The Golden Dawn system is built upon the esoteric correspondences of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet outlined in the kabbalistic text called Sepher Yetzirah, meaning Book of Formation, which sometimes, arguably, was also translated as Book of Creation.
The Sefer Yetzirah, allegedly, is the earliest extant book on Jewish mysticism – while other scholars speculated that it might have been a mathematical and linguistic theory treatise. The origin of the text is unknown and remains hotly debated.
The text is divided into six chapters. In a nutshell, the Sefer Yetzirah describes how ‘Yah, Lord of Hosts, God of Israel, the living God, King of the universe, El Shaddai, Merciful and Gracious, High and Exalted, dwelling in eternity, whose name is Holy – He is lofty and holy’ created ‘His universe with thirty-two mystical paths of Wisdom’.
These mysterious ‘thirty-two mystical paths of Wisdom’ are composed by the ‘Ten Sefirot of Nothingness and twenty-two Foundation Letters: three Mothers, seven Doubles and twelve Elementals.’
The attributes of the Ten Sefirot, ‘ten and not nine, ten and not eleven’,[3] are ‘the Breath of the Living God, Breath from Breath, Water from Breath, Fire from Water, up, down, east, west, north, and south.’
Chapter Three deals with the Three Mother letters, Alef, Mem and Shin. (…)
Chapter Four deals with the Seven Doubles: Bet, Gimel, Dalet, Kaf, Peh, Resh and Tav. (…)
Chapter Five deals with the so-called twelve ‘Simples’ or ‘Elementals’, respectively He, Waw, Zayin, Heth, Teth, Yodh, Lamedh, Nun, Samekh, Ayin, Tsade, Qoph. (…)
These letters are attributed to the twelve months, respectively Zodiac signs. It is straight forward, apparently no issues there. However, things get out of sync when the twenty-two letters are assigned to the Major Arcana cards according to their numbering based on the order provided by French occultist Éliphas Lévi which follows the pattern of the Tarot of Marseille. Normally,… The full article is available at https://www.patreon.com/posts/42491314
The Sepher Yetzirah and the Tarot
