Alemann's "Song of Solomon's Ascents

ALEMANNO'S "SOLOMON'S ASCENTS" IN OUTLINE

Alemanno's book The Song of Solomon's Ascents, of which Lesley provides a lengthy summary (153 pages, corresponding to 283 pages of the Hebrew original), is of relevance to tarot history for three reasons. One I expected: the book defends divination as the outcome of randomly combining letters in various combinations. This is somewhat analogous to the combining of cards, if each is assigned a letter. There are also two reasons I did not anticipate: first, the work's structure is somewhat parallel to the tarot sequence. And second, in it he talks about the Sefer Yetzirah as though it is somehow related to divination through teaching the principles behind change; thus it is a kind of "book of changes". Since Huck has noticed parallels between the Sefer Yetzirah and the I Ching, the parts of Alemanno's book discussing the Sefer Yetzirah is deserving of a closer look. Neither Lesley nor Idel do so, except for short discussions of the "divine efflux" (or influx) spoken of there, which Alemanno says is brought down by talismans. In this post I will deal only with the parallels in structure.

Alemanno's Song of Solomon's Ascents is an account of the imagined virtues, goods-- perhaps more precisely, goodnesses-- of Solomon, starting from the physical and gradually ascending to the most spiritual, of a sort that can be experienced both before and after physical death. The work, whose title is often translated as The Song of Solomon's Virtues, has seventeen main sections in all; seventeen, he tells us, is the sum of the numerical values of the letters that make the word "tov", meaning "good" (p. 80). I will reproduce here, piece by piece, the outline of sections (I-XVII) and subsections (A, 1, a, i, etc.) that Alemanno provides (Lesley pp. 80-83).

The first five sections (above) concern virtues/goodnesses of a material nature: beauty, health, strength, long life, and wealth. He is not saying that one must have these attributes to be virtuous, but that they are good to have. Wealth, for example, makes magnanimity possible. Long life makes wisdom and the wise application of justice possible (p. 178). This is of course the kind of thing the da Pisas wouldn't mind hearing.

After that (above), the next three (as well as the others, assuming they are all honorable as well as useful materially; of them I give just the fifth, as an example) seem to have to do in part with the middle part of the Platonic soul, those of the soldier and honorable man: honor, noble ancestry, companions and supporters.

Then (above) come four that have to do with the rational part of the soul, but primarily in relation to either practical utility or honorable conduct (Lesley p. 75, where he lists just the sections, not their subsections). These are the traditional four cardinal virtues: intelligence [prudence, as we shall see], self-control [temperance], fortitude, and justice. However to some extent these also pertain to a fourth part of the soul, not explicitly in Plato and not part of the soul's native equipment, namely the spiritual. They are ways in which the rational part can invite the influx of spirit from higher realms.


Under "skill" (above) he lists materially productive ones such as farming, building, hunting, commerce, and setting salaries. I am reminded of Garzoni's Universal Plaza of all the Professions of the World and Camillo's Memory Theatre. There are are also verbal skills such as grammar, rhetoric, poetry, logic, incantations, and letter combinations; the latter two probably are not in Garzoni. There are also mathematical skills, in which he includes "perspective" (as in the visual arts), mechanics, and "geomancy" as well as the usual arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and astrology. Essentially it is the usual seven liberal arts with a few unusual additions. Unfortunately either he or Lesley does not include anything about what incantations and geomancy entails. He gives an example of letter combinations: besides "top", there are tpo, opt, otp, pto, and pot (p. 112).

"Understanding" is deeper than just know-how. Under "political", it includes economics, politics, "occult legal judgments", and subjection of enemies. By "occult legal judgments" he mans "making judgments on obscure cases", where there are no witnesses or other objective evidence. The main example is how Solomon handled the two women disagreeing over whose baby died and whose lived. In such cases it is not a matter of weighing the evidence in relation to the statutes, but of skill in drawing out people's character, i.e. making them hang themselves. as we would say today. The woman who preferred to see the child cut in two might well have been its mother, he says, if her ruling planet was Mars, the type of person who prefers death to dishonor; there were stories, for example, of mothers killing their children rather than seeing them condemned to slavery (p. 119). It also might be Alemanno's reflection on Caterina Sforza, reputed in 1488 to have lifted up her skirts and told those who held her children as hostages: "Fatelo, se volete: impiccateli pure davanti a me... qui ho quanto basta per farne altri!" ("Do it, if you want to: hang them well in front of me...I have the mold to make more!") (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterina_Sforza). The implication was that those new children would have their revenge. Caterina's enemies did not kill the children. Would Solomon have done so? Solomon knew from identifying their planets that one of the women would respond in the way that gave him a way out, if he acted before they had a chance to think. The other, ruled by Venus, would sacrifice her honor for the sake of the child's life. This same difference in ruling planet makes it more likely that the child of the one wold have died rather than that of the other. But how could Solomon have known with certainty, we might ask, or even enough certainty to risk doing it? If he did, it could only be by "occult" means--seeing into the past and future by means not only of astrology but something higher than that.

There is also scientific understanding. Presumably these are to be known by means of the skills he enumerated under "mathematical", especially that of experiment:

You will have noticed that divination is included as subsection x; alchemy is xi; and medicine is xii.

There is also metaphysics, known partly by reason and partly by intuition.

Knowledge of the sefirot and its employment is covered under "intuitive". All of these types fall under "prudentia" of the kind that Alemanno expects a ruler--a philosopher-king, clearly--to have. Solomon's virtues, Alemanno attests, included "divination, augury, and talismans". On talismans: Just as Nebuchnezzer outdid Nimrod in building an image of gold, to bring down the power of the sun, instead of iron, to bring down the power of Mars, so Solomon built a temple with no image, to bring down the power of the Lord (p. 127). Knowledge of the sefirot was first articulated by Abraham in his Sefer Yetzirah (p. 129). Alemanno characterizes this book as being about the unity underlying all pairs of opposites and all change (p. 130). This part is probably the most interesting section for our purposes. I will devote a separate post to it.

Alemanno's next chapters, following Prudentia, are on Self-control (Temperentia), Fortitude (Fortitudo), and Justice (Justicia), in that order--the same order, one right after the other, I would observe, in the A order tarot of Florence and Bologna.

