Origins of the Marseilles Tarot Deck

One of first tarot decks that I possessed was the Marseilles Tarot deck, although I opted for other more modern and artistic versions of the tarot soon after I started down the road of being a reader and teller of fortunes. I was introduced to the tarot by borrowing and using someone else’s deck, which was the Swiss Tarot deck, and then immediately I was able to read them without much study. For some reason the symbology spoke to me, and I was able to give others and myself accurate readings. Soon after, I was given my own deck to use, and that started a long term relationship that has had no interruptions. You see, I was sixteen when I got my first tarot deck and I was just beginning to become acquainted with Witchcraft and ritual magic. At the time, I had felt that I was discovering an important part of my own internal mystery, and that a deeper study over time only made the tarot even more powerful for me.

I used several tarot decks, particularly the Morgan Greer Tarot, but I wasn’t in awe of the designs or the artwork because it seemed abbreviated and omitted important symbology. It wasn’t until I saw my first copy of the Crowley-Harris Tarot deck that I was quite inspired and used that deck, after finally purchasing a copy,  exclusively for many years. Then a close friend introduced me to the Voyager Tarot deck back in the late 1980's, which I presently use today, although it is now out of print. I still work with the Crowley-Harris Tarot, and I also have a fondness for the Waite-Smith-Rider Tarot deck, especially the pip cards, which have vignettes depicting meaningful, visual attributes of the cards. However, I have never forgotten the Marseilles Tarot deck because I felt that it was the very first tarot that had occultic undertones. I had seen earlier hand painted tarot decks, or tarocchi decks, as they were Italian, and obviously based on the more basic playing cards that had become vogue during the early 15th century, when paper card stock and printing became available in the West.

While I did not have much in the way of any historical reference, I just intuited that the Marseille Tarot deck was the earliest version that was obviously based on occultism, since the symbology had subtlety but remarkably changed from all earlier versions of the Tarocchi decks. While the typical version of the Marseille Tarot deck displayed a kind of primitive or crude artwork, an earlier version of that tarot deck (Vachier Tarot de Marseille, 1639 CE) was graphically and artistically superior. For some reason, the later popular version of that tarot deck used the crude artwork, possibly to disguise the importance of the symbology, or to make it appear more harmless than it was. I suspected that the Marseille Tarot deck had its origins in the port city of Marseilles, probably in the early 17th century, and the artwork was produced by some unknown artist. I didn’t believe that the occult tarot was a creation of French occultists in the late 18th century, as modern academics such as Dummett and others had hypothesized. I didn’t have any proof as to when and where the Marseille Tarot had its origin, but I believed that it was older than the late 18th century. Little did I imagine that the actual history of the Marseille Tarot was being tracked down by a singular scholar, and that the true history would be even more interesting than what I had assumed.

Then I came across the book “Two Esoteric Tarots” where Caesar Pedreros interviews the authors and amateur historians Peter Mark Adams and Christophé Poncet, who discuss what they discovered when researching the sources and symbolism of the Sola Busca Tarocchi and the Marseille Tarot, respectively. These decks are artistically similar, and also unlike the other tarocchi decks of the time. Their painstaking research pushed the origin of these two decks back to the 1490's, where the Marseille tarot was the precursor to the Sola Busca tarocchi, and that the Sola Busca was likely modeled on the Marseille tarot. The style of the artwork and the themes employed in the trump cards appeared to localize them to Italy, which was at the forefront of art, literature, the rediscovery of Plato and the Hermetic Corpus in Europe, and the study of esotericism, natural magic and the occult. Perhaps the most illuminated thinker of that time is the one person who had translated both the Hermetic Corpus and Plato from the Greek to Latin, and that was Marsilo Ficino, who was employed as a scholar by the Medici family. While the typical artistically rendered tarocchi playing cards contained tropes and motifs that would later be used in the more occult versions, the imagery and content can be safely placed firmly in the mid 15th century. It was in that time that the advent of an occult version of the tarot had its birth.

