by Marcus Katz
THE MAGICIAN’S KABBALAH
KABBALAH AS AN INITIATORY PATH ILLUSTRATED BY TAROT
Kindle Version
Marcus Katz
Copyright © Marcus Katz, 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
For permission requests, email the author c/o mailto:[email protected].
Western Esoteric Initiatory System® (WEIS) is a registered trademark.
First Edition published by Forge Press, Keswick, 2015.
ISBN-13: 978-0955856617
Dedication
Dedicated to those who labour in the orchard.
To Soror C. L. and Frater V. S. L. of the O. E. D.
And As Ever, Above All, this work is dedicated to
Antistita Astri Argentei
The Priestess of the Silver Star
She whose light leads the way to the Arcanum Arcanorum, the Secret of Secrets
Vos Vos Vos Vos
V.V.V.V.
About the Author
Marcus Katz has been working with and teaching Western Esotericism, Kabbalah and tarot for over twenty-five years. He also works with apprentices in the Western Esoteric Initiatory System® and was the first student to gain a Masters Degree in Western Esotericism from the University of Exeter, consolidating his practical study of the Kabbalah and Ritual.
He was first introduced to Kabbalah thirty years ago through the works of Dion Fortune and Aleister Crowley and has made a daily study and practice of the subject since that time. He worked through the syllabus of the International School of Kabbalah in the 1980’s before going on to study traditional Kabbalah for twenty years, including attendance at conferences worldwide with presenters including Moshe Idel and other leading scholars of the subject.
He co-founded the Tarosophy Tarot Association, the world’s largest professional tarot Association, with Tali Goodwin in 2009. His first book, Tarosophy, was called a “major contribution” to tarot by Rachel Pollack. He has written many other titles on the tarot, Alchemy, Kabbalah and related subjects, including his journal of the Abramelin Operation, a perilous and intense ritual to gain the knowledge and conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel, which has been published as After the Angel.
His ongoing magnum opus on the Western Esoteric Initiatory System (WEIS), published as the MAGISTER (in 11 volumes) has been described as “audacious” and “staggering”.
He lives in the Lake District with his wife, fellow author and editor, Brina, and magician’s cat, Alex, whose full name is Alexander Calvert Esq. M.M. (Master Mouser).
Marcus offers a unique apprenticeship opportunity to engage with the Great Work of spiritual liberation through the Western Esoteric Initiatory System, which can be discovered at:
www.westernesotericism.com
The many benefits of joining the Tarosophy Tarot Association are available at:
www.tarotassociation.net.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge those students who have worked through early iterations of this material through the Crucible Club, Order of Everlasting Day and Magicka School.
I would also like to acknowledge the scholars and professors who refined my work whilst I studied at the University of Exeter.
The librarians and archive custodians of the British Museum, British Library, Library & Museum of Freemasonry, Ritman Library (Amsterdam), and Warburg Institute have all given of their time and service in the provision of material which has informed this present work.
Contents
Introduction: A Guide for the Perplexed
A Note on Spelling
Using This Book
The Tarot, Ancient Egypt & Kabbalah
The Tarot in the Golden Dawn
The Tarot and Tree of Life
The Sephiroth
The Golden Dawn System
The Grades of the Golden Dawn
The Tree of the Golden Dawn
The Tree of Night Before the Dawn
Aleister Crowley’s Variation to the GD System
The Waite-Trinick System
The Tree of Sapphires
Voices of the Word, Leaves of the Light
The Tree as a Meta-model (Template Theory)
The Tree as a Fractal System (The Orchard)
The Tree as an Emanative System (The Fountain of Light)
The Tree as a Communications System (Lattice Theory)
The Sephiroth and the Four Worlds
The Four Worlds
Ain Soph Aur: A Necessary Non-Negation
Aleph in Kether
Yod in Chockmah
Nun in Binah
Kether: The Crown of Coherent Light
The Doctrine of Trans-Resonance
The Triune Crown
Kaph in Kether
Tau in Chockmah
Resh in Binah
The Tree of Crowns
Chockmah: The Quarry of Devotion
Binah: The Angel of the Tides
Chesed: The Unicorn at the Waystation
Geburah: The Folding of the Robe
Tiphareth: The Hub of Sacrifice
The Paths Of the Heart
A. The God of the Heart
B. The Initiation of the Heart
C. The Trials of the Heart
The Lines of Sacrifice
Netzach: The Rose in the Lamplight
Hod: The Crystal Watercourse
Yesod: The Hall of Mirrors
Malkuth: The Kingdom of the Shells
The Klippoth: The Shells & Husks
Gematria: The Numerology of the Kabbalah
The Binary System
The Grade Passwords
The Twenty-Two Paths
The Psyche: A Curtain of Souls
The Soul in Ancient Egypt
Contemporary Kabbalah
The Scholarly
The New Age
The Occult
The Popular & Literary
Conclusion
Appendix: A Kabbalah Study Program
Bibliography
Kindle Tarot Books & Series
Gated Spreads Series
Tarosophy KickStart Series
Tarot Life Series
Also in Print and Kindle
Websites & Resources
Introduction: A Guide for the Perplexed
It was by the knowledge of the attribution of the Paths and the Tarot keys that Daniel deciphered the meaning of the MENE, MENE, TEKEL UPHARSIN.