Temperance, or self-control, consists in part of "spending wisely great amounts of money for the sake of virtue, beauty, and honor" (p. 145). It is also the justified mockery of "those who think themselves wiser and greater than they are" and "pride in one's accomplishments" (p. 145), including the outdoing of others in the making of offerings. It is also humility before God, of which Alemanno says little, except that Solomon felt humble when at age 14 God made him ruler of Israel (p. 146f).

In the chapter on Fortitude, Alemanno repeats his earlier theme of doing good on a grand scale (p. 158), describing Solomon's Throne of Judgment.

The throne was made of ivory, plated with gold, and met with various kinds of precious stones. ...Pairs of lions and eagles stood on each step, the lions rampant and the eagles with wings spread. In addition, there were gold figures of various other animals, which were cleverly designed to be able to move and produce characteristic noises.
... To ascend to the throne of judgment, Solomon would be carried by the animals and transferred from one to another, up the stairs. When Solomon sat in judgment,, he would "open a device" on the throne and the statues would all begin to move and call out in their characteristic voices. All this was to awe the witnesses, so that they would not testify falsely.

The animals would also call out verses from the Torah to remind him of his grave responsibility. Here he says he is drawing on rabbinical sources, although he does not give specifics. What it brings to my mind is the Aesclepius, which attributed that power to the Egyptians. He says he has heard of such devices even in his own time, which moved "as if there were in them a living spirit". One even had a bird that chirped like a nightingale (p. 160).

For Alemanno fortitude is shown by "those who are not easily excited by external things". He says that Solomon, unlike David, did not "leap and dance before the Lord", showing his excitability (p. 161). Determination is also a characteristic of fortitude, which means doing great things despite the cost, such as conquests and building the Temple (p. 162).

For Alemanno, like Plato, justice is the greatest virtue, because it produces (p. 165)

harmony between the faculties of the soul which produce wisdom (Sapientia), fortitude (Fortitudo) and self-control (Temperentia). Justice is not merely one of the virtues, but is the principle by which they may be placed harmoniously within a hierarchy

This of course reflects Plato's Republic, on the four virtues.

Justice requires a acting in a way that combines both tradition (Kabbalah) and intellectual attainment, so as to bring down the "pleroma" [Greek for "fullness"] from God (p. 166f). It requires knowledge of the hierarchy of powers descending from the divine. The ascent through these powers is by "passionate love" and "divine mania" or "divine madness," resulting in a "possession" (p. 168(. These concepts are obviously borrowed from Plato's Phaedrus, perhaps mediated by Arab sources. He divides love into three types: love of the pleasant, love of the useful, and love of the good (p. 170). The love of the useful is that of a superior for an inferior. Love of the good is that of an inferior for a superior, including between man and God. Love of the pleasant is love between equals, as it is the love of what is similar in another. There is also the desire for unity with the beloved, which in an inferior's relationship to a superior, and man to God (p. 174), is accomplished by means of a combination of techniques. One is a rational understanding of the hierarchy of being, first acquiring the Acquired Intellect, then becoming attached to the Agent Intellect, by means of the Emanated Intellect (p. 176) This is the "kiss" discussed by Pico. And beyond that is the First Cause.

Another approach is by writing holy words and names and combining them, as in the letter-combinations described in the Sefer Yetzirah and the books of Abulafia (p. 178).

In a few days he can become familiar with combining the letters of Scripture and the revealed name of 48 or 12 or 4 letters. As he combines them, backwards and forwards, with many melodies, an overflow of the holy spirit will come upon him. He will begin slowly and increase his speed until he is adept. Then fear and trembling will come upon him; the hair on his head will stand up and his limbs will tremble. Then he will receive upon himself the spirit of the Lord, and it will seem to him that his body has been anointed. From combining the letters, which contain all languages, he will attain all intellectual sciences and thoughts, including the science of formation and of the merkabah and the secrets of the Torah, which no philosopher ever attained, without the use of any other book. By knowing the Name, you shall know everything. This is, in its way, a median between God and ourselves.

It strikes me that it is this Name that Pico and Reuchlin tried to identify with that of Jesus--although not to the end of "attaining all intellectual sciences".

A third method is by the performance of the commandments, especially sacrifices (p. 179).

Then, given all these methods, one's passionate love will ascend through all the types of being: from natural to spiritual to intellectual to sefirotic to divine. The entrance to the sefirotic, starting with Malkhut, is the Gate of Heaven. And "Whoever enters through Malkhut and Yesod reaches Keter without hindrance" (p. 191).

We are now very much in the spiritual part of the ascent. The next section, XIII, is short, on the importance of the parents' spiritual elevation at the time of a child's conception, meaning their non-contamination by sinful thoughts at that moment (p. 194). He does not explain his reasoning. Is it possible that thoughts can influence which sperm gets to which egg?

The following two sections are also short: "Attention shown to a man by his contemporaries"--i.e. good influences (p. 195(--and "Good fortune sent by God from Heaven", which Solomon always enjoyed (p. 196).

The next, number XVI, "Divine Guidance", is quite long. There is divine guidance to the material intellect (to understand nature, p. 202)), to the appetite (to desire only the good, p. 204), to the temperament (through the influence of celestial influences, p. 295, as in Solomon's judgment), in speech (p. 297), and then--resulting from particular kinds of speech, such as prayers, offerings, and letter-combinations--perception by the soul without mediation of the senses (p. 209):

a powerful, internal, mental perception of spiritual things that exist potentially , but have not yet come into being. This is through the perception of angels and the souls of the righteous. ...The explanation of sorcery, necromancy, and other occult arts that operate upon the souls of the dead is similar: they are internal, spiritual perceptions.

Then the sixth kind of guidance is through the imagination, in particular the prophetic imagination, "images taken from subtle spiritual forms and substances" (p. 210). The seventh and final type is of the reason, the rational faculty, which allows one to know "the principles of all the other sciences and also about the existence of God, His unity, His providence, that he is the cause of the sensible world, and the form, agent and end of it" (p. 211)

For each of these types of "divine guidance", Alemanno emphasizes that to partake of them while in the flesh is to receive the divine influx into one's soul, and thereby create the conditions for immortality:

The rabbis alluded to the existence of various levels of immortality in the world to come, which is the world of intelligence that comes after the world of matter: they said, "When do infants merit the life of the world to come? - From the time when they know how to say , "Amen, may His great name be blessed (T.B. Shabbat 119b)...'."