Christophé’s historical search and journey led him to Italy, based on the supposition that an enterprise such as creating an occult tarot would have required designers, artists, engravers and printers, and it would have been a costly endeavor that would have taken a few years to have produced results. It is likely that Ficino oversaw the design of the tarot, along with Cristoforo Landino, and the artistic inspirations can be traced to Sandro Botticelli, whose known artwork like the House of God and the Devil as illustrated in the Landino version of the Dante’s Divine Comedy resembles the tarot trumps of the same name. Other possible contributors were the Veronese artisan and artist Felice Feliciano, and the engravers, printers, and the family that bankrolled this endeavor, the Medici, probably with other allied wealthy backers. This endeavor was kept strictly secret and discrete, since such a publicized endeavor would have come to the notice of the Inquisition. Once the playing cards were fully developed, we can imagine Ficino’s Academe would have developed methods for using them, playing “Platonic games”, as obliquely described in one of Ficino’s works.

While this is all supposition because no records of this endeavor exist, there are too many points in common to the artists and the scholars involved to dismiss it. Since the Sola Bosca Tarocchi was developed soon after the Marseille Tarot, and it appeared to borrow a number of formulations from that tarot deck, and its noted place of origin, Ferrara, is nearby to Florence, even though it was produced for the exclusive purview of a wealthy and eccentric Venetian nobleman named Marin Sanudo, it was an early part of the family of occult tarot decks. The Marseille deck was an illuminating, upbeat, and an optimistic work, while the Sola Busca was darker, grotesque, and distinctly antinomian. 

What we have, then, is the place of origin and a time for the first occult Tarot to be conceived and produced, although its origin was in Italy instead of Marseilles. Still, the greatest esoteric and occult minds of the Florentine intelligentsia helped to create this Tarot deck, and it found its way into the public, and likely entered France via the Mediterranean port of Marseilles. The whole purpose behind allowing the occult tarot to spread into common usage was to seed the populous with the occult and Hermetic/Platonic imagery so as to communicate them with any who was insightful or educated enough to recognize and interpret these symbolic forms. It was a book of imagery that would spread the impressions and teachings of Renaissance enlightenment through the medium of the ancient symbolized wisdom of Hermeticism and Neoplatonism.  

This form of communication allowed for its developers to express very heretical beliefs and ideals without the possibility of being identified and severely punished by the church, which would have been their fate if they had published these ideas in books. However, over time, the actual occultic meaning of the cards became obscure and then lost, and the use of these kind of cards was centralized to only a few locations, most notably, France.

The French have always seemed to have been enamored with the Marseille deck since it first came out, and savants of the late 18th century recognized the arcane nature of the Tarot and heavily speculated on the meaning and the source of the cards. It was Court de Gebelin in 1781 who famously pointed out that the Tarot seemed to have its origin in ancient Egypt and embodied a secret teaching, and whose numerous writings ultimately made the Marseille Tarot famous and popular once again. Other and later occultists, such as Eliphas Levi and Papus lionized the Tarot and sought to link it with the recently popularized Qabalah. 

When the secret order of the Golden Dawn took the Marseille Tarot and redeveloped it, with an honored place along with their writings and teachings on the Qabalah, it bloomed anew, and when that literature was finally published and made public, it produced an explosion of interest in the Tarot, and therein began the process of designing and artistically rendering new and more modern versions. Crowley had already published his own versions of this Golden Dawn literature on the Tarot, and even designed his own version and commissioned Frieda Harris to paint it, although it was never published as a deck of cards until thirty years after his death. A Golden Dawn version of the Tarot had been designed by Waite and artistically executed by Pamela Cole Smith. Later versions of the Golden Dawn Tarot appeared, although long after the original order had passed away. In the 1960's and 70's several new versions of the Tarot appeared, and every decade since has seen many more published. 

Still, it is important that occultists reintroduce the symbolic context that was originally incorporated into the symbology of the Marseille Tarot. Christophé  Poncet and Peter Mark Adams are working to that very end. Christophé  will be publishing a singular work identifying and describing the symbology of the Marseille Tarot, and Peter Mark Adams has written a book titled “The Game of Saturn” where he sought to unravel the symbology of the Sola Bosca Tarocchi. Both authors admit that their work is in its initial stages and that some of the symbology hidden in the tarot may never be fully understood. 

What I have found fascinating is that much of the original intent of the Hermetic and Occult Tarot has been preserved in the basic symbology that seems almost universal, inspiring our modern imaginations, and the continual use that this divinatory tool has undergone for centuries makes it a living spiritual being. We may never know all of the original symbology and the knowledge employed behind it, but we will invent and derive what we do not know, so long as the Tarot is being used to peer into the unknown that veils our souls and our greater destiny. Its spirit is there to teach and guide us, if we can only learn to listen and apprehend its subtlety. 

