A Peculiar Deck of Cards

When four people sit down to play a game of Bridge, the dealer selects which suit is
to be the trump suit. If you find the foregoing statement startling, no doubt you have
become confused because people playing a later game derived from Bridge, the game
of Contract Bridge, often just call that game "Bridge" for short, it having so
thoroughly eclipsed that of the original (which is also known as Russian Whist). In
Contract Bridge, the process is more involved; the player who promises to win the
most tricks, should his selection of the trump suit be accepted, gets to make the
choice.

Even Bridge is an elaboration of an earlier game, Whist, in which the cards are cut to
determine which suit is the trump suit.

If you heard the announcement that a special deck of cards existed, designed to play
an earlier and simpler form of Whist in which the cards belonging to a special fifth
suit were always the trumps, would you not be interested to learn more about this
unusual deck of cards? If it were added that this deck of cards is currently available in
many bookstores, and the symbolism of the cards of the fifth suit, greater in number
than those of the other suits, conveys the teachings of an early Protestant
denomination, the Waldensians, surely the surprise would increase?

Well, perhaps not. By now, most readers will realize that I am referring to the deck of
cards used by upscale cartomancers, the Tarot cards. But what is this about the
Waldensians? Well, for example, the card known as "The High Priestess" was
originally "The Papess", and recalled a rumor which claimed that a woman in disguise
not only became a priest, but was elevated to the Papacy, being found out only when
she gave birth during a Papal procession. (The paragraph which preceded this one,
incidentally, is a parody of the introductory paragraph of the book which introduced
the notion of the Tarot deck as having serious mystical significance to the European
public.)

Before Champollion and the Rosetta Stone spoiled everyone's fun, it was claimed by
occultists that the Tarot cards embodied the lost wisdom of the ancient Egyptians. As
the great Egyptian civilization was about to crumble, the sage priests of Egypt, in a
stunning display of freedom from ethnocentricity, left behind, as their legacy to the
future, a pictorial key to the Kabbalah. (In this connection, an anecdote I once read
about harpsichordist and composer Wanda Landowska comes to mind. Yes, it's [one
of] the one[s] involving Bach.)
Etteilla was even quite specific about it: in the year 1828 after Creation, 171 years
after the flood, 3953 years prior what was presumably the year 1783, and hence in the
year 2181 B.C., seventeen illustrious Egyptian mages came together to design the
Tarot, twelve of whom were descendants of Hermes Trismestigus himself. (In
addition to the Tarot, one wonders if they left behind the minutes of the meeting at
which it was designed. Of course, were Etteilla in posession of such a document,
it would justify his extensive rearrangement of the order of the Major Arcana...) On
the other hand, if Paul Christian (Paul Pitois) is to be believed, the twenty-two keys of
the Major Arcana had long been in use in Egypt for the training of initiates.

And indeed, some of the sources for these speculations on the Tarot use the alphabet
of Cagliostro (which did pre-date him, having appeared in a book by Vigenére) to
argue that the Jews simply stole their alphabet from the Egyptians; since this notion
suffers the embarassing lack of a single papyrus in the alphabet in question, it's hard
to attribute such a notion to anything but anti-Semitism; although possibly not that of
the authors themselves, but instead a pandering to the surrounding climate.

Incidentally, though, I have recently come across the writings of Christine Payne-
Towler, from which I have learned that the account of the Major Arcana by Paul
Christian is likely based on a document from the Fratres Lucis, and that Etteilla's
ordering of the trumps reflects the Pymander.

Of course, it could be that the Egyptian traditions and the Kabbalah simply derived
from a common source, in Atlantis, or even Lemuria. Lemuria: that lost continent,
located in the Indian Ocean, where it provided an explanation for why lemurs were
found in both Madagascar and (as fossils) in Indonesia. Doubtless my readers are all
familiar with the Philadelphia Experiment, in which the secret theories of Dr. Albert
Einstein (and perhaps the lost notebooks of Nikola Tesla, and scraps of information
gleaned from crashed flying saucers) were used in an attempt to develop a cloaking
device for U. S. naval vessels. Under somewhat less secrecy, even presented to the
public in major newspapers - but in a veiled form - Einstein also experimented with
time travel, bringing to the present a primitive man from this ancient continent; from
this research, we learned that Lemuria was originally divided into the rival kingdoms
of Lem and Mu. These rival kingdoms were eventually united, forming a civilization
so advanced that it eventually caused the entire continent to float up into the air and
settle down in the Pacific ocean. (On a smaller scale, this technology allowed the
Pyramids to be built.)

