Why is High Priestess Moon? - Addenda
ADDENDUM - the Fucking Eliphas’ tarot
As if by the hands of Eliphas’ ghost himself, while looking into another thing, I found out we have an actual replica of his own tarot, and he drew some designs collected outside of his publications. Crying ‘oh, come the fuck ON’ and throwing my hands up, I returned to this manuscript of my own. Adding it here, because I discovered this after EVERYTHING else.
Other than the actual personal version of Claviculi di Solomon being sold to some bigshot private person in November of 2025, the situation’s been pretty quiet. But a year before that Marco Benedetti released some images of Levi’s as cards, together with his personal copy of the Marseille Tarot he, uh, scribbled on. Added many correspondences, grimoire sigils and drew Hebrew letters over the figures. I know this because I have been jealously looking at videos of people who can afford his historical reproductions. A lot of notes on this are hidden on Facebook which I refuse to go on, so, yet again, working with limited info, mostly from watching the videos on the Marco deck. Marylin from Tarot Clarity made a series of awesome videos on this deck, showing off every card..
Levi also replicated some Alluete deck cards. Alluete is a pretty funky Spanish playing card deck with nifty decor on the pip cards. He got this move from de Mellet and Gebelin, who both claimed that this deck points to the “Egyptian source” of the cards. Then there are some of his other prints, which don’t correspond to any Tarot, like Sphinx, or Melancholy. I know he had more versions of Tarot cards drawn out, I just don’t have access to it.
His Marseille Deck is the most interesting thing, because this is the living document of what he was thinking about and working with. Now, if you look at it, you see the aleph as Mercury as The Juggler. Which is insane from many angles, most importantly from the whole aleph as a mother letter, it’s not being assigned a planet. But maybe he used Mercury to refer to alchemical correspondence? See this is the problem with Levi. He just did so much, I genuinely can’t tell. On The High Priestess he notes from what I can see Sibilla, Sophia and most importantly the fucking Moon in the corner. And Again, he assigns Venus to the The Empress and gimel, then Jupiter to daleth and The Emperor - and then continues with heh as The Hierophant with Saturn floating there like what? Mars to vav to The Lovers? Sun to zayin to The Chariot? What is this Man DOING? He just gave up. Stopped giving a shit. But the darndest thing is that he also decoupled Archangels from the planets and just assigned them to the following seven cards. For example, Samael, connected to Mars, is just hanging out on The Justice, chet. Raphael to tet and Hermit, and so on.
Again, this isn’t their planet at all, it's like he decoupled the earlier correspondences he gave and just focused on the order, or imagery. And later cards have classes of angels, again, decoupled from Sefirot and just laid out there. Mind you angels are attributed days or planets, and this could be some insane connection I can’t decipher (It does suggest uh, going down some hierarchy numerically, like planets -> archangels -> hierarchy of angels), but this is merely an addendum and I already. went through the length of proving his system is a beastly chimera. This is merely adding more info I learned after my writeup.
THERE IS NO SANTA, THERE IS NO EASTER BUNNY AND THERE IS NO “CORRECT” ORDER OF CORRESPONDENCES.
ADDENDUM 2 - The fucking Letters to Eliphas’ favourite boy student
When creating a bibliography, I came across a book, which contains around 180 letters Eliphas wrote to one of his students. I was aware of the 10 letters which he wrote to another guy, which contain very distilled notes on Qabbalah, but these letters above fully escaped my notice. As such, I am covering them here. Can this guy leave me the fuck alone ?
As a reminder, his planetary attributions carried forward by the French school:
Beth: Reflection, thought, the moon, the angel Gabriel, prince of mysteries;
Ghimel: Love, will, Venus, the angel Anael, prince of life and death;
Daleth: Strength, power, Jupiter, Sachiel Melech, king of kings;
Caph: Violence, struggle, work Mars, Samael Zebaoth, prince of the phalanxes;
Phe: Eloquence, intelligence, Mercury, Raphael, prince of sciences;
Resch: Destruction and regeneration, Time, Saturn, Cassiel, king of tombs and solitudes; Tau: Truth, light, the Sun, Michael, king of the Elohim.
Numérologie et kabbale is a 1996 bound release containing all of his letters to his student Baron Spedialeri who was the one to publish them after Levi’s death.
So, I don’t know how much trust I should show these letters, really, but I choose to include them and trust in them, unless a serious doubt is cast.
In these letters he strongly suggests reading Pistorius’ Artis
cabalistic, ESPECIALLY his Sefer Yetzirah translation. So it was his
main source, and yet the SY in it simply doesn’t flow into his
attributions at all. (Letter 5)
You know that the three mothers are: Aleph, Mem Shin, or Aleph, Mem,
Thau, because Shin and Thau are two opposing and analogous letters that
represent being and life, as we shall see later. Thus is formed the word
Ameth, which is at the beginning of this letter and which means: peace,
justice, and truth. (8)
So in 1861, when he also released The Key to the Mysteries, he did know the correct mother letters, so perhaps it was a blind after all, but wait did HE? Tau is NEVER a mother letter! This category is indeed meaningless to him!
