Posted to TarotL on 11/5/00
Subsequently published on adepti.com
It may be well to add that I am not to be included among those who are satisfied that there is a valid correspondence between Hebrew letters and Tarot Trump symbols.
So says Waite, concluding his Introduction to Knut Stenring’s translation of The Book of Formation (1923). He had also gone on record as an opponent of the systematic assignment of the Hebrew letters to the Tarot cards in his translation of Levi’s Transcendental Magic when it was reissued with his annotations and footnotes.(1) Gilbert, in A.E. Waite, A Bibliography (p. 107) writes in reference to Levi’s Transcendental Magic, "His engaging style has lead uncritical readers to overlook both his dogmatic assertion of palpable falsehoods and his quite arbitrary attribution of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet to the Tarot trumps. Waite was well aware of these shortcomings but still felt that there was much of value to be gained from Transcendental Magic".
To Levi’s "Without the Tarot the Magic of the ancients is a closed book, and it is impossible to penetrate any of the great mysteries of the Kabbalah.", Waite’s note reads, "There is a sense in which this statement represents the main thesis of Levi respecting the Secret Tradition in Israel. It must be taken therefore as his serious and considered view, but its sole foundation is that there are 22 Hebrew letters and 22 Tarot Trumps Major. They belong to one another as much and as little as the 22 chapters of the Apocalypse connect with either."(2) Levi had extended the correspondence to include the 22 chapters of the Apocalypse, overlooking the fact that the division into 22 chapters was imposed on the Apocalypse by later Christianity, not its author. Waite assigns the same import to each – none at all. Obviously, the majority of Transcendentalists did not agree. The re-established French Martinists lead by Papus, Oswald Wirth and, more significantly, Westcott, Mathers and the official Golden Dawn had followed Levi (though in the modified form outlined in the Cypher Manuscripts – generally agreed to be the product of Kenneth MacKenzie) and systematically assigned the 22 letters to the Tarot. Waite was once again the oddball.
But Waite used the cards in correspondence to the letters as the evidence of his original ritual material and the literal Shin on the Fool card both seem to demonstrate. Even his remark in the PKT that of Levi, "nearly every attribution is wrong" indicates pretty clearly that some are correct. The question then is really at what points did Waite differentiate from the others? The discussion is non-existent! The prevailing and virtually universal view is that Waite was a good little GD soldier and while following their system verbatim, used "blinds" to obscure his true motives. In fact, those so-called blinds are hints, intimations of his actual system (and lack of one), much closer to Levi than the GD.
The first and most common mistake Waite’s misinterpreters make (besides not reading much more of him than the PKT) is to approach the question monolithically. There are, in fact, three facets to the question – the numbering of the cards, the assignment of the cards to the paths of the Tree of Life and the ordering for assignment of letters. The GD constructed a full system that incorporated all these elements (and a good deal more) into a single set of correspondences, which they handled monolithically. In fact, that system is so tightly integrated, Crowley would later substantiate reordering the cards with "Tzaddi is not the Star". Waite, on the other hand, was more critical, arguing from the beginning that substance precluded happenstance or expediency, but more likely wishing to hold to his preferred formula for restoring the Lost Word. It is a personal view, but is seems that the monolithic approach taken by the GD and adopted by nearly everyone else, is really what obscures the issue. Their success, admittedly of a high order, has so conditioned the modern to see the correspondences one way, it has become more fashionable to use terms like "blinds" than to examine critically.
Taking the first of these three facets, we see that Waite used a traditional numbering, starting with the Fool as 0, but deviating by swapping Strength and Justice. While this certainly must be seen as nothing other than an endorsement of the numbering specified by the Cypher Manuscripts, it has nothing to do with the letters. The swap of Atus 8 and 11 is astrologically motivated, to bring the zodiacal attributions of the majors into natural sequence. It does not provide any insight into the question of the letters, one way or the other.
The second is obvious, Waite adopting the GD’s assignment of cards to the paths. Note, though, that the assignment to the paths is based on the order specified by the numbering. Again, there is no insight here, one way or the other regarding the letters. The Fool, the first in the series as cypher nought, zero, is assigned to the first Path, the Path of Aleph. The Cypher Manuscripts surmised that this established the Aleph on the card, and moved the card from its traditional position between 20 and 21. But this is completely arbitrary, supported only by the location of the card on the path and the intuitive sense that the beauty of the GD’s pathworking system (and it is a thing of truth and beauty) provided the necessary authority.
And that brings us to the crux of the matter, the third facet.
In the PKT, Waite states, as I’ve mentioned, that nearly all of Levi’s attribution of letters to cards are mistaken. This has to mean that some are correct. Both systems order the cards, then assign the letters based on the order. While Christian and Levi, for example, place the 0 on the Fool in common with the GD, they order the card between 20 and 21, thus their Magician is Aleph and their Fool, Shin. The GD, enamored of the functionality discovered in the assignment of the cards to the paths, felt warranted in rearranging the ordering. Since the correspondences modified by the GD’s reordering begin at the first card, there is but one common correspondence between Levi and the GD. If, as Waite says, some, or more than one, of Levi’s are correct, then none of the GD’s are correct, outside the possibility of the one common assignment, The World.
