Llull, Pico, and Kabbalah

I want now to explore a different aspect of Jewish-Christian interaction, this time in relation to Ramon Llull's "combinatory art", going from a Jewish text in late 13th century Barcelona, to Llull's Ars Brevis in Pisa, 1308, to Pico's Apologia. Then in later posts I will try to fill in the speculative area on both sides of the 1487 Apologia..

Judging from Idel's writings, Alemanno does not seem to have quoted anything else, besides the part on golem-making, from Eleazar of Worms' Commentary on the Sefer Yetzirah Idel does mention in one article (http://www.academia.edu/9093665/Ramon_L ... c_Kabbalah, from Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 51 (1988), pp. 170–74) that Eleazar's commentary also contains "an interesting parallel to Lull" (p. 171), meaning the Catalan mystic Ramon Llull. Idel does not elaborate and simply refers us to Perush Sefer Yezira, Perzemyl 1853, Fols. 5ab, 17c-20b. Since Idel's article is about Llull's 'ars combinatoria', I assume that Eleazar says something there about that. In any case, that is what I want to talk about in this post--the interrelationship between Llull's "ars" and Pico's Kabbalah, up to the end of the 15th century. I will mostly be sticking with Idel's article, including how it might apply to cartomancy; it has to do with the art of combining different elements. At the end of the post I will bring in Trachtenberg again, on the subject of the various "names" that were used by the Kabbalists, as it wasn't just the four letter name and the seventy-two letter (actually, syllable) name; there was also a 14 letter name and a 22 letter name. This is part of a lead-in to the subject of what Pico might have meant in making the Llullist "art" part of Kabbalah, because Llull himself was not, in spite of a later tradition, a Kabbalist in the usual sense.

PICO AND LLULL: MAKING THE KABBALAH SPEAK LATIN

In his Apologia Pico talks about a Kabbalah that is similar to the "ars combinandi" of Ramon Llull (Idel p. 170):

quae dicitur ars combinandi ... et est simile quid sicut apud nostros dicitur ars Raymundi, licet forte diuerso modo procedant

In English, the corresponding passage reads (translated in Hanes, "Between the March of Ancona and Florence", at https://books.google.com/books?id=TlJU0 ... ia&f=false, p. 294):

that which is called hohmat har zeruf [revolution or combination of letters] is a combinatory art and it is a method for gaining knowledge, and it is similar to that which we refer to as ars Raymundi, although it proceeds in a very different manner.

He says further:

Illa enim ars combinandi, est quam ego in conclusionibus meis uoco, Alphabetarium reuolutionem.

Rather than try to translate this myself, I will give the entire passage in which the two quotes are embedded, in Latin and in Umberto Eco's translation, in From the Tree to the Labyrinth, 2014, pp. 409-410. I highlight the parts that Idel cited:

Duas scientias hoc etiam nomine honorifi carunt. Unam quae dicitur ..... .... [hokmat haseruf ], id est ars combinandi, et est modus quidam procedendi in scientijs et est simile quid sicut apud nostros dicitur ars Raymundi, licet forte diverso modo procedant. Aliam quae est de virtutibus rerum superiorum que sunt supra lunam et est pars magiae naturalis supremae. Utraque istarum apud Hebraeos etiam dicitur Cabalam propter rationem iam dictam, et de utraque istarum etiam aliquando fecimus mentionem in conclusionibus nostris. Illa enim est ars combinandi quam ego in conclusionibus meis voco alphabetariam revolutionem. Et ista quae est de virtutibus rerum superiorum [410] quae uno modo potest capi ut pars magiae naturalis.

(They also honored two sciences with this name. One is called ..... .... [hokmat haseruf ], that is the combinatory art, and it is a certain way of proceeding in the sciences, similar to what we call the ars Raymundi, even though on occasion they may proceed in a different manner. The other which has to do with the powers of the higher things that are above the moon is part of the supreme natural magic. Both these two sciences are called Kabbalah among the Hebrews for the reason previously mentioned. And we have spoken of both some time ago in our Conclusiones]. The first in fact is the combinatory art that I refer to in my Conclusiones as the revolutio alphabetaria. And the second is the one that has to do with the powers of higher things, which can be thought of as a part of natural magic) (Apologia, 5, 28).

There are some differences between Hames' translation of Idel's first quote and Eco's of the same one. The main difference is in the translation of "forte"; Hames reads it as "very" and Eco as "perhaps". According to Google Translate, Eco is right: if it meant "very", the word would be "fortis".

