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Crowley tarot text question...

19:44 / 11.12.05

studying the crowley/harris cards lately in conjunction with his Book of Thoth. in part one, the theory of the tarot section, under the chapter the shemhamphorasch and the tarot he says , " there are three verses in Exodus (xiv, 19, 20, 21) each containing seventy-two letters. By writing the first of these, and underneath this the next verse backwards and under this again the last verse forwards, seventy-two columns of three letters each are obtained. These are read downwards, and the terminations AL or AH according as they are male or female, appended. There is also an attribution of these intelligenes, one to each of the quinaries or ..."
yada yada yada... the point is this is where apparently teh angels of the zodiac receive their names. Well, in king james, exodus 14, verses 19, 20, 21 there are more than 72 letters (at least in 19, without that working I haven't gone forward).
Anyone have any idea where/if this works out or is this misrepresentation? I'm assuming older, hard to find versions but other than king james, I dont know where to look, but then again my bible version study is rusty.
any help appreciated
Cheers

rising and revolving

21:17 / 11.12.05

You want Hebrew, not English. There's 72 Hebrew letters in each of the attributed verses.

23:12 / 11.12.05

cheers!!!

05:08 / 12.12.05

I haven't read Pt. 1 in a while. Interesting that Crowley reverse engineers the tarot to relate to this name. He states that of the 36 lesser cards, each has a passive and active nature which can be regarded as intelligences. Thus, 72 angelic forces governing the minor arcana - the 72 triads of the shemhamphorasch. These show up in the Universe trump, though it;s difficult to find other references to this "name of god".

There's some good info about the names of God here. Scroll down a bit for the 72 Names derived from Exodus. Them kabbalists figured out all sorts of interesting ways to get info out of the Torah.

05:15 / 12.12.05

Also see this for lot's of goodies on the 72 names.

06:22 / 12.12.05

NICE
cheers on the resources

rising and revolving

16:57 / 12.12.05

Interesting that Crowley reverse engineers the tarot to relate to this name.

To give credit where due, he's just using the G.D. attributions - which they stole from Levi. Although Levi applies the orders differently - both to the Tarot and its meanings and thereby to all the other attributions, like the Shem Angels.

Some people (Lon Milo, for one) also attribute the Goetic spirits to the decantes in a similar fashion (thus ending w/ a sort of averse Shem) - but I can't remember who did that first, or whether that's always been done and the attribution of the Shem angels to the decantes was the derivative process.

I'll go look it up.

19:50 / 12.12.05

Yeah, I was using lazy shorthand to indicate that the "name" was never intended to correspond to the Tarot but that this was a later concordance. As you note, looks like most of this sort of thing began with Levi and was heavily marked up by the GD.