The lowest level of immortality is acquired in the simplest reasoning ability--to know that a body cannot be in two places simultaneously, for example (p. 202)-- which even so is given by God. So (p 202f):

...this intellectual form confirms some existence and perfection upon the hylic intellect, so that it already has some immortality when separated from matter, even though the human intellect is not perfected until it attains the acquired intellect and the emanated intellect.

The acceptance of higher forms of guidance then bestow higher forms of immortality. "Hylic" is Greek for "material". The more influx, and the higher the type, the more exalted will be one's immortality after death. The next stage, for example, is that of desiring only the good, which by divine guidance means loving God through obeying the commandments revealed in the Torah. Then:

...the actions commanded by the Torah, when derived from rational conceptions that man has of his Maker, of the separate intelligences and of the active intellect, become an essential cause for the immortality of the man's soul.

And so on for the other types of divine guidance. Only Jews can attain the highest level.

The final section of the book, number XVII, is about "The Ultimate Good". This starts at "the universal soul" (p. 214) and proceeds upward to the Agent Intellect, the Separate Intelligences, the Ministering Angels [planetary spirits], the 28 Encampments of the Shekhina, the sefira Malkhut, and the sefira Tiferet. This section builds on what he said earlier about the sefirot, so I will discuss it together with that one in another post. He remarks that the 28 "mansions of the moon" in astrology are a reflection of the "28 encampments of the Shekhina" (p. 217).

There is more (to p. 227), but I hope I have given some flavor of the strengths and weaknesses of this work of Alemanno's. He seems to have gone a different way than Pico, more in the direction of defending Renaissance magnificence than Pico's turn toward Savonarola in an unusually clear, at least in outline, combination of Jewish, Greek, and Arab thought, with the inclusiveness that characterized Pico's 900 Theses, but in a way that affirms the uniqueness of Judaism in bringing about the goal.

As far as correspondences to the tarot sequence, they are, as I have said, without direct one-to-one correspondences in the order, while conforming in overall approach. We might see all the ones before the four virtues as contained in the Empress and Emperor. Then the part on "skills" could be the Chariot. Some of the part on "understanding" might be the Hermit. The parts on Temperance, Fortitude, and Justice correspond to those virtue cards in the tarot; but certain sections would apply to the Magician--the parts on incantations, divination, talismans, etc.--and the Pope, in a Jewish rabbinical equivalent--namely, high-mindedness, ascent to God, spiritual elevation of parents, and attention paid by contemporaries. His account of the forms of love are covered by the Love card, and divine madness in particular by the Fool. as well as mockery against those who think themselves wiser than they are. For Death there are his occasional comments on life after death, as a fact to be reckoned with and not a subject in itself. By the Devil and Moon cards can be understood the "impure spiritual beings" of which I have not yet talked, above which is the Moon as a representation of Malkhut. The Star card of the lady pouring from two vessels would be the divine eflux ensuring immortality, a central theme which I have only mentioned briefly. The Sun is the triumph of immortality before the general Judgment, and even in this life. The Fortune card is that which God assured to Solomon. section XVI. The Popess might correspond to the Queen of Sheba, portrayed in the Bible as both submissive to Solomon and also seducing him into worshiping false gods.

So far I have skipped over Alemanno's discussion of the Sefer Yetzirah in the context of his overall presentation. I will address that, and how it might relate to the tarot, in another post

bout the Sefer Yetzirah, I want to start with a remark toward the end of Allemano's book, in the section on the ultimate good. It is the realization (p. 220, of which I give a scan at http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ewXQ8jM2P0k/V ... ley220.JPG):

...that there is a One that unites all contrarieties of the existents, and that the whole world is one because is is ruled by One. He [Abraham] explained, in his Book of Formation, that the five opposed pairs, first and last, good and bad, high and low, north and south, and east and west, are all harmonized and unified by the single Ruler of them.

This doctrine comes directly from the Sefer Yetzirah itself (Short Version 1.5, at http://www.psyche.com/psyche/txt/kaplan_sy_short.html; Long Version 1.5, Kaplan translation, p. 271):

Ten Sefirot of Nothingness: Their measure is ten which have no end. A depth of beginning, a depth of end; a depth of good, a depth of evil; a depth above, a depth below; a depth east, a depth west; a depth south. The singular Master, God faithful King, who dominates them all from His holy dwelling until eternities of eternities.

These are not mentioned as opposites, but that is understood. It certainly was how Alemanno understood them.

Alemanno in another part of his book (p. 216) divides the universe into 7 regions, each with its attendant spirits. Of the 6th he says:

6. The sefira Malkhut. This sefira is the beginning, in ascending order, of the world of the sefirot. This world is higher than the world of motion to which the previous five levels belong. Those preceding levels are all attached to matter in some form, and consequently it is those to which most souls are able to attach. It is impossible, however, for souls to become attached to this and the next level except through knowledge of the secrets of the Torah and the performance of its commandments.

By "secrets" he means the "oral Torah", not divulged to other nations. The one level higher is that of Tiferet, associated with the four-letter name of God (p. 217). The next two lower levels are first, those of spirits associated with the fixed stars and then, below them, the spirits associated with the seven planets. The lowest is the "mutable world" in which we live, associated with the "universal spirit".

here is what Alemanno says about levels 2 and 3. Not much, I fear (p. 215).

2. The Agent Intellect. All the scientists agree that human souls can become attached to it during their lifetimes and after their separation from the body. The greatest of the visionaries, Abu Bakr Ibn Tufayl, wrote that, after his complete immersion in his vision and destruction of his ego, he saw an essence with seventy thousand aspects, his term for the agent intellect. On this level he saw other essences, including the souls of the righteous after their death, all infinite in beauty and splendor and delight.
3. The Separate Intelligences. This level is so much higher than that of the Agent Intellect, that none of the scientists mentions it except R. Moses of Narbonne, in his commentary to Hayy Ibn Yagzan. He says that Averroes thinks that, at a level still higher than that of the Agent Intellect, the human intellect can perceive the separate intelligences.

