One really interesting way to understand tarot card meanings is to investigate their relative positions on the tree of life. I’ll give you an example. Check out the three horizontal paths on the tree:

From the topmost (highest/purest energy) horizontal path, you have the Empress/Daleth. The middle path, just below the abyss, is Lust/Teth. Then the lowest path is The Tower/Pe. Given that the Empress is attributed to Venus and love, and an alternate name for The Tower is “War,” then you can see the way the purity of the concept degrades as you go down the tree:

Another example: The 2 and 3 of Cups are above the tree’s abyss, and Crowley calls them “Love” and “Abundance.” The 4 of Cups is the highest energy water card below the abyss, and it is called “Luxury.” Think about the statement being made, about the relative purity of love and abundance, versus luxury. Kinda neat. There are a lot of interesting relationships like that, encoded on the tree of life.

This is fascinating. As part of my Qabalah study, I’ve been wrestling with this issue of how the hebrew letters are assigned to tarot trumps, and further how they are mapped to paths on the Tree of Life. Different decks and traditions do it differently, you see. There are at least two annoying quirks about the way the Golden Dawn attributions work, which made me want to look around a bit.

So, I’m reading through this Aeclectic thread on the topic, and found a link to Mark Filipas’ work with the Tarot of Marseille. If you are too lazy to click the link, at least read this quote (which will probably give you the energy to click the link, if tarot scholarship interests you at all):

“Each trump, in effect, illustrates one Hebrew letter, in much the same way as a child’s English primer echoes “A is for apple” and “B is for boy”. Not only do the allegorical subjects exist in alphabetical sequence but virtually every item on each trump can be found with the same initial letter, suggesting the Tarot of Marseilles to be a “visual abecedarium” of the Hebrew alphabet.”

Wow… of course, I have to reserve judgement until I see the whole book, but I think that page convinced me to at least buy the book. It looks really cool.

Also, I was struck by this quote in the aforementioned aeclectic thread:

Several of the meanings we Tarotists associate with the 22 letter names are completely erroneous, such as he meaning “window” (which it does not), chet meaning “field” (which it does not), teth meaning “rod” or “snake” (which it does not), lamed meaning “ox-goad” (which it does not), and tzaddi meaning “fish-hook” (which it does not). These errors appear to have originated in the works of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century linguists (Court de Gebelin is included in this lot!) and were then taken up and promulgated by early occult Tarotists. The same errors are repeated in Tarot books being published today.

hmm… I think I need to learn more about this, as well…

I’ve had Qabalah coming at me from all directions lately, and I’m kinda liking it. I was particularly struck by a point made toward the front of Fortune’s book, Mystical Qabalah. It points out that many westerners go to eastern religions like Buddhism for deeper answers, but they’d often be better served by Qabalistic study. The reason is that mystical traditions are complex and strange enough as it is, and people looking east are adding a cultural gap on top of everything else.

It was funny to see that, since earlier that day I was thinking that looking east would actually be an advantage! My thought was that you look for deeper answers because you aren’t satisfied with what you’ve been exposed to. I have some built-in prejudices against the western/Christian traditions based on years of “give us money” sermons and catholic schooling. So, I was worrying that adding Jewish/Christian roots to my esoteric study might ruin it for me.

But, so far, that is not the case! I am really enjoying the intro material I’m reading. Also, the tarot meditations suggested in Living the Qabalistic Tarot have been enlightening. I should write up some of the things I’ve been learning as I to through the Thoth majors. But, that is for another post…