Mirror of the Free
It is strange how things work - I have lately found myself being drawn into an exploration of the Caballa, Tarot and Alchemy and have started to see these connected issues in a whole new light. All of this research and reading has been offline and I haven’t even bothered to look anywhere on the net for that sort of thing for a long time. The strange aspect of this was that these issues somehow forced themselves on me a few weeks ago and as I prepared to write them up as yet another convoluted and impenetrable post, the owner owner of a new site discussing just these issues contacted me about a new publication he was preparing.
The publication is an interesting looking work called by Nicholas Swift to be published shortly and entitled The Tarot and the Kabbalah, the Ancient Mesopotamians and the Sufis. The accompanying website can be found at The Mirror of the Free.
I will not summarise Mr Swift’s argument here at this point but will rather draw attention to some noteworthy elements and suggest possible lines of research- but I strongly recommend anyone interested in this area to read the site in it’s entirety as there is no doubt that this book contains some new and highly important information which has not been published previously.
His research covers parallels with Gurdjieff’s teaching which has been previously documented and also connections with the Ikhwan as-Safa and Ibn Arabi’s thought which has been touched on by Idries Shah in The Sufis
To keep this brief I’ll just pick up on a few points: the Devil motif, the Hanged Man and possible Islamic/Sufi influence on the development of the pack (it would be good to also include a look at the eight-fold Caballa though perhaps in another post), although it would be great if an in-depth discussion could get going on this one and then perhaps we could delve deeper into the mysteries.
The Devil: the observation is made early on (see also in Gurdjieff’s teachings) that the god-figures are the ones that have horns whereas our contemporary society is more accustomed to associated horns with evil in general and Old Nick himself in particular.
It is a marked feature of Gurdjieff’s teaching that he takes a controversial character - one who is reviled or avoided - such as Judas or the Devil and ‘rehabilitates’ them as not just blameless but as adepts of the highest degree (without of course accepting any of the baggage assigned to them by the erstwhile detractors). In doing this, G is merely following an earlier Sufi practice (I would argue a malamati derivation but that is besides the point here). The figure of Satan is viewed on the sufi sense as the perfect monotheist and therefore a role model - he has this role because his ‘sin’ was to refuse God’s command to prostrate himself before Adam. But on deeper reflection, surely he is refusing to sin (in this case worship another than God) even though God himself commands him to. This subject has been dealt with brilliantly by Peter Awn in his masterly Satan’s Tragedy and Redemption: Iblis in Sufi Psychology
The Hanged Man: I will make some brief comments and hints about an issue which may not be stated explicitly but which is possible to research given a certain amount of diligence and open-mindedness.
In Shah’s book The Sufis mentioned above, he notes the use by Caballists of a diagram called the “square of 15”. See following illustration:
He goes on to say that the method of use of the diagram is to link certain of the numbers together by means of various diagrams in order to convey a hidden message. One of these diagrams he cites as a mark used by medieval masons and gves an example of this Mason’s mark as follows:
He then shows how the mark is overlayed on the diagram and how it connects certain numbers and isolates another like so:
I do not wish to go further on this issue but merely to draw attention to the shape of this mark in connection with the strangely positioned legs of the traditional ‘Hanged Man’ depictions.
Again following Shah, it should be noted that he claims an exclusively Sufic origin for the Tarot and that it is based on a teaching book by a certain Sufi master which is still extant. While this claim may or may not have validity, it seems certain that the word Tarot - itself deriving from tarocchi - is based on the Arabic turuq meaning ‘four ways’. Whilst this may be a reference to the four suits of the pack it also may well be referring to the four Sufi ways (or perhaps the four ways of Gurdjieff’s teaching - both he and the Sufi Naqshbandi’s used the term ‘fourth way’ to describe their activities) as it is a plural of the Sufi word for the path, tariqa.
Having said that, there can be no doubt that the pack has undergone a ‘Caballizing process’ (to misuse a phrase) and as such features elements not implicit in the original, some of which were deliberately added perhaps as obfuscation. Shah himself says as much when he discusses the wrong attributions of certain trumps (particularly the ‘House of God’ which is basically a mis-translation from the Arabic and consequently anomalous) and there is no reason to reject the idea that whoever the authors of this ‘adjustment’ were, that they could have not borrowed heavily from Mesopotamian motifs - in fact I am convinced they did.
Anyway, we’re running out of time on this post so perhaps we might discuss the identity of the Sufi master in question at a later date if anyone’s interested but I really would like to here any informed opinion on this issue as I think this book will prove to be something of a watershed and there are really some revolutionary ideas there - far more so than meet the eye on first contact.