Frater Barrabbas 

Transcendentalism vs Transcendental States of Consciousness

I have been reading about a kind of back-and-forth argument between magicians about the usefulness of Platonism and the Qabalah, the fact that Neoplatonic models espouse a transcendental reality that ultimately devalues the material world, and that a practical approach to magic should use the more archaic Shamanic, immanent world view. I find that I agree somewhat with both sides, since I can see where a transcendental perspective is useful as well as an immanent one. They look at spiritual reality from two different points of view, but their source is one and the same. I believe that religions in the west tend to emphasize the transcendental aspects of deity and reality over the immanent, even though the foundation of Christianity has the Deity defined with both attributes. It is a discussion that has no real resolution, and from a completely practical perspective, it belies the fact that the practice of magic generally produces transcendental states of consciousness.

I have never had much of head for either philosophy or higher mathematics, but practical logic and critical thinking skills were something that I learned early on, mostly by making mistakes and blundering my way through life. A friend of mine likened this argument to a confusion between ontology and epistemology, which is to say it is an argument between the nature of the universe as it really is, which none can fully know, and as it is perceived by all of us. We all have our opinions, but they are based on what we have experienced and what we know, individually and also collectively. From a purely practical perspective, this argument is hollow and fairly meaningless. Models, paradigms, constructs, and analogues all suffer from the limitations that they use analogy to describe something that is beyond description - what is seen and understood by the Eye of Spirit vs. the Eye of the Mind. The only thing that I think is essential is to understand that the analogy is not the thing that it describes. Models are useful tools, but they really don’t share in the numen of the thing represented unless we load them with mythic and mystic qualities. Doing that deviates from the usefulness of the model, and human nature being what it is, we are often mistaking the operational tool for the reality it represents.

My rule of thumb is to use whatever model works, but don’t over use them. Don’t try to extend a model to be universal, since it will then fail as a useful tool. When models or tools fail to explain something that you have experienced then it is time to either adapt another model or to create one based wholly on that experience. It is the nature of the human creature to name things, and to make meaning and connect things into a context when there is none. I see this as a way of enrichening the experience and significance of one’s reality, but it can also be a way of fictionalizing whole areas of our lives. Sometimes it is important to simply see something without any kind of narrative. I am beginning to discover that having that ability is the best approach.

The discussion of different models or perspectives at work in the world of the magician as a form of ontology seems to miss the whole nature of magic itself in that it produces paranormal experiences and generates transcendental states of consciousness. This seems to be true no matter what kind of magic is performed, whether low or high magick. In some ways this propensity for paranormal states of consciousness may be what attracts some folk into either learning to practice this art themselves or to hire someone who can do this for them. The field of consciousness of magic is full of paranormal phenomena and varying degrees of transcendental states of consciousness. Mystical and religious practices appear to produce the same kinds of phenomena and states of consciousness, and perhaps this is the basis of the religious and philosophical perspective on transcendentalism. Meditation and religious rites, or magic, produces these states in abundance, so therefore the spiritual world and the nature of deity itself must be transcendental, further postulating that these states are quite beyond all material reality.

As a ‘nuts and bolts’ kind of practical magician, I wonder if this is a case where a model or a constructive paradigm was used beyond its scope of usefulness, since in order to believe it is to reject the whole aspect of spirit and deity that is immanent, or that is within each and everyone of us. However, I have found that the transcendental states that I have experienced in magic has led me to see the nature of deity and spirit both within and all around me. It is to say that my dealings with spirit and magic have taught me that an exclusive adherence to either immanent or transcendent definitions of reality is too limiting. The true reality is somewhere in between or something altogether different, and it defies a neat model or convenient philosophy to explain it. Here again approaching this phenomena with an open and unbiased mind is the best approach.

Use what is useful, but don’t overuse it. Don’t rely too much on one theory in exclusion to others. Be open to contradictory evidence, and don’t be afraid to be wrong about practically everything at some point or another. Practice the magic and experience it fully, and be mindful of what is really going on inside you. Question everything you read, hear or experience. Base your opinions on the results of a thoughtful analysis of your actual experiences instead of what you have read or learned from others.

Frater Barrabbas

Novemberist Work - Where Did the Year Go?

