Qaballah and Tarot: Lesson VII

Yael R. Dragwyla Email: [email protected] http://polaris93.livejournal.com/

First North American rights 9,900 words

Qaballah and Tarot: A Basic Course in Nine Lessons Lesson VII: Review of Previous Material; a Support of Qaballah from Esoteric Astrology; and Applications of Qaballah in Reading Tarot A. Review 1. Lesson I a. b. c.

Opening Invocation of Djehuti: A ‘saying of Grace’ to the Patron of Magick, Qaballah, astrology, Tarot, and the other sacred and esoteric Arts and Sciences. Handouts, recommended books, recommended Tarot packs On the nature of Qaballah and its relationship to Tarot 1) A brief discussion of the mathematical basis of Qaballah and its use as a lexical system 2) Qaballah as the metaphysical underpinning of Tarot

2.

Lesson II a. A brief overview of the historical evolution of Qaballah and Tarot 1) Qaballah 2) Tarot b. The ten Sephiroth of the traditional Tree of Life and the Tarot 1) The Sephiroth 2) The Lower Arcana and the Court Cards of the Tarot and their relation to the Sephiroth 3) The Four Worlds of Qaballah a) Atziluth, the Archetypal World (Keys 1 and 31) b) Briah, the Creative World (Keys 2 and 23) c) Yetzirah, the Formative World (Keys 3 and 11) d) Assiah, the Material World (Keys 10 and 32)

3.

Lesson III: The 22 Paths of the traditional Tree of Life and their relation to the Greater Arcana of the Tarot

4.

Lesson IV: The philosophical basis of the Tree of Life

a.

b. c.

d. e.

The three Zeroes 1) Ain, Nothingness 2) Ain Soph, Limitlessness (No Limit; Infinity) 3) Ain Soph Aur, Limitless Light The esoteric significance of Sephirah 10, Malkuth The Triads 1) The Supernals: Kether-Chokmah-Binah 2) The Life of Righteousness: Chesed-Geburah-Tiphareth 3) The Artist-Scientist (the Higher Mind): Netzach-Hod-Yesod 4) The World of Manifestation: Malkuth The Queen Scale of Sephirothic colors and their interrelationships The esoteric significance of “Sephirah 11,” Da’ath, and the Abyss

5.

Lesson V: The basic astrological correlates of the ten Sephiroth, Da’ath, and the Atua connecting the Sephiroth a. The Lower Arcana of the Tarot and the ten Sephiroth b. The Court Cards of the Tarot: the 12 Signs, the four Quarters of the globe, and the four Elements as these are represented by the Court Cards

6.

Lesson VI: The mathematical and pedagogical uses of Tarot a. The Atua and the Greater Trumps: A discussion of the mathematical infrastructure of the Tree of Life and its relation to Keys 11-32 and the Greater Trumps of the Tarot b. b. The pedagogical uses of Tarot

B. Esoteric astrology, Qaballah, and Tarot: Qaballistic theory From Esoteric Astrology

Support of

In their monumental work Astrology: The Divine Science, Marcia Moore and Mark Douglas write: According to the esoteric tradition, the zodiacal complex is a multidimensional wheel which revolves backward into the plane of Illusion as well as forward into the plane of reality.* The process of evolution** is portrayed by an apparently counterclockwise motion of the wheel as the soul progresses from Aries through Taurus toward Pisces. The process of involution is portrayed by a clockwise turning in which the movement flows from Aries to Pisces and back through the Signs to Taurus, as in the precession of the equinoxes. It has been hypothesized that the body of the planetary entity travels one way around the wheel of life, while individual human beings slowly and painfully reverse their mode of direction and journey back to the source. . . . Materialistic people drift with the involutionary current which flows down into matter, while those who are consciously endeavouring to become self-determining individuals must swim against the stream. 1 The authors indicate that “immature souls” tend to incarnate only backward through the Zodiac, following “the line of least resistance” created by the precession of the Equinoxes in a clockwise (backwards) direction through the Signs, from Aries to Pisces to Aquarius and so on around the sky. “Advanced” souls, on the other hand, incarnate only the opposite (counterclockwise) direction, following the normal progression of the Signs. A “young” soul might be born in one life as a Pisces, the next with his or her Sun in Aquarius, and so on back to Aries, then Pisces, Aquarius . . . . An “old” soul, on the other hand, one born in one life with, say, the Sun in Aries, would probably incarnate in the next as a Taurus, the following one as a Gemini, and so forth.

*Possibly an esoteric interpretation of the fact that primary or Solar-arc astrological progressions can likewise be applied in both directions, that is, counterclockwise as well as clockwise in the chart. Such progressions are calculated by first calculating the Sun’s position in the ephemeris as many