- Previously unpublished note from the original Golden Dawn mss., likely attrib. S. L. MacGregor Mathers.
In this book we will take a tour of both tarot and Kabbalah, specifically the diagram known as the Tree of Life. It should be first said – very clearly – that there is no ancient historical connection of Kabbalah and tarot. However, as both provide maps of our experience arising from profound examination of that same experience, they find deep correspondences which are useful to all spiritual journeyers.
These two subjects are both extremely wide and diverse and we list many other titles in the bibliography for your further study. Kabbalah in particular is complex, no matter how we look at it, so we have endeavoured to make it accessible whilst pointing to interesting avenues of exploration. In this present book we are specifically looking at the illustration of the Western Esoteric Initiatory System (WEIS) by tarot on the Tree of Life. The WEIS is an authentic system of spiritual development attuned to a western conte
mporary life.[1]
Kabbalah, illustrated by tarot, despite (in fact, because of) its complexity, provides us an incredibly flexible tool of comprehension with numerous functions, including but not limited to:
Scientific – as a working model of any act of nature and creation, from the personal to the universal.
Religious – as an account of the nature of the divine, our spiritual role and the relationship of our life to the divine.
Art – as an illustration of our experience of nature.
Mysticism – as a structure to comprehend and predict profound and personal transcendent experience.
Magical – as a tool for engaging with the universe in diverse ways to accomplish our intent.
Psychological – as a map of human behaviour.
Initiatory – as a system by which an individual might arise to the realisation of the divine and their true nature.
I also hope to provide many other aspects of correspondence between the two systems that will provide practical enhancement of your tarot reading, and new ways of accessing Kabbalah to those already familiar with tarot. To those versed in Kabbalah, I trust this book will remain true to most of the major streams of the tradition, whilst demonstrating how tarot illustrates the Tree of Life to further illuminate these ideas in a new way.
If you are an absolute beginner to either subject, I recommend Tarosophy by myself and Around the Tarot in 78 Days with co-author Tali Goodwin as foundation tarot books to this present work. If you are new to Kabbalah, particularly in relation to tarot, we have written a foundation book Kabbalah and Tarot under our pen-name, Andrea Green, which contains more immediate and practical tarot applications of Kabbalah.
Let us first consider the history of our subjects. The tarot as we know it arose in the 15th Century in Italy – around the same time as the Gutenberg Bible became the first book to be printed in movable type. We presently have no record of anything other than dissimilar card games prior to that time. Whilst there are many methods of divination dating back to antiquity, the use of tarot for divination was comparatively recent. It began as a card game, became a family heirloom of choice, and only then finally became associated with fortune-telling and in parallel, western esotericism.
There is also no historical connection between the tarot and gypsies of any description for much the same reason – there is no ancient history of tarot. The records of the various peoples known as gypsies providing fortune-telling are illustrated with playing cards, not tarot. It was really not until the 1950’s that a fictional connection between gypsies, pyramids, owls, skulls and the tarot cards from 1910 (Waite-Smith) became popularized by marketing and advertising which then became fixed into a common contemporary misunderstanding.[2]
As we will come to see, the first connection of tarot and Kabbalah came through a piece of writing in Antoine Court de Gébelin’s Le Monde Primitif, which was published in 1781. A contributing author to these volumes of analysis of the ancient world, the Comte de Mellett, about who comparatively little is known, wrote that there was a connection between the 22 Major cards of the tarot to the 22 Hebrew letters.[3] It is this idea, published only a little over two hundred years ago, that gave rise to the connection between Kabbalah – the Jewish system of mysticism – and tarot cards.
However, the correspondences between the two systems were uncertain and changeable, as the structure of the tarot – notably the ordering of the Major Arcana cards, was not agreed upon by these early authors, including Etteilla (1738 – 1791), who arguably became the world’s first tarot teacher.[4]
Whilst authors such as Etteilla took the ideas in de Gébelin and produced new works on tarot cards for cartomancy (fortune-telling) other authors took a wider scope and connected the cards to not only ancient Egypt (as originally popularized in de Gébelin) but to Kabbalah. Again, this is only within the last two centuries, and no earlier.