Here it is, the end of November, and I have not yet gotten into the temple to do some magickal work. I had to make a business trip early this month, and then traveled down to Milwaukee to see my brother just before the Thanksgiving holidays. I also had to focus on getting the final set of edits done on my manuscript for the book project, “Qabalah for Beginners,” and that took most of the month as well. Not only did I have to produce a finished copy of the manuscript for submission, but I also had to supply the tables, timeline and examples of the 22 diagrams. Luckily, I found representations on the internet for what I want Llewellyn to produce for the diagrams, so I included them with a document that gave further instructions for each. The whole mass of documents, spreadsheets and pictures were bundled up into a zip file and sent off to Llewellyn for their perusal and inspection. 

 

We’ll see how things develop from this point on. I have successfully produced the required manuscript and materials as my contract required, so now it’s in the hands of the editors and the publication committee. They could reject the book and decide not to publish it, but I doubt that will happen. I suspect that what will happen will be a round of revisions and rewrites, and then it will be assembled for publication. I am expecting myself to be quite fast and efficient in the turnaround process associated with the rewrite phase, so maybe the book might be published in the autumn of 2012, or perhaps in the Spring of 2013. That’s a lot of time, so I will be working on other projects in the interim.

By the way, I just wanted to wish everyone a happy holiday season, starting with last week’s U.S. celebration of Thanksgiving. I have a number of things to be thankful for, and I stated these when my girlfriend and I had a feast of roast duck with a cherry sauce, wild rice, cranberry fruit salad,  and brandied carrots. It was a different sort of thanksgiving dinner than is regionally typical, but it was filling (yet not too filling) and also quite delicious. I said that I was thankful for my wonderful relationship, loving critters (four cats and a dog) and steadfast employment. Of course there are many other things that I am thankful for, but these three seemed to top the list.

I have been periodically communicating with John Michael Greer, and he had highly recommended a book for me to read, so I purchased it and am reading it now. I have always wanted to examine the Neoplatonic roots for modern occultism, but found that it was a very complex topic to examine. JMG has made that process much easier for me by recommending the book “Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus” written by Gregory Shaw (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995). I must say that I am enjoying reading this book, and I am also discovering that a number of very important occult concepts which I have long held are actually derived from Iamblichus’s work. I decided that it would be useful for me to remark on some of the more salient points as I carefully read the book, chapter by chapter. I might also add that this is not an easy book to read, and sometimes I need to use my Classical Greek dictionary to get at the roots of some term that is being used (and not adequately defined). It would seem that Mr. Shaw expects his readers to be much more knowledgeable of Plato’s works and the core issues of Neoplatonism than I have at my disposal. Since I lack this knowledge, I have had to do some ancillary study to make complete sense out of what I am reading. Even so, I have found this book to quite illuminating so far. I could go so far as to recommend it to my readers as a book that they should look over in their studies.

For many years I have been told by various savants that the roots to modern occultism, and even witchcraft and paganism are to be found in tenets of Neoplatonism. I have long regarded this idea as a great truth that I have not had the time or opportunity to adequately verify. I just accepted it as true without knowing the exact details. At this time in my studies, I feel that I need to finally examine this topic as thoroughly as I am able, even though I might lack a deep understanding and knowledge of classical philosophy. I have read over some of Plato’s dialogues, but not to the detailed level or with the required understanding that would make acquiring the knowledge of Neoplatonism an easy process.

I envy those occultists who have a classical education and are fluent with the writings of Plato, especially if that knowledge includes being able to read his works in classical Greek. Having a smidgeon of Greek and a rusty and ill used knowledge of Latin does put me at a slight disadvantage. Some of the various quotes that scholarly authors like to put into their published works includes languages that I regrettably don’t know, such as French, Italian or German. So I stumble along, and if I need to decipher an important and cryptic quotation made in another language, I will attempt to parse it myself or use some other online translation process. I suppose that if I were truly qualified to study this material and expound on it, then I would have already mastered these other languages. So what I will do is just attempt to distill some important points in the language that I am quite familiar with, which is English.

