Why is High Priestess Moon? - Many Sins of Eliphas Levi (part two)
In the Supplements there is one more article on Kabbalah. I find it a despicable work for many reasons, but Levi learned about quotations. So, growth? He is saying wretched shit about Jewish people, the what-aboutisms and weaponizing of anti-Christian satirical text to say “HUH SO YOU ADMIT JESUS DID MIRACLES”. I am not owned. You are owned! This is the part that interests me:
In the Zohar, we see the divine mother, the second conception of the Elohim, cooperating in creation, which would have been impossible without her. It is she who calms and tempers the rigors of the paternal yod; it is she who opposes water to fire, and mercy to anger: — “The fire,” say the authors of the Zohar, “had sprung forth from the divine yod like a serpent, and it was about to consume the earth in its embrace, when the divine mother (may her name be blessed) brought the waters and made the liberating waves walk upon the burning head of the serpent.” Here, remembering that Mary, in Hebrew, means the sea, or the salt of the sea, we understand why she is represented with a crescent moon under her feet; For the Kabbalists say that the moon is the image of the divine τὸς of the Tetragrammaton, of the maternal power of the Elohim, and we are no longer astonished by this immense glory attributed to a mere mortal who, by her immaculate conception, goes back beyond the origin of time.
He didn’t direct me to any of his sources. Why didn’t he tell me where he got this? He did it to Postellus, he did it to one specific part of Kabbala Denudata in the same article. Where is my citation Levi? Cat got your tongue? Which commentator, his religion, his tradition, is he real? Is his name a synonym of someone else? What was he commenting on? For the Kabbalists, he says pointing at his Hydra of sources of about 5000 dense Latin. Moon is Chesed, beth, Binah, heh, Malkuth, your mom, your 17-year old wife that fucking divorced you.
Again, this many sources and his pathetic attempt to force them together is in my opinion what created the yod as Mother letter nonsense.
Oh and Mary, Greek transliteration of the Hebrew Miriam does not mean
“sea” or “salt of the sea”. This was actually discussed around his time,
with some alternatives already at ready - it is possible it missed him,
as the biggest discussion was after his death, but still. It’s an
interesting topic that the Catholic encyclopedia gets into at depth. I will say that it’s curious St. Jerome comes up here, as the guy who very likely started the mistranslation. St. Jerome knew Hebrew and he was the guy who said “hey, let’s translate the Old
Testament from Hebrew and not Greek”, creating the Vulgate Bible
translation. Levi notes him as a source for Kabbalah back at the letter
section of The Key to the Mysteries. This is, presumably, because
Jerome talks about the Hebrew letters a bit, and hey, having Church Father
in your bibliography adds prestige. Funny how we keep coming back to the
same people. The underlying flaw that rests at any “sea” meaning for
Mary is this:
…at any rate, it is based on the assumption that the name miryam is
composed of the Hebrew words mar (bitter) and yam (sea). Since in Hebrew
the adjective follows its substantive, the compound of the two words
ought to read yam mar; and even if the inverse order of words be
admitted as possible, we have at best maryam, not miryam…
Which is so fucking funny. Levi probably didn’t know Hebrew well, he didn’t notice this. And even if he did, he needs to somehow force Mary into Zohar, a very important Kabbalistic text, through sheer insane force of will. For this purpose, her “salt of the sea” epithet fits. It’s an important woman and she is vaguely connected to water so checkmate atheist!
But wait, isn't it supposed to be a “star of the sea”? THAT is a real epithet of Marianic theology. Where did he get the salt from? It’s nowhere in the Catholic Encyclopedia etymology tracing. Did he turn bitter into salty? But bitterness is… a completely different taste… Is it just vague corruption of “salt of the earth?” But that has nothing to do with Mary, or women, or really anything. Again, nothing. I am literally reading a fucking Bible for this. Why didn’t he say the “Star of the Sea”? You still have inferred saltiness from the sea. You also have a star connection to make with the woman “with moon under her feet, crown of stars and cloaked in sun” of Revelations, which he himself refers to in the above passage.
Did he even know his own fucking theology? Is this why he dropped out/was kicked out of seminary? Or is he just doing whatever?
He wasn’t doing systems, he was building poetry. As long as something rhymed.