When Pico refers to his Conclusiones, he means, Idel says, the 2nd Thesis of his "Cabalistic Conclusions Confirming the Christian Religion" (i.e. his own, as opposed to those of the "Cabalistic Wisemen"), from which Idel quotes:

Prima est scientia quam ego uoco Alphabetariae reuolutionis correspondentum parti philosophiae, quam ego philosophiam catholica uoco

Here is the entire 2nd Thesis, with the part Idel cited in bold (Farmer, Syncretism in the West, p. 521):

Whatever other Cabalists say, I divide the speculative part of the Cabala [the science of names] four ways, corresponding to the four divisions of philosophy that I generally make. The first is what I call the science of the revolution of the alphabet, corresponding to the part of philosophy that I call universal philosophy. The second, third, and fourth is the threefold merkabah [chariot], corresponding to the three parts of particular philosophy, concerning divine, middle and sensible natures.

When Pico refers to the "speculative" part of Kabbalah, he means, according his first Thesis (which I didn't quote), the part that deals with the "science of shemot [names]", as opposed to the "science of sefirot'. This is the reverse of how the distinction was usually made in medieval Jewish texts, Farmer says (p. 518). Here Pico is stating his own theses, not reporting others' views. His rationale for switching is unclear.

Idel, drawing the parallel with Pico and Llull, cites the Barcelona Kabbalist text he thinks might be related to the "ars Raymundi", an anonymous 13th century commentary on the Jewish liturgy (p. 171). Its first and longest part deals with two figures. One has three concentric circles with alphabets inscribed on their circumferences; the circles are designed to revolve, so that all combinations of three letters can be selected in one line going from the outer circumference to the inner circumference. The second figure lists a series of words to be associated with each letter of the alphabet. For example, for aleph it lists 'Or Kadmon, i.e. primeval light, El (God), Adon (Lord), Ehad (One), 'Emet (Truth), etc.

The text then interprets the letter combinations, at least some of them, in terms of the concepts. Idel gives one example; it combines the two letters dalet and kof. The anonymous author picks out two words, Da'at and Kedushah, presumably from a longer pair of lists. He says:

Da'at (Knowledge) and Kedushah (Holiness). It shows that out of this combination appear the ideas of the perfect righteous who apprehend the knowledge of the Holy and pure ideas which emanate from this combination.

Idel observes (p. 171)

It is obvious that this technique of interpreting the meaning of the various combinations of letters resulting from the revolving of the concentric circles corresponds to the scientia mentioned by Pico.

By "scientia" Idel has explained, Pico means wisdom. That would seem to be the object of the circles in the anonymous commentary as well. In Llul's Ars Brevis of 1308 there is a similar figure of three concentric circles, all designed to rotate, and an alphabet on each one, or more precisely, the first nine letters of the Latin alphabet. These correspond to six lists of nine words or phrases each, thereby forming six columns.

A PARALLEL TO THE TAROT

I am struck by how easy it would be to adopt this idea of three circles to cards: instead of rotating the circles, one selects three cards. Then if you know the necessary words or concepts, you can combine them into something thoughtful--how thoughtful, depends upon the person doing the combining and on the subject the words relate to. If they are religious words, the thoughts will be pious ones. If multiple possibilities for each letter, and hence card, are listed, it will not be hard to come up with a variety of thoughts. In the sphere of fortune-telling, this is precisely Etteilla's method six centuries later: on the card there is a keyword, but there are also many "synonyms and related meanings" listed in the books by Etteilla's disciples designed (at his request) to supplement the deck. In the tarot of the Ferrara-area preacher of the "Steele Sermon", sometime between 1460 and 1500, the words might only be the titles that he gives for the cards.

Besides the fortune-telling context, the other main difference between this and cartomancy is that the cards are picked randomly, not selected by turning the wheel. That, of course, is a big difference.

Somewhere in between the two, we have the Italian tarocchi appropriati by Folengo and others starting in the second quarter of the 16th century, giving advice or making comments about life that incorporate the titles of various tarot cards. In Folengo's case, the cards to be combined are presented as though they were picked randomly by the people to whom he applies them, but it may well be that this is just a device Folengo uses; that is, he may have selected the cards in a non-random way, to fit the sonnets.

LLULL AND BARCELONA JEWISH KABBALAH

There is no evidence that Pico knew the anonymous 13th century Jewish text. But he might have known another text, which the Barcelona text seems based on. Idel continues:

It seems that Pico in fact referred to the specific system found in another commentary by the anonymous Kabbalist, a commentary to Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, a late midrash unfortunately lost, though quoted several times in the commentary on the liturgy. 13 ...It is possible, at least theoretically, that Pico was acquainted with this lost work.
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13. See e.g. Heschel (as in n. 11 [Abraham Joshua Heschel, 'Perush 'al Tefilot,' in Kovez Mada'y Likhvod Moshe Shor, New York, 1945, pp. 113-126]), p. 120.)

