Fire tends to create all the cards

Welcome to this round of the Tarot Blog Hop. Some of you may be coming from Tarot Wyzdom (La Vonne's) Blog. My regular readers, especially those who have been following the color scale posts, may want to check out her blog--there is a post about basic Tarot color theory there.

Today's Tarot Blog Hop topic is "The Fire Tends to All."

One of the things that makes me not fit into the traditional Golden Dawn mold is the fact that I have lifted a whole bunch of stuff from other esoteric traditions and streams of thought. One of the books that I have worked with before embracing Golden Dawn was Mouni Sadhi's book on the Tarot.

Mouni Sadhi at one point talks about how each one of the Tarot cards is rooted in one of the four letters of the Tetragrammaton (Yod Heh Vav Heh [final]). The first Tarot card in the deck would be a Yod card; the second card would belong to Heh; the third card would be assigned to Vav; and the fourth card would be the Heh final, as well as the Yod of the next cycle. The cards would also be given the element associated with the proper letter of the Tetragrammaton (Yod--Fire, Heh--Water, Vav--Air, Heh final--Earth).

Sadhi uses the one of the two well-known French orders for determining the order of the Tarot cards (Magician, High Priestess, Empress, Emperor, etc.). The difference between the two French versions happens at the end, and if you use one of the French orders I do not need to explain the difference between the two versions.

Now, where I prove to be a member of the lunatic Golden Dawn is the fact that I use his scheme of Tetragrammaton allotment with the order of the Tarot cards as set forth in the Golden Dawn Cipher Manuscript and associated lectures. So my sequence starts with the Fool card, instead of the Magician.

Hence, Fool--Yod (Fire), Magician Heh--(Water), High Priestess--Vav (Air), and Empress--Heh final (Earth) and Yod of the next sequence.

For me, going through the Tarot sequence with this additional information provides further insight into the Tarot Cards. Take for instance, the Magician card. Many people presume that the Magician is an active card. Yet in reality, the Magician is not the creator of forces; the Magician merely channels forces and redirects them.

I encourage my readers to sit down sometimes and use the Tetragrammaton sequence with their preferred method of arranging the Tarot cards and see what insights the method produces.

(For the reader who missed the connection, Fire Tends to All related in the back of my mind to the fact that the Yod cards create the other three cards [conditions] in the Tetragrammaton/Tarot sequence.)

For those of you who are continuing with the Tarot Blog Hop, the next blog is by Louise Underhill, Priestess Tarot. 

If there are any broken links in the chain, you can find the master list for the Beltaine Tarot Blog Hop here.