But a chunk of the continent proved a home to separatists who wanted to divide the
ancient kingdom of Lem from Lemuria, and thus they floated a chunk of the continent
to the Atlantic ocean, where it became known as Atlantis; this explains how Atlantis
and Lemuria managed to exist while blatantly contradicting the facts of plate
tectonics.

However, this story, however comical it may seem, is not entirely false. In early times
in America, many board games for children were designed with educational themes,
particularly leaning towards the religious. Our game of Snakes and Ladders is said to
be derived from a game in India that helped to expound the Hindu doctrine of
reincarnation, and in Tibet, a somewhat more complicated game is played to illustrate
the progress of souls according to Buddhist belief. And in ancient Egypt as well, the
game of Senet was meant to illustrate the difficulties of earning a good place in the
afterlife.

And this game survives, in an altered form, to the present day. We call it
backgammon, with Ludus Duodecim Scriptorum as its intermediate ancestor.

Also, as the title of Papus' book Le Tarot des Bohémiens recalls, it was believed that
the Tarot cards not only came to Europe from Egypt, but were brought there by the
Romany, known as Gypsies precisely because of their reputed Egyptian origin. As we
know now, their ancestors came from India; but then, playing cards also came to us
from India as well, after having been invented in China. But the Tarot trumps were
still a European invention.

Since the Tarot deck

consists of four regular
suits of cards, cups, coins,
batons and swords, each
with cards from Ace to 10
as well as Knave, Knight,
Queen and King, as well
as 21 trumps, and one
additional card, the Fool,
that can be played to a
trick in any suit, but
which always loses the
trick, those claiming an
ancient mystical meaning
for those cards, quite
naturally, speculated that
the 21 trumps and the
Fool correspond to the 22
letters of the Hebrew
alphabet. An "Egyptian"
alphabet, also called the Alphabet of the Magi, used by Count Cagliostro, and
following the pattern of the Hebrew alphabet, was associated with the Tarot trumps in
Paul Christian's History of Magic without even mentioning the Hebrew alphabet; this
alphabet is presented in the fourth column following the Hebrew alphabet in the chart
on the left. This was originally recorded as a Chaldaean alphabet by the Christian
scholar Theseus Ambrosius, who is famed for providing the Western world with its
first grammar of the Syriac language. It is preceded by actual Egyptian hieroglyphs
which vaguely correspond to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The letter L is
represented by a biliteral hieroglyph whose value is "rw"; it was originally thought to
be the Egyptian letter L because it was used to spell Cleopatra's name. Many people
are aware that Her Majesty Cleopatra the Seventh was one of the Ptolemies, belonging
to a Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt in consequence of the expeditions of Alexander
the Great; but perhaps few realized that she was so alien to Egypt that the Egyptians
could not even pronounce her name. Note also that, since these hieroglyphics are
presented in association with the Hebrew alphabet, they are presented in the
orientation they would have when used for writing from right to left, which is the
more common writing direction for ancient Egyptian.

The letters of the Hebrew alphabet are associated in the diagram with letters from our
alphabet in a traditional way which reflects the descent from the original Phoenician
alphabet of our alphabet. But while Aleph is the ancestor of the letter A, and Ayin is
the ancester of the letter O, these characters represented consonants and not vowel
sounds in ancient Hebrew. Information on the actual use of the Hebrew alphabet in
writing is given here.

