Even if you aren’t interested in psychic things, most people have heard of tarot cards. Others might or might not have heard of Kabbalah or the Tree of Life? The thing is these things can be u sed together and if you are trying to understand tarot cards you might see that they are associated with a Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
History of Tarot
Tarot cards are a deck of cards with 78 different cards. The cards have different images, and they are divided into the Major and Minor Arcana group. These cards can be found in new age shops or around online stores.
Tarots were first seen in the 13th century, and they moved to France and are found all over the world today. In the older times, people would put the cards on metal or leather to keep them stronger but now they are made similar to a deck of playing cards.
The Major Arcana group has 22 cards numbered 0 to 21 and the Minor Arcana cards has four different suits, and each suit has 13 cards including court cards.
Kabbalah and Tarot
Tarot cards became part of Kabbalah and the Tree of Life because of their association with numbers. The Kabbalah Tree of Life works with the four different suits of the wands, cups, spades, or pentacles and works with the letters of the word Tetragrammaton: Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh which is a theological idea.
The tarot and Kabbalah was first used in France where they would use these things with fortune telling, occult and more in Europe in the 1800’s.
Many famous authors have written on how to associate tarot with the Hebrew alphabet and the 78 cards with the Tree of Life. Eliphas Levi wrote on this and talked about how the Hebrew letters are supreme and they can be used to combine the Golden Dawn, tarot, Kabbalah, and the Tree of Life.
Tree of Life
Kabbalah is a kind of Jewish practice that uses tarot cards. This is a set of numbers that are organized and are known as a sephiroth. Each of these thing represent who God is. Here is how it is broken down:
- The right side is called the Pillar of Mercy, and it is a positive side or a masculine side.
- The left hand is called the Pillar of Judgement and is the negative side or the feminine side.
- The opposites are in the Middle Pillar called the Pillar of Mildness.
- Nine of the sephiroth are put in three triangles with two factors that oppose each other and one that is balanced, and these are considered tree shapes.
- At the bottom of the tree there is Malkuth which is a sphere, and it means the things in the world or material things. The idea is that the tree will pour into the Malkuth where things are manifested.
- The lines that go between the different sephiroth are the 22 paths and they form a Kingdom.
- The paths are numbered from the top down with the top being Path 1 and ending in Path 22.
The different paths will connect the sephiroth and have different kinds of things that they are meant to do along the way. This is how tarot, geometry, numerology, and astrology are all combined to help people to understand this, according to Levi.
Hermeticism
Hermeticism is putting the Tree of Life and tarot together and it is a kind of literature and texts that are based around Hermes Trismegistus. This was the Greek god, Hermes and the Egyptian god, Thoth. The texts show how you can divide this into religion, philosophy, and technology.
Technical is a group of texts that talk about astrology, numerology, Kabbalah, Alchemy, Theurgy and more. The texts were translated to Arabic and Latin and are seen throughout history. This shows the science of these things and was written by many people that believed in spiritual things.
The religious and philosophical side of this is more about cosmology, theology, and anthropology. These are texts that are called the Emerald Tablet and Seven Hermetic Principles.
Hermeticism and Tarot
There are different artists that became interested in things like the Golden Dawn, and this became a center of tarot teachings. The tarot ideas became used for spiritual advancement and physical ideas to spread word to the divine. They wanted to use this to make their own life better.
The Order of the Golden Dawn of Hermetics says that there are tools that work with the Hebrew alphabet to assign to the cards. It shows that the Major Arcana cards can be used such as the Fool, Strength and Justice for astrology and numerology and more. The Knight became the court card that was the most powerful while the King card was turned to the Prince and the Pages became Princesses. Levi talks about how the ten numbers of the Minor Arcana work with the sephiroth and the Tree of Life and works with 36 decans that work with the wheel of the horoscope and 72 Kabbalah angels.
Edgar Waite published a book in 1889 that talked about how to read tarot cards. He was interested in the Gold Dawn teaching and Hermetics and eventually the Rider Waite tarot deck was created based on these ideas.
Bringing Tarot and Kabbalah As One
The history of Kabbalah and tarot show that they can be combined naturally or that they have always worked together. You can find a deck of cards that suits whatever you want to do with it, and you can manifest things in your life using the right cards and the right religious and theological ideas behind it.