Yael R.

Dragwyla First North American rights

Email: Polaris93@aol.com 5,900 words
http://polaris93.livejournal.com/

Qaballah and Tarot: A Basic Course in Nine

Lessons
Lesson III: The 22 Paths of the Tree of Life and the
Greater Arcana of the Tarot

Endnotes
1
As the term is currently defined in physical science. A field is a region of space or the space-time
continuum where energy and matter are constrained to behave in certain ways, the nature of the
constraints defining the nature and structure of the field. The field is generally named after its proximal
cause, the phenomenon in the proximity of which it arises, e.g., the electromagnetic field that is
associated with a magnet, an electric motor, or an alternating current generator; a gravitational field
associated with a massy object; etc.
2
Since intellectual understanding in isolation has produced such minor matters as, say, the Bomb,
heart-transplants, LSD, and space-travel, one begins to wonder what it would accomplish if fully
harnessed, via Magick or Qaballah, to the emotions and the spirit!

Israel Regardie, A Garden of Pomegranates, 2nd Edition (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications,
3

1978).

Gareth Knight, A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, Inc.,
4

1983). Two volumes under one cover.

5
Part III of his Magick (John Symonds and Kenneth Grant, editors. London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1981). Magick also includes Parts I and II of Crowley’s book 4.
6
Book II of 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley(Israel Regardie, editor. York
Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1983). Book I of that work is Crowley’s essay, “Gematria,”
extrapolated from its original form in The Equinox, Vol. I, No. 5; it gives the general theory of Qaballah
and describes something of the way in which it is used in practical Magick and divination. Book III is
Sepher Sephiroth, extrapolated from The Equinox, Vol. I, No. 8 and originally begun by Allan Bennett;
this is a lexicon in which the entries are Hebrew words indexed by the sum of the numerical values of
their individual letters, together with their English translations, to which are added various mathematical
tables and other useful information.
7
Yael R. Dragwyla, Liber 777 Updated and Extended. Work in progress.

Yael R. Dragwyla, New Magicks for a New Age, Volume 2, The Magickal Sky, passim. Work in
7a

progress.
8
Knight, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 200-201.
9
(Eliminated during revision of original manuscript.)
10
Ibid., p. 194.
11
Ibid., pp. 145-156.
12
Ibid., pp. 185-186.
13
Ibid., pp. 168-169.
14
Ibid., pp. 179-180.
15
Ibid., pp. 158-164. Here, Knight says, “The Spirit is said to have been perfect until it learnt of the
Plan of the Manifest Universe; then it took on imperfection.” The physical analogue of spiritual
imperfection is the Second Law of thermodynamics, popularly mythologized as Murphy’s Law, that
states that the disorder in any closed system must always increase over time.* Or, since the apparent
disorder of any system, or its entropy, is an inverse measure of how much we know about and how much
order we can perceive in that system, then the detailed knowledge we have of any closed system must
always decrease over time. This means that from the moment time began, imperfection was introduced
into Creation. Yet without time there cannot be existence in any manifest sense. So imperfection is
necessary for physical existence.

*The Three Laws of Thermodynamics, re-stated as Finagle’s (Murphy’s) Laws, are as follows:

1) You can’t win.

2) You can’t even break even.
3) And you can’t even leave the game.