The Tarot trumps have been ordered in three ways in decks designed for fortune-
telling or occult study. In the first column below, I give the ordering due to Eliphas
Lévi, which is the same as the conventional order of the trumps, except that the Fool
is placed between the 20th and 21st trumps. In the second, I give the ordering used in
the deck drawn by Pamela Coleman Smith for Arthur Edward Waite, in which the
Fool is the first of the trumps, and Justice and Strength are exchanged. In the third
column is given the ordering of the trumps used in the deck by Etteila. While several
cards in Etteila's version of the Tarot do not resemble any card in the conventional
Tarot closely, before Etteila's own deck was published, he had written a book on
fortune-telling with the Tarot cards in which he described how the cards in a
conventional deck should be renumbered; the entries depending on this source, and
not obvious from the appearance of the cards in his deck are put in parentheses. A
version of Etteila's deck first designed in Italy, the Tarocco Egizio, and more recently
reprinted in Mexico as the Tarot Egipcio, assigned the letters of the Hebrew alphabet
to the cards of that arrangement in alphabetical order, and the correspondence of those
letters to the Major Arcana in the other decks is also held to be that of the cards in
their given order with the Hebrew alphabet in its order. One might also mention an
exception to placing the Hebrew alphabet in order alongside the cards: in Liber al vel
Legis, Aleister Crowley, who otherwise used the ordering of the Rider-Waite deck
shown in the second column, maintained the ordering of the cards, but noted
that Tzaddi was not the Star, and followed through by interchanging it with Hé, the
letter associated with the Emperor. It is not recorded if that means that The Emperor is
the heart of the Major Arcana.

The fourth column gives the ordering of the Trumps in the Revived Tarot, due to a
webmaster with the username Psyche, and inspired by the work of Carlo Suárez.

In this system, the Major Arcana represent not twenty-two, but twenty-seven symbols,
with the fact that the final forms of five Hebrew letters are placed at the end of the
Hebrew alphabet when it is used to represent numbers being taken as important.The
same trump corresponds to the regular and final form of the five Hebrew letters with
final forms.

Donald Tyson, co-author of a book about the Necronomicon of H. P. Lovecraft in

popular culture, has also proposed a revised order for the Tarot Major Arcana, based
on the astrological significance of the Hebrew letters (which is what prompted the
exchange of Strength and Justice by the Golden Dawn as seen in the popular Waite
deck).

Also, the Comte de Mellet - and perhaps Court de Gébelin himself as well - ordered
the trumps in reverse, beginning with The World, and ending with The Magician
followed by The Fool.

There is something one must give Aleister Crowley credit for, however. He is also the
inventor of Pirate Bridge, which for a time was considered by many respected Bridge
experts to possibly be the next major advance in the Whist family of games after
Auction Bridge.

Papus Waite Etteilla Psyche Donald

Tyson

The Magician The Fool (The High Priest) The Fool The Fool
Aleph Justice Athoïm
The High Priestess The Magician The Sun The World The High
Priestess Beth The Star Beïnthin
The Empress The High Priestess The Moon The Wheel of Fortune The
Magician Ghimel The Moon Gomor
The Emperor The Empress The Star The Tower The
Empress Daleth The Empress Dinaïn
The High Priest The Emperor The World The Emperor The
Emperor Hé The Hanged Man Eni
The Lovers The High Priest (The Empress) The High Priest The High
Priest Vau The Lovers Ur
The Chariot The Lovers (The Emperor) The Lovers The
Lovers Zain The Devil Zaïn
Justice The Chariot (The High Priestess) The Chariot
Temperance Heth The Magician Heletha
The Hermit Strength Justice Strength Strength
Teth The Judgement Théla
The Wheel of Fortune The Hermit Temperance The Hermit The
Hermit Yod Death Ioïthi
Strength The Wheel of Fortune Strength The Sun The
Wheel of Fortune Caph The High Priestess Caïtha
The Hanged Man Justice (The Hanged Man) Justice Justice
Lamed The Hermit Luzain
Death The Hanged Man The Lovers The Hanged Man The
Hanged Man Mem Temperance Mataloth
Temperance Death The Devil Death Death
Nun The Tower Naïn
The Devil Temperance The Magician Temperance The
Chariot Samech The Wheel of Fortune Xirön
The Tower The Devil The Judgement The Devil The
Devil Ayin The Chariot Olélath
The Star The Tower Death The Empress The
Tower Phe The Emperor Pilôn
The Moon The Star The Hermit The Star The Star
Tzaddi The Fool Tsadi
The Sun The Moon The Tower The Moon The Moon
Quoph The World Quitolath
The Judgement The Sun The Wheel of Fortune The Magician The Sun
Resh The Sun Rasith
The Fool The Judgement The Chariot The Judgement The
Judgement Shin Strength Sichen
The World The World The Fool The High Priestess The
World Than The High Priest Thoth
The Sun
final Yod
The Hanged Man
final Mem
Death
final Nun
The Empress
final Phe
The Star
final Tzaddi

