and 1511. Admittedly I can't be sure about that. What does seem more certain (although still not completely so) is that in 1544 whoever edited the work thought that there were divinatory card games and that they existed in Maffei's time and place (i.e. c. 1480 Italy). This editor might have been wrong about what was present in Maffei's time, but surely he was not likely to be wrong about his own time, i.e. 1544.

Then there is the issue of how Garzoni interpreted this comment by Maffai. Dummett says that Garzoni interprets him as referring to playing cards in general as a recent invention. That is a very strained interpretation of the sentence. Here it is again:

'Alcuni altri son giuochi da tauerne, come la mora, le piastrelle, le chiaui, e le carti, ò communi, ò Tarocchi, di nuoua inuentione, secondo il Volteranno: oue si vedono danari, coppe, spade, bastoni, dieci, noue, ...'

(Some others are tavern games, such as mora, quoits, keys and cards, either ordinary ones, or tarocchi, recently invented. according to Volterrano: in which are to be seen Coins, Cups, Swords, Batons, the 10, the 9, ...'....)

after which follows a list of the other cards, including the trumps. It certainly looks as though "di nuoua inuentione" is meant to modify "Tarocchi", which comes right before, just as "oue si venono danari..." etc. certainly does (since the list includes triumphs). Also, while tarocchi were conceivably a new invention to Maffei (writing in c. 1480, having just returned to Tuscany from a long residence in Rome and some time in Hungary), playing cards in general weren't.

Dummett insists that Maffei, too, was not speaking of tarot, but rather of "gambling games" generally, as shown by his mention of "avari". But how are games with lots and divination forms of gambling? Tarocchi was not primarily a gambling game either, in the sense of purely a game of chance. It was not a game preferred by those addicted to gambling, who liked simpler card games. For Garzoni to have read Maffei as talking about Tarocchi, when all he meant was playing cards generally (for gambling purposes), would have been a very incompetent misreading. There is no indication that Garzoni was that incompetent, since, as a careful reading shows, he is not attributing the list of card subjects to Maffei.

If we reject Dummett's view of how Garzoni read Maffei, how are we to account for Garzoni's inference that Maffei meant tarocchi as a game "of new invention"? It seems to me that the most likely hypothesis is that Garzoni was reading the 1544 or 1559 edition--which is reasonable, since he was writing in the 1580s--and assumed that when Maffei spoke of "divinatory card games" (the wording of 1544 and 1559), he meant with tarocchi, as the deck par excellence for divinatory purposes. Such, I infer, was the reputation of tarocchi at the time and place Garzoni was writing (1585 NE Italy)--in other words, no different from the reputation it has most places today. It is this sort of game, one of divination, with which tarocchi cards were thus associated, and this sort of game--not even tarocchi cards, but the divinatory use of them--which was newly invented at the time Maffei was writing.

I come now to chapter 19 of Il Mondo e L'Angelo, on the occultists of the late 18th throuugh early 20th century. (I am skipping his chapter 18, which is about tarot decks with French suits, shortened decks, and non-traditional trumps (animals, industry, etc), which proliferated during the second half of the 18th century and after.) What is of interest to me, in relation to the previous chapters, is to what extent the "occult" interpretations of the cards might have been rooted in previous practice. I think I have already discussed Etteilla enough. For the rest, Dummett gives us not much to work with. He says very little about their actual systems.The only thing I can find of a systematic nature is periodically a discussion of how one and another theorist related the cards to the Hebrew alphabet and what significance they attached to it.

That the added cards of the tarot deck are the same number as the letters of the Hebrew alphabet would have been obvious to anyone in the Renaissance, without any knowledge of Kabbalah or anything esoteric. The first written record of a correlation between the two, however, is in de Gebelin, expanded upon by de Mellet. De Mellett correlates the cards and the letters in reverse order, starting with the World as 21 and Alelph, and ending with the Fool as 0 and Tau. This is different from how the ancient Hebrews actually correlated letters with numbers, which was the same as the Greeks: aleph/alpha was 1 and so on until 10; then, for 11-19, they combined the letter for 10 with the letter for the first digit; then they assigned the 11th letter to 20, and so on. In addition, de Mellet associated each Hebrew letter with the particular thing that the Hebrew word signified and interpreted that object symbolically.He writes (http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Recherch ... les_Tarots; their translation except for a few obvious corrections):

Le Soleil répondant au Gimel, veut dire, dans ce sens, rétribution, bonheur.
La Fortune ou le Lamed signifie Régle, Loi, Science.
Le Fol n'exprime rien par lui-même, il répond au Tau, c'est simplement un signe, une marque.
Le Typhon ou le Zaïn annonce l'inconstance, l'erreur, la foi violée, le crime.
La Mort ou le Thet indique l'action de balayer: en effet, la Mort est une terrible balayeuse.
Teleuté en Grec qui veut dire la fin, pourroit être, en ce sens, un dérivé de Thet.

(The Sun answering to Gimel, means, in this sense, remuneration, happiness. Fortune or Lamed means Rule, Law, Science. The Fool does not express anything by itself, it corresponds to the Tau, and it is simply a sign, a mark. Typhon or Zain announces inconstancy, error, violated faith, and crime. Death or Teth indicates the action to reap: indeed, Death is a terrible reaper. In Greek Teleute, which means the end, appears to be, in this sense, a derivative of Teth.)

There is more on Tau, corresponding to the Fool, suggesting that for the Egyptians it might have meant, superimposed on Samech, a thief.

Surprisingly to me, the Golden Dawn also used symbolic interpretations of the objects denoted by the Hebrew letters, according to http://newsletter.tarotstudies.org/2005 ... ributions/. Their assignment of letters to cards was different.

