by Eliphas Levi
1 Compare La Clef des Grands Mystères, p. 226: “The ancients called practical Magic the Sacerdotal Art and the Royal Art, and it is to be remembered that the Magi were masters of primitive civilization because they were masters of all science of their time.”
2 This is Lévi, the French littérateur, in a mood of Mlle Lenormant, not Lévi affirming seriously on the basis of occult philosophy.
X K1
THE KABALAH
MALKUTH PRINCIPIUM PHALLUS
ALL religions have preserved the remembrance of a primitive book, written in hieroglyphs by the sages of the earliest epoch of the world. Simplified and vulgarized in later days, its symbols furnished letters to the art of writing, characters to the Word, and to occult philosophy its mysterious signs and pantacles.2 This book, attributed by the Hebrews to Enoch, seventh master of the world after Adam; by the Egyptians to Hermes Trismegistus; by the Greeks to Cadmus, the mysterious builder of the Holy City: this book was the symbolical summary of primitive tradition, called subsequently Kabalah or Cabala, meaning reception. The tradition in question rests altogether on the one dogma of Magic: the visible is for us the proportional measure of the invisible. Now the ancients, observing that equilibrium is the universal law in physics, and is consequent on the apparent opposition of two forces, argued from physical to metaphysical equilibrium, and maintained that in God, that is, in the First Living and Active Cause, there must be recognized two properties which are necessary one to another—stability and motion, necessity and liberty, rational order and volitional autonomy, justice and love, whence also severity and mercy. And these two attributes were personified, so to speak, by the kabalistic Jews under the names of GEBURAH and CHESED. Above GEBURAH and CHESED abides the Supreme Crown, the equilibrating power, principle of the world or equilibrated kingdom, which we find mentioned under the name of MALKUTH in the occult and kabalistic versicle of the Pater-noster to which we have already referred.1 But GEBURAH and CHESED, maintained in equilibrium by the CROWN above and the KINGDOM below, constitute two principles, which may be considered either from an abstract point of view or in their realization. In their abstract or idealized sense, they take the higher names of CHOKMAH, Wisdom, and BINAH, Intelligence.2 Their realization is stability and progress, that is, eternity and victory— HOD and NETSAH.
Such, according to the Kabalah, is the groundwork of all religions and all sciences—a triple triangle and a circle, the notion of the triad explained by the balance multiplied by itself in the domains of the ideal, then the realization of this conception in forms. Now, the ancients attached the first notions of this simple and impressive theology to the very idea of numbers, and qualified the figure of the first decade after the following manner:
1. KETHER. —The Crown, the equilibrating power.
2. CHOKMAH.—Wisdom, equilibrated in its unchangeable order by the initiative of intelligence.
3. BINAH.—Active Intelligence, equilibrated by Wisdom.
4. CHESED.—Mercy, which is Wisdom in its secondary conception, ever benevolent because it is strong.
5. GEBURAH.—Severity, necessitated by Wisdom itself, and by goodwill. To permit evil is to hinder good.
6. TIPHERETH.—Beauty, the luminous conception of equilibrium in forms, intermediary between the Crown and the Kingdom, mediating principle between Creator and creation—a sublime conception of poetry and its sovereign priesthood!
7. NETSAH. — Victory, that is, eternal triumph of intelligence and justice.
8. HOD. —Eternity of the conquests achieved by mind over matter, active over passive, life over death.
9. JESOD. The Foundation, that is, the basis of all belief and all truth—otherwise, the absolute in philosophy.
10. MALKUTH.—The Kingdom, meaning the universe, entire creation, the work and mirror of God, the proof of supreme reason, the formal consequence which compels us to have recourse to virtual premisses, the enigma which has God for its answer—that is to say, Supreme and Absolute Reason.
