I have just finished my first book on the Hermetic Qabalah and found it greatly interesting and a wonderful system to learn the archetypal mind as well as myriad of esoteric concepts. I have seen most people choosing the major arcana of the tarot to learn the archetypal mind. The qabalah seems to be the more complete system using not only the 10 Sephiroths but the 22 paths relating to tarot and astrological planets/constellations(Plus multitudes of other thing that i would be here all day stating)
Has anyone took it as a system of study here?
I have been studying Qabbalah for a number of years, keeping in mind there are different "versions" that have become prominent over time.
From my understanding they're 3 versions of Qabalah. The Judaic Kabbalah, the christian Cabalah and the Hermetic Qabalah. The later being the one i am most drawn to as it deals with the occult or magick tradition. Each of the 22 paths between the sephirot is connected to one of the 22 cards of the major arcana which doesn't seem to be the case in the Judaic tradition, although some have argued that the Torah is really based on the Tarot and such connections.
Have you studied the hebrew alphabet? It does seem to have a fair learning curve and i get the impression that most students of the Qabalah rely on reference tables such as those found in Crowleys Liber 777 and Mathers Kabbalah unveiled.
What tradition do you follow?
I don't follow any tradition, I study them each comparatively. As it was explained to me, you can look at the different Kabbalic systems as each having a different kind of function or have been built for a particular purpose. There are quite a few different ways to make use of the Tree of Life glyph.
I study it to discover its underlying archetypes and principles, working to understand the Tree of Life as a correspondence structure in which opposites can be harmonized and the low can attain to the high.
My study of Hebrew is slow going, mostly relating to Gematria at the moment although I am intending to get some calligraphy pens soon to get more intimate with the letters themselves. There are certain letters which I am more knowledgeable than others. I do not think Hebrew is necessary to know fluently in terms of language, but the letters should be known and their values, which is a task of remembrance in and of itself and is something I am still working on.
Right now I am engaged in a thorough study of the Golden Dawn system, they study Lurianic Kabbalah.
Sounds good, i assumed that the Golden Dawn followed the Hermetic Qabalah as it was the Hermetic order of the Golden dawn after all
. Gematria seems like an intensive study when you get into the scripture side of things, although my interests don't really lye in old texts i must say.
My understanding is that they teach a comparative approach, so while they do have a focus on the Hermetic aspect, the others are not shunned or looked down upon. I certainly am not so far in terms of studying scriptures, not really my thing, I guess I have a more practical approach to Gematria.
Matt1, what was the book?
I wouldn't say that the Tree of Life is a more complete system -- it all depends on what you consider "complete" to mean. The Tarot gives a more robust sense of each archetype as a whole, while the Tree of Life gives a more comprehensive picture of the relationships between them.
I am familiar with the Tree of Life, though the only books I've found on it that resonate are Golden Dawn oriented. Dion Fortune's Mystical Qabala is a good place to start with the spheres and Gareth Knight's A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism has a nice and detailed excursion into both the spheres and the pathways. Another good resource besides these two is the expanded version of Israel Regardie's A Garden of Pomegranates, which has "pathworkings" (symbol-rich astral journeys) into each of the 32 archetypes appended to the end of the book by it's "editors" the Ciceros. I guess they wanted to ride Rigardie's coattails rather than publish their own book.
I have tried many times to determine which pathways correspond to which Tarot images, and have not yet found a correspondence system that I'm happy with. It may be that they are impossible to directly transpose upon each other. Of course, this hasn't stopped Qabalists from trying. Ultimately, I decided that I was never going to know the answer until I chose a single system, identified the archetypes as clearly as possible, and then returned to the other system. The system I chose is the Tarot. I still haven't made it back to the Tree.
I think one of the greatest challenges is accepting that there is no single system of correspondences which is "correct", but rather there is a common principle underlying the use of the glyph itself, just as with the Tarot the consistency of there being 22 archetypes does not always yield the same archetypes in the same places.
Unbound Wrote:I think one of the greatest challenges is accepting that there is no single system of correspondences which is "correct"
I'm prepared to accept this if it is true, but I don't think I've reached a level of mastery where I can say one way or another. Until I'm very comfortable moving between the two systems, I'm happy to leave my judgment on this one up in the air.