The discussions of the cards in the PKT is ordered with the Fool between 20 and 21 and there is a Shin (and flames!) on the Fool card. It is obvious, for Waite, as far as the letters can be assigned to the cards, the letter attributions follow the order reflected in Christian and Levi, and later Papus and Wirth. The Fool is Shin, but, on the basis of his ritual materials, add to it the GD’s innovation, it lies on the Path of Aleph.
An argument from silence deserves a quick mention here. Waite never uses language that directly associates letter and card in the manner of Crowley’s "Tzaddi in not the Star". His language is always of the manner "card lies on the path of letter".
But only some of Levi’s attributions are correct (the Fool/Shin obviously one). There are a few other cards that Waite may have put letters to. For example, in "Shadows of Life and Thought" (pp. 190-191), Waite writes, "Now, there are twenty-two Trumps Major arranged, more or less, in a sequence but subject to certain variations as the packs differ respecting time and place of origin. There are also twenty-two Letters of the Hebrew Alphabet, and it occurred to Eliphas Levi that it was desirable to effect a marriage between the Letters and Cards. It seems impossible to make a combination of this kind, however arbitrary, and not find some accidents in its favour; and there is better authority in Kabbalism than Eliphas Levi ever produced in writing to connect The Hebrew letter Beth with the so-called Pope Joan or Sovereign Priestess of the Tarot." In the article "The Great Symbols of the Tarot"(3) he writes, "It is to be noticed further that Levi allocated meanings to each letter individually of the Hebrew alphabet, but they are his own irresponsible invention, except in two or three very obvious cases – e.g., that Beth, the second letter, corresponds to the duad, Ghimel to the triad, and Daleth to the tetrad."
Other possibilities occur from more arcane sources. For example, the French Martinists traditionally configured the left hand falling figure to suggest its letter, the Ayin. Though the RWS seems to uphold this tradition (compare the RWS Tower to Wirth’s), it cannot be asserted definitively.
But correspondence does not apply comprehensively. Waite, using as an example the only card on which he himself puts the literal character (and did I mention the flames?), remarks "The folly of the whole comparison is illustrated best by the Card which is called Fool and is not numbered in the series; the cipher Nought being usually placed against it. In Levi’s arrangement it corresponds to the letter Shin, the number of which is 300. But wherever it is placed in the series the correspondence between Trumps Major and the Hebrew Alphabet is ipso facto destroyed."(4) So, for Waite, while it is possible to place letters against the cards, they cannot be applied wholesale, as Levi and the GD do, and even when justified, only within the specific parameters of that justification. Just because Waite had reason to put the Shin on the card, he does not include all the letter baggage (as the numerology) in the application.
So why did Waite put the Shin on the Fool? "...in a rather early and important High Degree of the philosophical kind, now almost unknown, the Master-Builder of the Third Degree rises as Christ, and so completes the dismembered Divine Name, by insertion of the Hebrew letter Shin, this producing Yeheshua – the restoration of the Lost Word in the Christian Degrees of Masonry."(5) For Waite, the Fool is the undegenerate spirit of man (did I mention the flames?), wearing The Word like a garment. This theme is common with Waite, appearing in nearly all his hermetic works.
All that remains is to ask where the Air went. If the Fool is Shin and the element of fire (still a Mother letter and an element), a simple substitution makes the Last Judgement Resh and Air. If one were to make the Hanged Man Air and move Water to LJ, the elements are now in order. However, the rationale for assignment of element, planet and sign is tenuous enough in places that without Waite’s explicit instruction, many combinations are plausible.
Say, isn’t that lady on LJ a Resh? Resh, Shin (the boy), Ayin (pops), "wickedness". Shin...?! Must be a blind. :)
1. In "The Pictorial Key to the Tarot" (1910), Waite says only that "nearly every attribution is wrong." (p. 161)
2. "Transcendental Magic", New and revised edition; Rider. There is a great confusion of TM texts. The first edition, without annotation, is paginated differently than the New edition, with annotation. Subsequent to the New edition (specifically, the fourth edition), the TM was again reformatted, tipped in plates in earlier versions were incorporated into the pagination and it was reset in new type. All (actually, all I’ve seen) of the modern paperback versions (i.e. Samual Weiser) are reprints of the 4th, so I use it here. p. 383.
3. "The Occult Review", Vol. XLIII, No. 1; Jan. 1926. You can see the article in full at http://adepti.com -misc. writings.
5. "Some Deeper Aspects of Masonic Symbolism" in "The Builder", Vol. II, No. 6; 1916, June. You can see the articles in full at http://adepti.com misc. writings.