One thing that has always put me off from accepting Neoplatonism is its assertion that material existence is somehow debasing, or that the material cosmos is to be considered either inferior or controlled by demonic powers. This idea and opinion has a kind of prominence in Christianity (prior to St. Thomas Aquinas) and also was well developed in a number of forms of Gnosticsm. That some forms of Christianity still devalue the material world could explain why certain sects are predisposed into believing in an immanent apocalypse, which would make all forms of conservation seem irrelevant. I believe that it has fostered a deep sense of disrespect for the Earth, or that it is somehow irrelevant or even contrary to spiritual redemption. This negative impression of nature and the material universe has always puzzled me, since it’s not part of my thinking in regards to my pagan religious beliefs. Yet even so, I have found that this kind of thinking has unwittingly infected even my beliefs, based as they are on a modern paganism. That it was popular amongst the Greek intellectual pagans of antiquity (and by extension, to the entire Roman world) to believe that the material world was defective and life was not worth living seems to be in conflict with what I would have thought as a healthy form of paganism. Perhaps this pessimism could be summed up by a famous quote of Sophocles, who was amongst the more brilliant and creative minds of the 5th century BCE.
 
“Not to be born is, past all prizing, best; but, when a man hath seen the light, this is next best by far, that with all speed he should go thither, whence he hath come.” - Sophocles (Oedipus at Colonus)

This latent pessimism can also be found, although ambiguously, in two of Plato’s famous dialogues, which were the “Phaedo” and the “Phaedrus.” I have said ambiguous because the very opposite opinion can be derived from Plato’s other famous dialogue, the “Timaeus.” For some reason, Plato believed that from a cosmic perspective, the material world was good and that human beings had a soul that was fully engaged in the process of creation; but from an individual and psychological perspective, he saw human nature as trapped and imprisoned in matter. This ambiguity caused a major schism in Neoplatonism, with the philosophers Plotinus and Porphyry taking the ultimate stand that matter was inherently negative, and the opposite was taken up by Iamblichus, that matter, and the cosmos which it represented, was positive. For Plotinus and Porphyry, the soul did not fully descend into the body, and that it was up to the philosopher to forge a pathway that would allow for a complete escape from material existence. Like Sophocles, they seemed to believe that the material world was the domain of demonic forces, and that not to be born at all was a better fate for the human soul. Of course this perspective seemed to feed some gnostic cults, whose anti-cosmic beliefs were based in part on the Neoplatonism of Plotinus and Porphyry.

Porphyry’s doctrine of the undescended soul was the ultimate conclusion of this rather negative perspective. Even though this idea was not to be found in any of Plato’s dialogues, the Neoplatonists, starting with Plotinus and continuing with his student, Porphyry, seemed to accept this tenet as a great truth. An undescended soul represented the implied fact that the human soul was identical to the divine Nous (thought). It represented that humans were locked in a material existence and were bereft of any spiritual connection with the divine. The solution to the problem of material existence was to sever that partial connection between the soul and the body, which would have been to the undisputed benefit of the soul against the body. Additionally, to be redeemed, therefore, one had to escape from the cosmos of matter. Porphyry went so far as to say that the wise philosopher shouldn’t even participate in traditional or civic festivals, such as sacrifices and other religious celebrations of the time, because they were tied to the powers of nature, which were controlled and directed by inferior demonic gods. In taking this stand, he seemed to advocate the division of the sensible cosmos from the noetic, proposing a world of extreme dualism. 

However, in my opinion, this perspective of the world of matter as being the source of evil for the human condition presents a tenet that I would have to reject out of hand. In my experience, life is a mixed bag, and it is, to a certain extent, based on the motivations and expectations of the individual, as well as their outcome. I believe, to a certain degree, in the power of self-determination and the ability to transform and change, not only the individual, but even the world at large. The philosophy of Plotinus and Porphyry would seem to paint the material world as a kind of prison for the soul, where the mechanisms of fate (as determined by a negative astrology) and the extreme limitations and suffering of life would ensure that most of humanity could never evolve or even be capable of any kind of spiritual transformation. That seems too pessimistic for me, and there is nothing in my life experience that would even support it. As a naive optimist, I believe that everyone has at their disposal the mechanism of ascension and the realization of the Godhead.

For this reason I have found myself shying away from Neoplatonism and its philosophical creed, that is, until I discovered that Iamblichus broke completely from his predecessors and stated the opposite position - that matter is an important part of the greater good. While it is undeniable that material existence imparts suffering and trials, it can also be said that maintaining a balance between material desires and drives, and the desires and aspirations of the soul and the intellect is the key to a harmonious and fruitful existence. One of the ways of establishing that balanced relationship is through a religious life, and most particularly, the practice of theurgy.