In Europe, the rise of a wave of esotericism took these ideas and wove them into the expanding awareness of Kabbalah, to create a synthesis of thought that has been called by one leading scholar of traditional Kabbalah, a “supreme charlatanism”.[5]
This “charlatanism” however, led to a productive wave of writing and consideration of the universe. It was French occultist Eliphas Levi (1810 – 1875) who can be seen first to use the Kabbalah as a universal map of esoteric thought, modelling not only the chapters of his books on the structure of the Hebrew letters – and hence Kabbalah and through correspondence, tarot – but also much of his writing. There are sections in his works of text and poetry that deliberately and explicitly follow the sequence of Hebrew letters and their correspondences to both tarot and Kabbalah.[6]
This usage inspired the founding members of the Golden Dawn in 1888, and in parallel, esotericists such as Aleister Crowley (1875 – 1947) and A. E. Waite (1857 – 1942), who both immersed themselves in the symbolic synthesis of tarot and Kabbalah as a map of the initiatory system, and designed it into their decks – and hence every deck that has modelled itself on their designs.
So a creative misunderstanding is now hard-wired into many tarot decks whether their designers are aware of Kabbalah or otherwise. In further understanding Kabbalah, we can unlock many of the designs and symbolic intent of the first esoteric tarot decks, particularly with regard to the Initiatory System and as a Universal Map of Creation.
In this present book we propose that the WEIS has been constructed for at least four centuries as a synthesis of Neo-Platonic, Gnostic, Hermetic, and Rosicrucian philosophy, delivered through systems as diverse as astrology, tarot, alchemy, and Kabbalah. We further present this work as providing an authentic and valid practice of mundane, magical, mystical and spiritual appreciation. We believe it is also of contemporary relevance and accessibility through its illustration by the widely recognized tarot images.[7]
This is a book intended for intermediate students of tarot who are familiar with its language and have experience in reading it as a map of self-awareness and spiritual development. The reader may find themselves wondering of the relevance of various sections, numerological analysis, or apparently far-fetched links of correspondence. This is to be expected, as the process of Kabbalah is one which must be experienced, not merely studied; the mental exercise of forming links of correspondence, as one example, ultimately re-programs the brain to do something more – and something truly magical that cannot be communicated, only experienced.
As mentioned above, we have another title, Kabbalah and Tarot: A Step-Up Guide, under our pen-name Andrea Green, which is intended for absolute beginners and a companion work to this present book. It includes several practical and accessible exercises to tune up comprehension of Kabbalistic concepts. We also provide later a large list of recommended books with brief commentary to guide your further work in Kabbalah, in addition to an online course for self-study which shares material to this book.
In this present book we will look at the history and concepts of Kabbalah, and its appropriation by Western Esotericism. We will specifically look at three maps of spiritual ascent – Golden Dawn, Waite-Trinick and Crowley – illustrated by the tarot. In doing so we will draw upon secret images that have been hidden for a century, only recently discovered and published in our books, Abiding in the Sanctuary, A New Dawn for Tarot, The Tarot of the Secret Dawn, Secrets of the Waite-Smith Tarot and The Magister. This present work is a key-stone of Kabbalah for these other titles.
I hope to demonstrate the reasonability and usefulness of using Kabbalah and tarot together, both for divination and contemplation, and with particular regard to the spiritual understanding of our condition – both present and potential.
A Note on Spelling
There are no vowel letters in Hebrew, so the word ‘Kabbalah’ is a transliteration of Hebrew letters, and can be spelt in English as sounded, variously, ‘Kabbalah’, ‘Qabalah’, ‘Cabbalah’, etc.
The general usage by Jewish scholars is ‘Kabbalah’, (i.e. Moshe Idel and Gershom Scholem) which i
s that which is adopted here. In general, although it is not a universal rule, the usage ‘Qabalah’ has often been adopted by occultists and New Age authors (i.e. Dion Fortune, Naomi Ozaniec, Gareth Knight and R. J. Stewart), and ‘Cabbalah’ by the earlier Christian authors on the subject.
I have italicized most Hebrew transliterated words other than those in common usage such as Kabbalah, to remind the reader these are English characters for a Hebrew word, originally spelt in Hebrew letters. I have not used Hebrew characters for clarity and to avoid formatting complications in e-book versions. I have generally kept “tarot” rather than “Tarot” for ease of reading.
Using This Book
Kabbalah is a complex and profound subject and any attempt to make it accessible is made difficult by the language alone – before even straying into complex Judaic philosophy and history. There will be sections of this present book that will on first reading appear to be written in code or have no relevance to daily experience. The meaning or relevance of a complex phrase such as that below may be impossible to read at first attempt:
Numerically, Malkuth values 496, which totals to 19 (4+9+6), which totals to 10 (1+9), which can be broken down to 1 as well. Thus, Malkuth (10) and Kether (1) are within the value of Malkuth itself. Kether, on the other hand, values 620 (the Zohar speaks of the 620 pillars of light), which breaks down to 8 (6+2), the number of the Sephirah Hod…
It is recommended that readers persevere with the learning of correspondences, the names of the Sephiroth, the Hebrew letters, the positions and relationships of the Sephiroth on the Tree of Life and the tarot images. As you construct this basic framework, the more obscure elements will slowly fall into place as they become relevant to your experience. A general study guide has been provided as an appendix for those wishing a suggestion of an ordered sequence of learning.
For the contemporary reader who requires an alternative version of this book without reference to its original context, you may like to use the following substitution table throughout:
