1.15.23
More catching up . . .
I’ve ended up with a sheaf of handwritten notes on the “Kabbalah and Tarot” topic—which normally I would fuss over for days. But I’m far behind by now (!), so here’s the short version.
First of all, I’m thinking that one attraction of Kabbalah for Tarot enthusiasts (and many others) is the so-called “Tree of Life” image. However, the version we almost always see today is just one of several that were popular—and sometimes competitive—over the centuries.
For an expansive, fascinating survey of this image tradition, please see Rachel Pollack’s The Kabbalah Tree: A Journey of Balance & Growth.
It begins this way:
Kabbalah is a Jewish mystical tradition, with ideas first developed two thousand years ago, and most elaborated from the twelfth century onwards. The Hebrew word Kabbalah means "received,” as an oral teaching is received by a student direedy from a teacher, or perhaps in revelation, directly from God. And yet it was not primarily Jews who kept the tradition alive a hundred years ago, it was a small group of occultists, Christians with great interest in Pagan as well as Jewish traditions. Their main influence outside secret initiatory groups seemed to be among artists and writers seeking an underpinning of meaning to their creative impulses.
In my view, it’s important to recognize that Christian theorists like Court de Gebelin, Eliphas Levi, and Papus based their association between Kabbalah and Tarot on misconceived ideas about esoteric history. In reality, neither Kabbalah nor Tarot was nearly as “ancient” as they supposed, nor did those systems have any connection with the “pristine philosophy” they hoped to recover.
But of course the imaginal power of a Tarot/Kabbalah connection is not a matter of literal facts, and shouldn’t be looked at that way. One can be a gateway to the other, and reflecting on their common features can be a worthwhile practice.
The problem came about when—like many so ideas that started out as metaphorical illuminations—this one hardened over time into doctrine.
My worry is this: Linking Tarot to Kabbalah has had the effect of seeming to provide Tarot with a deeper, more complex structure. But in reality, making Tarot dependent on Kabbalah (that’s really the way it works out, not vice versa) takes away from the Tarot’s own, intrinsic deep structure.
The same thing has happened, I believe, with a form of literalism that took hold in the later 20th century. Given that Jewish mystical philosophy and Western natural magic are both complex systems—difficult to learn and laborious to apply—the move toward a more user-friendly theory of Tarot was inevitable.
And by comparison to Kabbalah, the “Hero’s Journey” is a snap to master!
Like Kabbalah, Jungian philosophy has overlaps and commonalities with Tarot. But I believe both of those systems serve best as imaginative gateways, not as intellectual foundations.
So . . . that’s my position on Kabbalah and Tarot.
Lucky for me—in terms of a transition—Bob Dylan was interested in both Tarot and Kabbalah. And there are some relevant links in a previous EP story,
What’s new is availability of The Dylan Tarot. The deck itself if fascinating. But the most compelling thing about this project is a website that connects each card with its musical expressions. For example:
For some reason, this site doesn’t seem to be linked elsewhere—but it’s really worth a visit, even if you aren’t (yet) that much of a Dylan fan.
The Etsy shop offers a more visual preview of the deck:
More soon. C
It's interesting connection between Tarot and Kabbalah in the esoteric history, which is a real history, it is after all over 300 years old. There is some trickster stuff at work here. The Provencal Kabbalah has no relationship with the Tarot, but the Lurianic Kabbalah of the 16th and 17th century probably does. The Lurianic Kabbalah came out of the Sabbatians of the Turkish Empire/Poland, who had fled Spain after the expulsion. Some important Spanish Kabbalists were invited by the aristocratic house of 'D'Este (had a number of Tarot decks) to live in Ferrara. They were closely linked with the Middle East. The Tarot could have gone from Northern Italy into the Turkish Sabbatians. That is the form of the Kabbalah that had an influence on the occult.