This course was originally launched in 1984 e.v.

to teach the Qaballistic roots of Tarot to a group of

young science-fiction writers. These writers, who wanted to incorporate the use of Tarot and Tarot-
related concepts into hard science-fiction stories and novels, wanted to do so in as historically and
technically accurate a way as possible. They found that this course not only provided a wealth of
information on the history and philosophy of the design and use of Tarot that proved to be extremely
valuable to them in their writing careers, but also richly enhanced their own personal use and
understanding of Tarot for readings, study, meditation, and even, in some cases, enhancement of their
ethnic roots.

The course covers not only the broad, general design of Tarot in relationship to such diverse Hermetic
disciplines as astrology, alchemy, and the ancient Jewish science of Qaballah, but also covers the designs
and meanings of all the individual cards in a Tarot pack. In addition to traditional Tarot packs of 78 cards,
it also discusses other possible types of packs, with some emphasis on designing them to accommodate
the ideas, motifs, trends, and phenomena of the Space Age which were completely unknown to the
original Qaballists and the creators of the first true Tarot packs. Conceived with the idea of providing a
solid foundation for the acquisition of true spiritual literacy in the late 20th and early 21st century for
“right-brained” and “left-brained” individuals alike, it gives an overview of the history of Qaballah and
Tarot, discusses in detail their interrelationship as well their relationship to astrology and alchemy,
describes all the individual cards of a traditional Tarot pack and their meanings, and provides ideas for
use of Tarot to teach basic skills to younger children as well as more advanced ideas, concepts, and
knowledge to older ones as well as adults.

Eventually we will produce a Tarot pack of our own to go with this course, which will also be available
through this page.

– Yael Dragwyla, Seattle, WA 2002 e.v.

This is only a very basic course on the relationship between Qaballah and Tarot.  More advanced
instruction on this subject can be obtained by arrangement with the instructor. The course will consist of
nine lessons.  Each lesson will consist of about an hour to an hour and a half of instruction and lecture,
followed by an hour or more of general discussion, question-and-answer period, and exemplary and
demonstration activity, such as practice in reading Tarot, showing how Tarot can be used as an aid in
Magickal ritual or meditation, etc., among students and instructor.

        Handouts will be given to students by the teacher from time to time.  It is the instructor’s
responsibility to provide these;  if a student is not able to attend a session, he or she should contact the
instructor to find out what was missed, to obtain copies of any handouts from that session and if
possible, to make arrangements for a make-up lesson. In such a case, he or she should also contact
other students in the class to obtain from them copies of their notes from class.  If it is at all possible,
DO NOT MISS ANY OF THE FIRST THREE LESSONS -- the material covered in the first third of the course is
fundamental to an understanding of the subject!
        Several books are recommended to the student.  Since some of them are hard to obtain and most
are expensive, these are not mandatory.  However, the most useful of them are not very expensive, and
the student will find them to be of enormous value not only for this course, but for anything related to
this subject.  If these reference materialscannot be obtained because they are no longer in print or for
some other reason, the instructor will find a way to provide the basic information contained in them,
e.g., in class handouts.

        The most valuable of all such works on this subject is 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister
Crowley (York Beach, ME:  Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1977 and all later editions).  This is a Qaballistic lexicon
which provides, in a clear and concise format, all the fundamental associations between Qaballah and
Tarot, as well as between Qaballah and all other esoteric concepts and principles.  Currently it is
published as a relatively inexpensive, handsome trade paperback, and either ordered directly from
Samuel Weiser’s bookstore in Manhattan or purchased at or ordered through a great number of
bookstores in any good-sized city.

        Aleister Crowley’s The Book of Thoth, also widely available as a trade paperback at low price, is an
extremely valuable supplement to and extension of Liber 777. If you are not able to obtain the latter
work, to a great extent The Book of the Thothcan supplement for it.

        Other useful resources include Arthur Edward Waite’s The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (Secaucus,
NJ:  Citadel Press, 1959), and Dion Fortune’s The Mystical Qaballah (York Beach, ME:  Samuel Weiser,
Inc., 1984).  Both of these are available as inexpensive trade paperbacks.

        Other works, of somewhat less value for this course, but still very useful, include Bill
Butler’s Dictionary of the Tarot (New York:  Schocken Books, 1977), Israel Regardie’s The Tree of Life:    A
Study in Magic   (New York:  Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1969), Regardie’s A Garden of Pomegranates:    An
Outline of the  Qabalah, Second Edition (St. Paul, MN:  Llewellyn Publications, 1978), and The Golden
Dawn:    An Account of the Teachings, Rites and Ceremonies of the Order of the Golden Dawn, Fourth
Edition (St. Paul: MN:  Llewellyn Publications, 1971;  contains Volumes I and II).  Of these four works, all
but The Golden Dawn are available as trade paperbacks.

        Unfortunately, The Golden Dawn is published in a one-volume edition comprising what was

originally a 4-volume set.  It is hardbound, quite expensive, and may now be out of print.  But that one
book is, by itself, of so great a value for the study and practice of Qaballah and Qaballistic Magick that it
would be well worth your time and money to track it down and obtain a copy for your own library.

        In addition to reading various source-works for this course, at least those handed out in class, you
will be asked to make your own graphic representation of the Tree of Life.  You will also need to keep
two sets of card-files.  The first one will be used to record all the associations you can find or work out
between given “Key Numbers”* and the standard, generalized sets of concepts and ideas found in the
Western Hermetic traditions of Alchemy, Magick, Qaballah, and so on.  The other will consist of twenty-
two blank cards, on each of which you should put, in as clear  calligraphy as possible, one distinct letter
of the Hebrew alphabet.  (If you aren’t familiar with Hebrew calligraphy, I suggest tracing from a
dictionary or other work in which the Hebrew alphabet is clearly printed in largish, easy-to-trace
letters.)  These will be useful as home-made “flash-cards” for learning the letters of the Hebrew
alphabet, if you are not already familiar with it.  Otherwise, you won’t need this second set of
cards.  You aren’t required to make either set of cards, but you will find that making at least the first set
of them will help you enormously as an aid to learning the material covered in this course. So for this
purpose you should obtain:

One or two card-file boxes for 3” x 5” index-cards

Packages of 3” x 5” index cards (preferably lined for the user’s convenience)

Card-file “guides” (though not the alphabetic ones, since you’ll be accessing your cards according to the
numbers 1-32 rather than according to the Roman/English-language alphabet)

Felt-tip pens, colored pencils, paints, crayons, or whatever tools for making color pictures suits you best

A roll of butcher-paper, or a pad of large-sized drawing-paper

Compass, protractor, and whatever other tools for constructing geometric curves of various sorts suits
you best.  Also, a straight-edge, either a draftsman’s tool or a simple ruler, will be extremely useful.  So
will  knowledge of construction of basic geometric entities, e.g., erection of a perpendicular to a given
line, construction of a Pentagram, etc., using only a straight-edge and compass

*These are taken from the set of positive integers 1-32.  The meaning of this term will become clear
later on in the course.

Nota bene:

        We will open each lesson with an invocation of Djehuti, the Egyptian Scribe of the Gods, Lord of
Justice, and God of the Sciences, Mathematics, Medicine, Healing, Technical Wisdom, Reading, Writing,
and all the other Arts and Science peculiar to civilization.  He is also the God of Magick, Qaballah,
Alchemy, and all the other Hermetic Arts and Sciences.  He was known to the Greeks as Hermes, the
Romans as Mercury, the Hebrews as Raphael, and the Norse as Odin, all of whom were Gods or Angels
of Wisdom, Justice, and Magick.  Whoever teaches this course will have Djehuti as his or her guiding
Archangel, so such an invocation is right and proper for him or her to do at the beginning of all such
endeavors as teaching, scrying, Magickal operations in general, and any other activity of which Djehuti is
Lord.  If any student of this course objects to such an invocation on religious grounds, of course he or
she should not have to suffer it, and in such a case the teacher should omit this opening
invocation. However, it should be clear that such an invocation is proper, and in fact should always be
performed, at least in an abbreviated form, before an intended Tarot divination by any practitioner of
Tarot.

        Alternatively, if you feel it would be more appropriate and acceptable to you, the opening
invocation could be to Hermes, Mercury, Odin, Hekate, Diana, Kali, the Archangel Raphael, Coyote,
Raven, or any other deity, angel, or spirit associated with the Hermetic Arts and Sciences.  Djehuti is just
one aspect of divinity among many. Ultimately there is only one God, but God wears many faces and has
many aspects, and to pray to God for blessing upon an endeavor in the name of that aspect of God
ruling such work is simply good manners.  (Do unto God as you would have God do unto you, maybe?)

        For those who have no objections to invoking Djehuti, I recommend “Liber Israfel,” in Gems from
the Equinox:  Instructions by Aleister Crowley for His Own Magical Order (Israel Regardie,
editor.  Phoenix:  Falcon Press, 1982), pp. 307-310. Otherwise known as “The Invocation of Thoth,” this
is Israel Regardie’s translation of an Egyptian prayer to Djehuti, one of the most beautiful and moving
prayers I have ever run across.  A slightly altered version of “Liber Israfel,” specifically titled “The
Invocation of Thoth,” can also be found in Francis King and Stephen Skinner’s Techniques of High
Magic:    A Manual of Self-Initiation (New York:  Destiny Books, 1976), pp. 168-171.

        As mentioned above, Djehuti has been known to the ancient Greeks as Hermes, as Mercury to the
Romans, as Raphael in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and as Odin or Wotan to the Norse.  Other of His
avatars in different cultures include Coyote of the Crow, Zuni, Wasco, Flathead, Nez Percé, White River
Sioux and other North American native peoples;  Raven, of a number of peoples native to the Pacific
Northwest;  Anansi-Spider, of the Ashanti, of Ghana, West Africa;  Grandmother Spider of the
Cherokee;  “Bob,” of the Church of the Sub Genius;  “Freddie,” of modern cinematic horror;  and a host
of other Trickster/Psycho pompos Gods and spirits.  Diana of the Romans, Hekate of the ancient Greeks,
Kali of Hinduism, and Lilith of Babylonian and Hebrew tradition have domains similar to Djehuti’s in
many respects, though not as much so as the aforementioned entities.  You may want to read up a little
on the mythology of all of these Gods and spirits.  Wallace Budge, Robert Graves, and Edward Bullfinch
are highly recommended.  Edith Hamilton is not;  she bowdlerizes excessively, and worse, edits to fit her
own pro-Classicist, somewhat anti-Egyptian biases.  (See bibliography for a list of these authors’
works.)  Another useful resource tool is Vivian E. Robson’s The Fixed Stars and Constellations  in
Astrology (Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1984).

Finally, it is highly recommended that you bring your own sense of humor to class with you.  This is the
most valuable tool, bar none, that the occultist -- or anyone else -- can ever bring to the Great Arts,
including that of Life in General.  (Or in Private, if you go for that sort of thing.)  And if you can make a
case for including, say, MAD Magazine or Joe Miller in this course, a good case (not one of Coors!), then
teacher will be happy to give it a try.  (Just no religious war over which Hierophant of High Humor has
the Absolute Low-down on Things -- and that goes  double  for “Bob”!!!)
 

Course Syllabus

Lesson I

        A.  Opening invocation of Djehuti

        B.  Preparatory activity

                1.  Handouts

                        a.  The Tree of Life

                        b.  The Hebrew alphabet

                        c.  Key-Scale material:  Tarot cards, colors, Gods, etc.

                2.  Recommended books:  See Introduction, above.

                3.  Recommended Tarot packs:

        You should have a Tarot pack of some kind, but which one is up to you.  The pack which you feel to
be most in harmony with your basic nature is the one best suited for you.

        However, “free-form Tarot” packs, those not based upon the traditional Tarot infrastructure or
acceptable extensions thereof,* are not suitable for this course, except for novelty value, as they really
have nothing to do with Qaballah, as you will learn further on.  Since, after all, it is the relationship
between Qaballah and Tarot which we will be examining here, we should use packs based upon the
Qaballah for our course.

 
 

*This infrastructure comprises a pack of 78 cards, divided into three sub-packs.  the first such sub-pack,
the Lower Arcana, consists of forty cards, divided into four Suits of ten cards each.  The second, the
Court Cards, consists of sixteen cards, divided into four Suits of four cards each.  The third, the Major
Arcana or Greater Trumps, consists of twenty-two cards, numbered from 0 to XXI, associated with the
twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

        There are numerous packs designed according to the standard, traditional form. Some of these are,
for example, the famous “Rider” pack designed by Arthur Edward Waite and painted under his direction
by Pamela Coleman Smith;  the pack designed by Aleister Crowley and painted by Lady Frieda
Harris;  the Marseilles pack;  the Aquarian Tarot;  Tavaglione’s Stairs of Gold pack;  etc.

        The Fantasy Showcase Tarot (Morgan Press, 1980), consisting of 84 cards produced by 83 different
artists and collected by Bruce Pelz, can also be used.  But this pack wasn’t put together by one artist
under the direction of one designer, as most of the others were;  nor, apparently, was it produced on
the basis of a real understanding of the Qaballah as the foundation of modern Western Tarot.  Perhaps
because of this, it doesn’t usually behave in practice as a well-integrated entity.  Instead, when used for
divination it tends to give very literal-minded, psycho spiritually constipated results which don’t lend
themselves well to genuine synthesis or inspired or truly clairvoyant scrying. Sometimes, in fact, this
pack tends to behave as if it suffered from multiple-personality syndrome.

                4.  Recommended materials:  See Introduction, above.

        C.  Instruction

                1.  What is the Qaballah?  Basic definitions

                2.  The relationship of Qaballah to tarot:  Basic concepts

Lesson II

 
        Lesson II opens with the invocation of Djehuti.  This will be standard operation procedure from now
on for every lesson, unless a student has religious objections, as mentioned above.

        A.  A historical overview of Qaballah and Tarot:  their origins

                1.  Qaballah

        A very good basic introduction to the historical origins of the Hebrew Qaballah is given in Dion
Fortune’s The Mystical Qaballah, Part 1,and Chapter 1.  Arthur Edward Waite’s The Holy  Kabbalah,
Books I-IV, is a beautifully detailed, extremely scholarly work on the subject.*  There are an enormous
number of other works on the subject. But for our purposes now, it is sufficient to understand simply
that the Qaballah is the result of a process of philosophical evolution comprising several streams of
Jewish mystical thought, and that as a metaphysical system, it came into a truly coherent form among
European Jewish scholars for the first time between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries e.v.

*Unfortunately, it is not for nothing that, at least on literary grounds, A. E. Waite has been called by
more than one critic “the Karl Marx of the Occult.”  The epithet may be uncharitable, but there is
enough truth in it to make reading many of Waite’s works hard going.  Not for nothing has it been said
of him that he was the man who “put the occult   into occultism”!  (He seems to have been closely
related to the lineage of the guys responsible for churning out IRS forms and military memos
inPentagonese.)  Even more unfortunately, however, Waite is one of the most authoritative,
comprehensive, and accurate of all modern occult scholars, at least in his particular areas of expertise,
so that at times, in spite of all the difficulty one encounters reading his works; it becomes absolutely
necessary to consult him.  This, you poor things, is one of those times ...

        Essentially, Qaballah is a mystical interpretation of Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament,
or the Pentateuch.  For example, the ten Sephiroth of the Tree of Life are directly associated in a one-to-
one manner with the Ten Commandments, and thus with the entire derivative body of law set forth
in Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and theTalmud.  More, Qaballah is squarely based on Jewish law and religion
as writtensystems, hence upon the existence of the Hebrew alphabet, without which a written tradition
and law could not exist.  Among other things, the twenty-two Atua of Qaballah and the twenty-two
Greater Trumps of the Tarot represent the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.  As
Leo Schaya says in his The Universal Meaning of theKabbalah (Penguin Books, 1974), “the Kabbalah is
the doctrinal essence of the Torah, the repository in the heart of Judaism of the ‘mysteries hidden since
the beginning of time’“ (ibid., p. 19).  In his A Garden of Pomegranates, Chapter I, Israel Regardie goes
into some detail in his exposition in that chapter of the original history of Qaballah and its transition into
the hands of the general community of Western occultists extending beyond the Jewish community per
se.  As he shows, this development didn’t occur until relatively late in this history of the Qaballah.

        Eliphas Levi Zahed, one of the most famous of all 19th-Century Western occultists, was probably the
first to make Qaballah per se widely available to a non-Jewish audience, through his book, Doctrine
et  Rituel  de la Haute  Magie  (Doctrine of High Magick)  (1852).  Here, the Qaballah’s major elements
were presented as the basis of a coherent Magickal system.

        After Eliphas Levi, at the end of the 19th Century, the famous Golden Dawn organization used a
fully developed Qaballistic symbol-system as the basis for their Magickal ritual and metaphysical
teaching.  Many of their more famous members, such as A. E. Waite, Dion Fortune, Aleister Crowley,
Israel Regardie, et alia, went on to develop Qaballah and Tarot even more fully for Magickal purposes
and to write a great number of valuable, scholarly works on the subject.

                2.  Tarot

        The first European Tarot cards may have been created by the Albigensians, a schismatic sect of
Christianity that flourished in Southern France circa 1020-1250.  This sect was dedicated to the idea of
universal literacy and education concerning the Bible for everyone, women as well as men.  This did not
set well with the Roman Catholic Church, which maintained its power via exclusive control of access to
education.  The Church was well aware that uncontrolled literacy among the laity would be a deadly
threat to its established power.  Consequently, it finally hounded the Albigensians to extinction in the
13th and 14th Centuries.  In the meantime, the sect survived as long as it did by becoming extremely cir-
cumspect about the way in which they taught the Bible to the people around them.  For this, they
adopted a pedagogical tool that may have harkened back to Judea under military occupation by the Old
Roman Empire for its inspiration.  The Jews under Roman occupation, forbidden by law to teach their
children how to write Hebrew, had adopted the use dreydlim to get around the problem.  When any
too-inquisitive types asked what the gentlemen and boys were doing with “that top with those funny
melted-looking letters painted on it,” the inquirer was told, “Oh, we’re just playing a little game, officer!
Heh-heh-heh . . .”  More than a millennium later, the Albigensians adopted a similar ruse to teach the
Bible, using the twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana of the Tarot as teaching-tools, one card standing
for one or more books of the bible, each symbol on that card representing one important person, place,
or event in the biblical book or books it represented.  Whenever a priest or other officer of the Church,
or someone who might be a spy for the Church, came by and asked what the cards were being used for,
teacher and students responded that they were “just playing a game.”
        Playing-card packs apparently developed independently from Tarot packs, more or less
simultaneously.  Both our modern playing-cards and the Minor Arcana of today’s Tarot, including the
Court Cards, may originally have come to the West from China by way of India, derived from a Chinese
game that used four “suits” of an unknown number of cards or other tallies per suit.  On the other hand,
as discussed above, the Major Arcana seem originally to have been intended for pedagogical purposes,
for the instruction of children, as well as of adults not literate in written language who wanted to learn
the Bible for themselves outside the Church’s authority and institutions. Somewhere about the 15th
Century these two different types of card-packs -- the Lower Arcana, consisting of four Suits of 10 to 14
cards each, and the Major Arcana, comprising twenty-two distinct cards -- were put together in what be-
came the modern Tarot.  (The Joker of the standard modern pack of playing-cards represents the Major
Arcana of the Tarot, and in fact is a single version of Trump 0, The Fool, out of the original complement
of the twenty-two cards of the Tarot’s Major Arcana.  There are only thirteen cards, including three
Court Cards, in each Suit of modern playing-card packs, instead of fourteen, as there are in a Suit of the
Tarot;  in them, the Page and the Knight of the Court Cards of the Tarot have been combined into the
Jack.)

        The first relatively dependable knowledge we have concerning the existence of Tarot cards as such,
in anything like a modern form, comes from an entry made in the Court account-books of Charles VI of
France in 1392.  This entry itemizes a sum of money paid to Jacquemin Gringonneur for three sets of the
Major Arcana of the Tarot.

        In the 15th Century, Tarrochino, an Italian card-game played with a pack containing some one
hundred cards, came into existence.  The cards represented all the Signs of the Zodiac, the Virtues, and
all the rest of the basics of what were then considered to be the proper instruction of the young.  This
was probably the earliest use of Tarot as both a pedagogical and a recreational tool.

        By 1748 the Tarot had been fairly well standardized.  A good example of this is B.
P. Grimaud’s Marseilles pack, which probably came into existence at that time. Revisions made since
have almost entirely concerned modifications of artwork and card design, rather than in the
infrastructure of the pack or its most basic symbols, which in almost all cases have remained essentially
unchanged.

        As far as design and symbolism go, the best Tarot packs come from the early 20th Century.  These
include the Waite/Coleman “Rider” pack, Aleister Crowley’s The Book of Thoth, the Golden Dawn Tarot,
and a number of others.  An excellent overview of the history of the Tarot is given in Chapter One of Bill
Butler’s Dictionary of Tarot and Part I, Chapter 4 of A. E. Waite’s The Pictorial Key to the Tarot.

        B.  The Qaballah and the Lower Arcana of the Tarot

 
1.  On the relationship of the ten Sephiroth of the Tree of Life to the forty cards of the Lower Trumps or
Minor Arcana

                2.  On the relationship between the Court Cards of the Tarot and the tenSephiroth

                3.  On the Four Worlds

        This section examines the concept of the Four Worlds and their representation in the Lower Arcana
and the Court Cards.  In brief, the Four Worlds embody the following ideas:

                        a.  Olam  Atsiluth (the Archetypal World):

        Spirit or Will.  Elemental Fire;  the Suit of Wands;  the four Knights of the Court Cards;  the first
letter of Tetragrammaton (the Unspeakable* Name);  Yod;  True Will.

*I.e., unpronounceable, because of the lack of consonants.  This word, such as it is, is all vowels, like a
wolf-howl, and could be written in Roman letters more or less as AEIOU!

                        b.  Olam Briah (the Creative World):

        The Emotions, Soul or Psyche.  Creativity;  Elemental Water;  the Suit of Cups; the four Queens of

the Court Cards;  the second letter of Tetragrammaton, Heh.

                        c.  Olam  Yetsirah (the Formative World):

 

        The Mind.  Elemental Air;  the Idea;  Intellect;  the Suit of Swords;  the four Kings/Princes/Emperors

of the Court Cards;  the third letter of Tetragrammaton, Vav.

                        d.  Olam Assiah (the World of Manifestation):

                The physical world.  Elemental Earth;  the Suit of Discs/Coins/Pentacles;  the four

Pages/Princesses/Empresses/Squires of the court Cards;  the four letters of Tetragrammaton, Heh.

        Sections of Israel Regardie’s The Tree of Life (New York:  Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1969), including pp.
53-56 and 75-79 (beginning at the bottom of page 75 with the exposition on Yechidah) should be stud-
ied for this lesson.

        Handouts comparing the Sephiroth with associated Tarot cards will be given to illustrate the
concepts covered here.  There will also be extensive notes on Keys 1-10, including material from Dion
Fortune’s The Mystical Qaballah and several other texts.

Lesson III:  The Twenty-two Paths of the Tree of Life and the Greater Trumps of the Tarot

        This lesson will be concerned with a comparison of the Major Arcana with theAtua as shown on the
Tree of Life, copies of which will be given in the handouts for this lesson.  There will also be detailed
descriptions of Keys 11-32 in the handouts.

        In addition, Hebrew numerology (Gematria) will be discussed.  Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet
has a numerical as well as a phonetic value.  These numerical values are taken from the set {1,2, ... ,
9,10,20, ..., 90,100,200, ... , 900}.  Because each of its letters has associated with it a numerical value,
every Hebrew word therefore has a numerical value as well, which is obtained by adding up the values
of its constituent letters.  An entire philosophical and metaphysical system has been derived from this by
Jewish scholars and philosophers, beginning as far back as the 2nd Century e.v., and elaborated upon
later on by numerous Western scholars outside the Jewish community.

Lesson IV:  The Philosophy Associated With the Tree of Life

 
        A.  On the three Zeros (the Three Veils of the Negative)

                1.  Ain:

        Nothingness, Zero, the Null or Empty Set.  The Circle.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was without form, and void, and
darkness covered the deep;  and the Spirit [or Mind] of God moved over the waters [Briah].  And God
said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.

     Genesis I: 1-3

        In the beginning was Nothing.  Out of it, out of the Inspiration or Creativity of God, was created
Something, and that Something was Kether, the first Sephirah, the topmost point and level of the Tree of
Life.  Out of Kether’s abundant overflowing cameChokmah, Divine Wisdom;  from Chokmah came Binah,
Understanding;  and so on, from Sephirah to Sephirah, down the Tree, at last giving birth to Malkuth, the
Manifest World.

                2.  Ain Soph: 

        Limitlessness, Infinity.  The Parabola.  Aleph-sub-Null, the first Cantorian transfinite set.  Movement

without purpose or direction, unlimited potential and possibility, with no way to put it to work or realize
itself.

                3.  Ain Soph Aur:

        Limitless Light.  The Hyperbola.  Potential transmuted into Actuality.  Energy, and Energy becoming

Matter (E = mc2).  Multiplication of transfinite sets, Aleph-sub-One. The Zero splits into two things, a
negative and a positive entity (2 = 0), and a gradient over which energy is manifest is
established, something traveling from here tosomewhere else.*  Thus life, awareness, change, and
evolution come into being.

*Recent work in cosmological and quantum physics strongly indicates that random fluctuations in the
micro-microstructure of the universe as it is now believed it was in the beginning, gaining momentum
and accidentally reinforcing one another in the manner of constructive interference, thereby brought
stable macrostructures into existence.  As it were, the latter suddenly manifested as something ness out
of random conjunctions of negative and positive nothingness, the result of multi linear recombinations
of nothing whatsoever at all.  See, e.g., A. Karel Velan, The Multi-Universe Cosmos (1994);  Michio
Kaku, Hyperspace:    A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th
Dimension (Oxford University Press, 1994), etc.

        B.  Malkuth:  Sephirah 10:

        The sine qua non of reality.  The “potting soil of the Tree of Life, without which it would starve and
die:  unless effort is grounded in Earth, in physical reality, made manifest in inertia/momentum, and
permanence, it is meaningless, and has no lasting importance to either the Spirit or the
world.  Malkuth comprises the Outer Planes, “where the bills get paid,” where pain and woe are quite
real -- but also where joy and Grace reach their apotheoses.

        C.  Interrelationships of the Sephiroth and their mythological and other associations

                1.  The three Triplicities or Triads

                        a.  The Supernal Triad:

        Sephiroth 1, 2, and 3 (respectively, Kether, Chokmah, and Binah).  This is the Mystical Garden of

Eden, comprising God (Kether), Adam (Chokmah, and Evah(Binah).  The Queen-Scale* “colors” --
technically speaking, these are called “contrasts,” since they are not really colors at all -- associated with
these threeSephiroth are respectively White, Gray, and Black.

*See Columns XV-XVIII of Liber 777, giving respectively the King, Queen, Prince and Princess Color
Scales.  These are lists of the colors associated with each of Keys 0-32, and thus with the Sephiroth,
Paths, Tarot cards, and so forth.

                        b.  Life after the Fall:  below the Abyss

                                        1)  The second Triad:

        Sephiroth 4, 5, and 6 (Chesed, Geburah, and Tiphareth.  The Queen-Scale colors associated with

these are the primary colors, respectively blue, red, and yellow. These three Sephiroth respectively
represent Grace, Power, and Beauty.  In Judaism, they respectively represent the Torah, the law of the
people Israel (the Jews), together with Moishe Rabbinu, who brought it down from Sinai to the peo-
ple;  Talmud, the interpretation of that Law for the purposes of daily life, and as a hedge of
righteousness to protect Israel from sin and keep the people from abandoning their God, together with
the rabbis from whence came those interpretations;  and the people Israel -- the Jews -- themselves.

                                2)  The third Triad:

        Sephiroth 7, 8, and 9 (Netzach, Hod, and Yesod).  The Queen-Scale colors of these three Sephi-

roth are the secondary colors, respectively green (blue + yellow), orange (red + yellow), and purple (blue
+ red).  Whereas the second Triad represents the Life of the Righteous Ones, the third Triad represents
the Master Artists and Craftsmen.

 
                                3)  Sephirah 10, Malkuth:

        The base of the Tree of Life, the tenth Sephirah, whose color is brown (red + blue + yellow = green +
purple + orange, a randomized, imperfect blend of all colors).

                2.  Interrelationships and systems of the colors of the Sephiroth

        Notice, using pictorial representations of the Tree of Life, the colors of each of theSephiroth in
relation to the Sephiroth which are positioned immediately above and below them.  For
example, Sephirah 9, Yesod, whose color is purple, is directly below and between Sephirah 5, Geburah,
whose color is red, and Sephirah 4, Chesedwhose color is blue;  blue + red = purple.

        D.  Da’ath, its principle;  the Abyss

                1.  Da’ath, the “Eleventh Sephirah”;  its principle

                2.  The nature of the Abyss

Lesson V:  More on the Sephiroth

        A.  Da’ath, continued

        B.  Review of last lesson

        C.  The basic astrology and astronomy of the ten Sephiroth, Da’ath, and the Atua

                1.  The Lower Arcana of the Tarot

 

                2.  The astrology of the Court Cards:

        The twelve astrological Signs and the four Quadrants of the physical Planet Earth. In one sense, the
Court Cards may be said to represent Da’ath, the energy of the whole system that is represented by the
Tree of Life, for they also represent the interactions of the sexes, reproduction and the formation of
families, hence that which underlies all human activity and keeps life itself going.

                3.  The four Elements and the Court Cards

                        a.  The Knights and the Wands:  The Element Fire;  Mutable Signs;  the Planet Pluto.

Figure 1:  Pluto

Figure 2:  Fire

                        b.  The Queens and the Cups:  The Element Water;  Cardinal Signs;  the Planet Neptune.

Figure 3:  Neptune

Figure 4:  Water
c.  The Kings/Princes and the Swords:  The Element Air;  the Fixed (Cherubic) Signs;  the Planet Uranus.

Figure 5:  Uranus

Figure 6:  Air

d.  The Pages/Princesses/Squires and the Pentacles/Disks/Coins:  The living world Gaia, the physical
globe of Earth and its Quadrants; manifest reality;  the substance and soil of our Planet;  the Planet
Saturn.

Figure 7:  Saturn

Figure 8:  Earth

Nota bene:

        There are in fact two more Elements, the Quintessence or chi, and Void orCaox.  There sigils are
respectively

and
 

These Elements are not represented in traditional Qaballah and Tarot, though the Quintessence is
implicit in them because it is the fusion of all four of the original four Elements.  We will be discussing
possible applications in new Qaballim and their associated Tarot packs for these extra two Elements in
Lesson IX.

Lesson VI:  The Mathematics of the Atua and the Pedagogical Uses of Tarot

A.  The mathematics of the Atua:  the 22 traditional Trumps and the Atua they represent, and the
55 possible ones

        What are the Atua?  They are members of a special class of mathematical mappings, the bijective
functions, which establish certain types of relationships between the two members of a pair of things, in
this case, Sephiroth.  An Atu or Path is a unique map between the members of a given pair
of Sephiroth.  Given that there are ten Sephiroth, there are

1 + 2 + . . . + 10 = 55

possible Atua, whether or not they are all formally recognized in traditional Qaballah.

        The twenty-two traditional Atua are also uniquely and bijectively related to the twenty-two letters
of the Hebrew alphabet in a manner we will go into in some detail in this course.

        B.  Tarot as a pedagogical tool

        1.  Astrology and the calendar

        2.  Psychology and psychoanalytic theory

        3.  Mnemonic aids
        4.  Mathematics

        5.  Physics

        6.  Other subjects

Lesson VII:  Reading Tarot with reference to what we have already learned:   cookbook
interpretations can be left behind!  (Have we got a deal for you!)

        A.  Review of preceding sections

B. Esoteric astrology, Qaballah, and Tarot:  an esoteric support from astrology of previously discussed
aspects of Qaballah

C.  Discussion of Tarot as a system:  what Tarot isn’t.  Why packs of cards of randomly or arbitrarily

chosen symbols, however beautifully or cleverly done,aren’t Tarot.

D.  Tarot and the human genotype:  the possibility that the Atua have some relation to the twenty-two
autosome pairs of the human chromosome complement, and the Court Cards, to the sex chromosomes
and their functions

E.  Non-Western mystical systems and their relationship to Qaballah and Tarot, with particular emphasis
on the I Ching as an exemplary system.  Why special adaptations must be made in the case of the I
Ching using written Japanese for this purpose, due to the fact that written Chinese does not have an
alphabet as such, unlike Japanese, which has two syllabaries, the katakana and thehiragana, both
derived from the kanji (a set of Chinese characters especially adapted for use in these syllabaries), nor a
numerology like Western numerologies.  (See also Crowley’s Liber 777 and The Book of Thoth.)

F.  Class will practice Tarot reading for one another, drawing on principles learned in this class for
divinatory interpretations.

Lesson VIII:  An introduction to applications of Qaballah and the Tarot in Magick and other esoteric fields
 

Lesson IX:  New directions:  an introduction

        A.  New Qaballahs

                1.  Extensions or modifications of the Tree of Life, based upon its traditional structure

                2.  The ASCII cybernetic lexicon and the new English-language Qaballah:

        The cybernetic technological revolution, and its implications in relation to Aleister Crowley’s The
Book of the Law (AKA Liber Al vel Legis, Liber AL, and Documents CCXX and XXXI), Chapter 2, Line
55.  This section will also be concerned with the relationship of the Periodic Table of the Chemical
Elements through element 94 (plutonium) to the Greater Trumps of this system, 94 in number, which
were developed by the author of these notes.

                3.  New maps for Magick:  re-designing the Tree of Life.

        Could new geometries be developed for graphic or n-dimensional representations of the Tree of

Life?  The traditional one is a projection onto a two-dimensional surface of an n-dimensional fractal
reality.  Could that reality be represented by a higher-dimensional graphic of a non-traditional geometric
form?

                4.  Alien Magick:  extra-terrestrial and extra-Solar Trees of Life.

        How would a hypothetical resident of another Planet of the Solar System, or the Sun, or a Planet of
another Star, or a space-ship culture which never took up a permanent, stable orbit around any Star
design a Tree of Life for its world?

 
                5.  Recursive Magick:

        The Tree of Life as a concept is itself a part of Olam Yetzirah, the Formative World.  It is therefore a
map that includes itself as part of that which it maps.  This section concerns recursive programming in
this context, and Magick as a technology for re-programming the Universe in accordance with the Will of
the Magickian, using Qaballah as its programming language.

        B.  New Tarots

                1.  New card designs

                2. New sense-modalities

        A project for the interested student:  Design a Tarot “pack” useful to, say, Helen Keller, who was
blind and deaf from the age of three years old as the result of a bout of erysipelas  which she suffered at
that age.  Do not construct it in the form of Braille, statuettes, bas-relief sculpture, or any other tactile
modality.

        C.  Open discussion:

        How has this class been useful to you?  If you are a writer, can you use any of the knowledge which
you have gained here in your writing?  Discuss writers such as Roger Zelazny from whose works it is
obvious that they are familiar with Tarot -- as well as writers who may have seen a few different styles of
Tarot packs but who obviously aren’t familiar with Qaballah.  How about T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste-
Land”?  (R. R. McCammon wrote a magnificent novel, the American equivalent of Dante’s Divine
Comedy, Swan Song [New York:  Pocket Books, 1987], which incorporates both symbolism from
traditional Tarot packs -- including actual cards from such a pack, as part of the story -- and, in relation
to it, lines from “The Waste Land.”  The interested reader might wish to examine the uses of Tarot in this
novel, and their implications for this section.)

        D.  Evaluation of class and teacher by students (here’s where you get revenge!BWA-ah-ah!!)
 

        Each of you please write out for teacher an evaluation of this class and her competency in teaching
it.  What, if anything, should be added to or subtracted from the course?  Also, what other
classes/subjects would you like to take up now?  For example, would you be interested in classes on the
theory and application of Magick, particularly in relation to Tarot and Qaballah?  How about astrology
and its correlation with Tarot and Qaballah?  Can you suggest materials and books that could have been
used in or suggested for this class, but weren’t?  Thank you.  Hope to see you again. And remember:

ENJOY!!!

Handouts

        These will be given out by the teacher from time to time, and need not be purchased by the
student.

        Series I:

1.  Aleister Crowley, Liber 777 (Part 2 of 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley [Israel
Regardie, editor.  York Beach, ME:  Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1977]), p. 39.

2.  _____, The Book of Thoth (New York:  Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1973), pp. 265-268.

3.  _____, Sepher Sephiroth (Part 3 of 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley, op. cit.),
which begins with the Hebrew alphabet with its English/Roman correspondences.

4.    _____, Liber 777 (Part 2 of 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley, op. cit.), Columns I-
XXI, CLXXV-CLXXXI.

Materials Needed for Class

        Books and Other Information Resource Materials

 
        It is strongly recommended that you obtain for this class those materials listed below which are
marked with a “*,” as these contain material which teacher will discuss in class.  The rest are more
useful as supplementary resources, but if you can also obtain copies of them you will find them both
helpful and interesting.

Butler, Bill.  Dictionary of the Tarot.  New York:  Schocken Books, 1977.

* Crowley, Aleister.  777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley.  Israel Regardie, editor.  York
Beach, ME:  Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1983.

*The Book of Thoth. New York:  Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1973.

Dragwyla, Yael.  New Magicks for a New Age.  Work-in-progress.  Chapter 2 of Part 1 of Volume 3 of this

work, on the new English-language 16-Sephiroth Qaballah, is especially recommended, as is the outline
of the work as a whole.  Ask the instructor if you would like a copy of any portion of this work.

* _____.  Qaballah and Tarot:    A Basic Course in Nine Lessons.  Seattle, WA: Djehuti/Quetzlcoatl Press,

1996.  The notes for this course, as a set.

* Fortune, Dion.  The Mystical Qaballah.  York Beach, ME:  Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1984.

King, Francis, and Skinner, Stephen.  Techniques of High Magic:    A Manual of Self-Initiation.  New

York:  Destiny Books, 1976.

Knight, Gareth.  A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism.  One-volume edition. York Beach,

ME:  Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1983.

Regardie, Israel.  A Garden of Pomegranates.  St. Paul, MN:  Llewellyn Publications, 1978.

_____.  The Tree of Life:    A Study in Magic.  New York:  Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1969.

Waite, A. E.  The Holy Qaballah.  Secaucus, NJ:  University Press/Citadel Press (n.d.).

* _____.  The Pictorial Key to the Tarot.  Secaucus, NJ:  Citadel Press, 1959.

        Tarot packs

        You should have your own Tarot pack for this course.  Which one you use is up to you, as long as
it is a genuine Tarot pack, with the traditional infrastructure of 40 cards of the Minor Arcana, 16 Court
Cards, and 22 Greater Trumps.  It is strongly recommended, however, that you use the one which you
find most appealing, attractive, and easy to use, the one which, as far as you are concerned, is the most
“user friendly.”
Lesson 1

A.  What is the Qaballah?

Qaballah is the quantum mechanics of the Inner Planes, the realms of mind, emotion, memory, and Will,
that is, of intellect, soul, and spirit, and of the physical body insofar as it mediates and mirrors these.  It
is the spiritual expression and reflection of physics, the science of physical reality at its most basic and
essential levels.  As will be seen, it even entails its own version of the Periodic Table of the Chemical
Elements, Mendeleev’s lovely brain-child, which gives essential mathematical descriptions not only of
the known chemical elements, but also of all that ever might be, and, in addition, something of the sub-
atomic particles of which atoms are composed.

        In particular, Qaballah is a system of bijective associations 1 between an alphabet of some kind and a
set of distinct numerical values.  An alphabet, in this case, is any ordered set 2 of distinct symbols,3 which
may include any of the following:  the digits (counting numbers 1-9);  astrological entities, such as
Planets, Signs, or Stars;  Gods; Tarot cards;  a scale of musical notes;  a discontinuous spectrum of
electromagnetic wavelengths (i.e., colors, visible or otherwise);  perfumes and
incenses’  drugs;  plants; animals;  gemstones;  Magickal tools or Powers;  or just about any other set of
distinct entities of a given kind one could possibly think of.  The set of numbers with which the elements
of that alphabet are associated may be any numbers that can be operated upon mathematically,
including integers, fractions, irrational numbers, complex numbers, and so on.  In every case, for each
character of the given alphabet, whatever it may be, one and only one member of any of the sets of
numbers associated with it (of which there may be more than one, none exactly identical with any
other) is associated with it.4

        For this course, the original (lexical or indexing) alphabet we shall use in the beginning will be the
set of distinct counting numbers 1 through 32.  These are called Key Numbers, partly because they
provide keys to the Greater Mysteries, and partly because they can be used as a mnemonic keying
system to index data more efficiently and quickly, like key-memory accessing modes in cybernetic sys-
tems.  This Key Number indexing system is traditional in the Western Tradition of esoteric Arts and
Sciences.  Later on, for philosophical reasons we will add Zero, À0 (Aleph-sub-Null, the first Cantorian
transfinite number, the Number of All Numbers, the order of the Real Line Â), À1 (Aleph-sub-One, the
second Cantorian transfinite number, the Number of All Mathematical Curves), À2 (Aleph-sub-Two, the
third Cantorian transfinite number, the Number of All Mathematical Structures), 5 i = Ö-1,* and the Null
or Empty Set to this indexing system, as well as a number of other mathematical entities.  For now,
however, we will stick to the traditional 32-two symbol lexical system.6

*The square root of minus one, the basis of the system of imaginary numbers.  This entity is distinct
from all real numbers, of any value;  for the result of squaring any real number (i.e., multiplying it by
itself) always produces a positive number, one greater than zero.  Obviously, then, -1 (minus one) cannot
be the resultant of squaring any real number.  Its square root is thus other than real -- hence it is called
“imaginary,” and symbolized as i, the initial letter of “imaginary.”
We will also discuss, very briefly, the general way in which a Qaballah is used in its associated
numerology, and how the Hebrew alphabet, in particular, is used inGematria, the numerology of the
Hebrew Qaballah.

Finally, there will be a brief discussion of the concept of the Qlippoth.  These are the distorted
reflections of the Sephiroth.  Each of the ten Sephiroth of the Tree of Life are realms of Divine Guidance,
ruled by a God or Archangel Who directs the affairs of that aspect of Creation according to the Will of
the Great Spirit, and populated by benign or at least spiritually neutral spirits who all are part of the
natural and divine order as it is expressed in that Sephirah.  The Qlippoth are poor, distorted copies of
theSephiroth, each ruled by its Arch-Demon, and populated by malefic spirits whose natures are
according to that of the Qlippoth in which they dwell.  The Sephiroth can be thought of as psycho
spiritual states, states of spirit, soul, and intellect, as well as aspects of physical reality;  the Qlippoth,
then, are comparable to illness of spirit, soul, and body, or disharmonies in the physical and social
universes.  In this section, we will discuss the Qlippoth, their denizens, and their impact upon both the
spiritual and the material life of humanity and other beings.

B.  What is the relationship of Qaballah to Tarot?

By comparing Tarot packs differing in design but all sharing the same traditional infrastructure of 40
Minor Arcana, 16 Court Cards, and 22 Greater Trumps, described above, we see certain other basic
similarities among them.  These in turn all refer to the Qaballah.  The Qaballah has grown out of a Jewish
metaphysical system which has existed in a coherent, written form for many centuries;  the original
elements out of which its current form has evolved go back much farther still. 7  In turn, all of the
traditional Hebrew Qaballah refers to the Tree of Life, a diagrammatic pictorial scheme that looks a little
like a tree bearing ten fruits interconnected by twenty-two branches.  The “fruits” are the Sephiroth*
and the “branches” are the Atua.**  In the Tarot, the Sephiroth are represented by means of the forty
numbered “small” cards, the Lower Arcana, while theAtua are represented by the twenty-two Greater
Trumps, numbered by 0 and the Roman numerals I-XXI.

*A Hebrew word meaning “sapphires” or “brilliants” (i.e., brilliant-appearing things, such as

gemstones).  The singular form is Sephirah.

**An Egyptian word meaning “Paths.”  The singular form is Atu.

All true Tarot packs, then, are based upon Qaballah, and specifically refer to the Tree of Life.  We will
cover the relationship between Tarot and the Hebrew Qaballah in lessons to come in small detail,
because understanding this relationship not only will help increase your skill in reading Tarot, but is also
absolutely necessary to creating a new Tarot pack of any real psychological and Magickal potency, if you
ever desire to do so.

Endnotes
1
Bijectivity:  A bijective map or bijective relation is a mathematical relation between two sets of things
such that each set contains exactly the same number of elements as the other;  for a given element in
either set, there is exactly one -- i.e., one and only one -- element associated with it under this
relation.  Furthermore, the first element in this pair is related to the second, and only to the second
member of the pair, through the inverse of the original map, which, like the original map, is also
bijective. Thus this mapping is a one-to-one/onto relationship.  That it is one-to-one means that each
element of the first set, the domain, is matched uniquely with (i.e., with exactly one of) one element of
the second set, the range.  That it is onto means that every element in the second set or range is
matched with at least one element of the first set, the domain.

A one-to-one mapping is sometimes called an into mapping, or injection  an ontomapping is sometimes

called a surjection.  Thus a bijection is a mapping that is both an injection and a surjection.

As an example of a bijective relation, suppose we have two bags, one containing ten black marbles, the
other ten green marbles.  Therefore every black marble in the first bag can be paired with exactly one,
distinct green marble from the second, and vice-versa, such that there are no green and no black
marbles left over after all the marbles in either bag have been paired up with marbles from the other
bag.  The relationship between the marbles in the two bags is thus a bijective one.

For more on mappings in general, and injective and surjective functions in particular, the following are
especially useful:  Donald R. Barr and Floyd E. Willmore, College and University Mathematics:    A
Functional Approach (Boston:  Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1968), pp. 7-102 (Chapter 1);  Howard Eves and
Carroll V. Newsom, An Introduction to the Foundations and Fundamental Concepts of Mathematics (New
York:  Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1958), pp. 226-259 (Chapter 8);  and John G. Kemeny,  Hazleton
Mirkil,  J. Laurie Snell, and Gerald L. Thompson, Finite Mathematical Structures (Englewood Cliffs,
NJ:  Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1959), pp. 70-90.
2
Ordered set:  More rigorous definitions of such a set may be found in various works on set theory.  For
now, we will call any ordered set any set  S = {s1,s2,. . .,si,. . .,sn},  where n is some positive integer (i.e., a
counting-number greater than zero), such that s comprises an array of
the n elements s1, s2, . . . , si, . . . , sn  fixed in order, such that for any element si of s, where i is a positive
integer that may have a value from 1 through n, then si is the ith component of the array.  For example,
suppose s is the set of positive integers {1,2,3,4}.  Given that in addition, these four elements of s are fix-
ed in order such that 1 is always the first in order of the listing of the elements of s, 2  isalways the
second, 3 is always the third, and 4 is always the fourth, then s is an ordered set.

From another point of view, if s = {s1,. . .,si,. . .,sn} is an ordered set, then it is also the vector
(s1,. . .,si,. . .,sn), whose ith component is  si.

The English/Roman written-language alphabet is a perfect example of an ordered set.  A, its first letter, is
the first element or component of that set;  B is its second component;  and so on, down to Z.

Another example of an ordered set is the subset of eight dominant notes of the 12-tone musical scale
we use in the West, in order, do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do.
For more on ordered sets and vectors, see Barr and Willmore, op. cit., pp. 118-119 and 542;  Georg
Cantor, Contributions    to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers (Philip E. B. Jourdain,
translator.  New York:  Dover Publications, Inc., 1955), pp. 32, 38 ff., 47, 50 ff., 52, 62, 75, 79 ff., 81, 110
ff., 113, 122 ff., 151 ff., 158, 159, 202, 208;   Eves and Newsom, op. cit., p. 118-153 (Chapter Five);  Ellis
Horowitz and Sartaj Sahni, Fundamentals of Data Structures (Potomac, MD:  Computer Science Press,
Inc., 1977), pp. 40-201;  and Kemeny,  Mirkil, Snell, and Thompson, op. cit., pp. 205-330 (Chapter Four).
3
Not only do the alphabets of the world’s written human languages qualify as alphabets under this
definition of the term, but so also does the set of digits 0-9, when used as symbols;  a set comprising any
number of distinct numbers or other mathematical entities, when used as symbols;  a set of distinct
punctuation symbols;  a set of distinct computer reserved words, when represented in the form of ide-
ographs or as holistic representations in other sensory modes;  and so on.
4
And vice-versa.  That is, we can have p alphabets and q sets of numbers, where none of the alphabets
exactly resembles any other, and no two sets of numbers are identical, such that every set of numbers
and each alphabet has the same number of elements in it.* Then each alphabet or set of numbers can
be bijectively associated withall the others, which can make for a very interesting set of cross-
associations among these sets.  This could be of particular interest in comparing two or more cultures,
each of which has a written language and an alphabet to go with it, using Qaballistic analysis.

*Thus all the alphabets and sets of numbers can be put into bijective correspondence with the set of
consecutive positive integers 1-n, where n is the number of elements in each of these alphabets and sets
of numbers, i.e., the order of each such set.

An actual example of such cross-indexing by means of one common reference or indexing set of integers
is, of course, Aleister Crowley’s Liber 777, op. cit..  In that work, the alphabets and numerical sets are
Columns I-CXCIV; in particular, Columns I, X, LI-LIII, CLXXV, and CLXXV comprise the sets of numbers,
Columns LI-LIII and CLXXV being the standard alphabets of written languages (Coptic, Greek, Arabic, and
Hebrew) each letter of which also has a numerical value.
5
The transfinite numbers are actually the orders of sets of indefinitely large size, that is, the quantities of
things which each of them contains.  Because these sets each contain an infinite number of elements,
the transfinite numbers are themselves effectively infinitely large, and behave in ways that are very
different than ordinary numbers of finite size.

Historically, À0 was the first transfinite number to be discovered and analyzed, by the mathematician
Georg Cantor.  This is the Number of All Numbers, that is, the infinitely large set of numbers which
together make up the Real Line, all of which can be manipulated according to the standard operations of
arithmetic.

À1, the Number of All Possible Geometric Curves, was the second transfinite number to be discovered,
also by Cantor.  These are geometric entities whose shapes and characteristics are specified by n-
th order equations, for example, x3 + 1, 45y4 - p2+ 13, and so on.
À2 is the Number of All Possible Mathematical Structures, including such entities as algebras, groups,
rings, rays, fields, and so forth, in all their infinite variety.

For more on transfinite sets, see Georg Cantor, Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of
Transfinite Numbers (Philip E. B. Jourdain, translator.  New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1955).
6
According to Moishe Baudelaire (or was it Shmuel de Sade?),

Once, it’s adventure;

Twice, it’s perversion;

Three times --

“ QIt’s tradition  b . . .”

7In fact, Tree-of-Life designs are immemorially old.  They are found in paintings and bas-relief designs
scattered all over the Middle East, dating back millennia.  Interestingly, with respect to the final part of
this course, Chaldean and Babylonian versions of this motif generally have twelve rather than
ten Sephiroth.

Bibliography

In addition to the bibliography given in the syllabus, the following resources will be of especial use for
this lesson:

Barr, Donald R. and Willmore, Floyd E.  College and University Mathematics:    A Functional
Approach.  Boston:  Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1968.

Cantor, Georg.  Contributions    to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers.  Philip E. B.

Jourdain, translator.  New York:  Dover Publications, Inc., 1955.

Eves, Howard and Newsom, Carroll V.  An Introduction to the Foundations and Fundamental Concepts of
Mathematics.  New York:  Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1958.

Horowitz, Ellis and Sahni, Sartaj.  Fundamentals of Data Structures.  Potomac, MD: Computer Science

Press, Inc., 1977.

Kemeny, John G.;  Mirkil, Hazleton;  Snell, J. Laurie;  and Thompson, Gerald L.  Finite Mathematical

Structures.  Englewood Cliffs, NJ:  Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1959.

A.  An Historical Overview of Qaballah and Tarot:   Their Origins

                1.  Qaballah

 
                The word Qaballah or Qabbalah comes from a Hebrew root meaning “to receive” and signifies
“reception.”  Originally the knowledge contained in Qaballistic literature was transmitted orally from
generation to generation, i.e., “received” by each new generation of scholars and mystics from the
previous one, hence the derivation of the term.

                According to Arthur E. Waite, in The Holy Kabbalah,

... [T]he subjects with which it is concerned . . . are Sacred and Divine Subjects:  they include the most
profound Mysteries of God and the Emanations of Deity;  the celestial economy;  the process of
creation;  the scheme of Providence in regard to man;  the communications of God in revelation and to
the just in his [Congregation];  the offices and ministries of good and evil angels;  the nature and pre-
existence of the soul;  its union with matter and its metempsychosis;  the mystery of sin and its
penalties;  the Messiah, His kingdom and His glory to be revealed;  the state of the soul after death and
the resurrection of the dead, with occasional . . . intimations on the union of the soul and God.  Hereof is
the aspect and this the part which was conceived and unfolded sub species aeternitatis.  Here also . . . is
the abiding part, rooted in everlasting values, and the one voice among many voices of old Tradition
which bears a message from the past to the modern world.

. . . The Kabbalah, in a word, is the hidden thought of Israel upon doctrines of Jewish Religion . . . and
upon the proper understanding of that Written Word which is referred to a Divine                Origin . . . .1

                Tradition holds that the Sepher Yetzirah (The Book of Formation, on the creation of the world)
was received by the Patriarch Avram and transmitted by word of mouth from him to following
generations.  Later, this work was first written down by Rabbi Akiva ben Yoseph, the pupil of Rabbi
Yoshua ben Hananiah, who was in turn the successor (as well as the opponent, at one point) of Rabban
Gamaliel, the head of the Palestinian Jews at the close of the First Century e.v. 2 and in the closing years
of the Second Century.  Akiva, born around 50 e.v., is said to have written the Sepher Yetzirah after the
destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem itself by the Romans in the Second Century e.v.;  he was
subsequently martyred by the Romans for transgression of the edict of Hadrian against the teaching and
practice of Judaism.

                After Akiva and the Sepher Yetzirah, the Zohar (The Book of Splendors), the great metaphysical
and theological work of Qaballah, probably came into existence sometime in the Thirteenth Century
e.v.  There is some dispute about this;  for more about the pros and cons of debate on this subject, the
interested student should consult A. E. Waite’s The Holy Kabbalah, Book II and Chapter 3.3

                Numerous works on the Qaballah were produced by various Jewish scholars after this period,
while non-Jews gradually took to its study.  By the mid-Nineteenth Century, Western occultists, Jewish
and otherwise, were so familiar with the subject that Eliphas Levi, one of the best-known and most
knowledgeable of all Western occult philosophers and practitioners, based an entire system of Magickal
techniques and metaphysics upon it.  At the close of that same century the Golden Dawn, which at that
time was the major heir of the general Western esoteric tradition, based its rituals and theosophy
entirely upon the metaphysical system of Qaballah.

                Aleister Crowley, in turn inheriting this same tradition from the Golden Dawn, likewise built his
O.T.O. and A\A\ solidly upon this same metaphysical and theosophical foundation.  To this day, the main
Western Magickal traditions and practices all incorporate the Qaballah into their rituals, beliefs,
metaphysics, and philosophies on every level and Plane.

                2.  Tarot

                Refer back to the notes in the Class Syllabus.  Not that much that is truly reliable is known
about the origins of the Tarot itself.

B.  The Lower Arcana of the Tarot and the Ten  Sephiroth of the Tree of Life

Introduction

                In order to show the relationship between the cards of the Tarot and the concepts of Qaballah
in a clearer light, a description of each Sephirah or Atu and its corresponding card or cards and other
associations is given in this and the next lesson.

                Nota bene:  While many works on Qaballah, Magick, and related disciplines go out of their way
to establish correspondences among the many concepts and symbols used in these disciplines, few
make it clear why they do so, i.e., what such correspondences are used for, and why.  Therefore, in
order to avoid confusing beginning students and make this subject as clear as possible, discussion of
theSephiroth and Paths should be prefaced by an explanation of the uses of such correspondences in
Magick and the other Hermetic disciplines, and the rationale behind that use, to wit:

0:  Notes on the Use and Rationale of Correspondences in the Hermetic Arts & Sciences

 
                Here and there in the literature on the Hermetic Arts and Sciences, micro-diamonds in what is
all too often a literary dust-bin, are to be found clear, concise definitions of the “doctrine of
correspondences” or “doctrine of signatures,” as it is also called, e.g.:

The doctrine of correspondences is perhaps the most difficult of the magical axioms to fully
understand.  It ultimately derives from the Neo-Platonic conception of each man or woman as a
microcosm (a ‘little universe’) that is to say as a reflection of the macrocosm – the cosmos as a whole.  It
is believed that every factor present in the universe is also present in the soul of man, that – to use a
phrase beloved by some magicians – ‘the aura of a man is a magical mirror of the universe.’

Since magicians believe that the soul is the universe in miniature they also believe that it is possible to
link any factor in the individual psycho-spiritual make-up with the corresponding factor in the universe
at large. In other words, to call down a natural force to strengthen that same force in the individual
soul;  technically this process is called invocation.

The actual techniques of invocation involve the magician in the use of one or the other of the traditional
systems of classification.  Today the system used by most Western occultists is based on a 32-fold
classification and printed tables of the major correspondences are available . . . .  The advanced
magician, however, uses such tables only as a basis for his own mental activity;  he transforms a portion
of his mind into an invisible card-index and sorts every fact known to him onto one or other of the
thirty-two available ‘cards,’ each of which correlates with a natural force. . . .

-- Francis King and Stephen Skinner, Techniques of High Magic:  A Guide to Self-

Empowerment (Rochester, VT:  Destiny Books, 1976, 1991), pp. 13-14

Because he knows that mind characterizes the entire universe, the magician is able to enjoy what we
may call a unitary view of nature.  For him the universe is exactly what the word implies – a unity.  This
in turn leads him to postulate that a law manifestly in operation in one part of the universal system is
equally operative throughout the whole.  The consequence of this last premise is that, since the universe
is in itself a complete whole, some characteristic of the major components must be shared by the lesser
components, animal, vegetable, or mineral.  We have, for example, seen how varying combinations of
identical molecules lie behind the evolution of all matter;  the visible results may differ but the essential
properties of matter remain the same.  All things therefore have the same components and obey the
same natural law, and behind their outward form there is but one mind.  In magic it is this universal
‘oneness’ that has long been an object of study and research.  It represents for the magician, as it must
also for the scientist, the secret of nature.  It is the unifying principles behind the intricacy of natural
phenomena, reconciling the unity of substance with the heterogeneity of form.
 

In magic the underlying similarity between different things is systematized by identifying certain
correspondences between them. From time immemorial magicians have sought to establish the natural
affinity that exists between certain planets, metals, jewels, birds, beasts, herbs, colors, flowers, and
scents.  A great deal of patience and ingenuity has been expended on this formidable task, but
observation and experiment have also played their part.  Magic is, after all, much more than an
academic exercise.  Nowadays many of the correspondences that have been elaborated may appear
crude and naïve, but the fault often lies not in the correspondences themselves but in the archaic way in
which they are expressed or the quaint reasons once thought up to justify them.  We must allow for the
fact that much extant magical writing dates from the Middle Ages or earlier and reflects the mental and
cultural climate of its time.  Some of these writings may be downright silly and many others will be
inconsistent with what we now know to be true.  However, while it is only right to discard everything
that strikes us as foolish, it would clearly be imprudent to reject the rest out of hand.

The most important of the universal correspondences are those that exist between us and
God.  Although we know well enough that man is no more than the product of a natural evolutionary
scheme, we must nevertheless accord him a special place within that scheme.  He is its fulfillment.  If the
material world is but a reflection of God, it is in man that God is truly reflected.  Like the universe itself,
only on a far smaller scale, man is a psycho-biological unit;  by studying that unit, the microcosm, we are
able to gain a more profound understanding of the universe, the macrocosm, for we can confidently
expect God, the sum of all things, to be everything that we ourselves are, only much magnified. We may
even go so far as to liken Him and the universe in which He expresses Himself to the human organism
expressed on a vast scale. Man, the miniature organism, is able by introspection to expand his
consciousness so that his inner self reaches out and embraces the universe.  Clearly, the closer the
miniature resembles its subject, the greater the expansion that is possible.  Thus it is above all the
complete man who, once he has experienced every human impulse and integrated them in one
balanced personality, is able to reach the heart of the universe wherein lies union with God.  This is the
supreme achievement of magic, and it is summed up by Aleister Crowley as ‘the raising of the whole
man in perfect balance to the power of infinity.’  In short, it is the apotheosis of the self.

If the universe is man on a gigantic scale, the mysterious forces that move it may be equated with those
that move man.  Through them is woven the fabric of all visible things and it is the magician’s task to
discover their true nature.  To this end he need only cultivate the forces already latent in himself, for
they are, of course, the same as those that regulate our world and propel the furthermost star.  ‘Know
thyself’ was the good advice given at Delphi.  In order to make them easier to comprehend, however,
the major cosmic forces have been named in magic after various planets and the gods and goddesses of
the ancient world.  However, this personification is merely a device to help us appreciate their real
significance:  the friendly figure of Mr. Therm was always more evocative than the vague concept of
High Speed Gas. Even more personalized are the lesser forces, which are dubbed angelic or demonic
according to their function.  In the Western hemisphere these often have Jewish names which are
ceremonially invoked in magical operations based on a system known as the Kabbalah. Elsewhere in the
world their names are different, but that need not disturb us;  the forces they represent are still the
same.

Apart from the results they achieve and the names they have been given, little is known about these
forces.  They presumably represent different aspects of the universal mind, its thoughts and intentions
which, unseen and inexorable, move through the universe in pursuit of some divine ambition.  There are
forces that sponsor growth and conservation;  others cause decay and destruction;  still others promote
love and peace;  while others, no less potent, are harbingers of hatred and war.  Because of these
differences it is possible to describe some forces as positive and others as negative.  No moral judgment
is implied by this classification, and both types of force are equally necessary. Indeed, the theory of
opposites is very ancient, and many ethical systems advise us to achieve a balance between the
opposites in our own character.  The philosopher Hegel is well known for his emphasis on the need for a
negative as well as a positive element in life.  Because the first of these discards the old and the second
ushers in the new, progress is possible only when they act together.  This synthesis between the two is
the goal of the dedicated magician who, having experienced and mastered all things becomes the
complete man, the true likeness of God.

The power that is used in magic is derived from the forces we have been describing and so comes from
both within and outside ourselves. It is formed by linking one aspect of the magician’s personality with a
corresponding aspect of the cosmic mind.  This at once sets up a current of power which the magician
can draw upon for his own purposes.  It is not unlike flicking a switch to turn on the electric
light.  However, just as electricity requires an efficient wiring system, so magical power always needs a
suitable conductor through which to flow.  This conductor is established by the performance of an
appropriate ritual, every detail of which contributes to the final influx of power.  It is because each detail
is so important that [time-tested rituals] must be scrupulously followed. This is not only because the
success of the whole operation will depend on it, but because, as in the case of electricity, magic can be
dangerous when tampered with.

-- David Conway, Ritual Magic:    An Occult Primer (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978), pp. 27-31

SIGNATURES – These are Paracelsus’s teachings of natural correspondences.  All things have their stamp
or signature and that signature is a clue to their connectedness to other things with similar
signatures.  The understanding of the properties and uses of herbs, stars, minerals, etc. depends on
knowing these principles.  If, for instance, you had to choose a substance for healing and could not test
the difference between poisonous and non-poisonous plants how would you proceed?  Random testing
could prove fatal, but if you were to allow yourself to be guided by a plant’s similarities to a function or
part of the body, you’d probably do considerably better.

For instance, as Arthur Versluis points out, in The Philosophy of Magic, pitch from a pine tree, being the
excrescence of a wound in the tree, provides a good poultice, just as vines, being similar to veins and are
probably efficacious in aiding circulation.  Yellow plants, closely aligned with the color of jaundice, are
helpful in treating liver ailments . . .  There is nothing whatever far fetched about such
correspondences: they are simple common sense, drawn from the principle of the essential unity of man
and cosmos.  If we carry the idea of signatures far enough they can lead us into the heart of the
“everything is everything else” gnosis, wherein, as a spider, one can occupy the center and be connected
to every strand in the universal web.

E. E. Rehmus, The Magician’s Dictionary:    An Apocalyptic Cyclopaedia of Advanced Magic(k)al Arts and

Alternate Meanings  (Los Angeles:  Feral House, 1990)

                As used in Magick, established, traditional correspondences between Qaballistic concepts and
Gods, Planets, gems, perfumes, and any- and everything else in the Universe are exploited to develop
methods of reinforcing the power of ritual.  That is, during ritual invocation, used to call down or call in a
God – the Intelligence informing one or another universal process such as, e.g., Love, War, Benevolence,
Fertility, Birth, Death, etc. – various things are used during the course of the ritual to establish within the
mind of the Operator an overwhelming vision or impression of that God, in order to create an identity
between the God as conceived within the Operator (the Microprosopus) and that same God as found at
large in the Universe or Multiverse (the Macroprosopus).  Anything and everything that helps to that
end can be and has been used in this way during rituals.  For example, during invocations of Venus, the
Goddess of Love, tapestries tinted in pastel hues, scarlet, and the color sky-blue, the gems coral, amber,
emeralds and turquoises, tea made of the herb damiana, venereal perfumes such as red sandalwood,
things made of copper (the traditional metal of Venus), the Tarot Trump The Empress,  vases full of
spring flowers, clusters of 4, 7, or 16 things (Her numbers include 4, 7, and 16);  copper pennies would
serve well in this context), and other things traditionally associated with Venus might be used as ritual
adornments, to help build up in the Operator’s mind a powerful impression of the presence of that
Goddess until it is possible for the Operator to identify him- or herself completely with Venus and
successfully complete the invocation.

                There may be more to this than psychology, however.  In a sense, the universe behaves as if it
were a vast hologram in which all matter and energy constitute a series of relatively but ultimately
ephemeral forms, each of which enjoys a certain amount of autonomy, but which is ultimately based on
a process, a sort of universal flux constituting the universe as a whole which gives rise from time to time
to such forms.  As the eminent biologist Lyall Watson puts it:

Any part of a hologram is a point in space, and yet it contains information about things at other
points.  Actually, the hologram plate is merely a convenient way of recording what is happening n that
region of space.  What happens is that there is a movement of light there, and it seems that embraced in
that movement is a mass of information about events taking place in other spaces.  Cameras have
always told us that, but what the hologram says is that any old point in space will do.  They all embrace
everything happening everywhere.

David Bohm, an imaginative physicist based at Birkbeck College in London, has used this discovery as the
starting point for a new description of reality which he calls the enfolded order.

Newton’s laws of motion make it possible to determine the position occupied by an object in space at a
series of times.  They assume that it is the same object which moves from place to place.  Bohm suggests
that what happens is that the object does not move, but is created again in each new position.*  It folds
like the tents of the Arabs and silently steals away;  and each time it unfolds and reappears, its form is
generally similar, but there are differences in detail.  In other words, our description of an object, what
we like to think of as objective reality, is merely an appearance which is abstracted from a hidden
flow.  No unfolded object has an independent, substantial existence in its own right;  it depends on the
folded order for its form.

*This idea is virtually identical to the Islamic philosophic concept of occasionalism, the idea that all that
exists is (re-)created anew by Allah from moment to moment, i.e., from occasion to occasion.

Imagine an insoluble ink droplet placed in a viscous fluid.  If the fluid is stirred slowly by a mechanical
device, the droplet will be drawn out into a fine thread folded into the system in such a way that it is no
longer visible to the naked eye.  But if the machine is reversed, the fine thread will slowly gather
together until it once again unfolds and appears as a visible droplet.

Suppose that a droplet is folded into the syrup in this way.  Another droplet is then introduced at a
slightly different position, and it too is folded in the same number of times.  Repeat this with a whole
series of droplets in progressively different positions.  Then start unfolding.

What will happen is that each of the droplets will appear briefly before being folded back in again in the
opposite direction.  And if the stirrer moves fast enough to produce, say, twenty-four droplets per
second like the frames in a film, an object that looks like a single droplet will appear to move through
the fluid.  There is, however, no such object.  It is an illusion whose existence depends entirely on the
fluid.

With the hologram we have found a way of showing how this works for light, but the same rules could
apply to sound or to the movement of electrons.
So what Boehm is suggesting is that matter, all matter, can be understood as a set of forms, which enjoy
a certain amount of autonomy, but are really based on a process – a sort of universal flux. Matter is
independent enough to be investigated in itself, but only up to a point.  You can discover a particle’s
position or its velocity, but not both.  Some things can never be known, because ultimately there are no
particles.

So I and the squid, the sea and the reef, and the rocks on which we all rest, are only relatively stable
forms derived from the flux.  Anything that can be seen or heard or handled by scientific instruments is
an abstraction unfolded from the invisible, inaudible, intangible ground of all matter.

I like the idea.  It fits in rather well with our general experience of things.  In fact, it even begins to make
some kind of sense of purely mental forms.  Thoughts can be considered as particular objects unfolded
from the deeper ground movement of mind.  And everything, the whole of existence, can be seen to
have its origins in a single source – universal life energy.

Exercising my bias as a biologist, I suspect that there must be degrees of folded ness.  I would expect to
find that living organisms have some sort of hot line, a more direct connection with the energy source
than inanimate matter could have or would need.  And that we lose this link, our lifeline, we cease to be
subscribers to the service, when we die.

Lyall Watson, gifts of Unknown Things (New York:  Simon & Schuster, 1976), pp. 39-41

So you might say that Magick is the Art and Science of folding and unfolding reality according to the Will
of the Operator.  Given that, then, Magickal correspondences of the sort established by Qaballistic and
Magickal theory are equivalent to blueprints or recipes instructing the unconscious mind of the
Operator where to grab hold of reality and how to fold or unfold it to bring into manifestation that
which is in conformity with his or her Will.

The true Magickal Machine is the living organism – i.e., you and I and everything else that lives, up to
and including Gaia, the living Earth described by James Lovelock and his colleagues in their work on
planetary physiology, and worshipped as the primordial aspect of the Great Spirit by almost all
cultures.*  It is necessary to understand how this machine works in order to get the most and best
results out of use of Spare Sigils;  after all, the mind is part of that machine, and the greater the mind’s
comprehension of the mechanisms underlying its own operation and that of the organism of which it is
part, the more thoroughly it can cooperate in and reinforce the performance of the Magickal Machine.

 
*This is reflected, albeit in a muted form, even in Judeo-Christian cultures.  For example, in the Book of
Revelations,   it says to “honor the Earth and its creatures.”

The Magickal Machine has both physical and para physical (biophysical) aspects, the latter including,
e.g., telepathy, telekinesis, etc.  These two types of functioning aren’t separate;  rather, like two sides of
a coin, they are inextricably integrated in function and form.  The physical aspects includes the sexual
organs and the complete neuroendocrine system (NES) of the body;  the para physical aspect comprises
the Chakra system, which may be thought of as comprising those organs of the Body of Light that
perform the same functions for it that the organs of the NES does for the physical body, and which are
the ultimate targets of acupuncture.

The Chakras that are most important to the operation of the Magickal Machine are those associated
with the central nervous system (CNS), the genitalia, and the mid-line of the body in general.  They
include the “invisible Chakras,”* which aren’t on or in the physical body at all, but rather are located on
an esoteric umbilicus reaching from the center of the Earth up through its surface, between the
organism’s hind feet and legs to the base of its spine, or on a similar linkage between the crown of the
head and the true center of the 16-dimensional universe, outside the space-time “skin” of the universe
as we normally perceive it to be.**†

*In acupuncture, these are associated to some extent with “ghost points,” which are acupuncture
meridians and points that are actually on the physical body, but stimulation of which can affect things
outside the physical body.  Stimulation of these points via moxybustion, acupuncture, Reiki, and shiatsu
massage has been used with great success in exorcisms, including exorcism of poltergeists from places in
which the patient lives in cases in which the patient is clearly not the source of the poltergeist attacks,
even through telekinesis.

**These umbilici may be best described in terms of “string theory.”  The essence of string theory is that
it can explain the nature of both matter and space-time.  It answers a series of puzzling questions about
particles.  Each string is only 10-20times the size of – 100 billion billion times smaller than – a proton is
vibrating, and each mode of vibration represents and distinct resonance or particle.  The string s so
egregiously small that, from a distance, the resonance of a string and a particle is indistinguishable.  The
particle is not a point at all, but a mode of a vibrating string. Thus each subatomic particle corresponds
to a distinct resonance that vibrates only at a distinct frequency.  Such particles aren’t by themselves
fundamental in nature;  it is the string that is fundamental, and it is its vibrations which comprise
particles – matter is nothing but the harmonies created by this vibrating string.  This idea bears a striking
resemblance to the concept of “enfolded ness” developed by David Bohm and described by Lyall
Watson, quoted above.  For more on string and super-string theory, see Michio Kaku, Hyperspace:    A
Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10 th  Dimension (New York:  Oxford
University Press, 1994), pp. viii, 16, 152-183, 335n.1, 345n.10.