Yet it is the task of Life and living beings to turn imperfection to good account as a series of creative
acts: every disaster, every death, every evil in Creation becomes a challenge to Life to master that evil,
first in the case of the individual, through luck and learning, then in whole populations and species, via
evolution. In this way imperfection becomes a means to a greater, higher-order perfection than existed
before. Thus evil becomes the servant of good, helping to produce greater and greater, ever-more
complex and resourceful good, Creation forever unfolding and evolving from Perfection to Greater
Perfection. But this is only possible in time. So Kronos, Whose Planet is Saturn and Whose cognate is
thus Shaîtan or Satan, the figure of the Grim Reaper and the Lord of Hell, is therefore necessary to the
fulfillment of Creation in a greater glory and perfection than that in which it began.
“As below, so above.” We had to fall so that we could rise again in glory – and a greater glory than
we had at the beginning. Without sin, there is no redemption; without entropy, Life cannot exist. This
may be part of the lesson of Trump VI, The Lovers.
16
Ibid., pp. 173-74.
17
Regardie, op. cit., p. 78.
 18
Knight, op. cit., p. 122.
19
Regardie, op. cit., p. 79.
20
Knight, op. cit., pp. 104-105.
21
Regardie, op. cit., pp. 80-81.
22
Knight, op. cit., p. 131.
23
Ibid., pp. 110-120.
24
This is not precisely true. The Second Law of Thermodynamics guarantees that no law is perfect,*
Capital Letters or not. In the first place, you don’t always get to put into life what you wanted or
expected to; in the second, you don’t have perfect control over your universe, and so can’t guarantee
what life will make of what to put into it – the principle of quantum indeterminacy is another guarantee
of this. As the mathematician-cum-satirist Tom Lehrer put it, attributing it to his apocryphal friend
Hen3ry (“The ‘3’ is silent, you see . . .”),

Life is like a sewer – what you get out of it depends upon what you
put into it.

*Which guarantees, of course, that somewhere, somehow, there are exceptions to the Second Law of
Thermodynamics. As an acquaintance of mine once put it, “I can see the headlines now: “Second
Law Self-Destructs!” 

25
Knight, op. cit., 139-143.
26
This isn’t strictly true, either. For example, in the Crowley/Harris Book of Thoth pack, this card
clearly represents the genetic and spiritual underpinnings of conception and, implicitly, birth.
27
Knight, op. cit., pp. 89-100.
28
In the Crowley/Harris pack, this card is titled “Art.”
29
Knight, op. cit., pp. 69-76.
30
Knight’s knowledge of cultural anthropology, as reflected in what he presents here of his
understanding of various peoples’ theologies and conceptions of God, leaves a great deal to be desired
and is in fact extremely biased, not to mention lacking a great deal of data that would give a rather
different picture of the religions of such cultures.

As, in many cases, are pictured on certain pieces of paper, on which also appear the motto “Anno
31

Coeptis” and the numbers 1,2,5, 10, 20, 50, etc. . . .

32
Eliphas Levi was a monarchist, and it shows here. Also, his view of human psychology is more
than a bit simplistic; so is his understanding of political science and sociology. Knight’s discussion here
of ignorance as the “root of all evil,” along with the quotations he cites from Levi, are apposite – but
egregiously incomplete.
33
Knight, op. cit., pp.78-87.
34
Ibid., pp. 56-67.
34a
J. C. Cooper, Chinese Alchemy: The Taoist Quest for Immortality (New York: Sterling Publishing
Co., Inc., 1990), pp. 72-77.
 35
In The Book of Thoth, Tzaddi is assigned to Trump IV, The Emperor, in line with Chapter 1, Verse
57 of Crowley’s The Book of the Law. See also Key 15, above.
36
Sic. Actually, she was a Roman Goddess, specifically, the Roman Queen of heaven and wife of
Jupiter. “Jupiter” is derived from Deus IAO-Pater, God All-Father; Juno’s proper title is Dea IAO-
Mater, “God(dess) All-Mother. Historically, Juno’s Greek counterpart and historical forerunner is Hera,
wife of Zeus, the Monarch of Heaven.
37
This is only one of several possible attributions. Two others are “The Man,” who, like the Eagle,
represents the Cherub of the Element Air; and “The Peacock.* The Eagle is also the Cherub of Water
and as such is assigned both to the astrological Sign Scorpio (Key 24), along with the Snake, the
Scorpion, and the Phoenix, as well as to Key 23, Trump XII, The Hanged Man, which represents the
Element Water and the Planet Neptune.** Possibly the American White-Headed or Bald Eagle and its
cousins, the other Fisher-Eagles, would be the best avian representative of Aquarius, other genera of
eagles then being assigned to Scorpio.

