Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Tarot: Hebrew Letters Attributed to the Trumps

I am delighted to announce that I have had a resolution of a query I have had with tarot for ever. I see that I wrote about the difficulty four years ago and have only come to any resolution by the chance discovery of a website today.
The problem has been to find a system of Hebrew letters attribution for the Major Arcana. A major reason for this problem has been my own insistence that aleph should be given to the Magician because his body forms the letter's shape (as opposed to the Golden Dawn's insistence that the Fool should be aleph - apart from my own stubbornness that their system was wrong, the Golden Dawn attributions otherwise made sense). This of course left me with the problem of where to put the fool. And I was not comfortable with the way McGregor Mathers arbitrarily placed him at position 20.
I have been delighted to find the website of Mark Filipas. I don't buy his theory that the tarot was created as a sort of Hebrew ABC but I think his attributions are spot on. He also uses mediaeval Hebrew to explain the connections and places the Fool right at the end. The only difficulty with the Rider Waite deck is that he's using the Marseille deck and of course Justice and Strength are the other way round.
What is the importance of this? I maintain the tarot started life as a game but one built on the world surrounding it, and a part of the world was the kabbalistic world view which underlies the philosophy eventually connected to the tarot when it became an occult tool. Filipas makes the point that the world view can also be seen in the chess set. For the reader the underlying meaning of the Hebrew letters provides an insight into the reading, as well as having a magical power in their own right.

4 comments:

  1. I don't really know what to say about the repositioning of the Fool except that I'm pleased you've found a resolution.

    In other matters, in a twist of fate, I think blogger may have eaten or spammed my comments on your Tarot Drama and John Travolta posts? What I find interesting about your link to the four year old post is that it's set to the mobile view, rather than the web view - something you touched upon in the 'Drama' post and that I commented on (if memory serves...). Anyway, I see what you mean about the layout, now.

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    Replies
    1. Strangely not spammed at all, I found them sitting in the awaiting moderation box but Blogger just didn't email me to let me know...

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    2. I recall someone at mine saying something about rubbish or non-existent comment notification emails - something to do with the recent changes, I think?

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