The next to assign letters to triumphs was Levi. Here is Dummett's summary of that theorist:

Egli [Levi] non pubblicò un’opera a sé stante sul Tarocco, ma ne trattò ripetutamente in tutti i suoi scritti, poiché secondo lui era una delle fonti primarie della dottrina magica.[end of 467] dipendente di teoria magica; piuttosto, egli lo rese parte di una struttura complessa. Lo integrò nel suo miscuglio di dot-trine occultistiche principalmente grazie all’associazione del Tarocco con il simbolismo cabalistico. Secondo lui, i quattro semi corrispondono alle quattro lettere del Tetragrammaton (il Nome Divino), le quattro figure di ciascun seme agli stadi della vita umana e le carte numerali ai dieci sefìroth (emanazioni divine)19. La parte di gran lunga più consistente dello studio di Lévi sul Tarocco ebbe come oggetto i trionfi, che costituivano le «ventidue Chiavi del Tarocco». Come Mellet, egli associava queste carte alle ventidue lettere dell’alfabeto ebraico; grazie a questa associazione, poteva applicare al Tarocco tutto il significato mistico che i cabalisti attribuiscono a quell’alfabeto, secondo cui ciascuna lettera rappresenta una delle ventidue vie fra i sefìroth. Dato l’ordine alfabetico delle lettere ebraiche, Mellet aveva disposto i trionfi in ordine discendente (secondo la numerazione del Tarocco di Marsiglia) per ottenere la correlazione fra lettere e carte. Lévi, al contrario, li dispose in sequenza numerica ascendente, facendo così corrispondere il I ad Alef, il II a Beth e così via. Riguardo al posto del Matto, Lévi propose una soluzione eccentrica: lo mise fra il XX e il XXI (il Mondo), facendo corrispondere il XX a Rese, il Matto a Shin e il Mondo a Tau. L’associazione dei trionfi con le lettere ebraiche era destinata ad avere un ruolo fondamentale nelle interpretazioni del Tarocco da parte degli occultisti successivi.

(He [Levi] did not publish an independent work on the Tarot, but treated of it repeatedly in his writings, because he thought it was one of the primary sources of magical doctrine [end of 467] dependent on magical theory; instead, he made it part of a complex structure. He integrated it into his mixture of occult doctrines mainly thanks to the association of the Tarot with Kabbalistic symbolism. According to him, the four suits correspond to the four letters of the Tetragrammaton (the Divine Names), the four courts in each suit to the stages of human life, and the numeral cards to the ten Sephiroth (divine emanations) 19. By far the largest study of Levi had as its object the Tarot trumps, which were the "twenty-two keys of the Tarot." Like Mellet, he associated these cards to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet; Thanks to this partnership, all the mystical meaning that the kabbalists attribute to that alphabet could be applied to the Tarot, according to which each letter represents one of the twenty-two paths between Sephiroth. Given the alphabetical order of the Hebrew letters, Mellet had arranged the triumphs in descending order (according to the numbering of the Tarot of Marseilles) to obtain the correlation between letters and cards. Levi, on the contrary, arranged them in ascending numerical sequence, thus I corresponded to Alef, II to Beth, and so on. Regarding the place of the Fool, Levi proposed an eccentric solution: he put it between the twentieth and twenty-first (World), matching XX to Resh, the Fool to Shin and the World to Tau. The association of triumphs with the Hebrew letters was destined to play a key role in the interpretation of the Tarot by later occultists.
________________________
19. Le Dogrne de la haute magie, ch. X.

At least Levi had Aleph as 1! The only idiosyncratic thing for him was putting the Fool between the Angel and the World and assigning it the letter "shin". Why he did that has been a subject for debate. There is of course no historical precedent for putting the Fool second to last. There is precedent for putting the Fool last in the sequence, and also for the practice of exchanging the last with the next to the last; but it is unlikely that Levi knew about the second of these or cared about either.

When I look at Dummett's reference, Chapter X of Levi's book, I find very little to hang any interpretation on. All Levi says is that Shin applies to "20 or 21" and Tau to "21 or 22", with a verse attached (http://hermetic.com/crowley/aa/Rituel%2 ... Part_I.pdf):

Resh, 20: When dust to dust returns, His breath can call
Shin, 20 or 21: Life from the tomb which is the fate of all.
Tau, 21 or 22: His crown illuminates the mercy seat
And glorifies the cherubs at His feet.

From that, I can't even tell that the Fool is meant as between Resh and Tau. It looks more that the Fool, if it is indeed associated with Shin, is either at 20 or 21. That would suggest, perhaps, that the Fool--and we are all fools--can enter Heaven if God is merciful.

On ATF, there was a long discussion of why and where Levi made Shin the Fool. Support for the above interpretation can be found at http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.ph ... hin&page=6, post 59, by Kwaw (SteveM). Everyone goes to heaven, even the Devil. However other documentation is on p. 3 of that thread, post 23, by Teheuti (Mary Greer), citing Levi's Clefs Majeures et Clavicules (http://www.tarot.org.il/Library/Levi/Cl ... alomon.pdf, p. 60). (Added later: Levi says, for the 21st letter:

La lettre schin. Point de nombre:

La fatalité. L'aveuglement. Le fou. La matière abandonnée à elle-même.

(The letter shin. Item number:

Fatality. Blindness. The fool [or madman]. Matter abandoned to itself.)

Put between "the great arcanum of eternal life" and "the resumé of all universal knowledge", the interpretation would seem to be that madness is what you get if you take in the celestial light without the necessary humble attitude and proper preparation.
Teheuti also cites The Key of the Mysteries. From what I see on http://www.naderlibrary.com/lit.keymyst ... levi.3.htm, find "thirty-first"); this is about the 31st path. But is the 31st path the same as the Fool? I am not sure about this.

Another thing about the Fool is Levi's astrological assignment to the Fool: fire, which is the entity assigned by the Sefer Yetzira to shin. While there is hellfire, and Levi's identification of shin with the fire between the Devil's horns (http://www.naderlibrary.com/lit.keymyst ... levi.2.htm, find "horns"), in the passage above, clearly about the Fool, he is thinking of celestial fire. That would correspond to Jesus, who came "to bring fire and the sword". There was a tradition identifying shin with Jesus, which I find first in Pico and Reuchlin, but which Levi also cites (Kwaw at p. 17, post 169. of the ATF thread). When received by "brute man", the result is madness, even if from a divine source. Shin as next to last is a complex concept.

(Added later: For Pico, see Part 2, section 11 of his Conclusiones, in Farmer's translation (Syncretism in the West p. 527; I omit the letter written in Hebrew):

11>14. By the letter...shin, which mediates in the name Jesus, it is indicated to us Cabalistically that the world then rested perfectly, as though in perfection, when Yod was conjoined with Vav--which happened in Christ, who was the true Son of God, and man.

