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Hermetic Fantasies and History of Cards WRT Judaism

To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.tarot,alt.divination,alt.magick
From: nagasiva 
Subject: Hermetic Fantasies and History of Cards WRT Judaism
Date: Sat, 24 May 2003 10:36:17 GMT

50030524 VII 

sri catyananda :
# This is found in the article by Art Benveniste at 
#     http://www.cryptojews.com/card_playing_to_hide_jewish_iden.htm
#
#    ...an email from Judith Crystal Pirkle who described her 
#    family customs. She said: "The stories passed down to me 
#    by my Mother and her family all check out. Also the custom 
#    of playing cards on the Sabbath eve, (Erev Shabbat) was 
#    passed on through our family. As the Mexican soldiers 
#    checked houses on Friday evening to make sure no one was 
#    observing the Sabbath, the Crypto Jews played cards and 
#    told Torah stories by using the cards..."
#
# The suggestive phrase is "told Torah stories by using the cards." 
# What is being stated is that there was a system in place of 
# using specific cards to relate to different portions of the Torah. 

thank you for bringing this more into central focus as I missed
it the first couple of times through. :/

# As Corey (hieronymous707@aol.com) mentions in another post in this
# thread, such identification of cards with specific portions of
# scripture has a counterpart in Christian tradition....

# ...Corey takes us even further back in time when he points
# out that:
#   
# "...please consider the publishing of 'Curious and Interesting 
#  Anecdotes', under the name "Louis Bras-de-Fer", printed in 
#  1778 in Belgium. It is the oldest specific reference  I can 
#  find of 'The Soldier's Almanack / Prayer Book', the story that 
#  relates playing cards to Christian doctrine.
#    
# "In 'The Encyclopedia of Tarot, Vol. 1', Stuart Kaplan writes, 
#     'In the sixteenth century, a book written by Jacob 
#      Cammerlander described each pip card with its moral and 
#      spiritual associations," 
#  referencing a book 'Kartenlosbuch', published by a M. Jacob 
#  Cammerlander von Mentz that describes playing cards in 
#  religious terms.  
#    
# "The text is written in rhyme."
#
# So via Cammerlander, we arrive at the 16th century for the earliest
# known associatations being made between playing cards and spiritual
# subjects. 

if both Christians *and* Jews practiced this association, how can we
be sure it wasn't Christians that inspired the notion that spiritual
instruction could be obtained from referencing tarocchi cards?

# So, if we acknowledge that Art Benveniste has rediscovered a 
# hidden Crypto Jewish tradition, 

possible.

# the Jewish people may legitimately be seen as the earliest to 
# make linkages or association between playing cards and 
# religious teachings 

possibly others beforehand. cards possibly originated in China. :>

# -- and, even if they were not the only ones, and Christians 
# did it too, the fact that they did so still lends a factual
# basis to the otherwise discredited Hermetic "myth" of the 
# tarot as a "cover" for Jewish religious teachings. 

indeed it does, though whether it competes well with the
Egyptomania-Resonance Coincidence Tarot-Kabbalah Theory
has yet to be seen. :> I wanna know about their 
*intersection*! Levi a Crypto Jew? was his translation
of his name into Hebrew just a costume? or was he
actually telling us something? where does the Judaism-
stealing start and the revealing-as-Crypto-Judaism end?

# that a complete system of Torah correspondences was in place, nor that
# Kabbalah was being taught. 

# ...The Hermetics may have exaggerated or misinterpreted the 
# role of cards vis-a-vis-Judaism, but if the material presented 
# in the article by Art Benveniste is true, then the Hermetics 
# seem to NOT have made up the story of a relationship between 
# the cards and Judaism out of whole cloth. 

indeed, though this doesn't confirm that this relation is the
inspiration for the fabrication of the Hermetic fantasies. :>
to do that, you'd have to throw in a few more bridging databits.

thanks! wonderful discussion!

nagasiva

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