*The Peacock is also the symbol of Shaîtan or Satan, Who, in the form of a gigantic blazing plume of
flaming natural gas emerging from the desert sands in their home territory, was worshipped the
Peacock God by the Yezidi, a Bedouin tribe of the Arabian sub-continent. The Yezidi were
eventually converted to Islam, giving rise to the Shi’ite sect of Islam. Today their former God is
known to them as the Peacock Angel, Whose Planet, Saturn, co-rules Aquarius.

**Neptune is also the esoteric ruler of Scorpio, as well as the natural ruler of Pisces and co-ruler of
Sagittarius. Crowley said of Neptune that “the heart of Neptune is Mars”; Mars is the traditional
ruler of Scorpio, so the association of the Eagle with Neptune is rather appropriate. The American
White-Headed or Bald Eagle, on the other hand, is a fisher-eagle, taking his food from Neptune’s
domains, which does confuse the issue a bit.

Further, along with the Eagle, the Man is likewise assigned to Key 11, Trump 0, the Fool. This Key
represents the Element Air and the Planet Uranus. Uranus is the ruler of Aquarius and is exalted in
Scorpio. This interlocking of associations among the Keys is quite strikingly prevalent and is in fact a
side-effect of the dynamics of astrology, Qaballah, and Magick as languages with inherent grammars
whose ultimate reference is to the entire Cosmos as a holon, a perfectly unified entity. These holistic,
recursive natural languages are, in effect, high-level programming languages which the Magickian
literally uses to re-program the Universe, or at least his or her local corner of it, so that its dynamics,
changed by this means, will then conform to his or her Will and Desire.
Other animal attributions for Aquarius include the Bear and the Bat. Both have man-like
characteristics; American Indians still refer to the Bear as Man-with-Fur and similar titles, and the Bat is
the closest living relative to the primates, from whom evolved human beings, i.e., Man. Furthermore, the
Bat, which has wings and flies, is a creature of the Air, like the Eagle; and of all the bats, the vampire
bats of South America (genera Desmodus and Diphylla) have an eerily high intelligence as well as being
social animals, and so resemble men in more than form and biological lineage. The Bear, on the other
hand, is omnivorous, tends to walk bipedally much of the time, and also has high intelligence, again
manlike characteristics. So both these animals are excellent representatives of Aquarius.
There are other animals that could be associated with this Sign, for example, the porpoise, Tursiops
truncatus, a creature of water with extremely high intelligence and even a genuine liking for human
company. One entire class of such representatives comprises all animals who are the product of
mutations due to radioactivity, which characterizes uranium, the metal of Uranus, Lord of Aquarius. The
interested reader might want to do more research in this area, as well as on what plants, gems, and other
things could be usefully associated with this Sign. See Aleister Crowley’s Liber 777 and his Magick in
Theory and Practice for further discussion on these points.
38
Regardie, op. cit., pp. 87-88.
 39
The idea that non-human life is somehow “inferior,” and that it is essentially “mindless” and/or
without sensitivity, is a leftover from nineteenth-century materialism (of which, unfortunately, there
seems to have been enough leftovers remaining even today to feed an army of philosophical gluttons!).
There may also be in that idea some residue of guilt over the way in which we have treated our fellow-
travelers on our poor, battered Planet, a rationalization designed to let those guilty of such mistreatment
via stockyards, abattoir, laboratory, etc. off the hook. At any rate, there is a great deal of evidence to
show that at all levels of life, organisms of all kinds are quite capable of mentation, emotion, sensory
sensitivity, and wisdom at least the equal of ours, if not grater. Even at the level of the individual cell,
organisms all show ability to make intelligent decisions and act on them appropriate, strong sensory and
even esthetic sensitivity, and reactions which must be in all honesty called emotional because of their
evident nature. To demonstrate this, put a few Volvox cells or a planarian worm into a petri dish, along
with a small salt crystal, some chemically neutral barriers to hinder movement, and other obstacles and
hazards necessitating some intelligent choices and behavior, and watch what the organism does!

*Which we know now does not exist and never did. From the beginning, Life has individuated itself in
elegant, enormously complex variety, a pattern selected for because the alternative was a rapid
submission to the Second Law of Thermodynamics and extinction.

