AUTHOR'S NOTE: The Qabalistic Tree of Life presents three triangles in its symbolic architecture, one with the apex pointing upward and two pointing down. Here I've adapted these triangles to the three-card tarot reading. In the cases of Fire and Air I introduced the "hidden knowledge" of Da'ath (to which I've assigned the nebulous planet … Continue reading Qabalistic Triplets: Adapting the Triangles of the Tree of Life to the Three-Card Tarot Reading
Qabalistic Theory
The “Equal-Opportunity” Skeptic
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Those of us who follow a qabalistic approach to the esoteric tarot recognize that the roots of our study and practice lie in Hebrew religious mysticism that has been adapted for ritual use by the 19th-Century Hermetic occultists of the Western Mystery Tradition. We may invoke the words and concepts but we don't … Continue reading The “Equal-Opportunity” Skeptic
A Confluence of Perfection: The Hermit by Threes
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Several years ago I came across the revelation that the numbers Three, Six and Nine represent the "Three Perfections" of ancient Greek (or possibly Hindu) philosophy. I was unable to discover the historical source of this information, but the idea has stuck with me. The "magic number" in the following meditation is the … Continue reading A Confluence of Perfection: The Hermit by Threes
Mental Over-steering: Mercury and the Tarot Eights
AUTHOR'S NOTE: In the Book of Thoth Aleister Crowley expounds at length on the fact that the Sevens and Eights are unbalanced, "low down on the Tree and off the middle pillar." In the case of the Eights they represent an over-emphasis on intellectual rationalizing divorced from the more mystical, intuitive and fluid outlook of … Continue reading Mental Over-steering: Mercury and the Tarot Eights
The Problem of Pronunciation
" . . . the relationship among letters, words and reality is potent, magical and central to human life." (Isabel Kliegman, in Tarot and the Tree of Life) The truth of this quote is apparent in the lives of those for whom the spoken word seems to be vital to their sense of self-identity beyond … Continue reading The Problem of Pronunciation
An Apostate in the Woodpile
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm now re-reading Isabel Kliegman's Tarot and the Tree of Life, which has a nicely detailed explanation of the core principles and potentialities of the "Kabbalistic" Tree (as distinct from the "Qabalistic" rendition of Western occultism). But this chapter has rekindled much of my early aversion to the fundamentally religious model when compared … Continue reading An Apostate in the Woodpile
The Tens: A “Holding Pattern”
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I won't regale you with where I got the raw material for this essay; suffice it to say that it's "of a piece" with my last dozen "sourced" ideas. The Tens of the Minor Arcana have been described as representing a "cessation of effort" while awaiting new information or a fresh impulse to … Continue reading The Tens: A “Holding Pattern”
The “Active Witness” and the Minor Arcana
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here is another interesting observation from Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Way of Tarot. In it he notes that, when a "pip" card of the Tarot de Marseille exhibits a red dot or figurative "eye," the symbol represents an "active (that is, actively involved) witness" to the action signified by the card. This idea inspired … Continue reading The “Active Witness” and the Minor Arcana
The Sixes as “Solar Centerpiece”
I recently reconnected with an idea I had forgotten about from my previous studies: adding together the integers of certain sets of three consecutive numbers from One to Nine (and, if necessary, refining the sum through "Theosophical reduction") will always yield the number Six. The same is true of the double-digit trump cards, and actually … Continue reading The Sixes as “Solar Centerpiece”
Tarot: Three Gods in One?
Yesterday I came across a brief discussion of the Qabalistic numerology of the tarot. It involved an analysis of the Hebrew four-lettered "name of God," Jehovah, and the fact that its letters, Yod, He, Vau, He (written right to left) enumerate to 26. The premise was that since the number of cards in a tarot … Continue reading Tarot: Three Gods in One?
Parsifal's Wheel Tarot & Astrology 