Since God is Yod he vav he (as Pico says in 11>15), what he means is that Shin is in the middle between the two parts of God's name, completing Yahweh as Yeshua. The four letter name of God becomes the five letter name of God. See also Farmer's explanation of the 11>14 at http://books.google.com/books?id=HZLWAA ... me&q=Jesus. Reuchlin alludes to the same doctrine on p. 73 of On the Kabbalah when he says there will come "a hero whose name will in pity contain these four letters--YHVH" (http://books.google.com/books?id=YSBz8t ... 22&f=false). Here he implies "not only these four letters". He spells it out later, but I don't currently have access to that part of the book. A snippet of what I think is the right quote can be seen at http://books.google.com/books?ei=JKblU5 ... &q=+Yeshua.)

In any case, Levi's repositioning of the Fool did not catch on, except with Papus and his followers, whom Dummett ignores. Nor did his astrological assignments (not discussed by Dummett, but you can see them in Appendix I at http://www.jwmt.org/v2n17/gurney.html). The Golden Dawn made different associations. Here is Dummett (p. 472f):

La componente principale della dottrina esoterica dell’Ordine, per quanto riguarda il Tarocco, era «l’attribuzione segreta» dei trionfi. Nell’Alba Aurea la parola «attribuzione» veniva usata per indicare il metodo di assegnazione delle lettere dell’alfabeto ebraico alle singole carte e, in questa accezione, è diventata termine standard dell’occultismo. Come abbiamo visto, tale attribuzione è di vitale importanza nella teoria occultistica del Tarocco, poiché essa determina in che modo la teoria debba intrecciarsi alle dottrine cabalistiche. «L’attribuzione segreta», rivelata nel manoscritto cifrato, era in accordo con Lévi nel disporre a questo scopo i trionfi in ordine numerico ascendente; la sua semplice idea originaria era di rimuovere il Matto dal suo posto fra il XX e il XXI e collocarlo all’inizio, scombinando così l’assegnazione di lettere ebraiche di Lévi per ciascun trionfo tranne il XXI. C’era anche un altro dettaglio:[end of 471] VIII (la Giustizia) doveva essere scambiato con l’XI (la Forza). Nei mazzi di tarocchi preparati dai membri dell’Ordine per l’uso occultistico, questi due trionfi erano rinumerati conformemente. Poiché l’Ordine insegnava che Lévi aveva visto il manoscritto cifrato, si doveva supporre che nei suoi libri avesse deliberatamente mentito per ingannare i lettori.

(The main component of the esoteric doctrine of the Order, with respect to the Tarot, was the "secret assignment" of triumphs. In the Golden Dawn the word “assignment" was used to indicate the method of allocating the individual letters of the Hebrew alphabet to cards and, in this sense, has become a standard term of occultism. As we have seen, this allocation is of vital importance in the theory of the occult Tarot, because it determines how the theory should be intertwined with cabalistic doctrines. "The secret assignment," revealed in the cipher manuscript, was in agreement with Levi in placing for this purpose the triumphs in ascending numerical order; its only original idea was to remove the Fool from his place between the twentieth and twenty-first and place it at the beginning, thus messing up the assignment of Hebrew letters for each of Levi's triumphs except XXI. There was also another detail: VIII (Justice) was to be exchanged with XI (Strength). When tarot decks were prepared by members of the Order for occult use, these two triumphs were renumbered accordingly.

So the Golden Dawn, like de Mellet, puts the Fool first, but unlike him associates that card with 0 and Aleph, the Magician with 2 and Beth, and so on. This association of letters with numbers is of course not the ancient Hebrew way any more than de Mellet's was. Dummett does not discuss why VIII and XI were switched, as it is not something that was part of the published works of Golden Dawn members. It is something that comes out in his 2002 book with Decker.The Golden Dawn made the novel sugestion that the letters be associated with astrological entities by means of the ancient Kabbalist or Jewish mystical book the Sefer Yetzirah. In that text the astrological entity corresponding to the 9th letter (and hence the trumph with the number VIII) is Leo, and naturally the triumph with a lion is Strength. Likewise the entity corresponding to the 12th letter is Libra; that naturally corresponds to the card of Justice. So the cards have to exchange places. There is no historical precedent for such assignment, to be sure. All the same, the old cards were in error in this one particular, even though in all other respects the correspondences work perfectly.

Sometimes people point out that there is a precedent for assigning 8th place to Fortitude, namely, in some of the A and B orders Fortitude is indeed the 8th triumph. However in these cases Justice is not 11 and in fact much of the card order is different from the Golden Dawn's, which is otherwise that of the Tarot de Marseille.

Could the Sefer Yetzirah have been one basis for the tarot? Historically, the Sefer Yetzirah was known by Christians in Italy in the 15th century, but they hardly mentioned anything about it. It is theoretically possible that it could have been used for astrological interpretations of the triumphs, but if so either it was in a more forced way, or else they put in a false order as a "blind" to mislead the uninitiated. Here I need to say that there is nothing to suggest that assuming "blinds" was a method of interpretation in the Renaissance . Although interpretations could indeed be imaginative, they had to fit what was believed that the author actually wrote, Petrarch had told them, not something else that interpreters were expected to correct. Renaissance writers on interpretation such as Alberti believed that while the wisdom in ancient texts and pictures might be obscure, and in that way inaccessible to the ignorant, they did not not present what their authors believed to be false. This equally applied to the interpretation of their own works, if we can assume the tarot to have been such. All they could assume was that knowledge of ancient classics generally accessible in their time, such as the Sefer Yetzirah, would continue to be accessible.

Even granting this switch of VIII and XI, however, there is a problem with the Golden Dawn's attribution of letters to astrological entities via the Sefer Yetzirah, one that Dummett and Decker do not seem to notice: the Golden Dawn's particular attributions of letters to planets occur in no known historical version of the Sefer Yetzirah. The Golden Dawn's order is Mercury (for the Magician), Moon (for the High Priestess), Jupiter (for the Wheel), Mars (for the Tower), Sun (for the Sun), and Saturn (for the Universe) (see e.g. http://newsletter.tarotstudies.org/2005 ... ributions/, or Decker and Dummett 2002, p. 97f) with http://www.psyche.com/psyche/yetsira/sy ... tions.html, which conveniently gives the Golden Dawn's attributions in the last row. It doesn't don't fit those of any of the Sefer Yetzirahs.