Idel thinks that the anonymous author might be referring to a lost midrash, Such a text might have been old enough to have been preserved by Italian Jews.All this is pretty hypothetical and vague. Pico only mentions Llull, who was not thought of as a Kabbalist. He might, however, be referring to something more recent, or perhaps even something not yet written but in his head, Llull's "ars" made Kabbalist. Or Pico is not be talking about a Jewish Kabbalah at all, but rather his own adaptation, one that gets to what he supposes is the Christian essence of those non-Christian works.

Llull seems to have done the same kind of thing as his Jewish counterparts. Idel observes that Llull was in Barcelona at the right time to have read one of the Kabbalist manuscripts with a similar set of circles. But would a Jew have shown this text to a Christian such as Llull? Idel notes that Abulafia, who openly preached to Christians when he was in Italy, was in Barcelona about the same time as Llull. Abulafia had teachers and students in Barcelona who might have done the same.

Abulafia's goal in combining letters was not the same as Llull's: Abulafia was concerned with the attainment of an ecstatic union with the divine. Yet wisdom may well have been a part of that union, or so it seems to me. If attaining the level of the Averroist "active intellect" was part of his method, that would seem to imply some kind of use of the intellect, if only to transcend it, throwing away the ladder, in the end.

LLULL'S "ARS BREVIS"

At the beginning of Ars Brevis there is a table with rows and columns. The columns consist of (a) attributes that would be appropriate to apply to God, i.e. great, good, glorious, etc., in other words, the Names of God, of which the names of the sefirot are other examples); (b) modes or measurements of being, i.e. greater, less, different, concordant, beginning, ending, etc; (c) types of questions, i.e. what, when, where, why, how much; (d) subjects, in a hierarchy from "instrumental" to God; (e) virtues; and (f) vices.

This chart is from Bonner vol. 1 p. 581, reproduced online at http://quisestlullus.narpan.net/eng/719_art_eng.html#.

The phrase "attributes that would be appropriate to apply to God", is my own. In earlier work, Llull used the word "dignities" and applied them specifically to God. In that way they correspond closely to "names of God" in pseudo-Dionysius or the Jewish "divine names" tradition; there is even a Hebrew word that corresponds to "dignities". However in Ars Brevis he wants the terms to be of more general application. They apply in an unlimited way to God, and in a more limited or even non-existent way to individual humans and other beings.

Illuminators and engravers concocted imaginative representations of the columns, portrayed as ladders, people hanging from towers, etc. Here is one, which I get from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... _Llull.jpg. It appears to be from a manuscript of 1321-1336 (http://www.ub.uni-freiburg.de/fileadmin ... iculum.htm), in a work by Llull's follower Thomas Le Myésier:


In Roob, Alchemy and Mysticism, p. 290, I found an explanation of this illumination:

The nine philosophers at the right-hand edge [I think this should be left-hand] embody the nine doubts, which can arise in the face of the nine object realms of the universe; these are listed on the first ladder. On the second ladder Lull demonstrated the nine absolute and relative principles"(...) these rules guide the willing reason according to certain principles, from the tower of trust, away from the doubts of your questions, for they embrace the causes of everything in existence." But the "Ars" ends at the tower. Its summit and the haloed trinity can now be reached by the "rope of mercy" which the hand of God is lowering. At the top of this hangs the intellect, followed by memory, the will and the seven virtues. The seven vices roast in Hell. (Translated inscriptions: W. Buechel/T. Pindl-Buechel, in Lullus-le Myesier, Electorium parvum seu Breviculum, Wiesbaden, 1988.)

Another example is an engraving of 1512, which one website (https://texasmiles.wordpress.com/tag/is ... e-seville/) puts with a cosmograph from a Christian monograph in a 12th century manuscript in the tradition of pseudo-Dionysius. This engraving shows Llull's "scala" (ladder or stairs) to heaven.

Llull shows how his "alphabet" in 6 columns works, by means of four "figures"; they can be seen at http://quisestlullus.narpan.net/eng/719_art_eng.html#, with short, simple, but incomplete explanations. The first two figures introduce the words or phrases of the first two columns. The third figure lists all the binary combinations of those words/phrases, 36 of them, The fourth figure is three concentric circles that can be rotated, each with the 9 letters associated with the 9 words or phrases in the columns. There are 1,680 combinations, he says.(Eco explains where this number comes from on pp.392-394 of The Tree and the Labyrinth, omitted from the Google Books selections.)

