Marcus Katz - 17 Jun

THE MAGICIANS 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 .

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 1980s 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 worlds 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 magicians 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:

The many benefits of joining the Tarosophy Tarot Association are available at:

.

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

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 contemporary life.

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 1950s 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.

As we will come to see, the first connection of tarot and Kabbalah came through a piece of writing in Antoine Court de Gbelins 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. 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.