days after the original event (birth, question, other event) under consideration as actual years have passed in real time since it occurred, then subtracting from that position the position Sol had when the original event actually took place. The result or Solar arc is then either added to or subtracted from everything in the original chart to get the progressed chart. In both cases, the net effect is that of rotating the original chart by the same number of degrees as comprised by the Solar arc calculated this way, then comparing the result to the original chart. The rotation is counterclockwise when the Solar arc is added to other points in the chart, clockwise when it is subtracted. Here, Moore and Douglas may be translating the technique of progression and its uses in horary and event prognostications into esoteric theory concerning reincarnation. **Large numbers of the American and European public first began to become interested in the idea of reincarnation in the 19th Century, as a result of the rise Spiritualist movement at that time combined with the influence of Madame Helena Blavatsky, who was much belovéd by Spiritualists and other occultists throughout the world. This trend was contemporaneous with the publication of Darwin’s monumental work on natural selection and the evolution of species, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (London: John Murray, 1868) and the inception and development of modern forms of sciences such as geology, paleontology, biology, sociology, economics, anthropology, and so forth. Spiritualists, who were keenly aware of their marginal position in the intellectual world and were anxious to show that they were just as modern, forward-looking, and “scientific” as their lionized contemporaries such as the new Darwinians and other biological, social, and physical scientists, borrowed as unashamedly as magpies from the growing intellectual smorgasbord of ideas and terminology associated with the sciences, stuffing their ill-gotten treasures any which way into their own rapidly developing theoretical models. The idea of evolution was of course one of the concepts they acquired in this way, though they did not also incorporate the mechanism that underlay it in Darwinian biology, that of natural selection. So was the new biology’s moral bastard, Social Darwinism, which, based on a great deal of wish-fulfillment, self-delusion, outright lying, and baseless ideas and reasoning, was used to give a “moral justification” to the unashamed, untrammeled exploitation and devastation of whole peoples and continents by ruthless industrialists, businessmen, politicians, and merchants. In fact, it was probably Social Darwinism that was used as the prototype for the Spiritualistic Calvinism involving Western adaptations of the Eastern idea of karma to rationalize every excess on the part of the believer and justify an utterly callous disregard for the rights of others and one’s community responsibilities. Be that as it may, such concepts as “evolution” as used since about 1840 in the Western esoteric community are the offspring of a marriage of convenience between Hinduism and emerging modern biology, social, and physical sciences that took place in the middle of the 19 th Century. The interested reader might wish to trace the historical origins of other ideas and concepts now the stock in trade of Western occultists and Spiritualists, in order to discover the extent to which modern esoteric models are products of wish-fulfillment, expediency, and scientific illiteracy combined with a certain instinct for intellectual social-climbing. Other scholars contradict this idea, asserting instead that the incarnations of “young” souls follow a general counterclockwise (Zodiacally direct) trend, while those of “old” ones follow a clockwise (retrograde) one. The latter seems more likely. The overall evolutionary trend of our living Planet and the Solar System as a whole is ultimately indicate by the precession of the Equinoxes against the background of the constellations of the Zodiac, which takes place in a clockwise (retrograde-motion) direction as observed from the Northern hemisphere of our Planet, one opposite to the yearly round of the Sun through the Signs. These constellations are in turn themselves evolving in form and size, since the Stars of which they are composed all have proper motion greater than zero, none of them in parallel motion to any other. The True Will of our living world and Solar System, their Right Relation to all the Universe – which is not a posture, but rather a dance that must itself change continuously over time to meet the changing conditions of that universal, cosmic ballroom in which it is performed – is therefore necessarily geared to all they contain as well as the universe of which they are part. So ultimately the precession of the Equinoxes must define the overall form of the evolutionary trends of our living world, be they physical, biological, or otherwise. True Wills do not conflict. Yet those of our living world and the beings inhabiting it, including ourselves, would be continuously at war with each other if their evolutionary courses took place in opposite directions. This is exactly what would happen if our world as a whole were evolving according

to the precession of the Equinoxes, that is, backward through the Signs in clockwise (retrograde) motion, while individual souls evolved over the long run, from incarnation to incarnation, forward through the Signs, in counterclockwise (direct) motion. Ecologically, we are completely integrated into our world, inalienably part of it. Its evolutionary trend were in the opposite direction to our own, the result would be very similar to a situation in which a living being was moving in one direction, when suddenly all the organs in its body hared off on their own in a completely directions at 70 m.p.h., or in which a ballbearing were rotating in one direction when all its constituent atoms began to whirl about in the opposite one. The evolutionary progression that Moore and Douglas – along with Alice Bailey and many other leading lights of 19th and 20th century Western occultism – assert is the “natural” one for “old” souls is hardly “the line of least resistance,” and very likely does not accord with the reality. Even so, Moore and Douglas are superb esoteric scholars and excellent writers. They are thus something of a rarity in the esoteric fields, a fact which a quick survey of any occult bookstore, the occult section of a general bookseller’s, or the occult section of your library will readily verify. I have therefore chosen to quote them at length, above, since they present the general idea that souls who haven’t existed long as separate individuals tend to incarnate from life to life with their Suns progressively farther and farther along the Zodiac in one direction, whichever it may be, while “older” ones at some stage of their evolution reverse that trend, thereafter “traveling” in the opposite direction from life to life, lucidly and clearly, as so many writers in the esoteric disciplines unfortunately do not. 2 Magick, Qaballah, and objective science must not contradict one another at the level of basic principles. When they do, error has crept its way – or maybe “jackbooted itself” is a more accurate term for it – into one or more of the disciplines involved. Since the implications of the directions of the evolutionary trends postulated for “young” and “old” souls by Moore and Douglas, Alice Bailey, et al. directly contradict what is already known of life’s general evolutionary trends relative to the precession of the Equinoxes, it is likely that on this point they are inaccurate, and that the models and theories they present should be modified to take that into account. The most basic principle of the Hermetic Sciences is probably “As above, so below” – that is, whatever occurs on the Inner Planes will ultimately manifest on the Outer Planes, and vice versa. From this, the corollaries of this principle may be derived. First, evolution must follow the same direction on the Inner Planes as the Outer. Second, real spiritual evolution, like physical evolution, must occur as a result of selection by environmental pressures upon mutational and congenital changes in body, soul, and spirit, eliminating that which, at any given time, can’t mesh integrally with its environment and the Cosmos as a whole. The implication of these is that spiritual evolution, like physical evolution, must follow the long-range trends of the precession of the Equinoxes (as well as those of the proper motion of the Stars, which doesn’t affect tropical astrology but does radically affect sidereal astrology, at least in the long run). Thus ultimately the soul, in its evolution over many lifetimes, must come to a point after which it incarnates from life to life in a retrograde trend, that is, such that its natal Sun is progressively father and farther around the Zodiac in a clockwise direction. The “young” soul is very aware of the yearly round of the Sun counterclockwise through the Zodiac. Later it also becomes aware of the same trend among the Outer Planets over decades and centuries. But at first it hasn’t the experience to notice the opposite trend, the slow retrograde motion from year to year of the place where the Sun stands against the background of the Stars as He crosses the celestial equator from South to North each year. This last movement is extremely slow, about 50” or 1/72° per year. It probably takes several consecutive incarnations for this difference in phase between tropical and sidereal aspects of the cosmic environment of life on Earth before the repeatedly incarnating soul to experience the impact of this subtle progression in a biologically and spiritually significant way. However, the “advanced” soul, with numerous incarnations behind it, has begun to find this drift in phase between the two types of celestial mutations to be very important indeed. At this point, it begins a process of spiritual reorientation to accommodate itself to the evolutionary trends of the sidereal aspects of its environment. So while the “young” soul incarnates in a counterclockwise Zodiacal trend, following the trends of Seasonal change and the motions of the Lights and the Planets through the Signs, the “old” soul reverses this, following the path of Equinoctial precession, in the opposite direction, clockwise through the heavens. This is nicely demonstrated by Keys 11-32 and the way in which they are arranged on the Tree of Life. The Individual incarnates, Plane to Plane, along the Paths from Sephirah 1, Kether, through the Sephiroth down to Sephirah 10, Malkuth, and back up once more to Kether, thereby re-tracing the route by which it descended from the Origin to physical incarnation. Beginning with Aries, ruled by Pluto, which is thus identified with Kether, the highest point on the Tree of Life, the Paths representing the Signs (which map the Sun’s day-by-day path through the heavens) are arranged so that the earlier a Sign

falls in the Zodiac, the closer to Kether and the higher up on the Tree of Life it is, and the lower the Key Number of the pair of Sephiroth connected by the Path with which it is associated. Thus: Sign

