Do not blur these
Tarot, Hermetic Qabalah, and Jewish Kabbalah
A Christian and Hermetic diagram is not the inheritance of the Jewish people. Learn the difference before you draw the Tree.
Kabbalah is a body of Jewish mystical thought and practice, rooted in Jewish texts, commandments, and community. It is not a visual aid for eclectic pagans. Access to its serious study, in Jewish tradition, has its own requirements. Those requirements are not ours to waive.
Hermetic Qabalah — often spelled with a Q in occult writing — is a Western esoteric system that took Jewish ideas, Christian interpretations, and Renaissance magic and built something else: a Tree of Life used by ceremonial magicians. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn mapped tarot cards onto that tree. A. E. Waite, who co-created the Rider–Waite–Smith deck, was part of that world even when his deck softens the diagrams. Those correspondences are a modern esoteric teaching. They are not what a medieval Kabbalist was doing, and they are not required to read the pictures on the cards.
House rules
- We teach tarot as pictures and reflection. We do not teach practical Kabbalah.
- If a book calls a ceremonial diagram “ancient Jewish wisdom” without distinction, discount the sentence.
- Do not wear Hebrew letters as décor because they look magical. They are a living people’s alphabet.
- Jewish readers are not obliged to translate their mysticism into our wheel of the year.