 †In the case of beings that do not possess bilateral symmetry, such as most true plants, algae, fungi,
protistans, and many invertebrate animals, the Basal Chakra, which is vertebrates such as ourselves is
located at the base of the spine, is sited at the center of mass of the organs of elimination and/or those
of reproduction, whichever is more centralized.  The Crown Chakra, which in vertebrates is located at
the crown of the skull, in other beings is located at the center of mass of the CNS and/or that of the
organs of sight, whichever is most completely centralized.

Magickal operations are initiated by stimulating the mind with images, sounds and music, perfumes,
colors, drugs, and sensations appropriate to the aim of the particular Magickal Operation under
consideration.  For example, Venereal Workings, dedicated to the Goddess of Love, employ images of
sexuality, sensuality, and luxury;  Tarot Trump III, The Empress;  tinctures of the herb damiana, which
generates sexual arousal;  the colors bright green, spring green, olive green, amber, sky-blue, and
patterns of cerise and green such as are displayed on the leaves of coleus plants;  perfumes and incenses
such as rose and red sandalwood;  jewelry made of emeralds, other green stones, turquoises, and
copper, sacred to Venus;  a vase of roses – the flower of Venus – on the altar;  etc.

The result of this constellation of stimuli is that the body and its spiritual analog, the Body of Light, begin
to drawn Kundalini energy up from the center of the Earth via the “invisible” Earth Chakras, which are
ruled by the Outer Planets, up to the basal Chakra at the base of the spine, which is ruled by
Saturn.  This phenomenon is known asKundalini rising.

As the mind and its primary throne, the CNS and the endocrine system, become more and more excited
due to this stimulation, the current of Kundalini energy that is being drawn up into the organism
becomes stronger and stronger.  Eventually it begins to rise up along the spinal Chakras, which are ruled
by the Inner Planets.  Here, the basic processes of the physical body and the Body of Light cohere this
energy in exactly the same essential way in which a laser operates, polarizing them so that they are
concentrated into a tight, narrow stream which arrives at its target with maximal impact.

The target for these energies is the mid-brain sub-system of the CNS/NES, the limbic or emotional brain,
an ancient, elegant marriage of neurological and endocrine systems that began to evolve from the even
older “reptilian” stem brain during the Early Permian, some 286 million years ago.   When the energies
that are rising higher and higher in the spinal Chakra system are strong enough and coherent enough,
they finally erupt in bursts that strike the pineal gland, a small, reddish, cone-shaped endocrine gland
lying deep in the brain, sited at the midpoint of a line drawn through the skull through points on either
side of the head just below the ears.  From ancient times, the pineal gland has been called the “Seat of
the Soul”;  in many ways it deserves that epithet, for it is the source of serotonin, the stuff of dreams
and visions, a hormone that is critically involved not only in sleep, particularly REM sleep, but also para
physical functioning, above all psychic and clairvoyant perception.  Here, electrons in the atoms of the
material that makes up the pineal gland, hyper-excited by the barrage of Kundalini energy pouring in
from the top of the spine, begin to leave their parent atoms, making their way in an electronic flood-tide
toward the pituitary, another endocrine gland in the mid-brain that is involved in regulation of the
endocrine system as a whole as well as the growth and development of the organism.  Stimulated by
this bombardment of b-particles, the pituitary shuttles the electrons and the kinetic energy they carry
back to the pineal body, which is still being bombarded from below by the Kundalini energy rising up the
spinal Chakras.

The incoming Kundalini energy is transformed by the pineal body into kinetic energy and added to that
already imported to the electrons which have just been returned to the pineal gland from the pituitary,
and they become even more energetic.  Out they go again to the pineal gland;  and so the cycle
continues, again and again, the pituitary and the pineal gland together acting as a living cyclotron,
shuttling electrons back and forth between them, faster and faster, transforming more and more of the
Kundalini energy erupting from the spinal chakra into kinetic energy associated with these electrons.

Finally, the electrons now pouring back and forth through the circuit connecting the pineal gland and the
pituitary become so excited that they can no longer be constrained by the combined action of the pineal
and pituitary glands.  At this point, they are “fired” out through the Crown Chakra, ruled by Pluto, which
in vertebrates such as us are located at the top of the skull.  At this, the climax of the organism’s arousal
due to the stimulations of the Working, the energy from the pineal-pituitary system thus released
through the Crown Chakra “takes a print” on its way out of the CNS/NES of whatever electronic patterns
are present in the brain at that moment, especially strongly redundant ones representing thoughts,
ideas, and feelings that have been continuously introduced to and reinforced in the organism
throughout the Working.*  And because of the holographic nature of reality, since these patterns are
thus introduced to the universe at large when the Kundalini energy called up in the Working is “fired”
from the Crown Chakra, eventually they must manifest in physical form one way or another.  In this way
Magickal Workings come to have manifest, tangible results, coming to fruition on the physical, social,
and biological planes in ways first determined by the psycho spiritual stimuli presented to the mind of
the organism during the Working.**
 

*In his beautiful book Gifts of Unknown Things (New York:  Simon & Schuster, 1976), op. cit., the
distinguished biologist and naturalist Lyall Watson discusses the work of the physicist David Boehm, the
developer of the new description of reality which Boehm calls “the enfolded order.” Based on research
into the nature of holograms, as previously described, Boehm has developed the idea that matter, all
matter, can be understood as a set of forms which exhibit a certain degree of autonomy but which are
actually based on a process, a sort of universal flux. Ultimately, says Boehm, there are no
particles.  There are only relatively stable forms derived from that universal flow.  Anything that can be
seen, heard, or handled by scientific instruments is an abstraction unfolded from the invisible, inaudible,
intangible ground of all matter (ibid.,  pp. 39-41 and passim.  So, if Boehm is right, the result of Kundalini
rising that occurs during Magickal operations is an unfolding of new abstractions from the ground of
matter/energy Boehm describes, which ideally conform to the Will of the Operator.

**In invertebrates performing their own brands of Magick, animals or otherwise, who don’t possess a
neuroendocrine system like ours, different organ-systems with similar functions carry out the activities
that in us are mediated by our endocrine glands, spinal cord, and brain.  Determining which tissues,
organs, and organ-systems are used by the organism during such Magickal activities in non-vertebrate
animals, plants, fungi, etc. would be a fascinating area for research, particularly because, scientifically
and Hermetically speaking, it is virtually virgin territory, deserving far more work, on a vastly more
intensive scale, than has ever been devoted to it.

                It is in this connection that the correspondences of Qaballah are put to their most powerful
uses.  Another way of looking at Bohm’s new concept of reality, it is as if the Universe or Multiverse
were a gigantic computer, one of which we, too, were part, and reality simply our experience of the
state of that computer and any changes going on in it at a given time t.  You could say, then, that Magick
involved reprogramming that computer from the inside, by one or more of its own components (the
Operator[s]),and that the correspondences of Qaballah and Magick were addressing functions used by
the programmer (the Operator) to cause the computer to manifest whatever state he or she wanted at
the time.  The greater the redundancy of the signature of the Gods or Spirits the Operator is trying to
invoke or evoke in the various ritual furniture and activities used during the Working, the greater the
repetition of the address of the Being which the Operator is calling in or up and the stronger the
identification between the Operator and that Being, until finally the Operator’s Will becomes identical to
its Will, and as that Being the Operator can bring into manifestation the reality he or she desires.
                Anything that serves in the process of ritual reinforcement is grist for the mill. Anything.  It can
be something as trivial or mundane as a bus-ticket, a condom, or the float from a toilet-tank, or as
“spiritual” and idealized as a prayer, a hymn, the religious music of Mozart, or the Chartres
Cathedral.  As long as it helps build up and reinforce the identity between the Operator – or, at least, his
or her deep unconscious mind – and the Being which he or she is trying to call via the ritual under
consideration, it is appropriate to the ritual and will help the Operator to bring about change in the
Universe or Multiverse in conformity with his or her Will.

                Therefore, in the following descriptions of the Sephiroth and Paths in this Lesson and the one
following it, I have tried to provide a fairly comprehensive and rather eclectic list of correspondences for
each Sephiroth or Path, to give an idea of the sort of things that might be appropriate for a ritual
Working, whether invocation or evocation, devoted to that Key.  No such list can ever be all-inclusive,
because ideally everything that exists or could exist can be associated with one or more of the Qaballistic
Keys, and any such list would have to be infinite in extent.  Even a merely very long list would tax the
space available here for exhibiting it, not to mention the student’s patience!  So I have tried, in each
case, to give a good idea of the sort of things that might be associated with a given Key, with the
underlying assumption that the intelligent reader, no matter how little he or she might know about any
of the esoteric Arts and Sciences, will get the general idea and fill in that list with whatever other
associations he or she finds appropriate for that Key.

In two cases, I have given virtually every single instance of a particular category of things as
correspondences to various Keys.  One of these includes the ten Commandments, from the Book of
Deuteronomy in the Old Testament;  this is because, historically speaking, the Qaballah was originally
developed as a system of metaphysics based strictly upon the Holy Books and religious philosophy of
Judaism, and the tenSephiroth are in fact exact correspondences to the Ten Commandments first given
by Moishe Rabbinu to the Children of Israel at the foot of Mt. Sinai.

The second case is that of the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United
States of America.  The USA was originally founded and the U.S. Constitution created by a group of men
all of whom were Deists, and the majority of whom were Masons and well-acquainted with Qaballah
and its uses in Magick.  That these men came up with exactly ten – “Ten, and not nine;  ten, and not
eleven;  ten.” – amendments to the Constitution, leaving it to the future to add more, if any, may have
been no accident;  it isn’t entirely impossible that they had the Ten Commandments and the
ten Sephiroth of Qaballah in mind when they first drew up the Bill of Rights.  So I have also included
those here and in Lesson III, as appropriate, as correspondences with the ten Sephiroth and Keys 11-20
(Trumps I-X) of the Qaballah.  For the purposes of mundane Magick, i.e., Magick applied to worldly
affairs, especially politics, environmental considerations, and other global concerns, the Bill of Rights
may be considered as a sort of secular version of the Ten Commandments, though applied to
governments rather than the governed – man’s answer not to God, but rather to other men who would
set themselves up as Gods.  For such Workings, the first ten amendments to the US Constitution may be
used as close correspondences with the traditional ten Sephiroth in the same way that any other
correspondences would, not only to reinforce the power of ritual, but also to direct it toward specific
aims, goals, and targets.
Again, because of the necessity to conserve space and out of the belief that students of this material are
intelligent and can decide for themselves whether a given correspondence given here is appropriate
and, if so, why it is, I have not always gone into detail as to the rationale for including that particular
item as part of the list of correspondences for a given Key in either this lesson or the following
one. Unfortunately, I must leave a good deal of that up to the student, simply because it isn’t possible to
provide all-inclusive such lists or explanations for them.  If you, the student, find any of the
correspondences given here questionable or their employment in Magick or anything else useless or
even counterproductive, then scratch them off your list (or, if you are reading this with the aid of a
word-processor, use your Delete key for that purpose).  If you aren’t sure of why I have included one or
whether it is appropriate, in the Bibliography for this course I have included a lengthy list of texts that
could be of great help in that respect.

In addition, Liber 777-Plus, my own extension of Aleister Crowley’s Liber 777(there are probably a great
many other such out there, by a great many authors;  I make no claims as to being unique in that
respect) may prove useful by way of providing much longer, more complete and representative lists of
correspondences not only for the traditional 32 Keys of Qaballah, but also for the 94+ new Keys that are
included in the new 16-Sephiroth, English-language Qaballah mentioned in these lessons and discussed
in detail in Part 1, Book 2 of Volume 3 of my text on Magick, New Magicks for a New Age.

I would welcome any comments, questions, and constructive criticisms readers of these notes might
have for me.  You can contact me for that purpose on the Internet at polaris93@aol.com.

The Ten Commandments, the Bill of Rights, etc.

B.  The Lower Arcana of the Tarot and the Ten  Sephiroth of the Tree of Life

        1.  Sephirah 1, Kether, and the four Aces of the Tarot

                a.  The Sephirah

        Kether (“Crown”).  Sphere of Pluto ß or î*

*The first symbol is formed of the initials for the astronomer Percival Lowell, whose assistant, Clyde
Tombaugh, actually discovered Pluto – a capital “P” for Percival, whose upright is shared with the capital
“L” of “Lowell,” the foot of which projects from the upright to the right:  the “footed P.”   The other
symbol is a sigil incorporating the Circle of Spirit above an upturned Crescent of Soul, which in turn
surmounts the Cross of Matter.

        Dion Fortune says of Kether:

Kether, the first Manifest, represents the primal crystallization into manifestation of that which was
hitherto unmanifest and therefore unknowable by us.

In Kether there is no form but only pure being . . . .  It is . . . a latency only one degree removed from
nonexistence.

Kether . . . is the One, and existed before there was any reflection of it to serve it for an image in
consciousness and set up polarity.4

        In his Hermetic lexicon, Liber 777, Aleister Crowley gives for the Magickal image of Kether an
“ancient bearded king seen in profile.” 5

        In his tour de force of modern Western Qaballism, A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism, Gareth
Knight gives these attributes for Kether:

                                                                         GOD NAME:                An ancient bearded king, seen in profile

                                                                         GOD NAME:                h y h a – Eheieh

                                                                      ARCHANGEL:                Metatron

                                                          ORDER OF ANGELS:                Chaloth ha Qadesh, Holy Living Creatures

                                                      MUNDANE CHAKRA:                Primum Mobile.  First Swirlings.

                                                                                VIRTUE:                Attainment.  Completion of the Great

Work.

                                                                                 TITLES:                Existence of Existences.  Concealed of the

Concealed.  Ancient of Ancients.  Ancient of Days. The Smooth Point.  The Primordial Point.  The Most
High.  The Vast Countenance.  The White head.  The Head Which is Not.  Macroprosopos.
                                                SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE:                Union with God.

                                                       ATZILUTHIC COLOR:                Brilliance.

                                                                BRIATIC COLOR:                Pure white brilliance.

                                                        YETZIRATIC COLOR:                Pure white brilliance.

                                                             ASSIATIC COLOR:                White, flecked gold.

                                                                                      VICE:                [Knight gives none.    However, the vice

best assigned to  Kether  and Pluto would seem to be raw hunger for power in any form.    The major sin
of  Kether  would be denial of the unity of God.]

                                                                            SYMBOLS:                The point.  The point within a circle. The

crown.  The swastika.5a

As he tells us:

Kether is the fount of Creation, the point where life wells up from the deeps of the Great Unmanifest.  It
is manifestation on the point of becoming manifest, the centre crystallized in the midst of Non-being,
containing within it the potentialities of all to come.  It is the supreme height of Godhead . . . .

...

As the Yetziratic Text says, it is the Primal Glory, because no created being can attain to its
essence.  Were any created being to attain to its essence, which according to the Spiritual Experience is
Union with God, it would by that very fact become uncreated.  Yet this is the goal of all evolution as the
Virtue of Kether reveals, Attainment, Completion of the Great Work.  The Great Work, a term often met
with in magical and alchemical writings, is the great work of life itself, the death of free-moving spirit
into form and its subsequent regeneration. 5b

Mythological and religiously speaking, all the Creator Gods, Male and Female, are associated
with Kether, especially the uncreated (“Bornless”) ones which, arising from the Waters of Chaos, create
the universe out of Themselves or Nothing (Ain).  These include the Egyptian Gods Djehuti, Black Isis,
and Osiris;  the Northwest American Indian create-trickster Raven;  the North American Indian spirit
Spider-Woman;  and all the other Gods that created the Universe and all in it from nothing more than
their own substance, and were Themselves created by no other God.

Kether is the first and highest of the Supernals, the triad of Sephiroth at the top of the Tree of
Life.  Ketherrepresents God the Creator;  Chokmah, Sephirah 2, represents Adam, Man, father of
humanity;  Binah,Sephirah 3, represents Eve, Woman, mother of humanity;  and the three Supernals
together represent humanity in its unfallen state in the Garden of Eden, able to walk and talk with God
and understand the languages of all things. The Supernals as a collective also represent the Enlightened
Ones who have achieved Samadhi and have become One with all things (Kether itself represents
attainment of Samadhi as an event).  The number of the ruler of the Supernals, Kether, 1, signifies that
above the Abyss, all contradictions are resolved in divine Unity.

Being the purest and highest of the Sephiroth, the Supernals are represented not by colors as such but
instead by the Contrasts:  Kether, by pure white, the apotheosis of all light; Binah, by pure black, the
apotheosis of all color;  and Chokmah, by gray; the transition between white and black, the shadow and
the Wisdom that understands that existence is never a matter of all black or all white.

“As above, so below.”  The Tree of Life has its distorted reflection in the Tree of Evil, just as the Heavens
and Empyrean of Dante’s Divine Comedy have theirs in the Inferno.  In Canto XXXIV of Dante’s Inferno,
Virgil bids Dante look upon the face of Satan, the Lord of Evil.  Dante reports, concerning Satan:

If he was truly once as beautiful

        As he is ugly now, and raised his brows

Against his Maker – then all sorrow may well

Come out of him.  How great a marvel it was

For me to see three faces on his head:

In front there was a red one;  joined to this,

Each over the midpoint of a shoulder, he had

Two others – all three joining in a crown.

That on the right appeared to be a shade

 
Of whitish yellow;  the third had such a mien

As those who come from where the Nile descends.

Two wings spread forth from under each face’s chin,

Strong, and befitting such a bird, immense –

I have never seen at sea so broad a sail –

Unfeathered, batlike, and issuing three winds

That went forth as he beat them, to freeze through  whole

Realm of Cocytus that surrounded him.

He wept with all six eyes, and the tears fell

Over his three chins mingled with bloody foam.

The teeth of each mouth held a sinner, kept

As by a flax rake:  thus he held three of them

In agony.  For the one the front mouth gripped,

The teeth were as nothing to the claws, which sliced

And tore the skin until his back was stripped.

‘That soul,’ my master said, ‘who suffers most,

Is Judas Iscariot, head locked inside,

He flails his legs.  Of the other two, who twist

With their heads down, the black mouth holds the shade
Of Brutus;  writhing, but not a word will he scream;

Cassius is the sinewy one on the other side. . . .’*

*The Inferno of Dante:    A New Verse Translation.  Robert Pinsky, editor (Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
1994), pp. 366-369, Canto XXXIV, lines 37-66.

Red in front, white to the right, black to the left – these can be equated with the vices and sins of the
Supernals:  the “red to the front,” i.e., in the middle, represents the vices and sins of Kether, all
associated with overweening lust for power over others and the perversion of the Will against Life
itself;  white on the right represents the vices and sins of Chokmah, associated with addictions of all
kinds, idolatry, perversions, sadism, cruelty, masochism, and horror, all the results of the seduction of
the Will by evil;  and the black face on the left represents Binah, associated with the malefic
employment of the Divine Names, black Magick, and sorcery of any kind.  In Taoist symbolism, red
represents life itself, the pulsing beat of blood in the body;  white represents death, i.e., the absence of
blood and its vitality;  and black represents chi, the vital, fertile ground out of which all things come to
be.  In that system, red could be associated with Kether, white with Chokmah, and black withChokmah,
for Kether  is the first impulse of life itself, Chokmah is the wisdom that accepts that all who live must
die, and Binah represents both the mother who gives birth to all and the matrix of the space-time
continuum out of which Magick can shape any reality desired.  So Dante’s color-coded symbolism for the
Faces of Evil actually accords rather well with the vices associated with the Supernals:  red, for the
perversions of Will and of the primordial life-springs of existence that are the sins of Kether;    white, for
the denial that all of us are mortal and the seductions of the Will that maintain that Lie that are the sins
of Chokmah;  and black, for the Faustian sins ofBinah that involve the malefic employment of the Arts
and Sciences of the Spirit, i.e., black Magick in all its forms.

        Because of its associations with Pluto and thus with Scorpio and Aries, the following may all be used
to represent Kether (and thus would be appropriate images for the Aces of the Tarot, as
well):  diamonds, lavas, or any other stone formed deep in the hottest parts of the Earth’s crust, near
the boundary of the crust and the mantle;  the metallic inner core of the Earth;  artificial stones of all
kinds;  the metal plutonium, as well as platinum and white gold (which is either platinum-plated gold, an
amalgam of iridium and platinum, or a mixture of nickel and gold);  volcanism, especially active
volcanoes;  the surgeon’s scalpel;  the first shoots and buds of Spring, and births of any kind;  deserts
and desert animals, particularly the Scorpion (the desert suggests Scorpio by its insistent absence of
water, so that Water becomes Power and Life on the desert);  wells, swamps, marshes, still deep lakes,
the de-oxygenated depths of the ocean, and sewers; dragons, Salamanders, and the Phoenix (dragons
breathe fire, Salamanders [the heraldic and mythological sort] live in fire, and the Phoenix is
regenerated in it); eagles, especially the American eagle (because of their associations with
Scorpio);  fire in any form, including the leonine, Solar form;  nuclear and thermonuclear explosions, and
nuclear and thermonuclear power in any form;  the chief executive of any government;  Gods such as
the Hindu Kali (death and destruction), the Polynesian Pere/Pele (volcanism), the Hindu Agni (Lord of
fire), and Hades (the Greek Pluto);  anything suggesting power in any form; almond trees;  skulls and
skeletons;  the Elixir Vitae (the drug of Kether);  the perfume ambergris;  the tools of Alchemy;  the forge
and the other things pertinent to the Smith and his smithy;  the Cook, his/her tools, and the
kitchen;  and images of birth, death, regeneration, and resurrection of all kinds.

        Each traditional Sephirah has associated with it one of the first ten Amendments to the United
States Constitution (Articles of the Bill of Rights) and one of the Ten Commandments.*  The First
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is associated with Kether:

*The Sephiroth collectively symbolize Torah, as represented by the Ten Commandments.  The Paths and

the letters of the Hebrew alphabet associated with them represent the Talmud, the Commentaries on
Torah.

Article I

Religious establishment prohibited.  Freedom of speech,

And the press, and the right to petition.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof;  or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;  or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
 

        The Commandment associated with Kether is:

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

You shall have no other gods before me.

        Exodus 20:2-3, Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version

b.       The four Aces

        Tarot represents Kether by means of the four Aces.  The designs of the Aces, unlike those of other
numbered cards of the Lower Arcana, are somewhat problematical, because the set of concepts
embodied byKether and represented by the Aces are so abstract that they are, in the words of one
philosopher, “one stage above non-existence.”  Aleister Crowley says of the Aces that

[t]he Aces represent the roots of the four elements.  They are quite above, and distinct from, the other
small cards in the same way as Kether is said to be symbolized only by the topmost point of the Yod of
Tetragrammaton.  In these cards is no real manifestation of the element in the material form.  They
form a link between the small cards [those numbered Two through Ten] and the Princesses [of the Court
Cards], who rule the Heavens around the North Pole. . . .

...

. . . [B]oth in their appearance and in their meaning, the Aces are not the elements themselves, but the
seeds of those elements.*6

*Italics mine.

 
 

        According to both Crowley, in Liber 777, and the Golden Dawn, the titles and attributions of the four
Aces, each of which represents one of the four primary or elementary aspects of Kether, is “The Root of
the Powers of Fire” (Wands or Staves [Clubs], for the Element Fire;  “the Root of the Powers of Water”
(Cups or Chalices [Hearts]), for the Element Water;  “the Root of the Powers of Air” (Swords
[spades]);  and “the Root of the Powers of Earth” (Coins, Discs, or Pentacles [Diamonds]). 7  This doesn’t
give much to go on.  However, for his Rider Tarot pack, Arthur Edward Waite used an interesting device
which also suggests something about the interrelationship between human spirit or will and the human
hand, the means by which that spirit becomes most powerfully manifest in the world, whether by
building, destroying, or in the more esoteric activities involved with spoken and written language.  In
each of the four Aces of his pack there is shown a hand issuing from a cloud, holding up the symbol of
the Suit to which that Ace belongs.

        For example of the Ace of Wands, he gives “[a] hand issuing from a cloud [grasping] a stout want or
club.”8 Kether is so removed from ordinary human experience that on a conscious level we are able to
grasp almost nothing of its essence.  But the essential core of its meaning is energy, the basic power and
activity of the Elements, as divorced from the multitudinous manifest forms of their expression shown in
the other cards of the Lower Arcana – energy in the raw, as it were, considered apart from the matter
which is its apotheosis.  The device of a hand coming out of nowhere and bearing up the symbol of the
Suit is thus an excellent choice for a representation of Kether and the Aces.  For of all parts of the body
of an individual human being, none so completely symbolizes the totality of human behavior, history,
and experience as the hand.  The hand, always in motion, carries out the greatest achievements of the
human spirit, from the creation of great literature to the building of cathedrals, as well as accomplishing
acts of murder and theft.  Even a deaf or dumb man can converse fluently with others if he hands,
through the miracle of the written word and Ameslan.  The hand makes love, holds an infant – indeed,
delivers a newborn, gathers stones together and throws them away, makes war with a sword and peace
with a pen, creates the works of Shakespeare and Goethe as well as Hitler, builds a factory that fills the
environment with deadly pollution and launches and crews a ship that sets out to save the whales, and
in every other way makes our world what it is.  Its God is Hermes-Djehuti, Lord of Magick and Cunning,
the Bright Swift One Who rules the Winds and the Mind.  Like its Lord, the hand is ever-darting, ever-
moving, never-ceasing in the quick fluid motions by which it makes and unmakes worlds in stone, flesh,
and the printed word.  What better symbol of the energy represented by Kether, whether the abstract
energy of Newton’s world or the infinitely complex movement and permutations of the biophysical
universe in which we live today?

        Another way in which the Sephiroth may be pictorially represented in the Tarot is in terms of the
geometrical figures appropriate to each Sephirah.  In the case of Sephirah 1, Kether, this would be the
Circle, the most perfect figure, representing the Perfection of God Who, as Augustine tells us, is itself the
“Circle Whose Center is everywhere and Whose Circumference is nowhere.”  The Circle has just one
“side,” its circumference, and is therefore appropriate for representing the first Sephirah, whose Key
Number is 1.  Some schools of hermetic thought assign the Point to Kether and the Circle to the
Zeros, Ain, Ain Soph, and Ain Soph Aur.9  But since the Point has no dimension at all and therefore no
extension, it could be considered to be more appropriate to the Zeros, and the Circle to Kether.*

*Other figures that might be appropriate for representations of Kether on the Aces are the Möbius Strip,
a figure with but one side and one edge, and the Klein Bottle, a figure which has only once surface.  The
first figure can only be represented in 3 dimensions, the second in 4;  the Möbius Strip seems to have
two sides and two edges, but because of the half-twist in it has but one, and the Klein Bottle seems to
be a two-sided surface, but has only one surface.  Higher-order figures like these, created by means of
1½, 2½, 3½ . . . twists, are in the same family, and could also be used.  So could the Wild Sphere, which is
created by pulling out the surface of a sphere like taffy on two sides until the extensions almost meet,
then dividing each extension’s tip into two “horns” and extending these to intertwine but not tie a knot
with the “horns” of the other extension, then doing the same to those, ad infinitum, as follows:

        It is the Circle within which the Magickian stands when performing a Magickal Operation of any
kind, for the Circle represents God, and whoever stands within it is thus identified with God and within
the Grace and Power of God, under the aegis of divine protection.  In all rituals of Ceremonial Magick,
no matter what else is done, the Magickian first invokes (“calls in”) the God or Archangel  type of
Operation which the Magickian wishes to perform,  In calling-in the Light of this God, the Magickian thus
recalls Genesis I:3, the first act of Creation:  “Let there be Light.”  That verse is assigned to Kether, and so
is the Circle which helps recall it.

        Astrology also lends itself to pictorial symbols of Kether that might be appropriate to the four Aces
of the Tarot.  For example, Kether’s Planet is Pluto, whose Gods are
Pluto;  Pluton;  Dis;  Hades;  Kali;  Agni; Ta’aroa/Kanaloa, the Polynesian Lord of Hell and the Deep
Sea);  Pere/Pele, Ta’aroa’s sister/wife, Lord of Volcanism;  Baron Samedhi, the Voudon Lord of
Death;  the Grim Reaper;  and all the other Gods of Death, Power, vast wealth, buried treasure, and final
judgment.  Its metal is plutonium, out of which was created the bomb that destroyed the living city of
Nagasaki in a fiery holocaust that shattered the expectations of the world and put it on a new,
inconceivably perilous path into the future.  A painting of a hypothetical view of the Planet Pluto, or a
photograph of His surface taken by a robot or manned space-probe, a photograph o9f Nagasaki just
after it was destroyed by the Bomb, a picture of a cemetery or morgue, or one of any great fire would
thus be an excellent starting-point for illustrating an Ace.
        But Pluto doesn’t just represent death and destruction.  He also rules birth, transformation,
regeneration, transmutation, renewal, and resurrection.  Pictures of birth and beginnings are therefore
also highly appropriate to the Aces.  A picture of an open, empty tomb at dawn, representing the
resurrection of Christ, would be a perfect symbol for them;  so would a Unicorn, which represents the
resurrection of the dead, rejuvenation of body and spirit, and the healing of all sickness and wounds.  A
picture of an Alchemist’s laboratory and working gear would likewise be appropriate to the Aces.  In
short, Kether,  Pluto, and the Aces represent the Ultimate, the First Breath and the Last Judgment, the
Alpha and Omega of all things, and anything symbolizing these would be appropriate to the Aces.

        Traditionally, long before the telescope made it possible for human beings to discover the existence
of Neptune and Pluto, Kether’s astrological assignment was the Primum Mobile, the spherical
Firmament within which were supposedly contained all the Heavens and the Earth in a series of
concentric spheres.  To the inner surface of the Primum Mobile were attached the Fixed Stars, and it
was the rotation of this outermost Sphere of Creation that was supposed to be responsible for the
precession of the Equinoxes and similar phenomena.  This concept could be graphically adapted for the
Aces, certainly for the Ace of Discs/Coins/Pentacles, the basic symbol for which is round or spherical to
begin with.  In fact the Pentacle, when used for the Suit representing the Element Earth, itself
represents the Pentacle, a material symbol of the Magickian’s or Qaballist’s Universe.  This can be
anything from an armillary sphere of the heavens or a globe of the Earth to a book about the universe
and what it contains.  A Tarot pack, for example, is also a Pentacle, for its cards represent all the
essential wisdom and knowledge about Creation in existence at the time the pack was designed.  So the
Primum Mobile as an armillary sphere could be used on the Ace of Pentacles to good effect, if it fit with
the design used throughout the pack as a whole.*

*The idea of using a picture of a Tarot pack on the Ace of Discs/Coins/Pentacles is rather intriguing.  It
suggests an infinite regress, something like the old cylindrical Quaker Oats cereal boxes which have a
Quaker holding a box of Quaker Oats cereal on which is a Quaker holding a box of Quaker Oats cereal on
which is . . . J

        Perhaps the most basic association with Kether is that of Light, the Light of Creation.  For this
reason, all the Aces of the Tarot have suggestions of the Power of that Light, generally in the form of
rays of illumination emanating from a central source, usually the symbol of the Suit to which the Ace
belongs.  The idea is the manner in which that Light manifests in each of the Four Realms:  the Light of
Spirit, the essence of the Will to create;  the Light of Creation itself, the first stirrings of reaction to the
Will of God in the receptive Void that is God’s medium for Creation;  the Light of Enlightenment and
Intelligence, that first consciously recognizes the existence of Creation and delineates its meaning;  and
finally the Light of Physical Manifestation, in which we experience Creation with our mundane senses, in
all its inertia and glory.  These four levels of manifestation are respectively symbolized by Wands, Staves,
or Clubs, representing Spirit and Will;  Cups, Chalices, or hearts, symbolizing Emotion and
Creativity;  Swords or Spades, representing Thought and Intellection;  and Coins, Discs, Pentacles, or
Diamonds, representing the Body, Physical Reality, a finished and whole Weltlehr.  For this reason, a
good symbol of Ketherthat could be used in the Aces would be the eye, the receiver and interpreter of
light.*

*Kether, Unity, also represents the fact that “contradiction is Unity above the Abyss.”  One of the great
paradigm shifts that have occurred in 20 th-Century physics is that which has given us a better
understanding of the nature of light.  Before the first few decades of this century and the “30 years that
shook physics,” experiments had shown that under some conditions light behaves like a wave, and
under others like a particle.  This apparent contradiction was intensely frustrating to physicists, who
were not able to resolve this apparent paradox until the publication of Einstein’s papers on the Special
and General Theories of Relativity and the work in quantum mechanics that followed this.  Today, light is
believed to be something which has both “particle-like” and “wave-like” aspects, but which is itself
neither particle nor wave, in the same way that, e.g., a building may be painted blue on one side and red
on another, but is itself not a color of any kind.  Such paradigm-shifts are one example of “crossing the
Abyss” between Chesed and Binah, in this case a collective one involving the entire world community of
scientists, scholars, philosophers, and engineers:  above the Abyss, all paradoxes and contradictions are
seen as only apparent, capable of resolution via a paradigm-shift engendering a new viewpoint that
allows one to perceive the underlying nominal unity among a bewildering variety of seemingly
contradictory and paradoxical phenomena.  Kether, the Crown, Lord of the Supernals, indicates by its
number, 1, such underlying, primordial Unity behind the ephemeral Plurality of the “real” world of our
waking senses and perceptions.  As it says on the Great Seal of the United States:  E pluribus unum.

        But any of the ruler ships of Kether  and Pluto can be used as symbols in the Aces.  For example, the
parts of the body ruled by Pluto, which include the crown of the head, the sex-organs, and the brain*
can all be used.  So could scenes representative of the biological processes peculiar to Pluto, e.g., birth,
death, such cytological phenomena as meiosis, Kundalini rising, and so forth.

*Because the brain is the most massive and complex of the sex-organs.  If you doubt that it is a sex-
organ, consider that it evolved to its present capacity and complexity in good part not only to facilitate
the finding of mates and the rituals peculiar to mating and starting a home, but also and especially to
keep track of those tricky little dickenses, the ultimate products of mating, one’s children, who would
otherwise be far too fast and agile for their poor parents to keep them out of mischief long enough to
survive and reproduce in their own turn!

        As for the divinatory meanings of the Aces, a good clue to these is the diurnal esoteric dominion of
the Planet Mercury, i.e., the Sign Aries, which rules beginnings.  The Aces show the beginnings of all
enterprises and the power inherent in all beginnings;  reversed or in bad aspect in a reading, they show
those beginnings aborted or perverted out of their original intent.  For the four Aces, A. E. Waite gives
the following:

1)     WANDS

Design:  A hand issuing from a cloud grasps a stout flowering wand or club.  It hovers high above a
landscape containing trees in leaf, a river, and a castle on a hill.  Leaves in the form of the Hebrew
letterYod drift about the branch.  A halo of light emanates from the hand holding the wand.

Upright meaning:  “Creation, invention, enterprise, the powers which result in these;  principle,

beginning, source;  birth, family, origin, and in a sense the virility which is behind them;  the starting
point of enterprises;  money, fortune, inheritance.  Calamities of all kinds.”  A successful Magickal
invocation (Kether is associated with the Circle, used to invoke the Gods).

Reversed:  “Fall, decadence, ruin, perdition, to perish;  also, a certain clouded joy;  a sign of birth
[obscure].  An invocation which has gone seriously awry, with deadly impact on the Operator and/or
those close to him/her.

2)       CUPS

Design:  Below is water, on which are water-lilies.  A hand surrounded by a halo issues from a cloud,
holding in its palm a golden chalice, from which five streams of water, accompanied on all sides by
falling dewdrops in the form of Yods, pour into a lotus pool.  A white dove which carries a cross-marked
Host in its beak (the Host is shown as a white circle with a cross on it), descends to place the Wafer in
the Chalice.  According to Waite, “It is an intimation of what which may lie behind the Lesser Arcana.”

        Upright:  “House of the true heart, joy, content, abode, nourishment, abundance, fertility;  Holy
Table, the felicity thereof.  Inflexible will, unalterable law.”

        Reversed:  “House of the false heart, mutation [suggesting transmutation, a function of the Sign
Scorpio, which is associated with this card], instability, revolution.  Unexpected changes of position.”

3)     SWORDS

Design:  A heavenly, haloed hand issues from a cloud, grasping a sword which it holds upright;  the tip of
the sword is surrounded by a crown garlanded with two branches, one of which has red
berries.  SolarYods hover over the head and hilt of the sword.  The hand and sword hover high in the
clear air above a bleak and mountainous landscape.

Upright:  “Triumph, the excessive degree in everything, conquest, triumph of force.  It is a card of great
force, in love as well as in hatred.  The crown may carry a much higher significance than comes usually
within the sphere of fortune-telling.  Great prosperity or great misery.”

Reversed:  “The same, but the results are disastrous;  another account says conception, childbirth,
augmentation, multiplicity.  For a woman, marriage broken off through her own imprudence.”

4)     COINS/DISCS/PENTACLES

Design:  An haloed hand, issuing from a cloud, holds a yellow coin in which is inscribed a
Pentagram. Below it is a garden hedged with red roses and filled with white lilies.  Through the arch of
an arbor in the hedge, to the right, can be seen the peaks of mountains, hazy blue with distance, far
away.  A path runs from the viewer through the arbor toward the mountains.  (In the pirated edition of
the Rider pack that came out in the 1960s, a serendipitously lovely effect was created when, in order to
evade copyright requirements, the publishers of the deck changed the original gray sky of this card to a
deep violet.  The resulting overall effect of the contrast between that gorgeous sky and the green of the
foliage in the card is absolutely exquisite.)

Upright:  “Perfect contentment, felicity, ecstasy;  also speedy intelligence;  gold.  The most favorable of

all the cards.”

Reversed:  “The evil side of wealth;  bad intelligence;  also great riches;  also great riches.  In any case it
shows prosperity, comfortable material conditions, but whether these are of advantage to the possessor
will depend on whether the card is reversed or not [as well as its placement in the spread and its
relationship to other cards].  A share in the finding of treasure.”10

        In the main, other sources agree with Waite on the divinatory meanings of the Tarot cards,
including the Aces.

For example, for the Ace of Wands, Paul Foster Case gives:  “Energy, strength, enterprise, principle,
beginning.”11  Exceptions include, e.g., Kahn’s “A letter, a book, an important piece of writing” 12 and
Grimaud’s “The power of man over matter.  Success due to force, force overcomes  results of force
annulled by some other force.”13  The latter is in fact closer to most interpretations given of the Ace of
Swords.  Crowley gives “Root of the powers of fire.  Blind, solar, phallic fire,”14 and William Butler, in
his Dictionary of Tarot,  suggests, “The active principle of Earth, the first emotions.  Phallic.”15  These last
two interpretations are not in contradiction with Waite’s;  rather, they address the more fundamental
Qaballistic meanings of the card rather than the issues usually addressed in horomancy, and for this
reason they may not be as useful for those not familiar with Qaballah and the other esoteric disciplines.

In addition to their association with Kether and the Planet Pluto, the Aces are also associated with the
Cherubic or Fixed astrological Signs, according to their Element.  That is, the Ace of Wands is associated
with Fire and the Fiery Fixed Sign Leo as well as the Season of Summer;  the Ace of Cups, with Water,
Scorpio, and Autumn;  the Ace of Swords, with Air, Aquarius, and Winter;  and the Ace of Coins, with
Earth, Taurus, and Spring.

Astrologically, Kether and the Aces are associated with the conjunction,  an angle or aspect of

0°. Associations for this aspect include, e.g., action, beginnings, consolidation, cycles, direction,
dynamism, emphasis, focus, initiation, intensity, intensification, the new, the personal, pioneering,
power, prominence, or unity.

Designs for America’s Tarot:*

 

1)       Ace of Wands:  Center:  A tan or medium-brown hand, red-gold hairs on its wrist, issuing from a
cloud, holding an upright Wand;  in the palm of the hand is an amber eye.  Upright:  Sequoia from
redwood forests of American Far West.  Reversed:  lone manzanita bush in the midst of a burned-out
forest.

Meaning:  Upright:  The root of the powers of Fire  inspiration.  Exercise of the Will, especially in

Magickal Operations.  Associated with the Salamander and the Lion, and thus with both David and Christ
(as the Lion of Judah).  People who have fair or sun-bleached hair, blue or green eyes, and tan or dark
skin.  Animation, enterprise, energy, growth.  The South.  Courage, hope, love.  Inimical to Cups, friendly
with Swords and Pentacles.  Summer. Glory.  Blind Solar, phallic Fire.  Beginning, strength,
principle.  Beginnings of journeys, enterprises, inventions, or families.  The power of mind over
matter.  Male libido.  Initiative.  Birth.  Innovation, pioneering, pioneer, origin, creation, initiation, news,
cause, reason, parentage, transmission of a message.  The virility and energy underlying the healthy
family.  Money, fortune, inheritance, investments, wealth.  A letter, book, or important written
work.  Reversed:  The heart.  The Sign Leo (about July 23-August 22 of a given year).  Barrenness,
sterility, most major vices.   Endings or destruction of enterprises, journeys, inventions, families. Success
due to force and oppression, force overcome, results of force annulled by some other
force. Persecution, pursuit, violence, vexation, cruelty, tyranny, oppression.  Fall, decline, descent,
depreciation, profanation, that which will happen only once and which cannot be taken back or
cancelled out.  Fall, decadence, ruin, perdition, damnation, to perish, a certain clouded joy.  Calamities
of all kinds.  A sign of birth.

2)     Ace of Cups:  Center:  A fair-skinned hand, blond hairs on its wrist, issuing from a cloud, holding a
Cup upright.  The Cup is filled with wine.  In the center of the palm of the Hand is a hazel
eye.   Upright:    Crater lake.  Reversed:  Settling-pond at Hanford nuclear reactor, glowing in the dark.

Meaning:  Upright:  Root of the powers of Water.  Admirable or Hidden Intelligence.  God.  Union with

God.  Samadhi.  Water in its most secret and original form.  The feminine counterpart of the Ace of
Wands, derived from the Yoni and the Moon.  Associated with the Eagle, the Scorpion, the Phoenix, the
Wolf, and the Serpent.  The Realm of Undine and the Nymphs.  Fertility, productiveness, beauty,
pleasure.  The coming of transcendent love, joy, contentment.  The mind filled with the spirit of
love.  Great psychic protections, knowledge which will be realized.  Plans, latent thoughts.  Passion,
inspiration.  Creative thought, dreaming, reverie.  A house.  Creative things in general.  Abundance,
perfection, joy.  Feasting, banqueting, good cheer.  The beginning of a love-affair.  Sanction, permission,
inspiration, idealism, enthusiasm, blessing.  May denote a leader, teacher, guide, or any influence of this
nature.  Legislation, direction, instruction, hospitality, sympathetic reception, driving, hunting, traveling,
planning for the future, invitation, convocation, appeal.  Detoxification.  The ending of
addictions.  House of the true heart, joy, content, dwelling, nourishment, abundance, fertility, Ark of the
Covenant, Holy Tablets (of the Ten Commandments), Torah. Inflexible Will, unalterable law.  The laws of
Nature.  The Realm of Hades-Pluto and Baron Samedhi, Lords of Scorpio.  Reversed:  The sex-organs and
the bowels.  The Solar month of Scorpio (October 23-November 21 of a given year).  The ending or
corruption of transcendent love, joy, or contentment.  The mind filled with hate. Benefits to be
scorned.  Nightmares, night-terrors, insanity.  Forced joy.  Pleasure indulged to the point of
revulsion.  Change, alteration, unrequited love.  Novelty, metamorphosis, inconstancy, Alchemical
transmutation.  Mutation.  Poison, poisoning poisoner  Death  Rebirth.  Environmental
pollution.  Translation and interpretation.  House of the false heart, instability, revolution.  Unexpected
change of position.

3)     Ace of Swords:  Center: A fair-skinned hand, dark brown or black hairs on its wrist, issuing from a
cloud, holding an upright Sword.  A crown of light circles its tip.  In the palm of the hand is a brown
eye.   Upright:  A sword (alternate:  a beautiful skyscraper).  Reversed:    The Bomb (alternate:  a slum
building).

Meaning:  Upright:  Root of the Powers of Air.  The primordial energy of Air.  Destruction may be

necessary to achieve something better.  Associated with the Bald Eagle and the Man.  The Realm of
Uranus-Urania and Liberty, the Lords of Aquarius, liberty, radical change, and scientific advance.  The
domain of the Faeries and the Sylphs.  Invoked force.  Conquest.  Activity.  The Sword used by Michael
and Kali to battle demons.  Force expressed as justice who maintains the world order, as the equilibrium
between Mercy and Severity.  A man forced to use his own strength.  Strong action with victory bringing
advantage.  Liberty, liberation, freedom.  Authority.  Stress.  Love, affairs of the heart.  Triumph,
fecundity, fertility, prosperity.  Workings of Ceremonial Magick, invocation. Telepathy, intuition,
telekinesis, teleportation.  Initiative, force, masculine activity, seed, germ, commencement of a matter,
decision, starting-point, emphasis, fructification, execution (of a plan). Annihilation of doubt and
uncertainty.  Courage, firmness, integrity, great passion or intense enmity, fury,
vehemence.  Triumph.  The excessive degree in everything.  Conquest, triumph of force.  A card of great
force in love as well as hatred.  Conception, childbirth, augmentation, multiplicity.  Great prosperity or
great misery.  Reversed:  The Solar month of Aquarius (about January 20-February 17 of a given
year).  The ankles, circulation of the blood, lower legs, pituitary gland.  Violence, murder, sudden
death.  The libertine.  The gain of one’s own freedom or power at the expense of that of others.  A love
affair that leaves the woman in dire straits.  Black Magick.  Embarrassment, foolish and hopeless love,
obstacle, hindrance.  Beginning of hostilities.  Execution (of a living being).  Affliction, pain.  Disaster.  For
a woman, marriage broken off through her own imprudence.

 
4)     Ace of Discs:  Center:    A swarthy- or dark-skinned hand, black, kinky hairs on its wrist, issuing from
a cloud, holding a silver Liberty-head dollar. In the palm of the hand is a golden-brown
eye.  Upright:  Semi-sphere of Planet Earth, seen from space.  Reverse:  The lower semi-sphere of same,
but as it would appear after total thermonuclear war and/or planet-wide ecological disaster.

Meaning:  Upright:  Root of the powers of Earth.  Associated with the Bull.  Realm of the Gnomes. Ruled

by Venus.  Stoicism under adversity.  Faithfulness.  Dedication.  Devotion.  Material success obtained by
invocation of the Gods.  The luckiest card in the Tarot pack.  Great good fortune, wealth, prosperity,
material success in all forms.  The Wheel of Fortune.  Perfect contentment, great happiness, triumph.  A
purse of gold, money, riches.  Inheritance, gifts.  Economy.  Beginning of good fortune.  Creative energy,
fulfillment of hope, wish, desire.  Good luck, bright prospects.  Profit. Perfect contentment, ecstasy,
speedy intelligence, comfortable material conditions.  Reversed:  The Solar month of Taurus (roughly
April 20-May 19 of a given year).  Adenoids, cerebellum, lower jaw, jugular vein, larynx, mouth, neck,
pharynx, salivary glands, throat, thyroid gland, tongue, tonsils, vocal cords.  Greed or
avarice.  Poverty.  Ending of good fortune.  Bad luck.  The unluckiest card in the Tarot pack.  A share in
the finding of treasure.

*Designed by Yael R. Dragwyla.  No artist has yet been commissioned to execute the cards.  See section
E. below.  Each card is divided into halves, each having its own design, one for the Upright meaning  and 
the other for the Reverse.  The two scenes are set bottom-to-bottom, like the designs of playing-cards,
e.g., as in the King of Hearts or Spades.  But the two scenes on each card, unlike those on playing-cards,
aren’t identical or even mirror-images.  The Reverse scene is either a parody or redemption of the
Upright one, either itsQlippoth or its reversal in meaning.

c.       The interrelationship of the Sephirah and the cards

        The four Realms and their Elements are the Roots of the Power of the Will of God.  The Great
Unspeakable Name of God, called Tetragrammaton, spelled in Hebrew Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh  and
transliterated into English as YHVH, represents the synthesis of these four Elemental Realms of Being
into the Quintessence, the Spirit of God. It is no accident that in Waite’s and Crowley’s versions of the
Tarot there can be found within the Ace of each suit the letter of the Name corresponding to the
Element of that Suit:  Yod, for Fire and Wands;  the first Heh of Tetragrammaton, for Water and
Cups;  Vav, for Air and Swords;  and the second Heh for Earth and Pentacles/Discs/Coins.  These letters
are intricately woven into the whole of the design of each card, so that one has to know that they are
there, and what they are, in order to recognize them.  For example, the crown at the tip of the Sword in
Waite’s Ace of Swords, together with the leafy branch hanging from it, forms the Vav of that Suit. In
Waite’s Ace of Cups, the fountains springing from the Chalice in the Ace, together with the Chalice itself,
form aHeh. Yods floating in the form of leaves float about the upright Wand in Waite’s Ace of Wands,
and the gate and trellis in the hedge in his Ace of Pentacles form a Heh.

        Similarly, in Waite’s Ace of Wands, other Qaballistic associations with Kether are embedded in the
design of the card.  The theme of “Beginnings” characteristic of Kether is represented by the phallic form
of the Wand itself and the spermatozoon-like Yods dancing about the Wand, which suggests the upright
phallus and the sperm it ejects during the sexual intercourse that eventually brings a new soul into the
world.  The river, the trees, and the prosperous castle high on a hill are indicative of new enterprises and
the prosperity these bring.  Likewise, all the various aspects of the card should suggest aspects
of Kether in Atziluth;  ideally, as much as we can comprehend of the Fiery and Spiritual manifestations
of Kether should be represented one way or another in the Ace of Wands.

        In the same way, the associations of Kether in Briah, Root of the Powers of Water, should be fairly
well represented in the Ace of Cups/Chalices/Hearts;  those of Kether in Yetzirah, the Root of the Powers
of Air, in the Ace of Swords/Spades;  and those of Kether in Assiah, the Root of the Powers of Earth, in
the Ace of Pentacles/Discs/Coins/Diamonds.

The Aces are above and distinct from the other “small cards” or Lower Arcana in the same way
that Kether is symbolized only by the topmost point of the Tree of Life and that of the Yod y of
Tetragrammaton, the Great Name of God, h w h y.  Generally, these cards have little or nothing to do
with manifestation of their Elements in material form.  They form a link between the Lower Arcana and
the Pages/Princesses, who rule the Heavens around the North Pole.  Going Eastward from Hiroshima,
Japan, the Elements rule Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. Thus the Aces and the Pages more or less rule the
Pacific Rim, the Ring of Fire surrounding the Pacific Basin, and all within it;  the Cups rule the
Americas;  the Swords rule Europe and Africa;  and the Pentacles or Disks rule Asia.

Nota bene:  The Element of Spirit, the Quintessence, like Fire is associated with the letter Shin c.  It is
also associated with Kether.  In a sense, all the Aces represent this Element, but the Ace of Wands in
particular is associated with it.  On the other hand, the Element of Void or Chaos may be associated with
the letter a, which is also associated with Air and the Planet Uranus, so the Ace of Swords can do double-
duty for both Air and Chaos.  It must be remembered, however, that the Aces are not the Elements
themselves, but rather the seeds or roots of those Elements.

 
2.       Sephirah 2 and the four Deuces

a.       The Sephirah

        Chokmah (“Wisdom”).  Sphere of Neptune Þ

       

        Gareth Knight gives these attributes for Chokmah:

                                                          MAGICKAL IMAGE:                A bearded male figure

                                                                         GOD NAME:                h y – Jehovah or Yah [Yah]

                                                                      ARCHANGEL:                Ratziel

                                                          ORDER OF ANGELS:                Auphanim.  Wheels.

                                                      MUNDANE CHAKRA:                The Zodiac

                                                                                VIRTUE:                Devotion

                                                                                 TITLES:                Power of Yetzirah.  Ab.  Abba.  The
Supernal Father.  Tetragrammaton.  Yod of Tetragrammaton.

                                                SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE:                The Vision of God Face to Face

                                                       ATZILUTHIC COLOR:                Pure soft blue.

                                                                BRIATIC COLOR:                Gray.

                                                        YETZIRATIC COLOR:                Pearl gray iridescence

                                                             ASSIATIC COLOR:                White, flecked red, blue, and yellow

                                                                                      VICE:                [Knight gives none.    However, the vices

best assigned to  Chokmah and  Neptune would seem to be addictions in any form, pathological lying
and  seduction of the innocent for prurient purposes, and all other Neptunian vices, crimes, and sins.]
                                                                            SYMBOLS:                The Lingam.  The phallus.  Yod.  The Inner
Robe of Glory.  The standing stone.  The tower. The uplifted Rod of Power.  The straight line.16

        For Chokmah, Liber 777 gives the following assignments:

Crowley says, concerning the Magickal Image of Chokmah, “Almost any male image shows some aspect
of Chokmah.”17

        Chokmah is the essence of Masculinity, and its most basic image is the male animal, particularly the
human male.  According to Liber 777, its most precious stones include the star ruby and the
turquoise;  its tree is the amaranth;  its vegetable drug is hashish or marijuana*;  and its perfume is
musk.18  Because of its association with the Planet Neptune, it may also be represented by such things as
the ocean, pearls, coral, rivers, seashells, and seahorses – indeed, horses in general, since according to
one set of ancient Greek religious teachings, Poseidon (the Greek avatar of Neptune) was the one who
gave humanity the horse.  Thus colors associated with water, rivers, and the sea such as aquamarine and
other aquatints, nacreous hues, the gray of ocean fogs, and the entire range of greens, blues, and
purples are all associated with Chokmah.  Chokmah’s vices, crimes, and sins (which were not listed by
Knight) therefore include all the Qlippoth of Neptune:  sloth, murder, suicide, poisoning, treachery,
espionage, slander, gossip, addictions, corruption of innocence, deceit, lying, etc.  Poisons of all kinds,
both in their toxic and in their medicinal aspects, are associated with Neptune and thus
with Chokmah.  Sleep, dreams, trance, hypnosis, psychedelic and other psychoactive drugs, illusion,
deception, confusion, chaos, con-artistry, delusions, and many of the psychoses, especially paranoid
schizophrenia, are associated with Neptune andChokmah.  Mirrors and the principle of Reflection are
associated with Chokmah, partly because of the association with the number 2, and partly because
Neptune, Chokmah’s Planet, is a higher octave of Luna, Who reflects the Sun’s light and is the Lord of
Mirrors.

*Marijuana is sacred to the God Shiva, one of Whose aspects is The Sun on the Waters of the Sea, a
Neptunian image.

 
        The parts of the body that facilitate sleep and reaming, particularly REM-sleep, include the corpus
coerleusin the brain stem, hence this part of the brain is ruled by Neptune and thus by Chokmah.  The
feet, traditionally ruled by the astrological Sign Pisces and thus Neptune, are likewise under their
dominion.  More importantly, the bilateral symmetry of the body and its asymmetric differentiation of
function, particularly in the brain, are ruled byChokmah because of the association with the number 2
and the principle of Reflection allied with it.  The two loves of the human brain, exhibiting different but
complementary functions, clearly illustrate this principle.  Thus thecorpus callosum, the structure
connecting the two hemispheres of the brain and facilitating their communication and cooperation, is
ruled by Chokmah and Neptune as well.  In particular, all “right-brain” functions, including spatial
perception, musical appreciation and competency, color perception, etc. are all Neptunian in nature,
just as “left-brain” functions, including logic, vocabulary, etc., are all ruled by Binah and Uranus (for a full
discussion on which, see the following section, below).

All evolution begins with  instability of some kind – until the balance of a system is upset, no change can
take place in it.  Once that instability takes place, the system works to attain equilibrium once more, its
organization evolving from form to form, passing through phase after phase of contending forces, until
finally balance is re-created.  At that point, evolution and change cease, and cannot come into being
again until the stability of the system is once more upset.  Kether, the beginning of all things, is a Point
formulated in the Void, having position but not dimension.  If, however, that Point is extended through
Space, it becomes a Line.  In a sense, Chokmah is the Line formed when Kether, the Primordial Point, is
extended in Space.

Chokmah, the outpouring energy that is represented by that Line, or by the uplifted Wand of Power or
Fire-Dagger of Will, is essentially dynamic.  In fact, it is the primordial dynamism, the beginning of
energy and motion. Kether is essentially static in nature, being a limiting of the free and formless in the
bonds of form (however tenuous that form may be), and it is not until Chokmah that true energy and
motion begin.19

Chokmah is primordial Force, even as Binah, Sephirah 3, is essential Form.  In a sense, Binah may be

considered to be the soul of Matter, of Structure;  just so, Chokmah is Energy in its purest form.  That
which moves, flows in any way, that is the vehicle of transformation or transportation, is
of Chokmah.  Israel Regardie says:

The first Sephirah . . . contained in essence and potentiality the other nine Sephirah and gave rise to
them in a process which can be mathematically stated.  S. Liddell McGregor Mathers asks, ‘How is
Number Two to be found?’  He answers this question in his Introduction to the Kabalah Unveiled:

‘By definition of itself.  For although 0 be incapable of definition, 1 is definable.  And the effect of a

definition is to form an Eidolon, duplicate or image, of the thing defined.  Thus . . . we obtain a duo
composed of 1 and its reflection.  Now, also, we have the commencement of a vibration
established.  For the number 1 vibrates alternately from changelessness to definition and back to
changelessness.’
Isaac Ibin Latif (1220-1290 A.D.) also furnishes us with a mathematical definition of the processes of
evolution:

‘As the point extends, and thickness into a line, the line into the plane, the plane into the expanded
body, so God’s manifestation unfolds itself.’

[T]he ultimate differentiation of existence, so far as we can grasp it is a plus and minus, positive and
negative, male and female, and so we should expect on the Tree of Life to find that the two emanations
succeeding Keser [Kether] partake of these characteristics.  We ascertain that the second Sephirah,
Chokmah or Wisdom, is male, vigorous and active. . . . .

...

Chokmah is the vital energizing element of existence, Spirit or the Purusha of the Sankhyan philosophy
of India, by which is implied the basic reality underlying all manifestations of consciousness. . . . 20

        Chokmah comes into existence as a reflection into the Void of Kether, the first emanation.  The idea
of the number 2 is thus associated with it because Chokmah – Kether’s reflection, is the second thing to
come into existence, Kether being the first.  Neptune is a higher octave of Luna;  where Luna is the
Mirror of Sol, reflecting in polarized and coherent form the light of Her Lord, Neptune is the Principle of
Reflection itself, that which gives the Mirror its power to reflect.

        Crowley says of Neptune:

Ah, Neptune is the soul!

And does this not fit the sea?  If [sic] the sea at once infinitely calm, and infinitely angered? Does not the
sea take strange shapes; break up the light into myriad fantastically colored flaws? Illusion and art,
chameleon and dragon that is the sea!  Is not the sea now tender, now adorable, sun kissed, now
terrible in its torment, a whirl of insatiable desires?  Did not Sappho fling herself into the sea, and did
not Undine draw thence the bitter joy of her veins.

...

 
. . . Neptune is the soul, with all its naked nerves played upon by rays of alien systems, malicious
capriciousness, fairy, or else harp-strings swept by some player from beyond, too subtle and divine for
his melodies to reach the ears of mortals. 21

        Astrologically, Neptune is the higher octave of Venus.  Just as Venus rules the fine arts, Neptune
rules the principles behind the Arts, the powers inherent in music, color, light, and
form.  Whereas Binah, “Understanding,” and its Planet Uranus rule the power of the Logos, the Word,
and thus the “left-side” functions of the brain such as speech and formal logic, Chokmah and Neptune
rule the “right-side” functions of the central nervous system such as spatial perception and the esthetic
senses.  Whereas Binah rules vocabulary and pronunciation, Chokmah rules the melody underlying
language and the flow of vowels for which the consonants are merely the otherwise inanimate
vehicles.  Whereas Binah is the body of language, Chokmah is its soul.

        Similarly, Chokmah rules the flow and flux of existence in all things, Lord of the Waves, as Binah has
the dominion of the Particle.  It is the orbital described by the probability function of the position of an
electron in an atom, the function y that defines the shape of light and light’s material avatars, the sub-
atomic particles of which all physical reality is constructed.  It is the song of the soul, the Grace of God,
the faith that carries one through the Dark Night of the Spirit when there is seemingly no possible
reason for hope.

        Traditionally, before the existence of the Planet Neptune was known, the Sphere of the Zodiac or
Fixed Stars was assigned to Chokmah.  This fits well with the Planet Neptune, for Neptune rules the Sea,
and knowledge of the Stars and their geometric interrelationships on the backdrop of the heavens was
absolutely required for navigation over any distance by seafarers from the beginning.  Landsmen can
almost always find or make stationary landmarks to aid their passage.  But there are no landmarks on
the deep ocean, far from all land, and only by means of a thoroughgoing knowledge of which Stars rise,
culminate, and set in a given place at a given time of year were long ocean voyages possible at all, up
until the advent of modern gyroscope compasses and similar aids.  The great seafaring peoples,
especially the Polynesians, were also superior astronomers, at least in terms of their specialty.  Hence
the ocean and those who know it well have ever been associated with the Stars and a science of the
Stars.  So it is fitting that Neptune likewise be associated with Chokmah, because of the long, close tie
between the sea and the stars in the history of humankind.

        The Second Amendment to the U. S. Constitution is associated with Chokmah:

Article Two

 
Right to keep and bear arms

 “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free Sate, the right of the people to keep
and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

        The commandment associated with Chokmah is

You shall not make yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that
is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth;  you shall not bow down to them or serve
them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to
the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of
those who love me and keep my commandments.

        Exodus 20:4-6, Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version

Nota bene:  A perfect exemplar of the wisdom, perfect vision, and selfless love represented by Neptune
andChokmah is Joshua Norton, late of San Francisco, California.

Perhaps it is worth recounting here the legend of the Emperor Joshua Norton, since this Planet’s
influence shares much of his nature.

Everybody understands Mickey Mouse.

Few understand Herman Hesse.

Hardly anybody understands Einstein.

And nobody understands Emperor Norton.

        – Malaclypse the Younger, K.S.C.

        Joshua Norton, or, as he preferred to be called, Norton I, proclaimed himself Emperor of the United
States and Mexico in 1859.
        Although a pauper, he was fed free in San Francisco’s best restaurants.

        Although a madman, he had all his state proclamations published in San Francisco’s newspapers.

        While rational reformers elsewhere failed to crack the national bank monopoly with alternate
currency plans, Norton I had his own private currency accepted throughout San Francisco.

        When the Vigilantes decided to have a pogrom against the Chinese, and sane men would have tried
to stop them, Norton I did nothing but stand in the street, head bowed, praying.  The Vigilantes
dispersed.

        Although a fool, Norton I wrote letters which were seriously considered by Abraham Lincoln and
Queen Victoria.  Although a charlatan, Norton I was so beloved that 30,000 people turned out for his
funeral in 1880.

        Joshua Norton is the perfect counterpoint and balance to Harriet Tubman, associated
with Binah and Uranus (see below).

                b.     The cards

        Geometrically, unlike the case for any other positive integer, a regular two-dimensional polygon
doesn’t exist.  Where the Circle clearly represents 1, the Triangle 3, the Square 4, etc., on up through
the n-gon and Number n, no such two dimensional symbol exists for the number 2.  We could use
something like a convex-lens-shape of the form

or perhaps a semicircle, i.e.

 
 

But no regular polygon exists to represent 2, nor does a figure such as the Circle exist for it.  This is
actually in keeping with the nature of Chokmah.  Chokmah is Wisdom, and Wisdom is gained through
experience of those things which we cannot easily put into words or represent by simple
symbols.  Chokmah’s Planet, Neptune, rules mystery, illusion, fraud, deceit, confusion, error, hidden
matters, the past, deeds done in darkness, sacrifice, leaps of faith, and the Vision that comes only to
those who have the Grace to receive it without embellishing or attempting to control it or keep it to
themselves.  It also rules the Sea and Water, which take all shapes and the shape of anything containing
them without having a clearly limited and delineated shape of their own.  That no one precise geometric
shape exists to represent Chokmah is very much in keeping with its nature.

        However, if we are to represent it on its Tarot cards, the Deuces, then we must have some symbol
that can represent it adequately.  Perhaps fractals, those elusive, infinitely self-replicating forms from
Chaos Theory, especially the gorgeous Mandelbröt Set, could serve to properly represent Chokmah.

        Astrologically, Chokmah and the Deuces are associated with an aspect of 180°, the opposition.  This

aspect is associated with, e.g., awareness, balance, partnership, challenge, companionship, completion,
the stranger, conflict, confrontation, consummation, cooperation, encounter, fertility, fraternity, face-
to-face encounters of any kind, fruitfulness, fulfillment, fusion, joining, links, marriage, polarization,
push/pull, approach/avoidance paradigms, aversion/attraction paradigms, reactions, separation,
sharing, stretching, struggle, understanding, or union (an unexpected link with Kether!).

From various sources we have the following designs and interpretations for the Deuces of the Tarot:

1)     WANDS

Design:  Generally, two Wands or Rods, crossed.

Waite’s pack shows a man standing on a battlement, looking out over the sea.  In his right hand he holds
a globe;  in his left, a Wand.  To his right, resting against the wall is another wand.  To his left, on the
wall, is a St. Andrew’s Cross, one arm of which is composed of white lilies and the other of red
roses. Crowley’s pack combines these motifs, showing a St. Andrew’s cross formed from two jester’s
scepters superimposed on a sigil of the Zodiacal Sign Pisces;  above are the sigils for Mars and Aries.  The
Fantasy Showcase Tarot* has two views:  the upright view shows a sunny, daylight scene, and a king on
his throne holding two Wands crossed before him, overlooking his domain;  the reversed view shows a
moonlit night scene, a queen on her throne, likewise holding crossed Wands, overlooking the same
domains (artist:  Gary Scott Csillaghegyi).  In general, almost all Tarot packs conserve the motif of two
crossed Wands, with or without the St. Andrew’s Cross.

*Collected by Bruce Pelz, with a booklet explaining the meanings of the cards by Walt Leibscher.  Each
card illustrated by a different artist.  Rights to individual cards reserved to the respective artists.  © 1980
by Bruce Pelz.  This pack is unusual in that not only was every card illustrated by a different artist, but
also because in addition to the normal compliment of 22 Trumps of the Major Arcana, it has two
more:  Trump XXII: Separation, and Trump XXIII:  The Farrier (the latter has meanings rather similar to
those of Trump XX,The Last Judgment, in a normal pack).

America’s Tarot:  Upright:  A redwood forest, a man and woman dressed in Lincoln green and brown felt
shoes standing before a redwood, against which leans the trunk of another, fallen redwood
tree.  Reverse:  An endless plain filled with the stumps of countless redwood trees, only two living trees
left of what had been a gigantic redwood forest.  A logger stands between the two trees as he
contemplates one of them, his back to the other, holding a gasoline-driven chain-saw in one hand.

Upright meaning:  Mars in Aries.  First decant of Aries, 0°-9°9’9” of the Sign.  Dominion;  the Will in its
most exalted form.  A clear-cut choice between two alternatives, one of which is far more preferable
than the other.  Taking or seizing control of one’s own destiny.  Other interpretations include riches,
fortune, opulence, magnificence, grandeur.

Reversed:  The loss of will, or the achievement of worthless goals.  Loss of control over one’s own
destiny.  Surprise, astonishment, extraordinary occurrence, enchantment, trouble, fear.  The head,
especially the cerebral hemispheres of the brain.  March 20 through March 31 in any given year.

2)       CUPS

Design:  Two carven chalices or, less usually, dolphins.  When chalices are represented, generally they
are held by two lovers.  In Waite’s design, which shows the two lovers holding cups, the winged head of
a lion with a caduceus hovers above them.  Crowley’s pack shows two cups resting upon the sea;  from a
fountain composed of two fish and two lotuses the cups are filled to overflowing, and in the sky are
visible the symbols of Venus and the Sign Cancer.

America’s Tarot:   Upright:  two pristine rivers springing from one source, running through beautiful,
fertile meadows.  Reversed:  two heavily polluted rivers running by or through a great city.

Upright meaning:  Venus in Cancer.  First Decanate of Cancer, 0°-9°9’9” of the Sign.  Love;  love as the

foundation of Will.  The harmony of male and female interpreted in the most general sense.  Perfect
harmony, expressed as intense joy and ecstasy.  Marriage, warm friendship.  Pleasure.  Affection,
attachment.  Lovemaking, friendship, passion, concord, hospitable meeting or reception, interrelation of
the sexes, desire.  Shared fortune.  The most creative form of intuition.  Artistic creation, possibly after a
sterile period.  A successful Tantric (Sex-Magickal) Working.

Reversed:  The breast.  Breast cancer.  June 20 through June 30 of any given year.  Lust, greed, ‘cupboard
love.’  Separation, disagreement, parting, divorce, temporary separation.  Something peculiar
concerning a meeting, perhaps conditional upon some other circumstance. Crossed desires, obstacles,
opposition and hindrances in the way of a relationship, a liaison, or a partnership.  An unsuccessful
Tantric Working;  one which has gone seriously awry, with deadly impact on the Operator and/or those
close to him/her.

3)     SWORDS

Design:  Generally, two Swords crossed.  However, Waite’s pack shows an interesting modification of

this in the form of a blindfolded figure seated beside the sea, her hands crossed and holding two upright
swords;  above her is a waxing moon (which of course becomes a waning moon when the card is
reversed).

America’s Tarot:  Upright:  Two railroad tracks that come together into one track in the foreground; in
the distance at about the same remove from us are two trains, one coming toward us on one track, the
other speeding off toward an endless horizon on the other.  The ground over which they pass is a fertile
prairie filled with short-grass.  Alternatively, two crossed American Indian war-lances.  Reversed:  the
Thin Man and the Fat Man (the first and second atomic bombs to be used in World War II) poised in the
act of falling through the air to land on Japanese cities;  one bomb comes in front of the other in its
flight, so that they appear to be crossed.  Or, crossed guided missiles.  Alternatively:  two broken lances.

Upright:  The Moon in Libra.  The first decanate of Libra, 0°-9°9’9” of the Sign.  The Lord of Peace
Restored.  Peace.  Balanced force.  Friendship.  Equilibrium.  The interplay of opposing forces of creation,
resulting in life.  Strife and dissent uniting to produce truth and beauty.  A quarrel made up.  Peace
restored, yet with some tension remaining.  Harmony.  Victory without conflict or battle.  Valor,
firmness, courage.  An attempt to forestall enmity.  Conformity.  Concord in a state of
arms.  Tenderness, affection, intimacy.  Marriage, formal marriage.  Gifts for a lady, or perhaps a
dowry.  Influential protection for a man in search of help, sanctuary, amnesty.

Reversed:  The kidneys.  September 22 through October 1 of any given year.  Indecision.  Passive

success.  A temporary amnesty.  Stalemate.  Duplicity, falsehood, disloyalty, lies, betrayal
and dishonors.  A False friend, treachery, lies.  Divorce.  Dealing with rogues – “thieves fall out.”

4)     COINS/DISCS/PENTACLES

Design:  Generally, a lemniscate (figure-eight or infinity symbol) within the two terminal loops of which
are shown two Pentacles, disks, coins, flowers, balls, or similar figures.  The Marseille Tarot shows two
four-petal flowers, each centered in a coin;  the two coins are joined by something that looks as if it
were intended to be a lemniscate on which is printed the maker’s name and two dates, 1748 e.v. and
1930 e.v. Waite’s pack shows a young man dancing by the sea;  in his hands he juggles two Pentacles
which are surrounded by a lemniscate.  Crowley’s pack shows a lemniscate formed by a crowned
snake;  within either loop is a ball in the form of the T’ao, each ball including two of the signs of the four
Elements, and at the top of the card is the Sign for Jupiter, while at the bottom is that for Capricorn.

America’s Tarot:  Center:  two silver Liberty-head dollars, one exactly above the other, within a
lemniscate such that each is within one of the lemniscate’s two loops.  Upright:  Two great mountains,
perhaps the Grand Tetons of Wyoming, majestic and breathtakingly beautiful against “azure skies and
amber fields of grain.”  Reversed:  Two industrial slag-heaps or piles of mine-tailings, or perhaps two
heaps of junk in a junkyard.

Upright:  Jupiter in Capricorn.  The first decanate of Capricorn, 0°-9°9’9” of the Sign.  The Lord of

Harmonious Change.  Change, generally of a positive nature.  Change in all forms, whether to do with
money, travel, news, or communications.  Visit to friends.  The juggler and all that he implies.  Spiritual
and financial riches.  News and messages in writing.  Troubles more imaginary than
real.  Christmas.  Gaiety, play, enjoyment, celebration.  A dance.

Reversed:  The knees or gall-bladder.  December 21 through December 31 of any given year. Monetary

obstacles.  Need for financial dexterity and intelligence.  Obstacles, agitation, trouble, embroilment
expressed in writing.  Enforced gaiety, simulated enjoyment.  Handwriting, composition, letters of
exchange.  Bad omens, ignorance, injustice.

Knights

1)     WANDS

Design:  Generally, a mounted knight carrying a Wand or a club of some sort.  Motifs of Fire are usually
included in the design.  Waite’s pack shows a knight riding through a desert;  his clothing is decorated
with Salamanders, and a plume of fire streams from his helmet.  Crowley’s shows a fiery knight with a
black and fiery horse, and motifs for the Sign Leo.