Theurgy is defined as the “work of the gods,” and that work consists of invoking the powers of the physical cosmos, and through a linkage with the divine, cause a state of union to exist between the soul of the individual and the World Soul. Theurgy allows a fully embodied soul to engage the divine powers hidden in matter, and to thereby realize the paradoxical nature of human existence, which is that it is both mortal and immortal. Theurgy aids the soul of the individual practitioner to directly participate in the creation and salvation of the cosmos - to precipitate the ultimate union of the many into the One. The goal of theurgy, then, is to assist human beings to gain union with the One, which is a form of spiritual ascension. The World Soul, or Anima Mundi, is analogous to the soul of the individual and the ultimate expression of the One (the Unity of All Being). As Plato said in his dialogues, the world is a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence and is therefore, an intermediary of the Gods and the One. I think that many pagans can easily identify this concept of a World Soul with the modern concept of the Gaian eco-consciousness.

As Iamblichus has stated in his book, “De Mysteriis:”

“And thus, from on high to the lowest things, the Egyptian doctrine concerning principles (archai) begins from the One and proceeds into multiplicity, and the multitudes in turn is governed by the One; and everywhere the indefinite nature is ruled by a certain and defined measure and by the highest uniform cause of all things”

What Iamblichus is saying is that there is an unbroken continuity between the divine and the material world, since matter is divinely created and therefore is dominated by the One.

Theurgy, according to Iamblichus, has two basic functions. The first is that it consists of rituals conducted by mankind that assist in preserving the natural order. The second is that these rites are empowered by divine symbols, which causes the human spirit to ascend to the level of the Gods, and thereby to join with them. This is what is known as “taking the shape of the Gods.” A theurgist is simultaneously mortal and immortal, both man and god, and through theurgy, he or she becomes an icon (what I call an imago or eidolon) and an incarnated symbol of the divine. In this manner, a human practitioner of theurgy becomes powerfully aligned with the World Soul, and becomes fully awakened to his/her augoeides soma, or star-body.

What this means is that the ultimate purpose of performing ritual magick must be the revelation of the higher self as the augoeides, or holy guardian angel, and through it, to consciously exist as the mediator of the divine agencies of the One. Whatever else a practicing magician might attempt or seek to materialize, this ultimate goal represents what he or she will eventually achieve. I think that to state the overall premise of being a magician, and performing magickal rites and workings, is that it is a process of ascension and union with the One. It would seem to perfectly represent what I have been maintaining all along, and it makes sense as a pagan and a witch. It also likely makes sense as an esoteric Christian as well.

These are some of the concepts that I am examining and analyzing from this wonderful book, and I will be discussing other important elements as I read and digest them. What I am seeing from this information is that the Neoplatonism of Iamblichus would seem to agree with how I perceive ritual magick and pagan occultism. I guess you could say that I owe a great debt of gratitude to JMG for directing my attention to this book.

Frater Barrabbas

Qabbalah For Pagans and Witches - Part 2

Practical Qabbalah

We have examined the ten sephirah and the structure of the Tree of Life, and we have seen how the thirty-two categories of the sephiroth and paths can be used as a powerful table of correspondences. What are the other practical uses for the Qabbalah that might be used by a ritual magician?

There are three techniques of practical Qabbalah that are very important for magickal work. The first method is a form of numerology that ascribes numeric values for the letters of the Hebrew Alphabet and tabulates them - it is called Gematria.

The concept that letters are also numbers may seem a bit foreign to us, with our present distinct set of numbers used apart from letters. Yet the numbering system that we use today, which is of Arabic and Hindu origin, was also derived originally from letters, except, of course, the brilliant addition of the number zero. This Arabic/Hindu numbering system has completely supplanted earlier and more primitive systems of numeration based on letters or tallies (Roman numerals). A vestige of the Arabic source of our numbering system is that numbers are tabulated from right to left, which is the direction that Semetic letters have been written using the Syrian or Arabic alphabet.

Still, the Greeks and Hebrews utilized their alphabets as both systems of numeration and writing. It’s possible that this relationship was only deliberately manipulated later on, but a form of numerology was developed by the occult literati of the time. They did this by using only certain examples of an obscure relationship between numbers, letters and words, since only certain examples were meaningful, while the rest were merely arbitrary.

To find the occult number associated with a word, the Qabbalist would total up the numbers associated with each letter. This operation could also be done to phrases, as well as proper names. A Qabbalist could then make some judgements based upon the number associated with words, phrases or proper names. Thus it was believed that words which had the same numeric value also had the same corresponding meaning. For instance, the Hebrew word AHBH (beloved), which has the individual letter values of 1, 5, 2, and 5, when added together, is associated with the occult number 13.

