The Torah in The Tarot: 10 Questions with Stav Appel
Stav Appel is not a Tarot reader.
His Instagram account, torah.tarot is a fantastically in depth analysis of the Tarot and his theory that when Judaism was made illegal, the Tarot became an arcane method of transmuting Jewish stories and parables. To my knowledge (and to his) slim to no one has made these connections. Being that there are 22 major arcana of the tarot, and 22 Hebrew letters of the alphabet, one is automatically drawn to the parallels, and he may be on to something.
The Prismatic Citadel sat down with Stav to learn more.
1. I learned of your work from your Instagram account, torah.tarot, can you tell us what inspired you to start the account?
For several years I have been deeply immersed in researching and deciphering the Hebrew letters, Torah stories, Judaic ritual objects and Jewish Holy Days concealed in the 17th century Tarot de Marseille, the artistic ancestor of contemporary Tarot cards. I began to post regularly on Instagram when I discovered that my research was of limited interest to commercial publishers.
Publishers of Judaica were not open to a Tarot themed book due to its association with the Occult. And Occult publishers were convinced that a book on the Tarot through a Judaic frame of reference had no commercial potential. Eventually I understood that social media afforded me the best and perhaps only opportunity to reach a wider audience.
2. Can you tell us a little bit about what is understood of the origins of Tarot?
A lot of the mystique of the Tarot is rooted in the consensus that its origins are a mystery. No one knows why its standard template has 22 picture cards, aligning with the number of letters of the Hebrew Alphabet, and no one knows the meaning or origin of the word ‘Tarot.’
Generally, we could divide the world of Tarot hermeneutics into two groups: Tarot Historians and Tarot Occultists. The serious Tarot Historians, Michael Dummett being the prime example, maintained that the Tarot was first and foremost for playing cards games and that its current association with fortune telling and the Occult is a relatively recent and ultimately fraudulent phenomenon. The Tarot Occultists, on the other hand, have happily indulged all sorts of inventive esoteric origin stories with little concern for historical plausibility. The former has suggested that the latter is primarily motivated by the desire to sell books. And the latter accuse the former of being spiritually dead and devoid of vision.
3. Certain features of your arguments for the meanings of various Tarot cards include aspects of the Hebrew alphabet, such as a hidden Resh in the Judgement card, or a Zayin in the Magician card. If people only had time to understand one such hidden reference, which would you point to, and why?
Everyone should take a few minutes to study the Magician card of the Jean Noblet Tarot de Marseille of 1650, alongside the Magician of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck of 1909. Just from these two cards alone one can absorb the entire game of telephone of the Tarot and its lost Judaic heritage.
If you happen to be a native Hebrew reader you will notice immediately that the Noblet Magician’s arms are held up like those of the letter Aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew Alphabet. Only half of the letter is present. And then in the Magician from 1909, you can see that the more recent artist reveals what the earlier card concealed, and vice versa. When we join the arms of the two Magicians’ together we finally have a complete letter Aleph א.
Appreciate that the Noblet Tarot was created in 1650, two centuries before Eliphas Levi invented Occult Kabbalah. Are we allowed to ask who, specifically, in historical reality, would have been motivated to hide Hebrew letters in a deck of playing cards in the year 1650?
One may also notice that the earlier Magician’s wand is a circumcised penis. Is it a coincidence that Aleph is the first letter in the name of Avraham, the first patriarch who made a covenant with the God of Israel via the ritual of circumcision? And does that appear to be the tools needed for a circumcision on the table?
4. In your work, you speak of the hiding of Jewish traditions in periods wherein it was illegal to be Jewish. Do you feel, from a Judaica perspective, that divination is perhaps intended by God to be an arcane and hidden artform, and that Tarot, Kabbalah, and Numerology might point toward that?
You have asked a beautiful question that is challenging to answer in a limited space. All I can do here is offer a cursory introduction. Divination is explicitly forbidden in the Torah, but what the Torah means by ‘divination’ requires a bit of deep reading. Despite this prohibition, the stones of the High Priest’s breastplate were consulted in a fashion that was clearly a form of divination. So what is actually forbidden? Not the act of divination, but rather divination through any power other than the singular one true divinity of the creation itself.
Historically we know that this is indeed how the Jewish community interpreted the Torah’s injunction against divination. The personal journal of Rabbi Chaim Vittal, one of the most famous and revered Kabbalists of the 16th century, contains numerous anecdotes of him consulting seers proficient in reading ‘drops of oil.’ The readers would place droplets of oil in water, and then interpret their shapes as a catalyst to receiving visions, prophecies and communing with spirits from other dimensions. His journal also contains stories of gatherings at which a young girl would stare into a mirror, a spirit would possess her, and then use her voice to convey prophecies and admonitions to those in attendance.
In short, divination, within the framework of permissible Judaic theology, was an integral part of Judaism until very recently.
5. Are you familiar with the work of Gary Goldschneider, specifically his assertion that a person's birthday is ruled by a tarot card, and subsequently corresponds with their personality? As in, a person born under the Tower or on the 16th of the month is destructive and deconstructive person?