Unbound Wrote:there is a common principle underlying the use of the glyph itself, just as with the Tarot the consistency of there being 22 archetypes does not always yield the same archetypes in the same places.
Of course. There is a component to the study which is necessarily subjective: we each have a unique perspective on this structure whose dimensions are beyond the scope of our total grasp. But the structure itself exists and
can be measured. Surely there is some means of measurement that we can commonly use (even if I don't know what it is). The boundary between the subjective and objective in any subject needs to be careful teased out. I've noticed that conversation about the archetypes doesn't always associate the same name with the same concept complex and I've often seen people (including Qabalists) mistake lesser deities for greater deities, so to speak.
So although I can accept the possibility that the systems are simply not directly compatible, I'm not yet convinced that this is so.
I am reading Will Parfitts book on the Kabbalah at the moment. The tarot seems to fit fine onto the glyph without any issue as far as i am aware. Thus you have the tarot cards relating to the 22 pathways as well as the Sephiroth to work with, this is why i say it seems to be a more complete system.
I started to study the "Qabalah" version in 2001 after my awakening but it was only at introductory level. I agree in that it seems a more comprehensive system where tarot and astrology are 'parts' of a whole.
Could more than one Social Memory Complex be involved also?
Here is an excerpt from Dion Fortunes "The Mystical Qabalah" (randomly opened on page 16)
It's worth noting that Carla mentioned this "wise lady" in book 5 of the Law of One.
Quote:14. "The universe is really a thought form projected from the mind of God. The Qabalistic Tree may be likened to a dream arising from the subconsciousness of God and dramatizing the subconscious content of Deity. In other words, if the universe is the conscious end product or the mental activity of the Logos, the Tree is the symbolic representation of the raw material of the Divine consciousness and of the processes whereby the universe came into being."
I was thinking before about Qabbalah but I didn't knew where to start. I've searched some, and indeed hermetic approach is most interesting and most detached from religious doctrine.
I've found by accident book:
Aryeh Kaplan-Sefer Yetzirah (A Book of Creation) - and I must admit it is quite intriguing.
Mr. Kaplan is surprisingly thoughtful in His interpretations and commentary.
I've decided to look deeper into it
So, Thanks Matt1 for this thread and directing my attention/focus
Matt1 Wrote:The tarot seems to fit fine onto the glyph without any issue as far as i am aware.
Yes, there are 22 cards and 22 pathways, but deciding which card is associated with which pathway is not as simple as it may seem at the outset. Unless you are willing to simply trust the correspondences that someone else has drawn (which I am not), then you must learn the harmonic signature of each card and each pathway and then decide which ones match.
While my familiarity with the harmonic signatures of the cards is just beginning to crystallize, I am still a beginner with the pathways. The spheres alone take long enough to absorb.
Matt1 Wrote:Thus you have the tarot cards relating to the 22 pathways as well as the Sephiroth to work with, this is why i say it seems to be a more complete system.
Again, on first glance this appears to be so, but the two systems were not originally conceived as one. It is therefore unwise to assume that they will match as neatly as the authors of books like to think they will. My experience with works by qabalists is that they generally see the cards as secondary to the pathways, so they force the cards to fit the conceptions they already have of the pathways. This would make the Tree, by definition, the more complete system. But if we approach each system on its own merits, then the question of which system is more complete is not as readily answered.
There seems to be the mythological founding of the Qabalah and the historical founding of it. However with what we know from Ra about the tarot i would say that the Israelites probably inherited the tarot from Egypt and developed it into the Qabalah in the slimier sense that the Egyptians developed the tarot from mixing Sumerian astrology and the teaching of Ra.
If i recall correctly Ra said the Golden Dawn material was useful and the Qabalah is a valid method for learning the archetypal mind. However i agree that it is difficult to draw any conclusions on the Hebrew alphabet/pathways and the tarot cards other than drawing on the work of hermetic societies. I have already noticed some disarrangement in my personal opinion of the cards/sephirot. However that being said it does seem to be a worthy system of study that will have the same end result.
Different correspondence systems have different purposes and functions. None are "right" or "wrong", they are operational.