Within the depth-psychology corpus, Kabalah functions less as a theological object of study than as a persistent symbolic infrastructure that occultists, psychologists, and mythographers repeatedly invoke when mapping the interior architecture of the psyche onto older esoteric frameworks. The term surfaces most densely in Tarot scholarship, where authors such as Robert M. Place document—often skeptically—the historical process by which nineteenth-century figures like Eliphas Levi fused Kabalistic letter-number correspondences with Hermetic, alchemical, and astrological doctrine to produce a synthetic occult Tarot. Place repeatedly stresses that the Kabalah-Tarot connection postdates the cards by several centuries and lacks historical warrant, a position echoed in Waite’s own self-critical aside. Jung engages the Kabbalah bibliographically and conceptually in his alchemical writings, treating Kabbalistic texts—the Sefer Yetsirah, the Zohar, Kabbala denudata—as parallel symbolic languages for psychic processes he reads through alchemy. Rudhyar integrates Kabbalistic cosmology (the Sephiroth and their concentric spheres) into his astrological-psychological synthesis. What unites these varied deployments is a shared recognition that the Kabalah offers a structured emanationist model—the ladder of descent and ascent—that maps neatly onto depth psychology’s own topographies of individuation, making it an indispensable comparative resource even when its historical claims are contested.
a great deal of modern Tarot literature equates the Tarot with the Jewish and Christian mystical tradition called the Kabalah. Although this idea has no history before the few speculations that we find written by de Mellet in Monde Primitif in 1781
Place establishes the Kabalah-Tarot connection as a modern occult construction originating in 1781, not in antiquity, and traces its decisive elaboration to Eliphas Levi.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005thesis
The key ingredients in Levi’s synthesis are Kabalah, Hermeticism, alchemy, Tarot, Pythagorean number symbolism, astrology, and ceremonial magic. He never wrote a book on any of these subjects alone.
Place identifies Kabalah as the primary structural element within Levi’s unified magical synthesis, inseparable from his broader doctrine of will and transformation.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005thesis
Today scholars consider him one of the greatest Medieval Neoplatonists and the originator of the Christian Kabalah. Lull was a major influence on the philosophers of the Renaissance.
Place situates the Christian Kabalah as a Renaissance Neoplatonic synthesis originating with Ramon Lull, linking Sufi and Kabalistic traditions to a Christological framework.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005supporting
We have already encountered several models of the ladder of emanation in Chapter Two in the sections on Hermeticism and the Kabalah, but let’s review these systems along with some others to see what they can teach us about the nature of the trumps.
Place uses the Kabalistic ladder of emanation as a structural model for interpreting the Tarot’s Major Arcana as a map of mystical ascent and descent.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005supporting
According to Kabbalistic ideas, the Universe consisted of ten concentric spheres, each sphere being under the influence of one of the ten Sephiroth, or Emanations from the Absolute.
Rudhyar integrates the Kabbalistic Sephirothic scheme of emanation into his astrological-psychological cosmology as the governing model for planetary influence on human affairs.
, The Astrology of Personality: A Re-formulation of Astrological Concepts and Ideals in Terms of Contemporary Psychology and Philosophy, 1936supporting
One English society, the Societies Rosicruciana in Anglia (referred to as the SRIA) founded in 1867, included Levi as an honorary member and provided lessons on alchemy and the Kabalah.
Place traces the institutionalization of Kabalah as esoteric curriculum within English occult secret societies, situating it at the root of the Golden Dawn tradition.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005supporting
He assumes that they are secret messages from ancient Kabalists. At times, even he cannot find a satisfactory correlation and just forces a given trump to fit a given letter.
Place critiques Levi’s method of forcing Tarot trumps into Kabalistic letter correspondences as arbitrary and historically unwarranted.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005supporting
The Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition, extends from the 1st cent. to the present. The printed literature comprises about 3,000 texts, and many more have never been printed. The two most important texts are the Sefer Yetsirah (Book of Creation) … and the Sefer Ha-Zohar (Book of Splendour)
Jung situates the Kabbalah within a sweeping historical overview, identifying its foundational texts and their relevance to his symbolic investigations into alchemical and psychic process.
, Letters Volume 1: 1906-1950, 1973supporting
Kabalah ancient roots of Christian Renaissance revival and Sepher Yetzirah
The index entry in Place’s study confirms Kabalah as a major structural node in his analysis, with distinct attention to its ancient roots, Christian Renaissance reception, and foundational text.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005supporting
The Kabbala denudata reproduces a ‘Kamea’ containing not 2 × 8 but 8 × 8 = 64 numbers, ‘which represent the sum of the name of the golden water.’
Jung draws on Kabbalistic numerical speculation from the Kabbala denudata to elucidate the alchemical identification of prima materia with Yesod and saturnine symbolism.
, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, 1955supporting
This new form of Kabbalism probably
Armstrong introduces a historically specific development of Kabbalah among Sephardic Jewish exiles in the Ottoman empire as a spiritual response to catastrophic dislocation, paralleling modern survivor psychology.
, A History of God, 1993supporting
The occultists synthesized the images in the Tarot with Hermetic, Kabalistic, and astrological associations. Many of the occult theories are historically unfounded
Place frames the Kabalistic-Hermetic-astrological synthesis as the defining move of modern occult Tarot interpretation, while flagging its historical unreliability.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005supporting
Kabbalah is based on the interlinking symbolism of letter, number, and astrological signs. Yet the earliest cards had no letters or numbers on them—just pictures.
Greer argues that the absence of letters and numbers on early Tarot cards undermines the claim that Kabbalah was constitutive of the deck’s original design.
, Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for the Inward Journey, 1984supporting
The Kabbalists, the occultists, and the Tarot designers, all deplored the separation of men and women into categories and taught unification as a final goal.
Pollack presents Kabbalistic thought as aligned with Tarot symbolism in its emphasis on the union of opposites and the transcendence of gender dualism.
, Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness, 1980aside
occultists unanimously agree that the Tarot, as they discovered it in its French form known as the Tarot of Marseilles, is mystical … they have generally attempted to back their views with unsupported claims that the Tarot was created by ancient Hermeticists or Kabalists.
Place notes the consensus among occultists that the Tarot is mystical in origin while rejecting the unsupported attribution of its creation to ancient Kabalists.
, The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination, 2005aside