Another problem is their correlation of paths on the Kabbalist "tree" and letters. There is no suggestion in the tradition known to Christian Kabbalists before the 17th century that there were 22 paths. In fact, the only commonly available picture of the "tree", that on the "Gates of Light" in 1515, has 15 paths (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F4KTM3y-4O4/T ... is1515.jpg). That text does talk about paths between sefiroth, but not in any way whereby one could end up with 22. It is also very specific that there is only one path between Malkuth and any other sefira;the Golden Dawn, however, has three. The first place I see 22 paths is in Moses Cordovero, whose work was first published in the West, in Hebrew, in Venice of 1597. He, too, says that there is only one path from Malkuth upwards; but it is possible that some other Jewish Kabbalists then had a different version of the "tree", from which Kircher in the 17th century got his.

One might wonder whether the Sefer Yetzirah, in its actual set of planetary correspondences, fits some historical order of the tarot sequence. One problem is whether to use the Golden Dawn's method of assigning letters to triumphs or one in which the Fool is toward the end of the sequence. In the Golden Dawn's version, which has the Fool as the first triumph, what is required is something to fit tarots I, II, III, X, XVI, XIX, and XXI. Otherwise it is necessary to increase the numbers by one, i.e. II, III, IV, XI, etc. Then there is the issue of which version of the Sefer Yetzirah to use. The most common Sefer Yetzirah sequence is the Ptolemaic one of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon (http://www.psyche.com/psyche/yetsira/sy ... tions.html). That clearly won't work symbolically. The Gra version is Moon, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Saturn, Jupiter. That doesn't work either. Nor does the Zohar one of Moon, Mars, Sun, Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury. However it strikes me that the reversal of the most common Sefer Yetzirah order, i.e. starting with the Moon and ending with Saturn, does have a chance of fitting the C order: the Bagato was represented as a "child of the Moon"; the Popess would have gotten her authority from Jesus, equated with Mercury, or as Isis, from Thoth/Mercury; the Empress remains with Venus; the Sun goes up and down like the Wheel; destructive Mars fits the Tower; Jupiter was the father of Castor and Pollux (although I don't know how old that tarot depiction is), and Saturn, the highest planet, represented both Wisdom and Evil, hence the World to come after the Last Judgment. Moreover, this is the traditional medieval order of the planets, which nomally went from the earth outward; thus such a reversal would have been perfectly natural.

These assignments work fairly well for the A order, if we continue going by ordinal rather than cardinal numbering, with the Fool first, and assuming that the "four papi" were not original in that order. Since the cardinal numbers in A start after the Bagatto, the A cardinal numbers are one less than the C (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YlU6F53x-_E/U ... .35+PM.png). The Angel is now identified with Saturn, which is the final triumph in the A order. Also, the Sun is correlated with Fortitude or the Chariot; if the Golden Dawn can correlate Strength with Leo, surely the Sun will do as well. The A cards do not have the two people on the Sun card; I do not know how the lady with the distaff could associate with Jupiter; but perhaps Jupiter = Christian God = Sun.

The assignments work less well for the B order, for which there are three problems: II is the Empress, III the Emperor, and XVI the Star (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1EdTAS9Qo6E/U ... .56+PM.png). I have no idea how to resolve these issues.

The question remains whether the other Golden Dawn assignments (zodiac and elements), which do accurately reflect the Sefer Yetzirah, relate symbolically to what is depicted on the card in a way that would have made sense in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. Before trying to answer that question, I would want to know how the Golden Dawn and others explained these assignments. Dummett does not present any justifications in any of his books. On the Internet, the one by Joseph Gurney, http://www.jwmt.org/v2n17/gurney.html, looks competent.

Two hard ones are the Moon, associated with Pisces, and the Chariot, associated with Cancer.. Of the first he says:

the divinatory meaning of “The Moon” - glamour, deceit, treachery – corresponds to the twelfth astrological house (enemies in secret), which itself is associated with the twelfth sign of the Zodiac, i.e. Pisces.

Looking at the Renaissance astrologer William Lilly (http://www.skyscript.co.uk/lilly_houses.html), I do see an approximation of "enemies in secret" as one meaning of the 12th house. I guess that would explain the giant crustacean lurking in the pond's murky darkness.

For Cancer and the Chariot Gurney says:

In a similar manner, the association of “The Chariot” with Cancer is difficult to explain until one remembers that in Horary astrology, one of the meanings of the fourth astrological house is “the end of the matter.” Thus it is appropriate to link “The Chariot” (which means triumph – i.e. bringing things to a successful conclusion) with the fourth astrological house – which happens to be itself associated with the fourth sign of the Zodiac, i.e. Cancer.

[/quote]
Looking casually on the Internet, I see "the end of the matter" given for the fourth house in modern astrology, but added at the end, unrelated to anything else. So I wonder if it was part of Renaissance astrology. I don't see it in Lilly, http://www.renaissanceastrology.com/houses.html#N. One medieval Arabic account says that the fourth house pertains to what happens to the dead (http://www.renaissanceastrology.com/housesalbiruni.html). That is a kind of "end of the matter", but not the sort that the Chariot would signify, given its place in the sequence.

The only Renaissance correlation of astrology with the tarot I know is the Schoen Horoscope (see Marco's psot at viewtopic.php?f=14&t=942#p13795 for pictures), which does seem, in my view, to correlate 12 of the cards with astrological houses (see my post just below Marco's). For the 4th house, which is mainly about fathers, he has a father and son operating a plow, which I have taken to be his version of the Chariot. That is a nice coincidence. But none of Schoen's other house-card correspondences fit the Golden Dawn's attributions of the corresponding zodiac signs that I can tell.

For the 12th house Shoen has someone in the stocks, which I have taken to be his version of the Hanged Man (punishment), who has a special relationship to the number 12 (12th disciple, 12 triumph). The Golden Dawn's assignment is different. Admittedly there is no reason why the astrological associations had to come out the same for everybody. But for the Sefer Yetzirah to have applied in the Renaissance, a way must be found to correlate the VIIIth triumph with Leo and the XIth with Libra. Leo is associated with the 5th House, that of Pleasure (and pain for the disobedient, Lilly says). Yes, perhaps justice is a pleasure for the righteous. But I do not know how Libra, associated with the 7th house, marriage and other contracts, would fit any historical version of triumph XI.