Key Number

Tarot Trump

Aries Taurus Gemini Cancer Leo Virgo Libra Scorpio Sagittarius Capricorn Aquarius Pisces

15 16 17 18 19 20 22 24 25 26 28 29

IV, The Emperor V, The Hierophant VI, the Lovers VIII, the Chariot VIII, Strength IX, the Hermit XI, Justice XIII, Death XIV, Temperance XV, The Devil XVII, The Star XVIII, The Moon

Connecting Sephiroth 2-64 2-4 3-6 3-5 4-56 4-6 5-66 6-7 6-9 6-8 7-97 7-10

Thus the very “young” soul clearly incarnates down the Tree of Life, while the progression of incarnations of the “older” ones takes place upward along the Paths. This corresponds nicely to what has been covered in Lessons III and IV and the corresponding sections in Dion Fortune’s Mystical Qaballah and Gareth Knight’s A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism.8

C. Tarot as a System To some extent we have already discussed the idea of Tarot as a system, not just a random collection of cards with no significant interrelationships among them, however interesting, mathematically pleasing, intellectually intriguing, or amusing they may be (see Lesson I). To summarize what has already been covered about the systems aspects of Tarot: Tarot is based squarely upon Qaballah, which comprises not only a system of ideas, by in fact an entire symbolic linguistic system. The latter refers to and communicates those ideas as a system as well as individually, in the same way that mathematics serves as the language of the objective sciences, or that any other technical language used in a particular field of study makes the same service for its special area. In a way, Qaballah is an ultimate recursive “programming language,” by means of which a Magickian can “reprogram” the universe, which is an enormous information system or natural “computer” of which the Magickian is also of course a living component. Using Qaballah for such “reprogramming,” the Magickian can bring about changes in that universe such that as a result, the way in which it, or at least the Magickian’s own local corner of it, functions after having been thus “reprogrammed” conforms to the Magickian’s Will. 8 Be that as it may, since Tarot is based upon and firmly embedded in Qaballah, not only are its symbols and coding (the way in which, e.g., color and composition of simpler symbols are used in the design and execution of the cards to convey certain ideas, doctrine, and other information) drawn directly from the Qaballah, but so is the general infrastructure of standard Tarot pack. Therefore if the infrastructure of a given Tarot pack – the types of sub-packs within it; the division of Lower Arcana and Court Cards into Suits; the number of cards per Suit or sub-pack; the relationship of its Major Arcana to a given alphabet; etc. – is not that of Qaballah or a legitimate modification thereof, and if likewise its design and execution are not based upon the symbols, coding, and grammar of Qaballah or one of its defensible modifications, then by definition it is not a Tarot pack, no matter how intellectually, esthetically, or otherwise attractive it may be. This is not to say that pretty or interesting packs of cards which aren’t based upon Qaballah or don’t conform to the defining criteria of what makes up a legitimate Tarot pack can’t be pedagogically useful, or fun, or great concentration and meditations aids, or a great way to get off on a drug trip if props are needed for such a thing. But to fit the definition of “Tarot pack,” a pack of cards must conform to certain strictures drawn from Qaballah and related disciplines – otherwise it isn’t a Tarot pack. Thus even though both the symbolism and the infrastructure of a standard pack of playing cards comes directly from Tarot, such a pack is not per se a Tarot pack. Rather than having Major Arcana

which correspond to the components of some legitimate alphabet, a standard pack of playing-cards has two Jokers, modeled on Trump 0, The Fool, the only remnant they contain of the Major Arcana of the Tarot. And it only has three Persons – King, Queen, and Jack or Knave – per Suit rather than the four of the Tarot (Knight, Queen, King/Emperor, Page/Empress). So it can’t do much of the job which a real Tarot pack can, and therefore doesn’t qualify as a true Tarot pack.* *Though it can, of course, be used successfully to tell fortunes, and is useful for some of the pedagogical functions for which Tarot can be used, e.g., using one of its Jokers and the numbered cards of the four Suits of its “Lower Arcana” to teach the Complex Plane.

A case can be made for a true Tarot pack whose Major Arcana include more or fewer cards than does the traditional one; or which has other than four Suits in its Lower Arcana (the numbered cards) and Court Cards; or which has other than ten denominations for the cards of the Lower Arcana; or which has other than four Persons in each Suit of its Court Cards; or whose symbolic language and/or sensory mode in which that language is expressed (e.g., touch, smell, sound, radiant electromagnetic energy of wavelengths above or below the visible spectrum, telepathy, magnetic fields, etc.) differ from that of traditional Tarot packs. Such packs must, however, still conform to the following criteria:

1) Number of cards of the Major Arcana The pack must be constructed with reference to some legitimate alphabet. This alphabet can be a normal, “human” one, e.g., Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Sanskrit; adapted alphabets for people with various handicaps, such as the Ameslan signing symbol lexicon or Braille; a technical one, such as the Periodic Table of the Chemical Elements, the Western musical alphabet including the 12-tone musical and the various notational symbols that go with it (such as “#” (sharp) and “b” (flat), the signs for bass and treble clefs, etc.), or mathematics; a sensory one, such as a collection of distinct scents or sounds; some other set of fixed, distinct symbols; or a combination and synthesis of some or all of these. Whatever alphabet the pack is based upon, the number of cards in its Major Arcana must be the same as the number of distinct symbols in the alphabet upon which it is based. Likewise, the symbolic language of its Major Arcana must be drawn directly from the experiential, esthetic, mathematical, philosophical, and spiritual universe of the culture from which that alphabet has come.