It may also be noted that the Tarot cards of the Major Arcana depicted by Papus
(Gerard Encausse) in his Le Tarot Divinatoire, following the order of Eliphas Lévi,
bear on them, in addition to Hebrew letters, Sanskrit letters and Egyptian Hieroglyphs,
symbols labelled "Archéomètre Saint-Yves". These are from a little-known
book, Archéomètre, written by the Marquis Joseph-Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre,
which contained charts giving mystical correspondences for the letters of several
different alphabets. These symbols are shown in the diagram above in the first and
second column following the Hebrew alphabet, between it and Cagliostro's Alphabet
of the Magi. The first column shows how they appeared on the Divinatory Tarot of
Papus, and the second column shows how they appeared in the actual Archéomètre; in
fairness to Papus, some of the symbols appeared in multiple forms in that work, and
some alternates are shown in that column.
Note that the interchange of the last two symbols is substantive: the correspondence
given in Archéomètre is between the characters of this primitive alphabet and the
Hebrew alphabet, not the Tarot trumps; thus, this is not due to a dispute over
whether The World should be numbered 21 or 22, although the placement of The
Fool by Papus could have been the reason for an error in associating these symbols
with the Hebrew alphabet.

Also of interest is the fact that of the five unrecognizable cards in the Eteilla deck, the
first four are also the cards which were temporarily replaced with the images of four
Moors in Tarot decks produced in some parts of Europe.

In Etteilla's deck, the trumps from The High Priest to The Chariot had the numbers
from 1 to 21, while The Fool had the number 78. The Minor Arcana were numbered
in reverse order, from the King down to the Ace, with the King of Wands as 22, the
King of Cups as 36, the King of Swords as 50, and the King of Coins as 64.

If the unusual ordering of the trumps of Eteilla were due to a re-ordering of the
Hebrew letters into the separate categories of double, mother, and simple letters, could
that unusual ordering conceal a more conventional ordering? One possibility thus
suggested is shown in the fifth column above.

In the seventh column are the names of the letters of Cagliostro's Alphabet of the
Magi.

The starting point for the sequences above is, of course, the order of the Trumps in the
Tarocchi deck as it was in existence for the purpose of card-playing. But that, also,
had variations:
The Fool The Fool The Fool

1. (The Magician) (The Magician) (The Magician)

2. (The High Priestess) (The High Priestess) (The High Priestess)
3. The Empress The Empress (The Empress)
4. The Emperor The Emperor (The Emperor)
5. The Pope The Pope (The Lovers)
6. The Lovers (The Lovers) Temperance
7. The Chariot The Chariot Strength
8. Justice Temperance Justice
9. The Hermit Justice The Wheel of Fortune
10. The Wheel of Fortune Strength The Chariot
11. Strength (The Wheel of Fortune) (The Hermit)
12. The Hanged Man (The Hermit) The Hanged Man
13. Death The Hanged Man Death
14. Temperance Death The Devil
15. The Devil The Devil (The Tower)
16. The Tower (The Tower)
17. The Star The Star The Star
18. The Moon The Moon The Moon
19. The Sun The Sun The Sun
20. The Last Judgment The World The World
21. The World (The Last Judgment)

the first column being the sequence we are most familiar with, from the Tarot de
Marseilles and many others, and the second being that of the Tarot of Bologna. Of
course, that the subject of the page is reasonably thought of by many as being baloney
is another matter. The third column shows those portions of the forty-one trumps of
the Minchiate deck which appear to correspond to the conventional Tarots. Between
The Devil and The Star are Hell, followed by the three virtues Prudence, Faith, and
Charity, the four elements Fire, Water, Earth, and Air, and then the signs of the
Zodiac in an irregular order: Libra, Virgo, Scorpio, Aries, Capricorn, Sagittarius,
Cancer, Pisces, Aquarius, Leo, Taurus, and Gemini. Following The World is one
additional card, Fame.

The vexing question of the order of the Tarot trumps might be felt to be solved, or at
least to have taken a giant step on its way towards a solution, if there were any
authoritative source of the meanings of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. And
there is one with, at least, the weight of tradition behind it: the Sepher Yetzirah, or the
Book of Formation.