Then come the spirits of the planets, etc. All of levels 1-5 are in the world of motion. Only level 1 is in the world of mutation. Levels 6-7 are in the world of rest.

I see only one other mention of "worlds", in the part that I talk about later in my post, p. 130 (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pgEV6RlsDXo/V ... ley130.JPG. He analyzes psalm 89 as dividing "all existents" into four "parts": spheres, movers of spheres, the "world of the sefirot", and

"mighty one", the agent intellect, which mightily brings all the latent forms from potentiality to actuality", and is affected by the name "Yah", which includes the three highest sefirot.

This seems to be the same "agent intellect" that he later puts at the second level of seven! But of course he is only analyzing a psalm, which you might otherwise not have known said all this. Otherwise it is consistent with what he said earlier, about the sefirot being in the "world of rest". The "four worlds" doctrine is in other Kabbalists in Italy (first seen in Sicily, Idel says, end of 13th century), as I say in my long post, but Alemanno either doesn't know it or doesn't feel a need for it.

Alemanno's idea is that below the sefirot, are the "worlds of motion", which the sefirot, although at rest, put in motion, through a kind of universal yearning. This is his Kabbalist adaptation of an Aristotelian idea.

Alemanno in this same discussion mentions two more pairs of opposites: "Justice and Mercy" and "spiritual and material." And the midpoint is called "Tiferet" (p. 220, http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ewXQ8jM2P0k/V ... ley220.JPG):

Jacob took as his measure the sefira Tiferet, the middle line that unites the higher and lower existents, Justice and Mercy, spiritual and material.

So we have "Justice" and "Mercy", i.e. Gevurah and Hesed.

A pair of opposites that Alemanno does not mention is one that features prominently in the I Ching, that of active/determining vs. passive/receptive. But perhaps it fits under "up/down" viewed in a sexual way, the male being active and the female receptive. Tiferet was frequently viewed as corresponding to the Sun in the heavens, and Malkhut to the Moon. In this case, the mean might be an equal combination of the two tendencies. He does in another place (p. 130, http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pgEV6RlsDXo/V ... ley130.JPG):

The wisdom that Abraham invented is the science of unification which unites opposites, such as day and night, the greater and the lesser light, heaven and earth, north and south, and all other opposites.

The "greater and the lesser light" are the Sun and the Moon, which shine in the day and night respectively. It is their allegorical unification that is being considered.

There is a natural sexual analogy here: the Sun gives light, while the Moon receives light and responds by reflecting the sun's rays. It is like the man and the woman in bed, as conventionally conceived. The midpoint is the phallus/vagina connection. So we have another of the opposing pairs of sefirot, the second of the two on the vertical central axis.

If Tiferet is to be directly connected with all the sefirot, including Malkhut, then it makes sense to identify the sefira just above the bottom one as Tiferet's phallus, connecting with Malkhut through the line FJ as the phallus/vagina union. There is then another allegorical meaning appropriate to this point F, namely, circumcision. It is that symbol of the covenant which every Jew makes with God that is the Foundation of the Chosen People. Hence the name Yesod, meaning Foundation. It is also, I think, what Alemanno is referring to when he speaks of "the circumcision of Tiferet".

n the Kabbalist application of the Sefer Yetzirah system, Malkhut is always in danger of being disconnected from the rest of the sefirot. Allemano says (p. 221, http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pfx9hwV6IWk/V ... ley221.JPG):

And the rest of the nations of the world at the time believed that there was no unity to the world, and no connection between higher and lower worlds, so that they understood Malkhut only as separated from the spiritual world. The nations put all their efforts to separating Malkhut, as the ruler of the material world, from the unified structure. But the sons of Jacob, in contrast, strove to unite it to the spiritual world. When they said to Jacob, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one," he replied, "Blessed be His name, whose glorious Kingdom (Malkhuto) is for ever and ever (as in Jewish Liturgy)."

The reason Malkhut is in such a perilous circumstance, requiring constant affirmation of divine Unity, is that it is connected to the sefirot only in one place to Yesod above her, the phallus/vagina linking "up" with "down" and the material world with the spiritual world of God. Allegorically, the phallus is a circumcised one, symbolizing the covenant of God with his people. This act connects God with his people, and for males it cannot be omitted. (For both males and females, in Jewish law, there is also water immersion. The two together seem to be as important as baptism for Christians. But I do not see Jewish Kabbalists discussing this.) Hence the only line between Malkhut (point J on our diagram) and the rest of the sefirot is through Yesod (point F). This the sons of Jacob maintained. Only with Moses was there a return to where Jacob and Abraham stood, at Tiferet.

Pico also emphasized the fragility of the connection. In thesis 28.4 (Farmer p. 347) he says

The sin of Adam was the severing of kingdom from the other shoots.

In other words, cutting off the connection is the origin of sin, i.e. separation from God.
This is also evident in a later thesis:

28.36. The sin of Sodom came from severing the last shoot.

The sin of Sodom is evidence of wickedness, hence separation from God. That he says "shoot" indicates that there is only one connection between Malkhut and the rest of the tree. He also says (p. 359):

28. 31. Circumcision was given to free us from the impure powers that circle about.
28.32. Circumcision occurs on the eighth day, because it is superior to the universalized bride.

Here, according to Farmer (p. 358), "eighth day" = Yesod, the 9th sefira, and "univesalized bride" = Malkhut, the 10th sefira. This confirms the interpretation of Yesod as the phallus, or perhaps phallus/vagina connection, that connects Malkhut as bride to Tiferet as groom.

In Allemano's classification of goodnesses, this might be the contrast between that which allows the mastery of skills and arts, which he calls "intelligence", and that which imparts understanding, which he calls "wisdom", e.g. on p. 116:

Right Understanding - Science
This includes what the gentiles call Wisdom, and the prophets, Understanding. It is divided into Natural and Political wisdom.

In what follows, he uses the word "wisdom" to apply to these subject-matters very often. He also uses it in the next two sections, on "theoretical knowledge", (p. 117), which includes those of "dialectic and sophistic" (p. 122), "nature and metaphysics" (p. 129), and "intuitive knowledge" (p. 129), on. "Intelligence" was the main way that sefira 3 was understood in the Renaissance, certainly by Pico in the 900 Theses (see Farmer p. 350f, citing Scholem in commenting on Theses 28.10-13). In Thesis 28.13 Pico speaks of sefira 3 in terms of "mysterium portarum intelligentiae", the mystery of the gates of intelligence.