2) Number of cards in each Suit of Lower Arcana The pack must be based upon a Qaballah which can be mapped onto a Tree of Life which comprises N Sephiroth and M possible interconnections among them. It must have a Lower Arcana divided into X Suits of Y cards each, where Y = N; that is, the number of cards in any given Suit of its Lower Arcana must be that of the Sephiroth on the Tree of Life onto which its Qaballah maps, and each card in that Suit must correspond with exactly one of those Sephiroth such that there is a bijective (one-one/onto) relationship between the cards of the Suit and the Sephiroth on that Tree of Life.

3) The number and nature of the Trumps of the Major Arcana The M possible interconnections among the Sephiroth of the Tree of Life correspond numerically and symbolically with the pack’s Greater Arcana, of which there are M’, where M’ ≤ M. (Remember that M’ is also the number of symbols in the alphabet to which the Greater Arcana of this pack refers.)

4) The Number of Suits There will be at least four Suits of cards in the Lower Arcana and the Court Cards. Three of them represent the three Active Principles or Elements of Pythagorean philosophy: Fire = Spirit or Will; Water = Creativity, Soul, or Memory; and Air = Intellect. A fourth represents the Passive Principle or Element, Earth = Manifestation or Permanence. There may be more than four such Suits, but not less;

and any extra Suits must correspond to universal Principles or Elements which are not essentially equivalent to any of the traditional four Elements or some combination of them, and for the existence of which a good philosophic and scientific case can be made.

5) Number of Persons in each Suit of Court Cards There will be as many persons in each Suit of the Court Cards as there are Suits therein, since a Person of the Court Cards also corresponds to any avatar (embodiment or incarnation) of an Elemental Principle, whatever else it may represent.

6) The astrology of the pack Given (4) and (5), above, and the fact that the Lower Arcana and Court Cards of this pack must also be mappable into the heavens in a manner like that discussed in Lessons V and VI of this course, we must have a new astrology to accommodate the addition of new Suits and thus new Persons in the Court Cards. That is, if we have P Suits, we have P Persons in any one Suit of Court Cards. Then since one Person in each Suit, traditionally the Pages or Princesses, represents 1/P-th of the physical body of our living world, while P - 1 Persons in that Suit represent the astrological Signs of the same Element as the one associated with that Suit, we must therefore have P • (P - 1) = P2 - P Signs or partitions of the heavens. For example, suppose we have, say, five Suits, hence five Persons in each Suit of Court Cards. There are therefore 5 - 1 = 4 Persons in that Suit Who represent astrological Signs. So in this case we must have 5 x (5 - 1) = 5 x 4 = 20 Signs. Further, each Suit of the Lower Arcana corresponds to an Element as a class of Signs, e.g., Fire Signs (Aries, Leo, Sagittarius), Water Signs (Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces), etc. The Ace of each Suit corresponds with the Element associated with that Suit itself; the other cards in the Suit each represent a Sign or an integral fraction (e.g., 1/2, 1/3, ¼) thereof. If there are N Sephiroth on the Tree of Life, hence N Lower Arcana in any one Suit of this pack, there will be N - 1 cards to represent the Signs of that Element in the Heavens, such that if S is the number of Signs of a given Element, then N - 1 = QS, where Q is some positive integer (whole number greater than zero). Thus each card of a given Suit of the Lower Arcana that is not an Ace corresponds to exactly one Sign of the Element represented by that Suit, or to exactly one integral fraction of that Sign, and only that Sign. This gives us S = (N - 1)/Q which implies that N = SQ + 1, where N, S, and Q are all positive integers. Since we have P Suits or Elements (see discussion above), the number of Signs in the Zodiac are therefore PS. But we know that there are P2 - P = P • (P - 1) Signs, so we have P • (P - 1) = PS, which implies that P - 1 = S = (N - 1)/Q, which in turn implies that N = Q • (P - 1) + 1, that is, the number of cards in a Suit of the Lower Arcana is equal to the sum of some positive integral multiple of one less than the number of Persons in a Suit of the Court Cards (hence the Elements they represent) and 1 (for the Ace). For example, suppose there are six Persons in a Suit of Court Cards. The number N of numbered cards of the Lower Arcana of that Suit would therefore be equal to Q • (6 - 1) + 1 = 5Q + 1 ε {6,11,16,21, . . .).

7) Meanings of the Greater Arcana Whatever else it may be, the meaning of each Greater Arcanum must be that of a synthesis of the meanings of the Sephiroth which it connects.10 This implies that the symbolism and composition of the design of each Trump communicates this meaning in a recognizable, comprehensible form. *** Summarizing, if a pack of cards meets all the above criteria, whether or not it is based specifically upon the Hebrew Qaballah as such or not, it is a true Tarot pack. Otherwise, by definition, it is not. Clearly Tarot, like the Qaballah it reflects as well as all other disciplines, from the spiritual ones such as Magick and Alchemy to the mundane ones such as physics, biology, and history, is a technical language. Even in cases in which a great part of the vocabulary of any given technical language is shared with the lay language of its parent culture, the two languages possess different grammatical structures and, more importantly, very different embedded maps of reality. As a result, it often seems as if someone speaking the technical language is just using the lay, parent language in a bizarre, eccentric, even crazy way, leading those not familiar with the former and the discipline with which it is associated to dismiss what the speaker is saying as woolly-minded nonsense, the product of stupidity, psychosis, or worse. But when this happens, it is usually due to the speaker’s inability or unwillingness to properly translate what he or she is trying to say into lay language, a lack of awareness that such translation is needed, or a lack of concern over making such a translation.* *This, by the way, is the root of the generation of the social disaster areas in which schizophrenics tend to embroil themselves. The maps of reality underlying the thought and behavior patterns of schizophrenic psychotics mesh very poorly with those of everyone else, a problem faithfully reflected in the lack of fit between the way in which they use the same language which those around them do. As a result vast misunderstandings between schizophrenics and everyone else are generally the rule, leading to tremendous problems for both the schizophrenics and for those who have to deal with them. Schizophrenic psychosis is more amenable to a combination of removing the schizophrenic from the situation in which his or her psychosis developed as an adaptive reaction and pharmaceutical remedies than it is to psychoanalysis; the psychiatrist’s chief duties when treating schizophrenics are those of mediator, translator, pharmacologist, and ombudsman for the schizophrenic rather than psychoanalysis and the more normal sort of counseling that is used with non-psychotic clients.