It is possible to make astrological assignments to cards without reference to any classical text or how the cards are otherwise interpreted. That is what Etteilla did: in the Fourth Cahier (pp. 22-27, reprinted in Holbronn, Etteilla, L'Astrologie du Livre de Thot): he affirmed the necessary astrological correspondences (naturally, those of the "ancient Egyptians") simply by assigning the zodiac, in order, to the first 12 of his cards, independently of what was usually depicted on them. Then the 7 planets and 3 other astrological entities were assigned to his cards 68-77. i.e. the 10 number cards of Coins. The designs he put on the coins, different for each card but showing the plantary god or other symbol, then served as their talismans. There is no symbolic correspondence whatever with what was on any previous versions of these cards; there is just what Etteilla himself put on the first 12 cards and the number cards of Coins. He also has the 4 elements (not 3 as in the Sefer Yetzirah), written on his cards 2-5. There is no relationship between any of this and the keywords on the cards. It is merely a way of generating a horoscope using cards, for which the keywords are not used.

However I cannot see how the Renaissance could have used such an arbitrary method, unless they actually put the necessary clues on the cards. It goes against their idea of interpretation.

Oddly, Etteilla's order of the planets is not the usual Ptolemaic one going from Saturn down to the Moon, but rather: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Moon, Venus, Mercury, Sun (4th Cahier, pp.22-25). I have no idea why he interchanged the Sun and the Moon.

The Golden Dawn's interpretation of the suit cards in terms of the Kabbalist four worlds seems to me to have roots in 17th and 18th century Christian Kabbalah; which in turn was derived from earlier Jewish Kabbalah. I have seen no indication that the "four worlds" were known in Italy during the Renaissance. However new information about Kabbalah in Italy is being published all the time. The interpretation of card 2-9 of the suits in terms of the 36 decans has some historical justification in that decans were a part of Renaissance astrology and were in fact used in the "Hall of the Months" at the Schifanoia in Ferrara. However I see no evidence of their use as shown in the meanings of the cards given by Etteilla (or any other source before Paul Christian); the lack of their fit to Etteilla and sometimes even to the Golden Dawn's own card-meanings is demonstrated by Huson in The Mystical Tarot, http://books.google.com/books?id=dVne-R ... ns&f=false). The same is true of Levi's application of sefiroth to the number cards (despite what Decker says, for which see my post at viewtopic.php?f=12&t=971&p=14920&hilit=Etteilla#p14920), except very remotely in that the sefiroth have a basis in Pythagorean number theory.

Dummett has much else to say about the occultists in his 1993 book, mostly accounts of individual personalities and their activities, most of which as far as I can tell, is repeated in his 1996 book in English with Depaulis and Decker. That book and the one with Decker in 2002 have more information, necessarily of a summary nature, concerning what the occultists actually said about the tarot and the decks they devised.

Chapter 20 of Le Monde e L'Angelo is about the game of tarot today and a summary. I hadn't known that the game died out in France but had a revival after World War II. The chapter will mostly be of interest to people interested in the game as currently played.

Note: A few hours later, I added more about Levi and shin.

Your link to Mellet's text don't work ... (";" is too much). This works
http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Recherch ... les_Tarots

************
For the content:

I recently wrote ...
http://tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=39 ... stcount=38

I offer there the opinion, the the SY author used the numbers 0-21 (Aleph-Tau), not 1-22.
And he also didn't use 1-2-3 ... 10-20-30 ... 100-200-300 etc.

If you follow this, you get with a simple addition "0+1+2+ ... +21" = 231 for the letters
and
"1+2+3+ ... +10" = 55

231+55 = 286

The mother letters would have under this condition ...

0 = Aleph
12 = Mem
20 = Shin

... which results to 0 + 12 + 20 = 32

The SY is written about 32 ways of wisdom, with which God created the world.

It seems plausible, that this is just a number construction with intention to express something.

If you calculate the rest of the numbers, you get 286-32= 254

If you part 254 in 2 halfs ... 254/2 = 127

... then you have

127 for the simple letters (4+5+6+7+8+9 + 11 + 13+14+15 + 17+18 = 127)
55 for the Sephiroth (1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10 = 55)
72 for the double letters (1+2+3 + 10 + 16 + 19 + 21 = 72)
-----
32 for the mothers (0+12+20 = 32)

**********

That's a relative simple way, how the order of the SY (that one, which was used by Levi and Golden Dawn later) was constructed (more at the given link).

The first place I see 22 paths is in Moses Cordovero, whose work was first published in the West, in Hebrew, in Venice of 1597. He, too, says that there is only one path from Malkuth upwards; but it is possible that some other Jewish Kabbalists then had a different version of the "tree", from which Kircher in the 17th century got his.

There are two trees described in Cordovero's 'Garden of Pomegranates', but only one of them is illustrated with a diagram. The Kircher Tree matches the non-illustrated one that Cordovero describes (in terms of its pattern, Cordevero does not however state which letters belong to which path. The unillustrated one belongs to the older (pre-Lurianic) schools of kabbalah, the illustrated one to the Ari influenced Safed school which is the one which predominates in modern Judaic Kabbalah.

OT: Cordovero also describes the hebrew letters as being divided into three ranks of seven starting with beth, the letter aleph being the letter from which all the other letters are generated, I haven't the reference to hand, but off the top of my head he says something along the lines of the first seven from and including beth belonging to the rule of grace, the second seven belonging to the rule of mercy, and the final seven to the rule of strict justice. The division of letters into aleph + 3x7 has some parallels to the way some occultists divide the fool + 3x7 trumps.

Before trying to answer that question, I would want to know how the Golden Dawn and others explained these assignments.

I don't think there is an explanation/justification in any of the GD documents I have seen, but Crowley does somewhere-- i'll try and dig it up for you.

Huck wrote

Your link to Mellet's text don't work ... (";" is too much). This works
http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Recherch ... les_Tarots.

Thanks. Fixed. Usually the Forum program puts in the URLs automatically, but with semicolons it sometimes doesn't.