Granted this distinction, Wisdom would be higher than Intelligence, and so Wisdom would be on the right in the diagram. With this identification, we can see why it is important to have a path between A and D in my diagram, as well as C and H. Love or Mercy, which is what D allegorically is, needs a dose of Intelligence in its application. And Justice needs a dose of Wisdom. i.e. the intuitive grasping of essences, as in the case of Solomon with the two women. Also, there is otherwise a problem of how one ascends from 4 to 3, or descends from 3 to 4, without a path connecting the two, part of the so-called "zigzag path" of ascent and descent through the sefirot. (One could, I suppose, just leap, but the intelligence-love path makes it easier to see.)

The other pair not yet allegorized is sefiroth 7 and 8, E to G, whose meaning is not easy to tease out of Alemanno's text. I think he has alluded to them in the next part of his book starting on p. 129, which also tells us more about what sefira 2 (Hochma) is, in its highest aspect. My scans of pp. 129-130 are at http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1dfhOEOOUb8/V ... ley129.JPG and
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-N5zhGBpZZm4/V ... ley130.JPG.

On p. 129, Alemanno relates "intuitive knowledge" to Psalm 89, which he says the rabbis teach was authored by Abraham, who also wrote the Sefer Yetzirah. And yet Solomon was wiser than Abraham:

Intuitive knowledge, which the prophet also included in the word, "wisdom," is intended by the phrase, "For he was wiser than....Ethan the Ezrahite (I Kings 5:11). The rabbis tell us that Ethan the Ezrahite was Abraham, considered to be the author of Psalm 89: "Maschil of Ethan the Ezrahite (v. 1." (Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 4.3) His wisdom is shown by the book he wrote, the Book of Formation , as well as from this psalm (89), which is written about wisdom.

Here it is fairly clear that intuitive knowledge is an important component of wisdom; it is also what the Sefer Yetzirah imparts.

Lesley's reference in parentheses to I Kings, I think, should be 4:31 (http://biblehub.com/1_kings/4-31.htm), at least as Christians identify verses. The number 89 for the psalm is correct. Looking at psalm 89, I see a lot of pairs of opposites: raging sea vs. still waves, strong enemies vs. enemies slain; heavens and earth; north and south; justice and mercy; faithfulness vs. faithlessness; lovingkindness vs. wrath; sun and moon. And also some implied pairs: day and night, high and low, strong and weak. (Sun and moon contain the opposition of giving light vs. receiving light, and so also active vs. receptive.) It is in reference to this psalm and its spirit, that Alemanno continues, in a passage I quoted from earlier (p. 130):

The wisdom that Abraham invented is the science of unification, which unites opposites, such as day and night, the greater and the lesser light, heaven and earth, north and south, and in general all opposites. He demonstrated the falsity of the belief in duality, of good and bad divinities, which was widespread n his time. He also introduced the science of the sefirot, which was not known in his time.

The point is that all are from God, and within each is always some of the other. In a similar way, the yin contains yang, darkness contains light, etc. God, despite our faithlessness, will never lose faith in us, etc. So one side of the opposition can change into the other, in the sense of becoming predominant.

Allemano also sees in psalm 89 a division of existents into four parts (p. 130):

In this psalm he divides all existents into four parts: "skies" (shahaq, v. 7), a reference to the spheres; "holy ones" (hna elokim, v. 8), the movers of the spheres; "the great council of the holy ones" (sod qdoshim rabba: v. 8), the world of the seferot; and "mighty one" (hasin yah: v. 9), the agent intellect, which mightily brings all the latent forms from potentiality into actuality, and is affected by the name "Yah," which includes the three highest sefirot.

It would be tempting to say that this doctrine, that the "mighty one" includes the three highest sefirot, implies the doctrine of the Trinity. Others did draw that conclusion, for sure. But that would not be inclusive enough for Alemanno: God, in the Sefer Yetzirah, is "without end". In fact He includes not only all opposites but all differences (still p. 130):

In the Book of Formation he [Abraham] is concerned with describing the world of the sefirot, with the single foundation that unites all multiplicity, whether of opposed pairs or not, and with the unification of all the worlds.

And how many worlds are there? In the preceding quote, he had four divisions, counting the upper three sefirot as one "world". However it appears that there is another world there beneath the "skies":

On this last, he says that everything is in the mutable world is in the world of motion, and everything in the world of motion is in the sefirotic world.

Since the celestial bodies were considered subject to motion but not change, this seems to imply a fifth "world" below the skies, which is nonetheless part of the "world of motion". As to why "everything in the world of motion is in the sefirotic world", this is probably the idea that Malkhut includes everything below it as well.

Other Kabbalists before Alemanno had four worlds. Although modern commentators on the Zohar do not find it there, Idel has traced this idea, with its distinctive labels, as far back as R. Yitzhaq ben Samuel of Acre, whom he located in Sicily of the end of the 13th century. For Yitzhaq the four worlds are as follows (Idel, p. 247f at http://archive.org/stream/MosheIdelKabb ... y_djvu.txt):

The highest one, that of 'Atzilut, is the world of emanation, referred to by R. Yitzhaq in the first A of the 'ABYA' acronym. The next one is the world of Beriy'ah, namely Creation, which is the world of the Divine Chariot, hinted at by the letter Bet. The third, the world of Yetzirah, meaning Formation, is the world of the angels, and corresponds to the letter Yod. Finally, the world of 'Asiyah, the lower world, is to be understood as the world of making.

I would think that the astrological entities would be part of the world of Yetzirah. The parts of the human body are below that. I am not sure where the units of time fit in.

So what does the Sefer Yetzirah teach? Here is Alemanno again (p. 130):

This is the science which is acquired through the divine imaginative faculty which is in the soul of the prophet who sees, through his intuition, the sefirotic world.