Aleph Air 11 Scintillating Intelligence

curtain before disposition
Beth Life (/Death) Wisdom 12 Intelligence of Transparency
visions, apparitions
Gimel Peace (/War) Health 13 Uniting Intelligence
Essence of Glory, consummation of truth of individual things
Daleth Wisdom (/Folly) Fertility 14 Illuminating Intelligence
founder concealed ideas of holiness & stages of preparation
He Sight Speech 15 Constituting Intelligence
substance of creation in pure darkness
Vau Hearing Mind 16 Triumphal or Eternal Intelligence
pleasure of the Glory
Zain Smell Movement 17 Disposing Intelligence
provides faith to the righteous, foundation of excellence
Heth Speech Sight 18 House of Influence
increases influx of good things, draws forth arcana and hidden senses
Teth Taste Hearing 19 Int. of All the Activities of the Spiritual
Beings diffuses affluence and exalted sublime glory
Yod Eros Work 20 Intelligence of Will
means of preparation of each created being, existence of Primordial Wisdom becomes known
Kaph Riches (/Poverty) Life 21 Intelligence of Conciliation
receives divine influence from benediction
Lamed Work Desire 22 Faithful Intelligence
increases spiritual virtues
Mem Water 23 Stable Intelligence
has virtue of consistency among all numerations
Nun Movement Smell 24 Imaginative Intelligence
gives likeness to all similitudes similar to its harmonious elegancies
Samech Anger Sleep 25 Int. of Probation or Tentative Int.
temptation by which righteous are tested
Ayin Mirth Anger 26 Renovating Intelligence
changing things renewed by it
Pe Grace (/Indignation) Power 27 Exciting Intelligence
intellect and motion of every created being
Tzaddi Imagination Taste 28 Natural Intelligence
nature of every existent being consummated and perfected
Quoph Sleep Mirth 29 Corporeal Intelligence
forms every body beneath worlds and their increment
Resh Fertility (/Solitude) Peace 30 Collecting Intelligence
judgement of stars and signs deduced from it by astrologers
Shin Fire 31 Perpetual Intelligence
regulates the motions of the Sun and Moon
Tau Power (/Servitude) Beauty 32 Administrative Intelligence
directs and associates operations of the seven planets in their courses

In the first column are the letters. The second gives the meanings as listed in the body
of the Sepher Yetzirah, in the order they are listed. But the meanings are not explicitly
connected to the letters, a later source which gives an explicit connection, gives a
different order, noted in the third column.

Then, at the end, the meanings assigned to the paths from 11 to 32, the first ten paths
being the Sephiroth, which we shall see below, in the essay The Thirty-Two Paths of
Wisdom by Joannes Stephanus Rittangelius in 1642 are noted.

With the Intelligence of Probation assigned to the letter Samech, being the twenty-
fifth path, this would seem to decisively favor the traditional order, where The Devil
is the fifteenth card, as opposed to the Rider-Waite order.

However, while Administrative Intelligence, associated with Tau, makes the

association of that letter with The World at least plausible, there is not really that
much else in the sequence which is that closely related to the Tarot cards. However,
Perpetual Intelligence, associated with Shin, suggests that the mystery trump for that
position, for which The Fool only fills in, might have a calendar as its symbol, since
calendars are based on the cycles of the sun and the moon (and, while The Sun and
The Moon are two individual Tarot trumps, none of the arcana seem to be associated
with both the sun and the moon together).

In the sequence of trumps as given by Papus, Aleph, corresponding to the element of

air, corresponds to The Magician (or The Juggler); Mem, corresponding to the
element of water, corresponds to Death. If The Fool, standing in for Shin, which
corresponds to the element of fire, is taken out of the sequence of trumps, would it
really correspond to the element of earth, the classical element left over from the three
assigned to the three Mothers in the Hebrew alphabet?

In that case, two possibilities suggest themselves for the 21st Arcana; Time, as a
complement to Death, or an accomplished magician, as a complement to both The
Fool on the one hand, and The Magician - generally believed to represent a neophyte -
on the other. The latter, though, is already represented by The High Priestess; while
the former ties in well to the previous suggestion of that trump being The Calendar; as
well, Time being an abstraction, it might have been difficult to properly depict,
making its card appropriate to leave out as an impediment to those unworthy of
initiation into the Mysteries.