In the case of Tarot, its grammar is as outlined above in Section C of this lesson, and its vocabulary’s elements are the symbols used on Tarot cards, the words used to refer to types of cards, positions in Tarot spreads, etc. In astrology, the grammar comprises the geometrical interrelationships of Signs and Houses and aspects between Planets, Lights, or certain points in the sky such as the Ascendant, Arabian Parts, etc.; its vocabulary consists of the Signs, Houses, Planets, Lights, Stars, Elements, significant points, and other discrete chart elements and phenomena. In Magick, the grammar comprises in part the systematization of Qaballistic and related concepts, as laid out against the Key Scale of Aleister Crowley’s Liber 777 or similar schemes; in part the choreography of ritual; and in part the grammar of astrology, since astrology is used to determine the timing of rituals as well as to analyze its results. The vocabulary of Magick includes that of astrology as well as the Enochian calls, the vocabularies of Qaballah and Tarot, and the various perfumes, gem-stones, God-Names, and anything else that might conceivably be used in Magickal ritual or for studying its results.* *Which could be anything. As Israel Regardie et al. have discussed, Qaballah, upon which the Western Ceremonial Tradition is based, is simply a highly compact, efficient psychospiritual filing-system by which anything conceivable can be referenced, similar to the Dewey Decimal System. That is, each Sephiroth and Path comprises a Tree of Life of its own, whose Sephiroth and Paths in turn are each a Tree of Life in miniature, and so on ad infinitum. Any given thing, phenomenon, or process can be

associated with some Sephiroth/Path of another Sephiroth/Path of still another Sephiroth/Path . . . for as many levels of Qaballistic qualifications as are needed to properly describe it. Thus anything at all can be used for reinforcement of Magickal ritual – once its Qaballistic reference, its place on the infinite-leveled fractal Tree of Life has been determined, it can thenceforth serve as a mnemonic for the Qaballistic, hence Magickal concepts embodied in that reference.

All these different languages are used to talk about discrete fundamental aspects of and viewpoints on one and the same Universe. Each has evolved as it has because, in any era, the form it has taken at that point has been the one which workers in the field of study associated with it at that time have found to be the most efficient and useful for describing that aspect of the universe and its manifestations. This is as true for the esoteric Arts and Sciences as it is for the mundane ones such as economics, ecology, and physics. E.g., physics-as-a-technical-language, say, differs from chemistry-as-a-technical-language in the way it does because physicists find that for their purposes, physics in its current form describes the universe far more usefully than modern chemistry would. Differences as technical languages between the esoteric and mundane disciplines or among the esoteric disciplines themselves have arisen for the same reasons. This should disperse much of the mystification in which laypersons, scientists, and even, God help us, those in the esoteric disciplines have shrouded the spiritual Arts and Sciences, and reveal them for what they are: legitimate areas of study, exhibiting scholarly, theoretical, and philosophical aspects, with their own rewards for those who work in them, like any others. Entirely too much garbage of all kinds has been spouted about these disciplines and their subjects by laity and those who work in those fields as well s by scientists. It is high time for these Augean Stables to be thoroughly cleaned out; I hope this discussion provides an at least moderately useful push-broom for that task.

D. The Tarot and the Human Genotype There are 23 pairs of chromosomes in each cell of a genetically normal human being. 22 of these have to do with essentially non-sexual and non-reproductive processes and functions; each chromosome in these is called an autosome. The remaining, 23rd pair comprises the sex-chromosomes, which have to do with sexual differences and reproductive functions in addition to numerous other genetically coded functions which are inherited down the generations in sex-linked fashion. We can assign each autosome pair in the human genotype to exactly one of the Greater Trumps of the Tarot, on a strictly mathematical basis. We can then relate the functions in which the sexchromosomes are involved to the Court Cards of the traditional Tarot packs in the following way. Pythagoras taught that there are two fundamental principles underlying everything else in existence: the Feminine (i) and the Masculine (k).* In a way very similar to the way in which complex numbers are built up as two-dimensional vectors each composed of a real and an imaginary number, these could be combined into the wholly Masculine (male-male, or kk), the wholly Feminine (female-female, or ii), and two permutations of the “androgynous” combination of Masculine and Feminine, the ordered pair  male-female (ki) and its polar opposite,  female-male (ik). Since the Female was purely receptive, and since moisture ultimately dissolves, hence receives all things, he called (ii) “moisture” and (kk), clearly the opposite of (ii), “dryness,” archetypal aridity. Since (he taught) the Feminine in search of a means to have offspring, i.e., a mate, is more aggressive than the male normally is, it was obvious that the Female “in heat” is  male-female (ki),

which he called “heat.” Its polar opposite,  female-male (ik) is thus of course “cold.” *Eastern and Western cosmologies and Alchemies are remarkably similar in terms of their underlying basic principles and systems aspects. In the East, the Feminine is associated with yin, the Masculine with Yang; these combine in particular proportions to form the various Elements, which combine to form chi¸ the Eastern equivalent of the Pythagorean Quintessence. The process by which this occurs is identical to that of Western occult science. For more on this and related topics, see J. C. Cooper, Chinese Alchemy: The Taoist Quest for Immortality (New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., 1900).

