A map for study

In A Garden of Pomegranates, Israel Regardie presents the Tree as a symbolic alphabet for arranging ideas and experience. Its thirty-two divisions bring together religious, philosophical and other forms of knowledge. The ten sephiroth and twenty-two connecting paths together form the thirty-two Paths of Wisdom.

His filing-cabinet analogy leaves room for personal study: a label provides a place to begin, while experience gradually gives its contents meaning. Learning the associations is one stage; comparing them, reflecting on them and seeing their relationships is the continuing work.

How to read correspondences

A correspondence links things through a shared quality. It does not make those things identical. Regardie illustrates this with Geburah: Mars, the sword, tobacco and the basilisk can all express qualities associated with the number five without becoming interchangeable.

The entries follow the particular attributions in these pages. Their comparisons between deities, philosophies, colours, plants and tarot belong to the author’s Hermetic Qabalistic interpretation. Read each association in the aspect described: the same deity can appear at more than one place on the Tree for a different reason.

Three triads and the Kingdom

Kether, Chokmah and Binah form the Supernal Triad. The book describes the Abyss beneath them as the metaphysical distinction between ideal principles and their expression in the seven lower sephiroth.

Chesed, Geburah and Tiphareth form the second triad; Netzach, Hod and Yesod form the third. Malkuth gathers the preceding nine into the world of matter and sense experience. Each sephirah has its own character, receives from above and passes on both what it receives and its particular nature.

Tarot on the Tree

The numbered cards run from the four Aces at Kether to the four Tens at Malkuth. The court-card attributions in this edition are Kings at Chokmah, Queens at Binah, Princes or Knights (Jacks) at Tiphareth, and Princesses at Malkuth. These source terms are retained because court-card titles vary between decks.

For the connecting paths, each Hebrew letter has an alphabetic position, a numerical value, a position on the Tree, a tarot attribution and a meaning when its name is spelled out. The chapter treats these letters and numbers as a language of relationships whose significance develops through study.

The opening pages also recount a legend of wisdom being preserved in the seventy-eight pictures of tarot. Regardie explicitly says he cannot vouch for that story’s accuracy; it is presented here as part of the book’s symbolic account of tarot.

Working with the map

The chapter proposes three related uses: analysing an idea through the Tree, finding connections between ideas, and translating one symbolic system into another. Its image of a living Tree suggests that understanding grows as the associations become familiar.

Names on this diagram use familiar spellings. Within each entry, source spellings such as Keser, Tipharas, Netsach and Malkus are recorded where they differ. Select Ain or either of the other veils to read the account of the limitless and the emergence of Kether.