22. The Book Of Hermesh

Who does not perceive in the golden table, crowned and supported by Cherubim which covered the Ark of the Covenant, the same symbols as those of the twenty-first Tarot Key? The Ark was a hieroglyphical synthesis of the whole kabalistic dogma; it included the JOD or blossoming staff of Aaron, the He or cup, the gomor containing the manna, the two tables of the law - an analogous symbol to that of the sword of justice - and the manna kept in the gomor, four objects which interpret wonderfully the letters of the Divine Tetragram. Gaffarel has proved learnedly that the Cherubim of the Ark were in the likeness of bulls, but he did not know that instead of two there were four - two at each end, as the text expressly says -though it has been misconstrued for the most part by commentators. The eighteenth and nineteenth verses of the twenty-fifth chapter of Exodus should read thus: “And thou shalt make two calves or sphinxes of beaten gold on each side of the oracle. And thou shalt make the one looking this way and the second that way.” The Cherubim or sphinxes were, in fact, coupled by twos on each side of the Ark, and their heads were turned to the four corners of the Mercy-Seat, which they covered with their wings inclined archwise, thus overshadowing the crown of the golden table, which they sustained upon their shoulders, facing one another at the openings and looking at the Propitiatory, as shown in the figure above. The Ark, moreover, had three parts or stages, representing ATZILUTH, YETZIRAH and BRIAH - the three worlds of the Kabalah: the base of the coffer, to which were fitted the four rings of two levers, analogous to the Pillars of the Temple, JAKIN and BOAZ; the body of the coffer, on which the sphinxes appeared in relief; and the cover, overshadowed by the wings. The base represented the kingdom of Salt, to use the terminology of the adepts of Hermes; the coffer, the realm of Mercury or AZOTH; and the cover, the realm of Sulphur or of fire. The other objects of the cul-tus were not less allegorical, but would require a special treatise to describe and explain them. Saint-Martin, in his NATURAL TABLE of the Correspondences between God, Man and the Universe, followed, as we have said, the division of the Tarot, giving an extended mystical commentary upon the twenty-two keys; but he refrained carefully from stating whence he derived his scheme and from revealing the hieroglyphics on which he commented. Postel showed similar discretion, naming the Tarot only in the diagram of his key to the arcana, and referring to it in the rest of his book under the title of the Genesis of Enoch. The personage Enoch, author of the primeval sacred book, is in effect identical with Thoth among the Egyptians, Cadmus among the Phoenicians and Palamedes among the Greeks. We have obtained in an extraordinary manner a sixteenth-century medal, which is a key of the Tarot. We are doubtful whether it should be confessed that this medal and the place where it was deposited were shown us in dream by the divine Paracelsus: in any case, the medal is in our possession. On one side it depicts the Juggler in a German costume of the sixteenth century, holding his girdle in one hand and a Pentagram in the other.