These ten primary notions attached to the ten first characters of the primitive alphabet, signifying both principles and numbers, are called the ten Sephiroth by the masters in Kabalah.1 The Sacred Tetragram, drawn in the following manner, indicates the number, source and correspondence of Divine Names. To this name of JOTCHAVAH,1 written by these four-and-twenty signs, crowned with a triple flower of light, must be referred the twenty-four thrones of heaven and the twenty-four crowned elders in the Apocalypse. In the Kabalah the occult principle is called the Ancient, and this principle, multiplied and, as it were, reflected in secondary causes, creates images of itself— that is to say, so many Ancients as there are diverse con ceptions of its unique essence. These images, less perfect in proportion as they are removed farther from their source, project upon the darkness an ultimate reflection or glimmer, representing a horrible and deformed Ancient, who is termed vulgarly the devil. Hence an initiate has been bold enough to say: “The devil is God, as understood by the wicked”; while another has added, in words more bizarre but no less energetic: “The devil is composed of God's ruins.”2 We may sum up and explain these strikingly novel definitions by remarking that in symbolism itself the demon is an angel cast out of heaven for having sought to usurp divinity. This belongs to the allegorical language of prophets and makers of legends. Philosophically speaking, the devil is a human idea of divinity, which has been surpassed and dispossessed of heaven by the progress of science and reason. Among primitive Oriental peoples, Moloch, Adramelek, Baal, were personifications of the one God, dishonoured by barbarous attributes. The god of the Jansenists, creating hell for the majority of human beings and delighting in the eternal tortures of those he was unwilling to save, is a conception even more barbarous than that of Moloch: hence the god of the Jansenists is already a veritable Satan, fallen from heaven, in the sight of every wise and enlightened Christian.
In the multiplication of the Divine Names the Kabalists have connected them all, either with the unity of the Tetragram, the figure of the triad, or the sephirotic scale of the decad. They arrange the scale of the Divine Names and numbers in a triangle, which may be presented in Roman characters as follows:
The sum of all these Divine Names formed from the one Tetragram, but outside the Tetragram itself, is a basis of the Hebrew Ritual and constitutes the occult force which the kabalistic rabbins invoke under the title of Shemhamphoras.
We have now to concern ourselves with the Tarot from the kabalistic point of view, and have already indicated the occult source of the name. This hieroglyphic book is composed of a kabalistic alphabet and of a wheel or circle of four decades, distinguished by four symbolical and typical figures, each having for its radius a scale of four progressive figures, which represent Humanity: man, woman, youth, child—master, mistress, knight, esquire. The twenty-two figures of the alphabet represent, in the first place, the thirteen dogmas, and secondly, the nine beliefs authorized by that Jewish religion which is so strong and so firmly established on highest reason.
Here follows the religious and kabalistic key of The Tarot, formulated in technical verses after the mode of the ancient lawgivers:1
By the help of this purely dogmatic explanation we shall already understand the kabalistic alphabet of the Tarot. Thus, Figure I, entitled the Juggler, represents the active principle in the economy of divine and human autotelia. Figure II, vulgarly called Pope Joan, represents dogmatic unity based upon numbers, and is the personification of the Kabalah or the Gnosis. Figure III represents Divine Spirituality under the emblem of a winged woman, holding in one hand the apocalyptic eagle, and in the other the world suspended from the end of her sceptre. The other emblems are equally clear, and can be explained as easily as the first. Turning now to the four suits, namely, Clubs, Cups, Swords, and Circles or Pantacles, commonly called Deniers —all these are hieroglyphics of the Tetragram. Thus, the Club is the Egyptian Phallus or Hebrew JOD; the Cup is the cteïs or primitive He; the Sword is the conjunction of both, or the lingam, rep
resented in Hebrew preceding the captivity by Vau; while the Circle or Pantacle, image of the world, is the He final of the Divine Name. Now let us take a Tarot and combine all its emblems one by one into the Wheel or ROTA of William Postel; let us group the four aces, the four twos, and so on, together; we shall then have ten packs of cards giving the hieroglyphic interpretation of the triangle of Divine Names on the scale of the denary, as previously tabulated. By referring each number to its corresponding SEPHIRA, we may then read them off as follows:
Four signs present the Name of every name.
I KETHER.
The four Aces.
Four brilliant beams adorn His crown of flame.
2 CHOKMAH.
The four Twos.
Four rivers ever from His wisdom flow.
3 BINAH.
The four Threes.
Four proofs of His intelligence we know.
4 CHESED.
The four Fours.
Four benefactions from His mercy come.
5 Geburah.
The four Fives.
