The Tree familiar to many tarot readers descends from an arrangement published by the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher in his Oedipus Aegyptiacus in 1653. It is often called the Kircher Tree. This arrangement of ten sefirot and twenty-two connecting paths was taken into Western Hermetic Qabalah and eventually became the Tree used by the Golden Dawn.
A great deal of meaning has gathered around this Tree. The High Priestess offers a good example. In the Golden Dawn system, she is associated with the Hebrew letter Gimel, traditionally understood to mean “camel,” and with the long path running from Tiferet to Keter. That path crosses the region separating the lower sefirot from the supernal triad of Keter, Ḥokhmah, and Binah. In later Hermetic interpretation, the camel became an image of the traveler able to cross the desert of the Abyss and reach the supernal realm. It is a beautiful interpretation. It also depends upon a particular Tree.
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| Bet from the Eilat Tarot |
The Kircher Tree became the framework into which the Golden Dawn fitted its elaborate system of correspondences.
The Eilat Tarot begins somewhere else. It is an attempt to create a dialogue between Kabbalah and tarot, and more particularly between the Sefer Yetzirah and Pamela Colman Smith’s images. Because the Hebrew letters are fundamental to the Sefer Yetzirah, I wanted them to remain fundamental when they were placed on the Tree.
The Sefer Yetzirah itself contains no Tree of Life diagram. It opens with thirty-two “wondrous paths of wisdom,” then speaks of ten sefirot b’limah and twenty-two foundation letters. Kabbalists found various ways to diagram the sefirot before the Tree became the familiar form.
Jewish kabbalists began creating elaborate diagrammatic representations of the sefirot, known as ilanot, or trees, during the Middle Ages. The Ilanot Project at the University of Haifa has now documented more than seven hundred examples. There has never been only one way to draw the relationships among the sefirot.
Kircher’s Tree belongs to this much longer history, but Kircher was not preserving Jewish Kabbalah. He was a Jesuit who reshaped Jewish material within his own Christian and syncretic system. He drew upon earlier Jewish and Christian Kabbalistic sources while incorporating them into his own Christian synthesis. The Tree later inherited by Western esotericism is therefore one historical interpretation of Kabbalah, not the Tree contained in the Sefer Yetzirah itself.
The Eilat Tarot instead uses the arrangement Aryeh Kaplan calls the Natural Array in his commentary on the Sefer Yetzirah, together with the path assignments he presents according to the GR"A, the Vilna Gaon.
The reason becomes visible when we look at the Hebrew letters. The Sefer Yetzirah does not treat its twenty-two letters as a single undifferentiated alphabet. It repeatedly divides them into three groups: three Mother Letters, seven Double Letters, and twelve Simple Letters. These groups are central to the structure of the book.
The Golden Dawn retained this division. Its three Mother Letters, Alef, Mem, and Shin, are associated with Air, Water, and Fire. The seven Double Letters are associated with the seven classical planets. The twelve Simple Letters are associated with the twelve signs of the zodiac.
But the Golden Dawn did not use these three classes to determine where the letters were placed on its Tree.
On the Golden Dawn Tree, the letters proceed through the network of paths in alphabetical order. Letters appear indiscriminately on horizontal, vertical, and diagonal paths.
Something different happens in Kaplan's Natural Array. The three Mother Letters occupy the three horizontal paths of the Tree. The seven Double Letters occupy the seven vertical paths. The twelve Simple Letters occupy the twelve diagonal paths.
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| The Mother Letters, Alef, Mem and Shin, arranged on the horizontal paths of the Natural Array |
Once I saw this arrangement, the name “Natural Array” made sense to me.
The letters do not have to be fitted onto the Tree without regard to the categories that structure the Sefer Yetzirah. Their placement makes those categories visible.
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| The Double Letters, Bet, Gimel, Dalet, Kaf, Peh, Reish, and Tav, arranged on the vertical paths of the Natural Array |
This is especially striking with the twelve Simple Letters. In the Gra recension, the Sefer Yetzirah describes them in relation to twelve “diagonal boundaries.” Kaplan understands these as the boundaries of a three-dimensional universe. On the Natural Array, there are twelve diagonal paths waiting for the twelve Simple Letters.
Both the Golden Dawn Tree and the Natural Array contain three horizontal, seven vertical, and twelve diagonal paths. The difference lies in what happens when the letters are placed upon them. Both systems preserve the 3-7-12 structure as a system of correspondences. The Natural Array used in the Eilat Tarot makes that structure visible in the Tree itself.
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Hei, Vav, and Zayin on the diagonal paths of the Natural Array |
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Ḥet, Tet, and Yud on the diagonal paths of the Natural Array |
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| Lamed, Nun, and Samekh on the diagonal paths of the Natural Array |
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| Ayin, Ẓadi, and Quf on the diagonal paths of the Natural Array |
There is another feature of the Natural Array that I find satisfying. Malkhut, hanging below the rest of the Tree, is joined to it by a single path through Yesod. In later Kabbalah, Yesod gathers what precedes it and transmits it into Malkhut. The diagram gives that idea a simple visual form. Malkhut receives what comes through Yesod.
None of this means that the Natural Array is the original Tree of Life, or the one correct Tree. There was no Tree of Life diagram in the Sefer Yetzirah for us to recover.
Nor does the Eilat Tarot need the Golden Dawn Tree to be wrong. The Golden Dawn was creating an immense synthesis of tarot, astrology, alchemy, ceremonial magic, Hebrew letters, and other traditions. The Tree it used became a framework capable of carrying that system, and generations of tarot readers have found meaning there.
The Eilat Tarot is asking a different question: What happens when the Sefer Yetzirah and Pamela Colman Smith’s tarot images are allowed to speak to one another?
For that conversation, the Hebrew letters cannot be incidental marks placed along the paths. They are among the building blocks of creation described by the Sefer Yetzirah. The Natural Array lets us see them that way.
The images accompanying this post show the pattern one layer at a time. The first shows the three Mothers crossing the Tree horizontally. The second shows the seven Doubles running vertically. The remaining images show the twelve Simple Letters filling the diagonal paths.
Seen together, they reveal something very simple:
Three Mothers.
Seven Doubles.
Twelve Simple Letters.
The Eilat Tarot does not use the Natural Array because it claims that this is the one ancient or correct Tree of Life. It uses the Natural Array because its geometry allows one of the central structures of the Sefer Yetzirah to remain visible.