He then took this one step further, creating the pairs “hot-dry,” “hot-moist,” “cold-dry,” and “coldmoist.” Now, Fire is archetypally hot and dry – that it is hot is obvious; that it is dry is indicated by the fact that in its presence, all moisture dries up. Likewise, Water is primordially cold and moist. Similarly, Air is hot and moist, and Earth is cold and dry. Thus the four Elements can be defined in terms of these simpler qualities, much as atoms are made up of protons, electrons, and neutrons, and these in turn are made up of various combinations of different species of quarks. The qualities so far described may be coded as follows: Male Female

M F

Hot Cold Moist/Wet Dry

H C W D

Fire Water Air Earth

Fi Wa Ai Ea

We then have: → M+M → M+F → F+M → F+F

→

D

→

H

→

C

→

W

Generation [1]

Generation [2] gives us: D+H

→

Fi

D+C

→

Ea

W+H

→

Ai

Generation [2]

W+C

→

Wa

But this implies, substituting from [1] into [2]: → → (M + M) + (M + F) → → (F + F) + (F + M) → → (M + M) + (F + M) → → (F + F) + (M + F)

→ Fi → Wa → Ea → Ai

Again, physical water is purely receptive, gravitationally passive, and chemically very nearly a true universal solvent, while physical fire attacks nearly anything. On the other hand, however, neither physical Earth nor physical Air behave as passively as physical water or as actively as physical fire. So Pythagoras assumed that Fire and Water were purer in their respective natures than Air and Earth, and therefore that the former predated the latter in cosmological evolution. This becomes important for analysis of the scheme given above, which shows the “generations” of the four Elements from vector combinations of the two primordial Qualities of Masculinity (Yang) and Femininity (Yin). Clearly, either Fire and Water are combinations of things inherent in Air and Earth, and therefore in effect their “offspring.” Or else the reverse must be true. Given that Fire and Water antedate Air and Earth as to their origins, then the latter must be the case, so that Air and Earth are the “children” of Fire and Water. Now if the scheme given above really describes the “genotypes” or inherent characters of the Elements, then Air and Earth each inherit exactly one of two possible “genes” from each “parent”: Air is hot, like Fire, but moist, like Water; Earth is dry, like Fire, but cold, like Earth. Thus Air and Earth, though “children” of the same two “parents,” have completely different “genotypes.” For all the world this looks like a highly simplified version of the transmission of inherited characteristics, or genes, which the monk Gregor Mendel worked out for the pea-plants he bred.* Further, it corresponds with the basic unit of mammalian, hence human reproduction and its results: a female and a male of a given species copulate and produce offspring, who in their turn can each have one of two genders, male or female. *In this case, the “organism” in question (an Element) has exactly two “genes”: a “temperature” (hotvs.-cold) gene, and a “saturation” gene (wet/moist-vs.-dry).

Looking at the Court Cards again, each Suit includes a Knight, a Queen, a King, and a Page. 11 As was discussed in Lesson V, Knights are associated with Fire, Queens with Water, Kings with Air, and Pages with Earth. This implies that Knights and Queens are “parents,” and Kings and Pages represent their “offspring.” Making the natural assignment of gender, we get the following: Father Mother Son Daughter

Knight* Queen King* Page*

*In Crowley’s Book of Thoth pack, the Page becomes a “Princess” and the King becomes a “Prince.”

Potentially this is a very useful pedagogical tool for teaching simple Mendelian genetics and mammalian reproductive patterns and behavior. Additionally, however, given the Medieval and modern European

political meanings of the titles of these cards as they appear in traditional packs and their implications in the context of the issues discussed above, it also reveals some interesting things about Western bedroom politics. It also suggests that Freud’s so-called “Oedipus complex” in fact refers to actual experiences of real people, rather than being the psychodynamic result of guilt over a mere fantasy.12 Finally, since we have four Suits of Court Cards in which each Suit represents an Element, this gives eight “parental” “genotypes” to play with, not just the two of Fire and Water alone. These are: Fire of Fire, Fire of Water, Water of Fire, Water of Water, Air of Fire, Air of Water, Earth of Fire, and Earth of Water. This could be especially useful for experimenting with various Mendelian combinations and recombinations of more than two characters at a time, and could also be used to demonstrate possible family and breeding combinations among mammals. For rural peoples who are farmers or otherwise dependent upon animal and plant breeding cycles and behavioral patterns for their livelihood, this could be an excellent practical teaching aid and almanac. Now, though the functions of the sex-chromosomes and their phenotypic expression in everyday life are neatly demonstrated by the Court Cards, is there a similar relationship between the autosome pairs and the Major Arcana? That is, does each card of the Major Arcana describe a genetically controlled aspect of human physiology, development, behavior, and evolution? Unfortunately, at this time there is no ready answer to that question one way or the other. But because of the numbers involved – 22 Major Arcana, 22 autosome pairs in the human genotype – and the fact that the functions of sex and the sexchromosomes are so neatly demonstrated by the Court Cards, certainly the idea is worth investigating. 13 The most fundamental unit of genetics, at least insofar as it is enthroned in DNA, is a nucleotide consisting of a nitrogen-containing purine or pyramidine base combined with phosphoric acid and ribose or deoxyribose sugar. Of the purine and pyramidine bases there are exactly four types: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine.* In an actual strand of DNA, guanine is paired back-to-back with cytosine, and adenine with thymine, which gives four “letters” or lexical units in the DNA laphabet: → adenine-thymine → guanine-cytosine → cytosine-guanine → thymine-adenine

→ A-T → G-C → C-G → T-A

When RNA in the body reads the information encoded in these base-pairs of DNA during the process of synthesizing the proteins out of which our bodies are built, and which facilitate our behavior and emotions on the physical plane, only one “side” of each such pair at a time is “read out” by the RNA molecules. The “backside” can be ignored, because it is perfectly predictable once the “frontside” is known, being an exact mirror-image of the latter. Thus there are four “letters” in the DNA alphabet: A (adenine), G (guanine), C (cytosine), and T (thymine). In turn, each of these “letters” can be associated with exactly one Suit of the Tarot, so that Tarot can be used to teach something about the structure and functions of DNA and RNA. Which DNA “letter” should be assigned to which Suit is rather arbitrary; we still know so very little about the extent to which and nature of the way in which Tarot is a particular phenotypic expression of the general human genotype, or of the human gene-pool and its dynamics. But the choice of assignments of Suits to DNA “letters,” whatever they may be, is at least consistent, then at even fairly sophisticated levels of pedagogy the Tarot can be very useful as a teaching aid in this field, as well.

*In RNA, uracil is substituted for thymine, but since uracil functions in RNA just as thymine does in DNA, here uracil may be considered to be essentially the same as thymine, so that there are still only four such bases.