In the Ars Brevis itself, I do not see anything corresponding to the Platonic "ladder of ascent" in any of the columns. For Plato, and Ficino after him, the seeker after knowledge ascends through the unfolding of contradictions ("dialectic") from sensation to opinion to knowledge. Llull's lists, in general, are merely ways of classifying things of a certain type in an exhaustive way, so that one may examine them in a process of elimination. With the "subjects" in the engraving, we do not start at the "instrumental" level and ascend through the mineral, vegetable, etc., levels. These are just types of things in existence, from things not found in nature to God. In this particular case, there is a hierarchy of being, each step being closer in essence to God. But It is not a ladder to be climbed by the seeker; rather, it is a series of modes of being, to be examined as needed.

Systems of cartomancy, starting with Etteilla, work in much the same way as Llull's columns. First there is a list of questions, of which the consultant selects one. That is the starting point.Then five or more cards, out of a pack containing all of them, are selected--out of 32 in the piquet deck, 78 in the tarot. A deck of just the 22 special cards could also be used. These cards, however many there are, correspond to the other four columns. Then the reader combines them in a definite order. As in the case of letter combinations, the selection is from the total number available, not just a part of them.

The types of thing in the deck correspond somewhat to four of Llull's columns: those of "figure A" apply to Emperors, Empresses, Popes, Triumphators, etc. all earthly images of God. The Popess would fit either as the Church or as the head of a female priesthood. I think the Fool and the Bateleur would also fit here. The Bateleur is a creator; the Fool is without concepts. The column Lull calls "subjects" is a hierarchy of closeness to God, as in the last section of the tarot sequence, although the tarot hierarchy starts with the embodied human (departing from this body at Death) and goes up from there. The columns of the virtues and vices correspond in the tarot to the virtues and evils there (some not labeled as such), mostly in the middle section. The "measure" categories (my term) might be reflected in the number cards, to which those concepts readily apply..

A major difference, as I have already said, is between how Llullian concepts are selected vs. cards in a reading. For Llull, they concepts come from the terms in which the question is framed. In cartomancy, they come from the cards that are picked blindly by the consultant.After that, however, there is a procedure of combining elements, whether from a well-constructed question or from an apparently random assortment of cards,

In the ecstatic Kabbalah, the result of combinatorial activity with letters or names is an influx of divine energy and an elevation of the soul, up to the sefirot themselves. It is from that standpoint that prophecy is possible, including knowing people's futures.

But its success depends in part on the conduct of those engaging in this practice. I quote Idel's quotation from Alemanno (Idel 2011 p. 188). I include Idel's comments--which he makes in the form of footnotes--although they are not what I want to talk about:

...the astrologers who have described Saturn say that it endows man with profound thought, law, and the spiritual sciences [holdimot ruhaniyyot], 49 prophecy [neuu'ah], 50 sorcery [kishshuf], 51 and prognostication and the Shemittot and Yovelot. 52 ... But if they [the Jews] do not keep the way of God, it will spit forth everything that is bad: prophecy will occur to fools and to babies in an insufficient manner, and to women and to melancholics, 54 and to those possessed by an evil spirit and maleficent demons that obliterate the limbs, 55 and bad counsels and sorceries, and anxieties and erroneous beliefs. 56
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50. For this nexus see already R. Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi's Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah (Epstein, Jerusalem, 1961), fols. 5ib~52a.

51. This understanding of sorcery as related to Saturn stems, in Jewish sources, from R. Abraham ibn Ezra, Reshit Hokhmah, chap. 4. 1 combined the version found in a passage of this book as explicitly quoted in R Joseph Bonfils, Tzajhat Pa'aneah, ed. David Herzog, vol. 1 (Krakow, 1912), p. 49, with the commonly used edition of the book (cited just below). See also ibid., p. 270. The common version of this passage, as edited and translated by Raphael Levi and Francisco Cantera, The Beginning of Wisdom: An Astrological Treatise by Abraham ibn Ezra (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore; Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1939), pp. xlii-xliv, does not contain the reference to incantation and sorcery.

52. These are terms for cosmical cycles according to Kabbalists, which interpreted biblical practices of cessation of agricultural works. The nexus between these two practices and Saturn is manifest already in the passage of Abraham Abulafia and even more in R Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi's influential Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah. See Moshe Idel, "Saturn and Sabbatai Tzevi: A New Approach to Sabbateanism," in Toward the Millennium: Messianic Expectations jrom the Bible to Waco, ed. Peter Schaefer and Mark Cohen (Brill, Leiden, 1998), pp. 179-180. See also above, chap. 12, note 39.
...
54. On Saturn and melancholy see the important study by Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl, Saturne et la melancholie, trans. L. Evrard (Gallimard, Paris, 1989).