Huck wrote,

I offer there the opinion, the the SY author used the numbers 0-21 (Aleph-Tau), not 1-22.
And he also didn't use 1-2-3 ... 10-20-30 ... 100-200-300 etc.

Then you have to assume that the SY was written at a time when "0" existed as a number before 1.That is likely. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_%28number%29), the first recorded use of a zero in the West was by Ptolemy, 130 c.e., using a circle with a bar over it. Later the the Roman "N" (for "nulla" and "nihil") was used. However alpha/aleph was still "1". But you may be right that the versions of the SY that have come down to us understood aleph = 0, because of the arithmetical properties you point out. Have you investigated the arithmetical properties of the SY if aleph = 1? If they are as interesting, that would cast doubt on your hypothesis.

Your hypothesis is congruent with my hypothesis that the En Sof (beyond number) had, in a Renaissance Kabbalist interpretation of the tarot sequence, the number 0 as well as infinity, representing the Fool, with Kether as 1 and the Bagato. So likewise the Fool, corresponding to the En Sof, would be both the first (ordinal number) and last tarot, the alpha and omega.

Your way of numbering the letters in the SY, and consequently the Tarot, would apply to Etteilla (who did not use the SY) and the Golden Dawn (who followed the traditional Hebrew numbering system) but not Levi. Etteilla made the Fool after the rest of the tarot sequence (after card 21) and also after all the other cards in the deck (number 78). Since his way of numbering started with the closest to divinity at 1 and ended with the furthest away, that makes the Fool, of all the traditional tarots, the furthest away. But he also gave it the number 0, which in his system would be even closer to divinity than the 1.

With Levi, however (for whom 22 is closest to divinity), there is no way that zero or infinity can be put between 20 and 22, as shin, the second to the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. But his system, too, is consistent with the SY as written; it also has the virtue of being consistent with the traditional Hebrew numbering system. Levi wrote about the Sefer Yetzirah in History of Magic, https://archive.org/stream/historyofmag ... v_djvu.txt. I have not read it, so I don't know how he uses the SY in his system. I know he identifies shin with fire, but whether that comes from the SY or elsewhere I don't know.

Looking at Dummett and Decker's 2002 book, A History The Occult Tarot 1870-1970, for more information on the subjects covered in chapter 19 of Il Mondo e l'Angelo, I noticed in the footnotes several "errata" entries referring back to their (with Depaulis) 1996 Wicked Pack of Cards. Since that book is cited in the literature more often than the 2002 book, I thought it might be useful to know what in Wicked Pack they thought was erroneous. So here is a kind of "errata sheet" for Wicked Pack, based on the entries cited in the index of the 2002 book under th heading "Wicked Pack of cards, errors in". It hardly deserves a thread of its own, so I will put it here. The page numbers, unless otherwise indicated, refer to Wicked Pack.

On p. 16: "the list of homonyms in the third column is compiled from Kircher's first and second lists, and 'viri fortes' should be replaced by 'principium'."

On p. 16: "the ranks in the Christian hierarchy thus identified by Kircher are shown in the right-hand column. Powers and Virtues there should be interchanged. Kircher variously departs from the usual Christian authorities on the ranking of angelic choirs."

On p. 17: "it should have been specified that 'Kircher's' homonyms in fact were borrowed from St. Jerome."

On p. 24: "pp. 24 erroneously gives the pack's publisher as 'E. Poirot'. 'Poirot' was our mistake; the 'E' comes from A.P. Morton's English translation of Papus' Le Tarot des Bohemians. According to Baylot 1975 [Jean Baylot, Oswald Wirth 1880-1943, renovateur et mainteneur de la veritable Franc-Maconnerie, Paris], the pack's publisher was Georges Poirel."

On p. 47: "An incorrect hypothesis to account for the use of the term 'Pentacles' is given in Decker, Depaulis & Dummett 1996, p. 47."
The 2002 book (p. 51) offers the following instead:
"The revelation of the Shechinah (1887), a somewhat obscure and dithyrambic commentary on the Tarot, is ascribed to 'Vincit Qui Se Vincit', the motto in the S.R.I.A. of Frederick Holland. (38). On pp. 17-18, his description of the Tree of Life contains the statement, 'the whole of the Archetypal world becomes the En Soph to three more, and form the four decads of the Tora...the true wheel of life'. 'These four decads form the different kinds of cards,' we are told, 'but instead of being clubs, cups, swords and pentacles, they are the four letters of the great name.' This is probably the first appearance in print of the term 'Pentacles' for the Coins suit. It was presumably that used among Holland's associates. It seems to have meant 'talismanic images' and was not limited to five-pointed stars. Only later, as in the Tarot by Comte C. de Saint-Germain and in the Waite/Smith Tarot, were stars conjoined with the circular suit-signs. In his writings, Levi had used the term pantacles in the sense of 'talismanic images', associating it with the suit of Deniers or Coins; A.E. Waite, in translatng Levi's texts, retained 'Pantacles', a word unknown to the Oxford English Dictionary. (39).
________________
38. In the previous year, 1886, he had published The Temple Rebuilt, also using his Latin motto as is pen-name.
39. Both points are illustrated by the phrase of Levi rendered by Waite as 'the four suits, Clubs, Coins [sic: Waite's text actually has "Cups", at least at http://hermetic.com/crowley/aa/Rituel%2 ... Part_I.pdf]. Swords, and Circles, or Pantacles, commonly called Deniers'; see Levi/Waite 1923, p. 101, (Chapter X of Eliphias Levi, Dogma de la haute magie.) Levi had not meant by pantacle a five-pointed star, for which he used the word pentagramme. In the original edition of his Clef des grands mystere of 1861, there are four illustrations of pantacles, of which three are in fact pentagrams, although the fourth is decidedly not. Mary Greer, in correspondence, has kindly drawn our attention to Grand Orient, Manual of Cartomancy (London 1909)p. 136, where the suit is called "Pantacles". (Grand Orient' was a pseudonyum of Waite's.) An incorrect hypothesis to account for the use of the term 'Pentacles' is given in Decker, Depaulis & Dummett 1996, p. 47. "

On p. 181: "p. 181 incorrectly makes Bulwer-Lytton a president of the S.R.I.A. and cites a date before the society was even founded". [P. 41 of Occult Tarot gives the correct information: "Lord Lytton was elected an Honorary Member in 1870, largely on account of the 'Rosicrucian' themes in some of his novels. He was nominated Grand Patron, a courtesy he declined, resigning even his membership in 1872."