A final question: If our species in particular, and other metazoan organisms in general, had more than two genders, how might this be reflected in the infrastructure of the Court Cards of whatever then

passed for a Tarot pack? Further, since, as we discussed in § C.6 of this lesson, above, a true Tarot pack’s Court Cards must also comprise an accurate reflection of its parent culture’s astrology, then what sort of astrology would our species have then developed? I leave these questions as exercises for the reader. Nota bene: Though both anthropologists and biologists always seem to overlook it in the case of certain human activities such as religious or Magickal behavior, it is a neo-Darwinian truism that any type of behavior in which the members of a given species engage over long periods of time (at least ten generations) must have selective advantages and value for that species. Otherwise, such behavior would have been eliminated from the species repertoire long before that point via natural selection. Now consider that various modern religions, Tarot, Qaballah, Magick in various forms, and similar religious and metaphysical systems have been part and parcel of human belief and behavior as far back as we have any evidence. Neandertal man reverently and tenderly buried his dead with flowers, tools, food, weapons, and beautifully worked votive instruments. So did many populations of Cro-Magnon man, who originally lived side-by-side with Neandertal populations and eventually replaced them. Even the earliest human and proto-human populations seem to have had a conception of the afterlife, providing their dead with flowers, shells, and worked stones, and carefully burying them in cairns or graves to protect them from predators and the elements. So either the neo-Darwinians and the sociobiologists are dead wrong concerning the most fundamental assumptions of their science, or all such beliefs and practices have had very real long-term, evolutionary as well as short-term selective value both for our species as a whole and for its individual members. It is a well-documented fact that Tarot packs in the traditional format have persisted in use over many centuries in the West, while packs varying significantly from that format have at best enjoyed a brief popularity due to novelty and then quickly fallen out of use. So we must conclude that if the neoDarwinians and the sociobiologists are right, then Tarot must have some real biological, selective value for us and our species, or at least for many sub-populations within it. If this is so, then, at least in part, it is quite likely that the symbolism and infrastructure of Tarot packs are overt expressions of much of the general human genotype, not just elaborate coding for certain historically persistent metaphysical ideas (which, just because of that persistence, may themselves also, at least in part, be phenotypic expressions of human genetics). This idea, which to my knowledge hasn’t been seriously considered at all in either the mundane or the occult disciplines, really does warrant investigation. At the very least, if there turned out to be anything to it, we would all have learned something significant about human biology – not to mention a great deal about how our spiritual natures are reflected in our biological nature.

E. Non-Western mystical systems and their relationship to Qaballah and Tarot A number of attempts have been made to establish a true bijective (one-to-one/onto) correspondence between the Qaballah and Tarot, on the one hand, and non-Western mystical and Magickal metaphysical systems, on the other. Perhaps the best-know of these have been efforts made by several researchers to correlate the mystical and mantic system native to China, I Ching (Book of Changes), with Qaballah and Tarot. None of these have been very satisfactory. Perhaps the best of these is the work which Aleister Crowley did in this area, including his own translation of the I Ching, his text on Tarot, The Book of Thoth, and his cross-cultural metaphysical lexicon, Liber 777. Overall, Liber 777 is the first and possibly the best attempt to establish correspondences as complete and bijective as possible between non-Western mystical, Magickal, and religious systems, on the one hand, and Qaballah and Tarot, on the other. It is also, for its day, an excellent basic work on comparative anthropology and ethnography of various cultures, including Crowley’s own as well as others both East and West. However, by now Liber 777 is very much out of date, and clearly needs a complete overhaul and expansion to accommodate what we have learned since in every area from the social sciences to mathematics, the physical and biological sciences, and Magick itself. For example, main trends in the fields of Western science-fiction, fantasy, horror, and humor should certainly be added to and correlated with Liber 777.* As for non-Western cultures, a great deal of research needs to be done in order to make Liber 777 an accurate cross-cultural index in today’s great Global Village.

*Above all, to leave MAD Magazine’s, er, logo of the Logos, belovéd Alfie out of a revised and updated edition of Liber 777 would be a sin for which the Gods should only rain custard pies forever upon us! 

Since this is only a survey course, there isn’t much point in going too deeply into this subject at this time. But the student should be aware that this area of interest contains treasures of knowledge just waiting to be mined by astute cultural prospectors. He or she should look over Liber 777 to see how much such correlations are made and how new data could be added to it productively, correlated with Liber 777’s Key Scale in the way in which the data it already contains is indexed.

F. Reading Tarot from basic principles Without reference to works such as Crowley’s The Book of Thoth, Waite’s The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, Butler’s Dictionary of the Tarot, or any of the numerous Tarot “cookbooks” now available everywhere from K-Mart and B. Dalton’s to specialty stores and the U. S. Games Systems order-line, each member of the class will pose a question and then, using any Tarot spread he/she prefers (including one of his/her own invention), will do a Tarot reading to get the answer to that question. For this exercise he/she will use what has been covered so far in class as a key to interpretation of the cards in that reading. The point here is not to demonstrate how perfectly clairvoyant one is, or how just the right cards come up in defiance of all the principles of statistics. Nor is the answer, qua answer, itself the issue, though of course it is of value. Rather, the aim is to recall the general meaning of the Sephiroth and the Atua, and thus those of the Tarot cards associated with them; to use these meanings to interpret the individual cards, as it seems appropriate to you; and then to synthesize those individual interpretations from the overall reading. Also, the positions of the cards in a spread can be correlated with the Sephiroth and/or Atua in any way that seems useful to the particular reader. For example, the Celtic Cross spread has ten cardpositions, not counting that of the Significator. These can be correlated with the ten Sephiroth, Kether through Malkuth, in whatever way is most useful to the reader; while the Significator can be correlated with Da’ath. In addition, each card can be associated with the Sephirah or Atu with which it corresponds on the Key Scale and, in the case of the Lower Arcana and Court Cards, with the Element associated with it, and interpreted accordingly. That interpretation can then be blended with whatever meaning the reader has assigned to the position in which it lies, e.g., in the case of the Celtic Cross spread, a particular Sephirah. Finally, the result of that blending can be added in with all the others to get an overall reading. The Celtic Cross spread is as follows:

One useful set of assignments of Sephirah to positions for this spread is as follows: Position Covers (1) Crosses (2) Above (3) Below (4) Behind (5) Before (6) The Present (7) The Environment (8) True Will (9) Outcome (10) Significator (11)