Above is a diagram illustrating the plan of the Tarot according to a scheme given
in The Tarot of the Bohemians by Papus, and also used in The Tarot, a Contemporary
Treatise on the Quintessence of Hermetic Occultism by Mouni Sadhu.

Each triangle represents a relationship between four cards patterned after the four
letters of the Tetragrammaton, the Name of God.
Yod represents an active element, the first Hé a passive element upon which the active
element acts, Vau represents the neuter result of the action, and the second Hé the
overall system. Thus, one simple analogy to this is a father, a mother, a child, and the
family. The overall system then functions as an active element on the next plane.

This pattern is repeated through the 22 cards of the Major Arcana; for each of the suits
of the Minor Arcana, the King, Queen, Knight (represented by N in the diagram) and
the Knave (represented by J in the diagram) represent one instance of the pattern, and
the cards from Ace to 10 represent three repetitions of the pattern. The four suits of
the Minor Arcana are ordered as they are because they also represent one instance of
the pattern. Note that the last card in the Minor Arcana, the ten of coins, represents a
transition to the Major Arcana, and the last card in the Major Arcana, The World,
represents a transition to the Major Arcana.

Also, recall that The Fool, represented by 0, is simply a placeholder for the 21st
position in the sequence - the actual card, the 79th card of the Tarot, being something
one is to discover for oneself when one is ready, according to this system of
understanding the Tarot.

The book The Tarot by Mouni Sadhu is based on the Encyclopedic Course of
Occultism by Grigory Ottonovich Mebes. While that work is referred to as
unavailable in Mouni Sadhu's book, in fact it was published in Russia in 1913.
Naturally, due to first the Great War and then the Bolshevik Revolution, it may well
not have been available until a copy turned up after the fall of the Soviet Union. There
was even another edition published in 1937 in Shanghai.

Although his day job was as a mathematics professor, and his esoteric activities were
known to but a few, he was eventually discovered and sent to a labor camp in which
he perished.

Despite this, he wrote a sequel to his earlier work, which dealt with the Minor Arcana.
Editions Pensamento, in Brazil, published a Portuguese translation of this book.

In this book, a correspondence between the pip cards of the Minor Arcana and the
Sephiroth (discussed below) is given which seems to conflict with the plan of the
Minor Arcana shown in the diagram above.

The two "red" suits - Coins (corresponding to Diamonds) and Cups (corresponding to
Hearts) correspond to the ten Sephiroth in forwards order. Swords (corresponding to
Spades) correspond to the ten Sephiroth in reverse order; Wands (corresponding to
Clubs) correspond to the ten Sephiroth in both orders together.
The traditional rulerships of
astrological signs create a
correspondence between the five
planets and two luminaries known
in antiquity, and the ancient four
elements of air, earth, water and
fire, and the twelve signs of the
Zodiac. Note that while the twelve
signs of the Zodiac correspond to
the simple letters in the Hebrew
alphabet in alphabetical order, the
order of the planets is not regular.

The Kabbalists did not merely assign meaning

to the individual letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
One of the central concerns of Kabbalism was
with the nature of God and His relationship to
His Creation. The absolute perfection of God
implied that He was utterly transcendent, and,
thus, for Him to deal with a Creation that was
so completely beneath Him seemed
inconsistent.

Thus, a construct called the Tree of Life was

derived from attempts to read between the lines
of the Old Testament. It constituted an
arrangement of ten Sephiroth, these being
attributes or emanations of God. While God
Himself, as the Ain-Soph, still remained
completely untouched and untouchable above
the diagram, it still was held to illustrate the link
between the divine and the material.

The traditional version of the Tree of Life is

illustrated on the left. The ten Sephiroth are:
 1 Kether Crown
2 Chokmah Wisdom
3 Binah Understanding
4 Chesed Mercy
5 Geburah Severity
6 Tiphereth Beauty
7 Netsach Victory
8 Hod Glory
9 Yesod Foundation
10 Malkuth Kingdom

and 22 paths, corresponding to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, are shown which
link them together.

The letters are arranged on these paths in a manner based on alphabetical order, thus,
each letter is accompanied by the number of its position in the Hebrew alphabet to
make this clearer.

