Cube of Space: Golden Dawn Tarot Attributions

Sepher Yetsira Index




Mathers rearranged the seven planets to correspond unerringly with their seven Tarot picture images. Thus a new secret order was established ... "     Hulse, Key, 1996, vol.II p.349

See: Traditional Tarot and Obscuring the Origins for an analysis of the "unerring" Golden Dawn system of planetary/Hebrew letter "assignments" in relationship to the tarot and classical cosmology. See the Seven Doubles and the Twelve Simples for Tarot linkages based on classical geocentric astrology and the formative symbolism of the early recensions of the Sepher Yetsira. See Tarot Natural Order to understand the Hebrew Formative Letter and Astrological/Elemental correspondences.








The West-South and West-North Diagonals: Direction Variation: Letter
 
Direction Gra Short Long Saadia Bahir Westcott GD WoC Suares
West South
West North
 




Two Elementals: Direction Variation in the Sepher Yetsira / Sefer Yetzirah & Sepher Bahir
 
Letter Sign Gra Short Long Saadia Bahir Westcott GD WoC Suares
West High West South West High West South West High West South West North West High West South
West South West North West South West High West Low West North West South West South West North
 




In Chapter Five of the Sepher Yetzirah, the Twelve Simple Letters are placed on the Cube. Each letter representing a zodiacal sign.Each sign finds itself directly opposite the letter/sign which is opposite it in the zodical year. These are the holy influences that stream from the stars and have their roots in the sphere of the zodiac, Chockmah (Wisdom).

Kevin Townley, Container of Creation, Archive Press, 1993


As with the Seven Doubles, the underlying semantic structure of the interrelated matrix of meaning / energy that the Cube represents is ignored, in an attempt to create a seeming order in a structure otherwise not understood.

In this case, the search for a symmetry in the opposing signs of the zodiac to match the cross-face symmetries of the top and bottom faces of cube led to an otherwise arbitrary re-assignment of two Hebrew formative letters and zodiacal signs to the South-West and North West Boundaries. This arrangment finds the remaining two opposed-sign pairs (the other four being defined by the top and bottom faces) crossing the Northern and Southern faces from front to back, in parallel.



What is missed with this inspiration is the crossing of four of the six zodical oppositions through the vertical axis of the top and bottom faces: through the body of Adam Kadmon. The sought-for symmetry was already there, diagonally through the central vertical axis from East-North to West-South (Aries to Libra) and East-South through West-North (Taurus to Scorpio), through the body of Adam Kadmon at the center of the Cube: another cross. The Golden Dawn (Paul Foster Case) arrangment leaves the oppositions at the periphery of the Cube, to the left and right of Adam Kadmon.

Paul Foster Case firmly established the directional correspondence of the Northwest as Lamed and the Southwest as Nun when first drawing the Cube of Space.
...
Using Stenring's translation for The Book of Formation and applying the Golden Dawn correspondences for the Hebrew alphabet as tarot cards, Case was able to establish the direction Northwest as Lamed and the tarot card Justice, and the direction Southwest as Nun and the tarot card Death.

Without allowing Justice to guard the Northwest, And Death to Guard the Southwest, the message revealed by the Cube of Space could not be elaborated as I have set out in the main narrative of this book, for Death must be positioned in the Southwest to prematurely block any progression onto the Southern face from the West, until the North is first explored.

Therefore, though Stenring's attributes for Northwest and Southwest differ from all other translations of the The Book of Formation , they are essential in discovering the hidden meaning behind the directional attributes for this spatial cube ...

David Allen Hulse, New Dimensions for the Cube of Space, Weiser, 2000

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"Therefore." covers a lot of ground. When the Sun/Hamah is arbitrarily moved to the Southern Face, the obvious logic of the South-West diagonal being the first lit by the Sun (in the West) is missed and instead of semantic interrelatedness we find a system of (hierarchical) magical initiations with mythological justifications.


Sepher Yetsira / Sefer Yetzirah: Zodiac
Carlo Suares, Sepher Yetsira, 1976, Front Cover


The Cube of space is a mapping in internal space of the familiar 12 sign zodiac. Opposite zodiacal signs must pass through the centers of both maps.


Sepher Yetsira / Sefer Yetzirah: Zodiacal Oppositions in the Cube of Space
Short & Suares Versions




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