America’s Tarot:  Upright:  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Reversed:  Cotton Mather (it was he, among
others, who brought an end to the Salem witch trials, contending that they had done little or no good
and a great deal of harm, and that little evidence existed to support the accusations made against the
various “witches”).

Upright meaning:  Sagittarius (Mutable Fire).  The Lord of the Flame and the Lightning;  the King of the
Spirits of Fire (Salamanders).  20 degrees Scorpio to 20 degrees Sagittarius (about November 11 to
December 11 of a given year).  The fiery part of Fire.  A young man of a fiery disposition or with Sun in a
Fire Sign.  Dark, friendly young man.  Activity, generosity, fierceness, pride, swift and unpredictable in
action.  Someone from far away.  An in-law.  Traveler.  A journey into the unknown.  Adventures.  The
Son.  A youth;  a man in his prime.  Marriage, change of state or title.  A priest, rabbi, or other
ecclesiastic.  A philosopher.  A university teacher or student.

Reversed:  The arterial blood system, bile, blood, buttocks, sciatic nerve, upper legs, hips, thighs, liver,
and generative organs.  Late November, early December.  Departure, change of
residence.  Impetuosity. Evil-mindedness, cruelty, bigotry, brutality.  Change of residence, departure,
emigration.  Abandonment and flight.  Rupture, division, interruption, discord.  Frustration of a woman’s
hopes for marriage.

2)       CUPS

Design:  Generally, a mounted knight carrying a chalice.  Waite’s pack shows a knight who wears a
winged helmet, riding across a desert toward a river and the mountains;  he carries a cup, and his
clothing is decorated with red fish.  Crowley’s shows a winged knight riding a white horse out of the
sea;  his upright hand holds a cup, above which is a crab, and his wings are the stylized extension of a
peacock located in the lower right of the design.

America’s Tarot:  Upright:  Walt Disney, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, or other great American
filmmaker with scenes from his films in the background.  Alternate:  Buddy Holly or other famous
American musician/composers;  great American mathematicians;  etc.  Reverse:  A montage of really
terrible TV program characters and stars or others symbolizing total waste of creativity.

Upright:  Pisces (Mutable Water).  The Lord of the Waves and the Waters;  the King of the Hosts of the
Sea (Undines).  Rules from 20 degrees Aquarius to 20 degrees Pisces (about February 9 to March 10 of a
given year).  The Fiery part of Water, its power of solution and dissolution.  Passivity,
gracefulness. Someone ruled by Venus or with Sun in Pisces.  Amiability.  Someone who is quick to react
to things, but whose action does not endure;  someone who is sensitive, but with little depth.  The
essence of the nature of a person signified by the card is innocence and purity.  Frail destiny, destiny
which must be seized.  A lover.  An offering.  Arrivals, approach, advance.  A young man of fair
complexion, fair hair, and blue, gray, or green eyes.  A stranger, a sailor, a man coming from far away
(across the sea).  Imagination, vision, dreams.  A mysterious person, a mystery.  Someone who acts
anonymously.  A hidden friend.  A ninja.  A dreamer haunted by his visions.  Arrival, approach.  A
messenger, a proposition.  Subtlety.  A visit from a friend who unexpectedly brings money.  A
mathematician, physicist, artist, cinematographer, riparian ecologist.

Reversed:  The feet and toes;  the endocrine system, qua system;  the lymphatic system;  mucus, mucus

membranes;  the cerebellum as gateway to the Astral Planes and the Akashic Record;  the corpus
callosum, corpus coerleus, pineal gland, and other organs in the brain involved with dreaming or
synthesis of neurological function.  Dilettantism.  Sensuality, idleness, dishonesty.  Deceit, lying, con-
artistry. Shattered, broken destiny.  A rival, a seducer.  A proposition or message. An unappreciated offer
of love or work. Duplicity, abuse of confidence, fraud, cunning.  Intoxicants, addictive drugs, merchants
of the same.  Occultism, black Magick.  Venomous reports, vicious gossip and rumors, slander, blackmail,
possibly a change of life caused by these.  Murder.  Poison.  A hidden enemy.  An
assassin.  Incitement. An instigator, spy, saboteur.  Trickery;  treachery.

3)     SWORDS

Design:  Generally, a mounted knight, carrying a sword.  Waite’s pack shows a knight riding hell-for-
leather, flailing his sword through the air;  his clothing is decorated with butterflies and red
birds. Crowley’s shows a knight wearing a helmet from the tip of which four wings issue, which enables
him to fly;  in his right hand he carries a long sword, in his left he carries a short sword, and below him
are three birds.

America’s Tarot:  Upright:  Nikola Tesla or other great American inventors/thinkers.  Alternative:  the

Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  Reversed:  J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb.

Upright:  Gemini (Mutable Air).  The Lord of the Winds and the Breezes, the King of the Spirits of Air
(Faeries, , Sylphs, Sprites).  20 degrees Taurus to 20 degrees Gemini (about May 10 to June 10 of any
given year).  The Fiery part of Air, the violent part of motion applied to an apparently manageable
Element.  The idea of attack, activity, skill, subtlety, cleverness.  Someone who is fierce, delicate, or
courageous.  Someone who is active, subtle, fierce, skillful.  A dark-haired, brown-eyed young
man. Someone who is dashing, brave, clean-hearted, and courageous, but inclined somewhat to
domineer. Ready for a fight.  Martial bravery.  A soldier, an intellectual, a librarian, a driver of public
vehicles, telephone operator, elementary school teacher or student, a postman or postal clerk, anyone
involved in communications media, a reporter, a journalist, someone who loves books.  Skillfulness,
capacity, promptness.  Ingenuousness, simplicity.  Romantic chivalry.  Enmity, wrath, war, death when
other cards also indicate death.  Heroic action.  A hero.  Military adventures and
experience.  Oxygenation of the blood, breath, breathing.  Hyper oxygenation of the blood.

Reversed:  The breath, respiratory system, bronchi, diaphragm, trachea, lungs;  the capillaries;  senses of

hearing, eyesight, touch, taste, and smell;  upper ribs;  thoracic cavity;  memory;  the nervous system,
neurons;  oxygenation of the blood;  the shoulders, arms, hands, and fingers.  Someone who becomes
the prey of his own idea, which comes to him without reflection.  Indecisiveness.  Someone who is easily
thwarted by opposition of any kind.  The futility inherent in inadequate violence, hence a sociopath or
psychopath.  Someone inclined to domineer and overvalue small things.  Deceitfulness, a tyrannical
nature, craftiness.  The start or end of a misfortune.  Someone who is extravagant, a braggart, a tyrant
over anything or anyone too helpless to defend him- or herself.  Incapacity, impulsiveness, hypocrisy,
imprudence, conceit.  A conceited fool.  Dispute with an imbecile.  Struggle with a rival who will be
conquered. Blood-poisoning.  Anoxia, hypo-oxygenation of the blood, suffocation, strangling.

4)     COINS/DISCS/PENTACLES

Design:  Generally, a mounted knight holding a disc, coin, Pentacle, or similar symbol.  Waite’s pack
shows a knight on a black horse, carrying a Pentacle before him in his outstretched hand;  his helmet is
crowned with oak, and his horse is heavy and slow.  Crowley’s pack shows a dark night on a dark horse
in a field of ripe wheat;  his helmet is topped by a stag’s head.

America’s Tarot:  Upright:  George Washington Carver or other inventors who discovered or invented

things that made life far better for many Americans on a practical level.  Reversed:  John D. Rockefeller,
Stephen Gould, Andrew Carnegie, or other great American financiers.*

*Thus demonstrating, as with other reverses, that the reversed position does not always signify negative
or bad things.  Andrew Carnegie was a philanthropist who helped establish the American free public
library system; the other plutocrats likewise contributed a great deal of good to this country, in spite of
the very real sins against individuals or the public committed by a number of them.  In general, the
reversed position of a card can mean the mundane aspects of something whose spiritual aspects are
expressed by the upright position;  a part of the body signified by the astrological entities associated
with the card;  a time of year;  or negative attributes of the card.  Which are implied depends upon the
rest of the spread in which the card is found.

Upright:  Virgo (Mutable Earth).  The Lord of the Wide and Fertile Land, the King of the Spirits of Earth
(Gnomes).  20 degrees Leo to 20 degrees Virgo (about August 10 to September 12 of a given year).  The
Fiery part of Earth.  Someone who tends to be laborious, patient, heavy, preoccupied with material
things.  A dull young man.  Strong instincts.  A laborer, financier, practical inventor, analyst. Black-haired
young man with black eyes, swarthy or dark skin.  A useful man.  Trustworthiness, wisdom, economy,
order, regulation.  A brave man who is unemployed.  Discreet aid in financial difficulties. Advantage,
interest, a loan, inheritance, a messenger bringing any of these, or news concerning them. Utility,
serviceableness, interest, responsibility, rectitude.  Matters and issues concerning health, pets, tenants,
or employees.  An employee, a tenant, a pet, a veterinarian, a healer, a chiropractor, nurse,
acupuncturist, herbalist.  A useful man, useful discoveries.

Reversed:  Late August and early September.  The small intestine, abdominal cavity, metabolism,
digestive system, gall bladder, pancreas, and Solar plexus.  Someone with little grasp of intellectual
matters even when they closely concern him or her.  Someone who is hopelessly stupid, slavish,
incapable of foresight, churlish, interfering, over-critical, surly, instinctively jealous of anyone better off
than he is, who meddles in petty affairs.  Someone who is idle or negligent.  Stagnation, placidity,
discouragement, carelessness.

c.       The interrelationships between the Sephirah and the cards of the Tarot

Chokmah is the first manifestation;  Kether  is completely concealed, its nature unknown to

anyone.  Thus only on reaching the Twos does an Element appear as that Element itself.  Chokmah is
virtually uncontaminated by any influence other than that of Kether,* so as represented in the Twos the
Elements appear in their original harmonious condition.

*Kether represents the outermost bounds of the Solar System and the Inner Planes associated with
these, as well as the influences impinging upon the Solar System from interstellar and intergalactic
space.  Hence the only Qlipphotic influences that can affect Kether, hence Chokmah via Kether, are those
that come from those regions of the Inner Planes associated with the Universe beyond the Solar System.

Crowley calls the Two of Wands the Lord of Dominion;  this card represents the energy of Fire in its best
and highest form.

Likewise, the Two of Cups is the Lord of Love, representing the energy of Water in its best and highest
form.
The Two of Swords is the Lord of Peace, representing Air in its most perfect form.

The Two of Discs or Pentacles is called the Lord of Change, or Change, and represents Earth in its purest
and most perfect form.  The Pentacles are also connected with the Pages or Princesses, and therefore
with the finalHeh of the great Four-Fold Name of God, Tetragrammaton, h w h y .  Earth is the throne of
Spirit;  there is thus a close tie between Kether and Malkuth.  Therefore in Crowley’s pack, this card
shows the symbolism of Ourouboros, the snake that endlessly devours its own tail, in the form of a
Möbius Strip, a loop with only one side and no end, similar to the figure-8-on-its-side infinity symbol or
lemniscate (¥) above the head of the Magician in Waite’s pack.

The Knights represent the powers of the letter Yod in Tetragrammaton.  They are the most active, purest
aspect of the energy of whatever Element they represent, collectively representing the fiery aspects of
the Elements.  Because of this they are generally represented as being on horseback, clad in full suits of
armor.  Their action is swift, violent, and transient.  For example, the Knight of Wands (Fire) corresponds
to the lightning-flash; the Knight of Cups (Water), to rain and springs;  the Knight of Swords (Air) to
winds;  and the Knight of Discs or Pentacles (Earth) to mountains (which, on the geological scale of
things, are generally impermanent and quickly brought low).

The Knight of Wands represents the Fiery aspect of Fire, Fire in its most volatile and violent aspect,
manifest both as physical fires and as the Will (the Bomb, as an example both of technological
achievement and of extreme heat and force, might be an archetypal expression of this aspect of
Fire);  the Knight of Cups, the Fiery aspect of Water, manifest as rain, springs, and Water’s power of
solution;  the Knight of Swords, the Fiery aspect of Air, manifest as wind and storm, the power of motion
applied to an apparently manageable element;  and the Knight of Pentacles, the Fiery aspect of Earth, in
particular the phenomena of mountains, earthquakes, and gravity, as well as Earth as the producer of
Life.  Physical analogues of these might be respectively the plasma that constitutes a flame, for Fire of
Fire;  lava, whiskey, vodka, gasoline, vitriol, aqua regia, hydrochloric acid, or some other flammable or
burning liquid, for Fire of Water;  hot air, live steam, or any other extremely hot form of gas, or thenuee
ardente (“Burning Wind”) often emitted by andesitic volcanoes, for Fire of Air;  and pellets of plutonium,
uranium, or other radioactive elements, or red-hot iron, for Fire of Earth.

        3.     Sephirah 3 and the four Treys

a.       The Sephirah

        Binah (“Understanding”).  Sphere of Ý (Uranus)

 
        The traditional astrological assignment for Binah was the Sphere of Saturn.  But now that the Planet
Uranus is well-known to Western, European-derived peoples, that Planet is assigned to this Sephirah.  In
turn, Saturn is now assigned to Da’ath, the “Sephirah”  that lies in the Abyss between the Second Plane
of the Tree of Life, which is determined by the Path connecting Binah with Chokmah, and the Third
Plane, determined by the Path connecting Chesed  and Geburah.  Binah represents Enlightenment, the
Shattering of a World-View that has become so strait and confining that only by destroying it and
opening itself up to a larger universe can the Spirit grow.  Thus Uranus, Planet of revolution,
breakthrough discoveries, and Universal Brotherhood is appropriately the Planet of Binah.

        Unlike Neptune and Pluto, which cannot be seen with the unaided eye and are visible from Earth
only by the aid of powerful telescopes and fly-by space-probes, Uranus can be seen with the naked eye,
even under less than optimal conditions.  It can even be seen without a telescope from the Los Angeles
Basin on relatively clear nights by anyone with good vision!  In fact, many peoples in the Americas and
elsewhere in the world had recognized Uranus as a Planet rather than as a Star for millennia, noting that
its average motion along the Ecliptic of some 4° per year is far too rapid for it to be the proper motion of
any Star.  But Europeans had no idea of the existence of a Planet beyond Saturn until William Herschel
“discovered” Uranus telescopically in 1781 and announced his finding to the European scientific
community.  In fact, what Herschel discovered was the planetary nature of Uranus rather than its
physical existence, for Uranus had been noted many times over the centuries on the charts of European
astronomers – but as a Star rather than as a Planet.  At any time, Europeans could have realized that this
“disappearing Star,” which, once spotted by an astronomer, disappeared from the location of its
discovery within a year or so, was a Planet.  But something in the collective psyche of Europe kept this
from happening until the late eighteenth century, just after the completion of the American Revolution
and around the time of the French Revolution.*  The European discovery of Uranus, originally named
“Herschel” after His discoverer, was the outward and visible sign of an internal revolution in
consciousness which Europe and her American colonies were then undergoing, side-by-side with their
various political revolutions then in progress.

*Since the time of Ptolemy, in the second century A.D., learned Europeans had believed that there could
be no more than two Lights and 5 Planets, the classical Planets including Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter,
and Saturn.  The Ptolemaic system dominated astronomy until the advent of the heliocentric Copernican
system in the 16th century.  The ancient philosophers imagined the universe to resemble a complex
machine consisting of concentric crystalline regular polyhedrons and spheres nested one inside another,
which carried the Sun, Moon and Planets in their motions and made the “music of the Spheres” as they
revolved.  By “regular” was meant that each of these polyhedrons was in the form of an n-sided figure
each of whose faces is a perfect polygon, the faces congruent, each a regular polygon, and all the edges
of which are the same length.  Only five such regular polyhedrons exist.  These include the tetrahedron,
a four-faced figure each side of which is an equilateral triangle;  the cube;  the octahedron, which has
eight faces, each of them an equilateral triangle, and looks like two pyramids stuck base-to-base;  the
dodecahedron, which has ten faces, each of which is a perfect pentagon;  and the icosahedrons, which
has twenty faces, each of which is an equilateral triangle.       These five solids are also known as the
Platonic solids, though they were known to the Greeks well before Plato lived.

The cosmos was believed to have the Earth at its center.  Around the Earth was a  Sphere in which was
inscribed a tetrahedron, and which was super scribed by a cube.  The later was inscribed in another
Sphere, which was superscribed by an octahedron, which was inscribed in a Sphere which was super
scribed by a dodecahedron, which was inscribed in a Sphere which was super scribed by an
icosahedrons, which was inscribed in yet another Sphere.  These Spheres gave off music as they turned –
the Music of the Spheres – and each of their songs corresponded to a note of the musical scale then in
use.  The five Planets and the Sun and Moon were carried by the Spheres geometrically determined in
this way – and there was no room for more Planets.

This beautiful clockwork scheme, based on perfect geometric figures, was believed to be the only one
which a perfect God could have made.  Religious belief thus kept this philosophical/scientific scheme
locked into the European mindset for long centuries.  Only the revolutions of the 18th century were able
to challenge it successfully, enabling William Herschel to see what had been there all along for
Europeans to see, had they been willing to:  that beyond the “last” of the Planets of the classical cosmos
was at least one more of Sol’s children, a whole new world, Uranus.

        Native American peoples, some of whom were well-acquainted with Uranus as a Planet, are
appropriately associated with Him.  The “American experience,” the cultural shock which Europe
underwent beginning in the late fifteenth century when Europeans first stepped onto American shores
and met some of America’s native peoples, precipitated a series of psycho cultural upheavals by which
Europe was so radically transformed that the resultant changes might better be called “evolutionary”
than “revolutionary.”  The ideals of democracy and freedom upon which the later American and French
revolutions were based were inspired by observation by European explorers and anthropologists of
American native peoples, who lived in a state that Europeans of that time could only perceive as
complete, untrammeled, nearly inconceivable freedom.*  Indeed, nineteenth-century European thinkers
were so impressed by the egalitarianism and freedom in which so many native Americans lived that
their observations and theories led Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to erect the socioeconomic and
sociopolitical theories and models which found their apotheosis in Karl Marx’s monumental Das
Kapital.        Later, more careful observations and new discoveries by anthropologists from Europe and
European-derived culture would reveal that many of the ideas upon which Marx, Engels, and their
colleagues based their theories were substantially as well as essentially in error, thereby invalidating
many of Marx’s conclusions.  But that did nothing to mitigate the impact upon the non-American world
of either Marx’s ideas or the historical experience upon which those ideas were based, an impact still
felt today in a nearly undiminished strength by the entire non-Indian world.  So it is fitting that Uranus,
Planet of Revolution, be associated with the peoples the original experience of which by Europeans
triggered so many great revolutions the world over.

*Where those same Europeans had not yet managed to decimate or destroy those peoples and their
cultures.

Binah,  the third member of the Supernal Triangle of Kether-Chokmah-Binah that forms the top of the
Tree of Life, should be studied in relation to Chokmah, which balances it on the opposing Pillar of the
Tree (it is never possible to understand a Sephirah when it is only considered apart from its position on
the Tree, in relation to the other Sephirah;  for it is just those relationships which show its niche in the
Cosmos as a whole, and thus its spiritual nature and meaning).

Binah represents the female or Yin powers of the universe, in the same way that Chokmah represents
the male or Yang forces.  Chokmah  and Binah respectively represent Positive vs. Negative;  Force vs.
Form.  Each heads it's Pillar:  Chokmah stands at the head of the Pillar of Mercy, the Right-Hand Pillar of
the Tree of Life,Binah’s place lies at the head of the Pillar of Severity, the Left-Hand Pillar of the Tree of
Life.  (Kether heads the Middle Pillar.]

Kether is Pure Being;  Chokmah is Pure Energy, or Pure Function.  Just as Chokmah is emanated

by Kether,Binah is emanated by Chokmah.  Force never moves in a straight line, but always in a curve
which ultimately travels throughout the universe;  therefore it eventually returns whence it issues forth,
but in a higher octave, since the universe has evolved since it first started out.  Therefore force
proceeding in this way, dividing and re-dividing and moving at tangential angles to its original direction,
will eventually evolve into a system of interlocking stresses which is relatively stable.  Over time,
however, that stability tends to be upset as fresh forces are released into manifestation, introducing
new factors to which adjustment has to be made.

It is such state of temporary equilibrium, which is created by the interacting and evolving forces as they
act and react and finally come into a deadlock, which is the basis of form.  As an example, the atom itself
is essentially a constellation of electrons and neutrinos, each of which is a vortex of Pure Force or
Energy.  Binah represents the stability thus achieved, which  is a condition of existence, rather than an
entity in its own right.22

 
        The Qaballistic assignments for Binah include the following:

                                                          MAGICKAL IMAGE:                A mature woman

                                                                         GOD NAME:                my h l a  h w h y

                                                                      ARCHANGEL:                Tzaphkiel

                                                          ORDER OF ANGELS:                Aralim (Thrones)

                                                      MUNDANE CHAKRA:                Saturn (traditional;  modern:  Uranus)

                                                                                VIRTUE:                Silence

                                                                                 TITLES:                Ama, the Dark Sterile Mother;  Aima, the

Bright Fertile Mother;  Khorsia, the Throne;  Marah, the Great Sea

                                                SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE:                The Vision of Sorrow

                                                       ATZILUTHIC COLOR:                Crimson

                                                                BRIATIC COLOR:                Black

                                                        YETZIRATIC COLOR:                Dark brown

                                                             ASSIATIC COLOR:                Gray, flecked pink

                                                                                      VICE:                Avarice

                                                                            SYMBOLS:                The Yoni;  the Kteis;  the Vesica Pisces;  the

Cup or Chalice;  the Outer Robe of Concealment

        For Binah, Liber 777 gives the following assignments:

Chokmah  is associated with the Declaration of Independence of the 13 American Colonies from Great
Britain:

In Congress, July 4, 1776

 
A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America,

in General Congress Assembled

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands
which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate
and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the
opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
– That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from
the consent of the governed. – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these
ends, it is the Right of the People t alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its
foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely
to effect their Safety and Happiness.  Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established
should not be changed for light and transient causes;  and accordingly all experience hath shown that
mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing
the forms to which they are accustomed.  But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing
invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it
is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. – Such
has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies;  and such is now the necessity which constrains them
to alter their former Systems of Government.  The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history
of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny
over these States.  To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused is Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended
in their operation till his Assent should be obtained;  and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected
to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those
people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and
formidable to tyrants only.
 

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the
depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his
measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on
the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected;  whereby the
Legislative Powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise;  the
State remaining in the man time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions
within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States;  for that purpose obstructing the Laws for
Naturalization of Foreigners;  refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising
the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to laws for establishing Judiciary
Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and
payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and
eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

 
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and
unacknowledged by our laws;  giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation;

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us;

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, for punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the
Inhabitants of these States;

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world;

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent;

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury;

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences;

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighboring Province, establishing therein an
Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit
instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies;

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms
of out Governments;

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in
all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging War against us.

 
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of death,
desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the
most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their
Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of
our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished
destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of this Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms:  Our
repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.  A Prince, whose character is thus
marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren.  We have warned them from time to
time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.  We have
reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here.  We have appealed to their
native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the times of our common kindred to
disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.  They
too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.  We must, therefore, acquiesce in the
necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in
War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled,
appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by
Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare That these United Colonies
are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States;  that they are absolved from all Allegiance to
the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and
ought to be totally dissolved;  and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy
War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which
Independent States may of right do. – And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the
protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our
sacred Honor.

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure
domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
United States of America.

The following Amendments to the U.S. Constitution apply to Binah:

Article III

Conditions for quarters for soldiers.

                No soldier shall in time of peace be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner,
nor in time of war, but in a manner to be proscribed by law.

Amendment XIII

Abolition of slavery.

1.  Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall
have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

2.  Congress shall have power to enforce this law by appropriate jurisdiction.

Amendment XIV
 

Citizenship rights not to be abridged.

Amendment XV

Race no bar to voting rights.

        Uranus, the Planet of Chokmah, is best represented by the Goddess Liberty.  The ideal of liberty has
its apotheosis in the Uranian Goddess Liberty, Whose colossal image stands today on Liberty Island
(formerly Bedloe’s Island) in New York City’s Upper Bay region.  The statue, whose full name is “The
Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World,” was given by the people of France to America as a symbol of
French-American friendship.  In the words of the designer, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi (1834-1904), the
statue “welcom[es] the peoples of the world with the torch of liberty.”  Finished in 1884, reaching New
York in 1886 after shipment from Rouen, France, the statue stands 151 feet tall from base to torch.  The
distance from the foundation of the pedestal to the torch is 305 feet that from the top of the statue’s
head to its heels is 111 feet.  It weighs 450,000 pounds. There are 167 steps from the land level to the
top of the pedestal, 168 steps inside the statue from the entrance to the head, and 54 rungs on the
ladder that leads to the arm holding the torch.  (Visitors may enter the head of the statue, but not the
torch.)

        Generations of immigrants, fleeing oppression in other lands, have thrilled to the sight of this
statue, symbolizing their hopes for liberty and opportunity in the new land, as they came into New York
City Harbor via Ellis Island, now renamed Immigration Island, which is also in New York Harbor, near
Liberty Island.  Their feelings have been magnificently summed up in Emma Lazarus’s famous poem,
which is graven on a tablet within the pedestal upon which the statue stands:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles.    From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome;    her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips.    “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost, to me.

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!141

The outer surface of the statue consists of a jacketing of copper, a metal ruled by Venus.  This surface
has of course oxidized over the years, in consequence becoming a greenish-blue in color, curiously
similar to the color of the Planet Uranus Himself, as photographed by Voyagers I and II.  This color also
suggests the hues of green associated with Venus, as does the seven-rayed crown on the statue’s head,
since the number 7 is also a number of Venus.  This is fitting, since Venus is very strong in Aquarius,
Uranus’s Sign, and the motto on the American National Seal, E pluribus Unum – “Out of many, one” –
indicates that the strength of American comes from the fact that it comprises a vast wealth of different
peoples, cultures, and cub-cultures held together not by brute force, but by common consent,
enlightened altruism, and mutual tolerance, aspects of Agape.    Agape is the manifestation of Venus in
Pisces, in which Venus is exalted, implying that due to the selective pressures on our species during the
Aeon of Osiris (Pisces), the capacity for Agape has been so strengthened in us that it has finally
manifested in the form of the communal virtues of libertarianism, as part of America’s way of life and
law of the land.

        These Venereal aspects also indicate the relatively matriarch focused cultures of native Americans,
who also treat their children far less oppressively and more lovingly than did the Europeans who
discovered, conquered, and displaced them.  At least as far as Europeans were concerned, native
Americans lived in a state of almost unbelievable freedom, closeness to nature, and profound
spirituality, all ideals of the Aquarian Age, ruled by Uranus. 142  These humane ideals and virtues all grow
out of the ability to love, to empathize with others, and depend upon that ability for their continued
nurturance and development.  This trait is one of the characteristics of Venus in Her most exalted
manifestations, exemplified by her exaltation in Pisces and Her esoteric ruler ship of Cancer.  Pisces,
mundanely ruled by Neptune, Venus’s higher octave, is the Sign of Agape, completely unselfish or divine
love, and represents the development in the growing child of the ability to identify with others,
necessary for a healthy sense of community with others, the absence of which is a hallmark of
sociopathology;  Cancer, mundanely ruled by the Moon, is the Sign of the home and the nurturance of
the extremely young child by its adult caretakers, particularly the affection and love without which the
ability of the young child to love cannot develop successfully. 143

        One of the most strikingly Uranian features of the statue is its base, Fort Wood, which is in the form
of an 11-pointed Star.  11 is the Key Number of Aleph, which has the numerical value of 1 and is
correlated with the Planet Uranus, the Element Air, and Trump 0 of the Tarot, The Fool.144

        A partial list of the correlates of Uranus include the intuitive faculties, or sixth
sense;  iconoclasm;  the bohemian, beatnik, hippie, Yippie, or other non-conformist;  the revolutionary
or anarchist;  the humanitarian and the philanthropist; Enlightenment, the awakening of the Higher
Mind;  destruction of old orders, and liberation of all kinds.

        The commandment associated with Binah is

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain;  for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who
takes his name in vain.

        Exodus 20:7, Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version

Nota bene:

        One final note, concerning Uranus’s true Qaballistic associations.

        Before the discovery of Saturn, Sephirah 3, Binah was assigned to Saturn, Sephirah 2, Chokmah, to

the Fixed Stars, and Sephirah 1, Kether, to the Primum Mobile or Firmament.  After the discovery of
Uranus, there was heated debate about which Sephirah to assign it to or, indeed, whether to assign it to
a place on the Tree of Life at all.  Clearly Uranus’s influence and characteristics had a very close fit to the
meaning of Tarot Trump 0, The Fool, and its corresponding Path, Aleph;  just as clearly, the old
assignments had worked very well, thank you very much, why change them?  Among modern
researchers Robert Godwin, author of Godwin’s Cabalistic Encyclopedia:    A Complete Guidance to Both
Practical and Esoteric Applications (Llewellyn, 1994), agrees with the latter opinion.  He says:
 

In my opinion, the three outer planets (Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto) have no place in an esoteric system
such as the cabala.  Their addition to the tradition makes no more sense than discarding Fire, Water, Air,
and Earth in favor of the 92+ elements of the periodic table.  Efforts to shoehorn new scientific data into
an established esoteric symbology are misguided attempts to force mysticism to conform to the details
of the physical universe.  There is nothing symbolized by these planets that was absent from the human
psyche before their discovery or that was not already adequately symbolized by existing structures. 

Even in astrology, attempts to work additional planets into the system of ruler ships and dignities have
made hash out of the elegance and symmetry of the older scheme.  In cabala, the absurdity of the whole
approach is exemplified by the rather silly equation of Pluto = Kether;  i.e., revolutionary change =
undifferentiated Oneness! 

From Planet Earth, these outer planets are invisible to the naked eye.  They should remain so in esoteric
thought.

– Ibid., p. 226

        However, Godwin’s first assertion, that “there was nothing symbolized by these planets that was
absent from the human psyche before their discovery or that was not already adequately symbolizes by
existing structures,” is refuted by the fact of mutation and evolution.  While all organisms are equal
before God, and should be before the Law, still only an idiot would claim that they all think alike, or have
absolutely identical emotional universes.  A bird’s mind is very different from that of, say, a cat – and
both are psycho spiritually alike as two peas in a pod in comparison to a squid, spider, or virus!  The
neurologist Oliver Sacks, in his wonderful An Anthropologist on Mars:    Seven Paradoxical Tales (Alfred A.
Knopf, 1993), and Roger Penrose, in Shadows of the Mind:    A Search for the Missing Science of
Consciousness (Oxford University Press, 1994), make exquisitely clear how anything from one small
mutation in a parental gene to a road-accident can make a tremendous difference in the workings of
mind and soul – and occasionally even add something new.  The long, long record in the rocks that
documents the history of life on Earth shows the incomprehensibly vast, sweeping changes to which life
has had to adapt during its tenure on our world – and as mind, soul, and spirit must work with the body
in some sort of cooperation to facilitate survival, obviously these, too, have varied enormously over the
eons, even as they have from one type of organism to another, or even between two individuals in the
same species, co-existing in the same moment of time.  In fact, the discovery of Uranus was followed
swiftly by the inception of the first great modern* Industrial Age of the West – which included the wide-
scale use of many chemicals never before released on Earth’s surface in significant quantities.  This, in
turn, produced increasing numbers of mutations in human beings and other organisms – and no one
today can reasonably claim that the current generation’s mind-set is identical, or even very similar, to
that of even the great-grandparents of today’s adults, let alone that of Western society of just a century
ago.

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_

*Quibblers among my anthropological colleagues will quite rightly point out that the first great industrial
revolution probably was that of the taming of fire by human beings, the second that of the beginnings of
agriculture and animal husbandry.  The first took place possibly hundreds of thousands of years ago, the
second, tens of thousands – at least.  But the first wide-scale harnessing of steam as well as machines of
all kinds for use in industry took place in the West in the last three centuries.  So there! :P

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_

        As for Godwin’s second assertion, I believe that Part 2 of Volume 1 and Chapter 1 of Part 2 of
Volume 3 of this work is a more than adequate refutation thereof.

        Finally, Uranus is quite visible with the naked eye on many nights from Earth, even from the Los
Angeles Basin, for those who know where to look.  It moves so slowly that many who observe it don’t
realize that it is a Planet, not a Star.  But numerous pre-telescopic cultures have not only observed it, but
recognized its planetary nature, including several North American native cultures, some Siberian
cultures, and other “primitive” peoples.

        Clearly, while Godwin’s beliefs on this matter work for Godwin, they don’t exactly accord with
objective reality in certain critical respects.

        At any rate, the question remains:  Where does Uranus fit on the Tree of Life?  Binah is clearly
associated with the Old Testament God JHVH, Whose nature is Saturnian.  Doesn’t this show that Saturn
should still be associated with Binah?

        It might, if that were the whole story.  But it must be remember that while JHVH could be a
domineering, tyrannical, fearsome God, He was also from the beginning a God of liberation.  It was JHVH
Who, through the good agency of Moishe Rabbinu, led the Children of Israel out of captivity in Egypt,
into the Promised Land.  So JHVH was also a Uranian God, a God of liberty.

        In fact, in this country, during the time of Black slavery in the South, Black slaves constructed a
whole spiritual machinery of resistance, rebellion, and self-liberation out of ideas, themes, and images
contained in the Old and New Testaments, disguising them as Christian hymns, psalms, sermons, and
exhortations as well as in the form of “simple folk-songs,” e.g., “Follow the Drinkin’ Gourd” and other
musical sky-maps to freedom.  JHVH, like the Planetoid Chiron,* has both a Saturnian and a Uranian
side.  Trouble starts when His followers stop at His Saturnian nature, becoming fearful and passive
and/or tyrannical, domineering, and cruel (depending on whom they are dealing with, those below or
those above them) themselves.  This sort of failing is in fact essentially that of the Sin of Da’ath, which
also entails mistaking mere factual knowledge and adherence to theory (Saturnian Da’ath) with true
understanding (Binah) or even real wisdom (Chokmah).  Crossing the Abyss involves a psycho spiritual
evolution from a passive, stone-like nature to that of an active, “bird-like” one, so that one ceases to
wait inChesed (Da’ath) for someone to come and carry one across the Abyss, and finally spreads one’s
spiritual wings and flies across it to Binah.  Uranus rules the Air, and the self-initiative which is the
necessary beginning of liberty and liberation, hence represents Binah, attained by that triumphant self-
evolution by which one is enabled to Cross the Abyss.  Saturn represents the Abyss of Da’ath, itself.  And
the Planetoid Chiron represents the transformation within from Saturn/Da’ath to
Uranus/Binah necessary to cross the spiritual Abyss between Chesed and Binah.* Hence Uranus is
associated with Binah, Saturn with Da’ath.

_____________________________________________________________________________________
_

*For more on whom, see Volume 2, Part 14 and “Orphans of the Sky” in my text, New Magicks for a
New Age.

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_

        Historically, one of the great avatars of Liberty was Harriet Tubman, nee Ross.

        The historical person of Harriet Tubman, known to history as General Moses,* of whom this Planet
is the namesake, was born into slavery in the ante-bellum American South.  At fifteen, her head was
injured by an overseer who, according to one account, beat her on the head with an iron bar.  As a result
of this beating, for the rest of her life she was subject to “fainting fits,” probably a type of epilepsy,
during which she frequently had prophetic visions – _real_ ones, which always came true, true
clairvoyant and precognitive faculties, which she always believed were gifts of God, given to her by Him
to aid her in His work.  It was by aid of these visions, many times, that she was able to accomplish her
work of helping to free other slaves and keep them and herself from being re-taken by slavers or killed
on their long journey North.**

 
 

*”Well has she been called ‘Moses,’ for she has been a leader and deliverer unto hundreds of her
people.”  FromScenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman (1869) by Sarah H. Bradford (b. 1818).

**She said of her unique gifts and their aid in her work, “‘Twant me, ‘twas the Lord.  I always told him, ‘I
trust to you, I don’t know where to go or what to do, but I expect you to lead me,’ and he always
did.”  Told to her biographer, Sarah H. Bradford (c. 1868).

        Not long after that beating, while still a very young woman, she made her way to freedom and her
niche in history.  She told her biographer Sarah H. Bradford [c. 1868] of her escape from slavery:

                        When I found I had crossed that line,* I looked at my hands

                to see if I was the same person.  There was such a glory over

                everything.

*On her first escape from slavery in 1845.

        Eventually she became the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad, the system of
routes by which escaped slaves made their way north, to freedom.  She made nineteen dangerous trips
back and forth, often disguised, escorting more than three hundred slaves to freedom.  Always with her
was her pistol, which she was known to have used a number of times with deadly effect to defend
herself and her charges and prevent their being taken back into slavery or worse.  Her first words upon
meeting new “passengers” to conduct to freedom on the Underground Railway, were “you’ll be free or
die.”  Once, when asked what her philosophy of life was, she replied, “There was one of two things I had
a right to, liberty or death;  if I could not have one, I would have the other;  for no man should take me
alive . . .”

        She is a prime example of the importance of the part played by Black women in the American Civil
War, e.g., Sojourner Truth, the legendary ex-slave who had been active in the women’s rights movement
and became a recruiter of black troops for the Union Army, as did Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin of
Boston.  Tubman herself raided plantations, leading black and white troops, and on one such expedition
freed 750 slaves.*

*See Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States (New York:  Perennial Library/Harper & Row,
Publishers, 1980), pp. 170, 180-181, 188., and Anne Petry, Harriet Tubman:    Conductor on the
Underground Railway (New York:  Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1955), passim.

        The Star Polaris is associated with Uranus, hence with Chokmah.

        Polaris, or Alpha Ursa Minor, a topaz-yellow and pale white binary Star at the tip of the tail of the
Constellation of the Lesser Bear, has long been known as “the most practically useful star in the
heavens.”  For many centuries, this Star has been the Lodestar or Steering-Star of navigators, the Pivot
Star of seamen, and the Latin Navigatoria of voyagers.  In many lands and ages, it has been known as a
symbol of constancy and faithfulness.  In legends from all over Asia, Polaris is known as the spire or
pinnacle of the cosmic Mountain of the World or “Axis of the Universe,” the fabled Mt. Meru or Sumeru
of Hindu and Buddhist lore.  In ancient China, it was known as T’ai Chi, “the Axis of the Universe,” “the
Center,” “the Ridgepole,” the “Great Root,” the “Wheel of the Universe,” the “Pole Star,” “the Wheel of
Life.”  In early Buddhist thought, it was used to express the concept of the Wheel of the Law, later
called karma.

        Closer to our own era, it served as guide for Black men, women and children escaping from slavery
in the American South who were fleeing toward the North, as celebrated in the Black “Spiritual hymn,”
“Follow the Drinkin’ Gourd.” This was  a song of the Underground Railway of the American Civil War
era.  Like so many other Black “spirituals,” this song was actually a call to freedom – and a practical tool
for attaining it.  In the following song, the Gourd is the Little Dipper (Lesser Bear), at the tip of the tail of
which is the North Star, Polaris, the guide-star of the Northern Hemisphere.  The same constellation
aided the moonlight rebels of Ireland, who called it the Plough and the Stars, and put it on their
flag.  The “old man” referred to in the song was apparently a real historical person, a member of the
Underground Railway who guided runaway Black slaves on the first leg of their journey to freedom;  he
wore the “peg-leg” of the song, and used it to mark the trail in the ground.  But at the same time, the
phrase refers to the Mississippi River, across the banks of which lay the road to freedom.  11 is the Key
Number of Aleph, Whose Planet is Uranus;  Uranus rules the 11th Sign, Aquarius, and is exalted in
Scorpio, which falls in November, the 11th  month.  The song itself goes as follows:

 
        When the sun comes back and the first quail calls,

        Follow the drinkin’ gourd,

        For then the old man is a-waitin’ for to carry you to freedom

        If you follow the drinkin’ gourd.

                Chorus:

                Follow the drinkin’ gourd –

                Follow the drinkin’ gourd!

                For the old man is a-waitin’ for to carry you to freedom

                If you follow the drinkin’ gourd.

        The river bank will make a very good road,

        The dead trees show you the way,

        Left foot, peg foot, traveling on –

        Follow the drinkin’ gourd.

        The river ends between two hills,

        Follow the drinkin’ gourd,

        There’s another river on the other side,

        Follow the drinkin’ gourd.

        Where the great big river meets the little river,

        Follow the drinkin’ gourd,

        The old man is a-waitin’ for to carry you to freedom,

        If you follow the drinkin’ gourd.

 

Polaris has thus been associated with the struggles for freedom of slaves and oppressed people for at
least four centuries, from the time when Black Africans were first forcibly transported to the Americas as
slaves right down to the Vietnam Era, when Viet Cong used its light to navigate by night during their
raids and assaults against American and South Vietnamese bases.

        Polaris is not located precisely at the true North Pole, being a little less than 1 degree distant from
it.  During the next 150, years, this distance will diminish and the Star will be closest to the exact pole
(27’ 31” distance from it) in the year 2102.  The change in distance is due to the gradual change in the
precession of Earth’s axis of rotation, which has a period of some 25,800 years, the “processional
cycle.”  During this time the polar point moves in a Great Circle about 47 degrees in diameter.  The star
Thuban (Alpha Draconis) was the Polar Star about 4,600 years ago, during the age of Pyramid-building in
ancient Egypt;  12,000 years ago, the bright star Vega (Alpha Lyrae) occupied the position of
honor.  Presently Polaris is much closer to the true Pole than Vega can ever been, and is a much more
accurate guide to true North than any compass.  If a greater degree of accuracy is required, the true
Pole lies very nearly on a line drawn from Polaris toward Eta Ursae Majoris (which Constellation is also
called the Wain), the last Star in the handle of the Great Dipper.*  So this Star, while being the closest
easily visible Star to the North celestial pole for about 1,000 years out of some 258 centuries, comes
closer to that pole than any other lying near the “processional circle” described by the North celestial
pole during one cycle of the precession of the Earth’s rotational axis.  And during historically recent
times, as the North Pole it has functioned as a guiding light for those seeking freedom or battling against
oppression.

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_

*For more on the astronomy and the historical and psycho spiritual significance of Polaris, see John
Burnham,Burnham’s Celestial Handbook:    An Observer’s Guide to the Universe Beyond the Solar System,
revised and enlarged edition, Volume III:  (New York:  Dover Publications, Inc., 1978), pp. 2008-
2024; Vivian E. Robson, B. Sc., The Fixed Stars and Constellations in Astrology (York Beach, ME:  Samuel
Weiser, Inc., 1979), pp. 108-109, 184-185;  and Richard Hinckley Allen, Star Names:    Their Lore and
Meaning (New York:  Dover Publications, Inc., 1963), pp. 453-458.

        Among the Gods and Goddesses associated with Binah are Medusa, the Crone aspect of Pallas
Athena; Isis, especially Dark Isis;  Kali, Parvati, and Chandi, the Battle-Aspects of the great Hindu Mother-
Goddess Durga;  and Persephone, the Wife of Hades, Queen of the Underworld.  Binah is the Bitter
Mother Who is  Womb and Tomb, Mother and Crone.  Thus figures of motherhood as well as of Crones
would be suitable for the Treys, as would bodies of water, Battle-Goddesses, etc.

b.       The Cards

        Geometrically, just as the Circle represents Sephirah 1, Kether, so the Triangle, the strongest of all
structures, symbolizing the Power of Omnipotent and Almighty God, represents Sephirah 3, Binah,
Understanding, this represents how we grasp reality.  During evocations – “callings up” – of spirits of any
kind, the Magickian directs the spirits so called into the Triangle of Art, a figure painted, inscribed, or
otherwise put on the ground just outside the Circle.  If the spirit or spirits to be called up are benign or
at least neutral, the Triangle of Art is laid at the East of the Circle;  if it or they are malign, or the
Magickian is unsure of their nature, the Triangle goes to the North.  This Triangle, which is in fact an
equilateral triangle which has God-Names of Power and various Magickal devices along its borders, is
the geometrical apotheosis of divine strength and power.  Unlike all polygons of four or more sides, the
Triangle can’t be collapsed by merely pushing against an unsupported side; each side is braced and
supported by the other two, and the whole is one structural unit.  It is the basic structural unit of any
geometrical structure, made by bracing higher-order polygons internally and thus dividing them up into
so many triangles.  The Triangle is thus the symbol of engineering and construction-work, the essence of
form. Therefore as a construct in the Worlds of Mind, Spirit, and Creativity, it is unbreakable by any
being from the Inner Planes which possesses less power than a true God.*

*Though we, who, like all manifest living beings, contain within ourselves the seed and essence of
divinity, can mentally and spiritually create and destroy such constructs, as a disembodied spirit trapped
in one cannot.

        Binah, Understanding, is the Realm of the Power of the Mind, and its Power is that by means of
which we comprehend and manipulate our world.  The Triangle is thus a fitting symbol for it, and an
appropriate one for any of the four Threes of the Lower Arcana.

        Astrologically, Binah  and the Treys are associated with an aspect of 120°, or trine, a soft aspect
associated with, e.g., absorption, benefits, blending, charisma, comfort, confidence, contact, creativity,
dramatization, ease, enthusiasm, expansion, expressiveness, facilitation, fashion, fashionableness, flow,
friendliness, goodwill, harmony, humor, increased value, joy, kindness, laziness, luck, optimism,
overindulgence, addictions, recreation, reward, smoothness, talents, or understanding.

The Treys

1)     WANDS

Design:  Various arrangements of three Wands.  Waite’s pack shows a man looking out over a landscape
that could be either the sea or a desert (the background color in this card is sometimes yellow,
suggesting either a yellow sea or sand);  his right hand grips one upright Wand, to his left stands
another, and slightly behind him and to his right stands a third.  Crowley’s shows one Wand upright,
passing through the intersection of two others that are crossed;  the Wands are tipped with Lotus
flowers, and they are superimposed on a design of two ten-pointed Stars, one of which is concentric to
the other, the intersection of the three Wands passing through their center;  a sigil of the Sun is above
the whole, and that for Aries below.  The New Tarot shows three snakes arranged in an equilateral
Triangle;  this suggests the Triangle of Art, one of the Magickal Weapons associated with Binah (as the
Circle is associated withKether).

America’s Tarot:  Upright:  three redwoods and a forest ranger, much as in the design of the card in
Waite’s pack.  Alternate:  three American Indian war-lances in an arrangement similar to
Crowley’s. Reversed:  Three broken arrows or war-lances, or three fallen redwoods.

Upright meaning:  The Sun in Aries.  10º 0’ 0” – 19º 59’ 59” Aries. Virtue;  established strength. The
successful beginning of a great project.  The inspiration and fire of the artist or the
inventor.  Pride. Power.  Departure, beginning, groping, advancing.  Research.  Success depending upon
surrounding cards.  A business from which material goods will be shipped to distant markets.  Business
at hand. Creative perspective.  Analysis of matters underway.  Enterprise, undertaking, commerce,
trade, negotiation, barter.  Hope, desire, attempt, wish.  The basis of the work is now firmly established,
and the undertaking can be fearlessly continued – especially positive if the question concerns a Magickal
Working of any kind.  Communication, instruction, reflection, message, writing, postage and
letters.  Discovery. Cooperation in business.  Collaboration will favor enterprise.
 

Reversed:  The nose;  those parts of the limbic brain which, like the amygladae, are involved in self-
assertion, self-defense, and aggression;  the eyes and the optical cortex. Around April 1 through April 10
of any given year.  Failure of nerve, paralysis of Will.  Arrogance.  Passing impressions, theft and loss. The
end of troubles, suspension or cessation of adversity.  Toil and disappointment.

2)       CUPS

Design:  Generally, three chalices.  Waite’s pack shows three women in a fertile field full of ripe crops,
each holding aloft a cup.  The Aquarian Tarot shows three women holding cups before a giant lotus;  one
is crowned with roses, one with circles, and one is uncrowned.  Crowley’s pack shows three cups in
designs reminiscent of ripe pomegranates or grapes from which liquid light falls as if from three
fountains; there are also eight lotus flowers;  the sigil for Mercury is above, and that for Cancer
below.  The New Tarot shows three pears joined by a triangle.

America’s Tarot:  At the top are the sigils for Mercury and Uranus, conjoined;  at the bottom, the sigil for
the Sign Cancer.  Upright:  three pristine mountain lakes joined by streams of water, from the surfaces
of which blazing light is reflected, spilling out over the landscape;  the landscape consists of fertile
mountain pasture or meadow filled with an abundance of wildflowers and grasses;  fireworks burst in
the night sky, in which is a glorious full Moon (4 th of July, Independence Day).  Reversed:  three polluted
lakes.

Upright:  10º 0’ 0” – 19º 59’ 59” Cancer.  Mercury in Cancer.  Abundance;  fulfillment of the Will of Love

in abounding joy.  The spiritual basis of fertility.  Maternity.  Comfort, healing.  Plenty, hospitality, eating,
drinking, pleasure, dancing, new clothes, merriment.  Spiritual riches resulting from a balance between
the physical and the mental.  Fruitful contribution by the union or collaboration of two
beings. Fulfillment.  Good beginning of a new venture.  The eve of a journey.  Success, triumph, victory,
favorable issue of a matter.  The beginning of love.  Mutual love.  Good health, recuperation.  Conclusion
of any matter in plenty, happy issue, etc.  Unexpected advancement for a military man.

Reversed:  The stomach and duodenum.  July 1 through July 11 of any given year.  Gastric or duodenal
ulcers, cancer of the gastrointestinal tract, cancer of any kind.  Unbridled passion, self-indulgence, sex
without love.  Pleasure surfeited, turning to pain.  Intermittent and transient bounty or abundance,
abundance that does not last.  Extravagance.  Business close at hand.  Expedition of business, quickness,
celerity, vigilance.  Excess of physical enjoyment and sensuality.  Consolation, cure, or the end of a
matter.

3)     SWORDS

Design:  Various arrangements of three Swords, though Swords forming an equilateral Triangle might be
appropriate, since it would suggest the Triangle of Art, used to evoke spirits – upon which the Sword is
used as an appropriate Magickal Weapon.  The Marseille Tarot shows two curved Swords, crossed;  a
third stands upright between them.  Waite’s pack shows three Swords piercing the same
heart.  Crowley’s shows two small Swords and a larger one, their points meeting in the center of a white
flower in full bloom.  The New Tarot shows three blades in a triangle.

America’s Tarot:  Upright:  Three skyscrapers.  Alternatively:  three pens, three computers, or other

arrangement of three artifacts of some kind, all suggesting the energy of the creative
intellect.  Reversed: three bombs or guided missiles aimed at the same target.

Upright: 10º 0’ 0” – 19º 59’ 59” Libra.  Saturn in Libra.  Sorrow, disappointment, tears,

heartbreak. Delay, absence, separation.  Necessary strife and conflict toward the end of the destruction
of that which is obsolete.  Struggle upheld by strength of mind, ensuring victory over the physical.  Gain
by force or in battle.  Rupture.  Strife, removal, dispersion.  A nun.  A quarrel.  Divorce.  An open enemy,
the clear manifestation of enmity or hostility.  Hatred.  Oppression, worries, a condition of being
burdened, baffled hopes.  Seclusion.  Pessimism.  Absence.  Small talk.  Bitter and evil
thoughts.  Illness.  Alienation.  Error of judgment.  Wrong-headedness.  Aversion.  Affliction of any
kind.  Division.  The Triangle of Art.  A successful evocation.  A theoretical model (scientific), a
hypothesis.  An intellectual discovery.  Computer science.

Reversed:  The adrenal glands.  October 1 through October 11 of a given year.  Secrecy. Perversion.  This

card is associated with Hekate.  Wars and disorders.  Distraction, confusion, disorder, error,
incompatibility.  Misrule.  Evil schemes.  For a woman, the flight of her lover.  A meeting with one whom
the Querent has compromised.  An unsuccessful evocation, with results deadly to the Operator and/or
those close to him/her.  An important  scientific or philosophical model or hypothesis which, though in
serious error concerning the reality it tries to predict, is nevertheless widely accepted by leading
authorities in the field as well as the public, having thus a strong deleterious impact on a society and
culture and the people who are part of them.
 

4)     COINS/DISCS/PENTACLES

Design:  Three Coins, Disks, Pentacles, or similar figures, generally arranged in a Triangle.  Waite’s pack
shows a monk and a hooded man observing a stonemason at his work on an archway at the apex of
which are three Pentacles arranged in an upright equilateral Triangle.  Crowley’s pack shows a three-
sided pyramid as seen from above;  each one of the apices of its base touches the center of a wheel;
above is the sigil of Mars, below, that of Capricorn.  The New Tarot shows three Stones, with an
equilateral Triangle.

America’s Tarot:  Center:  three silver Liberty-head dollars arranged in an equilateral

Triangle. Upright:  three “purple mountain majesties” above a fertile plain.  Reversed:  three heaps of
junk, industrial waste, or mine-tailings in a polluted wilderness.

Upright: 10º 0’ 0” – 19º 59’ 59” Capricorn.  Mars in Capricorn.  Work (used in the sense of engineering or
construction).  Magickal Working.  Construction, material increase, growth, financial gain. The
businessman, merchant, or craftsman.  Business, paid employment, commercial transactions.  A
journeyman (as opposed to an apprentice or Master).  Freemasonry.  High status, a gain in status,
earned honor, esteem.  Craftsmanship.  Nobility, elevation, dignity, rank, power.  The beginning of good
fortune. Civilization.  Aristocracy.  Skill.  Civil treatment, respect.  Noblesse.  Agreeable
relation.  Métier. Employment, profession.  Marriage.  Good done to others.  Bounty.  Profitable
relations in business. Restoration.  Reparation.  Successful repair of something damaged.  Beneficial
arrangement.  A marriage that will do much good, particularly one with great political
significance.  Skilled labor.  Renowned, glory. Celebrity for a man’s eldest son.

Reversed:  The calf of the leg.  The spine.  January 1 through January 10 of a given year.  Forces taken
from the occult to bring about gains in the physical world.  Relative equilibrium.  A fall from high status,
fall from grace, humiliation, loss of titles and honors.  Shoddy workmanship, anything done
badly. Children or offspring.  Commencement.  Youths.  Mediocrity, puerility, pettiness, weakness.

Queens

1)     WANDS
 

Design:  Generally, a crowned woman seated on a throne, holding a Wand.  The Marseille pack shows a

queen with a roughly carved club over her right shoulder.  The Waite pack shows a queen seated on a
throne decorated with lion motifs, holding a sunflower in her left hand, a Wand in her right;  a black cat
sits before the throne, and designs of lions and sunflowers appear behind her on a canopy.  Crowley’s
pack shows a queen crowned with a winged solar disk, holding a wand tipped with a pine cone;  her
throne is formed of fire, and a leopard sits near her.  The New Tarot shows a Serpent Queen, an
alligator, a snake, two daffodils, and a ship;  above is a crown with a lunar crescent.

America’s Tarot:  Harriet Ross Tubman.  Alternates: Susan B. Anthony or other American pioneer

Suffragette/Feminist;  Thomas Jefferson, who was an Aries;  Ned Buntline, a gunsmith;  Belle Star, a
female gunslinger.  The Person is seated on a throne made of redwood and carved with motifs
suggestive of them, which rests on a stage, and he/she holds a pistol in his/her right hand and a
sunflower in his/her left;  a couchant puma lies on the stage before the throne, and axolotls play about
the throne;  a tapestry made of flames is draped against a wall behind the throne, covered with images
of pumas and axolotls.

Upright meaning:  Aries (Cardinal Fire).  Queen of the Thrones of Fire.  20 degrees Pisces to 20 degrees
Aries (about March 10 through April 10 of a given year).  The Watery part of Fire.  Queen of the
Salamanders.  Adaptability, persistent energy, calm authority.  A kindly and generous nature.  An
immense capacity for friendship and love on her own initiative.  Strong loyalty and
trust.  Fertility.  Kindness, sympathy.  A lover of the country and of the home.  A
matriarch.  Adaptable.  Steady force, steady rule. Great attractive power, magnetism, charisma.  Power
of command.  Well-liked.  Kind and generous when not opposed.  Passionate anger.  Efforts to avoid the
blows of fate.  Astute woman.  Honesty.  Business transaction.  A sociable woman.  Woman living in the
country, lady of the manor.  A good and virtuous woman.  A dark woman.  A friend.  Seriousness.  A
good counselor.  The mother of a family.  A practical woman.  Wealthy or desiring
wealthy.  Ambitious.  Artistic.  A chaste, loving woman.  Honorable.  Well-disposed toward the subject of
adjacent card if the latter signifies a man, interested in the Querent if it signifies a woman.  Love of
money or a certain success in business.  A good harvest in all senses.  A woman with hair which, even if
dark, will have red or blond highlights, or is sun-bleached;  blue, green, gray, or hazel eyes;  heavily
tanned or dark skin.

Reversed:  The head and everything in or on it;  the brain, and in particular the cerebrum;  the face; the
upper jaw;  sinuses;  the skull.  The Sign Aries.  March 20 through April 20 of a given year.  Someone who
is impatient with opposition or frustration of any kind.  Pride which lacks spontaneous nobility, self-
complacent vanity, snobbery.  A tendency to brood, which results in a wrong decision execute with great
savagery.  Can be easily deceived.  May be stupid, obstinate, tyrannical and quick to take offence.  A
strong tendency to vengefulness without sufficient grounds for it.  Obstinate.  Possibly treacherous
without warning (and, incidentally, without cause).  Possibly unfaithful if married.  Fatality, defense by
means of brutality.  Stubbornness.  A gossip or flirt.  Possibly a meddler or dangerous woman.  Jealousy,
deceit, instability in emotional matters, fickleness.  Love of money, avarice,
usury.  Strictness.  Economical nature. Obstacles.  Resistance.  Opposition.  Passive and cool, not easily
roused to passion.  Money matters, e.g., banking, stocks, shares, etc., rather than money itself.  Good,
economical, obliging, serviceable.  Infidelity. Goodwill towards the Querent, but unable to exercise it.

2)       CUPS

Design:  Generally, a seated, crowned woman holding a cup or chalice.  The Marseille Tarot shows a

seated queen who holds a naked sword in her left hand, and an ornate, covered cup in her right which is
so elaborate that she must rest it upon her knee.  Waite’s pack shows a queen sitting on a throne by the
sea, holding an ornate cup decorated with angels;  her throne is decorated with cherub-mermen, and
incorporates a scallop motif in the heading.  Crowley’s pack shows a shadowy queen beside a lotus
pool; near her is a crane and a fish;  the cosmic lemniscate motif is repeated through the card in various
forms. The New Tarot shows the Queen of Pears with a golden crown above and the sigil for Cancer at
the bottom;  in the central figure are white roses, a pear, a crab, and a Viking ship.

America’s Tarot:  Elizabeth Taylor.  Alternates:  Bette Davis, Betty Page.

Upright:  Cancer (Cardinal Water).  The Queen of the Thrones of the Waters.  20 degrees Gemini to 20
degrees Cancer (about June 10 through July 10 of a given year).  The Watery part of Water, its power of
reception and reflection.  Queen of the Nymphs and the Undines.  Dreaminess, illusion, tranquility, able
to receive and transmit everything without being affected.  Fair woman, imaginative woman.  The gift of
vision.  A poet.  Kind, imaginative, poetic.  Good-natured underneath a dreamy appearance.  Imagination
stronger than feeling.  Prevailing wisdom.  Prudence.  Good advice.  Best friend of the Querent.  A fair
woman, a woman with fair hair, blue or green or gray eyes and fair skin.  A happy and satisfied
woman.  A beautiful woman.  A sensuous woman.  Success, happiness, advantage, pleasure.  A beloved
woman.  The mistress.  Good, intelligent, active, and practical woman whom the Querent will do well to
obey, and who deserves his full esteem.  Careful and attentive.  Loving intelligence.  Virtue.  Natural
growth.  Worldly promotion.  Fame.  Good, fair woman, honest and devoted, who will do service to the
Querent.  The gift of vision.  Wisdom.  Santa Sophia.    A perfect spouse and good mother.

 
Reversed:  The stomach, alimentary canal, esophagus, duodenum, and gastrointestinal tract;  the lower
ribs;  breast, belly;  uterus.  June 20 through July 23 of a given year.  Everything that passes through a
person signified by the card is distorted.  Not willing to take to much trouble for others.  A
coquette. Good advice which will be disregarded.  A Cassandra.  A barmaid.  A woman who is in a good
position, but meddles with everyone else.  A woman who is not to be trusted.  Success with attendant
trouble.  A good woman.  Distinguished woman who is not to be trusted.  Perverse
woman.  Vice.  Dishonor, depravity.  Sometimes a woman of equivocal character.  A rich marriage for a
man.  A distinguished marriage for a woman.

3)     SWORDS

Design:  Generally, a seated, crowned woman holding a Sword upright in her right hand.  Waite’s pack
shows a stern-faced queen sitting on a throne decorated with butterflies and winged cherubs, wearing a
crown also decorated with butterflies;  in her right hand, she firmly holds an upright Sword.  Crowley’s
pack shows a queen seated on a cloud;  in her right hand hangs a Sword, point downward, and in her left
she holds a human head;  her throne is jagged and crowned with the head of a cherub.  The New
Tarotshows the Blade Queen, two peacocks, a Sword, purple irises, a ship, and a crown with an eye set
into its side;  below is the sigil for Libra.

America’s Tarot:  Amelia Earhart, seated in the pilot’s seat of her plane, in flight above the ocean; she is
smiling, obviously very happy;  a bald eagle flies just above her plane, a flock of butterflies accompanies
her, and there is the faint image of a peacock overlaid on all.

Upright:  Libra (Cardinal Air).  The Queen of the Thrones of Air, Queen of the Sylphs and the Faeries.  20
degrees Virgo to 20 degrees Libra (around August 10 to September 10 of any given year). The Watery
part of Air.  The elasticity of Air and its power of transmission.  A perceptive, keen observer. A subtle
interpreter.  An individualist.  Swift and accurate at recording ideas.  Confident actions.  Gracious and
just.  Graceful.  Good at dancing and balancing.  An assessor, a mediator, an arbitrator, a
diplomat. Widowhood, mourning.  A keen, quick, intensely perceptive, subtle woman.  Fond of
dancing. Intelligence, complexity of personality, attention to accuracy/detail, alertness, skill and
accuracy in discernment.  Independent.  Versatile.  Swift to act.  Ingenious.  Intensely perceptive, keen
observation, subtle, quick, accurate in superficial things.  A fair-skinned woman with dark hair and dark
eyes.  A beautiful woman whose beauty is accentuated by fine bone-structure, slenderness, and wiry
constitution, as opposed to the Queen of Cups, whose beauty is a matter of a willowy build, soft skin,
and full contours. A woman of authority.  A female judge, a pilot, a hostess.  A widow.  Someone who is
dour or sad. Widowhood, loss, privation, absence, separation.  Suffering, afflicted
woman.  Sterility.  Grief.  Familiarity with sorrow.  Not a symbol of mercy, generally not one of
power.  Female sadness.

Reversed:  The kidneys, bladder, ureters, urethra, urine, and adrenals;  the skin, sweat, the sweat-
glands;  the testes;  the uterus, ovaries, and fallopian tubes;  lower back;  bodily equilibrium;  the bones
of the inner ear in their function of balance;  all bilateral systems of the body.  September 22 to October
22 of any given year.  Devious, slanderous, an enemy of subtlety, dangerous qualities.  Someone who is
cruel, sly, deceitful, unreliable, though with a good exterior, i.e., either a hypocrite or a dangerous
hidden enemy. Calumnious will, unpleasant advice, slander, evil words.  Destruction bearing
fruit.  Someone who is sly or crafty.  A prostitute, of either gender.  A bad woman, ill-tempered and
bigoted woman.  Riches together with discord.  Abundance together with worry, joy with grief.  A dark,
wicked woman, gossip, calumnies. A woman of bad character.  Paid love.  Deception,
menace.  Failure.  Unemployment.  The absence of a woman.  The evil influence of a woman.  Malice,
bigotry, artifice, prudery, bale, deceit.   A bad woman with ill-will towards the Querent.

4)     COINS/DISCS/PENTACLES

Design:  Generally, a crowned woman seated on a throne, holding a Pentacle, disc, coin, or similar
symbol aloft in her right hand.  The Marseille pack shows a seated queen, holding a Pentacle aloft in her
right hand;  the center of the Pentacle is an 8-petal flower;  in her left hand she holds a scepter which
rests upon her left shoulder.  Waite’s pack shows a queen seated upon a throne formed of a ram’s
head;  she sits in a flowery field beneath a bower of roses, and near the throne is a rabbit (in the pirate
edition of the Waite pack, the sky behind her is an absolutely gorgeous deep purple suggestive of the
sky in C. L. Moore’s marvelous short story, “Jirel Meets Magic”).  The Aquarian Tarot shows a queen in
an ermine robe, wearing a winged helmet.  Crowley’s pack shows a queen wearing a helmet which
incorporates the gigantic horns of a ram, and a goat stands before her;  she holds a globe with an
interlocking disc design in her left hand, and in her right she holds a diamond-tipped spear upright.  The
New Tarot shows a crown, a bear, a Phoenician or Egyptian ship and, at the bottom of the card, the sigil
of Capricorn.

America’s Tarot:  She is seated on a throne formed of piled-up Liberty-Head silver dollars;  in her left
hand she holds a gigantic silver dollar upright, and in her right she holds a diamond-tipped spear, as in
Crowley’s pack.  A goat stands before her.  The sky behind her is azure blue, the field before her is filled
with amber grain, and purple, majestic mountains are in the background.  Image:  Adelle Davis, the great
American nutritional scientist.  Alternate:  Rachel Carson.

 
Upright:  Capricorn (Cardinal Earth).  The Queen of the Thrones of Earth.  20 degrees Sagittarius to 20
degrees Capricorn (around December 10 to January 10 of two given, successive years).  The Watery part
of Earth.  Queen of the Gnomes.  The function of Water as Mother. Generous, intelligent, charming,
moody married woman.  A woman with dark hair, skin, and eyes.  Passivity, usually in its highest
aspect. Possess the finest of the quieter qualities.  Ambitious in useful directions, immense fund of
affection, kindness, greatness of heart.  Strong in intuition and instinct, weaker in intelligence, quiet,
hard-working, practical, sensible, domesticated.  Impetuous, kind, timid, charming, great-hearted,
intelligent, melancholy, truthful.  A dark woman.  A generous woman.  Liberality, greatness of soul,
generosity.  A serious cast of intelligence.  Opulence, generosity, magnificence, security, liberty.  Liberty
gained through wealth.  A rich and happy marriage for a young man.  A fortunate marriage for a
woman.  Good, intelligent woman who will render service to the Querent.  Help, assistance, woman of
good standing.  Timidity.  Material benefit, earnings, wealth, rent, products, security, insurance,
diploma, patronage of science, technical and industrial works.  High standing in the community, high
honors, renowned, fame.  A politician of either sex.  Civil service, someone employed in civil
service.  Christmas.  A redeemer, redemption, salvation.  Midwinter celebration, feasting.

Reversed:  Minerals, mineralization of tissues;  bones, bone-marrow, joints, and the skeleton;  the

spleen; the gall-bladder and bile;  finger- and toenails;  chitin (as on insects), hair, scales, fur, feathers,
armor in any form; teeth, horn, claws;  knees, knee-caps, shins, spine, and back.  December 21 through
January 20 of two given successive years.  (In a reticent and unassuming fashion) lustful and even
debauched.  Inclined to the abuse of alcohol and drugs.  Dull, servile, foolish, drudges rather than
workers.  Indecisive, foolish, capricious, changeable.  Disappointment in a given situation due to a lack of
wisdom.  A struggle to acquire and keep that which is acquired.  Sale of possessions.  Certain evil.  A
suspicious woman.  A woman justly regarded with suspicion and doubt.  Evil, suspicion, fear,
mistrust. Presents from a rich relative.  An illness.  A fall from grace, humiliation, loss of honor and titles,
etc.  A tyrant, tyranny;  a despot, despotism.  An oppressor.

c.       The interrelationships between the Sephirah and the cards of the Tarot

The four Threes, which represent Binah, express the symbolism of Understanding:  the Idea has become
fertile, the Triangle of Art has been established.  The Threes express the fact that while the stability
of Binah can never be upset, nevertheless it can give birth to something new.

In Crowley’s pack, the Three of Wands is the Lord of Virtue.  The idea of Will and dominion has become
manifest as Character.
The Three of Cups is the Lord of Abundance.  Here, Love has at last borne fruit;  but on a level
sufficiently far down the Tree that a very definite difference among the Suits is evident which wasn’t
possible before.

The Three of Swords is the Lord of Sorrow, which represents the idea of division and mutability which is
the Airy aspect of reality.  This card reflects the darkness of Binah,   the mourning of Isis over her dead
Lord, Osiris, but this is not the sorrow of mortals, depending upon individual disappointed or
discontent.  Rather, it is universal sorrow, the quality of Melancholy.

Finally, the Three of Pentacles exhibits the manifestation of Earth as crystallization of force.  It is thus
called the Lord of Work, representing real accomplishment.

As for the Queens, these represent the first Heh of Tetragrammaton.  They are the complements of the
Knights, receiving, fermenting, and transmitting the fiery energy of the Knight in the form of offspring,
either of the body or of the mind, in the same way that Woman receives the sperm of the Male in her
womb, thereby conceiving a child.  They represent the second stage in the process of creation whose
fourth and last state is manifestation upon the physical plane.  The fact that the Queens are shown
seated on thrones emphasizes the fact that they all have definite functions.

The Queen of Wands represents the Watery aspect of Fire, its fluidity and color;  the Queen of Cups, the
Watery aspect of Water, its power of reception and reflection;  the Queen of Swords, the Watery aspect
of Air, its elasticity and power of transmission;  and the Queen of Pentacles, the Watery aspect of Earth,
the function of that Element as Mother and matrix, the ground of being and womb of all
things.  Astrologically, they respectively represent the beginnings of each of the four Seasons:  the
Spring Equinox, the Summer Solstice, the Autumnal Equinox, and the Winter Solstice.  Their physical
analogs might be respectively a candle-flame, dancing in the wind;  a still pool or
lake;  telecommunications equipment;  and rain-soaked earth in early spring, waiting for the first seeds
within it to sprout.

B.  The Lower Arcana of the Tarot and the Ten  Sephiroth of the Tree of Life

§ © ª ¨

REVIEW

Kether:  Pure Being.  The Child.  God, Creation.

 

Chokmah:  Pure Force/Energy/Function.  Information (information theory).  The Father.  Man, the

Male.  The Phallus/Lingam.  Visionary, Mystic.

Binah:  Pure Form/Structure.  Redundancy (information theory).  The Mother.  Woman, the Female, the

Hag, the Womb that Devours in Order to Beget.  Yoni/Uterus.  Magickian, Engineer.

§ © ª ¨

The Abyss and Da’ath

Da’ath:  Sephirah 11

a.       The Sephirah

Da’ath, Knowledge.  Sphere of Ü (Saturn)

Between the Second Plane of the Tree of Life, which contains Chokmah and Binah, and the Third Plane,
which contains Sephiroth 4 (Chesed) and 5 (Geburah), there lies a region called the Abyss.  In it are the
InvisibleSephirah, Da’ath and “Knowledge.”

Like Janus, God of the turn of the year and the Solar months ruled by Saturn, Da’ath has two faces.  One
is that of the dedicatedly anti-spiritual materialist of the neo-Skinnerian or Martin Gardner type.  This is
the spirit whose motto is, “Science knows everything, or soon will,” who means by “science” an outworn
19th-century clockwork physics, and who means by “knowledge,” “control,” the complete anal-retentive
control-phreak paranoiac.  His battle-cry is, “I don’t believe in you, God!”, and his watchword is, “We
had to destroy them to save them.”
The other face of this Sephirah, however, is the ecologist.  His subject is the Energy of Life that is Pan,
the energy of the primordial layers of our being and instinct, which we must recognize as our True
Selves and the apotheosis of our Holy Guardian Angels* if we are ever to attain the highest levels of the
Tree, which compose Eden in the micro- as well as the macrocosm.  At this time, we won’t have too
much to say about the nature of this energy, except that its name is also “Knowledge.”  By this is meant
knowledge in the higher sense, as opposed to the “knowledge” of the “science” of an outmoded and
obsolescent materialism which denies that anything beyond the realm ruled by logic alone even exists,
let alone holds anything of value for thinking human beings, and ultimately rejects the worth even of
empiricism and objective experimentation and observation.  It is worth mentioning here, though, that in
the Bible, “knowledge” has more than one meaning, and that its other meanings may be applicable
here.