Of course, even if this intense approach to Scriptural exegesis is suspect in the eyes of
more orthodox followers of either the Bible or the Old Testament, known as
the Tanakh (short for Torah, Nevi'im, u-Ketuvim, The Law, the Prophets, and the
Writings) to those who do not recognize it as having been updated with a supplement,
the mystics who pursued Kabbalistic study cannot be held responsible for the occult
dabblings of those who appropriated their
tradition to apply it to the Tarot cards.

It may be also be of interest to note that, in

Hebrew, Kabbalah is spelled Quoph Beth
Lamed Hé, which letters have the respective
numerical values of 100, 2, 30, and 5. These
add to 137, and this is the integer which is
approximated by the inverse of the fine-
structure constant, which is the ratio between
the speed of an electron orbiting the nucleus
of a hydrogen atom in its lowest energy state
(in a classical model) and the speed of light.

Later thinkers in the mystical tradition of the

Kabbalah eventually proposed other
arrangements of the Tree of Life. Isaac ben
Solomon Luria developed the arrangement
shown at the right. Here, the fact that three
paths are horizontal, and seven paths are vertical, has been noted, and the three mother
leters and the seven double letters have been placed into correspondence with those
paths.

To make this clear, each Hebrew letter has been accompanied by the element, planet,
or sign that was placed into correspondence with it, since those correspondences
followed this division of the letters.

In addition to a different correspondence of the letters, note that two of the diagonal
paths in the diagram are different.

It may be noted that much later, molecular biologist Salvador Edward

Luria, who, with Max Delbrück and Alfred D. Hershey won the 1969
Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of how viruses caused
infection and reproduced themselves, was known for his studies of
one group of viruses in particular, bacteriophages, some of which
looked like the drawing on the left.
 This arrangement, an even later one due to
Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, the Gaon
of Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania), is depicted
here on the left in a form intended to
facilitate direct comparisons. Normally, this
arrangement is depicted, as on the right, with
the circles representing the Sephiroth
numbered 6, 9, and 10 moved up one
position to highlight the inherent symmetry
of the arrangement.

One discussion I recently came across refers

to this arrangement as the "Gra" form, and
claims it to have been the original form of
the Tree of Life.

While it is not the earliest known form, a

view held by many modern Qabalists is that
this was the original pure form of the Tree of
Life before the Fall of Man, with the current
effective form being that of Luria.

In the Sepher Yetzirah, one chapter discusses

the six permutations of the three distinct
letters found in the Tetragrammaton, Yod, He,
and Vau, and then the next one discusses the
six permutations of the three "mothers" in the
Hebrew alphabet, Aleph, Mem, and Shin. As
we've seen above, the three letters of the
Tetragrammaton are used in one scheme of
analyzing the Tarot cards, and the three
mother letters are significant in some versions
of the Tree of Life.

Could these be linked together by finding an

equivalence between the three "mothers" of the Hebrew alphabet, and the three letters
represented in the Name of God?

One obvious stratagem is

foiled, because not only are
these two sets of three letters
spaced differently in the
Hebrew alphabet, but the three
"mother" letters are all in odd-
numbered positions. This is
significant because there are
22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, or 2 times 11, just as in our own alphabet, there are
26 letters, or 2 times 13; in each case, two times a prime number. Thus, a new
sequence of letters, in which each letter appears only once, can be generated with
decimations of the alphabet by any odd factor modulo the length of the alphabet,
except the one equal to half its length.

But multiplying by such a number leaves all the letters in odd positions still in odd
positions, and all those in even positions still in even positions. Thus, no linear
transformation modulo 26 will bring the three "mother" letters (shown in red in the
diagram), all in odd positions (the ones with yellow backgrounds), into coincidence
with the three letters of the Tetragrammaton (shown in blue in the diagram), one in an
odd position, and two in even positions (the ones with green backgrounds).

On the other hand, if we set The Fool and the Hebrew alphabet aside, it may be
significant, and no mere coincidence, that there are 21 visibly different rolls of two
identical dice, and 56 visibly different rolls of three identical dice.

Certainly, this is highly encouraging to those who would connect the Tarot to Chess,
Checkers, board games with dice such as Backgammon, Snakes and Ladders, and
Pachisi and perhaps even Go (Wei Ch'i), Tablut, and Nine Men's Morris together in an
interconnected web of shared symbolism.