Outside of Dogma et Rituel and Le clef des grands mystères, almost every book focuses on something else and on Kabbalah he usually notes “hey, look at the Dogma and Ritual of Magic dude I explained everything there”. His Book of Splendors is about Masons and also his commentary on Zohar, but it gives us zero info on the planet problem. Clefs majeures et clavicules de Salomon (Major Keys and Minor Keys of Solomon) is actually relevant to Tarot. This book was a quick version of his own working grimoire to his student. - his pentacles and amulet design show his understanding of Minors, but most info on Majors is restated - it has yet another example of his nonsensical attributions, as we can see in the following set of images.
Except for the Kether - Michael - Sun. Which….. you know what. Do what you want Levi. I don’t even care anymore. This does show that planetary assignment logic in actual grimoire and amulet work could have been flowing from the Sefirot order and so the double letters got assigned planets based on that order basically (even if they don’t correspond to Sefirot themselves). This is as close to reconstruction I can get, and it still breaks once we consider this utterly random switch of Kether - Sun.
In his ten published letters to one of his students (I found English translation of them in the Book of Splendors release), we see this attribution table:
NUMBERS
1 Supreme power 6 Beauty
2 Absolute wisdom 7 Victory
3 Infinite intelligence 8 Eternity
4 Goodness 9 Productivity
5 Justice or harshness 10 Reality
LETTERS
Aleph Father Lamed Sacrifice
Beth Mother Mem Death
Gimel Nature Nun Reversibility
Daleth Authority Samekh Universal being
He Religion Pe Immortality
Vav Liberty Ayin Balance
Zayin Ownership Sadhe Shadow and reflection
Cheth Distribution Koph Light
Teth Prudence Resh Recognition
Yod Order Tav Synthesis
Kaph Force
These meanings are just Tarot images and it has nothing to do with planets or zodiac or elements.
And he openly tells the guy to just go look at Dogma again in one of the letters, you know, to pick up on what he already wrote. So he still considers that up to date.
(There is still The magical ritual of the sanctum regnum ... . and well, we’ll get to that).
And just going through all these texts one notices something when reading Levi even shallowly. Like when in Grand Splendour he shows commentaries on Zohar, but then jumps instantly to use its “two faces of God” formulation to discuss the Christian Devil. When in History of Magic he doesn’t discuss gnosticism but denounces it violently, for pages. Why he was so pissed about Pope Joan “protestant” fable.
Eliphas Levi fucking Loves Catholicism. He trained for it, he wanted it, he felt immense love for it. And as a note, that’s not bad. But it colours everything we read. Everything fundamentally served one goal for him - his proof that Christianity was felt in every religion in every ancient society. A lot of this book and some others devolve ONLY into this matter, making one wonder “Damn, that’s crazy but you promised me magic.” It becomes hard to sift through, like molten desert sands, especially when he repeats old adages against the Jewish people. All while stripping Jewish mysticism for parts or using them as symbols. I wanted to focus only on discovering his sources and how he formed his ideas, so I could determine the links in the chain, but this is all overpowering - his sadness and arrogance both occupy all his work. And forgive me but I can’t ignore the blood dripping from his wounds. In fact I am not certain this blood doesn’t cover the conclusion I want like a thick fucking veil. That it is my conclusion. This blood crystallized into a link. Eliphas Levi is willing to use every trick in the book and contradict himself, just to get out of the jam of the questions and problems that tear him apart. Kabbalah, is fundamentally to him a distraction, a tool through which he can redeem the Christian Church for himself. If he finds the universal underpinning of all religion, he can say it's Christianity, and more importantly that is the ritualistic Catholicism he adores.
If you look at Levi’s sources, the majority of them are Christians, apologists, Jesuits, neoplatonists. Christian Cabbalah was NOT a neutral learning. It wasn’t really a genuine study of Hebrew material, an attempt to build an equitable and similar school of mysticism. From the very first time Kabbalah was translated and dissected by Christians writers, it developed two explicit goals - facilitate the conversion of Jews and prove the validity of Christian faith. His only sources beyond that are Latin compilations, made by Cabalists with similar goals, and while these contain texts and commentaries of actual Jewish people, they are fragments, translated, and fundamentally creating this specific picture. It was never a neutral thing, it was forcing together people with various opinions and readings of the texts into one book, so of course he could fucking cherrypick whatever he needed at the momen.
