File talk:Rose Cross Lamen.svg

 

Rose Cross centerpiece

Is it possible to use the Rosy/Rose Cross in the very center as the main image for the Rose Cross? — Preceding unsigned comment was added by 2600:8801:8200:8F20:6233:4BFF:FE1A:23BD (talk) 02:07, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

If you want part of this image to be extracted and uploaded as a new image, then you should specify exactly what you want extracted... AnonMoos (talk) 00:25, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Correct order of the seven double letters

According to Regardie, p. 53: "The Seven Double Letters of the middle row are allotted to the Planets in the order of their Exaltations, the planets being wanderers; the Stars are fixed with respect to the Earth. These letters are Peh, Resh, Beth, with Daleth exactly over Libra [Lamed], followed by Gimel, Caph, Tau." Regardie then presents an illustration of the rose cross on page 56. The order given by Regardie and the illustration both match Fuzzypeg's original rendition uploaded in 2008 (although the color order is wrong).

Lon Milo DuQuette, in his 2003 book Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot, gives a different order, both in the text and in his own illustration of the rose cross: peh, resh, beth, daleth, gimel, tau, caph. Tau and caph are switched in this version. Viciarg replaced Fuzzypeg's rendition with the DuQuette version in 2018. Unfortunately, DuQuette doesn't explain why his version is different than Regardie's. My only guess is that it was to better match the Chaldean order of the planets. However, if he was going to make it match the Chaldean order exactly, he would have also needed to switch beth and daleth (representing Mercury and Venus respectively).

Regardie's comment that this is the "order of their Exaltations" is a bit mysterious. If we used the chronological order of the exaltations of the planets, we would get a completely different order: Sun (resh), Moon (gimel), Jupiter (caph), Mercury (beth), Saturn (tau), Mars (peh), Venus (daleth). So which of these orders is actually the "correct" one? Nosferattus (talk) 04:58, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Interestingly, Nigel Pennick's 1992 book Magical Alphabets shows an illustration of the "Hebrew Rose" on page 11 that matches DuQuette's arrangement. And of course he also gives no information on the source. Another rendition of the rose cross (apparently based on a sketch from 1951) also agrees with DuQuette's arrangement. Nosferattus (talk) 05:14, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

93. I've already been made aware of the discrepancies in the letter order in multiple sources, and I've found further variants. I'd consider anything original GD as authoritative, and any source that quotes original GD sources. Not sure what to make of Regardie's material, as it is known to be faulty at best. As far as I know the original GD manuscripts are somewhere, gonna look it up. —viciarg⁴¹⁴ 05:56, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

P.S.: DuQuette's excuse would probably be "That's how I learned it from Phyllis and Phyllis got it from Regardie" or something similar, maybe throwing Jane Wolfe and Crowley in there too. Unfortunately the California clique around DuQuette and Shoemaker have proven themselves quite unreliable when it comes to the transmission and documentation of historical tradition, most infamously Shoemaker falsifying GD rituals and qabalistic associations in Living Thelema, his only excuse being "Regardie told me so." —viciarg⁴¹⁴ 06:05, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

PSS.: The order in the Cypher manuscript is רפכתגדב, that would be enough authoritative source for me to know my version is correct. Checked at hand of a facsimile copy of page 55 of the manuscript in Carroll "Poke" Runyon, M.A.: Secrets of the Golden Dawn Cypher Manuscript, C.H.S., Inc. Silverado, Ca. 1997, ISBN 0-9654881-2-8, p. 172. —viciarg⁴¹⁴ 06:30, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

@Viciarg: Thanks for checking the original sources! I actually asked DuQuette about it, and he said "I believe the difference has more to do with the issue of which color assignment makes more sense as a progressive development through the light spectrum than it does the order of double letters in question." I guess that would explain why the color order in Fuzzypeg's version was weird. Nosferattus (talk) 07:47, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for checking with Lon, but yeah, that's exactly what I suspected: "I believe …" That's nice and all, and I sincerely do appreciate Lon's 50+ years experience and his writings from a practical no-bullshit perspective, but it's nothing that we can use as a source for Wiki{p|m}edia. We have the mention of the used color scale, we have the diagram in p. 55 of the Cypher manuscript, the only point of uncertainty is the usage of the word "exaltation." But even with this the source situation is enough to be certain of the order of the letters in the diagram. —viciarg⁴¹⁴ 12:24, 10 April 2023 (UTC)