Sephirah Binah (Form) Chokmah (Force) Kether Yesod Geburah (Necessity) Chesed (Opportunity) Hod (Awareness) Netzach (Meaning) Tiphareth (Will, Spirit) Malkuth (Manifestation) Da’ath (The Observer, Energy of the Whole System

Obviously there are many other possible assignments of Sephiroth to the positions of the Celtic Cross spread. Since the possible types of spreads are limitless, so are the possibilities for assigning Qaballistic concepts to positions in such spreads. The student should use his or her imagination, choosing or creating a spread which he or she likes best and making whatever assignments he/she finds most useful. Don’t be afraid to trust your intuition! Also, bring to the reading any other knowledge you have, whether about the cards, the subject of the reading, or anything else that may be relevant. Remember that the pattern in which you lay out the cards itself has meaning, regardless of the particular cards that fall into given positions within it. Again, don’t hesitate to use a layout of your own devising, if this somehow seems more appropriate to you than a standard one. Try to explain a little both of what the cards mean to you, individually and collectively, as they appear in the spread, and the meaning for you of your chosen type of Tarot spread. In this way, both your classmates and the teacher can learn something new.

Don’t worry about being “wrong”! What seems right and meaningful to you here, is so for the purpose of this exercise, which is to help you practice a little of what has been learned by you in this class. Don’t worry about looking “foolish” (after all, according to A. E. Waite, The Fool represents “that folly of God which is wiser than the wisdom of all mankind”). Remember how many times it took before you could get on a bicycle and pedal smoothly away without falling down or otherwise meeting disaster? -- or to roller-skate safely and enjoyably, or read, or any other activity which was hard to learn but which, once learned, gave you much pleasure and practical benefit? Learning to read Tarot from first principles is like that. So if you have some problems at first – keep trying!! And remember the First Commandment of all important esoteric work:

ENJOY, already!!!

Endnotes 1 Marcia Moore and Mark Douglas, Astrology: The Divine Science (York Harbor, ME: Arcana Publications, 1978), p. 714.

A fine example of a great astrological and occult philosopher who was as lousy a writer as she was a superb occult thinker is Alice Bailey. Another is A. E. Waite. Waite, one of the greatest occult scholars of all time, is also one of history’s most long-winded, pretentious, logorrheac bores. As Aleister Crowley once said of him, he “would never use ‘and’ where he could squeeze ‘overplus’ in.” 2

See Key 12, Trump I, The Magus.

3

In Crowley’s pack, this Path connects Sephiroth 7 and 9.

4

In Crowley’s pack, this path connects Sephiroth 5 and 6, and is associated with Tarot Trump XI,

5

Lust. In Crowley’s pack, this Path connects Sephiroth 4 and 5, and is associated with Trump VIII, Adjustment. 6

In Crowley’s pack, this Path connects Sephirah 2 and 6, and is associated with Trump XVII, The

7

Star. 8 Notice that Keys 0, I, II, and III, all of which are above the Abyss, are identified with Planets rather than Signs. Hence they aren’t involved in successive incarnations, which occur in time, which is measured by the Signs. The first four Keys that represent Trumps, Keys 11-14, like the first three Sephiroth, Keys 1-3, are outside time, concerned with the Eternal and hence the true spark of divinity in each one of us, the part of us that connects us to God. That which is below the Abyss, however, is in time, and mortal, as opposed to that which is above the Abyss, which is immortal and outside time. The meaning of the Fall – life below the Abyss – is to some extent shown by this distinction. 9 Aleister Crowley defines Magick as “the Art and Science of causing changes in conformity with (True) Will.” He discusses this axiom and explores its implications in a great many of his books. See especially his Magick Without Tears (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1973), The Book of the Law (Liber Al vel Legis, A.K.A. Liber Al), available in numerous editions; and Magick (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1994). Nota bene: Qaballah, astrology, Alchemy, and other esoteric Arts and Sciences, all of which deal with the psychospiritual interrelationships between sentient beings and their environment and the biological and spiritual meanings of those interrelationships, are quintessential languages of ecology, in particular human ecology.

For an exegesis of the Atua and the Greater Trumps for examples of this principle, see Gareth Knight, A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1983), Vol. II. 10

In the Golden Dawn pack, these are respectively called Knight, Queen, Emperor, and Empress. In the Crowley/Harris pack, they are respectively called Knight, Queen, Prince, and Princess. 11

This has since been confirmed by Dr. Jeffrey M. Masson. Dr. Masson had been retained by the Freud Foundation in England to translate Freud’s private correspondence into English. In the course of carrying out this project, Dr. Masson found overwhelming evidence in the correspondence he was translating that Freud’s original theory, the “Seduction Theory” of the origin of psychoneurosis, had been based on solid data obtained from patients who had actually suffered the horrors they reported, rather than merely fantasizing them. For reasons that still aren’t entirely clear, Freud decided to suppress this evidence by constructing a different theory that denied the reality reported by his patients. These findings have since been corroborated by independent researchers. See, e.g., Jeffrey M. Masson, Against Therapy Monroe, ME: common Courage Press, 1994), The Assault on Truth: Freud’s Suppression of the Seduction Theory (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984), and A Dark Science: Women, Sexuality and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986); Alice Miller, Thou Shalt not be Aware: Society’s Betrayal of the Child (New York: Meridian Books, 1986); and Judith Lewis Herman, MD, Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic Books,1992). 12

Recent evidence suggests that the situation may be much more complex than was formerly supposed. For a given autosome (non-sexual chromosome), certain genes seem to be carried on that autosome only in one sex and not in the other. Or it may be that they can be carried on that autosome in both males and female, but their expression is suppressed in one gender and not in the other. Or perhaps during meiosis in ovaries or testicles, sex-cells (eggs or sperm) in which that gene is found on that autosome aren’t permitted to reproduce in one sex, but are in the other. Whatever the case may be, currently it isn’t clear what mechanism might cause or permit this. Nota bene: In The Book of Thoth pack by Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris, Trump XV, the Devil, clearly shows an assemblage of phallus and testicles. Superimposed on each testicle is the image of a cell undergoing mitosis, complete with chromosomes and the other cellular engines peculiar to this process; and swimming about inside each testicle, furthermore, are images of half-formed men and women, the premonitions of the individuals who might come about from the union of the sperm from the testicles with the ova of some woman or women. 13