55. Apparently hemiplegia.

56. Alemanno, untitled treatise, Ms. Paris, BN 849, fols. 940-958, which is part of a passage dealing with the sefirah of Binah. See also Idel, "The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations," p. 209.

Similarly Etteilla stresses that the card-reader cannot just be a fortune-teller. He has to be well-versed in the Kaballah and other esoteric subjects as well as leading a life devoted to God and his commandments. It is only from such a place that a combination of words can turn, through the cartomancer's skill, into a guiding principle for one's future well-being. (Actually, he calls it "cartonomancy", to emphasize the importance of numbers in this scientia; but common usage did not adopt his term.)

There is also another difference, not between Etteilla and Llull but between Etteilla and Pico. Pico insists that the words to be pronounced, if there is to be magic, must be in Hebrew or Aramaic (although oddly enough, Pico seems to allow for names in other languages, as long as they don't mean anything). This is in magical conclusion 9>22 (Farmer, p. 501):

No names that mean something, insofar as those names are singular and taken per se, can have power in a magical work, unless they are Hebrew names, or clearly derived from Hebrew.

Farmer explains that by "clearly derived from Hebrew" Pico means Aramaic. Farmer also points out that in his conclusions on the Orphic Hymns, he seems to imply that Greek will work as well.

And between Etteilla/Llull and Abulafia there is also another difference: Abulafia's words, for the most part, are nothing like those of Llull, much less those of the tarot. They are words of scripture, or else derived by his methods from such words, consisting of the letters as conceived by the Sefer Yetzirah.

For Abulafia and the "ecstatic Kabbalah", the most important "name of God", besides the tetragrammaton, was the the 72 syllable one, made up of 72 3-character units, each formed from 3 successive 72 word verses in Exodus (Trachtenberg, p. 95). That does not quite fit the tarot; but Trachtenberg says there were also 12, 14, 22, and 42 letter names, of which the first two seem not to have caught on. I will cquote Trachtenberg on them because two of these numbers have been discussed in relation to the tarot seqauence, mainly 22, of course, but also 14 (p. 92):

The name if 12 letters, mentioned in the Talmud, was a dead-letter in post-Talmudic times... Its place, however, was taken by two new names of 14 and 22 letters, the first of which was comparatively little used. ...Though recognized as a legitimate name of God 33, and occasionally employed in incantations and amulets, its primary use was as an inscription on the back of the mezuza.

The name of 22 letters, however, is another matter, more interesting and puzzling--and much more imortant for the magician. Its debut was made in thr Sefer Raziel, 34 which, while largly ascribed to Eleazar of Worms, drew extensively upon Geonic mystic sources. ...It achieved a wide popularity very rapidly, was employed in many invocaigtons and charms in an especially potent name, and in the seventeent century it was introduced into the ritual of the synagogue, in a prayer which was attached to the reading of the Priestly Benediction.

Approximately transliterated into Latin characters, it is Anaktam Pastam Paspazim Dionsius, words that appear nowhere in Hebrew or Aramaic. There are two conjectures as to its origin: (1) it is a garbled version of Greek and/or Zoroastrian gods; and (2) it comes from the Benediction, which also has 22 letters. divided almost the same way, garbled by means of transpositions and substitutions. Trachtenberg favors the latter.

The 42 letter name traditionally derives from the first 42 letters in the bible. Trachtenberg sees "no reason to doubt the truth of this report" (p. 95).

Whatever any of this may have to do with the tarot, none of it has anything to do with Llull. These words are letter combinations derived by transforming the letters in sacred verses. They are not concepts of the understanding.

MAKING LLULL SPEAK HEBREW

I am not at all sure how Pico expected to make Llull speak Hebrew. One way would be simply chant appropriate Hebrew letter combinations, following some established "recipe", before giving the interpretation of the Latin words to be combined. Then from the height so attained, an oracle could be announced. Another possibility is that people after Pico, trying to apply Kabbalah to the tarot, might simply have disregarded this requirement; for Christians participating in the Eucharist, Latin seems to work fine, and so by implication would other languages (despite the Church's resistance). Another approach might have been to combine Llull and Kabbalah in some way and then apply that fusion to tarot. Llull and Kabbalah were in fact combined very soon after Pico's death (in a text cited by Umberto Eco which I will discuss in the next section).

Another way might have been to literally translate Llull into Hebrew. Since there is a lot written about that, which was actually done, I will deal with it next.