*The term “Holy Guardian Angel” is a rather ambiguous one, for different occultists have different
definitions for it.  Fortune sometimes means by it the True Self, the Spirit anchored in Kether, from
which the rest of the self evolves, sometimes that part of the self that is housed in Tiphareth, the driving
force of the living organism, depending upon which of her works are consulted.  Israel Regardie believes
it is the Superego, which is located near the base of the Tree of Life, on the Path Tav that
links Malkuth with Yesod.  Crowley says of it that it is neither “holy, nor a guardian, nor an angel,” and
more or less agrees with Regardie.  In practice, it does seem to act something like the Superego, which,
when it is in good working order, acts to keep us from doing things which otherwise could do us great
harm – and which, when it is out of order, keeps us from doing anything but, at best, that absolutely
necessary to keeping body and soul together.  This implies that Crowley and Regardie are a lot closer to
the mark than Dion Fortune in terms of their use of the term – and that the term itself is ambiguous in
the extreme, misleading, and highly inaccurate.  The reader is advised to keep that in mind when
reading Ms. Fortune’s discussions involving use of this term.

When Da’ath is understood in the higher sense, knowledge of it is holy and does not deny the seeker
access to the Supernals.  But in the lower sense, “knowledge” of Da’ath comes down to a belief that its
attainment from below is the ultimate step in attainment of true wisdom and understanding of the
universe and its Creation.  This error strands the seeker in a lethal stagnation of spirit of the sort which
has put our whole culture in the interesting position of creating, maintaining, and increasing, year after
year, an “arsenal” of “weapons” which are in fact militarily and politically useless, and which could
destroy our entire living world.  The potential depth and morbidity of this spiritual stagnation is
indicated by the fact that in spite of the obviously self-defeating and collectively suicidal nature of our
collective fetish for Planet-wrecking “weapons,” we somehow can’t seem to get over a belief in the
“need” for them and the military machine which exists to maintain and deploy them – a “need” for
which we annually pay hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes, as well as severe medical, cultural, and
ecological costs.

At any rate, Da’ath means “knowledge.”  It is sometimes called “the eleventh Sephirah” – an especially

interesting title, given the fact that 11 is the number of Magick.  Da’ath’s Planet is Saturn.

Regarded as a Sephirah Da’ath, is a comparatively modern idea.  It is mentioned in early Qaballistic

writings but only as the conjunction of the Masculine and Feminine Principles of
God, Chokmah and Binah. The early texts state explicitly that there are exactly “ten Holy Sephiroth:  ten,
and not nine – ten, and not eleven.  Ten.”  However, modern research has accumulated enough
evidence to warrant treating it as aSephirah in its own right.  Termed “the Invisible Sephirah,” Crowley
suggested that it might be best considered as another dimension to the other Sephiroth.*  On the Tree
of Life, it could be said to inhabit the Abyss, the gulf – a higher analog of the Gulf below Tiphareth –
dividing noumenal or spiritual reality from phenomenal or manifest reality.

Da’ath is the Sphere in which pure Force takes on form.  Binah represents the archetypal idea of form,
while the fourth Sephirah, Chesed, is a Sephirah of forms.  Da’ath represents the stage of evolution in
which actual forms are precipitated from the interaction of supernal forces.  In a way, Da’ath is
therefore a lower analogue of Kether, but rather than being, like Kether, a manifestation of pure Force,
its first manifestation is Form.  To be sure, the forms thus brought into being are still very abstract in
nature, being more nodes of energy than anything else.  Actual images and shapes as we usually
understand them generally don’t come into being any higher on the Tree of Life than the Sephirah
Hod.  At any rate, Da’ath is thus the highest unity in the world of forms.

Da’ath is the highest point of the human soul regarded as a soul or Higher Self, since awareness of the
Supernal levels can only be possible to the Spirit.  It is the gateway to Nirvana and the bliss
of Samadhi.  In Christian symbolism, Da’ath is the Upper Room during the descent of the Pentecostal
Flames into the Disciples of Christ.  In philosophical terms, it is the sphere of the Creative Fire in the
realm of Mind.

The symbol of the cloud-hidden peak of the Sacred Mountain of any race is appropriate
for Da’ath. Fujiyama, Olympus, Superstition Mountain of Arizona, or any other mystical, mysterious, or
holy mountain is an earthly manifestation of Da’ath.

Da’ath is thus the Sphere of Realization in its highest meaning:  the Understanding of Uranus
and Binahunited with the Knowledge given by Saturn and the Wisdom conferred by Neptune. 23

 
*This suggests that Da’ath could be the key to new Sephiroth and Paths, such as those added to the new
16-Sephiroth English-language Qaballah described in Volume 3, Book 2, Part 1 of my textbook, New
Magicks for a New Age, which is discussed in brief elsewhere in these course notes.

The Number of Da’ath might be conceived of as 0, Zero Manifest in a Symbol, as opposed to Ain,

“Nothingness,” Nothing not symbolized and not manifest.  In a later course we will explore this idea as
well as that of a Twelfth Sephirah, to which is assigned the Number a0, Aleph-sub-Null, the first
transfinite number, the Number of All Numbers or order of the Real Line Â.  In the first case, the
hypothetical trans-Plutonian Planet “Anteros,” meaning “Strife” or “Response,” or “Persephone,” after
the consort of Pluto/Hades, is assigned toDa’ath/Zero.  In the second,  the hypothetical trans-Plutonian
Planet “Eros,” meaning “Divine Love Expressed Sexually,” also called “Hera,” “Durga,” “Mary,” etc. after
the Great Mother Goddesses of all religions, is assigned to the Twelfth Sephirah, Ain Soph Aur, Limitless
Light.*

*In Volume 3, Book 2, Part 1 of New Magicks for a New Age, these Qaballistic assignments have
different astronomical assignments.  These course notes were written before the system described in
that article had been fully developed, which is the reason for the difference.  However, the points made
here are useful as they stand;  it is the idea behind them which is important.

Also, if we conceive of an “Eighth Plane” or “Invisible Plane” located above Kether, we may

positDa’ath as the Head of the Left-Hand Pillar of Power on that Plane, directly above and in line
with Binah,Geburah, and Hod;  and the Twelfth Sephirah as the Head of the Right-Hand Pillar of Grace, in
line withChokmah, Chesed, and Netzach.  This scheme is closer to that presented in the article in New
Magicks, and develops the ideas presented here in somewhat more detailed form.

The Abyss is that vast Gulf between the experience of reality and the Divine through the mediation of
the senses, intellect, and mundane intuition, on the one hand, and direct experience of Creator and
Creation via the Spirit, the True Self, on the other.  Such direct experience is known in the East
as Nibbana or Nirvana, the attainment of which is signaled by a state known as Samadhi, bliss beyond
bearing or verbal expression.
Another aspect of Da’ath is Justice, by virtue of its conduction of the Wisdom of Chokmah and the
Understanding of Binah to the Sephiroth below the Abyss.  By this is meant something far greater than
ordinary human justice, or attempts thereat.  The Justice of Da’ath is the balance of the Universe or
Multiverse itself that involves all factors within it from sub-atomic particles to the most remote and
largest galactic super clusters or even the infinity of alternate universes which collectively form the
Multiverse.  It has much the same relation to all of reality as health does to an individual organism;  as
perfect Adjustor and Balancer, Da’ath cannot deviate from perfect balance, hence its Justice, considered
over all 16 dimensions of reality and all of time and must likewise be perfect.

The human soul could not endure premature contact with the active side of this justice without being
seriously damaged or even destroyed.  This is a Justice as inexorable as gravity and the laws of quantum
mechanics, which shows no mercy to any transgressor of spiritual law.  Because of this, experience
of Da’ath strongly tends to upset conditions in the body and mind.  True, it is a balancing force, but only
in the long run;  in the short run, the results of encounters with it can be utterly disruptive for anyone
undergoing them.  Not only will one’s mind and soul be seriously upset by such an encounter, but even
more, one’s body and autonomic processes may be utterly dysfunctional as a result of it.  The effect of
the force of the Detachment of Da’ath upon one’s personality would tend to cut one off from awareness
of social and environmental exigencies operating in one’s present life; the consequences of the
stimulation of the more spiritual level of one’s being by such a contact will drive one into situations
regardless of their impact upon one’s physical and mental well-being.

Ideally, the influence of Da’ath will produce a type of person with a mission or sense of destiny, who will
have sufficient detachment to cut his or her way through all obstacles in the way of his/her goals,
regardless of the cost, and who will have absolutely no concern for whatever danger the future might
hold, so strong is his/her faith in his/her powers and acceptance of his/her destiny.  This is not an
attitude of fanaticism, though under less than ideal circumstances such contacts can lead to
it.  Fanaticism is born of megalomanic self-righteousness which eventually leads to isolation from human
contact and, finally, self-destruction.  The fanatic is in many ways rather inhuman, a blasphemous
caricature of the saint, cultivating virtues out of all contexts to the point that they become
vices.  Ultimately, the fanatic destroys himself, pointlessly, leaving a legacy of destruction and horror
behind him or her, nothing of any real value to anyone.  Evil frequently masquerades as good in this
way, but ultimately it reveals itself for what it is as a result of its utter lack of compassion, charity,
humanity, and love of God.

Clearly meditation upon or Magickal Workings involving are at best rather dicey business.  Great care
should be taken with any such Operation, especially if it is likely to involve the Universal Justice aspects
ofDa’ath.    For example, the normal colors of Da’ath are lavender, silvery gray, pure violet, and gray
flecked yellow.  As long as these are the only ones encountered during a Working of Da’ath, the
likelihood is that all is well.  But should notice strange reds and greens, a speckled brown and white, or
an electric blue appear during a Da’ath meditation or Working, then one should cease the Operation
immediately (taking care to close out the Circle if one is doing a Magickal Working dedicated to Da’ath),
for these colors are related to Da’ath’s aspect of Justice, and their appearance signifies an influence
which can do a great deal of damage to the spiritual levels of one’s being.  There is also a dark side
of Da’ath that is associated with the Collective Unconscious, what might be thought of as the
unconscious mind of God, and contact with it could have some very strange effects on one’s
soul.  Contacts with the person unconscious can be extremely disturbing, as it is, and contacts with the
Universal Collective Unconscious might prove to be unbearably explosive for anyone undergoing them.

Successful Operations involving Da’ath take the form of what is also called the Shamanic Journey, during
which one descends into the Underworld, suffering horror after horror and agony untold, but returning
with incalculable treasures of Wisdom and Understanding.  Such journeys are recorded in the religious
stories of  the  entire world.  They include, for example, the nine days and nights during which Odin
hung himself upside-down on the World Tree in order to gain his Wisdom;  Dante’s journey through the
Inferno and on to Purgatory and then Paradise, coming back to Earth at last to record it for
posterity;  Lovecraft’s literary expeditions from the Hell of “Pickman’s Model” and his dark poems,
“Fungi from Yuggoth,” through Innsmouth and its strange inhabitants, to the revelations of At the
Mountains of Madness, traversing the terrifying, dark path from the depths of the Universal
Unconscious to the realization that ultimately all life is one and there is no true separation between kind
and kind;  the journey made by Isis to recover the parts of the body of her slain Lord, Osiris;  the descent
of Inanna into the Underworld to recover the me of Enki, so that she could work the most powerful
forms of Magick;  Orpheus’ descent into the Underworld in search of his beloved, lost Eurydice;  and the
Centaur Chiron’s willing suicide, descent into the body of Mother Earth, and subsequent assumption
into the Heavens as the Constellation Centaurus,  in order to be healed of the endless agony of his
wound, which would not heal as long as he was alive and mortal.  However, unsuccessful Operations
in Da’ath can kill – or worse, leave the Operator brain- or soul-dead – when they don’t produce the
blackest form of sorcerer, the Faustian sociopath who is willing to sacrifice everyone and everything,
even murder the whole world, in order to realize goals that in the end prove to be utterly worthless.

The Magickal Image of Da’ath is taken from the God Janus in Roman mythology.  Janus had two faces,
looking in opposite directions, one for the dying, old year and the cold of Capricorn, one for the radiant
new year and the storms of Aquarius that are the heralds of spring to come.  Like Janus, Da’ath looks in
both directions – down into manifestation, the lower levels of the Tree of Life, seeing all that occurs in
them, as well as upwards, toward the Supernals.  In this way, Da’ath gives the Vision Across the Abyss,
and Janus is a very good representative of the process that confers that experience upon the Operator.

Baldur the Beautiful of Norse mythology and Horus of the ancient Egyptian religion can also be symbolic
ofDa’ath, signifying the pure spirit coming down into manifestation from the heavens above.  Heimdall,
who guards the great Rainbow Bridge leading from Midgard, the World of Man, to Asgard, the Realm of
the Gods, also has relevance to Da’ath.  In particular, the Rainbow is a symbol of Aquarius, ruled by
Saturn and Uranus.  Saturn is associated with Da’ath,   for He represents the binding of energy into
matter and the concretion of the pure forces of the Supernals into the Forms of the Sephiroth below the
Abyss;  Uranus is associated with Binah. Heimdall, Guardian of the Way from Earth to Heaven, is thus
associated with Saturn, Who is Lord of this world, and Uranus, Lord of the Sky.  As a result, Heimdall is
therefore associated with the Rainbow, one of the sigils of Aquarius, the Sign ruled by both Saturn and
Uranus.
Prometheus stole Fire from Heaven to give to humanity, when otherwise they would have perished of
cold, from attacks of wild beasts, and from hunger.  To punish him, Zeus chained him to a rock in Hell,
where he was tormented by an eagle who daily came to tear off and eat chunks of his liver, which Zeus
caused to be continuously renewed.  Finally, Prometheus was released from his punishment by the self-
sacrifice of Chiron, the Centaur, who agreed to go down to the Underworld in Prometheus’ place so that
he could die and have peace. The stealing of fire from Heaven by Prometheus symbolizes the attempt to
contact the Supernals throughDa’ath;  the punishment inflicted upon him by Zeus symbolizes some of
the possible deleterious effects of faulty or premature contact with Da’ath.  Chiron’s self-sacrifice,
through which Prometheus was delivered from Tartaros, symbolizes the relinquishment of ego and
worthless desires needed to enable someone who has suffered from such contact to be healed
again.  And Chiron’s subsequent ascent into the heavens as the Centaur symbolizes what is to be gained
by proper contact with Da’ath, at least in the long run.

Another symbol of the Shamanic Journey of Da’ath contact is the knight in shining armor that goes out
to slay the dragon.  Finding the great dragon’s cave, he enters and seeks out the dragon.  A mighty battle
ensues. Finally, the knight, burned and cut everywhere, his armor rent and buckled by his ordeal,
manages to crawl out of the cave, back into the sunlight and clean air again.  There he rests, regaining
his strength and healing.  Finally, his strength returned, he goes back into the cave to make sure the
dragon is dead – and there he finds, behind the corpse of the dragon, a vast horde of treasure, the great
horde of gold, silver, jewels, and priceless artifacts of all kinds that the dragon had accumulated over the
countless centuries of its existence, stolen from every part of the world.  Not only has the knight, at
enormous risk to him, managed to slay a monster that had been devastating the countryside for vast
distances around, but now he is the owner of the dragon’s treasures, wealthy beyond the dreams of
emperors.  In this vein, the story of Perseus likewise has a strong resonance with Da’ath. He was the
hero who slew Medusa, who is an excellent symbol of the darker side of Da’ath.

Originally Da’ath   wasn’t considered to be a true Sephirah in its own right, so there is no traditional God
Name given to it.  However, its true God Name is probably a synthesis of the God-Names
of Chokmah andBinah.  And since it is a reflection of Kether, it therefore represents all three
Supernal Sephiroth at the beginning of the worlds of form, and thus any God-Name given to it should
include the God-Names of all three of the Supernals.

Its Archangel likewise is probably a conjunction of the Archangels of the Four Quarters of the
Universe: Raphael, in the East;  Michael, in the South;  Gabriel, in the West;  and Auriel, in the
North.  The Angels ofDa’ath are related to the Seraphim, though they do not flame as do those
of Geburah.  They have been reported to have the appearance of silvery-gray serpents with golden,
darting tongues, a type of force emanating from them described as “Incandescent Knowledge.”

At best, descriptions of the experience of Da’ath are metaphorical, for Da’ath represents a state of

awareness devoid of all symbols, Samadhi.  This is the reason for the formula “The Empty Room”
for Da’ath, for it is the closest thing to a human symbol representing complete absence of symbol and
thus of contact with reality.  The mathematical concept of Æ, the Null Set { }, may be closer;  its very
abstractness is very much in harmony with the abstract nature of Da’ath, which cannot be easily
represented in any symbol that depends largely upon humanly meaningful sensory impressions for its
conception.  Da’ath is awareness of the ‘Complete Denudation of God,’ perception of God as that which
is neither Force nor Form, but which contains the roots of both within itself, something far beyond any
attempt to symbolize it in humanly intelligible ideas.  It is a condition of being beyond all others, one
which is approached by entering a state of abstract mind, mind that is completely above and outside our
normal experience.  The approach to this state, which partakes of several stages, is along a secret or
hidden Path of the Tree of Life springing from Chesed upward into the Abyss.  It is a process of initiation
for those who have learned all that normal Earthly life has to teach or for those beset by troubles for
which nothing in mundane existence provides a remedy, the Journey of the Shaman.  It can be a
terrifying Path, the Dark Night of the Soul of the mystic, but on a far higher level than is ever normally
experienced.*

*See Gareth Knight, A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism (York Beach, ME:  Samuel Weiser, Inc.,
1978), Vol. I, pp. 102-112.

The Qaballistic assignments for Da’ath include the following:

                          MAGICKAL IMAGE:                                 A head with two faces, looking both ways

                                         GOD NAME:                                A conjunction of h w h y and h w h y \ y h l a

                                      ARCHANGEL:                                The Archangels of the Cardinal Points

                           CHOIR OF ANGELS:                                Serpents

                      MUNDANE CHAKRA:                                Sothis or Sirius, the Dog Star;  the planetary comet

Chiron;  Saturn;  the Kuyper Belt of comets, extending from just inside the orbit of Pluto out to about
200AU;  the asteroid belt; the Öort Cloud of comets, beginning where the Kuyper Belt leaves off and
extending outward to the heliopause, Sol’s bow-shock.

                                                VIRTUE:                                 Detachment, Perfection of Justice, and the

application of the Virtues untainted by Personality considerations.  Confidence in the future.

                                                 TITLES:                                The Invisible Sephirah.  The Hidden or Unrevealed

Cosmic Mind.  The Mystical Sephirah.  The Upper Room.
                SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE:                                Vision across the Abyss;  Dante’s journey through the
Inferno and out again;  the Shaman’s Journey into the Underworld and back to the land of the living

                       ATZILUTHIC COLOR:                                Lavender, light beyond the blue end of the visible

spectrum (e.g., gamma radiation, X-ray, ultraviolet, etc.)

                                BRIATIC COLOR:                                Silvery gray

                        YETZIRATIC COLOR:                                Gray, flecked yellow

                             ASSIATIC COLOR:                                Pure violet, light below the red end of the visible
spectrum (e.g., microwave radiation, radio, etc.)

                                                      VICE:                                Doubt of the future.  Apathy.  Inertia. Cowardice

(fear of the future).  Pride (leading to isolation and disintegration).  Denial of the existence of the true
realms of Spirit.  Black Magick.

                                            SYMBOLS:                                The Cell of the Condemned Prisoner.  The

Prism.  The Empty Room.  The Sacred Mountain of any people.  A grain of corn.  The complete absence
of symbol.

                                                    GODS:                                Chiron, the Wounded Healer;  the Eumenides (the

Furies);  Persephone (for Her function as bringer of catastrophe);  Eris; Kali, Parvati, and Chandi (battle-
aspects of Durga;  slayers of demons);  Mikhail, Guardian of the Throne of God and Defender of the
People; Pallas Athena Medusa, because She rules the pattern-sense that enables one to perceive the
Tree of Life as a holon, one system, and also because She proclaims and dispenses the Justice of
Heaven;  Heimdall, the Aesir who guards Bifröst Bridge, the Rainbow Bridge that links Midgard to
Asgard;  Maîtresse Ezeli, the Haitian Venus Who dispenses divine Justice and battles evil in all
forms;  Themis, the ancient Greek embodiment of Justice;  Venus, Who rules Libra, the Sign of Justice
(the symbol for Libra represents the Balance-Scales carried by the familiar figure of Justice so often
shown in editorial cartoons);  Djehuti and all other Gods of Justice;  and Minos, Aeacus, and
Rhadamanthus, the Supreme Judges of the Souls of the Dead in the Underworld

Da’ath is truly a Siege Perilous, and in many ways the sins and vices of Da’ath are the deadliest of all,
involving as they do denial of the sovereignty of the Higher Self or God and the existence of true
Spiritual Reality.  TheQlippoth of Da’ath are the Shadows of the Black Magickian, the Sorcerer, the
Sociopath.  The serial killer and the power-hungry politician who will sacrifice all, including their very
souls, for the satisfaction of their various lusts are all ruled by these Qlippoth.  The sins of Faust are
those of Da’ath, the pursuit of knowledge at all costs.  Concerning these, Crowley tells us:

 
Now, if there is any difference at all between the White and the Black Adept . . . it is that the one,
working by ‘love under will’ achieves a marriage with the new idea, while the other, merely grabbing,
adds a concubine to his harem of slaves.

The about-to-be-Black Brother constantly restricts himself;  he is satisfied with a very limited ideal;  he is
afraid of losing his individuality – reminds one of that ‘Nordic’ twaddle’ about ‘race-pollution.’

. . . to the Left-Hander it would mean defeat, ruin devastating, irremediable, final.  It is exactly that
which he most dreads;  and it is that to which he must in the end come, because there is no
compensating element in his idea of structure.

. . . [H]ow can a man go so far wrong after he has . . . attained the ‘Knowledge and Conversation of the
Holy Guardian Angel’?

. . . Perhaps the Black Brother deserts his Angel when he realizes the Programme.

Perhaps his error was so deeply rooted, from the very beginning, that it was his Evil Genius that he
evoked.

In such cases the man’s policy is of course to break off all relations with the Supernal Triad, and to
replace it by inventing a false crown, Da'ath.  To them knowledge will be everything, and what is
Knowledge but the very soul of Illusion?

Refusing thus the true nourishment of all his faculties, they lose their structural unity, and must be
fortified by continuous doses of dope in anguished self-preservation.  Thus all its chemical equations
become endothermic.*

*Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears (edited by Israel Regardie.  St. Paul, MN:  Llewellyn

Publications, 1973), pp. 110-111.

Later on, he gives a concrete example of the results of the “Sin of Da’ath” taken from recent world
history:

For Choronzon is as it were the shell or excrement of these three paths [of the Supernal Triad], and
therefore is his head raised into Da’ath, and therefore have the Black Brotherhood declared him to be
the child of Wisdom and Understanding, who is but the bastard of the Svastika.  And this is that which is
written in the Holy Qabalah, concerning the Whirlpool and Leviathan, and the Great Stone.*

*Ibid., p. 117.  See also pp. 109, 164, 354, 392, 438, 443, 458, and especially 303, concerning Hitler as a
sorcerer or black Magickian, and his role in the Aeon of Horus.

Da’ath is associated with the United States Constitution in its entirety.  It is associated with no one
commandment, but rather with the whole of Torah, that is, the entire body of writings and teachings
associated with Judaism.  For Christians, this would also include the whole of the New Testament;  for
followers of Islam, it would include the Koran.  Indeed, for any culture, it is associated with all the great
Holy Books of that culture, from the Bible, the Koran, and the Egyptian Book of Coming Forth by
Day to Das Kapital to the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, Gray’s Anatomy, Emily Post,
and Webster’s Unabridged.

Gods associated with Da’ath include Pallas Athena, because She rules the pattern-sense that enables
one to perceive the Tree of Life as a holon, one system, and also because She proclaims and dispenses
the Justice of Heaven;  Heimdall, the Aesir who guards Bifröst Bridge, the Rainbow Bridge that links
Midgard to Asgard; Maîtresse Ezeli, the Haitian Venus Who dispenses divine Justice and battles evil in all
forms;  Themis, the ancient Greek embodiment of Justice;  and Minos, Aeacus, and Rhadamanthus, the
Judges of the Dead in the Underworld.

The astrological chakras associated with Da’ath include Saturn, Who sets limits and is thus a God of
Justice;  the comet Chiron, in a chaotic (in the strict mathematical sense) orbit between Uranus and
Saturn, named after the wounded centaur who learned to heal all wounds but his own;* Persephone, a
hypothetical trans-Plutonian planet, associated with catastrophes and comets;  the asteroid Pallas
Athena, and by extension the entire asteroid belt;  the Planet Venus (see above);  the Kuyper Belt of
comets, whose inner edge starts just inside the orbit of Pluto (it may in fact include Pluto, representing
Hades, Lord of Death and Transformation); and the Öort Cloud of comets that begins where the Kuyper
belt leaves off and extends out to the heliopause, at the edge of the Solar System (here are many
comets that have been captured from other Stars during Sol’s long wanderings through the galaxy)

 
*Comets in such orbits often [in cosmic terms] wander into the inner Solar System, where they and the
fragments into which the decomposed become a menace to Earth.  The Cretaceous period of Earthly life
came to a catastrophic end because of such a comet, or several such comets, impacting the Earth all at
once, 65 million years ago.  Comets have long been feared as instruments of divine wrath and justice,
probably with good reason – there is no reason not to assume that comets haven’t struck the Earth
since the dinosaurs died out, and even during the existence of human beings, possibly triggering the
onset of ice ages.

Numerological and geometric symbols of Da’ath include all “weird” numbers such as e, i =  Ö-1, irrational
numbers of all kinds, and À0 (the Cantorian transfinite quantity equal to the Number of All
Numbers);  Æ (the Null or Empty Set);  the Point;  ¥  (infinity);  mathematical structures such as groups,
rings, fields, etc.;  non-Euclidean geometries;  transforms, matrices, and other mathematical entities
which can be operated upon mathematically, but which aren’t scalar quantities (i.e., real numbers).

b.       The Cards

No traditional pack has cards standing for the four aspects of Da’ath.  These are from America’s Tarot:

1) WANDS

Design:  In the foreground, the Archangel of the South, Michael, wearing a breast-plate which has the
symbol of a lion’s head on it:  he wields a flaming sword with which he battles the legions of Hell. The
background is sky filled with storm-clouds and lightning, haloed with light suggesting Cherenkov
radiation, X-ray light, and gamma radiation.  In the middle distance is the airburst and toadstool cloud of
an H-bomb explosion.

 
Upright meaning:  Triumph over Evil and Illusion.

Reversed:  Seduction by Evil and Illusion;  selling one’s soul for worthless things;  the Sin of Da’ath(the
confusion of mere Knowledge with true Understanding and Wisdom, the sin of Faust).

2)       CUPS

Design:  In the foreground, the Archangel of the West, Gabriel, holding up a chalice in one hand and a
trumpet in the other, which he is blowing to announce the End of Days.  At the four corners of the card
are, in counterclockwise order beginning with the upper right corner, a spectre of Famine, riding a
starving Brahma bull;  a thermonuclear explosion, in the midst of the fireball of which can be seen the
head of a lion;  the figure of Death, wearing a black robe and cowl and carrying a scythe, an eagle on his
shoulder and a serpent under his foot;  and the spectre of Plague, covered with sores, puffing out his
cheeks as he blows contaminated air at a throng of screaming, frightened, battered people at the
bottom of the card. In the background is an apocalyptic sky and the Bitter Sea of Binah.

Upright:  Much the same as Trump XX, The Last Judgement,  but on a mass scale, involving countless
people or whole worlds.

Reversed:  Damnation.

3) SWORDS

Design:  In the foreground, the Archangel of the East, Raphael, holding a staff and a sword: “Behold, I
bring tidings.”  A butterfly sits on his shoulder.  Behind him is the disk of the Sun, blazing as at noon,
against a sky of pure blue, clean and cloudless;  Horus as a hawk flies above it.  Mathematical symbols
such as I (for the square root of minus one), À, Â, Õ, Æ, etc., rim the Solar disk.

Upright:  Understanding achieved by means including but transcending logic and the data at hand, as in
Kukele’s dream of the snake eating its own tail that suggested the actual form of the benzene molecule,
Einstein’s intuitive grasp of the principles of physics, etc.
 

Reversed:  Rejection of any ideas not backed up by “common sense” data, the sort of concrete thinking
to which schizophrenics are often prone, innumeracy, an inability to grasp abstract ideas, etc.

4) COINS/DISCS/PENTACLES

Design:  In the foreground is the Archangel of the North, Auriel, the Book of Days under his arm and a
staff in his hand.  He wears a breast-plate on which is a bull’s head.  He stands upon a crossroads.  In the
far background are great mountains and an evening sky.

Upright:  Physical reality as the throne of Spirit.

Reversed:  Libertinism, Lust of Result, greed, miserliness, illness and trouble that are the result of
inability to grasp the essential functions of the physical in relation to the spiritual, venereal disease, etc.

In addition, the Court Cards and Lower Arcana of the new 16-Sephiroth Qaballah (for more on which see
the final sections of this lesson and those for the following lesson, as well as Volume 3, Book 2, Part 2 of
myNew Magicks for a New Age) have six rather than four Suits.  The two additional Suits are the Suit of
Mandelbröts (the motif for which is a stylized representation of the Mandelbröt set, a fractal entity,
represented in a large palette of colors indicating zones of greater or lesser uncertainty concerning the
boundaries of the set), associated with Chaos or the Void, and the Suit of Stars (the motif for which is
the Unicursal Hexagram), associated with Ain Soph Aur  (Creation, the Universe as a complete living
entity).  The cards of these two additional Suits associated with Da'ath are:

5) MANDELBRÖTS

Design:  In the foreground is the Archangel of the South Pole, Eris (alternately, Persephone,  Kali, or
Spider-Woman), wearing a gorgeous robe patterned with Mandelbröts in all colors of the rainbow. In
the background are roiling clouds whose shapes hint at every sort of creature and phenomenon, none of
them clearly defined;  the clouds are colored in a riot of colors.  In the far background, glimpsed through
rents in the clouds, is empty blue sky.

Upright:  Things in potential.  The possibility of things.  The moment just prior to the beginning of

Creation.  The raw materials of Creation.  Creativity and the potential for it.

Reversed:  Stifled or destroyed potential.

6) STARS

Design:  In the foreground is the Archangel of the North Pole, Hera (alternately, Pallas Athena, Durga, or
Corn-Woman), wearing a sky-blue gown covered with Stars. She works at a great loom, upon which is
displayed the universe in all its blazing glory  In the background is the Firmament, separated into “the
waters above and the waters below.”

Upright:  The manifest works of God.

Reversed:  Devastation, destruction, waste, Armageddon, etc.

c.       The interrelationships between the Sephirah and the cards of the Tarot

Basically, these show the Archangels of the Four Quarters and their functions in the universe.

§ © ª ¨

 
 

4. Sephirah 4

a. The Sephirah

Chesed, “Mercy.”  Also known as Gedulah, “Grace.”  Sphere of Û (Jupiter).

Dion Fortune says of this Realm that

Chesed, being the first Sephirah of Microprosopos, or the manifested universe, represents the
formulation of the archetypal idea, the conception of the abstract.  When the abstract principle that
forms the root of some new activity is formulating in our minds, we are operating in the sphere of
Chesed.24

She also describes Chesed as

The father of his people in times of peace. 25

Chesed is the realm of the Philosopher and the Just Judge.  Here are formulated the basic principles
behind all things, whether human law, metamathematics, science and the workings of the natural world,
linguistics, or any other field of study.  Here also is the realm of equity law, which strives to attain the
most good for the greatest part of a community.

According to the Yetziratic Text,

The Fourth Path is called the Cohesive or Receptive Intelligence, because it contains all the Holy Powers,
and from it emanate all the spiritual virtues with the most exalted essences.  They emanate one from
another by virtue of the Primordial Emanation, the Highest Crown, Kether.

 
Before Da’ath was believed to be a Sephirah in its own right, Chesed was the first Sephirah of the
Formative World.  This explains the Yetziratic Text, which is still accurate:  Chesed receives all the holy
powers from the Supernals through Da’ath, one of the symbols of which is the Prism – just as a prism
transmits the separate wavelengths of Sunlight through the Abyss of Space to observers on Earth,
so Da’ath transmits the various influences of the Supernals to the Sephiroth below the Abyss.  As the
Text states, all the Emanations orSephiroth have their ultimate origin in the primordial upwelling of
divine force in Kether.  This force, when activated and given the potential for form
in Chokmah and Binah, is then, as it were, refracted through Da’athinto Chesed, which is for this reason
called the Receptive Intelligence.  In addition, it is called the Cohesive Intelligence because it is in
this Sephirah that the forces of the Supernals first cohere into form, albeit of a very subtle kind, more
like the “strange attractors” of quantum-mechanical fields and chaotic systems than solid matter of the
sort we normally deal with.  Binah represents the idea of form, and Da’ath carries out the process of
transmutation of energy or force into form, but it is in Chesed  that the forces of the Supernals first
actually cohere into true forms.

Descending from Chesed  to ever-lower levels of the Tree of Life, these forms gradually evolve into ever-
greater density of manifest form.  For this reason the Yetziratic Text states that from Chesed “emanate
all the spiritual virtues with the most exalted essences.”  In other words, though form has been implicit
to some extent inBinah and Da’ath, it is in Chesed, the first Sephirah below the Abyss, that it first truly
manifests, for which reason Chesed is the most exalted state of manifestation in form.  Therefore, while
primordial Force emanates from the Supernals and is transformed through Da’ath, Chesed has dominion
over the Yetzirah, the universe of form.  For this reason Chesed is said to be the Sphere of the Masters.

The history of the idea of the Masters is tempestuous and, before the end of the 19 th Century, largely
obscure.  Anyone who contacted them prior to that time generally kept the fact secret or else was
almost certainly unaware of what or who it was he had contacted.  As far as the Inner Planes are
concerned, ideas about the actual forms of the Masters is usually highly colored by the psychological
biases of the ones perceiving them.  Thus insofar as our images of the Masters go, these are virtually no
more than products of our own imaginations, as is true for all beings of the Inner Planes, whether
human, angelic, diabolic, or Elemental.  This doesn’t mean, however, that the Masters themselves are
solely the products of our imaginations – they are real beings on their own level.  But the realm of the
Masters corresponds to Chesed, a Sphere in which forms have the density of the processes of the
abstract mind or intuition;  thus any idea we have of their form which is in any way concretized won’t
correspond to their actual forms.  Our images of the forms of entities from the Inner Planes are created
in the Sphere of Yesod, the Treasure House of Images, but a Master is in actuality simply a potent center
of abstract force.  The idea projected in one’s imagination – in , the Treasure House of Images, but a
Master is in actuality simply a potent center of abstract force.  The idea projected in one’s imagination –
inYesod – serves as a focus for this force, which animates the image with its own energy.  By creating
such an interface with a Master, it is possible to hold conversations with the Master through the
medium of the projected idea which, however, holds about the same relationship to the true form of
the Master with whom one is communicating that a telephone does to those using it to communicate
with each other.  This technique is called “Astral psychism,” and it can be useful as long as one keeps
firmly in mind that one’s projected idea of the form of the being with whom one is communicating
through the medium of that idea or image is not the actual form of that being, and may in fact have no
resemblance whatsoever to the latter.

Obviously this method has its risks, and these can be quite serious, indeed.  Very few, if any, can work at
this level of communication – using images conceived in the relatively dense Astral levels of Yesod as
interfaces with beings whose proper Sphere is on a far higher, far less dense realm of being – without
unconsciously contaminating the communications received from those beings with their own ideas and
preconceptions.  The most direct forms of communication with the Masters, which consist of raising
one’s own consciousness to the level of the entities with whom one intends to communicate, are the
most efficient and least prone to that sort of bias and contamination.  By doing so, one receives the
communications direct from abstract mind to abstract mind, letting them then filter down into more
concrete levels of consciousness in the form of one’s own ideas and thoughts.

Clearly such a technique of communication makes it impossible to prove the existence of beings of the
high Inner Planes under laboratory conditions, for physical science has no means of directly recording
the output of anyone’s mind.  The only proof is therefore direct experience, which requires a great deal
of faith – and faith is not an approved scientific instrument or attitude (except, of course, insofar as it is
faith in scientific method! J). The only form of psychic communication to which the scientific method
applies at all is deep trance, which isn’t a condition that is required either for astral psychism or mental
telepathy.  Virtually anyone can learn to do these with some degree of facility, given a certain degree of
training and education;  in fact, many of us probably do it unconsciously, or in REM sleep.  Some, of
course, have the knack to a greater degree than others, but the potential for the talent seems to be
more or less universal.  The Masters themselves are reported to favor the higher mental approach, since
it is less subject to error one it has been properly developed.  The astral method, on the other hand, has
led to some ludicrous errors, one of the main contributing factors to the ill-repute which occultism in
general and astral psychism or “channeling” in particular have acquired over the centuries – consider,
for example, the more infamous “leading lights” of the New Age movement and, before them, the
Spiritualist movement, whose “channeled” pronouncements from “the Masters” sound like the products
of megalomanic developmentally disabled three-year olds!

Obviously, once you begin holding interior conversations with projections of your own imagination, it
won’t take much to plunge you into schizophrenic psychosis.  For this reason, occultism should be
carried out under strictly controlled conditions, with definite goals in mind, the reason for the careful
opening and closing rituals used before and after any practical Magickal Workings.  While those who
produced the first reports of the existence of the Masters weren’t necessarily schizophrenic psychotics,
they may well have been victims of hallucination in that they likely “confused the planes,” mistaking
astral consciousness for physical reality.  E.g., there are accounts of meetings with Master So-and-So in a
public places such as railway stations, parks or the like, with detailed descriptions of dress – always in
the style of the period of the person reporting on the contact!  Obviously such parochial descriptions of
appearance of the Masters are no more than the projections of imagination of the one giving the
report.  There is truth behind all such self-deception, but because of the appallingly stupid ways in which
the facts have been presented in the past, most of us have understandably dismissed the entire subject
as no more than the product of dementia or hoax.

The Masters, or Adepts of the Inner Planes, are mortals who have gained all the experience and the
wisdom that comes from it necessary for their spiritual evolution in the worlds of form.  They are
therefore “just men made perfect.”  According to an ancient Jewish legend, there are 72 of them – the
36 Just Men and their 36 wives – corresponding to the 72 components of the Shemhamforash and the
decanates or 10-degree sections of the Zodiac (assuming that the Zodiac has Northern and Southern
projections, there are thus 36 decanates in the Northern projection, and 36 in the Southern).  According
to the legend, as long as “36 Just Men remain in the world, the world will be secure from ultimate
harm”;  Judgement Day cannot come as long as they are in the world.  Obviously, they can’t be both in
the Sphere of Chesed and in the world;  presumably either they take turns incarnating in physical
existence here on Earth, or they speak and act through chosen mortals on the physical plane.  At any
rate, this legend reflects the nature of Chesed and its inhabitants, the Tzeddekim(“Saints”) or Just.

Everyone who has become free of the necessity of birth and death can go on to evolution in higher
Spheres, but some choose to stay behind on Earth in order to help the rest of us in our evolution
through Earthly incarnation.  These are the Masters, the Just.  How many of them there actually might
be is not known;  only a few are known to humanity by name, since it is only the “teaching Masters”
who communicate directly with us.

In the same way that the Archangels form the highest levels of the Angelic and Elemental hierarchies
(and, correspondingly, that the Archdemons form the lowest levels of the diabolic “Lowerarchy,” in C. S.
Lewis exquisitely apt phrase), this “college of Masters” forms the upper reaches of the planetary
hierarchy of mortal beings.  Their function is to act as mediators between divine forces or the Will of
God and mortals;  therefore their realm of operation is Chesed.

There is also, however, an “Inner Council of Masters,” commonly referred to as “The Great White
Lodge” or “Great White Brotherhood.”  These operate more in Da’ath, for when the “Council” is in full
session, they make contact with the higher, Supernal levels and with the unnamable and unknowable
beings who dwell in those remote Spheres.  These terms are of course at best very approximate
ones;  the nature of the “Council” and its contacts with the Supernals is more in the nature of a high
telepathic rapport than a council meeting or congress as we normally understand these.

The esoteric grade assigned to Chesed is Adeptus Exemptus, that is, one who is exempt from or free of
the limitations imposed by physical and mortal existence and the need to reincarnate.  That the function
of Chesed is similar to the function of the Masters is represented by the Sephirah’s Magickal Image, that
of a mighty king, crowned and enthroned;  the colors associated with Chesed, which are the purples and
blues customarily associated with royalty;  and symbols such as the Orb, Wand, and Crook.

The rulership implied by Chesed is not, however, the sort of authority we normally inflict on ourselves in
our world in the form of oppression, tyranny, and persecution, which may be regarded as Qlipphotic
shadows of the true functions of Chesed.  The Will of God is, after all, the Love that is God, and the true
spiritual experience ofChesed is the Vision of Divine Love.  Crowley was absolutely correct when he
asserted that “Love is the Law, Love under Will.”*

*That phrase can be interpreted in two different ways:  love as the basis, origin, fountainhead,

or ground of Will, and love as the subject or slave of Will.  The nature of Chesed is in line with the first
interpretation, that of its Qlippoth with the second.  Crowley’s other major axioms, “Every man and
every woman is a Star” and “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” suffer similarly from
misinterpretation.  The latter means that one should follow one’s True Will, which is synonymous with
the Will of God, the Tao, etc., not that one should act on every whim and impulse of the moment.  To
follow one’s True Will also means to be able to defer satisfaction of one’s appetites in order to gain a
greater good, rather than living the life of a sociopath who answers to no authority or law outside
himself.  Likewise, that “every man and every woman is a Star” does not mean that everyone is
therefore immune to trouble, woe, injury, and death;  it only means that the inner core of each of us is
Spirit, clothed in utterly mortal mind, emotions, and flesh, which last are all quite susceptible to the
“slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” and will be so as long as we continue in mortal existence.

At the level of Chesed, the individual is completely within the Tao, in total harmony with the Will of
God. The free will of mortal being is sacrosanct.  Obedience, the Virtue of this Sephirah, doesn’t mean a
willingness to take orders, but rather that the soul who has attained to the level of this Sphere is so
aligned with the Will of God that his own will is identical with it, so that he can therefore do no evil – evil
is utterly foreign to his nature. Therefore the Masters do not train their pupils to take orders, but rather
to develop themselves to such a degree that they can make up their own minds as to how to act in any
given situation, so that they will be in harmony with the Will of God and the goals of Life.

For this reason, there is no compulsion in “White” or “Right-Hand” occultism.  If someone is headed for
a fall, he may be warned about it, but if he nevertheless persists in his chosen course of action then that
is his business.  Of course, if the damage he is likely to inflict on himself and others is likely to injure the
group of which he is a member, he may be asked to leave it for the benefit of everyone concerned.  He is
then free to leave, pursue his course of action, and suffer the consequences.  If he is fit afterwards, and
has developed some wisdom as a result of his experience, he may be readmitted to the group.  Some
can only learn in this way.

Because the Will of God in ruling Creation is the law of Love, Gedulah, Love may be a better title for
thisSephirah, and it is often termed that.  However, Chesed, “Mercy,” is more commonly used;  it is
probably derived from the fact that when the glyph of the Pillars – the Right-Hand Pillar of Mercy, the
Central Pillar of Consciousness, and the Left-Hand Pillar of Severity – is superimposed on the Tree of Life,
this Sephirah is at the center of the Pillar of Mercy, at the level of ethical or moral being.  (In the same
way, Geburah, “Severity,” falls at the center of the Pillar of Severity.)  The subsidiary titles of “Majesty”
and “Magnificence” are also appropriate for Chesed.

Though Malkuth, the world of our mortal existence, is full of grief and woe, and frequently not at all a
loveable place, nevertheless the Will of God is truly Love.  For according to the Law of Love, mortal free
will must not be interfered with;  as a result, the real horrors of our physical existence stem from the
actions of mortals themselves.  And until the majority of us are raised in consciousness to the level
of Chesed, regardless of what they then call it,* the world will likely remain an arena of horror and
suffering.

*Such a time has been prophesied in both Judaism and Christianity.  Christianity refers to it as the
Second Coming of Christ.  In Judaism, it is conceived of either as the coming of a Messiah who will
deliver his people from woe and bondage, or as the Time of the Messiah or Righteousness, when the
nature of theMessiah will be realized within all humanity, acting through all of us, transmuting us all into
true righteousness, so that we transform our purgatorial existence into a true Earthly paradise by our
own efforts.

By deviating from the Will of God, not only have we created such horrors as gas chambers,
concentration camps, etc., but even more importantly we have disturbed the balance within ourselves
as well as between ourselves and all other living beings in our world.  As a result, diseases of mind and
body have come into the world, both the psychoneuroses, psychoses, and sociopathology that
constitute the illnesses, of mind, soul, and spirit, and the infections, parasitic pathologies, and
genetically-based conditions that blight our physical nature. Only by finding our way back to the Tao, the
Will of God, and learning to live in harmony with it can we regain a world in which health and happiness
are the norms, where disease and horror are so rare as to be considered mythical.  This doesn’t mean
willingly allowing ourselves to be ruled by a theocratic hierarchy of mortals and their laws, but rather
learning what the true ecological balances of our world and universe are, not only on the physical level
but also on the planes of mind, emotion, and spirit;  finding our proper niche within them;  and settling
into that niche to stay.  This is not to say that from then on, there would be no possibility of change
either in our own natures or that of the universe.  Rather, while we and the universe would continue to
evolve, and our true niche with us and it, we would then evolve in concert with all of Creation, rather
than seeing ourselves as somehow outside and beyond it, not subject to the natural limitations that
govern all of Creation, as so many of us, like Western society in general, do now.  In other words, the
Will of God is the Law of the Dance, which has to do with a dynamic balance among all things and
beings, rather than an eternally immutable, changeless set of mere rules that demand conformity with
themselves even when changing circumstances make them obsolete.  AndChesed is the Sphere in which
the nature of that Dance is best learned, in which we learn how, without sacrificing any of our True Will
or interfering with that of any other being, to live such that we become free from disease and
trouble.  So long as we are mortal, reincarnating in physical form, of course, we will never be entirely
free from these, but as we make more and more contacts with Chesed, we become less and less
constrained by the troubles of the world.  Clearly the Masters of Chesed are Zen adepts, who neither
deny the reality of the inevitable woes of mortality nor let those woes have dominion over them.

The Name of God for this Sephirah  is l a  (EL or AL). a (Aleph), the Path connecting Kether andChokmah,
associated with the Element Air and the Planet Uranus, signifies the beginning of things.  One of the
symbols for l (Lamed), on the other hand, is the wing of a bird.  Thus this name conveys the idea of
power and potentiality (a ) with uplifting and outspreading force, or grace (l ).  Aleph could thus be
represented by a point within a circle, a symbol of the beginning of things, and Lamed by a wing.  The
resultant composite symbol would resemble the winged disk of the ancient
Egyptians.  Alternatively, Aleph means “the Ox” and Lamed, “the Ox-goad,” implying a primordial
driving-force under strict control.

The Archangel of this Sephirah, Tzedkiel, has a strong association with the symbol of the Orb, as
doesChesed’s Choir of Angels,  the Chashmalim, the “Brilliant Ones.”  Their influence is especially
valuable to anyone suffering from instability, whether of mind, emotions, spirit, or body.  For example, a
problem with punctuality, an inability to deal with time properly, is a symptom of mental confusion,
while general untidiness, inability to manage space properly, is a sign of emotional confusion.  The
soothing and constructive forces ofChesed can do much to relieve such conditions.

Astrologically speaking, the Planet Jupiter, the Mundane Chakra of Chesed, is the Great Benefic, the
most benefic influence among the Planets.  This isn’t surprising, considering that Chesed, the first of the
Realms of Form, which receives the pure spiritual influences from the Supernals, is associated with
evolution in the form of “concrete spirit,” conceiving in abstract form the pure Will of God, which is
always good.

The Vices of Chesed are those commonly indulged in by those who set themselves up or are set up by
others as authorities;  frequently these are manifested in very subtle ways.  As Lord Acton said, “Power
tends to corrupt;  absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  Any mortal who acquires real power over
others and the world around him, will inevitably come to resemble something of a caricature of the
Divine Rule of Chesed.  Even good King David fell to the temptation to put Uriah, the husband of
Bathsheba, on the front lines of a war, resulting in Uriah’s death, so that he could then take the
beautiful Bathsheba as his own wife.  None of us is immune to such temptations, and none of us who
has acquired real power of that sort hasn’t fallen to such temptations, at least to some degree.  There
has never been a ruler without blemish in all the known history of humanity.  Bigotry, hypocrisy,
gluttony, and tyranny are all vices whose origins are in the identification of oneself with the principle of
rulership, while refusing to face the reality of those parts of the self that aren’t worthy of such
office.  Gluttony and tyranny are abuses of the entire principle of Chesed, for they orient rulership over
others or objects in terms of the self rather than for the benefit of all.  Such vices and temptations aren’t
just pitfalls for those in high positions of authority, either;  they are potential traps for us all.  Every one
of us has dominion over something, even if it be only one’s own physical body.  And even the lowest
slave can be a parent, while almost anyone can have a pet.  Abuse of helpless animals and children by
those who have no standing or power in their communities is the stuff of our daily newspapers;  and
alcoholism, drug-abuse, body-piercing, gourmandizing, and all the other abuses of our bodies and
physical natures, from which human society has never been free throughout recorded history, make
fortunes for “recovery clinics” today.  These are not, therefore, just the vices and sins of kings – they are
slippery slopes down which any of us can tumble, given half an opportunity, and all too often have.

The symbol of the Solid Figure for Chesed shows an added dimension to the one- and two-dimensional
figures associated with the Supernal Sephiroth.  This added dimension is, of course, that of form.

In the various religious stories of the world, the Gods relevant to Chesed are those who are beneficent
rulers over Gods and men, or those aspects of any God or Goddess Whose rule is benign.  Hence Zeus
All-Father is associated with Chokmah, but as ruler of Gods and men He is associated with Chesed;  Kali,
the Battle-Aspect of the Great Mother Goddess Durga, is associated with Binah, but Durga as such is
associated with Chesed. And so on.

The Qaballistic assignments for Chesed include the following:

                                                                                                               

                                                          MAGICKAL IMAGE:                A might king, seated on a throne.

                                                                         GOD NAME:                l a (AL or EL)

                                                                      ARCHANGEL:                l a y q d x (Tzedquiel)

                                                           CHOIR OF ANGELS:                s y l m c j(Chashmalim, “Brilliant Ones”)

                                                      MUNDANE CHAKRA:                Jupiter

                                                                                VIRTUE:                Obedience

                                                                                 TITLES:                Gedulah, Love, Majesty, Magnificence.

                                                SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE:                The Vision of Love

                                                       ATZILUTHIC COLOR:                Deep violet

                                                                BRIATIC COLOR:                Blue
                                                        YETZIRATIC COLOR:                Deep purple

                                                             ASSIATIC COLOR:                Deep azure, flecked yellow

                                                                                      VICE:                Bigotry, Hypocrisy, Gluttony, Tyranny

                                                                            SYMBOLS:                The solid figure;  the

tetrahedron; orb;  Wand;  Sceptre;  Crook (as in shepherd’s staff)

For Chesed, Liber 777 gives the following assignments:  The Unicorn;   the olive, the

Shamrock;  amethysts, sapphires;  opium;  cedar (perfume).

Chesed is associated with the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

Amendment IV

Right of search and seizure regulated.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable
searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no arrests shall issue, but upon probable cause,
supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons
or things to be seized.

The commandment associated with Chesed is

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.  Six days you shall labor, and do all your work;  but the
seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God;  in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your
daughter, your manservant, or your maidservant, or your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your
gates;  for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the
seventh day;  therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

Exodus 20:8-11, Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version

 
Nota bene:  The numerological mystique associated with the number 4 may have far more than a merely
psychological basis – which is true of other numbers associated with powerful esoteric ideas, but in this
case perhaps even more so.  The biology of all Earthly life is directed and controlled by the genes
encoded in the chromosomes of every living being on Earth.  This encoding is predicated on the
“alphabet of life,” information represented in terms of just four molecules (the letters of the biological
alphabet).

The genetic material of eukaryote life – living beings, either multicellular or unicellular, each of whose
cells is composed of a nucleus, containing the chromosomes, walled off from the rest of the cell by a
membrane consisting of fatty acids – as well as of many prokaryotes, unicellular life which does not have
a separate nuclear compartment for its genetic material, is DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid.  Each DNA
molecule is a long, double-stranded chain, each strand of which is made up of subunits
called nucleotides, each containing a sugar (deoxyribose), a phosphate group, and one of four
nitrogenous bases, adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine, respectively denoted A, G, C, and T.  A
given strand contains nucleotides bearing each of these four in various combinations.

The information carried by a given gene is coded in the sequence with which the nucleotides bearing
different bases occur along the strand.  These nucleotide sequences determine the sequences of amino
acids in the polypeptide chain of the protein specified by that gene.  Each nucleotide unit along one of
the strands is bound to a nucleotide subunit on the other strand by hydrogen bonds between the base
portions of the nucleotides. Because adenine only bonds with thymine (A-T) and cytosine with guanine
(C-G), the strands are therefore complimentary to each other, so that for every adenine molecule on
one strand in a given place there will be a thymine molecule on the other strand in that same place, the
same being likewise true of guanine and cytosine.  It is the property of complimentarity between the
two strands that ensures that DNA can be replicated, i.e., that identical copies of it can be made so that
they can be transmitted to the next generation.

In order to be expressed as protein, the genetic information thus encoded in DNA must be transmitted
to the protein-synthesizing machinery of the cell, which is contained in the cytoplasm of the cell.  One
form of RNA mediates this process.  RNA is similar to DNA, but contains the sugar ribose rather than
deoxyribose, and the base uracil (U) rather than thymine.  To initiate the process of information
transfer, one strand of the double-stranded DNA chains serves as a template for the synthesis of a single
strand of RNA that is complimentary to the DNA strand.  E.g., the DNA sequence AGTC . . . specifies the
RNA sequence UCAG . . .  This process is called transcription;  it is mediated by enzymes, chemical
templates facilitating the rapid formation of various molecules at temperatures low enough to permit
the continuance of life.  The newly synthesized RNA, calledmessenger RNA, or mRNA, quickly moves to
bodies in the cellular cytoplasm called ribosomes, which are composed of two particles made of protein
bound to ribosomal RNA, or rRNA.  Each ribosome is the site of synthesis of a polypeptide chain.  Several
ribosomes attach to a single mRNA so that many polypeptide chains are synthesized from the same
mRNA.  Each cluster of an mRNA and ribosomes is called a polyribosome orpolysome.  The nucleotide
sequence of the mRNA is translated into the amino acid sequence of a protein molecule by adaptor
molecules composed of still a third type of RNA, transfer RNA or tRNA.  There are many different species
of tRNA, each species binding one of twenty different amino acids.  In protein synthesis, a nucleotide
sequence along the mRNA doesn’t directly direct the synthesis of a protein;  instead, it specifies a
particular sequence of tRNA.  As each specified tRNA associates with its complimentary space on the
mRNA, the amino acid is added on to the lengthening protein chain, and the tRNA is then
released.  When the protein chain is complete, it is released from the ribosome.  The particular
sequence of amino acids in each polypeptide chain is determined by the genetic code.  Starting at one
end of the mRNA strand, each sequence of three nucleotides, or codon, specifies, via complimentary
tRNA sequences, one amino acid, and the series of such codons in the mRNA specifies a polypeptide
chain.

Although a “vocabulary” of 64 “words” or specifications is theoretically possible with four different

nucleotides taken three at a time, there are actually only twenty amino acids to be specified.  However,
several triplets may code for the same amino acid;  for example, UAU and UAC both code for the amino
acid tyrosine. In addition, there are some codons that do not code for amino acids, but rather for
polypeptide chain initiation and termination.  The code does not overlap;  i.e., a nucleotide in one codon
is never part of either adjacent codon.

This basic code seems to be universal in all terrestrial living organisms.  Though the genetic material of
some prokaryotes is a form of RNA rather than DNA, the basic principle of its operation is identical to
that of DNA. The only difference is the substitution of uracil for thymine, which does not make any
fundamental changes in the mechanics of protein synthesis.  The point is that all Earthly life is founded
on the basis of just four base molecules.  Eerie echoes of that fact resonate in the holiest Hebrew Great
Names of God, all of which consist of just four letters;  the complimentary tabu on various four-letter
words in English, whose “obscene” nature is psychodynamically similar to the equally tabu but sacred
status of the Names of God;  the Four Gospels and the Four Evangelists of the New Testament;  and the
four primal Elements of Pythagorean cosmology.  Moreover, the Great Name  h w h y  (JeHoWaH, “I Am
Who Am”) hints at the principle of complimentarity that makes possible the replication of genetic
material to pass on to the generations to come, in that only its “active” letters, yand w , are distinct;  its
“passive” letters, h , are identical, suggesting that once the active letters are known, from their natures
that of the passive ones can be deduced.  I.e., the two h are “place-holders” for something whose
nature is implied by the other letters, just as once the sequences of codons in one strand of a DNA helix
is known, those of the other are immediately known, since they are just the complements of those in
the first strand.

The holiness of life itself is thus implicit in Chesed, as well as in d Daleth, the Path
connect Chokmah andBinah, the associated numerical value of which is 4.  Daleth is above the
Abyss, Chesed below, but their mutual association via the number 4 links them together, providing a
bridge across the Abyss from Chesed to Binah. The nature of that bridge is the understanding that
because the Creator is implicit in all the living Creation, all life therefore is at bottom holy, the Child of
God, at its heart also at least potentially divine.  The understanding that all life thus partakes of the
divinity of its Creator, that all that live are thus linked together, and that therefore life in all its
manifestations, including ourselves, deserves our most profound respect forms that bridge and makes
possible the crossing of the Abyss.  That Daleth is associated with Venus, Who rules the Fertility of Life,
only serves to underscore that understanding.
 

b.       The Cards

The geometrical symbols par excellence of Chesed are the Square and the equal-armed Cross or four-
pointed star.  Diamond shapes also represent Chesed, as do trapezoids, rhombuses, rectangles of all
kinds.  In particular, a square is regular four-sided polygon with four interior angles of 90°
each.  Astrologers refer to this angle as the square, a “hard” angle that signifies achievement, action,
authority, challenge, choices, clashes, conflict, confrontation, constriction, crisis, discord, force,
frustration, impulse, obstacles, originality, overcoming, power, problems, reaction, release, stress,
structure, struggle, tumult, work, or worry.  These are all appropriate for any design for the Fours.

The Fours

1) WANDS

Design:  General, four Wands, in one arrangement or another.  The Marseille Tarot shows crossed

Wands with the old style numeral IIII on either side.  Waite’s pack shows Wands from which leaves
sprout, garlanded with flowers, forming a bower;  behind it are people celebrating before a great
manorial home.  Crowley’s Tarot shows eight Rods arranged in the form of an eight-spoked wheel which
may be a variant of the Gnostic Sun monogram;  each Rod is tipped with either the head of a white ram
or a white dove, which points toward the center of the circle, which is filled with fire;  the sigil for Venus
is above the whole, that for Aries, below.  The New Tarot shows four Snakes, arranged in a square.

America’s Tarot:  Upright:    Four great redwoods, two in front, two in back, forming a square. Garlands
are draped on and between them, forming a gigantic bower.  Two American Indian children play within a
bower, accompanied by their parents, who look on them with love;  a celebration is being conducted by
more Indians in the meadows that form the middle ground;  in the background is a vast forest, above
which is a clear, pristine blue sky, the Sun shining down on all.  Reverse:  The four trees chopped down,
the garlands destroyed.  The children are fleeing from a pursuing enemy, their parents lie dead among
the stumps of the four trees.  In the middle ground a war is being waged.  In the background, the forest
is on fire.
 

Upright meaning:  Venus in Aries.  20° 0’ 0” -29° 59’ 59” Aries (about April 10 through April 19 of a given
year).  Completion.  Perfected work.  The achievements of civilization, the esthetic arts, or culture in
general.  Settlement, arrangement completed.  Spiritual equilibrium.  Agreement in a durable enterprise
yielding a fruitful result.  A card of mastery.  Standstill.  Family ties.  Demands of
society. Refuge.  Fortunate partnership.  Satisfying project.  Friends.  Enjoyable work.  Recently
completed work or satisfaction in love or partnership, a new marriage.  Union, association, concord,
harmony. Prosperity, success, happiness advantage.  Family-spirit, clan, home.  The
familiar.  Memory. Augmentation.  Popularity.  A gathering of people.  Cosiness.  Harvest-home, repose,
domestic tranquility, prosperity, peace.  Increase, felicity, beauty.  Unexpected good fortune.  A married
woman will have beautiful children.

Reversed:   The lower part of the head, from the upper lip on down, in particular the jaws.  April 10-19 of
a given year.  Sagittarius, and the things it governs.  Decadence, snobbishness.  The qualities of effete
living.  Obstacles in the way of an enterprise.  Ideas which rule us.  Imagination, fantasy, decrease,
unstable conditions.  Vacillation.  Profanation.

2)       CUPS

Design:  Generally, four cups or chalices in one or another arrangement.  Waite’s pack shows a dreamer
sitting in front of a tree;  on the ground near him are three cups, and from the heavens above a hand
offers a fourth cup.  Crowley’s pack shows four cups filled by a lotus fountain;  the sigil of the Moon,
with horns up, like the “Rain Moon” of Cherokee weather symbolism, is above, and that for Cancer is
below.  The New Tarot shows four Pears arranged in a square.

America’s Tarot:  Upright:  Four badly polluted lakes, filled with hagfish;  factories rim their shores,
venting industrial waste into them.  The lands around the lakes are filled solid with slums and industrial
areas.  The sky above is gray and foul with smog.  The people in the city streets look sick and
weary. Reversed:  Four Great Lakes, glimmering in the Sun, filled with fish;  a river enters one of them
from the left.  An Indian in a canoe sits in one of the lakes, near the shore.  The lands around the lakes
consist of fertile green meadows filled with wildflowers and stands of wood.  In the background are
great mountains, above which are pristine skies.

 
Upright:  20° 0’ 0” -29° 59’ 59” Cancer (generally, July 12 through July 22 of a given year).  The Moon in
Cancer. The disease cancer.  Excesses, and the diseases they breed, from neurophysiological
deterioration to cancer and gout.  Serious obstacles to love that come from a source other than the
lovers themselves.  Dissatisfaction with material success.  Satiety, either of emotions or happiness in
general, which becomes dissatisfaction with achievement or the things of this world.  Blended pleasures.
Far away.  Ennui, displeasure, discontent, dissatisfaction.  Discontent with present
conditions. Estrangement.  Unrest, aversion, troubles, disgust, nausea, discord, failing to understand
others or to make oneself understood.  Changes generally for the worse, but with some distant goal.  At
war with current opinion.  Better to be silent than speak.  Weariness, imaginary vexations.  Contrarieties.
Agreements reached only with great difficulty.

Reversed:  The duodenum.  Scorpio.  Reception of pleasures or kindnesses from others.  New

relationships now possible.  New goals or ambitions. Persons or environments known to the Querent,
but not as yet utilized.  Near by.  New acquaintances.  Conjecture.  Sign, presentiment, omen. The “Rain
Moon” that prophesies rainfall.  Pleasure.  Luxury.  Contemplation or meditation. Waking from a period
of contentment or contemplation.  Plenty as a result of agreement and equilibrium.  New discoveries,
researches in unknown territories or countries, or in unfamiliar fields.  Meeting with
strangers. Instability.  Novelty, presage, new instructions, new relations.

3) SWORDS

Design:  Generally, four Swords in one or another arrangement.  The Marseille Tarot shows four lunate

Swords, crossed.  Waite’s pack shows a knight in prayer, upon a tomb within a sepulchre;  on the wall of
the sepulchre hang three Swords, point downwards;  below the knight, on the side of the tomb, is
another Sword.  Crowley’s shows four Swords, the points of which meet in the center of a Lotus;  taken
in pairs, the Swords form a St. Andrew’s Cross;  the sigil for Jupiter is above, that for Libra below.  The
New Tarot shows four Blades in a square.

America’s Tarot:    Upright:  Four guided missiles, erect, standing in a devastated wasteland filled with
corpses of many species, including human.  Reversed:  Four spaceships departing from Earth, in the style
of the rocketships of the Golden Age of Science Fiction.  The ships head towards another Planet, one as
blue and lovely from space as ours is.  A comet is heading toward the Earth, imperiling it.

Upright:  20° 0’ 0” -29° 59’ 59” Libra (generally, October 12 through 22 of any given year). Jupiter in
Libra. A refuge from mental chaos, chosen in an arbitrary manner, i.e., escapism or substance-abuse
used to avoid facing reality.  Conventions imposed from without.  Cowardice, refusal to face
opposition.  Exile, banishment, enforced seclusion, imprisonment, failure of nerve,
depression. Abandonment.  Intimacies of a dark nature.  Depressing circumstances.  Success against the
enemy, but with disastrous results.  Mutually assured destruction.  Avarice.  A bad marriage;  a marriage
which has fallen on bad times.  A very bad card.

Reversed:  The uterus, the bladder.  Gemini.  Rest from strife, relief from anxiety, quietness, rest, rest
after illness, convalescence.  Not a card of death.  Truce.  Change for the better.  A tendency toward
mysticism, growing understanding of spiritual reality.  Beginnings of a plan.  Flowering of
realization. Retreat, as in a religious retreat, or for reasons of health or
finance.  Withdrawal.  Solitude.  Meditation. Deep thought.  Recovery from bad
times.  Hermit.  Economy, precaution, regulation of expenditure. Opposition to
hatred.  Repose.  Gathering.  Collecting.  Precaution.  Testament.  A certain success following wise
administration.  A very good marriage.

4) COINS/DISCS/PENTACLES

Design:   Generally, four Coins, Discs, or Pentacles arranged in a square.  The Marseille Tarot shows four

coins, each with a four-petaled flower at its center;  at the center of the card itself are two squares, one
concentric to the other, surrounding a flower which might be a lotus.  Waite’s pack shows a brooding
king, sitting on his throne;  on his crown rests one Pentacle, he hugs another in his lap, and the third and
fourth are beneath his feet.  Crowley’s shows a castle with four turrets, as seen from above;  each of the
towers exhibits one of the four Elemental sigils;  the castle is surrounded by fields filled with ripe
grain;  the sigil for Sol is above, that for Capricorn below.  The New Tarot shows four Stones arranged in
a square.

America’s Tarot:  Center:  Four silver Liberty-head dollars, arranged in a square.  Upright: Above the

square of dollars, a great thriving city, behind which are blue skies, great mountains, fertile fields filled
with vibrant life of all kinds.  Reversed:  A miser in dark room, counting his hoarded treasures;  he lives in
filth, squalor, and poverty;  in a corner of the room are two starving children;  in another are two men
shooting drugs;  a window off the room shows a view of a slum.

Upright:  20° 0’ 0” -29° 59’ 59” Capricorn (generally, about January 10 through January 20 of a given
year).  Power.  Earthly power, physical forces and skill in directing them.  The constructive employment
of great wealth.  Gain of money and influence.  A gift.  Equilibrium among the Planes. Material
benefits.  Security.  The possibility of future gain.  Pleasure, gaiety, enjoyment, satisfaction. Good
fortune.  Legacy, inheritance.  A fortress, fortifications.  A castle.  A baronial manor.  Pleasant news from
a lady.

Reversed:  The skeleton as a whole.  The calves of the legs.  Virgo.  Inability to change, opposition to

change or to delegate authority.  Loss of Earthly wealth and power.  A plan brought to a halt by
contingencies which hold it fast;  sometimes the halt is not abrupt.  A great reversal.  Acquisitiveness,
miserliness.  Insecurity.  A miser.  Opposition to future gain, or unwillingness or inability to do those
things which would bring future gain.  Obstacles or hindrances.  Bad fortune.  Financial
losses.  Poverty. Desire.  Delay, retreat.  Secret
possession.  Debt.  Limitation.  Enclosure.  Corral.  Fence.  Something good which is not within the reach
of the Querent.  The surety of possession, clinging to that which one has.  Suspense,
opposition.  Observation.  Hindrances.

c.       The interrelationships between the Sephirah and the cards of the Tarot

The four Fours are associated with Chesed.  Four – Chesed – is below the Abyss;  therefore, in practice,
it signifies solidification and materialization.  Here, things first become manifest, and subject to the
rule of law.

The Four of Wands is called Completion.  The manifestation promised by Binah has now taken
place.  This number is associated with solidity, because it is the dominant influence on all the cards of
Lower Arcana from the Fives on.  God the Just Judge is the highest ideal which can be comprehended by
the intellect;  for this reason, this Sephirah is associated with Jupiter and Zeus, the givers of just laws to
mankind.  The Yang nature of Fire mandates that the Four of Wands be pictured as a very positive and
clear-cut conception.

The Four of Cups is called Luxury and the Lord of Pleasure.  The Yin nature of Water threatens the purity
of conception of this card, which therefore appears to be somewhat unstable.  Purity has somehow
been lost in the process of satisfaction of desire.  The seas are turbulent, the cup shivers as if from the
aftermath of use.

The Four of Swords, Truce, represents someone who is armed against trouble, preparing for battle,
ready to defend his home, keeping it orderly within.  The Yang nature of Air requires a strong
image.  This card is associated to some extent with the formation of military clans, the ninja and Szekeli
(Gypsy) families;  but it is also associated with Budo and the formation of feudal societies whose
hierarchical nature are so antithetical to the libertarian ethos and attitude of the ninja and the Gypsies.
The image for the Four of Discs, Pentacles, or Coins always suggests heaviness, whether the heaviness of
armor, fortifications needed to provide military security;  the responsibilities of enormous wealth and
power;  or heaviness of spirit and oppression of spirit and body, especially due to material
concerns.  The card is called Power, referring to power which dominates and stabilizes everything, but
more by dint of negotiation and other peaceful means than by aggression of any kind.  This card
represents law, the Constitution, and the mundane authority which upholds, carries out, and protects
both.

5. Sephirah 5

a. The Sephirah

Geburah, “Power.”  Sphere of Ú (Mars).

Dion Fortune gives this image for Geburah:

The king in his chariot going forth to war, whose strong right arm protects his people with the sword of
righteousness and ensures that justice shall be done. 26

It is Geburah that supplies the element of awe, of “the fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom,”
and of a general respect which nurtures our better nature. 27  Geburah, the Destroyer, the Lord of Fear
and Severity, is just as necessary to the equilibrium of the Tree of Life as is Chesed, the Great Benefic,
the Lord of Love, andNetzach, the Lesser Benefic, the Lady of Beauty.  Geburah is the Heavenly Surgeon,
the Lord of the knight in shining armor, the dragon-slayer, who is “beautiful as a bridegroom in his
strength to the maiden in distress, though, no doubt, the dragon might have preferred a little more
love.”28  Dynamic energy is as necessary to the welfare of society as meekness, charity, and
patience.  What is needed is a just and wise balance which makes for health, happiness and sanity all
round, along with the honest realization that sacrifices are necessary to obtain it.

Geburah is the sacrificial priest of the Mysteries.  Sacrifice means the deliberate and open-eyed choice
of a greater good over a lesser good, entailing the transmutation of force from a less desirable to a more
desirable state.  If there was no armed strength at the service of good in the world, evil would
multiply.29 Astrologically speaking, Mars, Lord of Geburah, rules the butcher and the
smith;  Qaballistically, He rules the schoshet or ritual butcher, as well as the priest who performs
sacrifices to God.  The first priests may have been the smiths of a community.  There is an old legend
concerning the “Children of the Lion,” involving the belief that all smiths are descended from Cain, the
first murderer.  In all early communities, the smith was both feared and revered because of his ability to
change metal into “water,” i.e., molten forms, and back again.  He was the prototype of the Alchemist,
as well as of the Chemist, the Engineer, and the Craftsman.  Because of his skill with metal and the
making of tools, including weapons, he was often also the butcher for the village, as well, who killed
non-human animals for the table – and human ones for the good of the community, whenever prisoners
of war or violent criminals had to be dispatched.  Since animals were also sacrificed to God, this latter
task eventually suggested, for many peoples, that God would be even more pleased if the community
sacrificed one of its own, a valuable slave, say, or a beautiful maiden or youth.  And it was the smith’s
job to prepare these sacrifices for ritual sacrifice.  Thus the smith became an honored – and feared –
official executioner and priest.*

* For more concerning the relationship between the smith/butcher and the priest, see J. C.
Cooper, Chinese Alchemy:    The Taoist Quest for Immortality (New York:  Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.,
1990), pp. 72-77.

The Qaballistic assignments for Geburah include the following:

                                                          MAGICKAL IMAGE:                A mighty warrior in his chariot.

                                                                         GOD NAME:                r w b g  \ y h l a (ALHIM GiBOR, Almighty

God)

                                                                      ARCHANGEL:                l a m k  (Kamael)

                                                          ORDER OF ANGELS:                r w  p r c   (Seraphim);  Fiery Serpents.

                                                      MUNDANE CHAKRA:                Mars;  the Star Antares (a Scorpii, Cor

Scorpio), and, to a lesser extent, the Stars Aldebaran (a Tauri) and Betelgeuse (a Orionis)

                                                                                VIRTUE:                Energy;  Courage

                                                                                 TITLES:                Pachad, Fear;  Din, Justice.

                                                SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE:                The Vision of Power

                                                       ATZILUTHIC COLOR:                Orange

                                                                BRIATIC COLOR:                Scarlet red

                                                        YETZIRATIC COLOR:                Bright scarlet

                                                             ASSIATIC COLOR:                Red, flecked black

                                                                                      VICE:                Cruelty, Destruction

                                                                            SYMBOLS:                The Pentagon;  the Five-Petaled Rose;  the

Sword;  the Spear;  the Scourge;  the Chain.