For my convenience, Kabbala Denudata by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, which was also a source for him, has a Kabbalistic Lexicon, of many terms. And it also contains just the entries for individual letters. And shoutout Rosenroth, he actually goes through the pluralities of meanings the letter can have AND he worked with fragments of real Jewish teachings, mixed with Christians. You can absolutely shop for meanings there
But you see all the same nonsense. You read through this lexicon, then you get to all the names and attributions they could get in Zohar and its commentaries - then INSTANTLY comes the attempt to force Christianity and Plato’s teaching on it. It’s not a neutral report. It never has been. All of it rotten, multifaceted, multi-authorial, generalized, stretched, butchered. I read the section Aditus tentatus rationem reddendi Nominum & Ordinis decem Sephirotharum in duabus Tabulis Cabbalifticis, ex Scriptura, Platonismo, Rationequelibera - Translated The Names and Order of the Ten Sephiroth in Two Cabalistic Tablets, from Scripture, Platonism, and Reason and Freedom. This text is written by D. Henrici Mori Cantabrigiensis - Wikipedia notes him as a person who worked hard on fusing neoplatonism and Christianity. One thing I will give him is that he at least read Hebrew and he goes out of his way to talk about how there are MANY opinions amongst Jewish commentators and he can’t just nail it down fully. But then he just collapses it all anyway, cause he needs to make an argument. Now, what is he arguing? He does all this thinking and categorizing to own the Jewish mystics and say “wow look at you guys, your Chokmah, Binah, Kether look like Trinity, you are already kinda Christians! so uh… you wanna get baptized?”
"Adeò ut utracunque ratione Argumentum hoc vim suam obtineat adversus Judaeos"
"So that by either means this argument may obtain its force against the Jews"
That’s the final sentence in this section. And it’s hard to read anymore. Both because of arguments and the difficulty of OCR not picking up stuff. Somewhere here can be the planetary attribution order I need. But it is above my ability to extract it - and more importantly, even if I did, what would it prove? That he took it from selective reading of people with a serious agenda?
Levi mentions “the learned Jesuit” Athanasii Kircher, who employed and worked with Kabbalah as part of his attempt to solve Egyptian Hieroglyphics. We also see him mentioned by Westcott. Kircher man fused fascination with Egypt with Kabbalah. Hey weren’t Jews in Egypt once? Surely they got the “correct” knowledge there! “Yea, Kabbala is a despicable art, but I got asked by the pope to see the spiritual truth in Egyptian hieroglyphics. I must untangle it here so we can see the universal truth … I have to use this wretched corruption of ancient knowledge”! All the same logic, the same syncretism! GebelĂn, the first guy to mention Tarot as transmission of Egyptian knowledge did so in a book where he argued for the existence of a universal language from which all other languages came from!
TRUTH? Some hidden Masonic tracts transcribed and put forward, having the “correct attributions” of the Ancients, fantasy that would make Dan Brown jizz? Even if such a thing existed it would probably be nothing more than continuation of this self-serving trend!
Levi turns the image of The Poppess into a more palpable universal Isis - he assigns her beth and she clearly fits a woman close enough, a passive duality. To see him justify this image on an illustration of woman in priestly robes, when you are just done reading his tract where he venomously talks about how wretched female priests are, it makes one’s head spin (“This intrusion of the woman into the priesthood was always the dream of the false Gnostics; for by levelling the sexes in this way, they introduced anarchy into the family and posed a stumbling block to society.” - History of Magic, Book III, Chapter VI. Kabbalist Paintings And Sacred Emblems)
Suffice to say, I needed to understand Levi to know why he made the system. I think I understand only too well now. Crowley’s mocking comment of “not revealing true attribution” is himself failing to understand and forcing his conclusion. And perhaps I don’t understand him either, my head still heavy with frustration. I don’t think there is much else to excavate here - my tastes have left me. I see a man playing with systems he doesn’t even want to know and copying cruel dead men, someone who never saw what he was taking with clear eyes. That’s enough. I will say, his Occultism Unveiled does show a man that came to see religion more… lightly and even kindly.
Christian and Papus recontextualized
However, this creates a bind of sorts. If Levi’s presentation of mother letters is false, how did his followers pick up on that and correctly assign astrology to them? And why would they, if he himself barely did?