In his lessons on beth, he mentions it is a reflection, the Moon to the Sun. So, I finally got hope he would explain his logic. But he explains it like this:
The figures of the binary are: the son who is the splendor of the father, the word which is the form of thought, or to give words their proper gender, it is speech fertilized by the spirit, the moon which reflects the sun, the woman which reflects man, water which reflects the sky. The binary of God is Chocmah, which for us is the unity having Binah as its binary. In other words, God sees himself reflected in his supreme wisdom, and we conceive of him in the mirage of this mirage: for Chocmah is reflected in us. From the notion of this wisdom emanates the idea of intelligence: In lumine tuo videbimus lumen. Chocmah and Binah are the two supports of the supreme Crown which represents for us the kingship of the Invisible. They are the two columns of the throne, they are the two obelisks of Solomon, they are the two arms of the apocalyptic angel, they are the Elohim. (Letter 31)
Again, he comes up with the facsimile and implicitly genders it, or gives words their proper gender. Now, his whole analogue is confusing, but the reflection of God is Chokmah, which corresponds to Wisdom, and then we see that Wisdom and it reflects in us as Intelligence. You may notice that he is doing something a little sneaky, which is treating a group of three as just a chain of binaries, which, Awesome. Love when he does his silly things. Why didn’t he save this for the third letter lecture, I will never understand. Why did it NEED to be forced into the Binary lesson?
In his septenary focused letters, he applies Seven Christian Virtues to the Columns of the Solomon Temple, in a rather wretched clone of Tree of Life (Letter 114). I hope I don’t need to say that’s a fucking idiotic thing to do to what is a text of Jewish mysticism. Although some grace should be given, this is Masonic theft of Jewish influences, not his. He also explicitly calls out three of the seven archangels and gives them different titles than in Keys of the Mystery ( Letter 117), but corresponds them properly (Michael Sun, Gabriel Moon and Raphael Mercury) (Letter 122). Miracles can happen and Levi can indeed not contradict himself. But he also says that Michael is the Angel of Joachim, and Gabriel of Bohas (two columns of the Solomon temple). Do I even need to say that that is not their attribution based on his letters in The Key. It does appear as one of the assigned meanings in Zohar based list in Kabbala Denudata, Tabula Secunda Clavis fublimioris Kabbalæ, de ordine divinorum Nominum pro refoletione difficilioruni Enigmatum Libri Sohar. One among many attributionsthere! However, he doesn’t give a fuck. Again, different levels of symbolisms, he’s just gonna treat them differently because fuck YOU. YOU the person reading this and trying to figure him out.
Letter 123 just drives that shit in:
The four angels whose names are not revealed in the Bible correspond to the symbolic planets: Mars, or strength; Jupiter, or justice; Venus (modest or Urania), temperance; and old Saturn, or prudence. They are still missing from the earth and must one day constitute morality on an unshakeable foundation, just as the first three angels constituted dogma: Michael, the ternary unity of God represented by Aleph; Gabriel, the incarnation or binary manifestation of the creator represented by Beth; and Raphael, redemption, signified beforehand by Gimel. (Attributions in Letter 127)The names on which there is the most agreement are those of Anael, given to the angel of chastity and love, and Samael, given to the angel of justice and punishment. This Samael, among the Hebrews, sometimes lends his name and his ministry to Satan, whom he then calls the uncircumcised Samuel, and the name of Anael is sometimes confused with that of Astarte, the Venus of the Sidonians. This must indeed be the case, since the four great geniuses of morality have not yet manifested their light. They are known only by their shadow.
So. Now he is just fully talking about four virtues. In his mythological explanation - four virtues which correspond to unnamed angels, yet to be revealed to humanity, which will happen during the events of the Revelation. The three named archangels correspond to Christian Virtues and a visible Dogma. He doesnt give a fuck about correspondences.
Also Gabriel is feminine because he visited a woman once (He’s the messenger to Mary in Annunciation). Fuck, cooties work on angels too?
And there is a funny thing he does where he applies letters of Tetragrammaton to a fucking Catholic Church twice in a row (Letter 14):
1. The object of faith - yod;
2. The infinite law as its object - he;
3. The worship that makes faith fruitful - vau;
4. The believing and practicing people - he.
The Church is the outward form of religion; religion makes the Church by manifesting itself outwardly, just as yod produces he.
The Church makes religion by manifesting it. The union of the two is represented by the cross + and the power of the cross is poured into the chalice (second he).
The Church does not subsist without four indissoluble and inseparable things:
1. A head, always the same according to the spirit, and, consequently, mysterious and divine-
2. An unchanging symbol-
3. A perpetual sacrifice-
4. An infallible school of teaching-
The Church, like us, has a spirit and a body …
So his conclusions and assignments once again start to feel very much like syncretism of his own ideas, rather than something he took from some ancient wisdom. He just uses all this shit in different spots differently and will change it! He doesn’t GIVE a shit! It is ironically a perfect use case for Tarot as the organization principle of things, applied in the worst ways possible!
Masonic rites and Jewish mysticism both are just tools that come to Levi fundamentally as something to come to represent universal religion, which is Christianity. This is a conclusion we keep coming to with Levi. He is just a continuation of Christian Cabbalah history, in a surprisingly occult outfit. I mean he admits so himself:
The current evil from which the visible body of the Roman Church is dying is spiritual anarchy; I have said this often enough in my works. But if my mother becomes leprous and infirm, is she any less my mother? (Letter 14)
And he is a homophobic (Letters 163 and 164), who is surprised? Man, misogyny, insane anti-semitism AND hatred for “the effeminate”? Awesome! Before people complain, yes, homophobia didn’t exist yet because homosexuality as a distinct identity has not been named yet. However the exact logic he uses has been used as part of violent oppression and murder of gender non-conforming people and people who desired and reached for same-sex for centuries. He names it as a crime against nature. The final heh in Tetragrammaton, is the one power to denounce this evil of “effemininity”, and that final heh is seen as the second generative principle, Nature. (Yes, I do wish he kept the four-letter name the fuck alone, why do you ask?) His darling, beloved leprous mother of the Church said so and he has to put it into his esotericism, which is really just an apologist narrative in a trench coat.
However, here I admit, I don’t know, maybe someone else will find the proper logic here in these letters. I am too tired and ready to be done, again, I have shit to do. This is a legit energy barrier.