Talk:Hermetic Qabalah

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[edit] Transliteration of Hebrew

There are a few places in which I would transliterate slightly differently. In most cases that's not a big deal — there are many possible variations, none authoritative; I tend to use transliterations that reflect the original Hebrew spelling (e.g. 'ph' for letter Peh, 'ah' or 'eh' for final He, and not doubling consonants when representing a single hebrew letter). I don't think we need to offer multiple variations though, except perhaps for Qabalah, since it's a word used in the title.

The Tau you have transliterated as "t", which is indeed its pronunciation; I have however most often seen it transliterated as "th" for some reason, and Teyth (pronounced as "t") has most often been transliterated "th". I'm happy enough to do it the other way round, "t" for Tau and "th" for Teyth, since I don't know why it was so arse about face in the first place.

Now I find the transliteration Ayin, En Soph and Or En Soph rather odd. Firstly "Ayin" is a common transliteration for the letter name, and means "eye" or "fountain": OYN. The word here is quite different: Ain: AYN. That could confuse some people. Secondly, it's the same word as is later transliterated En, and we should really be consistent. Thirdly, I haven't seen the name ordered Or En Soph with the Or ("light") at the beginning; I've only ever seen it at the end as Ain Soph Aur. I suggest Ain, Ain Suph and Ain Suph Aur (Hebrew AIN, AIN SUP, AIN SUP AUR).

Nice work so far, by the way. Fuzzypeg☻ 02:48, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I notice Tau is elsewhere in the article transliterated 'th' as in Kether and Daath. That's far more common than the other way round; I'll standardise it to that. We can always revert if you don't like it. Fuzzypeg☻ 03:00, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

The Tau sound is 't' in Sephardi pronunciation, 'th' in Ashkenazi. The pronunciation of the letter 'a' is 'Ayin', but when the 'a' appears in the transliterated word, it's pronounced as 'Ein'. The transliterated spellings don't really matter as long as they're consistent in an article, though you'll find that there'll be differences when you're using a direct quote. Abafied 07:32, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

When you speak of the letter 'a' it's quite unclear what you mean. Do you mean א (letter name אלף, 'Aleph, "Ox"), or do you mean ע (letter name עין, "Ayin, "Eye, Fountain")? Neither is exactly an "a" sound, since the first is a glottal stop and the second is a pharyngeal stop (in the pronunciations I was taught at least). However the letter Ayin doesn't appear in the transliterated word pronounced 'Ein'. It's Aleph that appears in that word. 'Ain, as in 'Ain Suph Aur, is spelt אין, and means "nothing". If it were spelt עין it would be pronounced slightly differently and would mean "eye". I normally use the convention of putting a single apostrophe before the a to denote a glottal stop (aleph) and a double apostrophe for a pharyngeal stop (ayin). That's why you sometimes see Daath spelt Da"ath.

I have forgotten the differences between Ashkenazi and Sephardic. I normally just pronounce how I was taught, so I'm having to revise a bit here. But I agree, any standardised transliteration will do, and we'll just put up with differences in quoted text. Cheers, Fuzzypeg☻ 02:24, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Greetings and salutations, I am probably going to put the cat among the pigeons here but... I think this very erudite and interesting talk of the correct transliteration of Hebrew might be moving into original research. Remember, this page is devoted to explaining Hermetic Qabalah as exemplified by those who have published regarding this particular path. Because of this I suggest that the transliterations set out in the books of the practitioners of this system be used. The obvious counter argument to this is that Hermetic Qabalah is not a static system but a living evolving thing and, as such, preferred transliterations may change. However I find myself leaning toward the former position. We are here describing a system as it is set down in the published works of its proponents. Some of these proponents had little or no Hebrew and this is reflected in their work. It is this work that we must conform to here if we are not to stray into original research.

Accordingly I suggest we go with the transliterations used by Fortune, Crowley, Regardie et al. In their writings. All of these use the transliterations which we find, for example in Fortune's The Mystical Qabalah i.e.

"The Qabalists recognise four planes of manifestation, and three planes of unmanifestation, or Negative Existence. The first of these is called AYIN, Negativity; the second, EN SOPH, the Limitless; the third, OR EN SOPH, the Limitless Light. It is out of this last that Kether is concentrated. These three terms are called the three Veils of Negative Existence depending back from Kether; in other words, they are the algebraic symbols that enable us to think of that."

Morgan Leigh 01:06, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I forgot to mention that these transliterations are set out in Mathers' The Kabalah Unveiled and can be found at Mather's Table.

