Elements Of The Qabalah In Ten Lessons
Letters by Eliphas Levi
Lesson III Use of the Method
In the preceding lesson I spoke only of the thirty-two roads; later I will talk of the fifty gates.
The ideas expressed by numbers and letters are incontestable realities. These ideas follow from one another and agree like the numbers, themselves. One proceeds logically from one to the next. Man is the son of woman, but woman comes out of man as number comes out of unity. Woman clarifies nature, nature reveals authority, which creates religion, basis for liberty, which makes man master of himself and the universe, etc… (Get hold of a Tarot - I believe in fact you already have one - and, in two series, lay out the ten allegorical cards numbered from one to twenty-one. You will see all the figures which correspond to the letters. As for the numbers from one to ten, you will find them repeated four times with the symbols of the baton or scepter of the father, the cup or delices of the mother, the sword of love and the coins of productivity. The Tarot is included in the hieroglyphic book of the thirty-two roads, and its summary explanation can be found in the book attributed to the patriarch, Abraham, which is called Sepher-Jezirah.
The savant Court de Gebelin was the first to discover the importance of the Tarot, which is the great key to the hieratic hieroglyphs. Its symbols and numbers are to be found in the prophecies of Ezekiel and of St. John. The Bible is an inspired book, but the Tarot is the book of inspiration. It has also been called the wheel, rota, whence tarot and torah. The ancient Rosicrucians knew it well and the Marquis de Suchet speaks of it in his book on visionaries.
It is from this book that our card games have come. Spanish cards still bear the principal signs of the primitive Tarot and they are used to play the game of the hombre or man, vague reminiscence of the early use of a mysterious book, containing oracular decrees about all human divinities.
The earliest Tarots were medals which have since become talismans. The clavicules or little keys of Solomon were made up of thirty-six talismans bearing seventy-two engravings analogous to the hierolyphic figures of the Tarot. These figures, altered by copyists, can still be found on ancient clavicules which exist in some libraries. A manuscript of this type exists in the Bibliotheque Nationale and another in the Biblioteque de l'Arsenal. The only authentic manuscripts of the clavicules are those which give the series of thirty-six talismans with the seventy-two mysterios names; the others, however ancient they may be, belong to fantasies of black magic and contain nothing more than clever tricks.
For an explanation of the Tarot, see my Dogma and Ritual of True Magic.
Yours in the holy science,
Eliphas Levi