Esoteric Coffeehouse

Since I am currently researching on the topic of early Rosicrucianism, I have taken a closer look at the Rosicrucian Manifestos: Fama Fraternitatis and Confessio. My reading of the documents made me decide to provide a modern English version, as the 1652 version is slightly hard to read. While the Chymical Wedding benefited from such a modern English updating, the Manifestos didn’t. I will soon publish my version under a new envisioned section of the website called Downloads.

It is important to know that, although lumped together as the ‘Manifestos’, the Fama and Confessio were not published simultaneously. The Fama was published in Kassel, Germany in 1614 as an appendix to a section of a Italian work by Trajano Boccalini. It was republished, together with the Confessio, in 1615. Hence, the Fama can be considered as the more original and important of the two treatises (in fact, the Confessio constantly refers to the Fama as authority).

To make things easier, I have set what I consider to be the main ideas of the Manifestos in a numbered list below.

1. Secret Medieval Tradition from the East. The works affirm that the Rosy Cross society was established in the 1300s by a legendary friar called Christian Rosenkreutz. He was supposed to have traveled widely in the Eastern lands and to have acquired secret knowledge from Islamic initiates. It was a peculiar aspect of Rosicrucian belief that secret knowledge could be obtained from Moslem thinkers in the Middle East. Needless to say, at the time, many anti-Rosicrucian writers attacked them for upholding non-Christian beliefs. Yet, as shown below, the Rosicrucian manifestos portray a mystical and ardent form of Christianity. Nevertheless, the composers of the Fama and Confessio must have been aware of the historical truth that esoteric knowledge came through the intermediation of Islam.

2. Paracelsianism. The Manifestos refer to Theophrastus Paracelsus as an important precursor of the Rosicrucian revelation; however, they say, he did not belong to the Rosicrucian lineage. Paracelsian language and ideas pervade both Fama and Confessio: they talk about universal medicine, the religious value of knowledge, the inferior nature of gold-making and other ideas traceable to Paracelsian followers. The Paracelsians, it must be remembered, were interested in medical alchemy rather than gold-making and often disparaged the latter as an inferior pursuit. They were also fervent knowledge-seekers, both in nature and in the Bible.

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Since last time I wrote about the Christian Kabbalah, I thought I’d briefly talk about the Jewish Kabbalah as well, with the caveat that I’m not an expert in this. My conclusions here come from reading mainly books and articles by the best scholars in Kabbalah – Gershom Scholem and Moshe Idel.

Based on my reading, I would generally divide the Kabbalah into three main categories: Sephirotic, Ecstatic and Lurianic. I will explain each of them in some detail below.

The Sephirotic, or Zoharic Kabbalah is that which is best known to modernity. It has been described as ‘theosophical-theurgical’ in the sense that it involves a complex cosmology and metaphysics, and it also involves a human effort of uniting the lower world to the upper one. The Sephirotic Kabbalah is almost exclusively the product of the Jewish diaspora (the Sephardic Jews) in the Spanish Middle Ages. Their supreme accomplishment is the Zohar, the Book of Splendor, written sometimes in the 13th century, presumably by the Kabbalist Moses de Leon.

According to the Zohar, and other writings, God is the Ein-Soph, the indefinable, indescribable divinity. Out of this infinity, He projects himself into three initial emanations, the first three Sephirot: Kether (Crown), Hochmah (Wisdom) and Binah (Understanding). These, in turn, produce the lower seven: Daat (Knowledge), Hesed (Mercy or Kindness), Gevurah (Strength or Power), Tipheret (Beauty), Netzach (Victory), Hod (Glory), Yesod (Foundation) and Malkuth (Kingdom or Monarchy). The emanations are dynamic and create a complex relationship amongst them – it is often said that the links are more important than the actual emanations.

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At the foundation of Christian Kabbalah stands one man: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the original enfant terrible of the European Renaissance. At the tender age of 23, in 1486, Pico wrote and sent to the Pope 900 Theses of theology and philosophy which he proposed to debate with anyone that wished to do so. To these he attached an introductory Oration on the Dignity of Man, which has become a classical statement of the Renaissance worldview. It is regrettable that today he is mostly remembered for this statement of human dignity rather than his other groundbreaking work.