Morgan Leigh | Talk 01:58, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi Morgan Leigh, I don't believe it's original research, since we are not trying to invent a method of transliteration off the tops of our heads, but are trying to choose the most appropriate method already established. No insult intended, but the example you cite is a pretty shocking example, since it transliterates the same word אין (meaning "not", "without", "nothing") two different ways (AYIN and EN) in the same sentence! The first version that it gives, AYIN, is doubly confusing because it is by far the most common transliteration for a quite different Hebrew word, עין, which is a very common word in Qabalah, being both the name of a letter and the word for "eye" or "fountain". I guess Fortune just confused the similar-sounding words, and demonstrated her poor grasp of Hebrew (she may have a better understanding of other areas of Qabalah). I believe the most common (and clearest) form of transliteration nowadays is that exemplified by either Paul Foster Case or Crowley. I don't have my books here, so I can't check for sure, but I think this is actually the form we have been using.

Also, this example is the only time I've ever seen OR AIN SUPH (by whatever transliteration) rather than the normal ordering of the words: AIN SUPH OR. That seems to be a bizarre attempt to make the words comply with English grammatical rules, literally "light (OR) without (AIN) limit (SUPH)". Cheers, Fuzzypeg☻ 05:06, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi Fuzzypeg, No offense is taken, in fact, I agree with you about the example. The reason I included it is exactly to show that Fortune had very poor Hebrew indeed. Maybe it is worth our writing something which mentions all this because this can be very confusing to new readers.

Morgan Leigh | Talk 10:35, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Categories

We do not add an article to supercategories of its narrowest category. Since category:kabbalah is a subcategory of category:esoteric schools of thought which is a subcategory of category:esotericism, neither of the latter should be added. category:kabbalah is also a subcategory of category:Jewish mysticism which is a subcat of cat:Mysticism, so mysticism does not get added, etc. The Ancient mysteries article defines what the ancient mysteries category is for, qabalah is not a member of the set that it defines.

That takes care of everything except panentheism. You'll need a reference which states that Hermetic Qabalah is a form of panentheism. My understanding is that Qabalah refers to a monotheistic God.

In any case, if qabalah is panentheistic, if is the category:kabbalah which should be added to panentheism, not this article. IPSOS (talk) 13:08, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kabbalah in film and fiction

There is a section of the Kabbalah article, Kabbalah in film and fiction, which mostly is a list of films with Kabbalistic themes. Since the list seems more of Hermetic Qubalah interest, I am thinking of moving the list there....if there is no objection. Kwork 22:18, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

The only obvious candidates for moving here are Promethea and Foucault's Pendulum. If you want to move these, feel free. Fuzzypeg☻ 23:01, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I think that, almost without exception, they come under the heading of Hermetic (not Jewish) Kabbalah. But if it is not wanted here, I will simply remove it instead of moving it here. Kwork 11:15, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tarot in Qabalah not a "proven fact"

How do you "prove" that Tarot is part of Qabalah? Well, a whole load of Qabalist authors say it is, so that's good enough for me. There's a basic problem with saying that anything is part of Qabalah, which is that there are different schools of thought and no single authority, however Tarot has, since the time of Eliphas Levi, been widely recognised as a key attribution of the paths of the Qabalistic Tree of Life.

There seems to be an underlying issue here, that a certain editor seems to be trying to distance tarot from occultism. This editor has made sweeping changes to any article that mentions tarot in an occult context, by explicitly calling it "occult tarot", and creating an Occult tarot page which is a redirect to the rather inappropriate article Tarot reading.

This editor doesn't seem to know much about occultism, but has reverted a few of my corrections nonetheless. Any help in educating this person would be much appreciated. Fuzzypeg★ 05:39, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

With all do respect, occultism is not the only aspect of tarot. The cards were made for a trick taking card game still played in Europe today. Information about tarot game playing is now becoming more common in the English speaking world. Tarot should not be treated exclusively in connection with the occult. The cards are also used for game playing. Wikipedia articles should reflect these facts. They should reflect a world wide view of the topic. The occult use of tarot cards should be specified as "occult tarot" Writers on the topic such as Michael Dummett, Jess Karlin and others have used this term. It should never be implied that the occult is the only aspect of tarot.Smiloid (talk) 08:24, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm aware of the history of tarot. I think you'll find that we're not treating tarot as exclusively the domain of occultism; you, however, are treating tarot as exclusively the domain of game-playing. This may originally have been true, but is now a false distinction. You're also falling over the English language in your hurry to sweep all uses of tarot that you find disagreeable into some other term, such as "occult tarot" or "tarot reading": it doesn't matter what the term is, as long as it's not your jealously guarded "tarot".

I could really use some input from other editors here; User:Smiloid has a major campaign going on here spanning a dozen articles, and he's just not listening to reason or evidence. Fuzzypeg★ 01:14, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh, for anyone who wants to join in, most of the discussion so far has been at Talk:Occult tarot. Fuzzypeg★ 01:15, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

I have created a section on Talk:Tarot for voting on the proposed merge of Tarot reading and Tarot games into Tarot. Please go there to vote or comment further. Morgan Leigh | Talk 03:04, 5 June 2008 (UTC)