Given that, at least in the general case, all of life, down to the level of the “primordial slime,”* is
intelligent, sensitive, and wise, then as Knight says, here, we have no biological excuses whatsoever for
irresponsibility and thoughtlessness, even at a “gross physical level.”
If Key 29, Trump XVIII, the Moon rules our basic biology, including reproduction, Knight’s remarks
here should be altered to accord with the findings of modern sociobiology. For more on this subject, see,
e.g., Jane Goodall, In the Shadow of Man, Revised Edition ((Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1971,
1988); Paul Corey, Do Cats Think?: Notes of a Cat-Watcher (Edison, NJ: Castle, 1977); Jeffrey
Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy, When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals (New
York: Delacorte Press, 1995); Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, The Tribe of Tiger: Cats and Their Culture
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994); Lyall Watson, Beyond Supernature: a New Natural History of
the Supernatural (New York: Bantam Books, 1988); and Lyall Watson, Lifetide: A Biology of the
Unconscious (New York: Bantam Books, 1980).
40
And also of menstrual blood. See Chapter 3, Verse 24 of The Book of the Law, as well as Aleister
Crowley’s Astrology (New York: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1974), pp. 47-48 and 50, which discuss the
astrological Sign Pisces and the Twelfth House of the Horoscope, which are represented by this Trump.
41
See Trump IX, The Hermit (Key 20). That card is associated with the Sign Virgo, which is 180°
across the sky from Pisces and is thus diametrically opposed to it. Virgo also rules bureaucracies and
bureaucrats, which in organized religion have ever been a hindrance to the true mystics and visionaries
who come forth from such religion and are also ruled by Pisces. See remarks under endnote 41,
following, concerning religious despotisms and the charismatic despots, so characteristic of the Aeon of
Pisces, who are also ruled by Pisces, whose following inevitably forms a bureaucracies whose sole aim
seems to be to prevent the free-flowing of the religious spirit (which may not be a bad thing; consider the
“free-flowing religious spirit” so evident in jihads and pogroms! Perhaps there are times when we should
get down on our knees and thank God for humankind’s indefatigable bureaucratic spirit . . .)
42
It also contains the reticular activating system (RAS), which facilitates arousal and hence a general
level of alertness. Certain forms of damage to this system have been found, via post-mortem
examination of accident victims and others, to be associated with paranoid schizophrenia and
megalomania á la Jim Jones of the People’s Temple debacle. This sort of damage can be induced by
means of long-term use of “uppers” such as benzedrine, methedrine, caffeine, and various forms of
cocaine (long-term use of crack cocaine has also been implicated in Parkinson’s Disease, which involves
dysfunctions of the medulla and cerebellum caused by accident or disease). Also, the corpus coerleus,
which facilitates REM and other levels of dream-sleep, and the pons, damage to which can destroy reflex
breathing, causing fatal sleep apnia, or interfere lethally with the heartbeat, are located in this part of the
central nervous system.
 This entire complex is part of the “primitive reptilian” brain-system, which neurologists now think is
strongly involved in the sort of charisma found in band-leaders of primate groups of all kinds. They
speculate that it has had much to do with the stunning, otherwise incomprehensible success, for better or
worse, of such human leaders as Adolph Hitler, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Josef Stalin, Winston Churchill,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Harry Truman – or, in an earlier time, Yeshua ben Yoseph of Nazareth.
Significantly, Jesus of Nazareth was the avatar of the Aeon of Pisces/Osiris, which might also be
called the Age of Charismatic Dictators. During this period, on the first day of Spring each year the Sun
rose against the Constellation Pisces. This Constellation has the same influence as the Sign of that name,
but the Sign is the last month of the astrological year, the last 30 days or so before the Vernal Equinox,
the first day of Spring. Because on any given day of the year the Sun’s position in the sky lies about 50”
of arc Westward of where it was on that same date the previous year, the Signs shift Westward by the