Four times four sins avenged His justice sum.
6 TIPHERETH.
The four Sixes.
Four rays unclouded make His beauty known.
7 NETSAH.
The four Sevens.
Four times His conquest shall in song be shown.
8 HOD.
The four Eights.
Four times He triumphs on the timeless plane.
9 JESOD.
The four Nines.
Foundations four His great white throne maintain.
10 MALKUTH.
The four Tens.
One fourfold kingdom owns His endless sway, As from His crown there streams a fourfold ray.
By this simple arrangement the kabalistic meaning of each card is exhibited. For example, the five of Clubs signifies rigorously GEBURAH of JOD, that is, the justice of the Creator or the wrath of man; the seven of Cups signifies the victory of mercy or the triumph of woman; the eight of Swords signifies conflict or eternal equilibrium; and so of the others.1 We can thus understand how the ancient pontiffs proceeded to make the oracle speak. The chance dealing of the laminae produced invariably a fresh kabalistic meaning, exactly true in its combinations, which alone were fortuitous; and, seeing that the faith of the ancients attributed nothing to chance, they read the answers of Providence in the oracles of the Tarot, which were called THERAPH or THERAPHIM by the Hebrews, as the erudite Kabalist Gaffarel, one of the magicians employed by Cardinal Richelieu, was the first to perceive.1
As to the Court-cards, a final couplet will suffice to explain them:
KING, QUEEN, KNIGHT, ESQUIRE.
The married pair, the youth, the child, the race; Thy path by these to Unity retrace.
At the end of the “Ritual” we shall provide further details, together with full documents, concerning the marvellous Book of the Tarot, of all books the most primitive, the key of prophecies and dogmas, in a word, the inspiration of inspired works, a fact which has remained unperceived, not only by the science of Court de Gebelin but by the extraordinary intuitions of Etteilla or Alliette.
The ten SEPHIROTH and the twenty-two Tarots form what the Kabalists term the thirty-two paths of absolute science. With regard to particular sciences, they distinguish them into fifty chapters, which they call the fifty gates: among Orientals the word gate signifies government or authority. The rabbins also divided the Kabalah into Bereshith, or universal Genesis, and MERCAVAH, or the Chariot of Ezekiel; then by means of a dual interpretation of the kabalistic alphabets, they formed two sciences, called GEMATRIA and TEMURAH, and so composed the Notary Art, which is fundamentally the complete science of the Tarot signs and their complex and varied application to the divination of all secrets, whether of philosophy, Nature or the future itself. We shall recur to this work in the twentieth chapter of our “Ritual”.
1 The number ten is the absolute number of the Kabalah and the key of the SEPHIROTH.—La Clef des Grands Mystères, p. 44.
2 “There exists an occult and sacred alphabet which the Hebrews attributed to Enoch, the Egyptians to Thoth or Mercurius Trismegistus, the Greeks to Cadmus and Palamedes. This alphabet, which was known to the Pythagoreans, is composed of absolute ideas attached to signs and numbers, and its combinations realize the mathematics of thought. Solomon represented it by seventy-two names written on thirty-six talismans, and eastern initiates still term it the Little Keys or Clavicles of Solomon.”—La Clef des Grands Mystères, pp. iii, iv. Éliphas Lévi goes on to say that these Keys are described and that their use is explained in the Sepher Yetzirah, ascribed traditionally to the patriarch Abraham; but this is certainly not the case. The kabalistic work in question treats of (1) the ten SEPHIROTH, (2) the Hebrew letters, (3) the Thirty-two Paths of Wisdom, and (4) in a supplementary part which is much later, the Fifty Gates of Understanding. The so-called talismans of Solomon are methods of inscribing the Divine Name of seventy-two letters, to which there is no reference in the Sepher Yetzirah. It should be added that this Name offers no analogy, however fantastic, with Tarot cards, the full number of which is seventy-eight.
1 In the Tree of Life KETHER, the Supreme Crown, abides above CHOKMAH BINAH, forming with these the Supernal Triad, below which are CHESED and GEBURAH. It must be said further that the Tree comprises three triangles, beneath which is MALKUTH. There is no circle as Lévi suggests, except in the accidental sense that the names and titles of each SEPHIRA are inscribed within this figure.