Additionally, the Hebrew word AChD (unity), which has the values 1, 8, and 4, when added together also produces the occult number of 13. A Qabbalist would then contemplate upon the subtle interconnection between the words “beloved” and “unity,” noting their analogy, and that they could be interchanged as formula key-words in a ritual.

The number 13 is then given the significance of the two words (beloved, unity) whose numeric value are equivalent, so the number 13 now has these additional attributes other than just being a number. Using this numerologic methodology, the Qabbalist would produce a book of numbers and their associated words (Sepher Sephiroth). This book of numbers would show the numeric values of all of the important words, such as phrases from the holy books as well as the various names of the Godhead, Angels, Demons and other spirits.  Looking into such a book, a Qabbalist would also find other words associated with the number 13, such as Hated - AYB, Emptiness - BHV, and a Locust - ChGB, and many others.

All of These words would be used together to build up a set of attributes for each number, although it would be quite difficult to determine a specific unified meaning amongst so many diverse words, phrases and names. Noting the above collection of words associated with the value of 13, I myself would find it impossible to think up a single semantic meaning that would fit all of these words. Still, in theory, that is how one would complete a Sepher Sephiroth, by creating a semantic structure for a full range of numbers and words. Generally, a Qabbalist will choose the words associated with a specific number that has the most significance, and then ignore the rest. An example of this kind of selectivity is to choose the two words “beloved” and “unity” and ignore the other words that have nothing in common with these two. Basically, Gematria is used to find connections between different words, but only where those connections would have some kind of significance or importance.

Gematria is a word derived from the Greek Grammateia, meaning tabulation (denoting an account book or domestic listing). That was the first methodology that we just examined. The two other systems of numerology are called Notariqan and Temura. Notariqan is from the word Notarius; it’s an ancient method of shorthand writing which the Qabbalist used to create or define acronyms. Temura is a method of permutation that substitutes letters so as to encrypt or decode words or phrases. There are supposedly 22 different methods of substitution, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Temura is also used to create signatures and sigils from formula words or important names, such as Angelic or Demonic names. These are used particularly in the rituals of invocation and evocation.

I use Notariqan to build and craft magickal acronym formulas, or to determine acronyms from a given sentence or phrase. Temura is useful for crafting sigils or signatures from the names of spirits, using magickal squares or the system of Aiq Bkr to create them. Using ciphers or decoding messages is less useful to me, particularly since I am not prone to using archaic grimoires or books that might employ them. I have also found only limited use for Gemtria, since it seems kind of contrived to me, but other occultists have used it extensively to prove obscure or subtle connections, such as the writings and books authored by Kenneth Grant.  

To recap - I use the Qabbalah extensively in the follow ways:

• Tree of Life as a model of the Inner planes,
• Sephiroth and paths are used in a massive set of tables of correspondence,
• Gematria can be used to determine connections between words, names and phrases,
• Notariqan is used to create or explode magickal acronyms,
• Temura is used to craft sigils or signatures from the names of various spirits.

       
As you can see, the Qabbalah is very useful and important, even if you are a pagan or a witch. If you practicing ritual magick, the Qabbalah is a critically important tool for determining analogies and connections between different symbologies. We will get deeper into these techniques and methodologies in future articles.


Neoplatonic Elements Found in the Qabbalah

You might be wondering by now where all of the ideas and insights came from that were used to build up the discipline and knowledge base of the Qabbalah. I previously stated that a lot of the ideas for the Qabbalah came from Neoplatonism, and that is why the product is more like a heterodoxy than representative of a purely monotheistic religion. This why some orthodox jews reject the Qabbalah, and many Christians are suspicious of its tenets, and rightly so. To follow the philosophical beliefs of the Qabbalah is to admit to the possibility of multiple aspects or attributes of the Deity. The Qabbalah is a monist based philosophy, but that does not give it any purchase with a strict monotheistic definition of Deity - they are in fact, incompatible. If Jews or Christians are also Qabbalists, then their concept of Deity would have to be very mutable, which would make them occultists who would espouse a very esoteric definition of their religious faith.