same amount per year and so are no longer coterminous with the Constellations whose names they bear.
Further the Signs, as defined by tropical astrology, are all exactly 30° wide, so that the twelve of
them together make up the 360° round of the sky. But the Zodiacal Constellations are not all of identical
widths, some being much larger than 30° and others consequently much smaller. For this reason as well
the Signs never quite correspond exactly to the Constellations, even when the first degree of the sign
Aries – the position of the Sun in the sky on the first day of Spring in a given year – corresponds to the
first degree of the Constellation Aries. Given this, since about 250 b.c.e we were in the Aeon of
Pisces/Osiris which, around 1904 e.v., after some 2,100 years, we left for the Aeon of Aquarius/Horus
(during which, it is hoped, we will leave behind our tendency to play follow-the-leader behind anyone
who radiates such quasi-sexual charisma, whether or not said leader is actually competent politically or
has our best interests at heart).
Women having such charisma would include, e.g., Elizabeth I of England, Golda Meier, and Dr.
Helen Caldicott, one of the founders of the anti-nuclear movement. Male examples would include, e.g.,
Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the aforementioned Jim Jones, and the Ayotollah Khoumeini of
Iran. In most cases, none of these have very much to do with one another except with respect to the
overwhelmingly evident ability to compel the adulation, even worship, of upwards of millions of
followers, which all of them have had in common.
At any rate, most of what is unconscious, reflex, and instinctive in ourselves is sited in and facilitated
by our hindbrain and upper spinal cord. These are located in the back of the head, and so because of the
tendencies and faculties associated with them, their bodily locus, the back of the head, is associated with
this Path, Key 29, Trump XVIII, the Moon.
43
Knight, op. cit., Vol. II, [[. 16-19.
44
Most scholars attribute the Archangel Raphael to Mercury and Sephirah 8, since he is the Hebrew
equivalent of Hermes-Djehuti, the Graeco-Egyptian God of Wisdom, Scholarship, and Intellect, though
in the Golden Dawn and O.T.O. Pentagram rituals, He is associated with Sol and Tiphareth, Sephirah 8.
Michael, on the other hand, is normally associated with Sol, Mars (Sephirah 5), or Pluto (Sephirah 1).
Why Knight attributes Michael to Hod is not at all clear, since this isn’t a Magickally fitting attribution.
Also, Hermes-Djehuti/Raphael may be associated with Sephirah 9, Yesod, the Sephirah of Luna,
since Djehuti was originally the Egyptian Lord of the Moon. He was the inventor of arithmetic, used to
calculate the Moon’s phases and cycles and its impact upon fertility, pregnancy, crops in the field, etc.;
because of this and other such gifts of the mind to humanity, He is therefore also Lord of Wisdom and
intellect, hence is simultaneously associated with Mercury (Sephirah 8) and the Moon (Sephirah 9).
45
”Karma” is a term which has been so badly misused in the West that it is worse than useless when
employed by Western mystics, occultists, or anyone else. As currently used, it tends to mean “What I’d
like to see happen to you” or “What will happen to you if you don’t do as I say or aren’t one of the
Chosen Few [of whom I am of course a member].” The ambiguity with which it has become so heavily
loaded has made it an Orwellian weapon for maximizing social mystification and minimizing justice in
proportion to the hoped-for benefits accrued by its use by the various in-groups that use it. Or, as an
acquaintance of mine put it, the concept has become yet another weapon in the psychological arsenal of
Neo-Calvinism.
In addition, it is frequently employed to mean “automatic and perfect restoration of balance.”*
Since the Second Law of Thermodynamics together with Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle insure that
no process can ever be either perfect or perfectly automatic in its working, then acceptance of this
definition of karma requires us to throw out the guts of modern physics, which is based squarely on these
two principles, and vice-versa.
This should be kept in mind when reading any passage by any author using the word “karma,” here
or elsewhere. In particular, mention of “karma” in the context of Key 32, Trump XXI, The
World/Universe should be a flag for the alert reader that what the author has to say might need so
modifications if it is to be both accurate and just, or at least not inciting to injustice.