Let’s think about it for a second. As a reminder, Papus only cites Rituel in The Tarot of the Bohemians as a justification for his Hebrew letter descriptions, and holy shit, I could actually kiss him on the lips. A guy with a very strong citation instinct is very sexy and refreshing in a sea of all of this. As a reminder, Dogme and Rituel do not yet carry any astrological attributions. His whole source for astrology is, essentially Christian. Christian’s source is uh… Egyptian papyrus from the Vatican.
To be perfectly frank, this mythical papyrus is just Levi again. Well, not exactly - again, there is astrology that Levi didn’t get into, but the Tarot content is all Levi. The order is the same, together with the telling The Fool at the 21st card mark. VERY notably, neither Christian, nor Papus assign elements to the three mothers and their assigned card, almost as if they didn’t know what to assign. This would fit with Levi’s whole deal, after all he just points at two pillars. This is VERY strange in the case of Papus, who by now translated the Sefer Yetzirah and really should have read it. I mean, I hope he did. His descriptions of the letters match Levi, because he trusts him. Wrong fucking move, by the way.
There is, however, an interesting case of Papus, simply applying the first ten Sefirot to the first ten cards. I have to admit, I didn’t notice it at first due to how he butchers their names. This doesn’t really touch on the planetary attributions but it was one of things Levi did, and it was very possibly a direct inspiration.
Hieroglyphic - The Mouth of Man Kabbalah Chocmah Astronomy The Moon Day of the Week Monday Hebrew letter Beth (The tarot of the Bohemians, Chapter X)
However, he curiously doesn’t mention the archangel here, which would make sense if he took the Hebrew letters from Dogme or Rituel, and trusted Christian with astrology. But The Key, where Levi lays out the letter - archangel association, is in Papus’ bibliography. That doesn’t mean he had to take everything from it, but it’s a curious omission nonetheless.
He mentions another guy as a source, Fabre d'Olivet. D’Olivet also touched on Hebrew language, but Eliphas dismisses him:
That is to say, in French, according to Fabre d'Olivet: “Now, the original attraction (greed) was the driving passion of all elemental life (the “inner spring”) of nature, the work of Jhôali, the Being of beings.” But here, Fabre d'Olivet misses the true interpretation because he was unaware of the great keys of the Kabbalah. (Rituel, Introduction)
So I quickly went through him, but he seems to be just describing Hebrew letters with the ultimate mission to “restore” the “true meaning” of the Hebrew language. Papus took him seriously as a source, but Eliphas didn’t. None of it touched the meanings of cards much. He doesn’t even show up in the section for Hebrew letters in The Keys. He’s also insufferable to read but hey, that’s just all of these guys by now. You see one person collapse the complexity of every culture into a bland mesh, like a child forcing all the shapes through a square hole, you’ve honestly seen them all.
But where did Christian get his nonsense, since he seems to be a node of transfer for astrology ? Again, Levi, in The Keys, directly talks about planets and zodiac two paragraphs after he is done explaining the letter assignments. The 12 simples and 12 signs are almost too sweet of a thing to resist. And he has The Key to the Mysteries in his Bibliography.
Look I am not saying it has to be the same barely justifiable bullshit as 22 cards = 22 Hebrew letters. But it sure seems pointed that way, doesn’t it? Again, it’s not difficult. Zodiacs are in set order. You just take that order and apply it to simple letters. Planets are easy, you just take uncle Levi at his word, because he is the expert and he would never lie to you, would he? So you almost get proper Sefer yetzirah-like assignments from the base principles.
But still, what about the yod as mother ? Why did that never apply to Christian or Papus? Well… again neither of these people have much to say about mother letters. They don’t even draw on their meanings in Sefer Yetzirah as elemental forces, but they also don’t really derive their meanings from Levi. They just point at them awkwardly and move from the image. I think that they noticed Levi bungling it up, and so they quietly just… Wrote about the other three mother letters that he mentions explicitly and that Papus especially would know as explicitly mother letters.
There is a high possibility that either of them read Kabbala Denudata, but Christian doesn’t mention it at all. Papus has it in his bibliography and cites it once, on yod in Tetragrammatron, when he describes it. So there is a chance he replicated the same source Levi did and that is why the attributions are the same.. That is never out of the question. All of the above is merely theorizing.
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