For Geburah, Liber 777 gives the following assignments:  the ruby;  oak, nux vomica, nettle;  the

basilisk; tobacco.  Other associations would include, e.g., cactus, any thorned plant, garlic, onion,
anything with a biting taste, hematite, garnet, snakestone, eagle, phoenix, serpent, scorpion, talons,
sharp beaks, claws, rams.

Geburah is associated with the Fifth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution:

Amendment V

Provisions concerning prosecution.  Trial and punishment – private property not to be taken for public
use without compensation.

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless as a presentment or
indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in
actual service in time of war or public danger;  nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to
be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb;  nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness
against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;  nor shall
private property be taken for public use without just compensation.

The commandment associated with Geburah is

 

Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God
gives you.

Exodus 20:12, Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version

According to the Yetziratic Text,

The Fifth Path is called the Radical Intelligence because it resembles Unity, uniting itself toBinah,
Understanding, which emanates from the primordial depths of Chokmah, Wisdom.

The Yetziratic Text of Geburah, like that of Chesed, lays stress on the source of power emanating from
the Supernals.  But whereas the text for Chesed specifically mentions Kether, that for Geburah refers
to Chokmahand Binah.  Kether constitutes the Atziluthic, Supernal or Archetypal World, while the Briatic
or Creative World comprises Chokmah and   Binah.  Thus just as Chokmah and Binah together represent
the Divine Force of Kether in action, so Geburah represents the more active side of the ruler ship
embodied in Chesed.  This is symbolized by Geburah’s Magickal Image, which is a mighty warrior in his
chariot, and reflected in Geburah’s Spiritual Experience, the Vision of Power, as well as in the Virtues
of Geburah, energy and courage.

Geburah’s associations are almost all martial in nature.  Because of this, there may be some
misunderstanding concerning its actual nature.  Geburah is primarily concerned with adjustment and
assessment, a Sphere of absolute, unadulterated truth.  According to Genesis, after each act of Creation
God “looked upon what he had made, and behold, it was good.”  Geburah is associated with that act of
judgment.  After creative effort that gives form to ideas, ruled by Chokmah, Binah, and Chesed, the
creator then gives intense scrutiny to what he has created and purges it of any defects he may thereby
discover in it.  The composition of the forms and interrelationships thereof of any creative work is ruled
by Chesed;  the clear-eyed assessment of such a work, and the elimination or correction of any defects
in it, is ruled by Geburah.

The same applies to the Universe as a whole, which is dynamic in nature, and is therefore not
perfect.  God’s Creation is not a static thing;  it is constantly changing, adapting for better or worse to
the relentless selective action of entropy.  This calls for constant assessment and readjustment and work
to keep Creation from becoming an irredeemable mess on God’s part.  The laws that describe such
continuous assessment and readjustment are attributed to Geburah.
According to one view, there is an aspect of Geburah known as ‘The Hall of Justice.’  Justice, as the
perfect balance between Mercy and Severity, is properly assigned to Da’ath;  Geburah is the Sphere
wherein that Justice is applied in Yetzirah, the Worlds of Form.  This aspect of Geburah might be
imagined as a great hall, completely empty save for the scarlet light which fills it.  Here, the soul stands
naked before the Assessor, the piercing, shadow less light penetrating every part of its being.  In the
pitiless light and silence of this hall, judgment is given:  this soul is in such and such a state, and is
revealed to be so before the Universal Assessor. All is taken into account, automatically, inevitably, and
without pity.  This is a hall of Justice, not of Judgment;  no sentence is pronounced, no doom
decreed.  The silence of Binah, Understanding, to which Geburah is united, fills the hall.  And like Kether,
Unity, Geburah  takes the part into account as being a part of a unified whole.  As a result the soul under
such scrutiny is inescapably presented with the nature of its own being.  Geburah does not force
punishment upon that soul;  rather, like some vast computer, it simply renders a perfect and
remorseless assessment of that soul’s state, nothing else, though omnipotent God is behind that
assessment. There is no consideration of whether that soul can bear the truths about it revealed in this
way, or crushed beneath the burden of such self-knowledge.  The assessment is given;  the soul can take
it or leave it as long as it chooses, as long as it is still free to make choices.  What is subsequently done to
redeem or correct that soul is not part of Geburah as such;  such action could come under the
destructive side of Geburah, but it could just as well be carried out in some other Sephirah’s dominion.

In its more positive corrective side, Geburah expresses within itself the joint activity of the Active (Left-
Hand) and Passive (Right-Hand) Pillars of the Tree of Life perhaps more clearly than does any
other Sephirah. Some souls are capable of facing death in the most hideous manner in the service of
some religious or political cause, a death which, because of the way we are physically put together, can’t
take long and therefore can’t cause prolonged agony.  This is the “sharp,” swift aspect of the action
of Geburah, symbolized by the Spear and the Sword.  The passive aspect of Geburah, on the other hand,
can be very slow indeed.  Indeed, its very slowness is one of its most powerful actions, involving
constant vigilance and iron control of its continuous action over a very long time.  This aspect
of Geburah is expressed in the gradual forces of evolution and extinction that shape populations,
species, and planetary biospheres, on a collective level, and in the evolution of a soul over many
incarnations as well as the development of an individual through various trials and hardships, on that of
the individual.  The symbols relevant to this more “passive” side of Geburah are the Scourge, which
goads us to continuous action, and the Chain, which holds something captive over long periods of time,
preventing any escape.  The inevitability of the action of Geburah is indicated by the title given to it in
the Yetziratic Text, the Radical Intelligence.  The works of Geburah have to do with root sources and
origins, forming part of the essential nature of all things.  They are also thoroughgoing and unsparing, so
that anything which doesn’t conform to the basic pattern of Creation, the Tao, is ultimately completely
eradicated by it.

One title of Geburah, Pachad or “Fear,” is not well-liked by most Western occultists, who believe that
fear has no part in a perfect Creation.  According to Gareth Knight, “One could almost say that it was
from Fear that all other deviations and evil arose, that it provides the foundations for the Powers of
Evil.”  However, fear is as legitimate a reaction as any other, in its proper place.  Without the ability to
fear, we would have nothing to keep us from plunging blindly on into potentially lethal situations.  Like
pain, anger, and fury, which are also things about which most Western occultists seem to be in extreme
denial, fear is a signal, information which should be taken very seriously and acted on appropriately if
the organism is not to come to grief.  There is a world of difference between neurotic fear, born in past
trauma and mostly unrelated to present realities, which only serves to keep the sufferer from living a
full, healthy life, and healthy fear, which keeps us from acting in ways which could terminate our
existence all too soon.  Without pain, we would not know when to act to avoid injury, and would soon
succumb to gangrene from a multitude of untended cuts and abrasions – which is often the fate of the
leper, whose disease destroys the nerves that convey sensations of injury to the brain, the sensations
the rest of us know as pain.  Without anger, we could not act to defend ourselves or anyone else at
need;  without fury, we would not have the adrenaline overdrive to carry us through in the midst of
situations which would otherwise reduce us to passivity and finally destroy us.  And without fear, and
the wisdom born of it, we would have nothing to tell us when we are in deadly danger, danger which
does not yet touch us but which is perceptible to the eyes and ears and perceptible to the brain.  The
true warrior – he or she who risks life and limb in the service of life and the community, protecting the
helpless and defending hearth, home, and nation from evil – makes fear his or her friend, the friend that
counsels when to act, when to withdraw, the shape of tactics and strategy. Geburah, ruler of the
warrior, is therefore associated with fear – the good fear, the fear that protects and preserves – just as it
is with pain, anger, and rage, which, in the right place at the right time, are the guardians and preservers
of Life.  Fear, anger, pain, and rage only become deadly when they are turned away from their proper
application, used to hobble the organism rather than galvanize it into life-saving and soul-saving
action. Geburah is the great teacher that shows us when these are appropriate, and why, and when they
are not, and it us under Geburah’s dominion that we learn their proper application.  The idiot who goes
into battle “feeling as if he were ten feet tall and covered with hair” has a half-life of about ten
minutes;  the wise warrior who knows how mortal he or she is, and has trained and trained to use his or
her mortality to the best possible advantage under every possible contingency, has a better than even
chance of walking away from that battle in reasonably good shape and with his or her honor intact, as
well.  Geburah is the Great Dojo of the Universe, where all of us learn, over lifetimes or in a given
lifetime, to evoke the Warrior within ourselves and deal with life’s harsher realities in the most
appropriate possible ways, whenever action is possible.  (Saturn and Binah, Neptune andChokmah, rule
those situations in which action is not possible.)

The symbol of the Balance held by the figure of Justice is made clearer in light of the idea of a sailor on
board a ship in dire straits.  The sailor must adapt himself to the worst that might happen, doing all he
can to stay afloat, and finally, when he has done everything in his power to help himself, putting his trust
in God.  Another, perhaps even better symbol is that of the ninja, who trains and trains and trains in
every possible technique and weapon until that training has become so ingrained in his or her nature
that it becomes planted deep in his or her unconscious, the threshold of God – when suddenly he or she
must go into battle, he or she acts appropriately as required without even thinking about it, so
thoroughly has the ninja learned to trust in the power of his or her unconscious mind and the God to
which it is the ante way.
Geburah’s Magickal Image is that of the warrior.  This image is expressed in different cultures as,
variously, St. George, Martius (Mars), Ares, St. Joan of Arc, Tiu, Sir Galahad, Menthu, Horus, Nephthys,
Vishnu, Shiva, Kali, and all the other warrior-saints and Gods of War.  The esoteric grade attained
in Geburah is that of the Adeptus Minor, one who is fully skilled in working Magick.  Geburah also rules
the master Alchemist and the smith, those adept at transmuting matter and those adept in shaping
metal into useful tools and weapons.  The God Name of Geburah, ALHIM GiBOR, can be translated as
Almighty God, implying the might and power of the Law of God.  Other symbols for Geburah, however,
express its aspects of justice, assessment, analysis, endurance, etc.  Such Gods and heroes as, e.g., the
Erinyes or Furies of the Greeks, the 42 Assessing Gods of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the jester-
knight Dinadan of the Arthurian Cycles, Judge Dee of ancient Chinese lore, and all their kin are spirits
and Gods of Geburah.

The towering scarlet figure of the Archangel Kamael, and the Fiery Serpents or Seraphim, may be the
safest forms in which to invoke the Intelligence of Geburah.  Kamael is protector of the weak and those
who have suffered injustice, the Avenging Angel who pursues transgressors of human or divine law.

The Mundane Chakra of Geburah is the Red Planet, Mars, the Lesser Malefic of astrology.  In horary
charts, Mars acts to warn of impending danger, especially that coming from hidden evils or from
authority figures.  The numbers of Geburah are 5 (for the Sephirah itself), 27 (the Key Number of the
Path of Mars, p (Peh), 15 and 378 (the Mystic Numbers of the Sephiroth associated respectively
with Geburah and Peh), and 85, which is the sum of the letters of  h p  (Peh), which spell the name of the
letter in Hebrew.

The professions ruled by Geburah include the surgeon, the smith, the Alchemist, the metallurgist, the
chemist, those whose work entail conditions of extreme heat and/or force (e.g., those who work in
steel-mills), police and firemen.*

*See Gareth Knight, A Practical Guide to Qabalistic Symbolism (York Beach, ME:  Samuel Weiser, Inc.,
1978), Vol. I, pp. 124-136;  Ivy M. Goldstein-Jacobson, Simplified Horary Astrology (Alhambra, CA: Frank
Severy Publishing, 1960), passim;  Stephen K. Hayes, Ninjutsu:    The Art of the Invisible
Warrior(Chicago:  Contemporary Books, 1984), passim;  Massad Ayoob, The Truth About Self-
Protection(New York:  Bantam Books, 1983);  Dr. Masaaki Hatsumi, Essence of Ninjutsu:    The Nine
Traditions(Chicago:  Contemporary Books, 1988);  Robert K. Spear, Survival on the Battlefield (Burbank,
CA: Unique Publications, 1978);  Jack Hoban, Ninpo:    Living and Thinking as a
Warrior (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1988);  Sun Tzu, Art of War (Ralph D. Sawyer, translator.  San
Francisco: Westview Press, 1994), passim;  Hanshi Steve Kaufman, The Martial Artist’s Book of Five
Rings:    The Definitive Interpretation of Miyamoto Musashi’s Classic Book of Strategy (Boston:  Charles E.
Tuttle Co., Inc., 1994), passim; J. C. Cooper, Chinese Alchemy:    The Taoist Quest for Immortality (New
York:  Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., 1990), passim;  and Frater Albertus.  Alchemist’s Handbook (Manual
for Practical Laboratory Alchemy) (York Beach, ME:  Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1974), passim.
 

b.       The Cards

The geometric symbols representing Geburah include the Pentagram, or Five-Pointed Star;  the

Pentagon, or regular five-sided figure;  and all other figures having five sides or five points.  It is of
interest here that the Pentagram can be made to represent the name “Jesus,” which in Hebrew is h w c
h y  (JOShUA or YEShUA), as follows:  the y (Yod) is associated with the Lower Right Point of the
Pentagram, the first h (Heh) with the Upper Right Point, the c (Shin) with the Top Point, the w (Vav) with
the Upper Left Point, and the second h(Heh) with the Lower Right Point.  Further, the four Elements and
the Quintessence are associated with the Pentagram, as follows:  Fire = Lower Right Point, Water =
Upper Right Point, Spirit/Will = Top Point, Air = Upper Left Point, and Earth = Lower Left Point.  Thus the
Pentagram represents both Jesus returning not with peace, but a sword (to battle evil at the Last Battle),
and the fundamental structure of Creation, i.e., the four Elements (Fire, Water, Air, Earth) and the Spirit
that uses them to create in conformity with its Will.  Also, the Pentagon is a regular five-sided polygon
with five interior angles of 72° each;  astrologically, an aspect of 72° represents such things as ability, art,
channels, comprehension, creativity, culture, disciples, anything exceptional, insight, interrelatedness,
management, manifestation, mastery, originality, penetration, self-assertion, specialization, talent,
understanding, or uniqueness.  All such conceits can be incorporated into the designs for the Fives
(remembering that Wands can represent both Fire and Spirit/Will).

The Fives

1) WANDS

Design:  Generally, five Wands in one or another arrangement.  Waite’s pack shows five youths playing
with Wands in the form of staves, perhaps in a contest or martial-arts practice.  Crowley’s shows five
Wands, one larger than the other four;  two of the smaller ones are tipped at the top with the head of a
Phoenix, and have the inverted horns of a bull at the bottom, while the other two are headed with
lotuses;  the large Wand has a winged solar disc and two snakes at the top and at the bottom Crowley’s
variant on the winged phallos;  a seven-pointed Star is inscribed within the disc, and within the star is a
variant on Crowley’s three-ring monogram;  in the background is a ten-rayed Star of fire; the sigil for
Saturn is above the whole, and that for Leo at the bottom.  The New Tarot  has five snakes arranged in
the form of a Pentacle.

America’s Tarot:  Upright:  Five American Indians having a contest with wooden Staves. Alternative:  five

ninjas in a dojo, enjoying practicing combat arts with one another.  Reversed:  Three lumberjacks in a
redwood forest, fighting with two environmentalists;  the latter are dressed as ninjas. Five cut redwoods
lay on the ground around them, the stumps of the felled trees nearby.

Upright meaning:  Saturn in Leo.  0° 0’ 0”-9° 59’ 59” Leo (about July 23-August 1 of a given year).  The
element of Fire at its strongest and most balanced, weighed down and embittered by Saturn. Strife (the
title of the card).  Competition, the suggestion of mental agility as a successful weapon, hence facility
and skill at combat and martial arts.  Contests, games, sports.  Athletes, warriors, martial artists,
enthusiasts of games, etc.  Wealth, success.  Making arrangements necessary for a venture, discussion,
plans, strategy, acquisition of specific information or intelligence.  Effort.  Gold, opulence, gain, heritage,
riches, fortune, money.  Opposition to the obstacles in the way of an enterprise, or victory after
surmounting them.  Positive speech.  Little or no evil.  Good for health and wealth in a general way,
promoting both.  Imitation fight, competition, the battle of life, gold, gain, opulence.  Success in financial
speculation.

Reversed:  The heart, especially its A-V node..  Late July.  Quarreling, fighting.  Struggle, hassle,

indisposition. Legal proceedings, judgment, law, lawyer, tribunal.  Egotism.  Speaking in a self-centered
way and taking no notice of others, possibly leading to
trickery.  Litigation.  Trickery.  Contradiction. Treachery.  Quarrels may be turned to advantage.

2)       CUPS

Design:  Generally, five cups in some sort of arrangement.  Waite’s pack shows a man dressed in black
who stands, disconsolate, beside a river;  on the ground before him are three overturned cups, and
behind him two cups stand upright.  Crowley’s pack shows five cups and lotuses which together form an
inverted Pentagram;  above them is the sigil of Mars, below, that of Scorpio.  The New Tarot shows five
Pears within a Pentagram.

 
America’s Tarot:  Upright:  The Great Lakes (Michigan, Huron, Superior, Erie, Ontario) of the North
American continent, at their most pristine and beautiful.  Reversed:  Those same five lakes at their most
desolate as the result of environmental mistreatment, hag-fish incursions, pollution by industrial waste,
and all.

Upright:  0° 0’ 0”-9° 59’ 59” Scorpio (about October 23 through November 1 of a given year). Originally
titled “Loss in Pleasure,” retitled by Crowley “Disappointment.”  Associated with the geomantic sign
Rubeus

·  ·

·  ·

·  ·

which Crowley describes as being of such evil omen that some schools of geomancy destroy any map on
which this sign appears, and wait for several hours until Rubeus appears in the Ascendant (Regardie says
that if Rubeus appears in the First House, the figure is to be destroyed as “not fit for judgment,” in the
same way that an astrological chart is not considered radical if Saturn is in its 7 th House). Disappointment
in love, marriage broken off, unkindness from friends (whether deserved or not is shown by surrounding
cards), loss of friendship.  Lack of harmony.  Indefinite plan which comes to nothing, a plan which
misfires.  Broken engagement.  A short but lingering love-affair.  Vain regret over an old love
affair.  Unusual frustration or separation.  Aborted projects.  Abortion.  Grief, sorrow, pain.  Material
difficulties.  The Internal Revenue Service.  Social Security.  A tendency to react too quickly to
surrounding influences.  Loss, but with something remaining.  Inheritances which fail to measure up to
expectations.  Marriage accompanied by bitterness or frustration.

Reversed:  The sex-organs.  Late October.  Temporary material prosperity.  Having to do with inheritance

or a gift.  A soul-mate.  Letting go of a person, life-style, or job.  Meeting up with your ex. New beginning
for an old affair.  Union, junction, marriage, inheritance.  Arrival.  Return.  News. Surprise.  Opposition to
obstacles to love, victory over such obstacles after a struggle.  Family matters, care to be taken
thereof.  Pleasure.  Strong emotion, passion.  Alliances, affinity, consanguinity, ancestry, return.  Happy
marriage, large inheritance, legacies, gifts, success in an enterprise.  Return of someone who has been
away for a long time.

 
3) SWORDS

Design:  Generally, five Swords in one or another arrangement.  The Marseille pack shows four curved

Swords, crossed;  in the center, where they cross, there is an upright Sword.  Waite’s pack shows a man
who, wearing an expression of malicious triumph, holds two swords over his left shoulder and a third,
point downward, in his right hand;  on the ground near him are two other swords;  two figures walk
away from him in dejection.  Crowley’s pack shows five Swords with differing hilts, the points of which
intersect near the center of an inverted Pentagram of rubies;  above is the sigil of Venus, which for
Aquarius is below.  The New Tarot shows five Blades in an inverted Pentagram.

America’s Tarot:  Upright:  Five ballistic missiles on their launch pads, getting ready to be fired; soldiers
and technicians mill about the field where they are located, indicating imminent nuclear
war. Reversed:  Five mushrooms clouds, standing in the midst of nuclear devastation.

Upright:  0° 0’ 0”-9° 59’ 59” Aquarius (about January 20 through January 31 of a given year). Venus in
Aquarius.  This card is titled “Defeat” or “Futility,” and none of its meanings are very good. Defeat, loss,
failure, slander, dishonor.  Intellect defeated by sentiment;  a sickly pacifism, not backed up by the
courage to take the consequences.  Possible treachery.  Disaster must be overcome in order for future
progress to take place.  Beware of treachery.  Malice, evil gossip.  A fierce struggle to penetrate to
higher planes, a wish to destroy the body in order to serve the mind or spirit.  Struggle without
result. Loss, affliction, bereavement, defeat.  Escape from danger, entrapment, partial
defeat.  Mourning, sadness, sorrow, grief, affliction.  Losses, trouble.  Opposition to obstacles to
enmity.  The enemy triumphs at the moment one fancies that the victory is secured.  Mutually assured
destruction.  Affliction, crisis, bitterness, impotence.  Great losses.  Degradation and destruction,
revocation, infamy, dishonor, loss.  An attack on the fortune of the Querent.

Reversed:  The ankles.  Late January.  The same as upright.  Burial and funerals.

4) COINS/DISCS/PENTACLES

Design:  Generally, five coins, discs, or Pentacles in one arrangement or another.  The MarseilleTarot

shows five coins, each with a four-petaled flower at its center.  Waite’s shows two beggars hurrying
through the snow, who are passing a brightly lighted church window;  the Pentacles are incorporated
into the tree design of the stained-glass windows.  Crowley’s shows a Pentagram, each of whose angles
terminates in a circle;  each circle bears one of the following symbols – triangle, square, crescent, oval,
circle;  the sigil for Mercury is above, that for Taurus below.

America’s Tarot:  Center:  Five silver Liberty-head dollars, arranged in the form of an inverted Pentagon
(i.e., one which is “point-down” when the card is upright), at the corners of a representation of the
actual Pentagon (the building itself, in Washington, DC).  Alternative:  an Alchemist or a Blacksmith, hard
at work.  Upright:  fertile fields filled with “amber waves of grain,” azure skies above, “purple mountain
majesties” in the background;  the grain grows out of clots of what, on closer inspection, turn out to be
dung, i.e., fertilizer in its original form.  Reversed:  Five young people, three male, two female, in a May-
Pole dance in the midst of fertile fields.  Alternative:  a Horn of Plenty.

Upright:  0° 0’ 0”-9° 59’ 59” Taurus (about April 20 through April 30 of a given year).  Mercury in
Taurus.  Titled “Material Trouble” or “Worry.”  Intense strain coupled with long-continued inaction.  The
Alchemist, who transforms lead into gold;  turning what would otherwise have been a very bad situation
to one’s advantage.  Loss of profession, loss of money, monetary anxiety.  Loss of fortune may lead to a
rebirth of spirit.  Attack on physical life.  Alchemy, the study of Spirit as enthroned in Matter, achieved
by interacting directly with matter on the physical plane.  Head ruled by heart.  Business loss as a result
of too much emotion.  Generally speaking, loss.  Disgraceful love, imprudence, license, profligacy,
promiscuity.  Opposition to anything in the way of good fortune.  Success coming which will compensate
for loss.  Material trouble.  Disorder, chaos, ruin, etc.  Conquest of fortune by reason.  Troubles in
love. Money in its power or prime.  Pay day.

Reversed:  The thyroid gland;  the tongue.  Concordance, affinity, adaptation.  The reversal of loss. Lover

or mistress, love, sweetness, affection, candy, pure and chaste love.  Emanation, expansion, love-
making, love outside the confines of legal marriage, brilliance combined sometimes with lack of
responsibility.  Travel or emigration will do much good.  Love and lovers.

c.       The interrelationships between the Sephirah and the cards of the Tarot

Just as the Twos, Threes, and Fours respectively represent the first, second, and third decanates or
thirds of a Cardinal Sign, the Fives, Sixes, and Sevens together represent the Fixed or Cherubic
Signs.  The Fives represent the first decanates of those Signs, the ones most representative of the power
of their respective Signs.

The Fives of course represent Geburah, and everything associated with it.  In the “Naples arrangement,”
they are associated with the idea of motion coming to the aid of the idea of matter, resulting in a
complete overturn of a statically stabilized system.  Storm and stress appear as a result – the discords
of Geburah necessary to the cleansing of the Formative Worlds.  This shouldn’t be regarded as
necessarily bad;  as Crowley puts it, “The natural feeling about it is really . . . little more than the
reluctance of people to get up from lunch and go back to the job.”  Even so, a disturbance is a
disturbance, and the cards reflect that.

The Five of Wands is called “Strife,” Fire delighting in exuberant energy.

The Five of Cups is called “Disappointment.”  The Cups represent Pleasure, which is passive;  any
disturbance of their repose is misfortune.

The Five of Swords is called “Defeat” or “Futility.”  The armed peace of the Four of Swords has erupted
in violence due to a lack of the strength necessary to prevent it from doing so.  Since the original idea of
the Sword is that of a manifestation of the result of love between Wand and Cup – in effect, the child of
their union – this must mean defeat.

It is likewise with the Five of Discs, Coins, or Pentacles.  Because of the duality of the coming into
existence of the Swords and Discs – the children of Wand and Cup – the nature of each appears so
imperfect, and this is just as true of the Discs as it is of the Swords.  In the case of the Five of Discs, called
“Worry,” the peace of the Four of Discs has been overthrown.  The idea is of strangling, e.g., as
dogs worry their prey.  The economic system has broken down, and balance among the various orders
of society has ceased to exist.  Discs are stolid and obstinate, as compared with Wands, Cups, and
Swords, so their breakdown serves to stabilize them, and there is no action that can affect the issue.

6. Sephirah 6

a. The Sephirah

Tiphareth, “Beauty.  Sphere of Ö (Sol, the Sun).

 
Tiphareth, located in the middle of the Central Pillar of Consciousness, is the center of equilibrium of the
entire Tree of Life.  It is a lower octave of Kether, a higher one of Yesod.  It is the point of transmutation
between the planes of Force and the planes of Form.  From the point of view of Malkuth, it is a
king;  from the point of view of Da’ath, it is a sacrificed God.  It is in Tiphareth that the Lead of
Saturn/Binah and Earth/Malkuth  is transmuted into the Gold of Sol/Tiphareth.

Macrocosmically, from the viewpoint of Kether, Tiphareth embodies the equilibrium

of Chesed andGeburah;  microcosmically, from the point of view of transcendental psychology, it is the
point where aspects of consciousness characteristic of Kether and Yesod are brought to a
focus.  Likewise, Hod and Netzach are also having their synthesis in Tiphareth.30      Tiphareth, the
mediator of Geburah and Chesed, rules the Seer, or the higher psychism of the individuality.

The four Sephiroth below Tiphareth represent the personality or lower self;  the four above it together

constitute the Individuality, or higher self, and Kether is the Divine Spark, the nucleus of
manifestation. Tiphareth must therefore be regarded as a link, a focus, a center of transition or
transmutation.  The Central Pillar of the Tree of Life is always concerned with consciousness, the Left-
and Right-Hand Pillars with the different modes of the operation of force on the different levels.

In Tiphareth the archetypal ideals are brought to a focus and transmuted into ideas, the vehicles of
thought. It is, in fact, the Place of Incarnation.  For this reason it is called the Child.  And because
incarnation of the god-ideal also implies sacrificial death, to Tiphareth are assigned the Mysteries of the
Crucifixion.  All the Sacrificed Gods, from Baldur the Beautiful and Osiris  and Chiron the Healer to Jesus
of Nazareth, are associated withTiphareth.*  God the Father is assigned to Kether, but God the Son is
assigned to Tiphareth.31

*Sol has His nocturnal esoteric ruler ship or super-exaltation in Pisces.  Pisces is ruled by
Neptune;  among other things, both Neptune and Pisces are concerned with martyrdom, Christianity,
and the Crucifixion.  Sol represents all Messiahs;  Sol in Pisces represents the Messiah Crucified.  This
dovetails neatly with the assignment given by Ms. Fortune in the passage above, which can also be
found in Golden Dawn teachings as well as Liber 777.

The Gods of Redemption, from Jesus to the Buddha, manifest in Tiphareth, forever striving to redeem
Creation by re-uniting it with the Supernals on the other side of the gulf made by the Fall, the Abyss
betweenBinah and Chesed which separates the lower Sephiroth from the higher ones, and by bringing
the diverse forces of the six fold kingdom into equilibrium.  To this end are the incarnated gods
sacrificed, dying for the people in order that the tremendous emotional force set free by this act may
compensate the unbalanced force of Creation and in this way redeem it or bring it into harmony with
the Will of God, the Tao.  For this reason, Tiphareth  is referred to in the Western Tradition as the Christ-
Center.32

Whereas Kether is metaphysical in nature, and Yesod psychic, Tiphareth is essentially mystical, in the

sense that mysticism is mode of mentality in which consciousness ceases to function in terms of
symbolic representations of unconscious processes, instead working in terms of emotional reaction. 33

Tiphareth is also associated with the Inebriating God, the Giver of Illumination.  Dionysus and Bacchus,
Gods associated with alcoholic inebriation in all forms, to the Gods associated with cocaine,
methamphetamine, and other uppers, the Gods of the opium poppy, etc., are assigned to Tiphareth.    So
are Shiva, Who is associated with cannabis and soma (Amanita fungi);  the Gods associated with
peyote;  Who- or Whatever may be in charge of LSD, the Buddha;  and all other givers of illumination.34

Kether, the Divine Spark around which individualized being is built up, is the nucleus of consciousness,
rather than consciousness itself, more or less in the same relationship to the rest of an individual that
the nucleus of an atom is to the atom as a whole, or the nucleus of a cell is to that entire cell.  Not
until Tiphareth is there clear-cut, individualized consciousness. 35

Tiphareth is the functional apex of the Second Triad of the Tree of Life, the two points defining the base
of which is Geburah and Chesed.  This second Triad, emanating from the First Triad of the three
SupernalSephiroth, is the matrix of the evolving individuality, or spiritual soul.  It is this which endures
and builds up through an evolution;  it is from this that successive personalities, the units of incarnation,
come to be;  it is into this that the active essence of experience is absorbed at the end of each
incarnation when the individualdissolves into dust and astral residues.  This second Triad forms the
Oversoul, the Higher Self, also called the Holy Guardian Angle, the First Initiator.  It is the voice of this
higher self which is so often heard with the inner ear, rather than the voice of discarnate entities or of
God Himself – which goes far toward explaining some of the odder results of spiritualism and other
forms of uncontrolled evocation of “spirits,” e.g., through Ouija Boards and the like. 36

As far as we here on Earth are concerned, the Sun is truly the Giver of Life and the source of all
being.  As Shakespeare said, “we are such stuff as stars are made on”;  more particularly we and all other
life are composed of Sunlight that has been temporarily bound into matter.  The Sun is one of the most
appropriate of all symbols of God the Father or Creator, called the Sun behind the Sun in the Western
tradition, just as Tipharethis the immediate reflection of Kether, the Ancient of Days.  On the physical
level, it is the Sun that gives life to the Earth;  just so, it is by means of the Tiphareth that we contact the
ultimate sources of vitality, the Supernals, and draw upon them, on both conscious and unconscious
levels.37

In Tiphareth, the Solar Center, the Heart of the Tree of Life, the spiritual manifests in the natural world,
and we give reverence to the Sun-Gods as Lords of the naturalization of spiritual processes.  (The false
spiritualization of natural processes, e.g., much of the mystification and denial surrounding sex, anger,
fear, self-assertion, self-defense, and other natural aspects of life, has had a good deal to answer for in
the history of human suffering.)38

The Qaballistic assignments for Tiphareth include the following:

                                                          MAGICKAL IMAGE:                A king;  a child;  a sacrificed God.

                                                                         GOD NAME:                t u d w  h w l a  h w h y  (JeHoWaH ALOaH

Va-DA’aTh, God Made Manifest in the Sphere of Mind)

                                                                      ARCHANGEL:                l a p r (Raphael)

                                                          ORDER OF ANGELS:                \ y h l a   y n b  (BeNI ALHIM, the Sons of

God;  also called Malachim, Kings)

                                                      MUNDANE CHAKRA:                The Sun

                                                                                VIRTUE:                Devotion to the Great Work; Courage

                                                                                 TITLES:                Zoar Anpin, the Lesser Countenance or

Microprosopos

                                                SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE:                Vision of the Harmony of Creation; Mysteries

of the Crucifixion

                                                       ATZILUTHIC COLOR:                Clear rose-pink

                                                                BRIATIC COLOR:                Yellow

                                                        YETZIRATIC COLOR:                Rich salmon-pink

                                                             ASSIATIC COLOR:                Golden amber

                                                                                      VICE:                Pride;  cowardice

                                                                            SYMBOLS:                Lamen;  Rose-Cross;  Calvary
Cross;  Truncated Pyramid;  Cube

For Tiphareth, Liber 777 gives the following assignments:  Topaz, yellow diamond;  acacia, bay, laurel,

vine; Phoenix, Lion, Child;  stramonium, alcohol, digitalis, coffee;  olibanum (perfume).

 
 

Tiphareth  is associated with the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

Amendment VI

Right to speedy trial, witnesses, etc.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial
jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have
been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation;  to be
confronted with the witnesses against him;  to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his
favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

The commandment associated with Tiphareth is

You shall not kill.

Exodus 20:13, Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version

According to the Yetziratic Text,

The Sixth Path is called the Mediating Intelligence, because in it are multiplied the influences of the
emanations; for it causes that influence to flow into all the reservoirs of the blessings which they
themselves are united.

 
Tiphareth is the central Sephirah  of the Tree of Life, its Heart, the keystone of Creation.  It embodies the
balance among the Sephiroth with which it connects, between God in the Highest in Kether and the
physical universe of Malkuth.  It mediates between the upper and lower poles of the psyche
in Da’ath and Yesod; between Chokmah and Binah,  Force and Form;  between Chesed  and Geburah,
Strength and Mercy; between Netzach and Hod, emotions and intellect.  It enthrones the balance
between Chesed and Hod,Geburah and Netzach.  It is truly the Mediating Intelligence of the Yetziratic
Text, above.  Without knowledge of what the Paths that lead from Tiphareth to other Sephiroth, their
interrelationships, and what these represent, there can never be a complete understanding
of Tiphareth.  The same is true for the other Sephiroth, of course, but the interrelationships
between Tiphareth and the other Sephiroth are so fundamental and wide-ranging that understanding of
this Sephirah is virtually synonymous with that of the whole Tree of Life.  Tiphareth is Beauty, where the
Will of God is made manifest in its ideal form.

According to the Yetziratic Text, all the influences of the other Sephiroth flow into Tiphareth,  where they
are given an imprint of overall beauty, elegance, and harmony.  Thus Tiphareth is the integrating aspect
of the entire Tree of Life.  It confers synthesis and unity upon the Tree of Life, a state towards which
humanity has been struggling throughout written history, ever since the last Interglacial, when the lush
conditions of many of the great river-valleys enabled our numbers to multiply so much that as a result,
we created urban cultures that cut us off from conscious awareness of our ties with the natural world
and our true niche within it – the Fall from the Paradise we once enjoyed as hunter-gatherers in a world
sparsely populated with human beings.  Tipharethrepresents a return to harmony with all things,
ecological as well as spiritual health, and therefore its Virtue is that of Devotion to the Great Work,
which is the Attainment of the Knowledge of and Conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel, that
aspect of our being which knows our true niche in the living world and works ever to encourage us to
conform with it.  And just as, on the level of the individual soul, the Great Work is concerned with
regeneration and rebirth, so Tiphareth is associated with the symbolism of death and resurrection.  It is
theSephirah of all Redeemer Gods, from Christ to the Buddha.

There are two sides to Tiphareth, and for that reason its Spiritual Experiences are two in number, rather
than the one that is the norm.  Tiphareth reconciles the Supernals with the rest of the Tree of Life, God
with Creation.  There is a split in normal human consciousness corresponding to the alienation of urban
humanity with the living world and the Spirit of Life, symbolized by the Gulf just below Tiphareth,
above Netzach and Hod. The average human being has little awareness of the vast sphere of what Carl
Jung called the Super conscious Mind, those aspects of his or her being above the levels of the conscious
and unconscious mind, and only becomes aware of those levels of being represented by Tiphareth if he
or she is at all religious in nature.  Even then, he or she may have no real awareness of the nature of this
Sphere, which entails the Vision of the Harmony of All Things and an understanding of the mysteries of
sacrifice, especially the sacrifice of the self, or ego, for the benefit of others and one’s higher self.  Mere
intellectual conception of Tiphareth isn’t enough;  to comprehend it entails true conscious experience of
everything this Sphere of being entails.
The colors of Tiphareth are the pinks, yellows, and ambers of the sublime beauty of Sunrise and Sunset
and in the blazing noonday Sun.  The name of God for this Sephirah is  t u d w  h w l a  h w h y  (JeHoWaH
ALOaH Va-DA’aTh), God Made Manifest in the Sphere of Mind.

Harmony and beauty are associated with health and healing.  Therefore Raphael, the Archangel of Sol, is
associated with Tiphareth.  In ritual Workings Raphael is the Archangel who guards the Eastern Quarter,
the quarter of the Element Air.  The East has always been associated with holiness*; 

*In Volume 3 of C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (New York: Collier
Books, 1970), the symbolism of Tiphareth (with which the rest of the series is also replete) is
represented in some of the most sublime imagery and deft passages that exist in English-language
literature. The Mouse Reepicheep, companion of Prince Caspian, says, in reply to Lucy’s question as to
the location of the Country of Aslan, i.e., Heaven:

I do not know, Madam . . . But there is this.  When I was in my cradle a wood woman, a Dryad, spoke
this verse over me:

‘Where sky and water meet,

Where the waves grow sweet,

Doubt not, Reepicheep,

To find all you seek,

There is the utter East.

I do not know what it means.  But the spell of it has been on me all my life.

Ibid., pp. 16-17

At the book’s end, when those on the Dawn Treader actually reach the Utter East, they find
 

Something not only behind the wave but behind the sun.  They could have seen even the sun if their
eyes had not been strengthened by the water of the Last Sea.  But now they could look at the rising sun
and see it clearly and see things beyond it.  What they saw – eastward, beyond the sun – was a range of
mountains.  It was so high that either they never saw the top of it or they forgot it.  None of them
remembers seeing any sky in that direction.  And the mountains must really have been outside the
world.  For any mountains even a quarter of a twentieth of that height ought to have had ice and snow
on them.  But these were warm and green and full of forests and waterfalls however high you
looked.  And suddenly there came a breeze from the east, tossing the top of the wave into foamy shapes
and ruffling the smooth water all round them. It lasted only a second or so but what it brought them in
that second none of those three children will ever forget.  It brought both a smell and a sound, a musical
sound.  Edmund and Eustace would never talk about it afterwards.  Lucy could only say, “It would break
your heart.”  “Why,” said I, “was it so sad?”  “Sad!  No,” said Lucy.

Ibid., p. 212

Give that Aslan, the Lord of Narnia, is a lion, the Solar symbolism is complete.

The Archangel Raphael can also be imagined in the colors gold and blue, those of the Sun in a clear blue
sky, giving off the healing and sustaining powers of Sunlight, including those associated with the infra-
red and ultra-violet light portions of the Solar spectrum, as well as the spiritual enlightenment and the
vitalization of life of the “Sun behind the Sun.”  Raphael can be pictured with wings which fan the air,
causing rushing Fire and Air which regenerate the auras of any aura they contact, sources of spiritual,
psychological and physical healing for everything they touch.

Tiphareth’s choir of Angels is the Malachim  or Kings.  These are the healing and life-giving agents ruled
by Raphael.  The natural world, Malkuth, the Sphere of the Elements,  is replete with vast healing
powers. Therefore the four Elemental Kings, the lords of the Elementals, individuated examples of each
Element, can be associated with Tiphareth, even though their proper Sphere is actually Malkuth.

Elementals are the intelligences or spirits associated with the most primordial aspects of the Universe,
the phenomena of quantum reality and thermodynamics.  When an Elemental has acquired spiritual
awareness, it therefore has a consciousness represented by Tiphareth.  The Elemental Kings, those
Elementals that have attained this state, are also guides for the other Elementals, showing them the way
to spiritual achievement.  The Elemental Kings have the names Paralda, for Air;  Niksa, for
Water;  Ghob;  for Earth;  and Djin, for Fire; though they are more properly ruled by Malkuth, they still
have associations with Tiphareth, because of their vast spiritual awareness and knowledge, which can be
tapped by the Hermeticist through evocation of the Elemental forces.

The Mundane Chakra of Tiphareth is the Sun, the source of light and life for the Solar System, a physical
manifestation of the powers of God and the spiritual worlds.  The Sustainer and Guide of the Solar
System is the Solar Logos, the Spirit of God;  while the Solar Logos is Lord over the Solar System, ever
Star has its own Logos associated with it, and that of ours is but one among a host of Gods – \ y h l a (the
Elohim).  The Sun is the physical body of the Solar Logos, which is Regent over the entire Solar System.

According to esoteric theology, God, like God’s Creation, evolves and changes.  It holds that every Star is
a God presiding over Its own creation, and that there are other Gods over the God of our Solar System,
the Gods of galaxies, of galactic clusters, and so on in a hierarchy that ultimately extends to the Lord of
the Multiverse. But all extra-Solar influences, whether from the Stars, the Constellations other galaxies,
or whatever affect us only through the mediation of the Solar Logos, and not directly.

All these things have reference to the Vision of the Harmony of things.  But there is, as previously
mentioned, another and darker side to Tiphareth, the Mysteries of Crucifixion, of the Sacrifice of Self in
service to the Greater Self.

It is in Tiphareth  that Spirit first makes contact with the mind of humanity.  At first, such contact is slight
and rare, the “still, small voice” which is so easily ignored.  But as a child, given protection and
nurturance, grows into manhood, so contacts with Tiphareth, properly cultivated, eventually come to
inform all our existence and experience.  However, ultimately the ego, the mundane self, must be
relinquished so that the spiritual self, the True Self, can be liberated to grow into its true estate.  It is this
sacrifice of the lesser self for the benefit of the greater that is represented by symbolism of the
Sacrificed Gods, whether Jesus Christ, Baldur the Beautiful, or Osiris of Egypt.  This does not mean that
one should suppress and neglect the “animal” side of one’s nature, but rather, as the Buddha taught,
that one should learn the limits of logical, acculturated consciousness and transcend them, attaining
the Samadhi that comes from the harmony of one’s physical and spiritual natures, making the ego the
servant of the Self rather than its master.  Thus the Magickal Images of the Child, the King, and the
Sacrificed God are associated with Tiphareth, representing the openness to spiritual experience of the
young child, the dominion of the Spirit over the rest of the Self, and the sacrifice of the ego in the service
of Spirit.

In fact, the death of the body can be equaled or even surpassed by the death of Initiation, in which is
sacrificed a way of life and awareness rather than one’s physical being.  Through the latter, one’s whole
life is dedicated to the service of Spirit and thus of the whole living world;  rather than dying for a
principle, the initiate lives out his or her life in accordance with it – which may be a far, far harder
thing.  He or she becomes one of the “living dead,” fully living out a life in the world that is nevertheless
understood to be on borrowed time.  The Great Work always comes first for the initiate, everything else
second, regardless of the cost.  Thus the Virtue ofTiphareth is devotion to the Great Work – not
intellectual interest, part-time effort, or vague good intentions, which are good enough for laymen or
minor aspirants, but acceptance of responsibility for achievement of the Great Work as the cornerstone
and foundation of one’s whole life and being, the core of and reason for one’s very existence.

Even so, though an unreserved dedication to the Great Work is called for, this does not mean that the
initiate should be a fanatic.  Fanaticism is at bottom a child of perversion of Tiphareth’s Virtues, not of
those Virtues themselves.  Unfortunately it shows up all too often in new initiates who have just been
apprenticed to a Master, who identify so strongly with the principles of their internship that they come
to resemble robots more than true individuals.  The goal is to retain all of one’s mortal aspects, yet live a
life entirely directed by principle.  After all, Jesus of Nazareth enjoyed good wine, good company, and
the companionship of the opposite sex – why should we mere mortals be any different, initiation or
not?  The life of the initiate generally doesn’t call for any great outward acts of heroism or spectacular
self-sacrifice, though his or her virtues must come to be heroic.  It doesn’t require totally ethical or
moral action at all times, in even the smallest details – a goal that is in fact impossible to mortal being,
the anxious striving for which is often the hallmark of a form of mental illness, “over scrupulosity” –
though it does require control of thought and emotion.  To the Hermeticist, every plane of existence is
as important as all the others;  a life that is outwardly virtuous is worthless if it is not also virtuous with
respect to the Inner Planes – something that Job found impossible to convey to his counselors.

It is the task of the Magickian to construct the appropriate forms out of his or her own being as
habitations for his or her own spiritual being.  The techniques of ritual Magick are only ways of raising a
particular power of one’s life to the highest possible degree in order to give it a proper direction and
form;  the real ritual is in fact a continuous, never-ending process of living one’s life according to
spiritual principles so that patterns of right living are solidly ingrained in one’s own unconscious mind as
well as the Collective Unconscious, making it easier for those who follow after to live in the right way.

Further, a life lived according to Magickal intent has much greater power than does one whose patterns
are based not on spiritual principles but rather on quotidian expediency.  In addition, the initiate has a
trained mind, and his or her clear-cut thought-forms and the energy of his or her aura profoundly affect
everything around them, often for astonishingly great distances in time and space.  The thoughts of the
average individual are usually far too weak and transient to have a truly permanent effect on the world
around him or her;  only the group-minds of collective associations of such laypersons will have much of
an affect on things, Magickally speaking. The trained Hermeticist, on the other hand, is a real force in the
world.  There is an old argument among historians as to whether it is “the time or the man” that is
critical to the great mutations of history.  In the case of non-initiates acting in a public capacity, the time
is everything;  in the case of initiates, it is the initiate him- or herself who makes the difference.

Just as Sol travels through the twelve Zodiacal Signs every year, so the symbolism of Tiphareth so often
involves a group of thirteen, which is, twelve followers and a leader.  Both the Christian Gospels, which
record the life of Jesus of Nazareth and the works of his twelve disciplines, and the literary sagas of
Arthur and his Round Table of twelve Knights are associated with Solar symbolism:  a Lord and King and
his twelve followers, who carry out his commands and express his will in the world.  The Round Table in
particular reflects the Solar symbolism in that it is round like the Sun;  and just as Jesus of Nazareth died
an ugly death on a cross, betrayed by one of his own, his death precipitating enormous changes in his
world, so Arthur was betrayed and murdered by Mordred – yet left a legacy for the ages in the way that
his reign influenced all of English history to come, especially on cultural and spiritual levels.

Of the other symbols commonly associated with Tiphareth, the Cube, a symbol of Chesed, also
corresponds with Tiphareth because of its six faces.  The truncated pyramid – with four sides, a bottom,
and a top that is smaller in area than is the bottom – also a six-sided figure, implies its missing apex,
which is associated with Kether;  its higher levels are not actually solid and manifest, the way that form
below Tiphareth is, but rather implicit in the form of its lower levels, broad-based and diverse below,
ascending towards Unity at the apex, which represents the Godhead.  The Lamen is a symbol worn on
the breast of a Magickian during a Magickal Operation;  it has written upon it symbols corresponding to
the nature of the force with which he or she is working, and thus corresponds with Tiphareth, the Vision
of the Harmony of All Things (in particular, it is worn on the breast, which corresponds to the Solar
Chakra in the body, Tiphareth of the application of the Tree of Life to the physical body).

All Solar Gods, Gods of inebriation, healing Gods, and sacrificed, redeeming Gods as well as various
Heroes are associated with Tiphareth.    Their various natures can give great insight on the manifold
nature ofTiphareth.  Among others, these include Sol, Apollo, Helios, Baldur, the Christ, Odin (for the
self-sacrifice of his eye in exchange for wisdom), Osiris, Bacchus, Dionysus, Shiva (Who is called the Sun
Dancing on the Waters in Hindu religion), Mescalito, Bast, Hercules, “Bob” of the SubGenii, and
Superman of DC Comics fame.  These are now far more often male than female (though, particularly in
earlier cultures, sometimes the Sun is female, the Moon male), which corresponds to astrological
associations of the Father, the Man, and the King of the Sun.  And Chiron, the Wounded Healer, who is
more properly associated with Da’ath, Saturn, and Uranus, nevertheless has Solar associations because
of his healing abilities, his self-sacrifice of his own life so that he might have release from the pain of his
unhealed wound and so that Prometheus might be liberated from Hell, and his ascension into the
Heavens after his death.

Astrologically, the Sun represents the life-force, especially in males;  rulers and leaders of nations;  a
woman’s soul-mate in her chart, the man himself in his own chart;  wealth;  children;  life;  lovers,
romance, pleasure, sex;  the father of the native;  a woman’s husband;  the ego;  fame;  a trusted
messenger or agent: creativity;  the life-force in all living beings;  gold;  the cinema, the theater, actors,
and everything associated with them;  men;  and virility (if in a man’s natal horoscope the Sun is afflicted
or weak by placement and aspect, his virility will be damaged and weak).

b.       The Cards

 
The geometric figures that best represent Tiphareth include the Hexagram, the six-pointed Star in the
form either of the Star of David (Seal of Solomon), consisting of two overlapping equilateral triangles, or
the Unicursal Hexagram:

The Star of David

The Unicursal Hexagram

The Elements, including the Transcendental Elements of Spirit/Will/Heaven and Chaos/Void/Sky, can be
associated with the points of the Hexagram as follows:  Spirit/Will/Heaven – Topmost Point,
Chaos/Void/Sky = Bottommost Point, Water – Left Lower Point, Earth/Metal = Right Lower Point, Air =
Right Upper Point, and Fire = Left Upper Point (in Taoist metaphysics, Earth or chi would be represented
by the Center Point). Likewise, the Planets can be associated with its points as follows:  Mercury, with
the Left Lower Point;  Mars, with the Left Upper Point;  Luna, with the Bottommost Point;  Saturn, with
the Topmost Point;  Jupiter, with the Upper Right Point;  and Venus, with the Lower Right Point (Sol, the
Sun, is associated with the Center Point). Six-sided figures and six-rayed Stars of any kind, in particular
these, are excellent for designs for the Sixes. Also, a Hexagon is a regular six-sided polygon with six
interior angles of 60° each.  Astrologically, an aspect of 60°, or sextile, is a “soft” aspect that can
represent application, cooperation, dreams, dullness, friendliness, harmony, ideas, intellect,
intellectuals, intuition, luck, opportunity, perception, perceptiveness, potential, pragmatism, practical
applications, relaxation, or softness.  Any such associations are appropriate for the design of the Sixes.

 
The Sixes

1) WANDS

Design:  Generally, six Wands in one arrangement or another.  The Marseille Tarot shows a bundle of

crossed Wands, to either side of which is the Roman number VI.  Waite’s shows a young man on
horseback, riding in triumph;  his wand is garlanded with a victor’s laurel-wreath, and he is accompanied
by other men on foot that bear Wands, all in a mood of celebration and victory.  Crowley’s shows six
Wands crossed, three over three;  two of the Wands are tipped with the winged Solar disc, two with
Phoenix heads, and two with lotus flowers;  at each intersection of the Wands there burns a small
flame; the sigil for Jupiter is above, that for Leo below.  The New Tarot shows six Snakes arranged three
by three in the form of a Hexagram.

America’s Tarot:    Upright:  Six great redwoods, before which stand six children, their faces filled with
awe and wonder;  in the background is a majestic redwood forest.  Reversed:  The same six trees, but
the children are replaced by six lumberjacks, eyeing the trees with speculative greed.

Upright meaning:  The title of this card is “Victory.”  Jupiter in Leo.  10° 0’ 0” - 19° 59’ 59” of the Sign Leo
(about August 1 through August 11 of a given year).  Victory after battle or strife.  Gain.  A stable
victory.  Gain.  Success.  A halt in the evolution of things to allow something to be brought to
perfection.  Stability.  Firmness.  Successful completion of a project.  Execution of desire.  Staying above
apprehension.  Attempt, hope, desire, wish, expectation.  Realization of the opposition. Knowledge,
decorative art, efficiency, practical solutions.  A victor in triumph.  Great news. Expectations crowned
with success.  The crown of hope.  Fulfillment of deferred hope.

Reversed:   The Spine.  Early August.  Victory, but only on a practical plane.  Domesticity.  Cunning

people.  Disputes.  Infidelity, disloyalty, treachery, perfidy.  Obstacles succeed in thwarting goals. Failure
of the enterprise in the midst of its execution.  Persons in subordinate positions waiting for orders, or for
the results of experiments, for the answers to questions.  Traitors.  Apprehension, fear.  Indefinite
delay.  Servants may lose the confidence of their masters.  A young lady may be betrayed by a friend.

2)       CUPS
 

Design:  Generally, six Cups, in one arrangement or another.  Waite’s shows six cups filled with white,
five-petaled flowers;  a small boy offers one of the flowers to a little girl.  Crowley’s shows six Cups in the
form of lotuses;  the sigil for the Sun is above, that for Scorpio below.  The New Tarotshows six pairs at
the center of which grouping are a Hexagram.

America’s Tarot:  Upright:  Six pristine lakes, arranged in a Hexagram.  A small group of American Indians
regard the lakes with awe and reverence;  they are about to begin fishing or some other necessary
activity.  Reversed:  Six polluted lakes, arranged in a distorted Hexagram;  around and in them are people
involved in various recreational activities.

Upright:  The Sun in Scorpio. 10° 0’ 0” - 19° 59’ 59” Scorpio (about November 1-11 in a given year).  This
card is titled “Pleasure.”  Beginning of steady gain.  Well-being, the harmony of natural forces without
effort or strain.  Fulfillment of sexual will.  The past, working through the present, creates the
future.  Successful Sex-Magick or Tantra.  Orgasm.  Clinging too much to the past.  Equilibrium. Assured
and durable success.  A happy couple, a satisfying and successful partnership, old friends and
acquaintances, a return home.  The past, that which has passed by, faded, vanished,
disappeared. Happiness.  Spiritual wealth.  Good health.  Good things in plenty and
profusion.  Impressions of the past and future.  Memories, nostalgia.  Pleasant memories.

Reversed:   The bowel.  Early November.  New relations, new environment.  Unsuccessful Sex-Magick or

Tantra.  New projects.  The future, that which is to come shortly, soon. The obstacles to love
triumph.  Love destroyed in the midst of happiness.  Widowhood.  Divorce.  An inheritance to fall in
quickly.

3) SWORDS

Design:  Generally, six Swords in one arrangement or another.  Waite’s pack shows two hooded figures
seated in a boat which also contains six swords, point downward;  the boat is piloted by a man who
propels it by means of a pole.  Crowley’s pack shows six Swords whose points intersect at the center of a
circle, which is within a cross within a greater circle;  the sigil for Mercury is above, that for Aquarius
below.  The New Tarot shows six Blades arranged in a Hexagram.

 
America’s Tarot:   Upright:  Six guided missiles being disassembled;  the parts are being used to make
spaceships as well as things useful and necessary to life in the world (swords into
plowshares). Reversed:  The founders of America gathered about a table on which is laid out the
Declaration of Independence;  they prepare to sign it, and Benjamin Franklin, turned toward the rest,
holds six quill pens out to them in his hand.

Upright:  The title of this card is “Earned Success” or “Science.”  10° 0’ 0” - 19° 59’ 59” Aquarius (about
January 31 through February 9 of a given year).  Success after anxiety, passage from difficulties. A
journey by water.  Earned success.  Science.  Pure balance of mental and spiritual (moral) faculties. A
solution to immediate problems, moving away from immediate danger.  The disappearance of a major
obstacle to travel to peaceful surroundings.  Emigration from a place of danger, immigration to one of
hope and potential for gain.  Escape from evil.  Labor, work.  A journey, probably by water.  A journey in
flesh or spirit.  Liberation, freedom, possibly as a result of killing someone or something.  Struggle,
turmoil, travel.  A long journey by ocean.  A journey, with the implication of progress.  Pilgrimage. Envoy,
messenger.  Voyage, travel.  Equilibrium of the opposition.  The enemy is rendered powerless at
last.  Health.  Sensuality and its expressions.  Route, way, expedient.  The voyage will be pleasant.

Reversed:  The pituitary gland, circulation of the blood, arterial system.  Early February.  New obstacles
after the disappearance of old ones.  Hindrances in the way of a journey.  Force, security. Return from a
journey.  Stalemate, unwanted suggestions.  No solution at present.  Declaration.  A proposal of love.  A
revelation, a surprise.  Badly aspected, a serious illness and the likely death of the
patient.  Confession.  Publicity.  Unfavorable issue of a lawsuit.

4) COINS/DISCS/PENTACLES

Design:  Generally, six Coins, Discs, or Pentacles in one arrangement or another.  Waite’s shows a

wealthy merchant giving alms to beggars;  in his left hand he holds a set of golden scales.  Crowley’s
shows six milky globes, each of which bears one of the following planetary symbols – Saturn, Jupiter,
Venus, the Moon, Mercury, Mars;  in the central Hexagon of the card is a mandala;  the sigil for Luna is
above, that for Taurus below.  The New Tarot  shows six Stones arranged in two groups of three, and a
Hexagram.

America’s Tarot:  Center:  Six silver Liberty-head dollars at the points of a Unicursal Hexagram, from the
upright Pentagram at the center of which erupts a tremendous burst of light.  Upright:  A prosperous
merchant at work in his shop, surrounded by his happy family of wife and four children (could be any
kind of shop, but one involved with trade goods, food, or other expressions of material prosperity is
best).  Two beggars have entered the shop;  the man, who is smiling kindly, is giving them gifts out of his
inventory.  Reversed:  A man dressed in opulent clothing, surrounded by wealth and material goods
– which is dying of a heart-attack due to his workaholicism.

Upright:   Titled “Material Success” or “Success.”  10° 0’ 0” - 19° 59’ 59” Taurus (around May 1 through
May 10 of a given year).  The Moon in Taurus.  Fertility.  Material
prosperity.  Philanthropy. Presents.  Success.  Transient conditions.  Success in material enterprises,
ownership of valuable things, prosperity in business.  Psychic or Magickal force exerting its power over
the Elements.  Sure judgment. Stabilization in the midst of uncertainty.  Fortune-
telling.  Gift.  Charity.  Gratification.  Charitable action. Fruitfulness.  Seizing of
opportunity.  Attention.  Vigilance.  Now is the time.  Present prosperity.  The present must not be relied
upon.

Reversed:   The throat.  Early May.  Prodigality.  Tendencies toward jealousy, threats to prosperity,

bribery, irrecoverable debts.  Small business dealings, a special favor which is likewise
returned. Ambition, desire, cupidity, greed, appetite, passion, aim, longing, goal.  The opposition to
money and trade.  Ruin.  Illusion.  A check on ambition.

Kings, Emperors, or Princes

1) WANDS

Design:  Generally a king seated on a throne, holding a Staff, Wand, or Club.  Waite’s pack shows a king
on a throne decorated with motifs of lions and salamanders, in a desert;  he wears a robe decorated
with salamanders and holds a Wand in his right hand;  a salamander is beside him.  Crowley’s shows a
prince riding in a fiery chariot drawn by a lion;  on his breast is a seven-pointed Star inscribed within a
circle, and inscribed within the Star is a crescent and a three-ring device;  in his right hand he carries a
Phoenix Wand.  The New Tarot shows the King of Serpents, with a shield crowned with a fez, a black lion
rampant, a snake, and a smaller shield with a flaming torch and arrow;  below is the sigil of Leo.

America’s Tarot:  Red Adair, the King of Fire, the Prince of Firefighters.

 
Upright meaning:  Prince of the Chariot of Fire.  Leo (Fixed Fire).  Rules 20 degrees Cancer to 20 degrees
Leo (about July 10 to August 12 of a given year).  The Airy part of fire.  Dark man.  Someone who is
friendly or ardent.  Honesty, an honest person.  Possible inheritance.  Swiftness and
strength. Impulsiveness.  States a proposition for the sake of stating it.  Slow to make up his
mind.  Always sees both sides of a question.  Essentially just, but feels that justice isn’t necessarily to be
obtained in the intellectual arena.  An actor, doctor, surgeon, healer, athlete, trusted messenger or
agent.  A child. Wealth.  A lover.  Beloved.  A soul-mate.  Intensely noble and generous.  Courageous,
fanatical courage.  Romantic.  Proud.  Holds meanness and pettiness in contempt.  Strong
endurance.  Enormous capacity for work.  Great cruelty, sadism, callousness, indifference, laziness,
intolerance, prejudice, a boaster or braggart.  A male child.  Virility.  Passion.  Loyalty.  Generosity.  A
love of traditional ways and family life.  A swift thinker.  An able mediator.  Good at moral
support.  Swift, strong, hasty, violent, just, generous, noble, scorning meanness.  Air of Fire.  Prince and
Emperor of Salamanders, the spirits of Fire.  A blond man with blue or hazel eyes.  His qualities may
include rashness, handsomeness, agility of mind or body, loyalty, nobility, desirable ancestry, hastiness,
honesty, friendliness.  Passion, unforeseen legacies, advantageous marriage.  High principles.  Discussion
brings ready agreement.  A clever man.  Good advice.  A fair man with firm desires, possibly a manager,
possibly pursuing some worthwhile objective.  A man living in the country, a country gentleman.  A man
of knowledge and education.  A naturally good but severe man.  Counsel, advice, deliberation.  Generally
represents a married man, the father of a family, an older man.  Governor, director of
business.  Austerity, security, initiative.  A notary, a clergyman, High Priest, Grand Master.  A man with
dark skin (tan?) and fair hair, perhaps with blue, gray, or green eyes.  Conscientious.  Generally
favorable.

Reversed:   The heart, aorta, spine, or sides of the body.  Around July 23 through August 22 of a given
year.  Someone who can be easily led.  Indecisiveness, especially over trifles.  Violent in
nature. Histrionic.  Cowardly.  A practical joker.  An autocrat, a tyrant, a masochist, a false ascetic,
unfeeling, prejudiced, ruthlessness. Virtuous in an idiosyncratic fashion.  Ethical but
intolerant.  Severity. Harshness.  A snob.  Doubt as to his absolute integrity.  Good but severe, austere
yet tolerant.  Advice that should be followed.

2)       CUPS

Design:  Generally, a king on a throne who holds a Cup or chalice in his right hand.  Waite’s pack shows a
king seated on a throne which stands on a stone block in the middle of the sea;  he wears a pendant in
the form of the emblem of a fish on a chain around his neck, which motif is repeated in the form of
jumping or flying fish in the background, possibly porpoises;  in his right hand he holds a Cup, in his left a
lotus scepter.  Crowley’s shows a naked man in a throne in the form of a great sea-shell, like that of a
huge scallop, being drawn over the sea by a bird that could be a swallow or a pigeon;  in his right hand
he holds an inverted lotus scepter.  The New Tarot shows the King of Pears;  there is a vase with a device
like a crown at the top, and on the side of the base are two white roses, a pear, a stylized scarab with a
torch on his back who bears a red flower in one pair of legs and a double-headed ax in the other;  at the
bottom is the sigil of Scorpio.

America’s Tarot:  John Paul Jones, and the motto:  “Give me a fast ship, for I intend to go in harm’s way.”

Upright:  Scorpio (Fixed Water).  The Prince of the Chariot of the Waters.  Rules 20 degrees Libra to 20
degrees Scorpio (about October 10 through November 11 of a given year).  The Airy Part of
Water.  Subtlety.  Secret violence and craft.  A fair man, a man with a calm exterior.  An intensely sexual
person.  Great personal magnetism or charisma.  An artist.  External influences serve to further or
transmute his secret designs into reality.  Hunger for wisdom and knowledge.  Ambitious.  Skill, agility,
and manipulation.  Craftiness.  A fierce nature with a calm exterior.  Powerful for good or evil, but
attracted by evil if allied with apparent power or wisdom.  Air of Water.  Prince and Emperor of Nymphs
and Undines.  Knowledge and abundance.  Possessions safeguarded and protected. Inalienable
wealth.  Sensitive or creative man.  A benefactor.  Husband, father.  A red-haired man.  A man of good
humor.  A kind man.  Making a large offering.  A big spender.  A sensitive man.  A man who will meet
with disappointment.  A tutor or teacher.  An angry man.  Goodness, kindness, liberality,
generosity.  Man of good position.  A fair man.  A friend.  A barrister, judge, ecclesiastic, or other
authority.  A bachelor.  Honest man.  Philosophical or idealistic.  Doctor, professor, teacher, hunter. The
Querent’s business activities judged or brought to light. Hope and promise for the future.  Ocean
voyages.  Man of business, law, or divinity.  A man who is red-haired or blonde, with green, gray, or blue
eyes.  Responsible.  Disposed to help the Querent.  Equity, art and science, scientists, researchers, law,
lawyers and judges, art and artists.  Creative intelligence.  Beware of ill-will on the part of a man in a
high position or a hypocrite pretending to help you. 

Reversed:  October 23 through November 22 of a given year.  The sex-organs, bowel, anus, cloacae.  A

subtle man, a violent man.  A man of violence.  A man of foul mind and habits.  A pervert. Someone
without conscience, a sociopath.  A murderer.  A doomed person.  Perfect ruthlessness. Power-
hunger.  Faust.  Intensely evil and merciless.  Enforced downfall of something that seemed protected
and invulnerable.  A serious move.  A man who is shifty in his dealings.  Distrust, doubt, suspicion,
jealousy, envy.  Exaggeration, fantasy.  Dishonesty, double-dealing, roguery, exaction, injustice, vice,
perversion, scandal, pillage, considerable loss.

3) SWORDS

 
Design:  Generally, a king seated on a throne that holds a Sword in his right hand.  The MarseilleTarot
shows a seated king with a Sword upraised in his right hand, holding a scepter loosely in his left; on his
shoulders are the Urim and Thumim (which the man in Trump VII, The Chariot, also wears on his
breastplate).  Waite’s pack shows a stern king seated on a throne made of stone which is carved with a
waxing crescent Moon, a waning crescent Moon, butterflies, and women;  his crown bears the device of
a winged cherub;  in his right hand he brandishes a Sword.  Crowley’s shows a black, winged king in a
chariot drawn by three small winged figures;  all the wings are highly stylized;  the king threatens the
three drawing his chariot with his Sword.  The New Tarot shows the Blade King;  a helmet with the
German Imperial Eagle, brandishing a Sword, upon it;  above the body of the eagle is a black and yellow
shield with a burning torch upon it;  below is the sigil of Aquarius.

America’s Tarot:  Hyman G. Rickover, father of the nuclear submarine.  Alternative:  J. Robert

Oppenheimer.

Upright:  Aquarius (Fixed Air).  The Prince of the Chariot of Air.  Rules from 20 degrees Capricorn to 20
degrees Aquarius (about January 10 through February 9 of a given year).  The Airy part of
Air. Hurricanes, tornadoes, the Earth’s atmosphere as a system.  The intellect, the mind as such, an
intellectual.  A pure intellect that destroys as soon as he creates.  Intensely clever, admirably
rational. Someone on whom it is impossible to get a grip. A revolutionary, rebel, liberator.  Full of new
ideas, thoughts, and designs.  Firm in friendship and enmity.  Careful, slow, over-cautious.  Alpha and
omega, the beginning and end of a matter, something that brackets (e.g., as in bracketing fire during a
firefight). The giver of Death who slays as fast as he creates.  Air of Air, Prince and Emperor of Sylphs and
Sylphides.    Supremacy.  Alteration of events by force, threat of conflict, justice enforced by the sword,
matters only settled by war.  A man in authority, a judge, a critic.  Severe.  A dark man with good
judgment.  A professional man.  A subtle man. A lawyer, a legislator, a policeman, a judge.  Power,
command, superiority, authority.  A soldier.  A knight.  A powerful enemy who must be distrusted.  A
general, a captain.  Justice.  The power of life and death.  Judgment.  Militant intelligence.  Military
intelligence.  A keen strategist.  Law.  Officers of the government.  A senator, a doctor.

Reversed:   The ankles, pituitary gland, and circulation of the blood. Unstable as to purpose, since he
knows that each of his ideas is as worthless or worthwhile as the last and the next, and thus reduces
everything to unreality.  Someone who advocates modernity at the expense of tradition, a
neophilic/archeophobic person.  Someone who brings about chaos in the name of order.  An
overzealous tyrant.  A control-freak.  A schlemiel.  A well-meaning disaster looking for a place to happen
in.  A hairy-eyed, bomb-throwing revolutionary who brings about nothing but catastrophe, with no
change for the better.  Distrustful, suspicious.  Harsh, malicious, plotting, obstinate, hesitating,
unreliable.  Sanctions taken by force can only be controlled by force.  A situation requiring ever-greater
oppression to maintain control that can only end in total upheaval and revolution.  Unremitting
conflict.  A vicious or crafty man.  A dangerous man.  A man to be careful of.  A ruthless man.  A wicked
man. Chagrin, worry, grief, fear, disturbance.  A dark, bad man.  Cruelty, tyranny.  Perversion, perversity,
barbarity, perfidy, evil intention.  A bad man.  Caution that it is time to put an end to a ruinous lawsuit.

4) COINS/DISCS/PENTACLES

Design:  Generally, a king seated on a throne that holds a Disc, Pentacle, or Coin.  The MarseilleTarot

shows a seated king who holds a pentacle containing a six-petaled flower in his right hand. Waite’s pack
shows a king on a throne capped by the carved heads of bulls at either side;  in his right hand he holds a
scepter with an orb at its end, and his left rests upon a Pentacle held upright in his lap; his robe is
decorated with a pattern of grape vines and ripe grapes;  in the background is a castle made of
stone.  Crowley’s shows a naked king in a chariot drawn by a bull;  his left hand rests on a globe, and in
his right he holds a scepter surmounted by an orb which is itself surmounted with a Maltese Cross;  his
helmet is crowned with the head of a winged bull;  the motifs of pomegranates and flowers are
repeated throughout the card.  The New Tarot shows the King of Stones;  a white stag bearing a bow, in
whose antlers are the crystal sign which has represented all the cards of this suit in this pack;  below the
stag is a deosil (clockwise-turning) swastika;  a field consisting of a fringed blanket above which is an
Indian head-dress representing a crown;  below is the sigil of Taurus.

America’s Tarot:  George Washington Carver, seated on a throne whose back is a silver Liberty-head
dollar.

Upright:  Taurus (Fixed Earth).  The Prince of the Chariot of Earth.  20 degrees Aries to 20 degrees Taurus
(about April 10 through May 10 of a given year).  The Airy part of Earth.  Friendly, steady, reliable
married man.  Great energy brought to bear upon practical matters.  Energetic and enduring.  A capable
manager.  Steadfast and persevering worker.  Competent, ingenious, thoughtful, cautious, trustworthy,
imperturbable, constantly seeks new uses of common things, adapting circumstances to his purposes in
a slow, steady, well thought-out plan.  Practicality, pragmatic.  Increase of a matter, increase of either
good or evil.  Solidification.  Practical and pragmatic applications. Technology, applied science, those
working in such fields, engineers, engineering.  Steady, reliable.  Air of Earth.  The Prince and Emperor of
Gnomes.  A black-haired, dark-eyed man of swarthy or dark skin.  Someone who is Black or Oriental in
ancestry.  A chief in industry, banking, or real estate.  A dependable married man.  An inventor of
practical things.  A mathematician.  Considerable financial ability.  The occult and fatal action of cosmic
forces.  Tremendous loyalty.  A dark man.  Victory, courage, success.  Noble, good, honest, influential
man –whom you must go to see.  A banker, speculator, gambler.  A benefic influence.  Wealth,
luxury.  Physical beauty.  Ability to work successful with machines and mechanical things.  Valor,
realizing intelligence, business and normal intellectual aptitude, mathematical gifts and attainments,
success in mathematics or business.  A merchant, master, or professor.

Reversed:  The throat, thyroid, tongue, pharynx, salivary glands, and sense of taste.  April 20 through
May 20 of a given year.  Lacking in emotion, somewhat insensitive, appearing to be dull but only
because he makes no effort to understand new ideas, stupid, resentful of more spiritual types, slow to
anger but can be an implacable enemy.  Materialistic, servile.  Beastly.  Slow to anger, but furious when
aroused.  Waste or perversion of one’s abilities.  Thriftless ness.  Bribability.  A bribe.  Someone who
gives or accepts a bribe.  Possessions which may be lost.  Morbidity, illness.  Possible danger to others
because of mental illness or a morbid cast of mind.  Avarice, greed, promiscuity, unfaithfulness.  An old
and vicious man.  A dangerous man.  Doubt, fear, peril, danger.  Inimical, indifferent.  Vanity, pride. Vice,
weakness, ugliness, perversity, evil, corruption, peril.

c.       The interrelationships between the Sephirah and the cards of the Tarot

This concludes the Abstract Triad of Chesed, Geburah, and Tiphareth.  As the Supernals represent Pure
Being (Kether) and the opposing principles of Activity (Chokmah) and Passivity (Geburah), so this Triad
represents the principles of Anabolism or building-up (Chesed), Catabolism or tearing-down (Geburah),
and Equilibrium, particularly the dynamic equilibrium of homeostasis by which living beings maintain
themselves in existence (Tiphareth).  Note that just as the Supernals are associated with the contrasts,
that is, white (the presence of all light and the absence of all color) for Kether, black (the absence of all
light and the presence of all colors) for Binah, and an intermediate state between the two (gray)
for Chokmah, so the Abstract Sephirothare associated with the primary colors:  blue (the high-energy
end of the visible spectrum) for Chesed, red (the lower-energy end of the visible spectrum) for Geburah,
and yellow (the middle of the visible spectrum) forTiphareth.   (As we will see, the next Triad, the Triad
of Form, wherein pure spirit or energy has evolved a considerable way toward matter, is associated with
the secondary colors: green (a blend of the blue of Chesedand the yellow of Tiphareth)
for Netzach,  orange (a blend of the red of Geburah with the yellow of Tiphareth) for Hod, and purple (a
blend of the blue of Chesed with the red of Geburah) for Yesod, indicating their increasing distance from
the Supernal World and contamination with mundane concerns.  Finally there comesMalkuth, where
everything conceived in the Supernal Realm is made manifest in form, associated with the color brown –
a blend of all colors that is not, however, in such perfect equilibrium as to be black.)  In Tiphareth,
abstract form is brought to perfection and balance, ready to become infused with mind, emotion, and
appetite, prior to becoming incarnated in Malkuth.