In other words, when in a trance produced by reciting the divine names in various letter-combinations, having done the proper incantations and obeyed the commandments, this is what the prophet sees, re-enacting the creation. And Solomon sees more than Abraham (p. 130f):

Solomon was greater than Abraham in such wisdom. Whereas Abraham sought to be attached to God through the sefira Gedulah, called "mercy (hesed) to Abraham (Micah 5:20)," Solomon sought to rise to the second sefira, Hokma.

That identification of the second sefira as Wisdom includes the intuitive understanding that comes from God. Solomon rose to that level, we learn elsewhere, by attaching to Tiferet, the unifying center. That is where Moses fixed himself, too. But (p. 131, at http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3xAXVbvmkzA/V ... ley131.JPG)

It is also said that Solomon "was wiser than....Haman (I Kings 5:11)." That is a reference to Moses, about whom it is said, "He is trusted (na'eman) throughout my household (Numbers 12:7)."

How is that possible, for Solomon to have been wiser than Moses? We do not find out until the next page of Lesley's translation (p. 132, at http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-y91SnlTLq0Y/V ... ley132.JPG).

Doubtless Moses knew better than anyone how the observance of the commandments in the Torah and the avoidance of the prohibitions of the Tarah would benefit the Israelite people; truly, "never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses, whom the Lord singled out, face to face (Deuteronomy34:10)." Among the nations, however, Balaam resembled him in his cognate knowledge of spiritual forces available to the gentiles. It was in this knowledge that Solomon surpassed Moses.

Alemanno is saying that Balaam, a gentile magician and diviner, was comparable to Solomon in understanding hidden spiritual forces, but from a non-Jewish foundation, i.e. from "impure" sources. It appears that Solomon knew both the Jewish and the gentile "wisdom". In that way he was wiser than Moses, by delving into impermissible areas.

In the above quote (from p. 132), I think I see another pair of opposites: positive commandments and negative commandments (i.e. prohibitions). There is a remark by Pico that suggests that these were attached to the 7th and 8th sefirot.

When the Cabalists say that sons should be sought from the seventh and the eighth, those petitions in the inferior merkabah are to be interpreted this way: so that one is asked to grant them, the other not to prohibit them. And which he grants and which one prohbits anyone who is knowledgable in astrology and Cabala can understand from the preceding conclusions.

By "inferior merkabah" I think Pico means the sefirot below the first three. Even though this statement is about petitions and not commandments, the preceding conclusion is in fact about commandments. There he correlates the 4th commandment with the 7th sefira and the 8th commandment with the 8th sefira. I think, from reading Wikipedia's article on the the Ten Commandments, that the 4th commandment would have been "Remember the sabbath, and keep it holy". a positive commandment. (Another possibility is "Honor thy mother and father", also positive.) The 8th would have been "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor", a negative commandment (the other possibility being another "Thou shalt not). So the 7th sefira is about positive commandments and the 8th about negative ones. This division fits the general tenor of the left side of the diagram, which has above the 8th "strict judgment", as opposed to "love" and "mercy" on the other side. Both of the positive commandments have to do with love. In Gikatilla's Gates of Light, the 7th sefira, Netzach, is the agent of "compassion upon Israel" (Weinstein translation p. 142); the 8th sefira, Hod, is that of God's armies, "to bring low the enemy, win wars", as in Daniel 10:8: "My majesty [veHODi] became a destroyer..." (p. 123).

The middle way here, represented in both Yesod (from below) and Tiferet (from above), is of course not that of doing things that are neither commanded nor prohibited, but rather of attending to both equally. Yesod is the sefira of Righteousness. Tiferet is the agent of compassionate judgment, sending his forces to the right or the left as needed.

The passage from Alemanno just quoted (p. 132) also articulates another pair of opposites, namely "spiritual forces available to the Jews" and "spiritual forces available to the gentiles". Solomon, it appears, tried to know both. I do not see this pair among the sefirot. Alemanno is rather bold to include it, but it is also in keeping with the inclusive spirit of this period in Florence.

There is a danger in this project: in knowing the gods of others, one is in danger of worshiping them. Alemanno sees a metaphor in the thousand wives of Solomon (p. 132).

R. Menahem of Recanati wrote in his commentary ont he Pentateuch: "All my days I ahv been astounded that such a wise man should have been trapped by women, when his own book, Proverbs, is full of warnings about them." When I recognized that the text says that he had a total of a thousand foreign wives (I Kings 11:3), I understood that these mean the thousand ranks of unclean spirits that are influence by the higher tree, Tiferet, and that Solomon, attached to this sefira, tried to complete his wisdom by understanding them. This is what was intended in the verse, "For Solomon went after Ashtoreth (I Kings 11:5): not that he worshipped them, but that he sought to complete his knowledge and went beyond the permissible point of investigation. Solomon tried to understand the customs and cults of the nations."

Looking up I Kings 11: 5, I see that it has "Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites". It seems to me that Lesley has put the quotation marks in the wrong place: they go after "Ashtoreth"; the rest is Alemanno's interpretation of "went after Ashtoreth". etc. Moses did not try to understand foreign gods (still p. 132):

In contrast, Moses sought only to preserve his power of receiving influences through Tiferet, the commandments of the Torah, as is written: "That caused his glorious (Tifarto) arm to go at the right hand of Moses (Isaiah 63:12)."

The problem is that in trying to understand the cults and customs of the nations, one is letting the door open to idol-worship, by others in one's domain if not oneself. This leads to the weakenng of Israel in the generations that follows. In this context Alemanno himself is of interest. He studied Greek and Arabic philosophers and even conversed with the Christians of his own time and place. Like the rabbis who commented on the Arabic philosophers, Alemanno is using this language, which of course the scriptures never heard of, in a way that is like what the Christians do but still tries to be true to Judaism. To many, at that time and since, this was considered dangerous and impermissible.

I do not see in these pages any suggestion that the golden calf was Moses' idea, an idea Idel finds in Alemanno's Notebooks. In "Solomon's Ascents" Alemanno says: (p. 138)

..the making of the calf was obviously taken from the science of talismans, as Ezra comments (to Exodus 32:2vv).

But it would seem to have been the Israelites' idea, not Moses, because he says that the Israelites asked God to forgive them (p. 138).

