The Revived Tarot
Identifying the Blinds and Decrypting the Code of the Tarot
In modern terms, we might say that the symbolic code (the images of the twenty-two trumps, which are a substitution code for the letters of the Hebrew alphabet) was further protected with an encryption key: at least nine trumps were scrambled in three different patterns. To make these patterns easier to see, it is only necessary to return to the source code. Validating the 12 Zodiacal Signs and 3 Mother Letters against the Sepher Yetsira The fact that fifteen Tarot trumps correspond exactly to the numerical and astrological symbolism of their Hebrew letters as specified in classical texts is as interesting as the fact that seven do not. Our first step is to check the positions of the zodiacal trumps against their Hebrew formative letters according to the Sepher Yetsira. The 19th century redactors of tarot wisdom knew only one Tarot: the Tarot de Marseille. Thus, they were working with a source with three distinct systems of "blinds" or deliberately obscured orderings:
First, the case of clear astrological conflict which actually produced a change in the order. Having a lion on the letter Lammed/Libra and a scales on the letter Tayt/Leo was a little too obvious. The only zodiacal anomaly seems meant as an obvious clue that the order is encrypted in the planetary trumps.
If so, it wasn't taken when the Golden Dawn canonified the swap of Strength and Justice, though the only reason to change the postion of those two is to make them conform to classical understanding of the attributions of the zodiacal signs to the Hebrew letters. Of course it is much easier to swap a planet than a constellation, which would have been much harder for even a post-classical public to accept. The codifiers of the Tarot were faced with the problem of reconciling the clear symbolic correspondences of the Tarot images to the classical and Hebrew Yetziratic attributions of the planets and signs to the Hebrew twenty-two letter alphabet. So instead of putting Libra after Cancer, they moved Strength and Justice.
Correcting that problem left these trumps mis-aligned with the classical attributions accepted by the Strength-Justice swap.
The Empress-Tower Contradiction A feminine symbol of nature on Dallet/Mars and a symbol of conflict and destruction on Pay/Venus is as problematic as Strength/Scales and Justice/Lion and should have provoked the obvious swap. Instead, in a failure to think even inside the box, the Golden Dawn changed the planets attributed to the Hebrew letters. Even a brief glance at the phonosemantic associations of the letters Dallet ("d") and Phay ("p/f") demonstates the dyslexia of Empress/Dallet and Tower/Pay. Which card looks like those letters to you?
The Magician-Sun-Wheel-Highpriestess-Universe Shuffle The prima-facie contradictions in the astrological symbolism of the Tarot in relationship to either classical understanding or original Jewish sources were equally unbearable and were taken care of by changing the planetary attribution of their Hebrew formative letters for Mathers' "new secret order." In the first case, Stength and Justice, the cards were changed. In the second (the seven doubles) the semiotic structure of the Hebrew alphabet was changed to accord with the inherited order of the Tarot cards. It might seem like a good idea (if we are founding a secret society and calling ourselves magicians) to arbitrarily move planets (and, in effect whole celestial spheres) to justify the inherited sequence and make Bayt, for instance, form Mercury instead of Saturn and make Raysh form the Sun instead of Mercury, but those changes can't be correlated or justified at any other level of the text. Back | Contents | Next
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