The four Sixes of the Tarot are associated with Tiphareth, which in some respects is the most important
of all the Sephiroth.  Tiphareth is the center of the entire system of the Tree of Life, the
only Sephirah  below the Abyss which communicates directly with Kether.  It gains its energy directly
from Chokmah  and Binah  as well as Chesed and Geburah, and in turn communicates directly with all the
lower Sephiroth save Malkuth. Balanced both vertically and horizontally, it is the Heart of the Tree of
Life.  Astrologically, it is associated with the Sun;  theologically, it is associated with the Son of God and
with the w  (Vav) of  h w h y(Tetragrammaton).  From one point of view, the entire geometrical
construction of Ruach – all the Sephirothfrom Chesed on down to Yesod constitutes an expansion
of Tiphareth,  which represents consciousness in its most harmonized and balanced form – and
definitely in form, not just in idea.  As Crowley puts it,

. . . the Son is an interpretation of the Father in terms of the mind. The four Sixes thus represent their
respective elements at their practical best.*

*Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth (New York:  Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1973), p. 181.

The Six of Wands is entitled “Victory.”  Its ruler is Jupiter.  The outburst of energy of the Five of Wands,
so sudden and violent that it suggests the idea of Strife, in this card has completely won the victory.  The
lordship in the Suit of Wands isn’t quite as stable as it might have been if less energy had been
expended;  so as soon as the current leaves the central pillar, the inherent weakness in the Element, due
to the fact that it is not completely balanced, can lead to very undesirable consequences which are
generally represented by the card reversed or in bad aspect to other cards in a layout.

The Six of Cups is called “Pleasure.”  Its ruler is the Sun.  The pleasure so represented is completely
harmonized and balanced.  Since this card is associated with Scorpio, pleasure is here rooted in the most
convenient soil, which may not be all that pleasant in nature – one is reminded of “the lotus, rooted in
mud and slime.”  That is, pleasure here is balanced against whatever must be done to achieve it, the
essence of true hedonism rather than libertinism.  It signifies the pleasure that comes from achieving
harmony with all things, including those things which, however necessary they may be to life, are
normally repulsive to the senses and the spirit, such as manure, sewage, death, putrefaction, etc.
The Six of Swords is entitled “Science.”  Its ruler is Mercury;  the success it signifies comes from turning
away from division and quarrel – intelligence, not force, has won through to the goal.

The Six of Discs, Coins, or Pentacles is called “Success.”  Its ruler is Luna, the Lord of Change, Who giveth
and taketh away, births and destroys, brings all things in their time.  This is a card of setting down.  It is a
heavy card, completely lacking in imagination yet somehow dreamy.  Change is about to take place, for
the weight of Earth will ultimately drag the current down to mere materiality.  Even so, because the
Moon is in Taurus, the Sign of Her exaltation, Her best qualities come through here.  Furthermore, since
this is a Six, the Solar energy fertilizes the Moon, generating a balanced system, at least for the time
being.  Thus the card deserves the name “Success” – for all success is only temporary!

As for the Kings, Princes, or Emperors, they represent the energy and influence of the in w  (Vav) of  h w
h y.  The Prince is the Son of the Queen (who is the daughter of the old King) by the Knight who has won
the Queen’s love.  He is therefore represented as being in a chariot, as the active issue of their union
and its manifestation, or on a throne, to symbolize his inheritance of his grandfather’s power and
titles.  His action is more enduring than that of his forebears.  He is, as it were, “the published record of
what has been done in secret.”  He also represents the “Dying God,” redeeming his Bride (followers) in
the hour and by dint of his own death.  The Kings in general are associated with the Fixed or Cherubic
Signs of the Zodiac, as the Queens are with the Cardinal Signs, the Knights with the Mutable Signs, and
the Pages with the four Quadrants of the physical globe.

*Ibid., p. 150.

The King of Wands represents the Airy part of Fire, Fire’s aspect of expanding and volatilizing.  He can be
ardent and warm, like Fire – or violent, or wavering, or capricious, also like Fire.  He is associated with
the Sign Leo.  He is ruled by the Sun, and has many of the Sun’s qualities.

The King of Cups represents the Airy part of Water and its aspects of elasticity, volatility, hydrostatic
equilibrium, catalytic properties, and the energy of steam.  He can be keenly intelligent, devoted, self-
sacrificing, protective, and loving – but he can also be ruthless, cruel, or even downright evil.  He is
associated with the Sign Scorpio.  He is ruled by Pluto and Mars, and has many of Their qualities.
The King of Swords represents the Airy part of Air and the Sign Aquarius.  He is associated with intellect,
the mind as such.  He is ruled by Saturn and Uranus, and has many of Their qualities – and for this
reason he is also associated with Chiron, the Wounded Healer, hence with Da’ath.

Finally, the King of Pentacles represents the Airy part of Earth, its aspects of fluorescence and
fructification (i.e., its function as a means of transport for wind-blown seeds, baby spiders, etc.).  He is
associated with the Sign Taurus, and is ruled by Venus, having many of Her qualities (and let us not
forget that the Greeks had a wealth of stories having to do with Her less pleasant side!).

B.  The Lower Arcana of the Tarot and the Ten  Sephiroth of the Tree of Life

         

7.     Sephirah 7

                a.     The Sephirah

        Netzach, “The Triumph (of Love).”  Sphere of Ù (Venus)

Netzach represents the instincts and the emotions they give rise to, while Hod, Sephirah 8, represents
the intellect as such.  In terms of physiology, Netzach  is enthroned in the limbic brain and endocrine
glands, whileHod  is facilitated by the cerebral cortex and the sensory motor nerves of the body.  In the
macrocosm theseSephiroth represent two levels of the process of increasing manifestation of force as
form.  In Netzach, force is still relatively free-moving, bound only into exceedingly fluid and ever-shifting
shapes;  in Hod, for the first time it takes on definite and permanent form, though of an exceedingly
tenuous nature.  In Netzach a particular type of force presents itself as a type of entity which flows
backward and forwards over the boundaries of manifestation in an exceedingly elusive manner, a being
which has no individuated personality, but instead is rather like the “armies with banners” that can be
seen in the sunset clouds.*  In Hod, however, true individualization into units has taken place, and the
entity has real continuity of existence.  In Netzach,  all mind is group-mind, but in Hodthe individual mind
has its true beginnings.39

 
 

*Or perhaps a mob or a crowd.  See Lyall Watson, Beyond Supernature (New York:  Bantam, 1988),

Chapter 5 (pp. 117-144), and Lyall Watson, Lifetide (New York:  Bantam, 1980), passim.  Netzach rules all
social interactions, and mobs and crowds are social phenomena par excellence, however rude and
barbaric they may appear to be.  Netzach and Venus also rule hiving or colonial organisms of all kinds,
from the lichen and the slime-mold grex to the bee, termite, wasp, social mammals of all kinds
(including ourselves), etc.

On another plane entirely, consider the binding of energy into matter, according to the equation “E =
mc2,” in terms that make subjective rather than objective sense, i.e., in terms of emotional and intuitive
cognition rather than intellectual thought.  From this point of view, the process of manifestation of force
in form as carried out inNetzach  and Hod is almost exactly the same as that described by modern
physics, particularly quantum mechanics, for the transformation of energy into matter, albeit stated in a
somewhat more poetic language.

In Tiphareth the Mediating Intelligence breaks up the White Light of Unity, Kether, as by a prism, so that
it becomes the Refulgent Splendor of the full spectrum in Netzach.  In Netzach,  rather than force, there
are forces;  rather than life, there are lives;  rather than Unity, there is Plurality – e unus pluribum.
Appropriately, therefore, the Choir of Angels assigned to Netzach are the \ y h l a (ALHIM, Elohim,
“Gods”).  The One has been reduced to the Many to facilitate manifestation of force as form.  This is the
Sphere of the Pantheons, the realm of the Gods of polytheistic religions, whose members are the
Archangels of monotheistic religions, the various Aspects (Netzach) of the One God (Kether).

Every instance of force manifesting in Netzach is a partial but specialized manifestation.  No entity which
inhabits the Sphere of Netzach is ever completely developed, but rather is always associated with one
single, stereotyped function.40

The inhabitants of Netzach, the Elohim, are not so much true intelligences as the embodiments of
ideas. They are the formative influences by means of which the forces of Creation express themselves in
the natural world.  Their true character is described in Chesed, where they are described as the “Holy
Powers,” i.e., the Archangels or Gods.  In Netzach, however, the uppermost level of the reflecting Astral,
they undergo a change: here, the imagination of mortals has begun to work upon them, molding the
Astral light into forms that represent them in our conscious minds.
These lower Sephiroth,  which constitute the Plane of Illusion, are densely populated by thought-
forms.   Everything which the imagination of mortals has been able to conceive, however dimly, has a
form built about it out of the Astral light;   the more the human imagination has dwelt upon it to idealize
it, the more definite that form becomes.  As a result, psychics, seers, and spiritualists who later seek to
discern the spiritual nature and innermost essence of any form of life encounter these images, the
‘creations of the created,’ and are deceived into mistaking these for the abstract essence itself.  The
latter, however, is not on any plane of the Lower Astral, the portion of the Inner Planes that provides
images to psychic vision, but only upon those that are perceived by pure intuition, that is, the Spheres
above Netzach.

Over the eons, acts of worship, especially when they are highly organized, ritualized, and formalized in
terms of a complex theology, build up exceedingly clear-cut, powerful images.  It is these images that
most of us take to be the Gods.  Countless centuries of worship and adoration build very strong images
in the Astral light, and when sacrifice is added to worship, the images are brought a step farther down
the planes into manifestation, acquiring forms in the relatively dense regions of Yesod, Sephirah 9.  In
this way they become extremely potent Magickal tools, capable of independent action when inspirited
by the concrete, intellectualized ideas generated inHod.

Thus every heavenly being conceived by the mortal mind is based on some natural force.  However,
upon the basis of this natural force there is built up a symbolic image representative of that force, which
is inspirited and rendered active by the force it represents.  The image, is therefore just a convenient
representation of that force or power created by mortal mind.  Even so, the force represented by and
inspiriting that image is a very real thing in its own right, and under the right circumstances it can be
exceedingly powerful.  Although the form under which the God associated with that force is represented
is a construct of pure imagination, the force associated with it is both real and active.  Or, in other
words, be careful what you call on – it just might show up.

Netzach is inhabited by the most tenuous form of these beings, which are perceived far more by the
‘contemplations of faith’ than by the ‘eye of the intellect’ 41  The contacts of Netzach are not made by
means of conceiving its life philosophically, nor by means of ordinary image-making psychism, but rather
by ‘feeling with.’ The angels of Netzach are contacted and invoked by means of dance, sound, color,
scent, taste, touch – anything that stimulates the emotions.  The worshipper of a God in the Sphere
of Netzach enters into communion with the object of his adoration by means of the arts.  Thus to the
extent that he is an artist in some medium or other, and can therein represent the object of his worship
in symbolic form, he will be able to make the contact and draw the spirit of that God into himself. 42

The three Supernals, and the first pair of manifesting Sephiroth, Chesed and Geburah, represent the
Higher Self;  Tiphareth is their point of contact with the Lower Self.  The four lower Sephiroth, Netzach,
Hod, Yesod,and Malkuth, together represent the Lower Self, or personality, the unit of
incarnation, Tiphareth functioning as their point of contact with the Higher Self, which is sometimes
called the Holy Guardian Angel.  From the point of view of the personality, Tiphareth represents the
Super consciousness, awareness of spiritual things; Netzach represents the instincts and
emotions;  and Hod the intellect, the cerebral mind.  Continuing on down,Yesod represents the fifth
Element, sometimes called “Æther,”* and Malkuth the four primary Elements, the subtle aspects of
matter.**

*There are a number of different ideas about the “fifth element.”  In Western Alchemy, the fifth Element
is the Quintessence, the Word made flesh;  in Taoism, it is chi, which has various interpretations but
generally refers to a combination of the other four Elements – Air (Growing Things), Fire, Water, and
Metal (Made Things or Artifacts) – or of Yin and Yang per se.  In Shinto and ninpo, the fifth Element is
Void (Sky), out of which comes all things and to which all things return, somewhat analogous to chi but
also a homologue of the Western concept of Caox (Chaos), which may be thought of as the “sixth
Element” of Western Hermeticism (Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and the Quintessence being the other
five).  See J. C. Cooper, Chinese Alchemy:    The Taoist Quest for Immortality (New York:  Sterling
Publishing Co., Inc., 1990) and Frater Albertus.  Alchemist’s Handbook (Manual for Practical Laboratory
Alchemy) (York Beach, ME:  Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1974), passim.

**Notice that both Malkuth, associated with the Earth or physical reality, and Da’ath, associated with
Saturn, correspond with the four Elements one way or another – Malkuth, with the Elements
themselves, andDa’ath, with the Archangels that rule those Elements.  For this and other reasons, there
are strong correspondences between Earth and Saturn, as both have to do with physical manifestation,
structure, and form.  And since, on the average, transiting Saturn moves at about the same speed
through the Heavens – some twelve degrees per year – as the Moon in a progressed horoscope, they
also thus both have strong correspondences with Luna, Lord of Yesod and the lowest realms of the
Astral, in which the Qlippothdwell.  Saturn is associated with the Devil, Yesod with spirits of evil, and
Earth with the “vale of tears” that is life for many of us, and these associations are reflected both in their
astrological meanings and their Qaballistic correspondences.  (And since from the point of view of a
heliocentric astrology, Luna and Earth, inhabiting the same circumheliacal orbit, function together as a
double Planet, there is thus an even stronger functional tie between Earth and Luna.)

Netzach is the Sphere of Venus, concerned with the function of polarity.  This is, however, a great deal
more than mere sex, as popularly conceived.  Rather than being just a mere fertility Goddess, Venus or
Aphrodite is the Goddess of love, presiding over all forms of relationship, from the sort of social
intercourse that goes on at cocktail parties to friendship, romantic love, and marriage, and even to one-
on-one battles and the wars of nations.  Venus rules society and everything that facilitates it;  She is the
glue that holds couples, communities, and nations as well as atoms and galaxies together as coherent
wholes.
The cult of Aphrodite was concerned with the subtle interaction of the life-force between two
individuated poles of being:  the flow and return, stimulus and reaction, which play so important a role
in the relations of the sexes, but also extend far, far beyond the sphere of sex.  Polarity is a principle that
runs through the whole of creation;  it is, in fact, the basis of manifestation.  It is represented on the
Tree of Life by the two Pillars of Severity and Mercy.  All the action of force is ruled by the principle of
polarity, just as the entire phenomenon of form is described by the principle of metabolism.

Polarity has to do with the flow of force or energy from a zone of high pressure to one of low pressure,
where “high” and “low” are relative terms, i.e., defined in terms of the relationship of the one zone to
the other. Every region of Creation will accept an influx of energy from a region of higher potential, or
source, and has an output into a zone of lower potential, or sink.  The source of all energy is in the Great
Unmanifest, Ain, from which it makes its way down the planes of the Tree of Life, changing from one
form to another until it is finally ‘earthed’ in Malkuth.  In the microcosmic Tree of Life, the Tree as
expressed within a mortal being, there is a flow down and up the positive and negative aspects of the
subjective levels of consciousness, as a result of which spirit inspires mind, mind directs the emotions,
the emotions form the etheric double, and the etheric double molds the physical vehicle, the ‘earth’ of
the circuit.  In this way, there is a flow and return between each or level of consciousness and its
corresponding aspect in the microcosm.  Just as there is an intake and output on the level of Malkuth by
means of which  food, water, and air are taken into the body and waste is excreted as manure, so there
is an intake and output between the etheric double and the Astral light, between the Astral body and
the mind,  and so on up the planes, the subtler aspects of being represented by the six highestSephiroth.

The goal of the Magickal Qaballah, the practical application of the Tree of Life, is to develop these
circuits between the different levels of being, and thereby strengthen and reinforce the soul and
spirit.  Therefore we need to develop our power to contact neutral energy in its essential form, as
represented by the Sphere of Netzach. Matter is crystallized spirit, spirit made manifest on a physical
level, and spirit is volatilized matter. There is no ultimate no difference between them;  they are two
different states of the “One Thing,” as the Alchemists call it (this is the great secret of alchemy which
forms the philosophic basis of the secret doctrine of transmutation;  it has to do with the
interrelationships among Kether, associated with Pluto, Malkuth, the realm of physical being, and Shin,
the Path connecting Hod and Malkuth).  As consciousness is transmuted up and down the Central Pillar
of Consciousness, or Equilibrium, of which Malkuth is the base, so is energy transmuted up and down
the Pillar of Mercy, of which Netzach is the base, and form transmuted up and down the Pillar of
Severity, of which Hod, the intellect, is the base.

In Chokmah is the tremendous drive of life, is the great Yang potency of the universe;  in Chesed is the
organization of forces into interacting wholes;  and in Netzach, evolution, ascending from Malkuth as
organized force inspiriting living form, is able to contact essential force once more.  From the point of
view of applied occultism, Netzach is therefore an extremely important Sphere.  Most people who
become involved in occultism only do work along the Central Pillar, the Pillar of Consciousness, paying
no attention to the side pillars of Function. The average would-be initiator in modern occult fraternities,
who is usually more a mystic than an occultist, doesn’t realize that he should initiate the unconscious
aspect of the aspirant as well as the latter’s conscious self, illuminating the instincts as well as the
reason.*  As a result, very negligible results are obtained by his initiations;  those he initiates generally
exhibit little, if any, real change in themselves or their lives, and become at best very mediocre
Magickians.43

*This isn’t just applicable to occultism.  In fact, reason itself is based as much on the “irrational”
functions of feeling, instinct, esthetic appreciation, and other “right-brain” functions as it is on pure
intellect.  See Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes’ Error:    Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New
York:  Grosset/Putnam Books, 1994), Roger Penrose, Shadows of the Mind:    A Search for the Missing
Science of Consciousness (New York:  Oxford University Press, 1994), and Oliver Sacks, an Anthropologist
on Mars:    Seven Paradoxical Tales (New York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), passim.

        The Qaballistic assignments for Netzach include the following:

                                                          MAGICKAL IMAGE:                A beautiful naked woman.

                                                                         GOD NAME:                t w a b x   h w h y  (JeHoWaH TzaBAOTh,

“Lord of Hosts”)

                                                                   ARCHANGELS:                l a y n a h   (HANIEL);   l a k y m(MIKAeL)

                                                           CHOIR OF ANGELS:                \ y h l a (ALHIM, “Gods”)

                                                      MUNDANE CHAKRA:                Venus

                                                                                VIRTUE:                Unselfishness, compassion.

                                                                                 TITLES:                Firmness, Valor, Victory, Triumph

                                                SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE:                The Vision of Beauty Triumphant.

                                                       ATZILUTHIC COLOR:                Amber

                                                                BRIATIC COLOR:                Emerald

                                                        YETZIRATIC COLOR:                Bright yellow-green

                                                             ASSIATIC COLOR:                Olive, flecked gold

                                                                                      VICE:                Unchastely, Lust.

                                                                            SYMBOLS:                The Lamp, the Girdle, the Rose

        For Netzach, Liber 777 gives the following assignments:  Emeralds, roses, the lynx, arsenic, damiana
(herb);  benzoin, rose, red sandal (perfumes);  the seven-branched candelabra, the rose of 49 (7 x 7)
petals.

        Netzach is associated with the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

Article VII

Right of trial by jury.

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by
jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the
United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

        The commandment associated with Netzach is

You shall not commit adultery.

        Exodus 20:14, Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version

According to the Yetziratic text,

 

The Seventh Path is called the Occult Intelligence because it is the refulgent splendor of the intellectual
virtues which are perceived by the eyes of the intellect and the contemplations of faith.

The Seventh Sephirah  is the Occult Intelligence, where “occult” means “hidden,” “secret,” or “full of
mysteries.” Netzach, like occultism, is replete with glamour and misunderstanding, for whenever the
human mind discovers anything mysterious it tends to project all manner of misconceptions and
superstitions into that mystery.

In the Yetziratic Text quoted above, the term “intellectual” refers not so much to the logical, concrete
mind but rather to the human mind as a whole, the psyche as represented by
the Sephiroth below Tiphareth. This “refulgent splendor of the psyche” is simply the force of the creative
imagination.  Therefore Netzach is the Sphere from whence comes the inspiration not only of the artist
but of anyone who does creative work of any kind.  It is a Sephirah of perfect balance of force and form,
reflected in the fact that it's Planet Venus is the ruler of the Sign Libra, “The Balance.”  Awareness of its
perfect balance and elegance evokes ecstasy, delight, joy, and fulfillment, the experience of the Vision of
Beauty Triumphant.  Hence this Sphere rules not only great works of art, but also, since the perfection of
precision in use gives beauty of form, the beauty of well-designed tools, machinery, scientific
instruments, etc., as well as the elegance and perfection of the best mathematical and scientific theories
and models.  To see this principle in operation, compare a modern supersonic jet transport or fighter
plane with the original heavier-than-air craft used by the Wright Brothers at Kittyhawk, or one of today’s
space shuttles with one of Goddard’s original rockets – the evolution from clumsy, awkward prototype
to sleek, elegant, efficient, state-of-the-art product, at once apparent from such comparisons, gives a
good idea of the workings of Netzach.  Art, technology, and scientific modeling are thus all ruled
by Netzach, the Sphere of the creative imagination.

Netzach’s title Victory has to do with the triumph of achievement.  There is a link between Netzach, the
seventh Sephirah, the seventh day of Creation in Genesis, and the Sabbath, the day of rest mandated by
the fourth Commandment given by Moses to the people Israel.  In Genesis 2:1-3 it says:

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.  And on the seventh day God
finished his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work which he had
done.  So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all his work which
he had done in creation.

And according to Deuteronomy 5:12-15:

 
Observe the sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you.  Six days you shall
labor, and do all your work;  but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God;  in it you shall not do
any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, or your maidservant, or your ox, or your ass, or any of
your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your manservant and your maidservant may
rest as well as you.  You shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your
God brought you out thence with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm;  therefore the Lord your God
commanded you to keep the sabbath day.

The achievement of perfection in form and force requires both firmness and valor – two more titles
ofNetzach which can be looked upon as two sides of the symbol of the Balance, Geburah on a lower arc,
as it were.  Firmness and Valor can also be conceived of as the Pillars of Severity and Mercy as they are
manifest inNetzach.*  The Atziluthic and Briatic colors of Netzach are respectively amber and emerald;
as it happens, the two Pillars of the Tyrian Temple were gold and green, while the Temple of the
Hibernian Mysteries represent Science and Art,  establishing further correspondences between
this Sephirah and the sciences and the arts.

*In Qaballistic theory, the whole Tree of Life is reflected in every one of its components, which thus
comprises a Tree of Life in microcosm, in its own right.  In turn, each such component is reflected in
each of its sub-components, and so on down in a recursive process that is carried out ad infinitum, down
to the most infinitesimal sub-levels of the Tree of Life.  Because of this, the Tree of Life is a fractal
structure of non-integral dimension – like the living world itself.

The rose, another symbol of Netzach,  is a complete symbol-system in itself.  It is generally considered to
be the perfect flower, combining as it does beautiful scent, shape, and color.  Further, it resembles a
sphere that contains semi-spheres within itself, a mandala centered around its golden heart, a pattern
which gives rise to the Mystique of the Rose.

To carry out creative work, one must overcome a feeling of enormous inertia – not only inertia in the
medium used for expression of the work, but also in the means of expression, the less civilized and
educated side of one’s nature, which is more instinctual than God-like and not basically concerned with
the higher forms of creative work.  But in the end this inertia is overcome – else there would never have
been any great works of art – and this is accomplished by means of the fiery, creative energy of
Netzach.  Netzach  is an active Sephirah, assigned to the Element Fire and the Sign Leo, as Geburah is
assigned to Fire and Aries, and Chokmah, the higher octave of Netzach, is assigned to Fire and
Sagittarius.  Fire is Spirit and the passions that stir it, which enable the artist to overcome the inertia that
would otherwise keep him or her from creating.

Once the urge to create has successfully overcome the inertia of the denser levels of one’s being, there
comes the joy inherent in creation, delight and satisfaction coming from awareness of the life-force
entailed in any act of creation, whether it is sexual, artistic, the Workings of ritual Magick, or anything
else.  Magick is highly involved with Netzach, for until the energy of Netzach is harnessed by the
Magickian, the images created in Hodcan’t be inspirited to do their work.  Without engaging Netzach,
ritual becomes mere empty gestures and words, and any work of art remains lifeless, without soul or
the power to stir the observer at all.

For this reason the Magickal Weapons assigned to Netzach  are the Lamp, the Eternal Lamp of the
Mysteries that brings Illumination, and the Girdle, which girds up the loins for action.  The operations of
ceremonial Magick are creative work at its best.

t w a b x   h w h y  (JeHoWaH TzaBAOTh), the Lord of Hosts, is the Name of God that applies to
thisSephirah.  This name indicates the diversifying effects of Netzach which, like a prism, splits up the
unified white light of Tiphareth into the rainbow splendor of the lower Sephirah.  A good symbol
of Netzach might be the sky at dawn, sunlight rising on morning clouds, evoking the image of a glorious
army, heralded by vast banners. This is especially true when the Planet Venus, the mundane Chakra
of Netzach,  is a morning Star, proceeding the Sun, splendid in the early morning sky.

The Archangel Haniel, the Archangel of this Sephirah, isn’t as familiar to us as, say, Michael, the
Protector, Gabriel, the Bringer of Visions, and Raphael, the Healer, associated with other
lower Sephirah.  But all the benefits of Netzach  are given by Haniel, not only awareness of harmony and
beauty in the lower worlds, but also understanding of the interrelationship of all beings and
things.  Haniel can be imagined as having a great green-and-golden flame with a rose-colored light
springing from the crown of his head, or a point just above it, with an aura of archetypal sympathy for all
things.

The other Archangel of Netzach, associated with invocations of Netzach in the Fire Quarter of the South,
isl a k y m  (MIKAeL), the Guardian of the Universe, the Demon-Slayer, who holds all the forces of Hell at
bay. This Archangel can be visualized as a gigantic column blazing with all the colors of
fire.  Alternatively, the image of a mighty winged angel with sword upraised, crushing a dragon, serpent,
or demon beneath his feet, can be used to symbolize this Archangel.  This is the one to be called upon
when assaulted by danger or unbalanced forces of any kind, including manifestations of demonic
aspects of oneself.

Netzach’s Choir of Angels is that of the \ y h l a (ALHIM), the Gods.  Since Netzach  is the Sphere in which
Unity manifests in diversity, here dwell all the Gods of all the polytheistic pantheons and all the angels,
archangels, and saints of all the hagiologies of monotheistic religions.  Whenever operations of astral
clairvoyance or “scrying” are undertaken, these God-forms play a very important part in the results,
often taking on a life of their own.  Such occurrences are not direct manifestations of ultimate Godhead
– the Vision of God Face to Face is an experience associated with Chokmah, one not to be achieved by
means of such Workings as those of the sensory imagination, which take place on much lower, denser
planes of the Tree of Life.  However,something motivates the forms and forces of the Gods perceived
during operations involving scrying or psychic perception, which after all are aspects of the One
God;  the agency responsible is the Order of Angels ofNetzach,  i.e.,  the Gods.

The Mundane Chakra of Netzach is the Planet Venus, ruler of relationships of all kinds.  The basic
principle of Netzach and Venus is polarity, i.e., relationship in all its forms.  The worlds religious stories
often deal with polarity, e.g., as in the stories about Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristram and Iseult, Paolo
and Francesca, Romeo and Juliet, Orpheus and Eurydice, Zeus and Hera, Hades and Persephone, Shiva
and Kali, Castor and Pollux, etc.  One of the vices or perversions of this principle is the exaggeration of
one particular aspect of it at the expense of all the others, which can lead to great tragedies of the sort
with which such stories often deal.    For example, consider Sex-Magick.  Though today the courtesan,
prostitute, or mistress has a much debased position in society, long ago the Temple prostitutes were
priestesses whose work was truly religious in nature. Money and gifts were given not to those
priestesses themselves, but rather as thank-offerings to the Gods in Whose names they acted.  The ritual
sex they performed both with priests and with laity became as much a sacrament as the taking of
Communion bread and wine is in modern Christianity, or as the taking of unleavened bread, bitter herbs,
a haunch of mutton, and a glass of wine is during the Passover Feast of Judaism.  By means of ritual sex
with these priestesses, those who had intercourse with them thereby were put in communion with the
Gods, and such rituals were as holy and high-minded as, say, Baptism or the taking of Holy
Communion is today.  Modern Magickians likewise frequently perform Sex-Magick for this same
purpose, to invoke the Gods by the most direct and powerful means possible.  When properly done,
such rituals are as sacred as any other true religious rituals, and the techniques involved in them are all
from the Sphere of Netzach.

Because Netzach is the Sphere of Venus, the Jungian concept is the anima is particularly relevant to
it.  The anima is a projection of a man’s ideas of Woman onto some particular woman who happens to
bear a sufficient resemblance to the archetype of the anima in his psyche to facilitate such a
projection.  Though the individual woman onto whom he projects his anima may be shallow and rather
worthless, the love-blinded lover invests in her all the attributes of what he conceives to be ideal
womanhood.  If the projection is mutual, the result may be a hasty, ill-advised marriage – one that may
have a half-life of about three months, since marriage is an extremely efficient teacher of the Reality
Principle when it comes to making a life with others, so that if the partners can’t live to each other’s
lofty ideals, as a result their marriage may rather quickly develop an acute China Syndrome and undergo
a spectacular self-destruction.

Even so, the anima (or animus, in a woman) is in fact the image of the higher aspects of the soul, which
seeking union with the lower self.  The best way to overcome the domination of the self by a powerful
anima is via religion or Magick.  E.g., the strong reverence for Mary, the Mother of Christ, in Roman
Catholicism, apart of its religious aspects, can also be a very effective form of psychotherapy, for
veneration of Mary also reinforces the idea that mortal women should not be expected to attain the
perfection that is Mary.  If the God-like characteristics of the anima or animus are safely projected onto
a religious object, there is less likelihood that they will be projected onto another person, with all the
potential for subsequent disillusionment and heartbreak that it could entail.  (Sometimes, however, this
can backfire.  In such cases, the worshipper either rejects any potential mortal lover because he or she
can’t live up to the religious ideal, or comes to regard earthly love as “dirty” and “impure” because
potential partners are, after all, flesh and blood and heir to all the ills of the flesh – ills which the
religious ideal is not subject to.)  Wholly patriarchal religions such as Protestant Christianity, with their
all-masculine bias, may well contribute a great deal to the spiritual pathology of the Anglo-Saxon Puritan
heritage.

Because of the principle of polarity which informs it, Netzach is possibly the most subtle and complex of
all the Sephiroth.  One of the most useful tools for developing understanding it is study of the various
religious story-cycles of the world’s polytheistic religions, which can give a great deal of insight on the
workings of the Collective Unconscious and the group-mind of any society as a whole.

Aphrodite or Venus is the main God-form of this Sephirah.  Like all other Gods and Goddesses, She has
both a bright and a dark side.  Roughly speaking, the “Bright Aphrodite” can be assigned to
the Atziluth andBriah, the Archetypal and Creative levels, of Netzach,  while the “Dark Aphrodite” can be
assigned to theYetzirah and Assiah, the Formative and Manifest levels, of the Sephirah.  A useful symbol
for meditation onNetzach is a pillar, or an image of Venus or Aphrodite, the upper half of which is white
and the lower half black.  In addition, two of the great symbols of Aphrodite, the Dove and the Leopard
or Lynx, can be respectively assigned to these “higher” and “lower” aspects of Netzach.  As manifest in
life, these two aspects ofNetzach are represented respectively by, e.g., the happy, fertile mate and the
happy-go-lucky “gal who can’t say no,” vs. the domineering mate and calculating wanton who uses the
destructive aspects of Venus for selfish ends.  The great figures of myth, legend, and literature provide
other suitable images, e.g., Guinevere, Morgan le Fay, Desdemona, Lady Macbeth, Juliet, Clytemnestra,
Electra, Marilyn Monroe, Jean Harlow, Madonna, Janis Joplin, etc.  In particular, the queens and noble
ladies of the Arthurian cycle give a very detailed picture of the various aspects of Woman functioning as
Mother, Maiden, Mistress, Aunt, Enemy, Guide, Guardian, Wise Woman, Magickian, Witch, Recluse, etc.

In addition, there are some extremely powerful insights to be gained from religious stories such as the
mating of Isis and Osiris after Osiris’ death, resulting in the birth of Horus and his twin/enemy Set.  The
Mysteries of Hekate, which have to do with the forces released when a woman undergoes menopause,
are also highly instructive.  So often, under adverse conditions, menopause is associated failing health,
mental illness, and maltreatment by all around her.  But worked with on a conscious level on the Inner
Planes, this force could make her even better off physically, mentally, and otherwise than she was
before.  Both of these stories reflect the fact that there is a “vertical” as well as a “horizontal” aspects to
all Workings involving the polarities ruled byNetzach.

Because of this, Venus/Aphrodite is sometimes referred to as “the Awakener.”  Not only does this reflect
the awakening entailed in the “horizontal” polarities of sex, but also to the “vertical” polarity of rising
conscious and contacts upon the Inner Planes.  Another aspect of this illuminating force is particularly
evident in the arts, where the creative imagination is always producing new forms and ideas;  at first,
this results in enormous antagonism from those who aren’t readily awakened to new experience – i.e.,
the average critic – hence the battle against indifference and hostility that almost every great creative
artist must face before his or her work is first accepted and then made part of establishment, in turn
itself becoming one of the obstacles that new artists will have to overcome.  Consider, for example, the
career of Salvador Dali, whose life was one long, endless battle not only against esthetic Philistinism, but
also against the sociopsychological inertia of a 19 th-century humanity rudely thrust into the 20 th century,
with all its wonders, terrors, and dislocations.  Dali, like all the greatest artists, came to thrive on all the
hoo-hah which his behavior and work provoked, learning to harness the energy of all the contention and
strife he caused in the service of his work, which evolved to ever-greater heights and
achievements.  This is the lesson of Netzach, which, like its Planet, Venus, is Lord of battle and strife as
well as harmony and peace:  achievement is not a matter of ease and restfulness, but rather of ever-
evolving relationship to the universe and all it contains, and the perceptions that are born of such
evolution.

The same is true in all other branches of creative activity, from science to mathematics to the arts.  The
pioneer is always resented, regardless of the particular field in which he or she works.  But by grappling
openly and frankly with such resistance and opposition, with all his or her mind, soul, and strength, the
pioneer is able to produce work of indisputable value, new and fresh and rich in what it has to give us
all.  And it is Venus who rules such contests of will, as She rules all forms of interactions among
individuals and groups, which are the province of Netzach.  However the relationship is made, whether
in love or animosity, only by making it can true achievement be enacted.  Without Netzach, nothing of
true worth can ever be accomplished.

When Venus is a morning Star, rising before the Sun, She is Lucifer, the Light-Bearer;  when she is
evening Star, setting after the Sun, She is the Star of Promise above the stormy sea.  The Victory
of Netzach cannot be achieved without Valor, Firmness, and struggle.  It should be noted that Lucifer is
associated with the Devil, whose Planet is Saturn – and Saturn is exalted in Libra, which is ruled by
Venus.

There is also the formula of “the Son of his Mother,” which refers to the Goddess who brings forth a Son
who, when adult, is reabsorbed back into her womb, though on a far higher level than physical birth and
death. This is the formula of the story of Isis, Nephthys, and Horus, Horus being “the Bull begotten of
two Cows.” Another, similar formula is found in the Book of Revelations in the New Testament, which
tells of a book which, when eaten, is sweet as honey in the mouth but turns to bitterness in the
belly.  This reflects the relationship between Netzach, sweetness, and the Great Bitter Sea of Binah,
which is associated with Kali, Persephone, and the Dark Isis.  In Assyrian religious stories, Ishtar, the
Assyrian Venus, is associated with the “force” aspect of the “Dark Goddess” as the archetypal
Courtesan.*  Another figure which has much to do with the power ofNetzach is Orpheus, who brought
peace and harmony to everything around him through his music (his lyre had seven strings;  7 is the
number of Netzach).  Another being associated with Netzach is the Egyptian God of the Moon Djehuti or
Thoth, the Lord of Wisdom and Justice, the Keeper of the Balance (Wisdom is associated
withChokmah and Neptune, Who is one of the esoteric or Magickal Lords of Libra, the Balance).

 
 

*Her name comes down to us as “Esther,” the name of the Jewish wife of the Persian king Ahasueras
who saved her people from slaughter by Haman, as told in the Old Testament Book of Esther.

The Virtue of Netzach is Unselfishness, of absolute necessity to success in any working involving
polarities of any kind.  Its Vices are Unchastely and Lust, which aren’t meant to be taken only in their
sexual application. Unchastely is impurity and lack of clear definition in any use of force, resulting in
blurriness and confusion, which are opposites of the Firmness of Netzach.  This is the vice that so often
inspires “New Age” sweetness-and-light presentations, saccharine greeting-cards, kitsch  art, and bad art
in general, the opposites of the hard-edged, glorious beauty of Netzach.  Lust is an overemphasis and
exaggeration of force, and thus in opposition to the perfect balance of the Beauty Triumphant
of Netzach.

Like the interpretation of Geburah as a Sephirah of war, the interpretation of Netzach entirely in terms
of sex is both superficial and misleading.  Just as there is much more to Mars than a mere rough-and-
tumble bruiser and thug, Aphrodite is far more than just a Patroness of cabaret and strip-tease shows,
prostitutes, cosmeticians, bridal shops, and adult toy-stores.  The Dance of the Seven Veils is usually
associated among Westerners with degenerate Oriental sensualism, but in fact it is a metaphor, in the
form of dance, for the seven traditional Planets and Lights and the Seven Planes of the Tree of Life.  The
naked Goddess is something far more than an erotic fetish, just as Eros, one of the oldest Gods and one
of the most powerful and terrifying, is something much more than just a cute little cupid.

The Victory of Netzach is the victory over all false ideals, from the ideal of the “great lovers,” the
glamour of romance that many take to excuse anything, to the patriotic ideals, sugar-coated by glamour
inspired by brass bands and stirring speeches, that incite us to bloody and ultimately futile warfare.  The
death of Romeo and Juliet was the fruit born of the embrace of one such ideal.  The hideous carnage of
the American Civil War, World War I, World War II, and Vietnam all began with the embrace of another
such, the oxymoronic ideal of the “Glorious War.”

The Victory of Netzach can only come after the Sacrifice of Tiphareth;  before it comes, all the false
ideals of “Beauty,” “Peace,” “Glory,” and “Romance,” the perversions of truth and beauty found in their
grossest forms in “pie in the sky” religion, kitsch art, and the sort of occultist “mysticism” which entails a
denial of the realities of physical existence, must be destroyed.  These false ideals stand in the way of
evolution from the Many into the One, from scattered ness or even schizophrenic psychosis to a truly
unified being,.  Beauty must be in accord with Truth.  Therefore Netzach’s Spiritual Experience might
better be called “The Vision of the Triumph of Truth and Law,” which, ultimately, constitutes true
Beauty.

 
 

b.       The Cards

Geometrical figures that represent Netzach include all seven-sided figures, especially the Septagon (a
regular seven-sided polygon with seven interior angles of 360°/7 = 51.42857 . . . ° each), the Septagram
(seven-pointed Star with apex upward), and seven-rayed Stars (seven rays emanating from one
Point).  In particular the points of the Septagram can be associated with the traditional Planets and the
days of the week as follows: Sun/Sunday = Lower Right Point, Mars/Tuesday = Mid-Right Point,
Jupiter/Thursday = Upper Right Point, Saturn/Saturday = Topmost Point, Venus/Friday = Lower Left
Point, Mercury/Wednesday = Mid-Left Point, and Luna/Monday = Upper Right Point.  Also, the Outer
Planets (including Saturn and the two hypothetical trans-Plutonian Planets Persephone and Hera/Durga)
and Luna, along with the nights of the week, can be associated with the points of the Septagram as
follows:  Luna/Saturday night = Topmost Point;  Hera (Durga)/Thursday Night = Upper Right
Point;  Persephone/Tuesday night = Mid-Right Point;  Pluto/Sunday night = Lower Right
Point;  Neptune/Friday night = Lower Left Point;  Uranus/Wednesday night = Mid-Left Point;  and
Saturn/Monday night = Upper Left Point.  The number of the traditional Planets (including the Lights, the
Sun and the Moon) are seven.  There are numerous associations of the number 7 with sacred
things.  360°/7 = 51.42857 . . . °, called a septile, is considered by astrologers to represent such things as
commitment, continuation, depth, disruption, fixation, focus, inevitability, the inside of something,
inwardness, introverted ness, consequences of actions, liberation, narrowness, the occult, originality,
perversion, quietude, silence, randomness, religion, a religious nature, symbolism, unpredictability,
chaos, and the unseen (which last also associates it with Hades-Pluto, one of Whose attributes was
invisibility).   All such associations are excellent for designs for the Sevens.

The Sevens

1)     WANDS

Design:  Generally, seven Wands in one arrangement or another.  Waite’s pack shows an embattled man
using his Wand as a staff to fight off six attacking staves;  he stands upon a pinnacle, and those wielding
the other six staves are below him.  Crowley’s pack shows a design similar to that for his Six of Wands,
but with the addition of a wooden rod superimposed upon the others;  the sigil for Mars is above, that
for Leo below.  The New Tarot shows seven Snakes, three above, four below, arranged as a Triangle on
top of a Square.
 

America’s Tarot:  Upright:  Seven redwoods, three in front, four behind, each with a fearful Dryad
perched in its branches, before which stands a single man, unarmed, an Elevener dressed in Lincoln
Green, his eyes closed as if he is concentrating intensely upon something with enormous effort, holding
out his hands in a warding gesture toward six lumberjacks armed with axes, whom he is
facing. Associated with the Elevener is a “ghost” or “shadow” in the form of a ninja.  The lumberjacks
look bemused and bewildered, and their grip on their axes is weak.  Reversed:  The Elevener lies
wounded on the ground;  the lumberjacks are beginning to attack the redwoods with their axes.  A
dryad stands weeping beside each.  The shadow of the ninja has fled the scene.

Upright meaning:   The third decanate of Leo, 20° 0’ 0” - 29° 59’ 59” Leo (about August 12-22 of any
given year).  Mars in Leo.  Entitled “Valor.”  Courage in the face of difficulties and opposition. Violence,
conflict.  Skillful exchange of ideas, effective communication.  Discourse for the present, present plans,
music, live theater. Success, gain, advantage, profit, victory.  Certain success of an
enterprise.  Discussion, negotiation, contract, measure, rules for conduct.  Wordy strife, war of trade,
barter, competition.  A dark child.  Exposure to an infectious illness.

Reversed:  The aorta.  Mid-August.  Emphasizes whatever cards are placed next to it. Indecisiveness,

doubt, hesitation, embarrassment, anxiety.  Perplexities, a caution against indecision. Development of
the symptoms of an infectious illness.

2)       CUPS

Design: Generally, seven cups in one arrangement or another.  Waite’s Tarot shows a silhouetted figure
seen from behind, who looks up at seven cups arrayed in the heavens;  from one cup arises the head of
an angel, from a second a serpent, from the third, a castle, from the fourth, jewels, in the fifth, a
monster, rising from the sixth, a shrouded figure with a halo, and in the seventh, a wreath;  on the side
of the seventh cup is a design of a skull, the only one of the cups to have such a design.  Crowley’s shows
seven cups in the form of lilies, from which drips a poisonous green liquid;  the sigil for Venus is above,
that for Scorpio below.  The New Tarot shows seven Pears in two groups, one of three, one of four, a
Triangle surmounting a Square.

America’s Tarot:  Upright:  A theme park á la Disneyland, and a ride or exhibit comprising seven ponds
from which rise seven figures, one for each:  an angel, Godzilla, a castle, a pirate’s treasure-chest,
Cthulhu, a shrouded figure with a halo, and Death.  A group of seven children are gathered round the
ponds, reaching out for the figures emerging from them or flinching back from them in
fear.  Reversed: The same children, grown – but one of them is a ghost.  They are all reaching out to
accept trophies and awards from others, perhaps their superiors, perhaps an adulating audience,
testimonies of their life’s achievements.  The trophies are in the form of cups.  The one given to the
ghost has a soul rising from its waters in glory, surrounded with a halo.  Of the rest, one has a Dove
rising from its waters (given to a man wearing the vestments of a priest), one the DNA helix rising from it
(to a man in a lab-coat), one a space-ship (to a woman dressed as an astronaut), one contains only blood
(given to a pirate), one an unbearably hideous monster (given to a man who holds a bloody knife and is
dressed in blood-drenched clothing), one a crown (to a pauper who nevertheless has the look of a king).

Upright:   The card is titled “Illusionary Success” or “Debauch.”  Venus in Scorpio. 20° 0’ 0” - 29° 59’ 59”
Scorpio (about November 12-23 in a given year).  Imagination, fantasy, day-dreaming, creation
in Briah of the things that will grow into form and eventually manifest in physical reality.  External
splendor and internal corruption.  Beautiful and poisonous.  Intoxication. Exceptional promise.  Mystical
experience.  Difficulty in the realization of happiness and in raising oneself above
matter.  Pleasure. Transient joys.  Idea, sentiment, reflection, project.  Thoughts, ideas, reflections,
impressions.  Short travels.  Unstable conditions.  Promise and surprise, but often more promise than
fulfillment.  Imagination and vision.  Transient achievements.  A fair child.  Design, resolve, movement.

Reversed:   The anus.  Mid-November.  Self-delusion. Addiction.  Poison.  False mystical experience,

deception by Qlipphotic entities.  Lying, deceit, promises unfulfilled.  Illusion, error.  Slight and transient
success.  Unexpected transience.  Disappointment.  Plan, design, resolution, decision. Desire, will,
determination, project.  Success, if accompanied by the Three of Cups.

3)     SWORDS

Design:  Generally, seven Swords in one arrangement or another.  The Marseille Tarot shows six curved

Swords, crossed, with a seventh, upright Sword.  Waite’s shows a man stealing away from a crusader’s
camp with five Swords;  two others remain, point downwards, in the ground behind him. Crowley’s
shows a Sword, hilt downwards, whose hilt combines the motifs of the lotus and the Solar disc;  six
other Swords, point downwards, their hilts formed from the sigils for Luna, Mercury, Venus, Mars,
Jupiter, and Saturn;  the sigil for the Moon is above, that for Aquarius is below.  The New Tarotshows
seven Blades, four above, three below, a Square above an equilateral Triangle.
 

America’s Tarot:  Upright:  Children playing at jackstraws with models of guided

missiles. Reversed:  Seven quill pens, arranged in the form of a 7-pointed Star, standing in a well on the
desk of Thomas Paine.

Upright:   20° 0’ 0” - 29° 59’ 59” Aquarius (about February 8-17 of a given year).  Luna in
Aquarius.  Entitled “Unstable Effort” or “Futility.”  Unstable effort, uncertainty, partial success.  The
policy of appeasement.*  Powerful opposition to the Querent.  Great danger.  Cowardice, hesitancy,
surrender immediately before victory would have been won, i.e., “pulling defeat from the jaws of
victory.”  Someone of untrustworthy character.  Vacillation.  Journey by land shown by nearby
cards. The possible failure of a plan.  A foolish attempt at some form of theft.  Arguments.  Espionage
and spying.  Sabotage.  Incomplete success.  Unstable or transient effort.  A wish to destroy by means of
armed might or sorcery.  Ephemeral realizations.  Disappointment in family or other close
relationships. Death, voided effort, vain hope.  New schemes.  Attempts.  Endeavors.  Quarrels, disputes,
unwise counsel.  Wish.  Success assured to the enemy.  Meeting an opponent, perhaps fighting, but
strategy more than actual battle is indicated.  Tricks, prestidigitation, trickery,
treachery.  Arguments.  One is undone.  Design, wish attempt, hope, confidence, a plan that may fail,
annoyance.**

*According to Crowley, “the success of the policy is in doubt as long as there exist violent,
uncompromising forces which take it as a natural prey.”  A dark-haired lady.  A good card.  Promise of a
country life after a profession has been secured.

**Waite notes that the design of his own version of this card “is uncertain in its import, because the
significations are widely at variance with each other.”

Reversed:   Courage, perseverance, prudence, and possibly cunning are required.  Unforeseen good,

good advice or instruction, wishes on the verge of fulfillment.  Hope.  Intimacy, love, close
relationships.  Confidence.  Circumspection.  Good fortune coming from sources outside and beyond the
control of oneself.  Using an enemy’s weapons against him.  Practical abilities and
achievements. Science, arts, and crafts.  Understanding of practical and material obstacles to an
endeavor. Understanding the nature of the work to be done.  The enemy disarmed.  A person of
technical ability. A calling to technical professions.  Success as a result of capability.  Good advice or
counsel, instruction.  Slander, babbling, gossip.  Good advice, which may be neglected.

4)     COINS/DISCS/PENTACLES

Design:  Generally, seven Discs, Coins, or Pentacles in one arrangement or another.  Waite’s pack shows
a farm worker gloomily contemplating six Pentacles hanging on a vine, apparently nearly ripe, and a
seventh at his feet.  Crowley’s shows seven circles, each of which contains the symbol for Taurus or
Saturn;  the background design suggests a Scarab beetle;  the sigil for Saturn is above, that for Taurus
below.  The New Tarot shows seven Stones arranged in two groups, one an equilateral Triangle, the
other, below it, a Square.

America’s Tarot:  Center:  Seven silver Liberty-head dollars arranged in a Septagon that is apex-upward

when the card is upright, connected up by rods to form a 7-pointed Star.  Above the top dollar is the sigil
for Saturn;  proceeding clockwise, in order, the sigils for Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the
Moon crown the remaining six dollars.  Upright: A pasture filled with scrubby, patchy grass and large
barren areas, seven overfed and sickly-looking cattle, and a worried-looking farmer. Reversed:  Seven
scarab-beetles busily working a meadow in which are seven deer, seven weasels, seven lynx, seven
moose, and other groups of seven animals of one species or another, all suggesting the enormous
fertility and vitality of the natural world before human beings get a chance at it.

Upright:  20° 0’ 0” - 29° 59’ 59” Taurus (about May 10-20 of a given year).  Saturn in Taurus. Entitled
“Success Unfulfilled,” “Blight,” or “Failure.”  Success unfulfilled.  Unprofitable speculations or
employment, honorary work undertaken for the love of it and without hope of reward.  Impotence in a
financial situation after promising beginnings, monetary stagnation.  Indecision, lack of precision,
difficulty.  Ardent pursuit of wealth, greed.  Some small and temporary financial
gain.  Inertia.  Anxiety. Imprudence.  Money, finance, treasure, gain, profit.  Disturbance, worry,
melancholy.  The natural outcome of what was done previously –”As you sow, so shall you
reap.”  Impatience, apprehension.

Reversed:   The parathyroid glands.  Mid-May.  Delay, but with growth.  Cosmic harmony, equilibrium

between matter and the psyche.  Birth, a child.  Success.  Ingenuity.  Success assured.  A large
fortune.  Friendship, concord, ecological balance, health, cooperation.  Cause for anxiety concerning
money that the Querent may lend. Business, money, barter, altercation, innocence.  An improved
position for a lady’s future husband.

c.     The interrelationships between the Sephirah and the cards of the Tarot

The Sevens represent the last of the decanates of the Fixed Signs, the first Sephirah of the Triad of
Form. The Briatic or Queen-scale color attributed to Netzach is green, a blend of the blue of Chesed and
the yellow ofTiphareth, reflecting Netzach’s position on the Tree of Life, which is directly below y (Yod),
the Path connecting Chesed and Tiphareth.

These cards are associated with great instability and impermanence, due to the fact that Netzach is far
down on the Tree of Life, well into the denser levels of the Inner Planes, where the purity of the
Elements are greatly contaminated by astral invasion.

The Seven of Wands, Valor, represents the draining of energy due to opposition.  One struggles
desperately, and may be overcome.  However, this card is associated with Mars in Leo, of which Mars is
an esoteric Lord and in which he is at is strongest and best.  While victory is not assured, it certainly is
not ruled out, and in fact, because one is in a position of vantage, it may be easier to achieve than one
believes.  This card is associated with the hottest parts of Summer, which come just before Summer
begins to wane and transmute into Autumn.

The Seven of Cups, Debauch, is a card of poison, intoxication, delirium, and ecstasy.  It represents both
the delusions of delirium tremens and the exaltation of sexual love.  On the one hand, it signifies false
pleasures, addictions that lead to self-destruction;  there is something suicidal about this aspect of
it.  On the other, it associated with the Alchemist who turns base lead into gold, or the wise agriculturist,
who knows the true value of manure and offal, the potential nutrients they provide for tomorrow’s
golden harvest.  This card is associated with Venus in Scorpio, in which Venus has Her detriment, and
therefore it usually signifies the potential for real trouble, especially in the form of toxic love, addictions,
and other debilitating conditions and circumstances.  But Venus in Scorpio also represents the Hidden
Treasures of Hades, the mineral wealth of the soil so necessary to new life and production of food;  in
that light, this card signifies the Black Dragon of Alchemy, the Vessel of Putrefaction, that stage of
transmutation achieved by the decomposition of something into its most primordial components,
achieved through the agencies of rot and putrefaction, necessary to its transformation into the highest
and most valued possible form.  The Five of Coins also signifies Alchemy, but has more to do with the
thing to be transformed, a bad situation that can nevertheless be turned to advantage, than it does with
the process of transmutation as a process, which is the essential meaning of the Seven of Cups.  At any
rate, while on a spiritual level this card can be positive, signifying transformation, regeneration, rebirth,
or resurrection, on a mundane level this card generally signifies poisons, anything toxic, and addictions
or addictive substances. In its negative aspects it is associated with vampires, zombies, ghouls, the
undead, and toxic relationships of all kinds. This card is associated with mid-November, the midst of
Autumn, a time of increasing gloom and cold, with no end in sight.  Winter is soon to come;  despair,
dying, death, and decay fill the world, and Spring seems infinitely far away.

The Seven of Swords, Futility, is associated with the Moon in Aquarius, wherein Luna has Her
detriment.  It is therefore a card of weakness, as well as of passivity, because of Luna’s nature.  It
signifies the end of the second third of Winter, a time when Winter’s grip on the world is beginning to
slip and weaken.  Change – represented by Luna – is definitely in the air, and that that change is in the
direction of decrease of the cold and storms of Winter is represented by Luna in Aquarius, a placement
which weakens both.  The ice and snow of Winter are no match for the steady increase of the length of
day and warmth of the Sun which, however short and weak they may seem, are far greater than those
of Capricorn, true Winter.  Slowly the Sun is infusing the world with warmth, weakening the tyranny of
Winter by sheer steady attrition rather than a frontal attack.  One of Aesop’s fables, concerning a man
wearing a cloak and a contest between the Sun and  the Wind to see which would be able to force his
cloak from him, has much to teach about this card:  sometimes Friendly Persuasion (and Aquarius is
associated with friendship) can work miracles where force majeur proves to be utterly futile.

The Seven of Disks, Failure, is associated with Saturn in Taurus.  Saturn has His fall in Taurus, for which
reason this is generally not a good card.  There is no effort here, not even dreams.  The die has been
thrown, and the gamble has been lost.  All effort has come to nothing.  But that is only one side of this
card.  The other shows “the road less taken,” the alternatives to that effort and what might have come
from them.  The card thus may signify a warning not to embark upon what could prove to be a fruitless
endeavor with a pointlessly tragic outcome;  it is associated with well-meaning stupidity and the road
that is so well-paved with the such intentions. It must be remembered that the metal of Saturn is
lead;  sowing a fertile field with a toxic substance such as lead can generally have but one outcome.

8.     Sephirah 8

                a.     The Sephirah

        Hod, “Brilliance.”  Sphere of Ø (Mercury)

 
The two root-powers of the universe are represented on the Tree of Life by Chokmah and Binah,
positive and negative force, Yang and Yin, emitting and receptive.  Although each Sephirah gives birth to
the next in numerical order, once the Tree of Life has been established, these two
Supernal Sephiroth are reflected diagonally on its lower levels in a particular way.

Binah is the Giver of Form.  Chesed is it cosmic expression in form, analogizing the productions of Binah,
where the organization of the units formulated by Binah into complex, interacting structures is
accomplished.  In turn, Hod, the reflection of Chesed, is likewise a Sephirah of Form, representing this
coagulating principle in yet another sphere.

Chokmah, on the other hand, is the dynamic principle of Force.  It reflects into Geburah, which is the
cosmic catabolism, representing the breaking-down of the complex into the simple, thereby releasing
latent energy.  In turns, the function of Geburah is reflected into Netzach, the life-force of Nature.44

Functionally, the Lower Triad comprises Hod, Netzach, and Yesod.  Hod and Netzach are respectively the

expressions of Form and Force on the Astral plane.  Yesod is the basis of astral substance, variously
called the Akasha or Astral Light.  In particular, Hod, the locus of the formulation of forms, is the Sphere
of Magick;  it is therefore the sphere in which the Magickian actually works, for it is his mind that
formulates the forms, and his will that makes the link with the natural forces of the Sphere
of Netzach that animate them.  The power of the concentrated Will is necessary to enable the Magickian
to gather himself together for his work, but the power of imaginative sympathy is essential to enable
him to make his contacts.45

It is through inhibition, deferral of gratification, and sacrifice on the lower planes that the dynamic
energy of the highest plane is rendered available.  It is in the Sphere of Hod that the rational mind
imposes these inhibitions on the dynamic animal nature of the soul;  condensing them;  formulating
them;  directing them by limiting them and preventing diffusion.  These are the Operations of
Ceremonial Magick, by means of which the free-moving natural forces are constrained and directed
toward goals that are determined by the Operator – “the Art and Science of causing Change in
conformity with Will.”  This power of direction and control is only obtained by the sacrifice of plasticity
and malleability.  For this reason, Hod is known as the reflection of Binah throughChesed.46

        The Qaballistic assignments for Hod include the following:

                                                          MAGICKAL IMAGE:                A hermaphrodite.

                                                                         GOD NAME:                t w a b x   \ y h l a  (ALHIM TzaBAOTh, God

of Hosts)

                                                                   ARCHANGELS:                l a p r  (Raphael);  l a y r b g (Gabriel)

                                                           CHOIR OF ANGELS:                t w a b x   y n b (BeNI ALHIM, the Sons of

God)
                                                      MUNDANE CHAKRA:                Mercury

                                                                                VIRTUE:                Truthfulness

                                                                                 TITLES:                –

                                                SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE:                The Vision of Splendor

                                                       ATZILUTHIC COLOR:                Violet purple

                                                                BRIATIC COLOR:                Orange

                                                        YETZIRATIC COLOR:                Red russet

                                                             ASSIATIC COLOR:                Yellowish black, flecked white

                                                                                      VICE:                Falsehood, dishonesty

                                                                            SYMBOLS:                The Names and Vesicles.  The Apron.

        For Hod, Liber 777 gives the following assignments:  Opal, especially fire opal;  moly

(garlic),Anhalonium lewinii (mescaline), the Hermaphrodite, the jackal, mercury metal (quicksilver),
storax (perfume).

According to the Yetziratic Text,

The Eighth Path is called the Absolute or Perfect Intelligence because it is the mean of the Primordial,
which has no root by which it can cleave or ret, save in the hidden places of Gedulah, from which
emanates its proper essence.

Hod is primarily the Sephirah of the forms of the concrete mind, the intellect.  Since form itself first
comes into real existence in Chesed, the diagonal opposite of Hod on the Tree of Life, the relationship
between these twoSephiroth is stressed in the Yetziratic Text.  In turn, Chesed is diagonally
opposite Binah, where the idea of form is first conceived.  Thus these three Sephiroth are linked by
means of their nature as Sephiroth of Form, ruled by Water in the same way that Fire rules Chokmah,
Geburah,  and Netzach, and Air rules Kether,Tiphareth, Yesod, and Malkuth.

        Because the human mind works in terms of form, clearly Hod is the Perfect or Absolute Intelligence,
for when forms are true, they are the means by which we can come to grips with the formless truths of
the Supernal realm.  Even so, form, when viewed from the point of view of the Supernals, i.e., the Spirit,
has no reality, since it has only phenomenal and not noumenal reality.  For this reason, the Yetziratic
Text tells us that these lower forms, regardless of their value, have no fundamental reality “save in the
hidden places of Gedulah,” a state in which spiritual forces first take on aspects of form.

This applies to the anthropomorphication of our Gods.  The various aspects of God operate in the lower
planes of the Tree of Life in Netzach, which is, however, concerned with Force rather than Form.  So we
give images to the forces of the Universe, including the forces within us.  These images are formed
in Hod.  It doesn’t matter whether those images are gross or naïve in nature, e.g., the popular image of
God as a patriarchal, bearded old man wearing long robes, or whether it is symbolic and subtle, such as
the symbol for the same ideas as a point within a circle.  In any case, an image is used to represent the
idea of God or a God, and it is formed in Hod, in which all mental images are created.  Thus all the
images of God are associated with Hod in the same way that all the various forces or aspects of God are
associated with Netzach.

All the varieties of philosophy, in that they are structures of formalized concepts, belong to Hod.  The
only criterion that can be applied to them is the question of whether they are true or false, honest or
dishonest, the concerns of the Virtue and Vice of Hod.  (Falsehood can be due to no more than error,
based on acceptance of inaccurate information as accurate.  Dishonesty, on the other hand, is
deliberate, based on a lie.  The first is intellectual in nature;  the second is moral.)

The God Name of Hod, t w a b x   \ y h l a  (ALHIM TzaBAOTh), God of Hosts, is similar to that
ofNetzach, t w a b x   h w h y  (JeHoWaH TzaBAOTh), “Lord of Hosts.”  In Netzach, the Hosts are the
myriad forces of the lower planes, while in Hod they are the countless forms serving to clothe those
forces.  h w h y (JeHoWaH, “Lord”) refers to the manifestation of forces on different planes, so this
Name is applicable toNetzach, which has to do with the relationships of forces at all levels.  \ y h l
a  (ALHIM, “God”), on the other hand, has polarity and plurality implicit within it, “e unus
pluribum,”  while it is in Hod that logical structures are created, a process of finding a coherent,
underlying unity among diverse aspects, “e pluribus unum.”  The Magickal Image of Hod is the
Hermaphrodite, which, like  \ y h l a , has duality and plurality implicit in one form. Further, the Names t
w a b x and   \ y h l a  first respectively appear in Chokmah and Binah;  according to the principle of
similarity of Sephiroth diagonally opposite to each other on the Tree of Life, Netzach and Hod are the
respective lower octaves of those two Supernal Sephiroth.  Chokmah and Netzach are at the head and
base of the active Pillar of Force, or Mercy, of the Tree of Life, while Binah  and Hod form the head and
base of the passive Pillar of Form, or Severity.

The Archangels of Hod are Raphael, who rules the spirits of the Air, and Gabriel, Lord of the Mighty
Waters.  Raphael can be conceived as a column of light standing before the Solar disk, or as a winged
figure with a staff and a lute.  Gabriel is the familiar Angel of the Last Trump, blowing his mighty horn on
Judgment Day. Hod is associated with Mercury and Hermes, Lord of the Winds, hence Raphael, the
Archangel who rules the Air Quarter of the East, is one of Hod’s Archangels.  But because the Planet
Mercury is also associated with quicksilver (metallic mercury), Hod is thus also associated with the
Element Water and its ruler, Gabriel of the Water Quarter of the West.

The Choir of Angels, the Beni Elohim or Sons of God (or Sons of the Gods), work in conjunction with the
Choir of Angels of Netzach, the Elohim or Gods.  These two Choirs can be thought of as the Force and
Form aspects of all the Gods and Goddesses.  Here, the term ‘Sons of God” or “Sons of the Gods” has
both esoteric and exoteric aspects;  the first is used in the sense of, e.g., “we are the children of
disaster,” that is, metaphorically, the second in a literal sense, as in the idea that Jesus of Nazareth was
literally conceived by God upon Mary.

The Mundane Chakra of Hod is the Planet Mercury, which stands closer to the Sun than any other
Planet. In terms of celestial mechanics, the orbits of Earth and Venus are heavily influenced by the
passage of Mercury close to Them, and vice-versa.  The Gods associated with this Planet are Mercurial of
the Latin's, Hermes and Athena of the Greeks, Djehuti of the Egyptians, Odin or Wotan of the Norse, and
so on.  He is associated with wisdom and learning in all forms, and especially with speech and the
development of written language.  Hence the Virtues and Vices of this Sephirah, Truth or Honesty vs.
Untruth and the Lie, which are intimately associated with and dependent for their very existence upon
communication, whose Lord is Hermes-Mercurius-Djehuti. (Obviously, the Qlippoth of
this Sephirah must be imps of the darker side of Hermes, that is, of His dominion over liars, thieves,
practical jokers, and so forth.)*

*See Gareth Knight, op. cit., pp. 164-174.

        Hod is associated with the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

Article VIII

Excessive bail or fines and cruel punishment prohibited.

 
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments
inflicted.

        The commandment associated with Hod is

You shall not steal.

        Exodus 20:15, Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version

b.       The Cards

All eight-sided figures, especially the Octagon, a regular polygon a figure with eight equal sides and eight
interior angles of 45° each);   the Octagram, an 8-pointed Star formed by the superposition of one
square over another at a 45° angle to the first, their centers congruent, or by connecting up the points of
an Octagon by gaps of 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5;  and 8-rayed Stars (8 rays emanating from a single Point) are
associated with Hod.  An angle of 45°, or semisquare, in an astrological chart represents irritability,
abrasiveness, activity, adjustments, ambition, annoyances, antagonism, attunement, a bumpy road, a
challenge, clearing out, clumsiness, conflict, contrast, courage, determination, a detour, difficulties,
discord, dynamism, earnings, effort, engagement (as gears), enthusiasm, friction, a frown, frustration,
something that grates, hardness, haste, impulsiveness, inflammation, initial effort, irksomeness, a lack,
martial qualities, need, pursuit, resolution, stimulation, stress, tension, lack of awareness, or an
upset.  Eight is also associated with Easter, hence with Jesus as Christ, redemption, resurrection,
transfiguration, transmutation, Alchemy, rebirth, etc.  All such associations are excellent for designs for
the Eighths.

The Eights

1)     WANDS

 
Design:  Eight Wands, in one arrangement or another.  Waite’s pack shows eight Wands flying through
the air parallel to one another, almost at the terminus of their flight.  Crowley’s shows four lightning
bolts crossed to form a double (Solar) cross;  above is a rainbow, along with the sigil for Mercury, and
below is the sigil for Sagittarius.  The New Tarot shows eight Snakes arranged in the form of a wheel.

America’s Tarot:  Upright:  Eight redwood saplings, straining upward toward the sky.  Children play
among them, and birds are building nests in their branches.  Reversed:  The trees have grown too closely
together.  Three are sickly, dying for lack of enough water and minerals;  three are overgrown, their
branches entangled with those of all the others, casting too much shade over the ground below; two
have fallen on the ground, dead, possibly as a result of lightning.  Nearby are corpses left over from a
battle;  ravens fight over who gets the best pickings.

Upright meaning:  Entitled “Swiftness.”  Mercury in Sagittarius.  The first decanate of Sagittarius, 0° 0’ 0”

- 9° 59’ 59” Sagittarius (about November 22 through December 1 of a given year).  Swiftness, activity,
approaching a goal.  A time for initiative will be indicated when hopeful change or movement will take
place.  Journeys, communications.  A hasty communication, letter, or message.  Transition between life
and death.  New beginning.  Stability, understanding, a rural matter.  The country, gain, gold.  Higher
education, religion, marriage.  Understanding, observation, direction.  Examination, interrogation,
misgivings.  Misunderstandings.  Quick response.  Pleasure and pain.  Life at or on the sea.  Students of
occultism.  Poetry, music, sculpture.  Secret messages, hidden meanings.  Questions concerning sex.  A
private interview or rendezvous.  Activity in undertakings, that which is on the move, the arrows of
love. The Spirit.  Spiritual matters.  Evocation of a spirit.

Reversed:  The hips.  Late November.  “Nature, red in tooth and claw.”  Rashness, dissipated

brilliance.  Travel, rumination, sorrow.  Quarrels, intestinal troubles, disputes, discord.  Because of
opposition to its success, the enterprise will be only partially successful.  Bad weather.  Arrows of
jealousy, domestic disputes.  Haunting.  Possession.  Evil spirits.  Internal dispute, conscience, matters of
conscience, guilt.

2)       CUPS

Design:  Generally, eight cups in one arrangement or another.  Waite’s pack shows a desolate night
scene, wherein a man turns his back on eight Cups stacked in a display and walks away, beneath a
waning crescent moon.  Crowley’s shows eight Cups in the form of lotuses;  the sigil for Saturn is above,
that for Pisces below.  The New Tarot shows eight Pears.
 

America’s Tarot:  Upright:  Eight lakes dead of eutrophication and pollution.  A ghost-town lines its
banks.  In the background can be seen the remains of strip-mining and open-pit mines.  Reversed: Eight
lakes in the prime of health, abounding with life in the form of fish, birds, plants, shellfish, etc.  Eight
American Indians in canoes paddle on their waters.  In the background is a vast, ancient forest;  in the
middle ground is a thriving Indian village.

Upright:  Entitled “Abandoned Success” or “Indolence.”  The first decanate of Pisces, 0° 0’ 0” - 9° 59’ 59”

Pisces (about February 18 through March 1 of a given year).  Abandoned success.  Instability. Leaving
material success behind for something higher.  Recovery from alcoholism or drug addiction.  The soul
poisoned.  Decline of interest in a thing.  Ennui.  Anomie.  Abandon of psychic pursuits, return to matter
or materialism, mental imbalance.  Disappointment without success.  Reversal of fortune.  Gentle
attachment, casual association.  A blond woman.  Nourishment.  Room and board.  Partial
love. Preparation.  Friendship, attachment, tenderness.  A partial failure of love, love only partially
succeeds. Leaving the house or home.  Changes in the family.  Shyness.   Little chance to see one’s
ambitions realized.  Disorder and waywardness.  Despondency.  Dissatisfaction.  Deserting the cups of
happiness or enterprise.  Mildness, timidity.  Honor.  Modesty.  The decline of a matter, or indication
that a matter thought to be important turns out to be unimportant or trivial, i.e., an indication that if
one is anxious about something, it will turn out to be nothing to worry about.  Marriage to a fair (light-
haired) woman.

Reversed:   Late February.  The pineal gland, corpus callosum, and corpus coerleus in the
brain. Agreement and success.  Pleasures of the moment.  Parties.  Sexual
gratification.  Dancing.  Theater. Fun.  Gaiety, feasting.  Great joy, happiness.  Perfect satisfaction.

3)     SWORDS

Design:  Generally, eight Swords in one arrangement or another.  Waite’s pack shows a blindfolded,

bound figure standing with five Swords on its right, five on its left.  Crowley’s shows six horizontal
Swords, each different from the others;  two Swords vertical, point downward, crossing the others;  the
sigil of Jupiter is above, that for Gemini is below.  The New Tarot shows eight Blades.

Upright:   Entitled “Shortened Force” or “Interference.”  The first decanate of Gemini, 0° 0’ 0” - 9° 59’

59” Gemini (about May 21 through May 31 of a given year).  The Will thwarted by accidental
interference.  A test or initiation.  Indecision, waste of energy in details, a crisis.  The end of a period of
misfortune, provided that opportunities for change are recognized and seized.  Narrow or
restricted. Petty.  A prison.  Restriction or imprisonment in general.  Heavy and
overpowering.  Despair.  Criticism, critics.  Blame, censure.  Sickness.  Calumny. Gossip.  Partial
opposition to success.  Obstacles, conflict.  Danger.  Sex problems of a threatening nature.  Possibility of
danger of death.  Revenge. Debt.  An uncouth female person.  Temporary durance.  Bad news.  Violent
chagrin.  Scandal spread concerning a woman.  Departure of a relative.  Difficulties due to in-laws.