Unfortunately for Pico, church officials were not in a mood for a debate with the young and dashing count, and instead proceeded to analyse the 900 Theses against the Catholic dogma. They found 13 propositions suspicious of heresy, and out of these, one in particular: “There is no science that assures us of the divinity of Christ than magic and the Cabala”. Pico agreed to retract the condemned theses, but later he published an Apology which pretty much re-affirmed all his ideas. This, of course, set the Pope on fire, and Pico had to flee to France to avoid imprisonment. After many other adventures, Pico settled back in Florence, where he died at only 31 years of age, apparently poisoned by a member of the famous house of Medici.

Pico has been called the disciple and pupil of the philosopher Marsilio Ficino. They shared an interest in Neoplatonic, Hermetic philosophy and magic, but Pico didn’t think those were enough. He was attracted to the mysterious art of the Kabbalah, whom Hebrew scholars were talking to him about.

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I have mentioned in my previous articles about the influence of Eliphas Levi on the Rider-Waite tarot, the most common tarot pack in the world today. Today, I want to look slightly more in depth at how Levi’s Kabbalistico-Egyptian theory of tarot origins blended together with A.E. Waite’s own interpretations to yield the well-known cards of modern tarot. To do so, I will look at the symbolism and meaning of the 10th Rider-Waite tarot card: the Wheel of Fortune.

The Wheel of Fortune is usually considered a good card, bringing about luck, change, and good fortune (1). Yet other people deem it is a bad card, because it signals major change, even if usually of a good sort (2). Obviously, the value that we bestow on this card is linked with the perception we have of change in general.

A.E. Waite, the spiritual author of the Rider-Waite tarot, openly attributed the conception of the Wheel of Fortune card to Eliphas Levi (3). Therefore, a good starting point to understanding this card would be to delve into Levi’s vision of the Wheel of Fortune.

Levi built an entire philosophy surrounding the word “Rota” which means “wheel” in Latin. He believed that Rota stood for the enigmatic Labarum, or the monogram of Christ, and that it hid the whole of magical science within it (4). He furthermore affirmed that Rota was transliterated into Taro by esoteric adepts. He also played with the letters in the tradition of the Kabbala to form the word “Tora” as well – the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. This word play is clearly visible on the card’s wheel spokes: you can read clockwise Taro, counterclockwise Tora and starting on the bottom Rota. This is of course, not all there is, because the four letters also point out to the cardinal signs. Thus one can also imagine the movement of the sun from east (Alpha) to west (Omega). Interspersed between this circulatory movement is the name of God (YHWH) inscribed on the wheel, to suggest that all this change is overseen by the divine will. Also on the spokes of the inner wheel (there are three enclosed wheels one into the other) are the alchemical symbols of sulphur, salt and mercury as well as water. This reflects Levi’s desire of combining all esoteric knowledge, including alchemy, into the “Taro”. Nevertheless, these particular symbols were introduced by Waite according to Golden Dawn imagery (5).

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I have written sometime ago an article on the Egyptian myth of the Tarot (you can find it here if you missed it). I mentioned there that the ‘creators’ of the Tarot as we know it were basically 18th century esoteric writers Antoine Court de Gebelin and his friend the Count of Mallet. Yet Tarot would not be the esoteric phenomenon it is today (a search on the internet on ‘tarot’ would pull a staggering amount of 28 million entries) if it weren’t for another Frenchman, Alphonse Louis Constant, known as Eliphas Levi (1810 -1875).

Levi was a shoemaker’s son, just like another famous esotericist, Jacob Boehme. He was due to become a priest, but he gave up and got involved in the whirlwind of the 1848 revolution (1). When his political ambitions became frustrated, Levi turned to a serious study of Western esoteric traditions. In the process, he became acquainted with two key traditions: the Jewish Kabbalah and the Tarot.

The Kabbalah is a set of esoteric teachings developed by medieval Jews, and based upon a hidden understanding of the Hebrew Bible. At the core of the Kabbalah stays the Tree of Life, a complex system representing the 10 emanations of God into His Creation and the relationships amongst them. Kabbalah had been enthusiastically taken up by the Hermetic thinkers of Renaissance Europe, particularly Pico della Mirandola, Johann Reuchlin, Cornelius Agrippa and others. Christian Cabala, or Qabalah, as it became known, may have altered the original Jewish thought, but it had a tremendous influence on modern esoteric traditions. Levi enthusiastically subscribed to the Kabbalah and included it in his works.

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