On p. 236: "Faucheux's first name is incorrectly given as Alfred." [The passage to which this note is attached, on p. 41 of Occult Tarot, reads "The theosophical Society had no special doctrine regarding the Tarot. However one Frenchman in the Society, Albert Faucheux (1838-1921), a civil servant, gave the trumps a Theosophical twist. When writing on the occult, he called himself Francois-Charles Barlet (the surname being an anagram of Albert). An essay by Barlet appears in Le Tarot des Bohemiens (The Tarot of the Bohemians, Paris 1889), an influential book by Papus (1865-1916)...]

SteveM wrote:
I don't think there is an explanation/justification in any of the GD documents I have seen, but Crowley does somewhere-- i'll try and dig it up for you.

What I was thinking of is "The Truth About the Tarot Trumps" by V.N. published in the 'Occult Review' 1910, which gives an astrological based explanation for the tarot/letter attributions, but it doesn't explain the GD's double letter planet assignments. The identity of V.N. is not known for sure, most popular opinions are for either Victor Neuburg or George Cecil Jones (Volo Noscere), whoever, the stamp of Crowley is clearly upon it.

mikeh wrote:Huck wrote

Your link to Mellet's text don't work ... (";" is too much). This works
http://www.tarotpedia.com/wiki/Recherch ... les_Tarots.

Thanks. Fixed. Usually the Forum program puts in the URLs automatically, but with semicolons it sometimes doesn't.

You have to finish the link with a "space", not with a semicolon, that's the trick. "Link" followed by "space" and "semicolon" would work.

Huck wrote,

I offer there the opinion, the the SY author used the numbers 0-21 (Aleph-Tau), not 1-22.
And he also didn't use 1-2-3 ... 10-20-30 ... 100-200-300 etc.

Then you have to assume that the SY was written at a time when "0" existed as a number before 1.That is likely. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_%28number%29), the first recorded use of a zero in the West was by Ptolemy, 130 c.e., using a circle with a bar over it. Later the the Roman "N" (for "nulla" and "nihil") was used. However alpha/aleph was still "1". But you may be right that the versions of the SY that have come down to us understood aleph = 0, because of the arithmetical properties you point out. Have you investigated the arithmetical properties of the SY if aleph = 1? If they are as interesting, that would cast doubt on your hypothesis.

You would get ...

mothers ... 32+3 = 35
simple ... 127+12 = 139
double ... 72+7 = 79
----
Sephirith ... 55 = 55
----------------------------
Total ... 286 + 22 = 308

That's not remarkable, I would say. The central message is 0+12+20 = 32. Only with that one can note, that there should be a "construction with personal intention" in the number system.

Your hypothesis is congruent with my hypothesis that the En Sof (beyond number) had, in a Renaissance Kabbalist interpretation of the tarot sequence, the number 0 as well as infinity, representing the Fool, with Kether as 1 and the Bagato. So likewise the Fool, corresponding to the En Sof, would be both the first (ordinal number) and last tarot, the alpha and omega.

One has to take the SY as that, what it is, not with additions of later times.
.... :-) ... rather similar to the situation of early Trionfi decks.

As far I know, "En sof" appeared not in SY. Naturally one can connect the use of "zero" (and whis that the idea of En sof") in some aspect of the SY, but it's better to leave it just to that, what's really said in the SY.

Your way of numbering the letters in the SY, and consequently the Tarot, would apply to Etteilla (who did not use the SY) and the Golden Dawn (who followed the traditional Hebrew numbering system) but not Levi. Etteilla made the Fool after the rest of the tarot sequence (after card 21) and also after all the other cards in the deck (number 78). Since his way of numbering started with the closest to divinity at 1 and ended with the furthest away, that makes the Fool, of all the traditional tarots, the furthest away. But he also gave it the number 0, which in his system would be even closer to divinity than the 1.

With Levi, however (for whom 22 is closest to divinity), there is no way that zero or infinity can be put between 20 and 22, as shin, the second to the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. But his system, too, is consistent with the SY as written; it also has the virtue of being consistent with the traditional Hebrew numbering system. Levi wrote about the Sefer Yetzirah in History of Magic, https://archive.org/stream/historyofmag ... v_djvu.txt. I have not read it, so I don't know how he uses the SY in his system. I know he identifies shin with fire, but whether that comes from the SY or elsewhere I don't know.

Similar it's for the SY not really of interest, how the later Tarot experts commented the SY. Scholem spoke about some 50 medieval Jewish commentaries, which likely all had their differences in the interpretation.
What's likely seldom realized (or what was possibly kept as a secret ?) was the condition, that the SY was based on the "hypercube of 6 (= 2x2x2x2x2x2 = 64)" and not, as still Aryeh Kaplan believed, on the "hypercube of 5" (2x2x2x2x2 = 32).

The hypercube of 6 delivers the internal stucture of the 32 ways (3 + 7 [= 6+1] + 12 = 22 [letters]) + (1 + 3 + 6 = 10 [Sephiroth] = 32 Ways of Wisdom = 32 Pairs = 64 single elements

The hypercube of 5 naturally delivers the value "32" with 2x2x2x2x2=32, but the internal structure would be 1-5-10-10-5-1) or in pairs 1-5-10.

Likely it was the idea of the terminus "way", that a "way of wisom" determines A (as the begin) and B (as the end) and B was defined as totally different to A (as 111111 is totally different to 000000, if a system is defined to contain only "1" and "0"), cause otherwise the terminus "wisdom" wouldn't applied.

In a system of 64 elements the starting point A would have 62 other possible ways (not ways of wisdom), which would not lead to the total opposite B (only this A>B or B>A is called "way of wisdom"). Only B gives a "balance" to A ... per definition. If A=111111, then B = 000000; if A = 111000, then B = 000111.

Possibly Cusanus had a similar idea with his Coincidentia Oppositorum ..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_of_opposites

If you would use a common coordinate system, such as we learned it in school, and would have for a point A the values x=1, y=1, z=1, the natural opposite point B would be x = -1, y = -1, z = -1, and all direct connections ("ways") would run through the point x=0, y=0, z=0 and the distance from this 0-point to point A would be the same as the distance from 0-point to point B.