They sought to have God forgive them, and punish their children, for the rabbis say: "No punishment comes to the world that does not contain an accounting for the making of the calf, as indicted by the verse, 'But when I make an accounting, I will bring them to account for their sins (Exodus 12:34) (Exodus Rabba 42; Sanhedren 102a).'"

That was rather mean-spirited of them, to wish that their sons be punished and not themselves, who committed the crime! Alemanno continues (still p. 138):

Every transgression contains some element of idolatry. But God pardoned them.

So apparently making the golden calf was, although not Moses' idea, at least a transgression. Alemanno goes on:

Solomon was wiser than they in building such forbidden idols. They built only one calf, but for his wives he built thousands of them. Like the Israelites, he was pardoned: although his son suffered for his sins, Solomon himself repented at the end of his life and was pardoned...

I am not totally sure what the sin was. Making idols for his wives is letting impurity flourish (and so seemingly unwise). On the other hand, the gentiles have wisdom that Jews may and have used to get closer to God (the learning of which would make one wiser). I have no further clarification. For anyone who wants to try, I give Alemanno's text 133-138:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YRwkSzmeJVc/V ... ley133.JPG
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WWA0yWCPcN4/V ... ley134.JPG
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xWwYhQlD_FE/V ... ley136.JPG
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gmAFtNI9nbU/V ... ley137.JPG
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5hDlgQPeIAE/V ... ley138.JPG
Of these I have only discussed p. 138.

Given that Malkhut is the gate to Yesod, that Tiferet is in the middle, and Kether at the top, there are, for these 4 sefirot, 2 vertical pairs, one with Yesod as mid-point and the other with Tiferet as midpoint. There are also 3 horizontal pairs, all with Tiferet as midpoint. The five pairs of the Sefer Yetzirah are now all interpreted allegorically.

Alemanno, like Gikatilla and most other Kabbalists, is concerned with allegorizing the opposing pairs and achieving a balance between the two sides of the opposition.

This tendency to emphasize the sefirot and their relationships rather than the astrological components of 3, 7, and 12 may be reflected in the version of the sefirotic diagram that became most used by Christian hermeticists, namely, that presented by Kircher in 1652 (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: ... f_Life.png). If you look carefully on that tree (or any following it, such as Crowley's), you will see that the assignments of letters to paths do not reflect the division into 3 horizontals, 7 verticals, and 12 diagonals at all. Alef is at the top, between Kether and Hokma, and thus would be one of the 12 diagonals. However the Sefer Yetzirah clearly says that it is a mother letter; so it should be one of the horizontals. It is the same throughout. The principle Kircher's tree follows is not that of the 3, 7, and 12 but rather that of simply going from the top down, with Alef at the top and Tau at the bottom. That is good for picturing the allegorical relationships between the sefirot, but not for picturing astrology.

And when Kircher's diagram does add astrology, it does it in a way those who diagrammed the Sefer Yetzirah never dreamed of: it assigns planets to sefirot rather than to the 7 vertical paths, and not simply in descending order but with an adjustment that better fits the meaning of the various sefirot: it goes 4 Jupiter, 5 Mars, 6 Sun, 7 Venus, 8 Saturn, 9 Mercury, 10 Moon. This is a variation on what Pico did in his 900 Theses, not as what Jewish kabbalists did but as his innovation (Thesis 11>48); the only difference is that Pico made Saturn 8 and Venus 9; he was probably thinking of the left side as "feminine" and the right as "masculine".

But this tendency, too, is anticipated in Alemanno and probably other Jewish Kabbalists before him, when he associates the 3rd safira, Binah, with Saturn (Idel p. 188 at http://archive.org/stream/MosheIdelKabb ... y_djvu.txt). How the other planets then run he doesn't say. The Christian hermeticists, as though oblivious to the Sefer Yetzirah, which they also used, then went down the order, similar to Kircher's until they made further innovations near the end, with 8 Hod as Mercury, 9 Yesod as the Moon, and 10 Malkhut-- this last in Jewish lore mainly associated with the Moon--as the earth.

There is another version that also does not fit, namely, the one on the cover of Paolo Ricci's translation of Gikatilla's Gates of Light, 1515. That one has 17 paths (see http://dcsymbols.com/journey/tree1516.jpg; I count the forked one as 1 vertical and 2 diagonals). Since the sefirot were always justified by reference to the Sefer Yetzirah, to which Ricci's picture still has a deformed connection (4 verticals, 1 horizontal, 12 diagonals), there must have been 22 paths. It is only Gikatilla's total disconnection from the astrological assignments in his writing that makes such a misrepresentation possible.

GENERALIZATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

For Alemanno, the sefirot, in the context of the sefirotic diagram and Alemanno's outline of "goods" reproduced in the previous post, constitute a schema not only for human choices but for change in general, as it affects the "world of motion". Someone who can attain the level of the sefirot is in a position to know, for example, whether in a particular case, Justice or Mercy is the stronger, if they are balanced, and likewise for the other sefirot. The sefirot, with God's help, allow one to see behind appearances to the essential.

For Alemanno's view of the sefirot, an analogy might be to Newton's laws. of motion and gravitation. From them it is possible to know in a particular case what will happen to a given object in relation to other objects, knowing their mass, speed, density, etc. These laws are "occult" in operating invisibly; it is not a matter of chains or levers pushing and pulling the objects around. The forces work in a hidden way, known only to the wise, who know both the principles and how to apply them, through the various sciences, to particular cases in the "mutable world".

However in Alemanno's world numerical operations are not differential calculus but rather gematria supplemented by ecstatic vocalizations of very precise permutations; and the "sciences" include those of alchemy along with astrology and other forms of divinaion. Yet at the same time "mechanics", in which mathematics is an important tool, and "experiment", as specified in his list of "goods", are parts of what we must learn to understand the world. With such means it is possible to make progress toward understanding some of these "occult" forces in the way that Kepler and Newton eventually did. How much their verified theories left out is another issue.

Astrology, given the Sefer Yetzirah, for Alemanno is the mathematical science that governs the stars, with the sefirot above them. In the Sefer Yetzirah, it is a way from sounds and combinations of sounds called "letters" to entities in the world. How they relate to the sefirot is not even mentioned. Medicine and bodily health are also incorporated in the Sefer Yetzirah, since particular bodily organs are assigned to particular paths. However the parts still must be put together in a coherent whole. The Kabbalists' sefirotic system, as a product of a monotheistic consciousness that includes the "en sof" as its unifying principle, offers this unity.

