Why is my book titled Tarot and the Gates of Light?

The short answer is because each tarot card is in fact a gate to Sephirotic energy that can lead you to experience the energy of Divine Flow. And by doing the daily meditations in the book you can strengthen your spiritual container to hold an ever greater flow of this energy.

The longer answer involves a bit of history, ranging from the Spanish Kabbalists of the 13th century, French occultists of the 18th century to members of the late 19th/early 20th century British occult group, the Society of the Golden Dawn.

The name is a reference to a seminal 13th century Kabbalistic work by Joseph ben Abraham Gikatilla, a Spanish Kabbalist whose work influenced Moses de Leon, the author of The Zohar. That book was called Sha’are Orah (שערי אורה) The Gates of Light.

So how does this connect to tarot cards?

The first book that detailed the divinatory meaning of tarot cards was written by a French occultist named Etteilla in the 18th century. And it appears that many of the original meanings given to the Minor Arcana cards as described by Etteilla, match phrases describing the Sephirot in Gikatilla’s The Gates of Light.

The Gates of Light is divided into ten sections, one for each of the Sephirot—each is a “gate of light” through which one can access the Divine. While it was written in the 13th century, it was translated into Latin in the 16th century, well before the Zohar itself was translated. So that Christian occultists who wanted to study Kabbalah had access to this information. The image in the banner of this blog is from the frontispiece for this 1516 translation, called Portae Lucis (Gates of Light).

Ronald Decker, in his book The Esoteric Tarot: Ancient Sources Rediscovered in Hermeticism and Cabala, shows in side-by-side comparisons that the meanings of the Minor Arcana cards as recorded by Etteilla align systematically with explanations of the Sephirot as written in The Gates of Light.

How did this alignment come about? Decker surmised that someone may have used a deck to create “Kabbalistic flash cards,” writing the meanings of the Sephirot on the cards that correspond numerically.

While we don’t have hard evidence this, it’s clear from the comparisons in Decker’s book that whether Etteilla was aware of it, Gates of Light is where his interpretations had their origin. And Etteilla’s interpretations have influenced all subsequent writing about the cards.

Flash forward to the early 20th century.

In 1909 A.E. Waite oversaw the creation of a tarot deck that was art directed by Pamela Colman Smith. They were both members of the Society of the Golden Dawn, which studied Hermetic Qabbalah, and this knowledge was consciously baked into the structure of the deck and design of the cards.

Look at the Four of Wands from the Waite-Smith deck pictured below. One of the meanings Etteilla gives for this card is “covenant,” which comes directly from the chapter in Gates of Light on Chesed, the Sephira that corresponds to all numeric “four” cards. The image is of a chuppah—the wedding canopy under which couples marry in a Jewish ceremony, which is a “b’rit,” the Hebrew word for covenant.

There’s another hidden connection in this image of four staves. It can be seen as Abraham’s tent, which was open on all four sides so that he would be able to better see people in the distance and thus welcome them as guests.

In fact, it was after undergoing the “b’rit milah,” the covenant of circumcision, that Abraham was seated and recovering in the tent that was open on all sides that he saw four visitors in the distance. These were the angels who give him the news that his wife Sarah would bear him a son.

And by the way, each Sephira is identified with a patriarch. Chesed as it happens, is identified with Abraham.

Was Smith aware of this when she designed the card? We know she hadn’t advanced in her work with the Golden Dawn. And the Hermetic Qabbalah most likely wasn’t noting these correspondences anyway. Nevertheless, it’s all here if you’re looking closely.

Each Minor Arcana card is a representation of Sephirotic energy. And with the right knowledge, you can access that energy to experience greater Divine flow in your life.

And when you read Tarot and the Gates of Light, you will learn how to do just that. It’s available for pre-order right now on Amazon.