*Originally the term didn’t apply to individuals as such, but rather to the stochastic dynamics of groups.
That is, if someone behaves in a way that crates trouble, hardship, or grief for others, he or she is
thereby destroying the balance of the community of which he/she is part and upon which he/she
depends in many ways for his/her survival, well-being, and happiness. There is thus a certain
probability that eventually this will rebound upon the miscreant in some form, either because the
neighbors get up a nice lynching-bee or other appropriate means to deal with said miscreant, in
reaction, or because the effects of his/her behavior upon the community upsets its balance so badly
that he/she is harmed along with everyone else as a result. If we also assume that reincarnation is a
fact, the probability of such consequences of his/her behavior for him/her increase dramatically,
assuming that he/she will eventually reincarnate in the same community for which he/she caused the
original trouble. Even so, however probable it may be that eventually he/she will suffer one way or
the other from the direct or indirect consequences of his/her actions, probability isn’t certainty, and
there is always a certain probability, however small, that he/she will never suffer or even be mildly
inconvenienced as a result of his/her actions. But this isn’t how the term has come to be used lately.
Instead, it is assumed that (a) whatever you do that is proscribed by the Powers That Be will
invariably and automatically be inflicted on you in the form of “karma,” and that (b) everything bad
that happens to you in this lifetime has to have been the result of “bad karma” earned in previous
lifetimes by “bad behavior,” and that you yourself chose to have it happen to you before you were
born in order to “work out the bad karma.” If that is true, then there is no such thing as evil or
injustice, for everything bad that happens to anyone is something they chose to have happen, before
they were born, to “work out bad karma.” This is the sort of argument that only a bone-deep
sociopath would use to “justify” his or her crimes, a philosophy that would be prized by the Marquis
de Sade – as something for the “cattle” to believe that would make it that much easier to use them
any way one wanted without incurring any serious protest from anyone who could do anything about
it. This is the New Age?! Who the hell needs it!?!