Apart from the Sefer Yetzirah's mystical assignments of the Hebrew letters, there are the allegorical meanings of the sefirot themselves, not mentioned in that book but interpreted, as Alemanno does, in relation to cognate biblical verses and kabbalist commentaries. That is how Moses got the power of Tiferet in his right arm, as Alemanno explains it.

The sefirotic system then forms, or is understood to form, a kind of "science of sciences", a book for understanding all changes in the lower world, based on knowing the energy in the paths and spheres of the sefirot. It is a kind of "book of changes", in other words. Just as the I Ching is based on the unity between yin and yang, broken lines and whole lines, and the various subjects and combinations under which this unity can play out, on six different axes, so the Sefer Yetzirah does something similar, on at least five different axes and 32 different situations. The sefirotic system makes up for its lower number--32 vs. 64--by recognizing the continuum between the opposites and the middle way. Perhaps the I Ching does so as well, in its own way. I have not studied it.

The I Ching, besides being a book of wisdom-poems, also gives a method of focusing on one or a few of these poems, the method of casting sticks, which may or may not be legitimately simplified by the tossing of coins. That is where the tarot comes in.

When the tarot expresses the sefirot, including the lines between them, it, too, becomes a "science of sciences", focused on a particular person at a particular time. However I doubt if it is one accessible to the ignorant--despite what Alemanno says about children's interpretations of scripture--but rather only someone like Solomon, who has mastered all the particular sciences, even down to stonecutting and shepherding. (That point would seem to be a given in Camillo's massive theatre of all knowledge and the memory systems to hold it all in one's mind.) Once one knows how the sefirot are charged, one can predict the future, Alemanno says--just as surely as a physicist today who knows Newtonian mechanics can predict the course of a spaceship, given that he knows the relevant facts to put in the equations. And just as the scientist can adjust the thrust of the rocket remotely to achieve success, so might a Kabbalist be able to adjust the relevant energy levels in the sefirot and their paths. Divination, aided by piety, becomes magic.

With the tarot, it is a matter of understanding that the same basic laws that are expressed in the sefirot govern the distribution of cards, when done in a way that connects them to their divine archetypes. It is a matter of interpreting them according to definite principles. The Sefer Yetzirah then becomes a key to understanding the cards, or at least the 22 "triumphs", now properly seen as "major secrets". Their astrological and medical diagnoses can be read from the letter corresponding to the number of the card. And to the extent that cards can be linked with particular sefirot, by the method of numerical and subject correspondence, it is possible to use their meanings, understood in terms of the Kabbalist commentaries, for occult diagnoses and predictions as well. '

On p. 136 of Lesley's translation, we also learn Alemanno's explanation of why it is that there is more to the meaning of work than meets the eye. It is something that would apply as well to the tarot:

He [Solomon, the author of Ecclesiastes] made every subject comprehensivle to every person, each according to his taste and desire, in order to gather together the thoughts and opinions of the people. He apologized for this by saying, "The words of the wise are as goads (Ecc. 12:11)," to arouse the lazy. As such, they must at first sound like what is familiar to the learner, so that he will accept them; then, when he is receptive, he gradually comes to learn the truth. So the words of the wise teacher must partly resemble the opinions of the fools, to insert a brace of truth. Ultimately, this mixture of the pleasant and the instructive will give the people knowledge of the sefirotic world and the immortality that comes with knowledge of that world.

But there are problems. For one thing, when the paths are assigned to Greco-Babylonian astrological entities, then the allegory of paths as gradations between pairs of opposites is lost--if, for example, the Fortitude card is understood in isolation from Rashness and Cowardice. In that case it may be possible to appeal to "surrounding cards". Perhaps in this context the number cards would have been of use.

More seriously, there is the problem of how to correlate the letters with cards. Is card 1 Alef, card 2 Beth, and so on, or might it go in the reverse direction, as de Mellet supposed? It would seem that the subjects of the tarot sequence are of some relevance, and not merely their number. But how to do justice to both the subject and the number? There is also the question of what letter to assign to the Fool card, which has no number. Maybe it, instead of card 1, should be "Aleph". And apart from the astrological correspondences, may one correlate cards with the sefirot themselves, even past the number 10 (perhaps by ignoring the "1" in front, and reversing the order, as I have suggested at ). At least here there is no problem about what number to give the Fool; the "En Sof" also is unnumbered.

Then there is the question of what the proper order of the sequence is, given that many orders existed by Alemanno's time. Does it matter, or is there one or more that is correct, rationally and intuitively?

There is also the question of who is qualified to be a tarot reader. Alemanno admits that astrology is a science even though not Jewish. Is the same true, going in the other direction, for Kabbalah? Is a Kabbalist tarot-reader necessarily someone who follows the precepts ofJudaism, or can others adapt Kabbalah to their beliefs? If so, must they still practice the Abulafian permutations?

In part these problems are simplified when you consider that Alemanno and the Kabbalsits before him de-emphasized the astrological and biological parts of the Sefer Yetzirah in favor of an elaboration of the sefirot themselves, in ways far beyond what that book imagined. It is possible to get a meaningful Kabbalist interpretation of the cards without considering those other areas, astrology and biology, at all. I have examined this issue at

Papus and others spoke of "triads" within the tarot sequence corresponding to "triads" in the sefirot, such that one mediates between or encompasses the other two. That is very much in the spirit of Alemanno's approach to the seferot. The astrological, biological, and linguistic reflections are then secondary at best. They are like old things kept for their sentimental value, not thrown out but never actually used in one's current life.They can be used, in the way that children might dress up in the old clothes they find in the attic, but in Jewish Kabbalah, astrology and astrological medicine seem to have been regarded as a kind of foreign accretion picked up in the Babylonian captivity and not really a proper Jewish endeavor. And while it may or may not work in the modern day, the framework of Jewish morality that it projects is still valuable: let the spiritual infuse the material, keep the heart's commandments as though they were agreements with God, love what is lovable and hate what deserves to be hated, develop your practical intelligence and your intuitive wisdom, temper justice with mercy and love with intelligence.