Thothtober: Mick’s Squiggles

At the bottom of each of the Thoth Trumps, there’s the name of the card, an astrological glyph and a symbol.

That symbol is a letter of the Hebrew alphabet – the Aleph-Beis. However, the way the Hebrew letters appear seems to vary from edition to edition. On some Thoth decks they are clearly readable Hebrew letters from a standard font, on others they are hand-drawn squiggles!

But whichever version of the Thoth deck you have, the correspondences that Crowley used between the 22 Trumps and the 22 letters of the Aleph-Beis are consistent.

How did Crowley assign the Trumps to the Aleph-Beis?

Here’s a table for you to refer back to. It’ll be useful if you get totally lost in my attempts to explain my understanding of how the Crowley/Hebrew correspondences work:

0	The Fool	Air	א	Aleph
I	The Magus	Mercury	ב	Beis
II	The Priestess	The Moon	ג	Gimmel
III	The Empress	Venus	ד	Daled
IV	The Emperor	Aries	צ	Tzaddi
V	The Hierophant	Taurus	ו	Vov
VI	The Lovers	Gemini	ז	Zayin
VII	The Chariot	Cancer, the crab	ח	Chess
VIII	Adjustment	Libra	ל	Lamed
IX	The Hermit	Virgo	י	Yod
X	Fortune	Jupiter	כ	Kaf
XI	Lust	Leo	ט	Tess
XII	The Hanged Man	Water	מ	Mem
XIII	Death	Scorpio	נ	Nun
XIV	Art	Sagittarius	ס	Samech
XV	The Devil	Capricorn	ע	Ayin
XVI	The Tower	Mars	פ	Pei
XVII	The Star	Aquarius	ה	Hei
XVIII	The Moon	Pisces	ק	Kuf
XIX	The Sun	The Sun	ר	Reish
XX	The Aeon	Fire	ש	Shin
XXI	The Universe	Saturn	ת	Tof

The three cards that are highlighted in blue are the three Elemental Trumps. The Fool corresponds to Air whose symbol is the upward pointing triangle with a horizontal line through it. You can see that symbol at the foot of the Thoth card.

The Hanged Man corresponds to the element of Water. Check out the downward pointing triangle on card XII.

The Aeon card corresponds to the element of Fire and you can see the upward pointing triangle on triangle XX.

Yes but what about the Hebrew Letters?

Now it’s time to introduce a very mysterious book known as the Sefer Yetzirah.

The origins of the Sefer Yetzirah are so obscure that some say it was written by Abraham. And if that wasn’t remote enough in the past, others say it was written by Adam!

Wherever it came from, it’s a very small book about the Hebrew letters. The Sefer Yetzirah gives correspondences between the 22 Hebrew letters and many things including the elements of Air, Fire and Water, the 12 signs of the zodiac and the 7 traditional planets.

Maybe you can see where this going.

The Sefer Yetzirah links Air to the letter Aleph, Water to the letter Mem and Fire to the letter Shin.

Why is there no letter for the element of Earth?

Can we leave that for another time please. Just accept that there are only three elements in the Sefer Yetzirah correspondences to the Hebrew letters and, thereby, into Crowley’s Thoth deck.

So you can now “triangulate” the three letters Aleph, Mem and Shin via the three elements into the Tarot deck giving this table:

0 The Fool	Air	Aleph
XII The Hanged Man	Water	Mem
XX The Aeon	Fire	Shin

That’s three of the cards nicely triangulated via the three elements and the Sefer Yetzirah.

What about the planets though?

The cards that are shaded on the main table are the planetary trumps. Crowley dealt with them in Aleph-Beis sequence using the seven planetary letters as defined in the Sefer Yetzirah. The Magus corresponds with Beis, (the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet). The Priestess corresponds Gimmel (the third letter) and so on up to the final card XXI The Universe which links to Tof (letter 22).

Here’s what he ended up with:

I The Magus	Mercury	Beis
II The Priestess	The Moon	Gimmel
III The Empress	Venus	Dalet
X Fortune	Jupiter	Kaf
XVI The Tower	Mars	Pei
XIX The Sun	The Sun	Reish
XXI The Universe	Saturn	Tof

Well that doesn’t seem too bad. Are the 12 zodiac signs straightforward?

There are 12 Tarot Trumps still needing a Hebrew letter correspondence and 12 available Hebrew letters. You could be forgiven for thinking that Crowley would match the Trumps in Tarot sequence with the corresponding Hebrew letter in Aleph-Beis sequence.

If only.

Were you to do this you’d find that in amongst the 12 pairings, IV The Emperor links to the letter Hei and Aries, XVII the Star would correspond to the letter Tzaddi and the sign of Aquarius. My understanding is that having completed this one-to-one pairing, Crowley had a vision in which he was told, “All these correspondences are right but Tzaddi is not The Star[1]”.

For reasons that I can’t explain, Crowley then swapped the Hebrew letter correspondences for The Emperor and The Star. This gave the correspondence for Tzaddi to IV The Emperor and for Hei to XVII The Star.

Blimey! Is that it?

Having switched the correspondences for Aries and Aquarius, thereby abandoning the Sefer Yetzirah connection. The Thoth deck also breaks the Hebrew letter sequence by placing the Libra card Adjustment as trump VIII and the Leo card Lust as trump XI.

At least the Libra card still adheres to the Sefer Yetzirah correspondence with the letter Lamed just as the Leo card is still the letter Tess.

Here’s the complete Thoth zodiacal table:

IV The Emperor	Aries	Tzaddi
V The Hierophant	Taurus	Vov
VI The Lovers	Gemini	Zayin
VII The Chariot	Cancer	Chess
VIII Adjustment	Libra	Lamed
IX The Hermit	Virgo	Yod
XI Lust	Leo	Tess
XIII Death	Scorpio	Nun
XIV Art	Sagittarius	Samech
XV The Devil	Capricorn	Ayin
XVII The Star	Aquarius	Hei
XVIII The Moon	Pisces	Kuf

Did Crowley take a lot of drugs?

Yes

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[1] The Book of the Law Red Wheel/Weiser 2018, page 35