How do you use Kabbalah for your Tarot readings?

[newoldians]

Hi All

I have read a few books describing about Cabalistic Tarot readings, but it was always so brief and nothing deep at all.
It talks about Tree of Life spread, and what each sepheroth is supposed to mean for the cards.
I wasn't too impressed with it.

I was sure there must be other ways reading Tarot with Kabbalah, for deeper, richer and more accurate readings.
How do you use it, if you are mainly using the method for your tarot readings. Or even if it is not your main way to read tarot, what methods do you use it? Thanks.

[TheLoracular]

Hi Newoldians!

So Qabalistic tarot is a hobby/passion of mine but I don't actually use a lot of QBL in ~readings~ rather than in meditation, shadow work and magickal ritual. The Tree of Life (especially the diagram called The Gra Tree of Life or called The Natural Array by Aryeh Kaplan) is beloved to me and it shapes how I look at my personal microcosm, human society/culture, and creation/the universe in general.

So QBL principles (the 10 sefiroth, the 4 worlds, the 22 paths divided into 3/7/12, and what the Tetragrammaton symbolizes when applied to stuff like archetypal psychology) are present in my head every time I shuffle a tarot deck. These principles create associations I make for the four elemental suits, for the number sequences of 1-10, and ways that the 22 Major Arcana map to each other and to occult systems like astrology and alchemy.

But unless the question the querent (including myself) is asking is about something related very directly to the Tree of Life or another piece of QBL-related lore? It doesn't come up. Most people I have read for would never know I was a Qabalist; I don't use the language associated with any branch of it in my ordinary tarot readings. I am more likely to talk a lot about The Sun for example as a symbol and metaphor than to start talking about Tifaret.

But get me at a table with another Qabalist with coffee and a tarot deck and we could be there for hours and hours talking about the stuff I've mentioned in this post.

[newoldians]

Hi TheLoracular

Thank you for your interesting post. In my case, I used to read up on Kabbalah a lot a few years back. The best book on Kabbalah from my memory was The Chicken Kabbalah by L M Duquette. I still got the book somewhere in the house. I now found the book, and am re-reading it selectively and also referring it to time to time when I want to find more about the Hebrew Letters. The Hebrew letter section of the book seems the best among all other books I have on the subject.

I am more interested in the divination than Magic or ritual side of Tarot. I was also reading the Robert Wang's book. Recently I took it out again, and started re-reading, and when I was reading on the page where it described on some minor arcana cards such as 8 of cups, it was really spot on with the situation and so I could make some good reading for my wife's question in the reading based on the Wang's book.

I thought that there are a lot to learn in Kabbalah, and it will definitely help in understanding and making good predictions in the divination side of Tarot readings. So I am now trying to learn about different ways of using Kabbalah based Tarot reading.

As I said in the OP, some of my other Tarot books such as "The Holistic Tarot" was so brief on the Kabbalah Tarot reading, it was just one page for the topic and was perfunctory explanation, I was not impressed with the book at all. I went back to the Wang's book, and am keep reading it every day.

[TheLoracular]

Hand's down, The Chicken Qabalah of Rabbi Lamed Ben Clifford by Lon Milo Duquette is my favorite book on Hermetic Qabalah. I re-read it within the past six months and found it even more useful than when I read it the first time shortly after it came out. I keep meaning to pick up and read Son of the Chicken Qabalah, but Lon Milo is one of my favorite Western Occult authors who practices and teaches the Golden Dawn-style Qabalah.

He is also a master of the Crowley-Harris Thoth tarot and honestly? If I had to pick one tarot deck that I was going to use to incorporate Golden Dawn-style Qabalah with, it would be that deck. I would grab Lon Milo Duquette's book Understanding The Thoth Tarot and a Thoth deck.

The deck to use to learn Hermetic Qabalah is funny enough called Hermetic Kabalah Tarot. Nemia was the one on this forum to recommend it and I grabbed it a few months ago for my collection, haven't done much with it but it is ideal for learning the attributions to the cards.

The Sefer Yetzirah, which is the foundational document of Jewish Kabbalistic mysticism was translated and incorporated into the Christian Cabala spawned in the Renaissance along with a few other key texts and then in the mid 1800s Eliphas Levi and his generation of magicians in Paris laid the groundwork for attributing the Hebrew Letters to the Major Trumps and the suit cards to the 10 sephiroth and 4 Worlds and the Tetragrammaton. But all of them were working off some pretty poor versions of the Sefer Yetzirah which is itself a very big, broad topic. The -best- book on the market about the Sefer Yetzirah which has the four major versions used nowadays is written Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation in Theory and Practice by Areyh Kaplan

The Sefer Yetzirah is where the astrological and other correspondences to the Hebrew Alphabet comes from but these predate the Tree of Life itself.

There are now some books and websites devoted to tarot within a modern Jewish Kabbalistic framework but I don't personally recommend the one that sounds the most promising by title, Kabbalistic Tarot: Hebraic Wisdom in the Major and Minor Arcana by Dovid Krafchow. The author has a very personalized set of beliefs and truths that don't represent conventional Jewish mysticism, classical (everything Gershom Scholem writes about) -or- the modern Jewish mysticism that's exploded on the Internet during the last 20 years and isn't the closed practice it used to be because of that.

A book that might be worth your time though would be Kabbalah & Tarot A Step-up Guide For Everyone by Andrea Green which is the pen name of the two founders of the Tarosophy Tarot Association.

[newoldians]

I have a LMD's Understanding Thoth Tarot from about 10 year ago.  I had read it in full at the time, but was not too happy with the each individual card description section. I thought it was too brief in the divination description part.  But again, I located the book, took it out, went through it, and found it to be an excellent book.  It is still not great in the divination explanation part, but then it has a lot of information on the correspondence part.  It even shows the dates and month for each card, kabbalah path and astrological attributions.  I thought it was still a great book, as you described.
And I agree with you about the Kabbalah book by the author.  A few years ago, when I was trying to learn Kabbalah and Tarot, I looked into the book on Amazon. I think I read a few pages of the book, but somehow I was not happy with it, and didn't buy the book.  Your comment on the book reminded me of the book, and we seem to agree with the book's problem, although right now I am not certain what I didn't like about the book at the time. My memory is getting fuzzy for the time.

I do have a copy of Yetzira and Bahir as well.  These are some of the books that I was getting about 10 year ago, but never managed to read fully at the time due to my lack of ability to understand them well.  I am now trying to get back to them, because I seem to understand these texts a lot better now than 10 year ago.

But wow, I am really grateful to you for your recommendation for the Step Up Kabbalah Tarot book by Theosophy. I went to the link, and was able to borrow the book for free with my kindle membership.  I read it last night, and it seems to be an excellent book for exactly the topic of this thread - how to use Kabbalah with Tarot reading.  The book explains in very good detail and seems very interesting and relevant to what I have been trying to find. Thank you.

[newoldians]

I came across this video on youtube, and found it very useful for Kabbalistic reading of Tarot.