I am not familiar with Gary Goldschneider’s work. I am not a Tarot card reader and do not have a developed perspective as to the utility of various card reading methodologies.
6. As we enter Spring, a season that is initiated by Fire (Aries), do you think there is some correlation between God speaking through fire (as in to Moses via a burning bush) and the suit of Wands?
I often get asked if I see any coded or concealed content in the pip cards. I am sorry to disappoint, but the pip cards of the Tarot de Marseille do not have enough narrative detail to reach any conclusions regarding the artists’ original thematic intent. The playing card template with the four suits was in existence long before the creation of the Tarot de Marseille with its 22 unique picture cards. However, and I hope this is obvious, the lack of original intent should not limit anyone from drawing a new connection between the suit of wands and the voice of the divine and so forth. The most powerful Tarot card readers I know are those who have explicitly granted themselves permission to invent their own symbolic worlds.
7. In your talks you have pointed to Esther 9:20 and the story of Haman as being indicative of qualities featured on the Tower card. You have briefly mentioned how it correlates to Tisha B'Av, which is the 9th day of the 11th month in the Jewish calendar, and the destruction of the first and second temple. Do you feel that this perhaps illustrates a divine operating force in predetermination of the events of 9/11, or perhaps a prophecy encoded, or something along those lines?
If you look closely at the House of God card, which was its original name before it was recreated by the Rider-Waite-Smith deck as ‘The Tower,’ you can find in the sun nine burning flames and eleven spots in the sky. The 9th day of the 11th month is a holy day in Judaism known as Tisha B’Av, the day of mourning for the destruction of the House of God. It’s the one card whose title is not even a disguise.
Obviously, it’s a bit jarring that the one card with a falling tower conceals the numbers 9 and 11. Just a coincidence? A core concept of the Kabbalah, which I believe a deep reader can find presented front and center in the Torah itself, is that the entire creation is a singular unified pattern. Sometimes these patterns are obvious. Recognizing these patterns retroactively is no big deal, the hard part is being able to see their presence in the future. During the day I work as a Data Scientist, or in other words, I use numbers to predict the future. Someone might say I am literally a fortune teller.
8. Surely, your fantastic work would be much more difficult to convey without the internet as a means of conveyance, have you ever heard the idea that the internet is, itself, a manifestation of the tree of knowledge? Do you have anything to add to that notion?
The Tree of Knowledge is a metaphor for the totality of all knowledge, the supernal Torah, which is not just all of the data that comprises the creation, but also its form and modality of transmission. The word ‘Sephira,’ of the Ten Sephirot, contains the Hebrew words for counting, telling and transcribing all in one. The metaphor conveys a few core ideas: Ultimately the entire universe is comprised of information, that every bit of information is interdependent and connected, and lastly that this body of information is continually growing and evolving. Judaism is a religion that reveres written text as a means to commune with the divine. It was created when people still recognized writing as a form of magic, a means through which information could transcend worlds. In many ways the birth of Judaism was a celebration of the most advanced information technology of its time.
God’s divine gift at Mount Sinai wasn’t a super weapon, or a pot of gold, it was a scroll with words written in an alphabet with 22 standardized letters. A scroll that could be read by anyone. Written Hebrew was a revolution against Egyptian hieroglyphics which was the private language of an elite Priestly class.
The great mistake of staunch traditionalists, however, is the absurd belief that the process of the creation is done and that somehow we are not meant to continually grow, develop and advance. The great information revolution of our time is the internet and the arrival of the digital age, and yes, it’s inarguable that the internet is an expression of the same creative energy of the universe that gave birth to the first standardized alphabet millennium ago.
9. On the internet today, the connection is often made between Saturn and 'The Black Cube' as people as unlikely as Ice Cube have tweeted about the connection. As you make reference to the Tefillin in your talks, have you maybe seen any connection between Saturn or the Earth element, Pentacles, and this topic, within tarot?
Another great question that I am unable to answer. I think there is a lot of great potential poetical content to explore on this theme, but my research is focused on the elements that can be objectively deciphered within a concrete historical framework. The French philosopher Derrida wrote that all of hermeneutics can be divided into two modalities; that of the Poet and the Rabbi. A poet grants herself license to breathe new interpretive life into a work of art. She has no concern for artistic original intent. The rabbi, on the other hand, is singularly focused on original intent. I believe the poetical lens of interpretation for the Tarot is powerful and precious, but my work is strictly through a rabbinical lens. Contemporary Tarot culture can be understood as a massive communal event of creative poetical hermeneutics.
10. Tell us a joke!
Humor is the second oldest form of magic; the means by which we transform sorrow into joy. Genuine humor requires spontaneity and intimacy, so, no, I am unable to share a joke that would be worth the effort. But I would like to offer your readers a communal wish: May we all overcome the illusions that separate us one from the other and may we all recognize the singular divine that resides within us all.
Follow torah.tarot for more of this engaging and esoteric research!