Reversed:  The shoulders.  Late May.  Release from restriction.  Passing or failing a test (which is which

depends on surrounding cards).  Success or failure of an initiation (depends on surrounding
cards).  Treachery in the past.  Accident, remarkable incident.  Notable event.  The enemy only partly
triumphs.  Disquiet.  Difficulty.  Opposition.  Accident.  Treachery.  What is unforeseen.  Fatality.

4)     COINS/DISCS/PENTACLES

Design:  Eight coins, discs, or Pentacles in one arrangement or another.  Waite’s pack shows a

woodworker chiseling out a Pentagram within a Circle;  five such creations hang beside him, a seventh
rests against his bench, and the eighth is on the ground beside him.  Crowley’s shows a tree with eight
five-petaled flowers;  the sigil of the Sun is above, that for Virgo below.  The New Tarot shows eight
Stones in an octagon.

America’s Tarot:  Center:    Eight Liberty-head silver dollars forming an octagon;  rays of light interconnect
them to form an Octagram or eight-pointed Star.  Upright:  A field containing eight young plants with
golden heads or beards in the form of discs, healthy and well-tended.  Reversed:  The same field, but the
plants are dying from neglect, lack of water, and bad soil.

Upright:  Entitled “Prudence.”  The first decanate of Virgo, 0° 0’ 0” - 9° 59’ 59” Virgo (about August 23
through September 2 of a given year).  The Sun in Virgo.  Intelligence lovingly applied to material
matters.  Skill, prudence, competence, artfulness, cunning.  Equilibrium of extremes in every realm,
harmony of the worlds.  Economy.  Health.  A journeyman.  The analytical mind.  A virtuous brunette
woman.  Minor Magick, e.g., spells for good weather.  Herbal lore, herbalists, herbal medicine.  A wise
woman.  A healer, chiropractor, veterinarian, acupuncturist, paramedic.  A dark woman.  Beauty,
candor, chastity, innocence, modesty.  Partial success.  Work done out of devotion, perhaps on behalf of
charity.  Devotion and its fruits.  The mysteries of nature.  Religious work. Medicine.  Prisons.  The arts.
The conversion of a ne’er-do-well to a workaholic or at least someone capable of good work.  Work,
employment, commission, craftsmanship.  Skill in craft or business, perhaps in the preparatory stage.  A
young man in business who has a business relationship with the Querent.

Reversed:  The small (upper) intestine.  Late August.  Concentration on short-term or petty goals, as

opposed to long-term or major ones.  Violent stopping of something, or success or stability, depending
on the cards around it.  A vain woman, working to get what she wants;  a shameless hussy.  Minor
sorceries, e.g., putting a hex on somebody’s clock or other inanimate, small chattel, or a plague of zits,
etc., nothing particularly deadly.  A sorceress.  Flattery, usury, hypocrisy, shiftiness.  Just as you appear
to be securing your fortune, you lose a lot of money.  A possibility of Bohemian love ending in
degradation.  Deprivation.  Waste of money.  Voided ambition, vanity, cupidity, exaction, extortion.  The
skill of the ingenious mind turned to cunning and intrigue.  The Querent will be compromised in a matter
of money-lending.

c.       The interrelationships between the Sephirah and the cards of the Tarot

The four Eights are associated with Hod.  They represent the first decanates of the Mutable Signs
Sagittarius, Pisces, Gemini, and Virgo, that is, the first week of the last third of each Season.  Since Hod is
on the same plane as Netzach on the Tree of Life, though on the Pillar of Severity rather than on that of
Mercy, the same weaknesses can be found in the Eights as in the Sevens.  Even so, there is one great
redeeming feature, that the Eights may alleviate the problems associated with the Sevens.  While there
is no possibility of perfection in the Eights, nevertheless they are free from the essential, sui
generis flaws of the Sevens.

The Eight of Wands is entitled “Swiftness.”  It represents Mercury in Sagittarius.  While Mercury has His
detriment in that Sign, nevertheless all the Planets and Lights are given a degree of dignity in Sagittarius,
because of its generally fortunate nature.  This card expresses a highly spiritualized idea of Fire, from
which all gross characteristics have disappeared.  Now, for each Element, the Cardinal Sign represents
the swift, impulsive onrush of the Element;  the Cherubic Sign its full, balanced power;  and the Mutable
Sign, the waning away of its force.  E.g., Aries represents the first great flowing force of Fire, as in the
beginning of a blazing bonfire;  Leo represents its power and the source of its power, the Sun;  and
Sagittarius represents its ultimate spiritualization or taming, symbolized respectively as the rainbow (the
fiery light of the Sun at its most beautiful), on the one hand, and high-energy technology or lightning, on
the other.  In the Eight of Wands, Fire is no longer represented together with ideas of combustion and
destruction.  Instead, it is associated with electric current, lighting harnessed to do work, or rays of light
used to measure the great constants of the physical universe.  Basically, this is a very good card.

The Eight of Cups is entitled “Indolence.”  This card expresses the acme of all that is unpleasant and
repellent.  It is associated with Saturn in Pisces, where Saturn has His esoteric detriment, showing His
greatest weaknesses and the most unpleasant aspects of His nature.  Time and sorrow have set upon
pleasure, and there is nothing that can react against them.  The idea of a hangover gives a very good
idea of the card’s meaning, except that the “night before” the “morning after” expressed by this card
hasn’t happened.  The card might represent a party for which all preparations have been made, but
nobody has thought to invite guests, or perhaps the caterers never showed up, or somebody forgot to
go on a major beer-run.  Whatever the problem is, in terms of this metaphor it is the host’s own
fault.  Perhaps the party he planned was well beyond his financial means, or maybe he just wussed out
at the last moment.

The Eight of Swords is called “Interference” or “Initiation.”  It is associated with Jupiter in Gemini, where
Jupiter has His detriment.  There is no restriction of the Will by internal or external constraints.  As
Crowley puts it, it represents “the error of being good-natured when good-nature is
disastrous.”*  Gemini is an Airy Sign, a Sign of the intellect, whereas Jupiter is all Fire, geniality, and
optimism, without the tremendous concentration necessary to do anything useful with Air.  This card
also contains the aspect of the Unexpected, Eris at large, hence a suggestion of sheer, unforeseen bad
luck.  This is a card of chaos and chaotic conditions, in which small changes in input can make for large
variances in output, as is true of meteorological systems, population dynamics, and so forth.  As the tale
goes, “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost . . .”  Above all, it is a card of unexpected changes in
weather:  Jupiter is a Fiery Planet and Gemini and Airy Sign, and heat applied to air always begets
change in the weather.

*Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth, op. cit.,  p. 184.

The Eight of Discs, Pentacles, or Coins is called “Prudence.”  It is associated with Sol in Virgo, where the
Sun has his esoteric detriment, a time of both harvest and the end of fertility.  It also expresses
uncertainty, the uncertainty of whether what has been sown in good faith will bear a plentiful
harvest.  It has to do with the fruits of investment of one’s labor and goods in any enterprise.  After that
investment has been made, all that one can do is wait and see what comes of it.  In that sense, it
expresses Sol’s weakness in Virgo – all the Sun’s fiery heat can’t force even one more seed to come to
fruition once the time for growth and development of the young plant has gone.  It is a card of buying
time, analyzing, and calculation, the card of the actuary, accountant, and assessor.  If it represents a
person, it is someone who seems to be easy-going but is nobody’s fool, who is stable, competent, and
wise.
According to A. E. Waite, four Eights upright in a spread signify reverse;  three Eights upright
signifymarriage;  two Eights upright, new knowledge;  four Eights reversed, error;  three Eights
reversed, a spectacle;  and two Eights reversed, misfortune.

9.     Sephirah 9

                a.     The Sephirah

        Yesod, “Foundation.”  Sphere of × (Luna).

        Yesod is the Sphere called the Akasha, the repository of the Akashic records, and sometimes the
Astral Light.  It partakes of the nature of both mind and matter.  It is to the “substance” of the space-
time continuum what the latter is to dense matter, and is the basis of the phenomena which the
physicist attributes to the behavior of the ultimate microstructure and basic ‘substance” of the Universe.

        According to Dion fortune,

The Æther of the Wise might, in fact, be called the root of the ether of physics. 47

Yesod is the receptacle of the emanations of all the other Sephiroth as well as the sole, immediate
transmitter of these emanations to Malkuth, the physical plane.  Yesod purifies, proves out, and corrects
the emanations which it receives from the other Sephiroth.  As a result,  it is in the Sphere of Yesod that
all operations designed to correct the Sphere of dense matter, Malkuth, or perfect its unity of design are
carried out.  Therefore Yesod is the all-important Sphere for any operations of Magick which are
intended to take effect in the physical world. 48

The Astral Ether, or space-time continuum, the level of reality upon which the phenomena of quantum
mechanics take place, can be molded into forms by the mind.  It also holds the molecules of dense
matter in its mesh-like lines of tension as if it were a rack of pigeon-holes into which those molecules
were slotted.49

Yesod is also of enormous importance to the practical Hermeticist, because it is the first Sephirah with
which he comes into contact when he begins to “rise on the planes,” lifting his consciousness
above Malkuth.  Having traveled from Malkuth along the ghastly Thirty-second Path of the Tau Cross of
Suffering, associated with Saturn, he enters Yesod, the Treasure House of Images, the realm of Maya,
Illusion.  Yesod, in and of itself, is the Sphere of Illusion, because the Treasure House of Images is none
other than the reflecting Ether of Malkuth, corresponding in the microcosm to the Collective
Unconscious, filled with ancient and forgotten things that have been lost or banished there since the
dawn of humanity, millions of years ago.  The keys that unlock the doors ofYesod and enable the
Hermeticist to command the beings that dwell within it are to be found in Hod, the Sphere of Magick.

Yesod is also the Sphere of the Moon.  The Moon and the earth share one astral body, though their two
physical bodies are separate, reflecting the fact that they share the same orbit around Sol. On the Astral
planes, the Moon and the Earth may be considered to be two poles of one gradient, Luna being the
positive pole and the Earth the negative one.  As the physical Moon reflects the Sun’s
light, Yesod reflects the Solar Astral light ofTiphareth, which in its turn is Kether on a lower arc.  Thus the
light and power of Kether is transmitted directly to Tiphareth, which reflects and redirects it
toward Yesod, which in turn reflects it on to Malkuth and the Earth.  For this reason, some believe Pluto,
associated with Kether, to be the – or, at any rate, a – higher octave of Luna.

Yesod, like Luna, is forever in a cycle of ebb and flow lasting about a month or a third of a Solar season,
because the amount of sunlight reflected by Luna toward the Earth waxes and wanes in a twenty-eight
day cycle.  In turn, Malkuth-Earth has a three hundred and sixty-five day cycle, of which the phases are
marked by the Equinoxes and the Solstices.*  It is the interaction of these cyclical tides which is so
important to the practical Hermeticist, because so much of his work depends upon them. 50

*I.e., Earth’s Solstices and Equinoxes have a reflection in the Quarters of the Lunar months.

        In Qaballistic symbolism, the organs of reproduction are assigned to Yesod.  In this context it is
interesting that the Roman Goddess of the Moon was Diana, the Chaste or Maiden Huntress – who was
also, however, the Patroness of Childbirth, the Goddess Who stood by when women gave birth and
guarded them and their newborns from the perils that come at such a time.

        Luna has three major aspects:  Diana, the Maiden, the young woman who has never given
birth;  Luna or Selene, the Matron;  and Hekate, the Hag or Crone, the post-menopausal Woman of
Power.  Overall the Moon is Woman.  She rules the breast, the womb, childbirth, and infants as well as
inheritance, he home, and ancestry. Above all, She rules the Tides of Life, especially those of
fertility;  menstruation;  and pregnancy.  She rules the cessation of physical fertility at menopause,
which frees women for cultivation of fertility of mind and spirit and to engage in the protection and
education of the young, the ultimate fecundity of a community and the future vehicle of its
spirit.  Finally, She rules the rites attendant upon preparation of the dead for burial or cremation, and
the grave, which is only the foyer of the womb in the next incarnation.

        The Qaballistic assignments for Yesod include the following:

                                                          MAGICKAL IMAGE:                A beautiful naked man, very strong

                                                                         GOD NAME:                y j  l a  y d c  (ShaDdaI AL ChaI, Almighty

Living God)

                                                                      ARCHANGEL:                l a y r b g  (Gabriel)

                                                           CHOIR OF ANGELS:                \ y b w r k  (Kerubim)

                                                      MUNDANE CHAKRA:                Luna

                                                                                VIRTUE:                Independence

                                                                                 TITLES:                The Treasure-House of Images

                                                SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE:                Vision of the Machinery of the Universe

                                                       ATZILUTHIC COLOR:                Indigo

                                                                BRIATIC COLOR:                Violet

                                                        YETZIRATIC COLOR:                Very dark purple

                                                             ASSIATIC COLOR:                Citrine, flecked azure

                                                                                      VICE:                Idleness

                                                                            SYMBOLS:                The Perfumes and Sandals

For Yesod, Liber 777 gives the following assignments:  Quartz:  the banyan tree, mandrake, and damiana
herb;  the Elephant (symbol);  orchid root (drug);  lead (mineral drug);  jasmine, ginseng, and all
odoriferous roots (perfumes).

        Yesod is associated with the Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

 
Article IX

Rule of construction of Constitution.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage
others retained by the people.

        The commandment associated with Yesod is

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

        Exodus 20:16, Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version

According to the Yetziratic Text,

The Ninth Path is called the Pure Intelligence because it purifies the Emanations.  It proves and corrects
the designing of their representations, and disposes the unity with which they are designed without
diminution or division.

Yesod  is the Sephirah of the Astral plane per se.  Thus not only is it the raw machinery which powers the
physical world, but it also holds the framework in which all quanta of dense matter are held.  I.e., it is
the realm of quantum mechanics, in which all the neuro-endocrine processes associated with thought,
Will, and emotion take place, the raw stuff of the space-time continuum itself.

The “etheric” realms or Astral planes exist side-by-side with all phenomena which are the subject of the
physical sciences, and the effect of their influence upon the physical world is more or less to vitalize
it.  They act to integrate and coordinate the raw building-blocks of matter and life, from sub-atomic
particles to the cells that make up multi-cellular organisms such as us, into coherent, organic
wholes.  Without this influence our physical bodies would be nothing but random collections of
independent, unrelated cells, and matter itself would likewise be no more than loose aggregates of
unrelated sub-atomic particles and pure energy.  Yesod is not a product of biological being, for it is
closer to the source of things than is Malkuth;  but organic life as we know, from multi-cellular plants
and animals to the very rocks of the Earth and the planetary physiology of Gaea, as expressed via plate
tectonics and climatic patterns,  it is its child.

Yesod is the controlling agent in the biochemistry of protoplasm.  Its presence is reflected in the
reactions of organisms to stimuli of all kinds;  it is the basis of the action of nerves and endocrine glands
which underlie thought and emotion.  According to some schools of esoteric thought, it is the etheric or
astral body rather than the physical body which has the power to feel and react emotionally;  from this
point of view, anesthetics do their work by driving the astral double out of the physical body, just as
sleep, deep trance, and death do.  According to this school, the physical body has only the capacity of
reception of sensory stimuli, but no actual sensory awareness as such except vague, dull, diffused
feelings such as general fatigue;  the formation of the nervous system entails an admixture of astral with
physical force, so that there are only rudimentary nervous structures in plants, and none at all in
minerals.

However, this point of view is in direct conflict with the work of Cleve Backster et al. on reactions of
plants to mere intentions of experimenters to do them harm,* as well as the incredible ability of plants
both to sense and react appropriately to changes in their environment with a variety of exquisitely fine-
tuned, elegant, and powerful behaviors.  These last range from the secretion of powerful toxins into the
air and the soil used by some plants to discourage other plants from invading their territory, to various
noxious or toxic substances generated in the leaves, stems, flowers, and roots of some plants to drive
away or kill off potential predators, to the ability (so help me God!) of manzanita, chaparral, and other
fire-selected plants to generate enormous positive charges of electricity in their roots to draw lightning
to start massive brush-fires during which these plants set seed, ensuring that their offspring will have
few or no competitors for resources such as space, light, and soil during the earliest and most critical
phases of growth.

*See Cleve Backster, “Evidence of a Primary Perception in Plant Life,” International Journal of

Parapsychology 10:4, 1968;  and Lyall Watson, Beyond Supernature, (New York:  Bantam Books, 1988),
p. 45.

It is thus far more likely that it is Yesod and the astral body, rather than specific physical structures such
as the vertebrate central nervous system, that makes possible the ability to sense and react
appropriately to environmental conditions in all organisms.  I.e., since Yesod influences the entire Earth
and all its life, it makes more sense to assume that its influence endows all animals, plants, fungi,
microorganisms, and all other forms of life with such abilities, expressed in different ways according to
species and the exigencies of existence.  The entire universe is in a sense an organic whole, capable even
of reproducing itself by means of black holes that generate new “Big Bangs” and resultant expanding
universes, and shows this same responsiveness to conditions, as does every one of its parts to one
degree or another.  That this is so only serves to strengthen the hypothesis that it is Yesod and its Lunar
action that underlies all manifestations of mind and emotion;  the belief that plants and other non-
animal entities do not possess minds and souls is therefore a form of species chauvinism which only
keeps us from seeing the results of Yesod’s actions everywhere, and is ultimately a neurotic, self-
defeating denial mechanism.

Be that as it may, the structure of all living beings is created and maintained in existence by the astral
web or network generated by Yesod, which is thus the foundation of physical existence.  For this reason,
the title of thisSephirah is Yesod, “Foundation.”

In this way, Yesod contains the image of everything existing in the physical universe, what Rupert
Sheldrake calls the “morphogenetic field.”*  For this reason it is called the Treasure House of
Images.  Not only does it contain these images, but it also has the power to alter them;  it is by tapping
the power of Yesod that the Yogi can produce changes within his own body by means of the techniques
of Hatha Yoga, the practitioner of chi !kung can produce physical effects in the bodies of others or even
the physical world around him, and anyone under the proper conditions can, á la  Yuri Geller,  bend
spoons, twist keys, and create other such seemingly impossible changes in physical objects by merely
touching or stroking them.  This particular aspect of Yesod is the one stressed in the Yetziratic Text,
above, as well as Yesod’s biophysical integrating and organizing functions.  Ultimately, according to
Qaballistic theory, the supreme integrated image of Yesod is that of “the Luminous Image of the
Creator,” which is both expressed through and hidden by the physical world.  Therefore the God Name
of Yesod is  y j  l a  y d c (ShaDdaI AL ChaI), “Almighty Living God.”

*See Rupert Sheldrake, A New Science of Life  (London:  Blond & Briggs, 1981), passim;  Watson, op. cit.,
pp. 62-64, 96;  and Lyall Watson, Lifetide (New York:  Bantam Books1980), passim.

Since Yesod is concerned with the astral realms, the images of pre-physical manifestations of all
emanations from the higher Sephiroth, and the vast body of teaching developed about the Moon, the
Archangel of Yesod is Gabriel, the Archangel of the Last Trump and the Annunciation, who gives the
powers of Vision.  Gabriel can be imagined as a beautiful blue-green figure with silver flashes of light and
a tremendous swirl of colors including various shades of peacock tints shot through with silver, forming
his wings and aura, with streams of liquid silver about his head and beneath his feet.  While these aren’t,
strictly speaking, the colors of Yesod per se, they do evoke a mood of the Sea and the Lunar power
associated with  per se, they do evoke a mood of the Sea and the Lunar power associated with
Yesod.  This form should be imagined as changing into a tremendous pillar of silver light, one tinged with
mauve-gray, reaching up to the heavens and standing on the Earth, with clouds of peacock blue and
green surrounding the pillar.  This pillar represents a sort of universal battery, through which all activity
and energy throughout the Universe is switched.  It is this battery which gives Vision, the power ofYesod,
which includes clairvoyance, clairaudience, and psychic powers of all kinds.  Another appropriate image
of Gabriel is a solid crystalline solid with nine sides, reflecting silver and blue-green light.  This figure
should be imagined to contain the same forces contained by the pillar;  by watching this solid, as one
looks into a crystal globe for scrying, and seeing what appears in it, one can develop one’s psychic
abilities.

The Choir of Angels of Choir of Angels of Yesod are \ y b w r k  (the Kerubim), “the Strong Ones,”
associated with the enormous strength required to hold together the astral planes and the stresses
upon which physical form depends.  This idea is also behind the Magickal Image of Yesod, the Beautiful
Naked Man, very strong, reminiscent of Atlas, the Titan who holds the whole world on his
shoulders.  Another representations of this strength is the idea of the gigantic tortoise on whose back
stand four elephants on whose shoulders the world is carried through the heavens.  The Kerubim work
to build knowledge and harness force through methods peculiar to Yesod.  One of these methods
involves the use of symbols associated with Yesod as the Sephirah is manifest in the depths of the
unconscious mind.  Over time, use of these symbols tends to become less a matter of ritual and more a
matter of mental exercise.  The various schools of psychoanalysis therefore preserve much of the
symbolism of Yesod, however weird the idea of “The Treasure House of Images” and the Lunar forces
upon the dynamics of the psyche depend may sound to the reductionist minds of most practitioners of
psychotherapy.  The great powers of the astral realms are the Kerubim, and since the powers
of Yesod are the great formative forces of the world and of the living body and mind, those forces must
be taken into account one way or another by biomedical practitioners if their techniques are to have any
value.  Apart from those aspects ofYesod which have to do with the unconscious mind, which are heavily
involved in psychosomatic illness, complete understanding of the machinery of the living organism
necessary to heal its ills, keep it in good condition, and rejuvenate it when it grows old are all contained
in Yesod, and must be sought there, in the astral foundation behind the physical realms of Malkuth.

Many forms of alternative or holistic medicine do in fact take these considerations into account, though
not always with explicit, conscious understanding of what their techniques actually entail.  Some of
these techniques work better for patients who have conscious awareness of the astral levels of their
being to some degree.  On the other hand, drug addicts are less likely to be helped by alternative
medical practices such as herbal medicine and homeopathy.  Oddly, the presence in the body and the
environment of radioactive materials, for all the damage they can do to the body, causing everything
from heart disease to deadly cancers, may stir up the astral or etheric levels of the organism and make it
easier to treat the patient via alternative techniques.  Go figure.
The Mundane Chakra of Yesod is the Moon.  Luna is intimately connected with so-called vegetative
growth, as in the growth of plants, fungi, cancers, etc.  There exists a vast, ancient cultural reservoir of
lore concerning herbs and their influence on illness and other things, all associated with Yesod, which
more and more is proving to be of enormous value to the pharmaceutical and biomedical
industries.  While quacks and faddists are ever prone to abuse such knowledge, it is nothing to sneer at
– consider, for example, the discovery of digitalis, an extract of foxglove herb.

Luna is intimately connected with the Earth in the same way that the astral or etheric plane is intimately
connected with the physical levels of being.  The power of etheric vitality resembles power of the
Moon’s gravity, by which the vast energies of the oceanic tides are generated.  The cyclic activity of the
astral “Machinery of the Universe” is like the cycles of the tides and the menstrual cycles of women,
who from time out of mind have been associated with the Moon.

The Moon and the Sun represent the two great principles upon which all Creation is grounded, which
have their analogs in the Pillars of Severity and Mercy of the Tree of Life.  Pan and Isis are two great
complimentary aspects of Yesod;  Pan represents the idea of archetypal strength which is characteristic
of the etheric level of being and of the influence of Luna on the Earth, while Isis represents the
archetypal Feminine Side of God, the great Yin or receptive aspect of the universe which is manifested in
the reflection of the light of the Sun by the Moon, as well as Yesod’s function as receptacle of the
emanations from all the higher Sephiroth, which it forms into the morphogenetic fields which are the
basis of form in the physical world.  Above all, the primary function of Yesod, by which all beings live and
die, are born and begotten and mated, is also the function of the Great Mother, Isis, Who contains all
other Goddesses.

In terms of Magick, Yesod is more important than any other Sephirah except possibly Hod.  The Egyptian

God Djehuti, a Lunar God, is of course associated with it, for He is the Lord of Magick, and a partner f
Isis.  All higher forces must pass through Yesod before they can manifest in the physical world, and it is
in Yesod that they are purified and unified in ways that are absolutely necessary to Magick.

The Sandals represent the close Magickal link which Yesod has with Hod, for Hod is associated with the
God Mercurius, Whose Winged Sandals give Him the speed of thought.  Also, the Sandals are Magickal
Weapons which enable the aspirant to travel with ease over the Foundations of the various levels of the
astral world.

The Perfumes represent the Magickal functions associated with minerals and plants.  Perfumes, like
music, can work profound changes in the psyche, the province of Yesod.  There is also a more subtle
esoteric aspect to perfumes associated with Isis and Da’ath.  There is a strong link
between Da’ath and Yesod, which are considered to be “opposite poles of the Magickal
circuit.”  Da’ath represents the highest aspects of the psyche and Yesod  its lowest, apart from the
physical body in Malkuth and those aspects of the Self associated with the Supernals.  These
two Sephiroth are the two poles of the link between Spirit and Matter.

The powers of the Moon and the Sea were worshipped as Gods long before humanity worshipped Solar
Gods.  Thus the fertilizing powers of Luna became sacred to the ancient peoples from whom sprang the
Jews and, later, the followers of Islam.  At one time, Luna was worshipped as a God as well as a Goddess,
various peoples being inclined more to one or the other point of view, and ancient clashes between
those peoples may have come about as a result of such religious differences.

The Queen-Scale color associated with Yesod is purple, a secondary color combining the pure primary
cobalt blue of Chesed with the brilliant, pure scarlet of Geburah.

There are numerous traditions of teaching associated with mysteries of the sea.  Like stone, the sea is a
symbol of the universe as a whole, of the vast reaches of outer space – and it is Luna and Her influence
upon the world that gives the sea its power.  Knowledge about celestial bodies, along with numerology,
was an extremely important part of ancient mystery teachings.  Lunar lore has been with us since
perhaps before we were ever human, possibly even from the beginnings of life on Earth, some 4 billion
years ago, when the Moon came close enough to the Earth to nearly destroy it as a result of tidal
action.  Out of our collective awareness of the rhythms and influence of the Moon was born all our
astrologiy, numerologies, and calendars, out of which evolved all our arts and sciences.  Yesod, the
Sphere of Luna, is thus concerned with every application of the measurement of time and space and all
bound by and contained within them, the objective as well as the esoteric sciences, as well as with
rhythm, contrast, and the cycles of life and death underlying all our arts.  Its archetypal science is
astrology, the parent of astronomy, and its primordial art is music, which harnesses the ebb and flow of
the universe to influence our very souls in whatever way the musician desires.

Finally, Yesod is associated with the Great Triple Goddess, the Great Mother Who is represented in
virtually all cultures as the trio of Maiden, Mother, and Crone.  Some of their avatars include, e.g.,
Pallas/Athena/Medusa;  Durga/Parvati/Kali;  Artemis/Selene/Hekate, etc.  Originally, before patriarchal
culture triumphed virtually everywhere, this trio was symbolized by a great Warrior-Queen (the
Matron), a gifted psychic (the Maiden), and a powerful Wise Woman or female Magickian (the
Crone).  They also represent the three major stages of a woman’s life, from virginal girl through
childbearing years to a post-menopausal niche as the grandmother who teaches and protects the
generations to come.  For this reason the numbers 3 and 9 (= 3 x 3) have been associated with the Moon
from long before the advent of written history.  The numbers 7 and 28 are also associated with the
Moon, because of the 28-day cycle of Lunar phases;  and the number 13 as well, because there are 13
Lunar months in a Solar year.*  As for the archetypes of Maiden, Matron, and Crone, the Crone is
associated with both Binah, whose number is 3, and Da’ath, associated with the number 11 and Magick,
while the Matron is associated with Sol and Tiphareth,  whose number is 6, as well as with Luna
andYesod, and the Maiden, Artemis or Diana, is also the Huntress, associated with death as well as birth,
and thus with Pluto and Kether, whose number is 1.  Thus the Triple Goddess in a sense is represented
by the Central Pillar of Consciousness as a whole, and is associated with the numbers 1, 3, 6, 9, 11, and
13.

 
*The symbolism of the United States of America is closely associated with the number 13.  The birthday
of America is July 4, when the Sun is almost in the very middle of the Sign Cancer, whose Lord is
Luna; further, in the U.S. natal chart, for 2:30 a.m. local time, July 4, 1776, at Independence Hall,
Philadelphia, PA, Luna is in Aquarius in the 10 th House, the highest Planet in the chart;  Uranus, ruler of
Aquarius, is rising, in the First House in Gemini, conjunct the Fixed Star Aldebaran;  and Mercury, ruler of
Gemini, associated with Hod, is in the Sign Cancer.  From an esoteric point of view, therefore, it isn’t
surprising that there would be so much Lunar symbolism involved with this country.

b.       The Cards

Enneads (groups of nine things), the Enneagon (a regular nine-sided polygon with nine interior angles of
36° each), the Enneagram (a nine-pointed Star formed variously of three superposed equilateral
Triangles oriented at angles of 0°, 120°, and 240° to the vertical, with congruent centers, or tracings
from point to point of an Enneagon with gaps of 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 points between connected points), or a 9-
rayed Star (9 rays emanating from a central Point) are all associated with Yesod.  In particular, the
Enneagram formed by superposing three equilateral triangles with concentric centers represents the
Great Mother Goddess and Luna in Their most powerful aspect.  The angle 40° is considered by
astrologers to represent power, that is, opportunities or occasions upon which the native may act most
effectively, or which confer great power upon him or her, or potential strengths in his or her
makeup.  Various associations with this angle include birth, brooding (as a hen on her egg), completion,
gestation, creativity, development, devotion, fertility, growth, nourishment, nurture, refinement,
release, productivity, supportiveness, and testing.  Cats – whose eyes wax and wane like the Moon –
have nine lives.  All such associations are excellent for representing the Nines.

The Nines

1)     WANDS

 
Design:  Nine Wands, Staves, or Rods in one arrangement or another.  Waite’s pack shows a man with a
bandaged head (or wearing a sweatband?) leaning upon a Staff;  behind him stand eight other
Staves.  Crowley’s shows eight small Wands and one large one;  the smaller ones are arrows pointing
downward, their feathers formed from stylized crescent Moons, their tips also crescents;  the arrows are
crossed, and the ninth Wand has a Solar disc at its top and a crescent at the bottom;  the sigil for Luna is
above, that for Sagittarius below.

America’s Tarot:  Upright:  A ninja standing in a clearing amid nine healthy redwoods, which wears a
sweatband and holds a great treasure chest in his arms (the number 9 has great significance in ninpo,
the philosophy behind Ninjutsu combat arts).  Alternatives:  rather than a ninja, the person could be a
Szekeli (Gypsy) prince, or it could be a Szekeli in a ninja’s night work costume (the Szekeli are the ninjas
of Europe;  they were the aboriginal inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent who, rather than submitting
to Aryan rule and becoming Outcastes, left their homeland to wander the world, organizing themselves
much as the ninja clans of 9th Century Japan did, developing their own combat and guerilla skills to
perfection – like the ninjas, they are known everywhere as thieves par excellence, and all manner of
mystical powers are attributed to them). Reversed:  The same ninja or Szekeli, but standing at the
entrance to a cave that holds nine enormous, fire-breathing dragons.

Upright meaning:  Entitled “Strength.”  Luna in Sagittarius.  The second decanate of Sagittarius, 10° 0’ 0”

- 19° 59’ 59” Sagittarius (about December 1 through December 11 of a given year). Preparedness,
strength in reserve, a second wind, victory after opposition.  Great strength.  Change in stability.  The
best that can be obtained from the energy of the Suit of Wands.  Power, health, energy. Victory after the
application of great force.  A desire to attain the realms of the psychic, which goes beyond the bounds of
physical safety.  Delays.  Gain.  Separation and advantage.  Extremely valuable knowledge or
intelligence.  A stalwart position.  Order, discipline, good arrangement, disposition. Realization of
success.  Continuous success.  Teaching.  Planning travel.  Editors and
journalists. Prophecy.  Preaching.  Public excitement, frenzy, or celebration.  Revolution.  Strength in
opposition. Suspension.  Adjournment.

Reversed:  The thighs.  Early December.  Physical debility or illness.  Abstract, objective, or physical

science.  Mathematics.  Threat or mishap.  Obstacles, calamities, disaster.  Crosses (i.e., things that cross
someone, cross his path, hinder his way.)  Displeasure.  Unruliness.  Controversy.  Contradictions
wherever this card appears.  Generally speaking, a bad card.

2)       CUPS

 
Design:  Generally, nine Cups in one arrangement or another.  Waite’s pack shows a merchant sitting in
satisfaction before a row of Cups.  Crowley’s shows nine Cups in the form of lotuses;  the sigil for Jupiter
is above, that for Pisces below.  The New Tarot shows eight Pears surrounding a ninth.  The Fantasy
Showcase Tarot  shows two, eer, beings hanging out in a cantina, which may or may not be located in
Mos Eisley;  nine cans of beer are stacked in a pyramid on the bar between them.

America’s Tarot:  Upright:  Nine beautiful lakes by an ancient forest.  Several American Indians are

camped by one of the lakes.  The air is clear and pure, the skies beautiful.  Reversed:  The same lakes,
but a resort town has grown up around them, powerboats roar across some of the lakes, children play
all around the shores of the lakes, and concession stands are everywhere.  Much of the forest has been
chopped down to accommodate a housing development.  The scene still has its virtues, but these are
definitely less than were those of the Upright view.

Upright:  Entitled “Material Happiness” or “Happiness.”  10° 0’ 0” - 19° 59’ 59” Pisces (about March 1-10
of a given year).  Material success, physical well-being.  The most complete and beneficial aspect of the
force of water.  Stability, security, well-being.  Complete success, pleasure, and happiness;  wishes
fulfilled.  Success in the realm of intellect.  Success in everything, especially matters of the
heart.  Victory, advantage, success, triumph, difficulties
surmounted.  Motherhood.  Contentment,Gemütlichheit.  Concord, harmony.  Your heart-felt wishes will
come true.  Dreams come true.    Of good omen for military men and for business.

Reversed:   The opposite of any of the above, without justification, and with attendant troubles. Desires
unfulfilled.  Material troubles and unhappiness.  Faults, errors, mistakes, imperfections.  Truth, loyalty,
liberty.  Mistakes, imperfections.

3)     SWORDS

Design:  Generally, nine Swords in one arrangement or another.  Waite’s pack shows a figure sitting up
on a bed, covering its eyes, possibly weeping;  behind it are nine horizontal Swords;  the bedcover is
decorated with a design of squares which contain, in alternating sequence, red roses with the Planetary
Signs and those for the Houses of the horoscope.  Crowley’s shows nine Swords, point downward,
dripping blood;  the sigil for Mars is above, that for Gemini below.  The New Tarot shows nine Blades in
the form of a wheel, like a buzz saw, rotating in a clockwise direction.

 
America’s Tarot:  Upright:  Nine ballistic missiles in the process of being launched toward an enemy
target.  Reversed:  A war-room below ground, nine generals pondering a great map on the wall which
shows nine question-marks that could indicate incoming mail but which also might not.

Upright:  Entitled “Despair” or “Cruelty.”  Mars in Gemini.  10° 0’ 0” - 19° 59’ 59” Gemini (around May 1
through May 10 of a given year).  Despair.  Cruelty.  Worry.  Suffering.  Misery.  Loss. Unconscious,
primitive instincts.  A sociopath or psychopath.  A fanatic.  Suggested solutions for dealing with this
card:  passive resistance, resignation, or martyrdom;  sometimes implacable revenge.  Assorted
tribulations, most of them arising from evil done by others, which can be effectively combated by means
of calculated inaction.  At best, this card brings new life out of suffering, at worst complete isolation
from all hope or comfort.  Associated with Chiron and the
Shaman.  Illness.  Malice.  Pain.  Agony.  Suffering generally.  Matter struggling towards
perfection.  Unmarried or unattached person.  A dead twin, enmity between twins.  Total disasters of
assorted varieties.  Anxiety.  An ecclesiastic, a priest.  Conscience. Probity.  Good
faith.  Integrity.  Enduring hatred.  Dogma, dogmatism.  An ecclesiastical mind.  Hard
judgment.  Orthodoxy.  Asceticism.  Swearing.  Shyness.  Miscarriage.  Shame.  False evidence given. A
scrupulous mind.  Conscientiousness.  The scientific method.  Natural selection.  Utter
desolation. Death.  Failure.  Delay.  Deception.  Disappointment.  A card of very bad omen.

Reversed:  The hands.  Early May.  Hope for the morrow.  Desire to succeed.  Unseen complications or

adversaries.  Doubt.  Slander.  Evil gossip.  Wise distrust.  Suspicion, fear, doubt. Shady
character.  Imprisonment.  Reasonable fear.  Good ground for suspicion against a doubtful person.

4)     COINS/DISCS/PENTACLES

Design:  Generally, nine Coins, Discs, or Pentacles in one arrangement or another.  Waite’s pack shows a
woman in a vineyard filled with ripe grapes, presumably on her own land;  on her upraised left hand she
holds a bird;  her gown is patterned with flowers in the form of the sigil of Venus.  Crowley’s shows six
small Discs surrounding three large ones, which are reminiscent of the Ace of Discs;  within the smaller
discs are the planetary sigils of Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, Luna, Mercury, and Mars made into stylized
faces;  the sigil for Venus is above, that for Virgo below.  The New Tarot shows nine Stones.

America’s Tarot:  Center:  Nine silver Liberty-head dollars, arranged to form the apices of a nonagon,
which are connected by rays of light to form a nine-pointed Star.  Upright:  A woman who is likely an
American Indian within an arbor on her own land;  the arbor is filled with ripe grapes, much as in Waite’s
card;  nine of the grapes are larger than the rest, and bear Pentacles in their centers.  A great wolf lies
contentedly at her feet, and an eagle flies above.  In the middle distance is a great manorial house and
fields and orchards filled with ripe, healthy crops of all kinds.  In the far distance are great purple
mountains and azure skies.  Reversed:  The same scene, now overrun, pillaged, looted, and burned by
invaders;  the woman lies bleeding on the ground, apparently the victim of one of the invaders, who
may have ravished her;  most of the invaders have already gone, and only a couple can be seen in the
charred ruins of the manor house in the middle ground.

Upright:   Entitled “Material Gain” or “Gain.”  Venus in Virgo.  The second decanate of Virgo, 10° 0’ 0” -

19° 59’ 59” Virgo (about September 3-12 of a given year).  Prudence.  Material gain. Completion.  Good
fortune in material affairs.  Favor and popularity.  Inheritance.  A great increase in one’s financial
standing.  Gain of a fortune.  Private concerns:  the pleasures of life, an inheritance, or one’s own
interests.  Unattainable agreement between the spiritual and the material.  Agreement.  Future
gain.  Endeavors accomplished for the benefits they will bring in the future.  The mystic arts.  Spiritual
practices and gifts on a large scale.  Discretion.  Circumspection.  Discernment.  Absolute
equilibrium. Honesty.  Positive action.  For the Querent it means “Go ahead, you will succeed.”  Strong
affirmative answer to questions.  The effect is
certain.  Safety.  Success.  Accomplishment.  Certitude.  Prompt fulfillment of what is indicated by
neighboring cards. 

Reversed:   The vermiform appendix, the back.   Assorted dangers:  thieves, cancellations, loss of home

or of a friend.  A need for caution.  Differences of opinion.. Concealed or latent plans.  Dealing. Games
involving money.  Risky ventures.  Chance.  Fate.  Gambling.  Cards.  Dice, roulette.  Big business.  Deceit,
bad faith.  Artifice.  Deception.  A durable fortune.   Roguery.  Voided project.  Vain hopes.

c.       The interrelationships between the Sephirah and the cards of the Tarot

Both the Eights and the Nines, respectively associated with Hod and Yesod,  have a great deal to do with
Magickal Workings and the fruits that come from them.  The Nines also represent as well the middle
third of the last third of a season, the second decanate of the Mutable Signs Sagittarius, Pisces, Gemini,
and Virgo.  Like the Eights and the Tens, they represent the functions of intellect, perception, memory,
and emotions.  Because Yesodis on the Middle Pillar of Consciousness of the Tree of Life, the Nines also
represent equilibrium and balance; and because Yesod receives the influence of Tiphareth directly,
without the mediation of any other Sephirah, the power of Yesod, represented by the Nines, is
enormous.  Each of the Nines shows the full impact of the force of the Element in its most material
sense, or rather the idea of it, since Yesod is still in Yetzirah, the Formative World.  In many traditions
the number 9 is considered a number of perfection, and is sacred, and that idea carries over into these
cards.

The Nine of Wands, “Strength,” is ruled by the Moon.  It represents at once the potential for change in
the heart of stability and the stability of the processes of change:  “The only constant in this universe is
change.” Change is, from another point of view, energy or information.  It is the intense energies of the
realm of quantum mechanics, the Strong Force of the atom, which holds everything
together;  constrained into tight channels, these energies are thereby transmuted into matter, and thus
the world comes into being.  From the point of view of information science, only the endless
communication among the components of reality makes reality a coherent whole.  Or consider a
bicycle:  only by keeping the bicycle’s wheels in rapid, continuous motion can one keep one’s balance on
the contraption.  And if one tries to draw a straight line, the task becomes impossible if one’s hand
shakes.  Hence “Change = Stability,” which is the meaning of this card.  The card is associated with Luna
in Sagittarius.  Luna rules all the great changes of the world, the tides of life, while Sagittarius is a card of
harnessed Fire, Fire made to do work for the good of all.  So here is all the power of that which causes
Change in the most fortunate of all Signs.  To be sure, Luna has Her esoteric detriment in this Sign, and
ordinarily that would make Her very weak;  but all the Planets are given great dignity in this Sign, which
applies no less to Luna, so that what would otherwise be a debility becomes great strength and good
fortune.

The Nine of Cups is entitled “Happiness.”  This is one of the best of all the cards, signifying great good
fortune.  It is associated with Jupiter in Pisces, which Sign is one of the traditional dignities of Jupiter, the
Great Benefic.  In Pisces Jupiter is in His strength and is in full harmony with the nature of the Sign, so
that only good can come to pass from such a placement for Him.  The Cups represent love, and here the
Divine Love signified by Jupiter is given one of its finest expressions.  Even so, Pisces represents Illusion
and Deceit, and if one is not careful to take wise advantage of the benefits conferred by Jupiter’s
passage through this Sign, once He has left it for Aries those benefits may all disappear like smoke on
the wind, or a dream in the light of morning.

The Nine of Swords is called “Cruelty.”  This card is associated with Mars in Gemini, in which Mars falls,
the ugliest aspects of His nature coming to the fore.  As Crowley says, it represents agony of mind.  It
shows “mind at the end of its tether,” lost in the depths of despair.  Crowley says of it:  “It is always a
cathedral – a cathedral of the damned.”*  The mind is furiously active, but filled with the sense that for
all its striving, it will never get anywhere.

*Crowley, The Book of Thoth, op. cit., p. 186.

 
 

The Nine of Discs, Pentacles, or Coins is called “Gain.”  This card is associated with Venus in Virgo, a Sign
in which Venus has Her fall, the most acquisitive and greedy side of Her nature coming to the fore.  It
represents the apotheosis of Gemütlichheit, the feeling that “everything is for the best in this best of all
possible worlds.”  It is a card of perfect material contentment and satisfaction, and all that these entail,
and material gain in great measure.

B.  The Lower Arcana of the Tarot and the Ten  Sephiroth of the Tree of Life

         

10.   Sephirah 10

                a.     The Sephirah

Malkuth, “Kingdom.”  Sphere of j (Earth).  Another system assigns Da’ath to Sephirah 0 (Ain Soph) and

the Planet Anteros/Persephone (see above) rather than Saturn;  in this system, Saturn is in turn equated
with Malkuth, while Earth (the Planet) is associated with Key 32, Tav (see Lesson III, Key 32 of this
course).

Malkuth represents the end-product of all the activity of the Tree of Life.  It is the nadir of spiritual
evolution, the outermost point on the outgoing arc, through which all life must pass before returning
whence it came.  This is the Sphere of the Earth-soul, the subtle, psychic aspect of Matter, the
underlying quantum-mechanical noumenon of the physical plane which gives rise to all physical
phenomena.  The same is true of the four Elements:  they are not earth, air, fire, and water as known to
the physicists, but are rather the four conditions in which energy can exist, i.e., bound solid matter
(Earth), bound fluid matter (Water), gaseous matter (Air), and plasma (Fire). 51

The Hermeticist finds the end results of all operations of Magick in Malkuth.  Not until the
complimentary pairs of opposites have achieved the settled equilibrium which is the state known as the
Element Earth, coherent matter and form, can they be said to have completed any given cycle of
experience.  When this is achieved, they build a permanent vehicle of manifestation and stereotype its
reactions.  The machinery of expression thus evolved becomes homeostatically self-regulatory,
continuing to function from then on with a minimum of attention.

In this way stability is achieved. The virtue of Malkuth resides in its inertia. All the other Sephiroth are
mobile, plastic to some degree;  even the Central Pillar of Consciousness only achieves equilibrium in
function, in the same way that a tight-rope walker does, not by standing still, but through dynamic
activity.

Though Malkuth is essentially the sphere of form, the coherence of its components depends upon the
operations of Yesod, which in turn depends for the manifestation of its activities upon the substance
provided by Malkuth.  The forms of Yesod are “such stuff as dreams are made on” until they have picked
up the material particles of Malkuth in which to manifest, systems of quantum stresses in the space-
time continuum into whose framework the physical particles are slotted.  Likewise Malkuth consists only
of inanimate matter until the powers of Yesod animate it.52

        The Qaballistic assignments for Malkuth include the following:

                                                          MAGICKAL IMAGE:                A young woman, crowned andthroned.

                                                                         GOD NAME:                ] l m  y n d a  or  { r a h y n d a (ADNI

MeLeK “The Lord Who is King,” or ADNI ha-AReTz, “The Lord of Earth”)

                                                                      ARCHANGEL:                } w p l d n s   (Sandalphon)

                                                           CHOIR OF ANGELS:                \ y c a  (AShIM, “Souls of Fire)

                                                      MUNDANE CHAKRA:                Earth;  the Sphere of the Elements

                                                                                VIRTUE:                Discrimination, that is, the ability to

discern differences among things

                                                                                 TITLES:                The Gate.  Gate of Death.  Gate of the

Shadow of Death.  Gate of Tears.  Gate of Justice. Gate of Prayer.  Gate of the Daughter of the Mighty
Ones.  Gate of the Garden of Eden.  The Inferior Mother.  Malkah, the Queen.  Kallah, the Bride.  The
Virgin.

                                                SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE:                The Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy

Guardian Angel

                                                       ATZILUTHIC COLOR:                Yellow

                                                                BRIATIC COLOR:                Citrine, olive, russet, and black

                                                        YETZIRATIC COLOR:                Citrine, olive, russet, and black, flecked gold.

                                                             ASSIATIC COLOR:                Black, rayed yellow.

                                                                                      VICE:                Avarice or greed.  Inertia (Sloth).

                                                                            SYMBOLS:                Altar of the Double Cube.  The Equal-

Armed Cross.  The Magick Circle.  Triangle of Evocation or Art.

        For Malkuth, Liber 777 gives the following assignments:  Rock crystal;  willow, lily, ivy;  the

Sphinx; magnesium sulfate, peppermint (drugs);  dittany of Crete (perfume).

        Malkuth  is associated with the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

Article X

Rights of States under Constitution.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States,
are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

        The commandment associated with Malkuth is

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house;  you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant,
or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s.

        Exodus 20:17, Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version

 
According to the Yetziratic Text,

The Tenth Path is called the Resplendent Intelligence because it is exalted above every head and sits
upon the throne of Binah.  It illuminates the splendors of all the Lights, and causes an influence to
emanate from the Prince of Countenances, the Angel of Kether.

The Sephirah Malkuth represents the entire physical universe.  Though most of us think we have a good
idea of what physical reality means, and that we are fully conscious of it most of time, very few people
truly live in that world, their consciousness fully focused in the here and now rather than wandering off
into memories of the past or fantasies of the future. Only the Yogi, the Zen adept, or the very small child
truly live in the present moment; the rest of us have our faculties centered on our mental and emotional
lives rather than the sensory life of the physical world.  In the West, even our religions embrace an
aversion to sensuousness, that is, the life of the senses, confusing it with sensuality, an undue
indulgence in the grosser pleasures of the senses.

Yet, from the point of view of spiritual evolution and reincarnation, the physical world is the one which
must be thoroughly grasped by the soul.  There is ample time between incarnations for explorations of
past and future, emotions and mental spheres.  Because one must return again and again to the physical
world, it holds the key to spiritual development, which is not to be gained in regarding all of physical
reality as a trap and a temptation which must be strenuously denied and rejected.

The soul descends on the arc of involution from the planes of Spirit, forming functional vehicles of
manifestation on all the planes as it descends.  On the evolutionary arc, it is the soul’s destiny to gain
objective control of all the planes in ascending order.  The first plane on the evolutionary path is
therefore the physical realm – yet few aspirants to spiritual attainment have any effective control over
it.  All too often, such a person is incompetent and ineffectual in life, in the physical world, and his or her
apparent calling to the spiritual life is in fact no more than escapism, a way of running away from his or
her True Will, which is to become fully functional and effective in the mundane world, achievement of
which is the Initiation of the Nadir.

The Yetziratic Text pertinent to Malkuth, quoted above, indicates the importance of the physical world
in the divine scheme of things:  “The Tenth Path is called the Resplendent Intelligence because it is
exalted above every head and sits upon the throne of Binah.”  The reference to Binah shows
that Malkuth is the supreme manifestation of the entity which was first conceived as a possibility in the
Supernal Sphere of Binah.  It is thus exalted above all things, for Malkuth is the goal of the divine
impulse toward manifestation, the Spirit made manifest in matter.

Its title, the Resplendent Intelligence, comes from the second part of the text:  “It illuminates the
splendors of all the Lights, and causes an influence to emanate from the Prince of Countenances, the
Angel of Kether.”  The Lights are either the Divine Sparks that are the souls of mortals, or the other
nine Sephiroth and the Planets associated with them, which represent the whole of Creation.  This text
implies that objective physical existence is necessary to draw forth the true potentials within the Spirit
residing in every mortal.  It gives a picture of what physical existence should be – and, indeed, which it
must be before further evolution can occur.

The significance of the phrase “[It] causes an influence to emanate from the Prince of Countenances, the
Angel of Kether,” is that the material world is a focus or grounding device for the creative powers of the
Spirit. The Angel of Kether is Metatron, the being who superintends the Creative World of Briah.  Spirit
and Matter function as the poles of a gigantic cosmic battery, each of which before anything can flow
through the circuit between Da’ath and Yesod.  Further, all knowledge of spiritual reality can be gained
from study and contemplation of the physical world, which is the reflection of the Macroprosopos or
Vast Countenance inKether, something which is entailed in the Hermetic axiom, “As above, so below.”

The various titles of Malkuth which refer to it as a Gate represent the fact that the physical world is a
definite stage in spiritual development, a passage which one must go through.  The Gate of Death and
the Gate of the Shadow of Death refer to the great boundaries of Malkuth as far as our physical
existence is concerned, birth and death.  Through birth, we come into the world;  through death, we
leave it.  But birth and death are two sides of the same coin, for upon physical death one is born into the
higher realms of Spirit, while physical birth is death from the point of view of the higher realms of the
Inner Planes.  That aspect of Malkuth called the Gate of Death   can be looked at in two different
ways.  There is the Gate of Death of the Physical Body, to be sure;  but there is also the Gate of the
Death that is Illumination or Initiation, a dying away from one way of life and a birth into a new one that
does not require the destruction of the physical body.

The spiritual exercise of imagining oneself as dead is well known in the Roman Catholic Church.  The
practice of going back over the happenings of the day just prior to going to sleep is recommended
among various esoteric schools, because in this way a good deal of the abstracting process of death is
carried out in life.  (It should be noted that communication between the living and the dead should be
achieved by meditation within oneself, rather than by indiscriminate, uncontrolled evocation of the
spirits of the dead of the sort carried out in Spiritualist churches and séance rooms.  The latter is a good
way to do irreparable injury to the spirits called up in this way – or become possessed by one of them,
should that spirit decide it would really like to give the Earth plane another try at it without, however,
going through all the bother of being born and taking on all the burdens of living which that entails.)

The Death of Initiation is achieved through invocation of and meditation upon the
higher Sephiroth.  Success at such work is made evident via profound changes in the behavior and way
of life of the one who has been initiated;  though he or she hasn’t physically died, nevertheless it is as if
he or she had been transformed into a being very different from the one which he or she had been
before.

The reference to Malkuth as the Gate of Tears emphasizes its connection with Binah, whose Spiritual
Experience is the Vision of Sorrow.  Sorrow is among the things we must learn in Malkuth.  It has,
however, nothing particularly to do with self-pity, but is rather caused by realization of the delays and
separations implicit in spiritual evolution and the development of form, perhaps best expressed in the
German word Weltschmerz.  The title “The Gate of Justice” has to do with the fact that the great balance
of all things is worked out on the physical plane.  The title “The Gate of Prayer” has to do with the fact
that just as Malkuth is a child of Binah, the Parent of Faith, so prayer is an active result of the fact of
faith.  The title “Gate of the Garden of Eden” refers to the original perfect state of Creation, the pure
mind and awareness of the newborn.

The remaining titles, “the Inferior Mother,” “the Queen,” “the Bride,” and “the Virgin,” all suggest
femininity and the Yin aspect of reality.  Malkuth is receptive to all emanations of all the
higher Sephiroth, an archetypalYin condition.  “The Queen” and “the Bride” are references to the
relation of Malkuth to Tiphareth, the King and the Lesser Countenance or Microprosopos, the Harmony
of which must become manifest in Malkuth. Malkuth is also the Cross of dense matter upon which the
Spirit is crucified, thereby forming another link withTiphareth in the form of the Mysteries of Sacrificed
God.  The “Inferior Mother” indicates the link with Binah, the Supernal Mother, and the title of Virgin
could be applied either to the pristine condition of Creation at its inception or to that of Earth before
becoming the Bride of Tiphareth.  Most of these feminine titles reflect the Magickal Image of Malkuth, a
young woman, crowned and enthroned.  The Throne is that of Binah, and the maiden can be identified
with an Earth-Goddess such as Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, the Earth-Mother.

The God-Name of Malkuth is ] l m  y n d a (ADNI MeLeK), “The Lord Who is King,” or  { r a h y n d a (ADNI
ha-AReTz), “The Lord of Earth.”  y n d a  is a holy emanation of God, like any other God-
Name; therefore Malkuth is no less holy than Kether, for it is an expression in manifest form of the same
force.

The Archangel of Malkuth as the physical Planet Earth is  } w p l d n s   (Sandalphon).  His colors are
citrine, olive, russet, and black. He is the Guide of Intelligence of the Planet Earth.  However, Metatron,
the Archangel of Kether, is also an Archangel of Malkuth as Sephirah, because of the link between these
twoSephiroth.  The Archangel of the Element Earth, on the other hand, is Auriel or Uriel, one of the
Great Archangels of the Four Quarters.  Raphael the Healer rules the East;  Mikhail the Protector, the
South;  Gabriel, the Archangel of Vision, the West;  and Auriel the Teacher, the North.  The colors of
Auriel are the dark greens and browns of Earth, and in his inner aspects he represents the primeval Light
of God.  Auriel is much concerned with the great teacher who haS periodically been born on Earth.

The Archangels of the Four Quarters might best be conceived as great fortresses or towers colored in
the active colors of the Elements concerned, i.e., Yellow for Raphael, Red for Mikhail, Blue for Gabriel,
and Green for Auriel (as opposed to their passive colors, which are respectively Blue, Dark Red, Silver,
and Black).  The Archangel Sandalphon might then be conceived as interpenetrating all the rest, colored
in citrine, olive, russet, and black, pulsing with the slow harmonics of the Earth.

As for the Kings of the Elemental Forces, surrounded by the lesser beings dwelling in the Sphere of the
Elements under their dominion, these might take the following forms:  The Air-King, Paralda, presiding
over the Sylphs, in the East, standing in great eddies of air, air and wind streaming from him in radiant
light;  the King of fire, Djin, in the South, presiding over the Salamanders, waves of heat surging up
around him, and points of fire and flame searing the atmosphere and reaching toward the high
heavens;  the King of Water, Niksa, in the West, presiding over the Undines, permeated with moisture,
currents of foam swirling around his feet and pouring forth from his aura;  and The Earth-King, Ghob, in
the North, presiding over the Gnomes, waves of “Earth-power” emanating from him, an intermediate
state of matter, slow-moving but extremely powerful, a spiritual equivalent of gravity waves.  The
Elements themselves can be conceived of as forming a vast equal-armed cross, a symbol of the Elements
as well as of Malkuth;  in the center of the cross is the Rose of the World, which blooms slowly with the
development of the Elementals, whose falling dew helps these beings to manifest.

The four Cardinal Points or Quadrants of the Compass can be associated with the Fixed, Cardinal, and
Mutable Signs of astrology.  The Fixed aspect is the “temperament” or “personality” of the Quadrant,
based on the nature of one of  the Four Holy Living Creatures of Kether, oriented Northwest-Southwest-
Southeast-Northeast.  The Cardinal aspect is the Great Intelligence behind the Quadrant, the ruling
power of its Archangel, oriented East-South-West-North.  The Mutable aspect, oriented SSW, ESE, ENE,
and NNW, is associated with the Elemental Kings, who work through the processes of change.

The Choir of Angeles, \ y c a  (AShIM), “Souls of Fire,” is the intelligences of the atoms of which all matter
is composed, by whose influence physical reality is held together.  The Mundane Chakra of Malkuth is
the Sphere of the Elements, ruled by the Elemental Kings.

The Spiritual Experience of Malkuth is the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian
Angel.  This being is often confused with the Higher Self or Individuality,
comprising Da’ath, Chesed, Geburah, andTiphareth in the microcosm that is the behind the Lower Self,
or Personality (Netzach, Hod, Yesod, andMalkuth).  However, what this experience really ahs to do with
is the attainment of full awareness of one’s true destiny or dharma, one’s True Will.  Usually this
manifests in the form of urges within the self that constitute a calling, but sometimes it is experienced as
being separate from the self, as in the case of Socrates and hisdaemon, which could well have been an
aspect of his Holy Guardian Angel.  I.e., the Holy Guardian Angel is that part of oneself that knows what
one is supposed to be doing with one’s life at all times, and urges one to do it.  Sometimes the term is
used indiscriminately to mean “spirits,” “angels,” and so forth that are not part of oneself, but which are
believed to dance attendance on the soul and steer it in the right direction.  It may be that the term
should ultimately be junked and something which more accurately describes what it is intended to mean
put in its place, for there is a wealth of contradiction and misunderstanding surrounding it that hasn’t
really done anything to help the student to understand much about the Inner Planes.

The symbols of Malkuth include the Magick Circle and the Triangle of Evocation or Triangle or Art, which
represent the actual results of Magickal operations.  The Magick Circle defines the area in which the
Magickian chooses to work;  as the Circle is the most perfect form, it symbolizes God, the perfect being,
and by standing within it, the Magickian acts out his or her intent to create an identity between him- or
herself and God or some aspect of God for the purposes of the Working.  The Triangle of Art, which
stands just outside the Circle at the East or North, is the area into which the Magickian evokes
spirits.  The Triangle is the strongest of geometric forms, and symbolizes the divine strength of Will
necessary to keep the spirit within safe boundaries and constrain it to obey the Magickian’s commands.
The Altar of the Double Cube is a six-sided figure, though its name implies ten sides (if one cube is
stacked upon another, the bottom of one is conjoined with the top of the other, thus subtracting two of
their total of 12 faces from view).  Ten is the number of Malkuth, the reason for this symbol.  Malkuth is
itself an Altar, the place into or onto which forces from the higher Sephiroth descend.  In another sense,
an altar is also a Gate, especially in cases in which the whole of one’s being is offered up on the Altar of
Sacrifice – usually not in the sense of blood-letting, but rather in the sense of dedicating one’s life to a
cause or a God.

The Vices of Malkuth are Avarice and Inertia or Sloth.  That greed is a great driving force in this world, no
one over the age of about 10 can truthfully dispute;  and the inertia is met with by anyone who tries to
do any kind of creative work.

The Virtue of Malkuth is Discrimination, the faculty of discernment, the ability to tell what is good from
what is bad.

All the Earth Gods and Goddesses are associated with Malkuth.  Demeter and Persephone come
immediately to mind;  They are the deities of the Eleusinian Mysteries, one of the great focal religious
rituals of the ancient world, the inner aspect of the Earth Cult.  The Gods of the Underworld – Hades,
Pluto, Hel, Dis, Ta’aroa (Kanaloa), Poseidon Earthshaker, Hekate, etc. – are also associated with Malkuth,
another tie between Malkuth and Kether, which is associated with the Planet Pluto.*

*See Gareth Knight, op. cit., Volume I, pp. 189-203.

b.       The Cards

Decagons (regular ten-sided polygons with ten interior angles of 36°), Decagrams (ten-pointed Stars,
formed by connecting the points of a Decagon with gaps of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 points between the
connected points), and ten-rayed Stars (ten rays emanating from a central Point) are all associated
with Malkuth.  The Ten Commandments and the ten articles of the Bill of Rights are also associated with
it. The 36°-angle (which equals 4 x 9°) is considered by astrologers to represent valuable potentials
within the native, or valuable opportunities that come one’s way, as well as potential talent for working
with esoteric matters;  and 36 also represents the total number of decanates, or thirds of a Sign, in the
Zodiac   All these are excellent for the design of the Tens.

The Tens

1)     WANDS

Design:  Generally, ten Wands, Staves, or Rods in one arrangement or another.  Waite’s pack shows a
man carrying a bundle of ten heavy Wands, approaching a building in the distance.  Crowley’s shows
four small Rods crossed with four others, all tipped with flame;  two larger, vertical Rods with fools’
heads at the top and spear-points at the bottom are superimposed upon the first eight;  above is the
sigil for Saturn, below that for Sagittarius.  The New Tarot shows ten Snakes in two groups of five. The
Fantasy Showcase Tarot shows a rather pixilated gentleman carrying ten long pieces of wood, stumbling
along a road (as the sign says) “to the city 10 miles.”

America’s Tarot:  Upright:  Ten gigantic redwoods at the edge of a clearing.  Ten forest rangers and ten
lumberjacks stand adamantly before them, barring access to a group of ten American Indians, ten
raccoons, ten squirrels, ten deer, etc. that look longingly toward the trees.  Reversed:  Same scene,
except that the Indians and animals are raising merry hell for their opponents, running around them in
circles and generally deviling them;  the Indians and animals are grinning as if at a great joke, while the
forest rangers and lumberjacks look as if they were driven half out of their wits by it all (á la Keystone
Kops sort of thing).

Upright meaning:  Entitled “Oppression.”  Saturn in Sagittarius.  Third decanate of Sagittarius, 20° 0’ 0” -

29° 59’ 59” Sagittarius (about December 11-20 of a given year).  Oppression.  Burden of ill-regulated
power (as in The Fantasy Showcase Tarot version of this card).  The most violent form of the energy of
Wands.  Saturn is strong in Sagittarius;  that placement represents political philosophy, religious dogma,
or political or religious ideology.  Cruelty and malice toward others.  Overbearing
strength.  Revenge.  Injustice.  Temporary power in the realm of the psychic.  Difficulties.  Plans which do
not succeed, or only succeed with great difficulty.  With other cards, this card can indicate a halt or
sterility.  Treachery.  Change of style, place, occupation, activity, and/or location.  Excessive
pressure. The quality of being overburdened.  Subterfuge.  Duplicity.  Bar.  Uncertainty in the
management of the enterprise.  Karma.  Obedience.  Executive
ability.  Falsehood.  Dishonesty.  Overestimation of the importance of things.  Miserliness carried to
extremes.  Dogmatic materialism taken so far as to exclude any dimension of the
spiritual.  Fortune.  Gain.  Success.  Oppression of the results of success, fortune, or gain.  False-
seeming.  Disguise.  Perfidy.  Success is prevented if this card is followed by the Nine of Swords, and if
the matter under consideration is a lawsuit, there will be certain loss.  Difficulties and contradictions if
near a good card.

Reversed:  Arterial blood system, blood (as tissue), bile (as secretion), buttocks, liver, sciatic nerve. Mid-
December.  Malicious deceit.  Guile.  Lies.  Mischief with the object of watching the ants run around in
circles.  Gold.  The sea.  A situation which has within itself at least some of the seeds of its own
solution.  Confidence.  Honor.  Security.  Good faith.  Intrigues.

2)       CUPS

Design:  Generally, ten Cups in one arrangement or another.  The Marseille Tarot shows nine carven
Chalices, oriented vertically, surmounted by a tenth, larger Chalice oriented horizontally;  this larger one
has a quatrefoil floral design within it that may be a reference to the Host of Holy Communion.  Waite’s
shows a man and woman beholding a rainbow of Cups in the heavens;  nearby, two children are
dancing.  The Aquarian Tarot shows a pair of lovers;  she wears a rose in her hair;  above are nine small
Cups, and a tenth, larger one into which a rainbow is pouring.  Crowley’s shows ten Cups, their design
suggesting the sigil for the Sign Aries;  the sigil for Mars is above, that for Pisces below.  The New
Tarot shows ten Pears arranged in two groups of five.  The  Fantasy Showcase Tarot (my favorite for this
card) shows a the same scene as that on Waite’s version of this card – except that the scene is enclosed
in a cartoon dream-balloon emanating from the sleeping dreaming of a gently smiling leprechaun who
has passed out on the floor;  the cause is immediately evident, 10 empty cans of “Putz Beer” – and oh, is
he ever going to  have a head when he wakes up! J

America’s Tarot:  Upright:  Ten pristine lakes in open land next to a vast forest, mountains in the
background;  rainbows springing up from the lakes link them together, i.e., each rainbow has a foot in
two lakes, and every lake is linked to every other by a rainbow.  An American Indian family consisting of
a man, his wife, and their children stand nearby, looking over the lakes with awe and joy.  Reversed: Ten
badly polluted lakes next to a devastated city.  The inhabitants of the city consist of horribly injured,
diseased, or insane figures stumbling through the ruins, attended by a few howling dogs and, of course,
hordes of rats.  Cockroaches are everywhere.

 
Upright:  Entitled “Perfected Success” or “Satiety.”  Mars in Pisces.  The third decanate of Pisces, 20° 0’
0” - 29° 59’ 59” Pisces (about March 10 through March 19 of a given year).  Lasting success. Happiness to
come.  Perfected success.  The work proper to Water is complete, and disturbance is due to
come.  Perpetual success.  Matters definitely arranged and settled in accordance with one’s
wishes. Complete good fortune.  Contentment, friendship, trust.  Separation of matter and mind.  A
burning need for evolution or spiritual progress.  Home life or homeland.  Adjacent cards indicate final
outcome.  The city.  Envious people.  Material well-being.  The town where one
lives.  Honor.  Consideration. Esteem.  Virtue.  Glory.  Reputation.  Uncertainty in the management of a
love affair.  Well-earned security.  The city.  Birthplace.  Physical constitution.  Organic life of the body or
community.  Repose of the entire heart.  Perfection of human love and friendship.  If with several Court
Cards, someone who is taking charge of the Querent’s interests.  The town, village, or country inhabited
by the Querent.  If the Querent is male, a good marriage, and one beyond his expectations.

Reversed:  The negative aspects of peace and security.  Discontent, enmity, distrust, suspicion,

paranoia.  Transition.  Passage from life to death.  A halt.  A strange turn of fortune.  A miraculous
event.  Meeting with a friend from the distant past.  The unusual, unexpected, remarkable, or
unbelievable.  Combat, strife, opposition, dispute.  Irritability and agitation.  A weak nervous system
must avoid the fully sway of emotions.  Repose of a false heart.  Indignation.  Violence.  Sorrow.  A
serious quarrel.

3)     SWORDS

Design:  General:  ten Swords in one arrangement or another.  The Marseille Tarot shows eight curved

Swords, crossed;  two diagonal Swords, one crossing each set of four curved Swords.  Waite’s pack
shows a man lying face downward;  his back is pierced with ten standing Swords;  heavy, dark clouds fill
most of the sky, only a bit of sky above the mountains in the background still showing. Crowley’s shows
two Swords with hilts in the form of hourglasses, two with hilts in the form of Greek Crosses, two with
hilts of four-pointed Stars, one with a hilt with scales at the top, and one with a hilt having a Pentagram
and Crescent at the bottom;  many of the blades are broken;  the sigil for Sol is above, that for Gemini
below.  The New Tarot shows ten Blades, five above moving clockwise, five below moving
widdershins.  The Fantasy Showcase Tarot shows a little naked, sexless figure with great big paddle feet
and a belly-button from which three long hairs protrude, standing erect, which might be a mouse;  it
holds five Swords in its arms, the Swords pointing in all directions, holding none by the hilt;  four of the
Swords lie on the floor between or around its feet;  and one, point down, has come to rest with the
point in the being’s left foot;  the expression of the being clearly means “Oops!”

 
America’s Tarot:  Upright:  Ten guided missiles, their ballistic trails showing, which, having been
launched from pads on land, have curved around to come right back to their launching-point.  Soldiers
scurry about, looking panicked.  Reversed:  John F. Kennedy and Nikita Kruschev on two sides of a jagged
line representing telephone communication over great distance, each talking into a red phone; both
look extremely worried;  on the wall behind Kennedy is a map of Cuba showing five probable missile-
sites for Soviet nuclear weapons, and on that behind Kruschev is a map of Turkey, ditto.

Upright:   Entitled “Ruin.”  The Sun in Gemini.  The third decanate of Gemini, 20° 0’ 0” - 29° 59’ 59”
Gemini (about June 10 through June 19 of a given year).  Reasons run mad.  Soulless mechanism. Neo-
Skinnerian philosophy.  The logic of lunatics and (for the most part) philosophers.  Quantum
mechanics.  Reason divorced from reality.  The energy of Swords (Air) as a completely disruptive
force).  Hence tornadoes, hurricanes, other catastrophic manifestations of the power of
Air.  Ruin. Pain.  Desolation.  End of delusion in spiritual matters.  Disillusionment.  Desolation and ruin
as these apply to a whole community or other collective entity.  Warning that one is about to experience
a lethal situation and that one should turn back NOW;  one has not yet encountered that situation, and
escape is possible – the sooner the better.  False dawn.  Continued or worsening suffering.  The Sun is
esoteric Lord of Gemini, hence very strong here;  the “ruin” here can mean simply the “ruin” or end of
Spring, making way for the beginning of Summer.  Tears.  Jealousy.  Envy.  Loss.  Agony.  Tears, affliction,
grief, sorrow.  Uncertainty as to the nature of the enemy.  Results of karma, whether benefic or
malefic. Material limits.  “The proof is in the pudding.”  Results of an experiment, particularly those
which overturn established ideas, theories, and beliefs.  Destruction of dogmatic beliefs and
ideologically determined convictions.  Physical necessity.  Authority.  Official might and power.  Official
persons. Possessions may become a curse.  Not very beneficent for the parents of the Querent, or else
the Querent does not esteem his or her parents.  Sometimes death, but may mean a death which the
Querent observes.  Sadness.  Desolation.  Not especially a card a violent death.  Followed by the Ace and
King of Swords, imprisonment.  For a girl or wife, treason on the part of friends.

Reversed:  Lungs, breath, bronchi, breathing apparatus, diaphragm, sense of hearing, nerve fibers,
nervous system, oxygenation of blood, respiration, respiratory system, sense of taste, thoracic cavity,
thymus gland, sense of touch, trachea, memory, thought, idea, mind, all Third House meanings.  Mid-
June.  The worst is over.  Reason for hope.  Overthrow of evil forces.  A measure of success.  Courage to
rise again (i.e., to “get back on one’s horse and ride again”).  Looking for help from higher powers. The
beginning of harmony between evolved matter and the things of the mind.  Agreement.
Equilibrium. Understanding.  A party.  Illness of short duration (which, if infectious, also confers the
benefits of immunity to whatever caused the infection upon the sufferer);  an inoculation or
vaccination.  “Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger.”  The evening, in the
evening.  Benefit.  Profit.  Possible Temporary gain.  Passing success, monetary advantage.  The enemy is
uncertain, giving our side an advantage.  Due reward and honest profit.  Merited position.  Worldly
position and authority.  Learning from past errors. Advantage, profit, success, favor, but all of them
transient.  Power and authority.  Victory and consequent fortune for a soldier in war.