2 “Authority, so great and so misunderstood at this day, is funded on Wisdom and Intelligence, as KETHER upon CHOKMAH and BINAH. Authority sanctions honour, which reposes on devotion and justice, as TIPHERETH on GEDULAH and GEBURAH. Honour is based on social truth, which is the alliance of order and progress, power and duty, and this truth constitutes the moral life of humanity. (1) Authority, (2) Wisdom, (3) Intelligence, (4) Devotion, (5) Justice, (6) Honour. (7) Progress, (8) Order, (9) Social Truth, and (10) Humanity: herein is the philosophical explanation and application of sacred numbers in the Kabalah.”—Fables et Symboles, pp. 298, 299.
1 “The Kabalah is the ciphered formula of the Divine hypothesis. Mysteries are the theorems of its algebra. It is simple as two and two make four, clear as the four rules of arithmetic and obscure for the ignorant as the table of logarithms or Newton's binomial.”—Le Livre des Sages, p. 58.
1 The Divine Name consists of the consonants JOD, HE, VAU, HE, and cannot be read JOTCHAVAH.
2 “It is affirmed by Kabalists that the secret and true name of the devil is that of Jehovah written backward, and this is a plenary revelation for initiates in the mysteries of the Tetragram. The order of those letters which compose this great Name indicates the predominance of idea over form, active over passive, cause over effect. To reverse this order is to obtain a counter result. Jehovah is He Who dominates Nature like a magnificent horse and makes it go where He wills; but CHAVAJOH—otherwise, the demon—is an unbridled horse which overthrows its rider and precipitates him into the abyss. It follows that the devil exists really for Kabalists but is neither a person nor a power which is distinct from the forces of Nature. He is the bewrayment or sleep of intelligence, as he is also folly and falsehood.”—La Clef des Grands Mystères, p. 219. Compare a statement put into the mouth of an alleged hierophant: “When you have seen God, turn about, and in the shadow which you project in the presence of this Sun of Intelligence there will appear the devil, that black phantom which presents itself when you do not look towards God.”—Ibid., p. ii.
1 “Above all unities, or rather all conceptions of unity, a necessary hypothesis compels us to admit the Absolute and Inconceivable Unity, Principle without principle, Cause apart from cause. . . . This terrible Unknown has no name which can be formulated, for the Tetragram itself applies only to its conventional and hieroglyphic image. But it is ALEPH and TAU, ALPHA and OMEGA in all beings: we can affirm only concerning it that it is —EHIEH.”—Correspondence with Baron Spédalieri, No.
16.
1 In one of his later reveries Lévi pretends that the Apocalypse appears to have been devised according to the numbers, symbols and hieroglyphical figures of the Tarot. “There in fact we find sceptres, chalices, swords and crowns, disposed by determined numbers and corresponding to each other by means of the denary and sacred septenary. We find also the four kings of the four quarters of the world and the four horsemen which figure in our ordinary cards; we find the winged woman and also the Logos in kingly garments, afterwards in pontifical vestments with several diadems on His tiara. Finally, the Apocalyptic Key, which is the vision of Heaven, is identical with No. 21 of the Tarot, exhibiting a throne (sic) surrounded by a double rainbow and at the four corners of this crown (sic) the four sacramental animals of the Kabalah. These coincidences are very curious at least and give much food for thought.”—La Clef des Grands Mystères, pp. 325, 326. The alleged analogies are utterly fantastic throughout, or more correctly do not exist. There is no need to waste space, but sceptres do not appear in the Apocalypse, and the twenty-first chapter of that text has not one symbol corresponding to the Tarot card which is called THE WORLD, and is here misdescribed utterly.
1 Gaffarel was a man of learning, as his Abdita Divinae Kabbalae Mysteria and Unheard-of Curiosities concerning Talismanic Magic prove abundantly. He was the librarian of Cardinal Richelieu, and I doubt very much whether he was employed in any other sense by the great prelate. Providence is said to have removed him—circa 1681—on the eve of a great folly, the preparation of a formidable work upon caverns, hollow places, holes in the earth and in the human body. It should be added that there is no reference to Tarot cards in the writings of Gaffarel.