The reason that the Qabbalah is incompatible with a strict monotheistic definition of Deity is because its roots are in Neoplatonism, which was a system of philosophy that was inherently pagan and polytheistic, even though it had developed a decided monist perspective. Most of the concepts that I have already explained as central to the Qabbalah were first described and elucidated by the Neoplatonists of the third and fourth century C.E., most notably, Plotinus and Iamblichus. Iamblichus is important because he postulated a system of Theurgy that later became the impetus for the birth of modern ritual and ceremonial magick.

Neoplatonism taught that there was a greater godhead or source of all of the gods, which was called the One, and also the Good. The One was thought to be pre-existent, self-begotten and fully self-determined. That One also existed as the greater union of all of the gods, goddesses, daimons, demigods, spirits and souls in existence. The One, which was also called the Good, was the cause and source of all things, thus nature itself was good. Not only was nature inherently good, but all things in the natural world ultimately led back to the One.

The material world was created by a nested process called emanation, through which the One proceeded to generate three levels extending out from itself. These four levels were called the Hypostasis of the One, Intelligence, Soul and Body. The Hypostasis of Intelligence represented the Universal Mind which contained the Platonic forms or ideas. The Hypostasis of Soul was the producer and organizer of the sensible. There was the group or collective Soul of the World, known as the Anima Mundi, and there was the souls of individual people. The Body, of course, was the natural world, animated and ensouled by an interpenetrating of the essence of the One.

The process of creation involved what was called procession, where the higher level would automatically and without intention or will, generate the level below itself, which in turn, led the next level, creating the level below it. There was a natural tendency to “process” from the highest One to the many, and there was a corresponding pull attracting the many back to the One, which was called the return. The act of creation in no way diminished or diluted the source, since there was no dissipation of power from higher to lower. The higher was unaffected by the act of creating the lower, since it created without movement, inclination or will. It retained its integrity and wholeness, and did not need to engage with what it created, since the created lower level automatically inherited the structure and order of the higher. The full cycle of creation always involved a procession and a return, with a later stage called Abiding added in, which represented the state of immanence preceding creation. The Neoplatonists also consider the process of emanation to be continuous, infinite and outside of space and time, which is pretty much the same as what the Qabbalists thought about creation via the Tree of Life.

Iamblichus himself added an important rule, which he called the Law of Mean Terms. This law stated that in order for there to be any kind of communication or linkage between two things, that a third thing that acts as a mediator between the two must exist. This concept of intermediation is applied to all levels, which produces a seamless bonding between all levels of creation. Thus the concept of levels and divisions completely disappears, making the universe dynamic and continuous. This is an important concept when thinking about the divisions in the Tree of Life, because of the Law of Mean Terms, there really isn’t any actual boundaries or divisions between the levels.

Another important point is that Neoplatonism freely mixed with another related discipline, and that was Neopythagoreanism. Iamblichus used Pythagorean concepts in his philosophy, and even wrote a biography on the life of Pythagorus. Many of the great philosophers of the first and second century subscribed to pythagorean beliefs and practices, including some of the Stoic precursors to Neoplatonism. If we substitute Plato’s ideal forms with pure numbers, and apply that to all of the rest of Neoplatonic philosophy, then something of the Neopythagorean perspective is derived. Because the Qabbalah uses numbers and letters in the structure of the Tree of Life, and in the creative emanation of the material universe, one could also see a Neopythagorean influence at work in the fashioning of the first major book on the Qabbalah, the Sepher Yetzirah. 

Now that we have gone over some of the more elementary components of Neoplatonism, it should be pretty obvious that the concept of emanation, the levels of hypostasis, the manner of creation, procession and return - all of these concepts are used in describing and explaining the Qabbalah. I could, of course, bring up even more concepts and ideas from Neoplatonism, but that would over emphasize the points that I have already made. While there were indeed original beliefs and perspectives that have a Jewish origin in the philosophical underpinnings of the Qabbalah, the more important concepts were taken and adapted from Neoplatonism. I think it’s sufficient to say that great ideas don’t need to be constantly reinvented, and that the Neoplatonic sources of the Qabbalah are neither problematic nor do they devalue the overall quality of what has been adaptively created.

If you want to read up and study Neoplatonism, and perhaps find the sources of my above statements, I would recommend the book “Neoplatonism” by R. T. Wallis (Bristoll Classical Press - 2002).

Frater Barrabbas

Qabbalah For Pagans and Witches - Part 1

Sorry - this blog article was removed pending the publication of “Magical Qabalah for Beginners” published by Llewellyn Worldwide - you can find this material in that book, published on January, 2013.

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