That's not really a complicated idea, but more or less trivial.
But hiding it in a mysterious text with the connection "how god made the world" can make a lot of fools out of otherwise not so stupid persons, as one can learn from the long career of SY and its many follow-ups.

The I-Ching followed on its base the same mathematical ideas as the author of SY.

If one thinks with some consequence about the internal logic of I-Ching, the following mathematical figure is not really avoidable:


http://trionfi.com/tarot/new-themes/sepher-yetzirah/

One has to see this as "three dimensional".

Not much people think so intensive. But some do.


http://www.i-ching.hu/

So it's already around in the I-Ching world and gets children ...




http://kairos.laetusinpraesens.org/engatao2_1_h_3


google-images


Snapshot from "Thoughts of a Taoist Babe"
post: "I Ching Sphere (Part 7): Putting It All Together"
http://taobabe.wordpress.com/i-ching-sp ... -together/

... .-) ... well, the 5x14-theory has more problems ..

The I-Ching in its extensions (actually it's mostly a lot book) goes other ways than the Sepher Yetzirah, and, if one regards the later followers of SY also as "extension", the SY also goes other ways, finally connected to the rich world of Tarot.

Nonetheless, at the earlier, original stage of reflections, the same "Sphere" model for the I-Ching above shown would also work for the Sepher Yetzirah and even for a part of the Golden Dawn Tarot model. Naturally it only works for the 22 trumps and the 10 Sephiroth, and NOT for the small arcana, just as neither the author of I-Ching nor the author of SY knew anything about the playing card development in later times.
And also the author didn't think of channels.

In the Bahir, very old in the Kabbala development, actually pre-Kabbala, appears the 64 , well just in short part ...

94. Rabbi Amorai sat and expounded: What is the meaning of the verse (1 Kings 8:27), "Behold the heaven and the heaven of heaven cannot contain You"? This teaches us that the Blessed Holy One has 72 names. All of them were placed in the Tribes [of Israel]. It is thus written (Exodus 28:10), "Six of their names on one stone, and the names of the other six on the other stone, according to their generations." It is also written (Joshua 4:9), "He raised up twelve stones." Just like the first are (Exodus 28:12), "stones of memorial," so these are (Joshua 4:7), "stones of memorial." [There are therefore] 12 stones [each containing six names] making a total of 72. These parallel the 72 names of the Blessed Holy One. Why do they begin with twelve? This teaches us that God has twelve Directors. Each of these has six Powers [making a total of 72]. What are they? They are the 72 languages.

95. The Blessed Holy One has a single Tree, and it has twelve diagonal boundaries: The northeast boundary, the southeast boundary; The upper east boundary, the lower east boundary; The southwest boundary, the northwest boundary; The upper west boundary, the lower west boundary; The upper south boundary, the lower south boundary; The upper north boundary, the lower north boundary; They continually spread forever and ever; They are the arms of the world. On the inside of them is the Tree. Paralleling these diagonals there are twelve Functionaries. Inside the Sphere there are also twelve Functionaries. Including the diagonals themselves, this makes a total of 36 Functionaries. Each of these has another. It is thus written (Ecclesiastes 5:7), "For one above another watches." [This makes a total of 72.] It therefore comes out that the east has nine, the west has nine, the north has nine, and the south has nine. These are twelve, twelve, twelve, and they are the Functionaries in the Axis, the Sphere, and the Heart. Their total is 36. The power of each of these 36 is in every other one. Even though there are twelve in each of the three, they are all attached to each other. Therefore, all 36 Powers are in the first one, which is the Axis. And if you seek them in the Sphere, you will find the very same ones. And if you seek them in the Heart, you will again find the very same ones. Each one therefore has 36. All of them do not have more than 36 forms. All of them complete the Heart [which has a numerical value of 32]. Four are then left over. Add 32 to 32 and the sum is 64. These are the 64 Forms. How do we know that 32 must be added to 32? Because it is written (Ecclesiastes 5:7) , "For one above another watches, [and there are higher ones above them]." We thus have 64, eight less than the 72 names of the Blessed Holy One. These are alluded to in the verse, "there are higher ones above them," and they are the seven days of the week. But one is still missing. This is referred to in the next verse (Ecclesiastes 5:8), "The advantage of the land in everything is the King." What is this "advantage"? This is the place from which the earth was graven. It is an advantage over what existed previously. And what is this advantage? Everything in the world that people see is taken from its radiance. Then it is an advantage.

from http://www.servantsofthelight.org/QBL/B ... hir_1.html

We thus have 64, eight less than the 72 names of the Blessed Holy One
It seems, that the author just adds to the 64 hexagrams the 8 trigrams [seven days of the week]

But one is still missing.
That's naturally the trigram of heaven.

************

In summary we've a similar development in Kabbala as in the Trionfi cards. Somebody made something, others added something or transmuted the original. Finally nobody knew, what the idea of the original author was.

Likely that happens not only with Trionfi cards and Kabbala.

mikeh wrote:Looking at Dummett and Decker's 2002 book, A History The Occult Tarot 1870-1970, for more information on the subjects covered in chapter 19 of Il Mondo e l'Angelo, I noticed in the footnotes several "errata" entries referring back to their (with Depaulis) 1996 Wicked Pack of Cards. Since that book is cited in the literature more often than the 2002 book, I thought it might be useful to know what in Wicked Pack they thought was erroneous. So here is a kind of "errata sheet" for Wicked Pack, based on the entries cited in the index of the 2002 book under th heading "Wicked Pack of cards, errors in". It hardly deserves a thread of its own, so I will put it here. The page numbers, unless otherwise indicated, refer to Wicked Pack.

As far I remember, Dummett and Decker published in the IPCS (or somewhere else ?) an explicite and rather long excuse to Athanasius Kircher, and believed, that they had misinterpreted Kircher and his engagement.

Teheuti at Aeclectic recently stated ...

You appear to assume that those who call for standards in historical research know nothing about the occult Tarot. That may be true of some. In fact, I pointed out a couple of errors to Dummett arising from his lack of such knowledge, which he acknowledged as errors because I gave him convincing evidence.

http://tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=40 ... stcount=58

So the authors got some critical feed-back, and, as it seems, reacted on it.