46
Knight, op. cit., pp. 49-57.
47
Or, at least, Knight’s idea of “beasts.” His species chauvinism is a little too evident here; I don’t
agree with it – and neither do the findings of modern biological science.
48
It was the Titan Prometheus who first stole the Fire of the Gods to give it to man. Prometheus is
the Greek word for “foresight” or “forethought” (Prometheus’ brother, the unfortunate husband of
Pandora, was named Epimetheus, “hindsight.”
49
All the atoms of the chemical elements are composed of the same basic elementary particles. Only
the numbers of each type of these subatomic particles vary from one element to another, or, for a given
element, from one isotope to another. The differences in the physical and chemical behavior of different
elements or of different isotopes of a given element arise entirely out of the differences in numbers of
particular types of subatomic particles, e.g., the protons, neutrons, or electrons within atoms, or the
quarks which compose them.
Similarly, objectively speaking red differs from blue, or the note A from the note G on the tonic
scale, only in terms of the frequency of light or sound involved, that is, as the number of cycles per
second of each color or tone in question. And temperature – hence physical state – is likewise just a
measure of the kinetic energy, i.e., the motion, of the particles of the substance under consideration.
50
Knight, op. cit., pp. 29-36.
 51
For a marvelous new version of this old, old tale, elegantly presented in modern symbolic form but
missing nothing of the essence of the original, see Samuel Delaney’s novel The Einstein Intersection (ca.
1971).
52
This is, in fact, what Charismatic Christians mean by the phrase “born again”: Initiation into the
Mystery of the Christ, i.e., the ritual killing of one’s Personality and its spiritual resurrection into Christ-
consciousness.
53
Melchizedek, king of the Biblical Salem, was the “priest of God most high” who blessed Avram
(Abraham) in the name of God. Where Venus enters into all this, I’m not sure. The Biblical account of
Avram’s meeting with Melchizedek in Genesis XIV:18-20 makes no mention of Venus. The idea that
Melchizedek brought certain things to Earth from Venus may have come from the Theosophical
movement.
54
Astrologically speaking, Venus, the traditional and mundane diurnal ruler of Taurus, is exalted in
Pisces, which rules the oceans and seas of the world, and is the esoteric Lord of Cancer. On the other
hand, Luna, the traditional and diurnal mundane ruler of Cancer, is exalted in Taurus, and is the esoteric
Lord of Pisces, with even more strength in that Sign than Venus has. (A Planet is strong in Signs of its
mundane dominion, stronger still in Signs of its exaltation, and strongest of all in Signs of its esoteric
dominion. For a complete table of the astrological dignities, see the Appendix to these notes.)
55
See Lesson IV concerning “The Three Zeroes.”
56
This is a bit fanciful. Also, there is historical evidence that before the Greek Classical period, at a
time when Persia was expanding her empire and the Greek city-states were either trying to make alliance
with her or aligning themselves against her, a matriarchal kingdom existed whose queen was the model
for the mythological Medusa, a kingdom whose great ally at the time was a Mediterranean island-based
civilization that was probably Minoan or Cretan in origin (the origin of the myth that Poseidon was the
lover of Medusa). A world-wide change was then in process in the form of a transformation of various
societies from more or less sexually egalitarian forms to patriarchal ones. Politically and militarily, the
latter tended to have the advantage over the former, at least in the short run, and Medusa’s kingdom, her
people, and their culture became casualties of this struggle. Persia (Perseus) and one or more Greek
kingdoms (giving rise to Athena’s part in the myth of Medusa) combined to conquer this little kingdom,
for reasons that were in part political and military, and partly for the economic and other resources that it
had, which may have included fine horses, like those of Scythia (one Greek myth-cycle attributed the
origin of the horse to Poseidon). Once the conquest was complete, the reigning queen was beheaded
and/or the entire royal family was executed (later memorialized as the beheading of Medusa, i.e., either
the literal beheading of the queen who was the historical model for Medusa or the elimination of the
kingdom’s aristocracy, its “head”), and the kingdom itself laid waste (some of the myths about Medusa
refer to her as “barren”). Additionally, two kingdoms that were neighbors of Medusa’s were probably
conquered and laid waste during this campaign, as well (in the myth, Medusa was supposed to have had
two sisters, all three of them referred to collectively as “the Gorgons”).
Astrologically speaking, Medusa is associated with the Star Algol. According to Vivian E. Robson,
in The Fixed Stars and Constellations in Astrology (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1979), Algol
is “the most evil star in the heavens” (Ibid., p. 124). Currently (1997 e.v.) the celestial latitude of this Star
is about 41° North; Her longitude is now 26° 1’ Taurus (like all other Stars, She moves eastward through
the Heavens at a rate of about 50” of arc per year). This same Star is also associated with the Hebrew
vampiress, Lilith, “Queen of the Demons”; Ra’as al Ghul, “the Demon’s Head, by the Arabs; Tseih She,
“Piled-Up Corpses,” by the Chinese; and by the names of various demon-queens all over the world. But
significantly “Lilith” is a corruption of Al-ITh, “God the Mother” or “God-ess,” i.e., God-with-a-Womb,
the supreme divinity of early, matriarchal Bedouin and Hebrew tribes, the Mother Goddess out of Whose
Body came the whole Universe and all in it. The change in the connotation of this name, as applied to
the Star Algol, from “Divine Mother” to “Supreme Female Lord of Evil,” occurred several thousand
years ago, at a time when the transformation of sexually egalitarian societies was taking place over all the
Old World* -- oddly enough, probably right about the time that Algol, now known to be an eclipsing
binary, a variable Star whose variability is due to the fact that it is regularly eclipsed by a less-bright
companion, first became noticeably variable. Before that time, Algol was considered to be one of two of
the “Luckiest Stars in the heavens,” the other being Spica, situated about 150° Eastward around the
Zodiac from this Star. Al-ITh was female to Spica’s male, and together they represented the supreme
Feminine and Masculine polarities of Divinity.

*Apparently, however, not the New, for unknown reasons; the native peoples of New World have
retained their basically sexually egalitarian or even matriarchal orientation up to the present day.
See, e.g., William Brandon, The Last Americans: The Indian in American Culture (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1974.

For more information about Algol, see Volume III, Book 10, Part 1 of my textbook New Magicks
for a New Age, “The Esoteric Significance of the Star Algol.”
57
Space is also represented by Jupiter, The number of Jupiter’s Sephirah, Chesed, is 4, as is the value
of the Hebrew letter associated with His Path, Kaph. Jupiter represents the Point in Extension, the Cross.
Additionally, Jupiter is nocturnally exalted in Aquarius, whose traditional Lord is Saturn and modern
Lord is Uranus.
58
Saturn rules the bones and the skeleton as a whole, so the skeleton-figure of the Grim Reaper is
clearly associated with this Planet.
59
Saturn rules time.
60
These are the Bull, the Lion, the Eagle, and the Man. These four figures represent the four
Cherubim who guard the Throne of God the Most High. The Bull is Taurus, Key 16, Trump V, The
Hierophant; the Lion is Leo, Key 19, Trump VIII, Strength; the Eagle is Scorpio, Key 24, Trump XIII,
Death; and the Man is Aquarius, Key 28, Trump XVII, The Star.
There are four Stars in the heavens associated with these four Signs, which some cultures believed to
be the four Cherubim themselves, surrounding the Throne which presumably was directly overhead, in
the Empyrean. These four Stars, called the Royal Stars or Watchers of the heavens by the Persians about
3,000 B.C. called them, are Aldebaran, whose dawn rising then marked the Vernal Equinox, associated
with the constellation Taurus; Regulus, marking the Summer Solstice, associated with Leo; Antares,
marking the Autumnal Equinox, associated with Scorpio; and Fomalhaut, herald of the Winter Solstice,
associated with Aquarius.
At that time, almost 5,000 years ago, the Sun conjoined Aldebaran on the Vernal Equinox; Regulus,
on the Summer Solstice; Antares, on the Autumnal Equinox; and Fomalhaut, on the Winter Solstice.
This of course is no longer true, for two reasons. The first is the precession of the Earth’s axis of
rotation, like that of a spinning top; as viewed from Earth, the position of the Sun in the heavens at the
Vernal Equinox moves Westward at the rate of about 50” of arc per year, or about 30° of arc every 2,160
years or so, making a complete circuit of the sky about once every 25,920 years. So about 5,000 years
ago, the Sun rose in the Constellation Taurus on the Vernal Equinox; in that of Leo at the Summer
solstice; in Scorpio at the Autumnal Equinox; and in Aquarius at the Winter Solstice.
The second reason has to do with the proper motion of the Stars. This has nothing particularly to do
with the apparent Eastward trend of the Stars due to equinoctial precession. Instead, it can be in any
direction and at any speed, and is essentially unique to each Star. Due to their proper motions, the four
Royal Stars no longer have exactly the same geometrical relationships to all other Stars, including Sol,
which they did 5,000 years ago. Some have moved relatively far from others to which, at the time, they
were “near neighbors.” For example, at that time, five millennia ago, Fomalhaut lay within the
longitudinal boundaries of the Constellation Aquarius; now, it lies outside and somewhat east of it,
inside the longitudinal boundaries of the Constellation Pisces. The other three Royal Stars have similarly
shifted their positions relative to the rest of the heavens since then, so that even if all four were somehow
simultaneously all moved Westward 69° degrees or so to compensate for their Eastward precessional drift
during those five thousand years, they would not end up in the same positions they occupied at that time.
Instead, they would be displaced some distance North, South, East, or West of where they originally were
then due to their various individual proper motions.
For more on these and related topics, see, passim, Richard Hinckley Allen, Star Names: Their Lore
and Meaning (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1963; Robert Burnham, Jr. Burnham’s Celestial
Handbook (in three volumes. Volume I: Andromeda Through Cetus. Volume II: Chamaeleon Through
Orion. Volume III: Pavo Through Vulpecula. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1966, 1978); and
Vivian E. Robson, op. cit.
61
Knight, op. cit., pp. 1-14.