4)     COINS/DISCS/PENTACLES

Design:  Generally, ten Coins, Discs, or Pentacles in one arrangement or another.  The MarseilleTarot

shows ten coins arranged in two ‘X’ forms, one above the other;  each coin has a four-petaled flower at
its center.  Waite’s pack shows a patriarch seated before the gate of his estate;  near him are his dogs,
his children, and his grandchild;  ripe grapes and crescent Moons decorate this card;  at the left, behind
a pillar can be seen a hill and high mountains, perhaps a wilderness.  The Aquarian Tarot shows a man,
woman, and child entering the gate to a castle which stands on a high hill or mesa; Pentacles are
incorporated into the design of the gate.  Crowley’s pack shows ten Coins with Qaballistic designs upon
them, including the sigils for Mercury, a combination of the sigils for Mercury and Saturn, the Caduceus
formed from the three Hebrew “Mother” letters Aleph, Shin,  and Samekh, the Zodiacal Sign for Aries, an
eight-pointed Star, a Hexagram inscribed within a Hexagon, the Hebrew letter Beth, and the sigil for
Mercury combined with that for the setting Sun;  of the two central coins which complete the ten, one is
illegible, and the other contains the Hebrew for “Raphael,” Archangel of the East,Tiphareth, and Angel of
the Planet Mercury.  The New Tarot shows ten Stones arranged in two Pentagrams.  The Fantasy
Showcase Tarot shows a couple holding hands, standing in an archway within a great medieval keep;  in
the background are towers of the keep and the Sun, just sinking behind a wall;  a faceless figure in a
green cloak is in the foreground;  above is the Roman numeral “X” for 10.

America’s Tarot:  Center:  Ten silver Liberty-head dollars arranged to form two Pentagrams with
congruent centers such that together they form a ten-pointed Star.  Lines of light connect the Coins to
make the Stars.  Upright:  An American Indian community, rich, filled with people.  Tribal elders hold
council in the middle.  Children run at play among the dwellings, which could be either long-houses, as
of Pacific Northwest tribes (in which case there should be totem-poles among them), or one- or two-
story houses as of many settled tribes, teepees of the sort common to Plains Indians, etc.  A vast forest
fills the middle distance, and purple mountains and a sunset sky the background;  in the foreground are
indications of great natural wealth, e.g., a beaver-dam, birds flying, fertile meadows, etc.  Reversed:  A
Wheel of Fortune.  A man with empty pockets stands weeping on one side, a grinning woman with a full
purse on the other.

Upright:  Entitled “Wealth.”  Third decanate of Virgo, 20° 0’ 0” - 29° 59’ 59” Virgo (about September 13-
22 of a given year.  The manifest results of any successful Magickal Working.  Wealth, riches, material
prosperity.  The great and final solidification of Earth, completely expended and resulting in death.  A
hieroglyph of the cycle of regeneration.  Inheritance and its effects, for good or
ill. Ancestry.  Wills.  Dowries.  Success.  Agreement.  Equilibrium.  Satisfaction.  Complete joy.  The end of
a cycle.  Stable home.  Family life.  The house.  Assignations and conferences.  Money.  Peace. Amity.  A
mate.  Dwelling, habitation.  The family.  Great successes.  Economy.  Agriculture.  Music and painting.  A
beautiful voice.  Advantages in world affairs.  Possessions.  Domains, lands, or
property. Banking.  Insurance.  Art dealing and dealers.  Laziness.   Dull luxury.  Full midsummer of one’s
life. You cannot escape this good, ripe fruit of karma, or the fullness of Nature at Her
height.  Archives. Extraction.  Represents one’s house or dwelling, deriving its value from other cards.  A
notable event. The coming of Autumn.  Harvest.  Harvest celebrations.  The end of a Season.

Reversed:  Mid-September.  Abdominal cavity, bodily metabolism, digestive system overall, gall bladder,

pancreas, Solar plexus.  Diabetes.  The manifest results of any unsuccessful Working, or of one which has
gone seriously awry, with deadly impact on the Operator and/or those close to him/her.  A genetically-
caused illness.  Possible loss.  Gambling.  Dissipation.  Robbery.  Loss.  Uncertainty in the fortune.  Great
reverses.  Favorable chance.  “Enjoy it while you can.”  Chance.  Games of
hazard. Gift.  Dowry.  Pension. 

Pages

1)     WANDS

Design:  Generally, a young person holding a Rod, Wand, or Staff.  The Marseille Tarot shows a young

man who stands holding a club cut from a tree-branch.  Waite’s pack shows a young man wearing
clothing decorated with Salamanders who stands in a desert, holding a Wand.  The Aquarian
Tarot shows a young man wearing a hat decorated with a flower in bud, holding a flowering Rod,
standing before a swamp filled with cat-tails (bulrushes).  Crowley’s pack shows a princess drawn
upward with a leopard past an altar upon which a sacrifice burns;  she carries in her left hand a Wand
tipped with a Solar emblem, and her hair forms the sigil for Leo.  The New Tarot shows the Serpent Page,
a snake, a spilled cauldron, a zebra, and the sigil for Sagittarius.  The Fantasy Showcase Tarotshows a
young man bearing a long staff (bo, about 6’ long) in his right hand, standing in front of a large oval
opening in a red wall;  through the opening, a lake within a cavern or canyon can be seen in which swans
paddle;  an owl flies by on his right;  quail stand by his feet, and his left foot is upon a rock.

American Tarot:  A Polynesian girl dressed as one of the alii nui, holding an upright Wand or Rod in her
left hand, standing at the beginning of a field of cooled, solidified lava that stretches upward along the
flanks of a great volcano;  she faces away from the volcano, toward a village, as if proclaiming something
to them.  The ghostly figure of Madame Pele can be seen hovering above the volcano’s caldera.  Molten
lava flows gently over the edge of the caldera and begins to run down the volcano’s flanks.

Upright meaning:  Entitled “The Princess of the Shining Flame, the Rose of the Palace of Fire.” Rules the
quadrant of the globe which includes the Pacific Rim and everything within it, the “Ring of Fire” formed
by the volcanoes generated by the vast subduction zones at the edges of the continents surrounding the
Pacific Ocean, extending from pole to pole.  The Earthy part of Fire.  The dance of the virgin priestess of
the Lords of Fire;  she attends upon an altar ornamented with ram’s heads which symbolize the Fires of
Spring.  Brilliance.  Daring.  Vigor.  Energy.  The impression of beauty.  Sudden, Violent, implacable,
ambitious, aspiring, patient only when it is a matter of revenge.  A young woman;  a girl.  Girl with fair
hair, blue/hazel/gray eyes, and dark or tan skin.  A dark young man.  A
messenger. Resource.  Enthusiasm.  Beauty.  Force.  Sudden in anger or in love.  Desire for
power.  Enthusiasm. Earth of Fire, Princess and Empress of the Salamanders.  Throne of the Ace of
Wands.  Courage. Volatile in love and anger.  Man faced by difficulty becoming aware of his forces and
who can prevail or stagnate according to his abilities.  Hard work with chance of success.  A stranger of
good character. Good news.  Pleasure.  Satisfaction.  A dark child.  A friend.  A message from a near
relation.  A brother or sibling.  A schoolmate.  A younger man on an errand.  News.  Telegraph,
telephone, radio, telepathy;  in general, a communication of important information.  Helpful influences
in general.  Helpful people.  Dustmen, chimney-sweeps.  He is unknown but faithful, and his tidings are
strange.  Faithful.  A lover.  An envoy.  A postman.  Beside a King, a Knight, or Trump I, The Magus,  he
will bear favorable testimony concerning him.  A dangerous rival if followed by the Page of Cups.  The
chief qualities of Wands.  May signify intelligence running in a family.

Reversed:  The Pacific Ocean;  that part of the Japanese islands East of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the
Pacific (tectonic) Plate;  the Hawaiian Islands;  all areas settled by the Polynesians and Micronesians;  the
extreme Western portions of the United States of America;  the extreme Eastern portions of Siberia,
including the Kamchatka peninsula;  everything between 90° West longitude and 180° West
longitude.  Someone who is superficial, theatrical, shallow, cruel, faithless, or domineering. Betrayal of
trust.  An interpreter who gives a false interpretation.  Bearer of scandal, disinformation, malicious
gossip, or slander.  Slander, misleading information, gossip, scandal, disinformation.  A libeler, libel.  A
saboteur, a counterintelligence agent.  Someone who may break your heart.  A tease.  A flirt.  A young
person who plays with the hearts of others.  Powerlessness yielding in the face of
effort.  News. Displeasure.  Chagrin.  Worry.  Anecdotes.  Jokes.  Announcements.  Evil news.  Indecision,
and the instability which accompanies it.

2)       CUPS
 

Design:  Generally, a young person holding a Cup or Chalice.  The Marseille Tarot shows a young man

carrying an ornate Chalice in his right hand;  his hat droops from his left hand.  Waite’s pack shows a
page standing beside the sea, holding a Cup from which a fish is jumping.  Crowley’s pack shows the
Princess of Cups holding a giant Cup in the form of a shell in which seems to be a tortoise;  behind her is
a swan, and next to her a fish;  her gown is decorated with diamond-shapes.  The New Tarot shows the
Page of Pears, a wreath of white roses in a circle;  above is an inverted Cup from which light issues;  in
the center are a pear, a mandolin, a cup of blood, and the inverted stalk of a green plant;  below are the
sigils for the waxing and waning Moons (which also suggest the sigil of Pisces).

America’s Tarot:  An American Indian girl standing on the shore of a great lake or ocean.  She holds a
beautifully worked and painted vase or pot (the style could be from any American Indian people who
have had a long history of making and decorating pottery).  A salmon (for a lake) or whale (for the
ocean) broaches joyfully from the ocean.  The girl looks about her with joy and wonder.

Upright: Entitled “The Princess of the Waters, the Lotus of the Palace of the Floods.”  Rules that
quadrant of the globe that includes all but the Westernmost edge of North America and all of Central
and South America.  Princess of the Waters and Lotus of the Palace of the Floods.  Princess and Empress
of Nymphs and Undines.  Throne of the Ace of Cups.  Represents the faculty of crystallization, the power
of Water to give substance to idea, to support life, and to form the basis of a chemical compound.  She is
infinitely gracious, all sweetness, all voluptuousness, gentleness, kindness, and tenderness;  all these are
part of her character.  She lives in the world of romance, in the perpetual dream of rapture.  A
dependent person, but unsurpassed as a helpmeet.  The power of Water to dissolve virtually
anything;  its chemical and biochemical qualities.  Fair-haired, blue/hazel/gray-eyed, fair-skinned young
person.  Fair, studious
youth.  Reflection.  News.  Sweetness.  Poetry.  Gentleness.  Kindness. Imagination.  Dreaminess.  Dream
s.  Can be roused to courage.  Spiritual and moral riches obtained as a reward and giving full
satisfaction.  Work rewarded and giving wealth.  A sensitive youngster.  A bachelor or spinster dreaming
of pleasure.  Confidence.  Probity.  Discretion.  Integrity.  A messenger. Birth.  Friendly message, good
news.  A proposal of marriage or love affair.  Solicitation.  Change of relations and
sympathies.  Praise.  Persuasion.  A young person impelled to render service to the Querent, with whom
the Querent will be connected.  A studious
youth.  Messages.  Application. Reflection.  Meditation.  Business-oriented mind.  A good omen.  A
young man unfortunate in love.

Reversed: Generally, the continents of North and South America;  in particular, the United States of
America;  0° - 90° West longitude.  Indolence.  Selfish.  Luxurious.  Any happiness gained from wealth or
affection is elusive.  A flatterer, flattery.  Deception.  Artifice.  A possibility that someone will try to
seduce the Querent;  a seducer.  Someone who is very much open to being influenced by sex or the
promise of it.  Taste.  Inclination.  Attachment.  Seduction.  Obstacles of all kinds.  A heartbreaker.

3)     SWORDS

Design:  Generally, a young person bearing a Sword. The Marseille Tarot shows a young man resting a
sword over his left shoulder.  Waite’s pack shows a young man standing on a windy hill, brandishing a
Sword.  Crowley’s shows The Princess of Swords, brandishing a Sword that is held point downward, from
a throne set in the middle of storm clouds.  The New Tarot shows the Page of Blades, a half light/half
dark face or mask, a horn, a chalice filled to overflowing with blood, a sword, and a victor’s
wreath;  below is the sigil for Gemini.  The Fantasy Showcase Tarot shows Jimi Hendrix, bearing a silver
guitar;  he is dressed in a close-fitting bright green blouse with a scoop neck and hallucinogen purple
trousers, and wears brown boots;  he dances in the midst of a sandy desert from which erupt countless
protrusions of rock, and in which no other living being exists.

America’s Tarot:  A girl wearing dress normal to a young woman from Europe (ethnic costume for
various Eastern European countries, the Netherlands, or other could be used), Africa (ethnic costume for
various African countries), or the Near East (ethnic costume for Turkey or other Near Eastern
country). She is sitting at a desk, writing in a notebook or diary;  books lie scattered about the desk.  She
is dreaming of being a dashing swordswoman in a Sword-&-Sorcery epic.

Upright:  Entitled “The Princess of the Rushing Winds, the Lotus of the Palace of Air.”  Rules that
quadrant of the globe that includes Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.  Earth of Air.  Princess and
Empress of the Sylphs and Faeries.  She represents the fixation of the volatile.  She brings about the
materialization of idea.  Her character is stern and vengeful, her logic destructive.  She is firm and
aggressive, and possesses great practical wisdom, subtlety in material things, and cleverness in
managing practical affairs, especially controversial ones.  Wisdom, strength, acuity, subtlety in material
things. Grace, dexterity.  A young person with brown hair and brown eyes.  A page in the diplomatic
service. A page in a legislative assembly.  Possible great understanding or knowledge about diplomacy,
messages, military intelligence, or espionage.  Graceful, dexterous.  A defensive and agile intellect
triumphing without violence over matter.  A fencer.  Defense against fate.  A friend who gives aid in time
of need.  Overseeing.  Authority.  That which is unforeseen.  Vigilance.  Support.  A child.  The results of
study and examination.  A test.  Policeman.  Detective.  Sudden events or
effects.  Surprises.   Authority.  Secret Service.  Spying, spies.  What is unforeseen.  A state of
unprepared.  Illness. Astonishing news.

Reversed:  0°-90° East longitude.  Incoherent.  Displays low cunning.  Someone who exhibits paranoid

schizophrenia.  Someone who is devious, prying, vindictive, or treacherous.  Frivolous.  An
imposter.  Likelihood of exposure.  Frivolity.  Frivolousness.  Illness, especially of the mind.  Watch out
for the unforeseen.  Oppression by the material.  Powerlessness in the face of strong forces.  A spy.  A
rival.  Deceit.  An enemy.  Bad news.  Delay.  Dilettante.  The evil side of authority, supervision, secret
service, or spying.  Someone who will pry into the Querent’s secrets.

4)     COINS/DISCS/PENTACLES

Design:  Generally, a young person holding up a Coin, Disk, or Pentacle.  Waite’s pack shows a young
man standing in a field of flowers, holding up a pentacle.  Crowley’s shows the Princess of Discs as a
Germanic princess wearing a ram’s-head crown;  her left hand rests on a pentacle formed by combining
a lotus and the symbol for the Tao, and it holds a spear with a point made of a diamond, oriented point
down, shedding light on the earth near it.  The New Tarot version of this card is reminiscent of some
American Indian art;  it has the Zodiacal sigil for Virgo at the bottom.  The Fantasy Showcase Tarot shows
a young woman dressed in medieval costume, of gentle aspect, staring wistfully upward at a Pentacle in
the form of a Star within a circle which may represent a real Star or some other heavenly body.

America’s Tarot:  A young woman wearing ethnic costume from a culture in the Far East or Australia,
holding up a silver Liberty-headed dollar, at which she looks as if it were a crystal ball and she were a
fortune-teller.  She is from a culture either in the Far East or Australia.  If an Australian aborigine, she
stands in the Great Outback;  if from the Far East, she is in a setting containing buildings and other things
pertinent to her culture, e.g., temples, roads, fields of crops, etc.

Upright:  Entitled “The Princess of the Echoing Hills, the Lotus of the Palace of the Earth.”  Rules a
quadrant of the Earth which includes the Far East, Australia, New Zealand, and Antarctica.  Rose of the
Palace of the Earth.  Earth of Earth.  Princess and Empress of the Gnomes.  Throne of the Ace of
Pentacles.  Womanhood in its ultimate projection.  Thrift, diligence, honor, administrative sense,
business acumen.  Generous, kind, diligent, benevolent, careful, courageous, preserving, pitiful.  A young
person with black hair and eyes;  a swarthy, dark brown, or black complexion;  possibly curly or kinky
hair. Material work to ensure one’s survival.  Disinterested work bringing riches as a reward.  Economy,
order, rule, management.  A disciple, student, messenger, or newsagent.  Liberal treatment of the
Querent.  A director, bookkeeper, assistant, editor.  Honorable
mention.  Application.  Study. Scholarship (in both senses).  Reflection.  The bringer of
messages.  Rule.  Management.  A young officer or soldier.

Reversed:  90°-180° East longitude.  Asia East of the longitude of Hiroshima, Japan.  Australia. Indo-

China.  China.  Japan.  Antarctica.  Bewildering inconsistency.  Idleness, stupidity, humorlessness, literal-
mindedness, over-cautiousness, hypercritical nature, a tendency toward pride and pride in
power. Wasteful, prodigal.  Tentative advance.  Mediocre results.  A crass young materialist.  Dull
person. Avarice and greed.  Profusion, waste, dissipation.  A meeting, committee, or board of directors
(with the implicit understanding that “a camel is a horse put together by a committee;  an elephant is a
mouse built to government specs”).  A libertine, libertinism.  Unfavorable news.  Luxury.  Unfavorable
news. Degradation.  Pillage.

c.       The interrelationships between the Sephirah and the cards of the Tarot

The Tens represent Malkuth, the final crystallization of that which was first conceived in Kether, the
Spirit enthroned in Matter.  Its Queen-Scale colors are the browns, i.e., various combinations of all three
primary and/or secondary colors in varying proportions.  The reasons for this are that (a) brown is the
color of Earth, associated with this Sephirah, and (b) brown is the result of combining the Queen-scale
colors for all the otherSephiroth below the Abyss.  The Tens embody the Four Elements as well as the
physical globe of the Earth; because of the first, they therefore also represent the Quintessence,
T’ao, chi, or Spirit (Life), which is the product of the combination of four lesser Elements.

The Ten of Wands, “Oppression,” represents Saturn in Sagittarius.  Saturn is an esoteric Lord of

Sagittarius, at His very strongest in that Sign, which represents the philosopher and the Godly.  Hence
this card represents the force or weight of philosophy at its most powerful, i.e., in the form of religious
or political dogma and ideology.  This card represents the complete internalization of the ruler, the
Superego, which can be a horrible tyrant.

The Ten of Cups, “Satiety,” represents Mars in Pisces.  Mars falls in Pisces, and many of His worst
attributes appear in that Sign or in the Twelfth House, ruled by Pisces.  On the negative side, meanings
of this card include “Be careful what you pray for – you might get it” and “Marry in haste, repent at
leisure.”  It represents not just the satisfaction of a drive or desire, but also excessive zeal in pursuit of
that satisfaction, until one is sickened and repelled by the very thing which formerly one desired – “the
morning after the night before.”
The Ten of Swords, “Ruin,” represents Sol in Gemini, of which Sol is esoteric Lord.  This is the crowning
moment of the Idea, its ultimate apotheosis.  It also represents the process of “testing to destruction,”
pushing the envelope until the envelope ruptures, applying a theory, an idea, or a method
indiscriminately and without consideration of its appropriateness to every possible situation until that
application proves disastrous.  It represents the overturning of theory, the disproving of the Null
Hypothesis, scientific and philosophical revolution.  Because Sol is at His strongest in this Sign, it
represents the tremendous Solar energy that brings about revolutionary breakthroughs in science and
philosophy as well as the tremendous changes that are brought about in the world because of them.

Finally, the Ten of Discs, Coins, or Pentacles represents Mercury in Virgo, of which Mercury is the
traditional Lord.  It represents the competent and consistent application of the force of intellect and
experience to the solution of practical problems and management of practical situations, the ultimate
result of which, all other things being equal, is wealth, prosperity, and prospering families and
communities.  It represents harvest-time and all the skills which go toward accounting for the harvest
and reckoning its worth, the work of the bookkeeper, analyst, accountant, and general business
manager.

The Pages of the Tarot represent the four major quadrants of the physical globe, and the peoples who
live therein.  Roughly, these are the Pacific Basin and the “Ring of Fire” that circles it, the Pacific Rim
(Wands/Fire), whose peoples are Polynesians, Melanesians, and the most future-oriented people living
in the countries surrounding or in the Pacific Ocean;  North and South America (Cups/Water), whose
peoples include the original American Indians, Eskimos, Aleuts, and South American native peoples as
well as the descendants of European and Far Eastern peoples who also colonized them later on;  Europe,
Africa, and the Near East (Swords/Air) and their peoples;  and the Far East, Australia, and Antarctica
(Discs or Swords or Pentacles/Earth), whose peoples include the Chinese, Japanese, Australian
aborigines, European settlers in Australia, Indonesia, etc., as well as scientists and other personnel from
all over the world who are stationed in Antarctica.

The Princesses, Empresses, or Pages represent the final  h of  h w h y.  They symbolize the ultimate issue
of the original influence radiated from Kether in its completion, crystallization, or materialization, as well
as the counter-balancing and reabsorption of that energy or influence in Kether after making its way
back up the Tree of Life again from Malkuth.  They represent the great silence and complete equilibrium
into which all things return, which we experience as Nibbana, achieved through repeated Samadhi.  As
such, they represent that which is at the same time permanent and nonexistent.  In Crowley’s words,
they are an “audit of the equation 0 = 2.”*

*Crowley, The Book of Thoth, op. cit., p. 150.

 
 

Because Malkuth is linked to Kether, there is a primordial link between the Pages/Empresses/Princesses,

which are allied with Malkuth, and the Aces, allied with Kether.  More:  from Malkuth of one Tree of Life
springs Kether of a new one, so that the Pages represent new beginnings, new enterprises, and the
tremendous energy that accompanies these.

The Pages also represent the end-points of processes, their equilibrium condition.  Hence the Pages of
Wands represents thermodynamic equilibrium;  the Pages of Cups represents liquids at their most
quiescent and still;  the Page of Air represents climatic patterns, relatively permanent meteorological
conditions and factors in a given region;  and the Page of Earth represents the Earth itself and all that
dwell upon Her, from mountains, oceans, and great chasms in the Earth to human beings, elephants,
sequoias, bacteria, toxic tubeworms, “all creatures who on Earth do dwell”:

All things bright and beautiful,

All things great and small,

All things wise and wonderful –

The Lord God made them all.

Thus in the world’s pantheons the Page of Wands would be associated with, e.g., Kali;  the Page of Cups
with, e.g., Undine or the Nymphs;  the Page of Air with Pallas Athena Medusa or Maîtresse Ezeli of
Haiti;  and the Page of Discs/Coins/Pentacles with Persephone, or at any rate with Koré (Her name
before Her marriage to Hades)

C.    Relationship of the Court Cards to the Ten  Sephiroth and the Four Worlds of Qaballah

        In sections B.2, B.3, B.6, and B.10, above, the Court Cards have been described and interpretations
given for them.  Here, we will go into more detail concerning their meanings and assignments.

The four Knights may be associated with Sephirah 2, the Father;  the four Queens
with Sephirah 3, Binah, the Mother;  the four Kings with Sephirah 6, Tiphareth, the Son;  and the four
Pages with Sephirah 10, Malkuth, the Daughter.  (See also Lesson V, Section C.2.)  It is not within the
scope of this course to go very far into explaining many of these associations, but if you have questions
about the Court Cards that aren’t covered in class, ask the teacher as well as reading the books
suggested in the bibliography that comes with this course and those listed in their bibliographies and
notes.
        In the meantime, the following chart may be helpful:

Suit Fire Water Air Earth

Fire/Wands Knight of Wands Queen of Wands King of Wands Page of Wands

Water/Cups Knight of Cups Queen of Cups King of Cups Page of Cups

Air/Swords Knight of Swords Queen of King of Swords Page of Swords

Swords

Earth/Discs Knight of Discs Queen of Discs King of Discs Page of Discs

In the table above, “Staves” or “Clubs” may be substituted for “Wands”;  “Chalices” or “Hearts” may be
substituted for “Cups”; “Spades” may be used in place of “Swords”;  and “Pentacles,” “Coins,” or
“Diamonds” may be used in place of “Discs.”  Also, in the system designed by Aleister Crowley for his
own Tarot pack, “Prince” is substituted for “King” and “Princess” for “Page.”  In Crowley’s Liber 777,
“King” is substituted for “Knight,” “Emperor” for “King,” and “Empress” for “Page.”

These are the four Elemental expressions of any given Element, its projection into the Four Worlds of
Being, which is discussed below and following lessons.  Each type of Court Card – Knight, Queen, King, or
Page – is associated with an Element:  Knights with Fire, Queens with Water, Kings with air, and Pages
with Earth.  Likewise, each Suit represents an Element, as we have already discussed:  Wands, Staves, or
Clubs represent Fire;  Cups, Chalices, or Hearts represent Water;  Swords or Spades represent Air;  and
Discs, Coins, Pentacles, or Diamonds represent Earth.  So, for example, we may represent the Fiery
expression of Water as the Knight of Cups, since Knights represent the Fiery expression of any given
Element, while Cups represent the Element Water itself.  Similarly, Earth of Air would be the Page of
Swords, Water of Water would be the Queen of Cups, etc.  Just as Malkuth is the soul of Earth, having
Fiery, Watery, Airy and Earthy expressions – respectively, e.g., active volcanoes and sunlight;  oceans,
rivers, lakes, etc.;  the atmosphere;  and the land-masses of our Planet – so it is with all other
Elements.  One use of the Court Cards is to illustrate the four Aspects of each of the four Elements in
symbolic form in just this way.

        Another set of associations may be made between the types of Court Cards and the three-fold
division of the Signs of the Zodiac into Cardinal, Fixed, and Mutable Signs, as well as a similar one
concerning the division of the Houses of the Horoscope into Angular (1, 4, 7, and 10), Succeedent (2, 5,
8, and 11), and Cadent (3, 6, 9, and 12) Houses.  Knights are assigned to the Mutable Signs and Cadent
Houses, Queens to the Cardinal Signs and Angular Houses, and Kings to the Fixed or Cherubic Signs and
the Succeedent Houses.  On the other hand, Wands are associated with Fiery Signs and the Houses of
Life (Houses 1, 5, and 9), Cups with Watery Signs and the Houses of Endings (4, 8, and 12), Swords with
Airy Signs and the Houses of Relationships (3, 7, and 11), and Discs/Coins/Pentacles with the Earthy
Signs and Houses of Substance (2, 6, and 10).  This gives the following system of associations:

Suit Queen King Knight

Wands Aries (1) Leo (5) Sagittarius (9)

Cups Cancer (4) Scorpio (8) Pisces (12)

Swords Libra (7) Aquarius (11) Gemini (3)

Discs Capricorn (10) Taurus (2) Virgo (6)

The Pages are not left out;  they have their own system of associations with the four Quadrants of the
physical Planet:

Suit Degrees from Greenwich Continents/Plates/Oceans

Wands 180°-90° West The Pacific Ocean, including

Japan, Siberia, and the rest of
the far Eastern portion of
Asia, California, Polynesia,
Melanesia, and
Micronesia.  According to
Crowley, rules Asia and one
Quadrant of the Heavens
around the North Pole.*

Cups 90°-0° West North and South America,

minus portions of North
America on the Pacific Plate,
such as Southern
California. Also includes the
Atlantic Ocean.  According to
Crowley, rules the Pacific
 Ocean and another Quadrant
of the Heavens around the
North Pole.*

Swords 0°-90° East Includes Europe, Africa, Near

East, Russia, the
Mediterranean Ocean, the
Arctic, and related
areas.  According to Crowley,
rules the Americas and a third
Quadrant of the Heavens
around the North Pole.*

Discs 90°-180° East The Far East, including India,

the Indian Ocean, China,
Tibet, Mongolia, and other
portions of the Far East, as
well as Australia, New
Zealand, and
Antarctica.  According to
Crowley, rules Europe and
Africa and a fourth Quadrant
of the Heavens around the
North Pole.*

*See Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth (New York:  Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1973), pp. 177, 282.

D.      The Four Worlds

1.  Look over the notes in the Syllabus that refer to Lesson II, Section B.

 
2.  Another viewpoint of the Tree of Life concerns what are called the Four Worlds. It concerns what are
called the Four Worlds.  These are metaphysical regions of both mind and matter, for each state of
consciousness has its own vehicle, a grade of substance appropriate to it.  These worlds may be analyzed
from two distinct points of view.  The first places a Tree in each of the four worlds, thus yielding
forty Sephiroth in all (i.e., 4 x 10 = 40).  The first of the four Worlds is the Archetypal World, Olam
Atziluth, in which the primordial archetypes or emanations are developed in the form of a Tree of
Life.  This Archetypal Tree of Life also represents a human form, which is named Adam Kadmon, the
Heavenly Man, in the Book of  Splendor.    This being contains within itself all souls, spirits, and
intelligences in every part of the cosmos.  It is the Universal Soul, the divine parent and progenitor of all
others.  This soul is the Divine Man, the World-Soul, in the life of which every individual being and
separate consciousness participates.

The totality of the Sephiroth in Olam Atziluth, the Archetypal World, occupies the highest plane of
spiritual consciousness, the first appearance of awareness out of the AinSoph.  As the processes of
evolution proceed, Adam Kadmon gradually projects itself further into matter, becoming ever re denser,
its unity being split up, projected into many facets, forming the Creative World, Olam Briah.  In this
world, the plan contained in the creative imagination of the Macroprosopos is worked upon still further,
the separate sparks or ideas being clothed with that condition of fine substance appropriate to that
sphere.  Here, too, a complete Tree of Life is developed by means of reflection.

From the Creative World, the Tree of Life is projected onto a third plane, that of the Formative
World, Olam Yetsirah. Here, the imaginative ideas of the Logos, the spiritual monads or Yods already
clothed in the subtle mental substance of the Creative World, are formed into definite coherent entities,
the Astral models which give rise to, or serve as the stable foundations of the physical world.

The Physical World, Olam Assiah, is the fourth and last plane.  As the crystallized projection of the
Formative World, it is the summarization and concrete representation of all the higher worlds.

The formula of Tetragrammaton is also applied to the Four Worlds and the primordial four Elements,
Fire, Water, Air, and Earth.  To the Archetypal World the letter y (Yod) is given.  Thus the Archetypal
World is the Father, the all-begetter, the all-devourer of the worlds.  The Yod also represents the
element Fire, which manifests the fierce, active, spiritual* nature of the Father.

The first  h (Heh) of the Tetragrammaton is associated with the Creative World with which the Element
Water, which is receptive and passive, is associated.  This plane represents the Mother who, before the
Son can be born, awaits the creative energy and the influx of divine life from the Father.**

The Formative World is assigned to the letter w (Vav), the Son.  Like the Father, the Son is active, male,
and energetic.  Thus the Element Air is attributed to it.†

Finally, completing the divine name, is the second h (Heh).  This letter is similar to the Mother, the
first Heh, passive and inert, receiving whatever influences are poured into her.  She is called the
Daughter, and represents the Physical World, the synthesis of all the worlds.‡
In the second method of analysis, a single Tree of Life is used.  Kether, the Crown, is the realm of the
Logos, the Archetypal World.  The second and third Sephiroth, the Supernal Father and Mother,
constitute the Creative World, receiving and carrying out the divine imagination.  The third plane, the
Formative World, the Astral plane proper, comprises the next six Sephiroth, in which all is prepared for
visible manifestation. Finally, Malkuth, the Kingdom, is the Physical World.  All the attributions following
the first description of the Four Worlds apply to this second method, with one exception, that they are
all arranged on one Tree of Life, rather than four. 53

*I.e., willful, of the Will or True Will, which is the origin of all Creation.  The Will or Spirit is assigned to
Fire, which is Hot and Dry.

**Water is Cold and Wet, and is associated with Creativity and reproduction.

†Air is Hot and Moist, and is associated with the Intellect.

‡Earth is Cold and Dry, and is associated with manifest physical reality, the world and all in it.

        Clearly the 40 cards of the Lower Arcana of traditional Tarot have a perfect bijective
correspondence with the 40 Sephiroth of the Four Trees which Regardie gives as the first method of
mapping the Four Worlds.

        Also, the components of the Tree of Life may also be classified and named as follows, with respect
to the Microprosopos:

Kether, the first Sephirah, represents Spirit, eternal, supreme, that has never been born and will never
die, which persists throughout all the passing ages, “world without end, amen.”  Called Yechidah, “the
Only One,” it is a spiritually sensitive point of consciousness, indivisible and supreme, the center from
which comes all the energy and force of the individual.  The whole individual is one spirit, one eternal
center of consciousness;  all other principles are only variations of its activities, enclosing sheaths of its
own substance, the spirit and the body being just two facets of one and the same thing.  The Monad is
like a mirror;  though itself unchanging, it reflects the harmony of all other Monads with who, in the
body of Adam Kadmon, it is in inalienable congress.  Its direct vehicles are the powers
of Chokmah and Binah the two manifested poles of the creative tool which it employs.  Yet not only are
they instruments, but also the highest aspects of the activity of the spiritual being whose holy light is
infinite and eternal.  In mortal being, these two Sephiroth are represented by the
principles Chiah andNeschamah, respectively the Will and the Spiritual Soul whose nature is
intuition. Existing on the creative plane, reflecting the influences radiated from the Divine Self in the
Archetypal World, together with the Monad the Will and the Soul constitute the imperishable,
unchanging Self. This trinity of Sephiroth collectively form a metaphysical unity which is the Inner God,
the Creator in the individual life, the artist and the poet, the Genius whose ideal creations are projected
from its own divine essence into the quotidian consciousness of its immediate vehicle, the individual
mortal.

Chiah is the Will, the first creative vehicle of the Monad.  Its activity is wisdom and discrimination.  It is
also connected with the “coiled serpent splendor,” Kundalini.  Just asChiah is the active energetic
creative power, and since in practical Magick the Wand is the ceremonial instrument of creation, so the
Wand is the true symbol of the Spiritual Will, one, upright, and towering to the heavens, a mighty and
irresistible creative power.

Neschamah, which is in opposition to Chiah on the Tree of Life,* is feminine and passive, representing
the true spiritual vision of Intuition or Imagination.  Like the Chalice on the altar it is always open to
receive the dictates and commands issuing from Ketherand Chokmah.  With it is also associated the
spiritualized imagination, called Kriyasakti, which, together with the Will, is the great power utilized in
the performance of ritual Magick.  These three principles, Yechidah, Chiah,  and Neschamah,  like the
three Supernal Sephiroth of which they are the projections into the Microcosm, lie above the Abyss,
reflecting themselves downward into the phenomenal universe of human consciousness, ruled over by
the human soul with the lower will, memory, and imagination.  But while these last do exist below the
Abyss, their spiritual progenitors exist above the Abyss, not subject to the limitations and restrictions
which the lower mind and normal conditions of mortal existence generally impose.

As the Supernal Sephiroth and the cosmic Essences project themselves into denser forms and less subtle
forms of matter, so also do the mortal Sephiroth in obedience, to the law of the Macrocosm.  Below the
Abyss, the next five Sephiroth are named Ruach, the Mortal Soul, a composite principle of Reason, Will,
Imagination, Memory and Emotion centered in Tiphareth, the Sephirah of Harmony.  It is Ruach which is
the created vehicle of the Real Self, a mechanism formed as a means of acquiring contact with the
outside world.  It is in Ruach that self-consciousness is centered, although it is true that this perceptual
mechanism, initially created to be just a tool of the Self, usurps the power of That which gave it birth,
setting itself on a pedestal in the form of the Ego, as that which supposedly has real power, insight, will,
and the ability to solve the problems of life.  This Ruach, calling itself ‘I,’ changing from moment to
moment as time passes by, agitated and disturbed by the constant ebb and flow of ever-changing
thoughts and emotions, is exactly the one thing which is not ‘I.’  Nothing more than a vehicle, it has
assumed the prerogative of a separate existence, divorcing itself from its own divine Lord, the Self which
alone has given it life and being.  In the practice of ceremonial Magick it is this lower self, the empirical
ego, which must be offered up in sacrifice to the Holy Guardian Angel.

*That is, Neschamah is associated with Malkuth, at the base of the Tree of Life, whereas Chiah is
associated with Kether, its Crown.

The ninth Sephirah, Yesod, is the Foundation of the lower self.  Called Nephesch, it is the lunar

vegetative and instinctual principle which is concerned solely with the continuation of mortal
existence.  This instinctive soul is at once and the same time a form of energy and a malleable
substance, the quantum-mechanical totality of the vital processes of biological existence as well as the
invisible Astral mold upon which physical atoms arrange themselves to form the physical body.  As a
substantive principle, it forms the Astral body, the plastic double built of Astral substance which serves
as the template for the design of the physical body.  Nourished by the Astral Light, upon which it draws
for nourishment in exactly the same way that the physical body is nourished by the produce and
energies of the Earth, it resembles the Unconscious – though it possesses neither a mind nor an
intelligence of its own – in that every thought that we think, every emotion we feel, every action we
carry out, leaves an indelible impress or memory upon that substance, thus preserving in the Astral body
the indelible record of our entire lives and every moment in them.  Most of the characteristics attributed
by psychoanalysts to the Unconscious are possessed by Nephesch, or at least that aspect of it concerned
with the instincts, drives, and impulses, which acts as an automatic storehouse of sensations and
impressions, in the same way that the term “Collective Unconscious” may be appropriately applied to
the Astral Light.  All the fundamental instincts of a man, all his the primordial, root impulses, arise out
of Yesod, the Foundation from which all the energy of life comes.

All these principles obtain are aspects of the functioning of all living organisms on the physical plane,
the Guph attributed to the tenth and last Sephirah, Malkuth, the Kingdom, the seat of every force and
function of all the subtle planes of nature, and every spiritual aspect of mortal being.  In this sense, the
human body is truly the Temple of the Holy Ghost. 54

E.       The new, English-language 16-Sephiroth Qaballah:  New Suits, New Persons

 
1:  General Theory and Applications of the Art and Science of the Tarot

        A traditional Tarot pack includes three sub-packs.

        The first of these comprises the twenty-two Major Arcana, which correspond to the letters of the
Hebrew alphabet and the twenty-two traditional Atua of the Tree of Life.

        The second sub-pack consists of forty Minor Arcana or “small” cards.  This sub-pack is further sub-
divided one way into four Suits, each one of which contains ten cards, numbered Ace through Ten, and
the other into ten sub-sets of cards, each containing four cards all bearing the same denomination.  Each
Suit corresponds to one of the traditional four Pythagorean Elements or Modes of existence, usually
Wands, for Fire;  Cups, for Water;  Swords, for Air;  and Coins, for Earth.*  Each numbered card in a Suit
corresponds to one of the traditional ten Sephiroth  of the Tree of Life;  in addition, the Ace corresponds
to the “Root of the Power” of the Element associated with that Suit, while the Deuce through the Ten
correspond to the nine decanates or thirds of the astrological  Signs associated with that Element, Deuce
through Four associated with the three decanates of the Cardinal Sign of that Element, the Five through
Seven with the Fixed or Cherubic Sign of that Element, and the Eight through Ten with the Mutable Sign
of that Element.

*In many packs, the Suit corresponding to Earth may be symbolized as Discs, Coins, Plates, or Pentacles
(Pentagrams on circular shields).  Also, sometimes Swords are assigned to Fire and Wands or Staves to
Air.

        Finally, the third sub-pack consists of sixteen Court Cards.  This set of cards is further subdivided
one way into the four Suits of the Lower Arcana, in the same way that the second sub-pack is, and the
other way into a set of four Persons, usually the Knight, Queen, King, and Page of the Suit.*  These
Persons correspond to two successive generations (parents and children), two reproductive modes
(female and male), and one mode of sexual preference (straight) of the nuclear family, a sociobiological
unit which should be of standard use only for geneticists, stock-breeders, and agronomists but which
unfortunately all too often describes the pitifully gutted remains of the extended family which modern
industrial society is proud to herald as the refuge of the Godly (one wonders:  which God?).

 
*In Crowley’s Book of Thoth pack, these are respectively the Knight, Queen, Prince, and Princess.

        This structure of the traditional Tarot pack can be generalized as follows:

(a) A sub-pack consisting of A cards, where A is the order (number of components) of the alphabet of
the written language of the culture for which this pack is to be produced.  These cards will correspond to
the components of that alphabet*;  in turn, both will correspond to the Atua of the generalized version
of the Tree of Life of the Qaballah of that culture, the number and nature of which will of course depend
upon the number ofSephiroth in that version of the Tree (see the previous chapter for a detailed analysis
of Qaballim generalized from the traditional one, in particular the 16-Sephiroth English-language
Qaballah).

*This alphabet may not necessarily be in a visual format.  It could instead, for example, be in an auditory
one, written magnetically on tape or recorded on CD by a laser, in which case its “letters” would be
phonemes or other basic auditory units.  Or it could be an olfactory alphabet, its components different
scents, coded as “scratch-’n’-sniff” spots on cloth or paper;  or a tactile one, coded in terms of textures
recorded on some sort of hard medium, or couched in any other possible sensory modality, on a variety
of recording media.

(b)  A set of m = p x r Lower Arcana, where m, r and     p are positive integers.  These are further sub-
divided into

(1) p sub-sets of r cards each.  The r cards in each of the p sub-sets are numbered Ace (1) through r.
where r is both the number of Sephiroth in the Tree of Life of the Qaballah to which this Tarot refers,
and the number-base of the culture which uses that Qaballah, such as the base-10 system of our normal
numerical and arithmetical system, the hexadecimal (base-16) system that is virtually universal today for
computers of all kinds, or the duodecimal (base-12) or sexagesimal (base-60) systems used in Chaldean
and modern astrology.
 

(2)  r sub-sets of p cards each, where each of these r sub-sets corresponds to one of the Sephiroth on the
generalized Tree of Life associated with    this new, generalized form of the Tarot, while the p cards it
contains correspond to the p Suits of the Lower Arcana of this pack.  In turn, the latter correspond to
the p Elements or Modes of Being acknowledged as being distinct by, and of significant importance to,
the culture using this pack.

These Modes of Being refer to the Seasons or major agricultural and ecological divisions of the
year.  They can also refer to the number of states of matter which that culture regards as technologically
and scientifically interesting or useful, e.g., plasma, gas, liquid, glass, solid, the weird phases exhibited by
super-cooled helium, etc.  They can also refer to psycho spiritual states or modes of
operation;  cybernetic modes; sociological units;  or anything else that seems to be nicely symbolized by
the Seasons or sub-Seasons of the year.

(c) n Court Cards, where n = p x q.  Here, p is as defined above, while q is equal to q1 x q2 x q3.  These last
three variables are defined as follows:

(1)  q1 = the number of generations in a typical family group in the culture that will be using the pack;

(2)  q2 = the number of genders or reproductive modes recognized and legitimized by that culture;

(3)  q3 = the number of sexual orientations recognized and legitimized by that culture.

        This generalized form of the infrastructure of Tarot packs can, of course, be particularized to
accommodate the English-language 16-Sephiroth Qaballah developed above.  The following section,
“Notes Toward the Design and Production of a Tarot Pack for the 16-Sephiroth English-Language
Qaballah,  discusses the production of a Tarot pack to accommodate that new Qaballah, using this
generalization of Tarot to provide a model for its infrastructure.

2:     Notes Toward the Design and Production of a Tarot Pack for the 16- Sephiroth English-Language
Qaballah

 
        First, Keys 1-33 should continue to be associated with their traditional correlates, including the
cards of the standard, traditional Tarot pack.  It is for the new Keys, Keys 33+ as well as the non-integral
Keys such as À0 and Æ, that we need new Tarot cards. These would include:

(a)     a set of 94 new Greater Trumps to represent Keys 33-126 (and more, for any Keys associated with
characters in the extended ASCII lexicon exclusive of the original 94 basic ASCII characters);

(b)     a set of m = p x r Lower Arcana, where p, also corresponding to the number of Elements,
traditional and otherwise, of the metaphysics underlying the new Qaballah and its associated Tarot
pack, is the number of Suits in the Lower Arcana and the Court Cards;  and

(c)  a set of Court Cards, the number of which is n = p x q, where p again equals the number of Suits in
the Lower Arcana and q is equal to q1 x q2 x q3, the last three variables being respectively the number of
generations in a typical family group in the culture that will be using this pack, the number of genders or
reproductive modes recognized by that culture, and the number of sexual orientations recognized and
legitimized by it.

        For example, let us restrict our metaphysics to the standard number of Elements of traditional
esoteric science, i.e., Fire, Water, Air, and Earth, so that p = 4, and let the total number of Sephiroth is
16, such that r = 16.  Suppose in addition that the generations of a family group includes children,
parents, and grandparents, such that q1 = 3;  the recognized genders or reproductive modes include
fertile females, fertile males, infertile females, infertile males, infertile ambisexuals, and fully functional
hermaphrodites, so that q2 = 6;  and the recognized sexual modes include, say, straight males, straight
females, gay males, and gay females, such that q3 = 4.  In that case, m, the total number of cards in the
Lower Arcana of the Tarot pack used by this culture, would equal p x r = 4 x 16 = 64, rather than the 40
cards in the Lower Arcana of traditional Tarot packs, while n, the number of Court Cards in the new
pack, would equal p x q = p x q1 x q2 xq3 = 4 x 3 x 6 x 4 = 288, as opposed to the 16 of the traditional
packs, which presumably recognize only two generations (parents and children), two reproductive
modes (fertile male and fertile female), and one sexual orientation (straight).

        In Table 6 in the Appendices, the Tarot assignments for Keys 1-32 are taken from Aleister
Crowley’s Liber 777, his The Book of Thoth, and his Astrology.*  Table 7 is taken almost completely
from The Book of Thoth with the exceptions that here, Neptune is given as Lord of all Fixed or Cherubic
Signs, while Uranus rules the Mutable or Common Signs, the reverse of the case given in The Book of
Thoth.  Likewise, for any Tarot pack designed to go with the 16-Sephiroth English-language Qaballah, the
cards assigned to Keys 1-32 should not differ essentially in design or execution from those for traditional
packs, such as the Crowley-Harris pack, The Book of Thoth, or the Waite-Smith pack (often called the
Rider pack after Rider and Company, the company which originally produced and marketed it).
 

*See Crowley, op. cit.

        Designs for the non-traditional Keys, including Æ (the Empty or Null Set), 0 (Zero), 33-126, i = Ö-
1, À0, À1, and À2, have already been discussed to some extent in other sections of this work, and should
be incorporated into the design of whatever new cards are created to represent them.  In passing,
however, I will also add some remarks here, particularly concerning the use of Tarot cards for
meditation purposes as well as additional reinforcement stimuli in Magickal rituals.

        The weird* number i = Ö-1 is associated with the trans-Plutonian Planet Persephone, and  À2, the
Number of All Possible Mathematical Structures, with the trans-Persephonean Planet Hera or
Durga.  Persephone is invoked as a bridge or enabler for rituals involved with invoking or evoking Stellar
influences and entities; Hera/Durga aids in protecting the Operator and others from malignant forms of
such beings and forces.  Persephone is associated with Chaos, and Hera/Durga with the
Quintessence.**  The influence and action of either of these two hypothetical trans-Plutonian Planets
counterbalances those of the other.  Any new Tarot cards designed to represent Them should
incorporated into their design and symbolism all available data from modern astronomical and
astrophysical research on the trans-Plutonian reaches of the Solar System and the Cosmos at large.

*The reason that this number, the square root of –1, is weird, is that it cannot be generated by normal
operations of arithmetic as these apply to the Real numbers. i2= (Ö-1)2 = (Ö(-1 x –1) ) = Ö+1 = 1.  Yet by
definition,  i2 = -1, so by that logic, 1 = -1, which is absurd.  So the square root of minus one is
“imaginary,” and multiples of it is considered to be part of the Imaginary line I, which is orthogonal to
the Real line which constitutes the set of all real numbers, integral, rational, and irrational, negative as
well as positive. Together Â and I form the Complex Plane C, whose elements are numbers of the form
(a  + b·  i), where a and b are real and i  is the square root of minus one.  The powers of i = Ö-1 are
equivalent to rotations in the Complex Plane, i.e., such that  i4 = (i2)2 = (-1)2 = 1 is located one unit to the
right of the Origin point (O = (0,0)), on the Real or X-axis of the Complex Plane; i3 = (i2) x (i) = -1 x i = -i   is
located one unit below the Origin, on the Imaginary or Y-axis of the Complex Plane, a quarter-turn
clockwise from +1;  i2 = -1 is located one unit to the left of the Origin, on the Real axis of the Complex
Plane, a half-turn clockwise from +1;  and i1 = i is located one unit above the Origin, on the Imaginary
axis, three quarter-turns clockwise from +1.  Now
 

eiq = cos q + i sin q,

where e is the transcendental number equal to 2.71828 . . ., defined as the limiting value of the
expression

(1 + 1/(n/r))n/r

where n is any integer and r represents a percentage.  Thus (eiq - e-iq)/2 sin q = i, clearly showing a
relationship between i and q, an angle of rotation in a plane.  This is of significance for that branch of
astrology dealing with progressions, which are charts calculated either for a certain number of days or
months after a particular date and a chart erected for that date, or involve adding as many degrees to
the position of everything in a chart as years (or months) have elapsed since the time and date for which
that chart was erected.  In particular, this second type of progression, which usually involves adding
either the same number of degrees to the positions of everything in the chart as the number of years
that have gone by since the date for which it was erected, or else calculating the difference between the
Sun’s placement that many days after the original date and that of the Sun on that original date, then
adding the difference to everything in the original chart, is in effect a counterclockwise rotation of the
original chart.  If the rotation involved is, say, 90° =p/2, that would correspond to multiplication of
everything in the chart by i:  if it is 180° = p, it is equivalent to multiplication of everything in the chart
by i2 = -1;  if it is 270° = 3p/2, it is equivalent to multiplication by i3 = –i;  and if 360° = 2p, it is equivalent
to multiplication by 1.  Obviously few if any people live beyond about age 70, and so progressions
generally involve addition of no more than about 70° to everything in the chart, i.e., a counterclockwise
rotation of no more than 70°.  This would represent a point on the Complex Plane p · (cos 70p / (2 x 90) ,
sin 70p / (2 x 90)) = p · (cos 70°, sin 70°) = p · (.6333192 . . ., .77389 . . . ), where p is a scalar (a real
number), i.e., a point .6333192 . . . p units from the Origin on the Real line or X-axis, and .
77389 . . . p units from the Origin on the Imaginary or Y-axis. And since 70 is less than 90, so that the
counterclockwise rotation would not take the point left of or below the Origin, both coordinates of the
point would be positive, i.e., p must in this case be a positive number.  Because of this association
between astrological progressions and i = Ö-1, Persephone is therefore the Lord of this branch of
astrology, just as Mercury, Who co-rules all the Signs She rules and is one of Her Lower Octaves, is the
Lord of astrology in general.  By extension, then, She rules the more esoteric aspects of astrology,
especially those dealing with the passage of time and its relation to a given chart.

 
**The so-called Fifth Element, a combination of the four Pythagorean Elements Fire, Water, Air, and
Earth.  It is analogous to chi, “Earth,” of ancient Chinese metaphysics, formed of varying combinations of
Fire, Water, Air/Wood (the energy associated with the natural growth of living things), and Metal (the
energy associated with artifice or things made by sentient beings), which in turn are various
combinations of Yang (male/active/giving/hot/base)
and Yin(female/passive/receptive/cold/acid).  Chaos, on the other hand, is regarded as an Element in its
own right in the Taoist metaphysics associated with ninpo, the Shinto's philosophy underlying the
ancient combat-arts schools of the mountain clans of 9 th-Century Japan.  In that philosophy, this element
is called “Void” or “Sky,” the emptiness through which eagles fly, the quiescent Mind of God just prior to
Creation.  So together with the four standard Elements, whether of East or West, the Quintessence
or chi and Chaos or Void make a total of six Elements altogether.

        In particular, Persephone may be associated with the Kuyper Cloud of small bodies lying in a belt
around Sol just beyond Pluto, ranging from about 35 to 50 AU in terms of their distance from the
Sun.  Alternatively, She may have something to do with the Öort-Opik Cloud of comets believed to orbit
Sol at the furthermost borders of His kingdom, at distances ranging from 200 to over 200,000
astronomical units from Him.

        It is even possible that Persephone could be connected with the hypothetical Shiva, the “Dark Star”
believed by some paleontologists to be responsible for a periodic bombardment of the Solar System’s
Inner Planets by meteors and/or comets at intervals of around twenty-six million years;  according to the
scenario created by these researchers, Shiva creates such bombardments by perturbing the orbits of
whatever bodies orbit Sol out by the hypothetical Öort-Opik Cometary cloud, as a result sending many
of these plummeting inward, toward the Inner Planets, on a periodic basis.  It is now accepted by most
paleontologists that a huge comet or meteor from whatever source impacted upon what is now the
Yucatan Peninsula about sixty-five million years ago, possibly accompanied by a somewhat smaller body
that struck North America somewhat North of what is now Texas at around the same time.  This event is
called the K-2 event, referring to the sudden, absolute cessation of fossils in the upper regions of
Cambrian fossil beds, signaling the end of the Mesozoic Era of life on Earth, the so-called Age of
Dinosaurs, and the beginning of the Cenozoic, or Age of Mammals. According to widely accepted current
theory, the impact upon the Yucatan, whether accompanied by a smaller one or not, was responsible for
the Second Extinction, the total eradication of all dinosaur species then alive on Earth, along with
countless other types of animals and plants on both land and sea, a total of 55% of all species then alive
on our world, within a time-frame which, as near as anyone can tell, was at most a few years in
duration.  Of all warm-blooded land vertebrates, only a few species of birds, monotremes,* and
mammals were left to re-populate the continents after their rivals, the dinosaurs, had been wiped out
by the catastrophe.**

 
 

*While the dinosaurs as such have long since become extinct, their descendants may be with us
today.  Many scientists believe now that birds are either descended from some lineages of dinosaurs or
that birds and dinosaurs had a common ancestor that existed much later than the common ancestors of
dinosaurs and mammals, in which case, birds would be relatively close cousins of the
dinosaurs.  Certainly, in either case, Class Aves (the birds) comprises the closest relatives of the
dinosaurs alive on earth today, and evolutionary biologists now generally include both the dinosaurs and
all species of birds, ancient and modern, together in Super-Class Archosauria.  The modern monotremes,
examples of which include the duck-billed platypus and the echidna, while warm-blooded, covered with
fur, and nursing their young like mammals, do not give birth to live young the way mammals do, but
rather lay eggs, nesting on them until they hatch, then tenderly caring for them in a way characteristic of
birds and mammals and, from recently discovered fossil  evidence, probably a great many species of
dinosaurs, as well.  Moreover, the monotreme skull, rather than having a conformation typical of the
skulls of true mammals, is essentially identical to that of many modern reptiles and, as well, numerous
species of dinosaurs.  So the monotremes probably should be classified as members of Super-Class
Archosauria, along with birds, pteranodons, and dinosaurs, rather than Class Mammalia.

**See Steven M. Stanley, Extinction (New York:  Scientific American Library, 1987), Chapters 6-7, Niles
Eldredge, The Miner’s Canary:    Unraveling the Mysteries of Extinction (New York:  Prentice-Hall Press,
1991), Chapters 5-6, and James Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia:    A Biography of Our Living Earth (New
York: Bantam Books, 1990), Chapter 5, for detailed discussions of the Mesozoic Era of Earthly life, which
included the rise and fall of the dinosaurs and evolution of their rivals and probable descendants into
modern times, and its likely end.

        Be that as it may, assuming Her existence is ever astronomically confirmed, whatever type of Planet
Persephone turns out to be, whatever Her relationship to the far reaches of the Solar System,  and
whatever Her influence on the evolution of Earthly life, these should be represented in some form in the
designs of any new Tarot cards and Qaballistic Keys associated with Her.

The remaining four new Planets, presumably lying beyond Hera/Durga, are Lobachevski, associated with
the number 0 (Zero);  Amphitrite or Bifröst, associated with À1, the Number of All Possible
Curves;  Tubman or Ross, named after Harriet Ross Tubman, associated with Æ, the Null or Empty
Set;  and farthest out of all, Norton, named after His Highness the Emperor Joshua Norton, associated
with À0, the Number of All Numbers.
Symbols for these six hypothetical new Planets might be as follows.  For Ross-Tubman, a broken chain,
symbolizing self-liberation from the most horrible forms of oppression;  for Amphitrite, a stylized
fisherman’s net (or, if Bifröst is for the name of that world, instead, a rainbow, symbolizing the Rainbow
Bridge connecting Middle-Earth, the Realm of Men, with Asgard, the Realm of the Aesir);  for
Lobachevski, a sphere balanced on a saddle-shape, or an inverted “U” surmounted by a circle, to
represent the contributions to the theory of non-Euclidean geometry contributed by the great
mathematician after whom this world is named, Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevski;  for Norton, the Circle of
Spirit superimposed upon an inverted Crescent of Soul, which in turn is poised atop the Cross of Matter,
like the symbol for Pluto save that the crescent is inverted;  for Persephone, a stylized comet;  and for
Hera/Durga, a rainbow (suggesting Genesis 8:21-22 and 9:8-17;  though if this is so, then the symbol for
Bifröst should be one suggesting Heimdall, the all-seeing Aesir who guards the Bifröst Bridge and is a
friend to both Gods and men).

        A possible way of establishing appropriate designs for new Tarot cards to go with the new Keys may
be illustrated as follows.  The Planet Uranus may be appropriately assigned to Key 33, since 33 = 3 x 11,
where 3 is the number of Binah, with which Uranus may be associated, and 11 is the number of Magick,
also associated with the Element Air and the Planet Uranus.  If so, then any Tarot Trump
representing  Path 33 should represent both the Illusion of Existence and its apparent opposite,
Enlightenment.

        The essential expressions of Illusion of Existence include Maya, the trickster God of the Hindus, who
seeks to lead us away from the blazing, pitiless light of Truth by means of lovely, seductive distractions
of all kinds;  the social contract expressed as consensus reality;  and human engineering, which builds
apparently solid, enduring structures which nevertheless have far shorter life-expectancies than
Nature’s most enduring works, such as mountains, and which is another product of the social
contract.  Enlightenment, on the other hand, entails the breaking up of formerly solid mental sets and
perceptive filters, thereby demonstrating that our assumptions about reality aren’t necessarily identical
to reality itself.  It is represented by all the forces, whether artificial or natural, which tear apart and pull
down the seemingly “permanent” works of engineering and intellect created by human civilizations,
thereby demonstrating the same thing in a more concrete form.

        So Path 33 and its associated Tarot Trump should represent the differences between the Sorcerer
and the Magus, the Politician versus the Mystic.  At least in part, the image of a thermonuclear explosion
would be a good symbol for this dichotomy within the spirit.  The notation for the isotope of the
chemical element uranium that is the key to the utilization of uranium in nuclear bombs as well as in
breeder reactors, 92U235, would be appropriate for this card.  So would images representing such Uranian
phenomena as astronomy, space-travel, UFOs, modern high-energy or other esoteric branches of
technology, gay liberation, feminism, and so forth.

        Finally, there are 94 new Paths in the extended Tree of Life.  Their theory and optimal design will
be  discussed in Lesson III of this course.
        A Tarot pack including these new Keys and Trumps should have overall onecoherent artistic design
and execution, produced either by one artist working closely with one designer or by a relatively small
team of artists and designers, all of whom work well together, closely monitoring one another’s work
and receiving continuous feedback from one another on their own.  That way, the new pack won’t be
just a loose collection of cards which, however, esthetically pleasing they may be, and however
esoterically correct their design is, are not closely coupled with one another on the Inner
Planes. Otherwise, in action it will behave like a government bureaucracy – i.e., as unimaginatively and
literal-mindedly as possible – rather than as a single, highly intelligent being, which is in fact how it
ought to.

        Even when all such considerations have been taken into account, of course, ultimately only practical
use of a pack will show, once and for all, how closely the results of its use for divinatory, meditation, or
Magickal purposes fit those historically observed for traditional packs.  But a new pack is far more likely
to give satisfactory results when used for whatever purposes if, on the one hand, the symbolism of its
design doesn’t conflict with or contradict traditional Tarot symbolism, especially wherever the two are
likely to be found together within a given card, and, on the other, it closely accords with the natural
astrological and Magickal symbolism of whatever Planets, old or new, they might involve.

        3.     General Correspondences of the New Keys of the 16-Sephiroth Qaballah

        In addition to designing a suitable Tarot pack which includes cards for the newSephiroth and Paths
from the 16-Sephiroth English-language Qaballah, a complete set of non-Tarot assignments should be
worked out for each of the new Keys, á laCrowley’s Liber 777.  In fact, the latter would be of inestimable
aid to designing the new Tarot pack, and the two projects should therefore probably be carried out
simultaneously, each aiding work on the other in a continuous process of feedback between the two.

        In particular, here are some ideas for the three basic sub-packs for a new Tarot based on the 16-
Sephiroth English-language Qaballah, as follows:

a.     The Greater Trumps

        Detailed of these will be left to Section C of Lesson 3 of this course.

b:  Notes Towards the Design and Production of a Tarot Pack for the 16- Sephiroth English-Language
Qaballah
 

Introduction

        I have been doing work on designing a Tarot pack specifically patterned on themes, motifs,
historical references, and esthetic considerations drawn from American culture and history.  In what
follows, notes on “America’s Tarot” refer to that pack.

                        1):  The Lower Arcana

        As discussed above, there should be m = p x r Lower Arcana, where p is the number of Suits in the
Lower Arcana and the Court cards, also corresponding to the number of Elements, traditional and
otherwise, upon which the metaphysics underlying the new Qaballah and its associated Tarot pack is
based;  while r is the total number ofSephiroth.  What values do we want for p and r?

        p is the number of Suits in the Lower Arcana, hence the number of Elements upon the metaphysic
of which our new Tarot is based.  The traditional number of these is, of course, four, including Fire,
Water, Air, and Earth.  These correspond respectively to the four Seasons recognized in recognized in
Western temperate-zone, European-based cultures, Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, as well as to
the four Modes of existence also traditionally recognized:  Will or Spirit (manifestations of Atziluth, the
Archetypal World, mediated by the “old reptile” or “hind” brain, i.e., the brain stem), the Psyche
(Emotion and Creativity, i.e., Briah, the Creative World, mediated by the limbic system, the corpus
callosum, and the corpus coerleus), the Intellect (Yetzirah, the formative world, mediated by the
cerebral cortex), and the Physical Body (Assiah, the Material World and the appetites, mediated by the
hypothalamus and rhinencephalon).

        But there is also a fifth Element recognized by the esoteric community, that of the Quintessence,
which is a sort of Alchemical amalgam of the other four.  The best-known Classical analog or metaphor
of the Quintessence is Plato’s Philosopher-King, who is simultaneously the greatest of warriors, the
perfect athlete, the ablest of statesmen, and the greatest adept among the philosophers and members
of the esoteric schools.*  While traditional Tarot, as we know it today, has only four Suits, in the past
there were many packs that had at least five Suits, some having more.  So adding a Suit to represent the
Quintessence would be historically appropriate as well as useful for both pedagogical and Hermetic
purposes.

 
*The Emperor Charlemagne was a Medieval version of this idea;  Russia’s Tsar Peter the Great is a pre-
modern one.  Today’s analog would be something like the West Point ideal of “an officer, a scholar, and
a gentleman” – with scientist Albert Einstein and statesman Henry Kissinger carefully blended in to the
mixture, as well.  39th (!) U. S. President James Earl Carter, an extremely well-educated and adept
individual who at one point was one of Admiral Hyman Rickover’s hand-picked engineers and a nuclear
submarine commander, is a sort of high-tech version of the modern philosopher-king;  admire him or
not, so is USM Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North, Ret., who not only has so broad an education and so
vast an intellect that even his enemies have easily admitted he has “an I.Q. of 300,” but was a decorated
hero of the Vietnam War and, as well, was boxing champion in his class at the U. S. Marine Corps
Academy.  Save for the fact that he never was a military man, the late Winston Churchill might qualify,
as well, as would the late Eleanor Roosevelt, with the same caveat.

        This is also pleasing with reference to Chinese astrology and Alchemy and metaphysical systems
based upon them.  Such systems recognize five basic Elemental types, rather than only the basic four
recognized in the West.  In Chinese cosmology these include Wood or Air (Spring), Fire (Summer), Metal
(Autumn), Water (Winter), and Earth or chi, the Center (manifest reality;  the physical globe and ground
of Earth).†*  These are in turn correlated with the five Planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and
Saturn.**

†The very word “China” is etymologically homologous with the Chinese word chi, meaning “center,” as
in “center of the world” or “Middle Earth.”  (Was J. R. R. Tolkien in fact writing an Eastern Western when
he wrote Lord of the Rings? J) Chi is also a primordial force or energy comprised of equal
parts yang (Hot, Dry, Male) and yin (Cold, Moist, Female);  it breaks apart into these two derivatives
which combine to form the Elements Wood, Fire, Metal, and Water.  The elements, in turn, combine
and recombine in countless ways to create the entire living universe. Then everything breaks back down
into the Elements, which break down into yangand yin, which recombine to form chi, beginning it all
over again.  This is the system upon which the I Ching is based.  Obviously chi isn’t just another
Element.  The Chinese conception of it is that it is the ground and origin and ultimate end of all things –
just as China is conceptualized in Chinese culture as the Center of the Earth, Origin of Civilization, from
which all human good flows and to which it all returns. Chinese maps, reflecting this,
have South upward, rather than North, as ours do – throughout most of history, China was not an
ocean-going culture to any great extent, and most of their explorations and expeditions were
overland.  On land, navigation is oriented at least as much with respect to the Sun  as it is with respect to
the Stars, and for Chinese explorers and merchants, it was with reference to the Sun’s passage across
the sky – thus a Southerly direction – that they made their maps.  In the West, on the other hand, where
so many mercantile and political empires have been formed on the basis of overseas partnerships,
alliances, and conquests, navigation has necessarily oriented itself to the Stars, in particular “the
Mariner’s Friend,” Polaris, the North Star.  So it is North that is up on Western maps.

*In Japanese derivations of the Chinese systems, Earth becomes a basic element in its own right, while
Metal is replaced by Void or Sky.  In Shinto and Japanese combat arts, the latter is probably best
conceived as “being a place through which eagles like to fly.”  Void is the Unknown containing all
possibilities, out of which the entire manifest universe comes.  Psycho dynamically, it corresponds to
Freud’s personal unconscious as well as Jung’s Collective Unconscious and the worlds described in
Dante’s Divine Comedy.  It cannot be known except in the Zen sense of “be here now,” “the Tibetan tat
twam isi, the Hindu Samadhi, but from it comes all knowledge and all power –if we make ourselves
receptive to it.

**The Lights – the Moon and the Sun – are not associated with the Elements and their metals.  Instead,
as in the West, the Sun and Moon are associated respectively with gold and silver.  In addition, the Sun
is associated with yang, the Moon with yin, and, of course, the Planet Earth with Earth, chi, and all that
flows forth from it.  For more discussion on these and related topics, see the Introduction to Part 9 of
Volume 3 of this work, “5 = 6 – the relationship of Eastern to Western Qaballah,” concerning
correlations between I Ching and Qaballah, and fitness of Far Eastern philosophical concepts to the Tree
of Life. For more information on Chinese metaphysics and cosmology, see the Richard Wilhelm
translation of The I Ching,  or Book of Changes (English translation from the German by Cary F.
Baynes. Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series XIX, 1967), Book II.

        Something in the Western soul likes balance, however, and as a result seems to prefer even to odd
numbers in completed sets.  For example, traditionally there is tenSephiroth, and the evolution of each
one after Kether is explained in terms of instabilities arising from the evolution or existence of
previous Sephiroth, resolved by the birth of the new one.  This continues all the way down
to Malkuth, Sephirah 10 – an even number – with which the system is complete and finished.

        So if we’re going to add a fifth Suit, we should also have a sixth, as well, to take care of instabilities,
psychic and otherwise, arising from creation of the fifth one.  What should it be?

        As the existence and evolution of the traditional four Elements have their culmination and
apotheosis in the fifth, the Quintessence, so all the Elements originally arise from primordial Chaos, the
volatile, boiling Nothingness that was before all things and will be all that remains when all else is
gone,  the formless Void of Genesis I: 2, which gave birth to Eurynome, Goddess of All Things.  So
whereas the fifth Suit would represent various manifestations of Quintessence or Philosopher-Kings, the
sixth should be that of Voids, or of Chaos and the Night of Time.

        Inclusion of six Suits in our new Tarot pack is of interest for still another reason:  we can also
associate each of six Suits with one of the six new Sephiroth.  For example, the Suit of Voids or Chaos can
be associated with the Null or Empty Set;  Quintessence, with À2;  Cups (Water) with Zero;  Swords (Air)
with i = Ö-1;  Discs/Coins/Pentacles (Earth) with À0;  and Wands (Fire) with À1.  The design for each Suit
could then include symbolism appropriate to whatever new Sephirah we chose to associate with it.*

*In Tarot packs associated with Chinese Hermeticism, Quintessence would become Earth (chi);  where
we have Fire, they would have Wood or Air;  where we have Air, they would have Metal.  The sixth suit,
for Chaos or Void, would then be associated with the Void of Shinto and Japanese combat arts.

        r, the number of cards in each Suit, would of course be 16, the total number ofSephiroth, new and
old, in the new Qaballah.  We would thus have a total of 6 x 16 = 96 cards altogether in the Lower
Arcana of the new Tarot pack.

        As for card-design, regardless of whatever illustration any given card may have in its foreground,
the designs of the backgrounds of the illustrations for the cards of the Suits dedicated to Voids/Chaos
and Quintessence should suggest the nature of those new Elements.  For example, the backgrounds of
cards in the Suit of Chaos or Voids might contain delicate, shadowy fractal patterns embedded in
apparently chaotic contexts such as boiling clouds, water in a rapids, writhing flames, the tossing surface
of the ocean, a dust-storm – or the characteristic patterns of Life itself, such as those of the leaves on a
tree, blades of grass and wild grain and flowers in a field, milling herds of cattle as seen from above, and
so forth.  These would suggest the underlying patterns embedded in even the most seemingly disorderly
of natural phenomena, the patterns of Chaos which, we are beginning to find, define and delineate the
real world, patterns of apparently random, unordered masses of unrelated particles in which, however,
systems of fractal regularity are embedded.  For a unified symbol for the Suit, I suggest “Mandelbröts,”
i.e., 256-color replicas of the famous Mandelbröt Set at whatever degree of magnification is esthetically
required, along with whatever scene is indicated, against vast, empty skies (Voids).

        Similarly, the backgrounds of cards in the Suit of Quintessence might consist of Starscapes, vistas of
the great Starry, gassy masses and vast open voids of the cosmos as captured by huge telescopes such
as Hubbell, within which are embedded faint patterns of fractal design and emission spectra of the
Stars.  For a unified symbol of the Suit, I suggest 5-pointed Stars, i.e., Pentagrams.
        For the Suits, I suggest the following motifs and associations:

Name of Suit Alchemical and Far Eastern Motifs

Astrological Associations
Associations

Wands Fire;  Cardinal Fire;  Mars Wands;  fire-selected growth

Signs;  Angular such as sequoias and chaparral
Houses

Cups/Chalices Water;   Fixed Water;  Mercury Cups or chalices – lakes, rivers,

(Cherubic) streams
Signs; Succeedent
Houses

Swords Air;  Mutable Air, Wood; Jupiter – Swords, growing things

Signs;  Cadent growing things
Houses

Coins/Discs/Pentacle The physical globe Metal – made Made

s of Earth things, artifacts things; landscapes; hemispheres
of the globe

Mandelbröts Chaos Void Mandelbröts and other fractal

images;  vast, empty
skies; characters and
background
fromMAD Magazine, comics,
animated cartoons, and/or the
Funny Papers

Stars Quintessence chi, T’ao, the Center The physical

universe; characters and
backgrounds drawn from
American territory, great events
and achievements in history,
etc.

 
 Name of Suit American Political Figures from American
Estate American representations for
mythology the Court Cards

Wands Legislature   Famous Senators or

Congressmen

Cups/Chalices Executive Branch   Presidents

Swords Swords   Justices of the

Supreme
Court; members of
the American
military such as
George S. Patton or
Hyman Rickover

Coins/Discs/Pentacle The People   Famous private

s citizens

Mandelbröts The Media Bugs Bunny, Little Famous journalists

Lulu, Little Iodine, J. such as Edward R.
R. “Bob” Dobbs Murrow

Stars The ideals of the   Lady Liberty, the

country American Eagle,
other American
symbols

        For the numbered cards of the two new Suits, Mandelbröts and Stars, I suggest the following:

Card Suit of Suit of Suit of Suit of

Mandelbröts: Description Mandelbröts: Interpretation Stars: Description Stars: Meaning
Numbe
r

Ace H-bomb explosion with Extinction, endings Space-station Creation

Mandelbröt as or in the near a Planet of
fireball another Sun

Deuce        
Trey        

Four        

Five        

Six        

Seven        

Eight        

Nine        

Ten        

        Nota bene:  The 64 Hexagrams of the I Ching can be assigned to the Lower Arcana and Court Cards
of the Tarot for the 16-Sephiroth  Qaballah on a one-to-one basis.  The Hexagrams of the I Ching are
simply pairs of Trigrams, the meanings of which are as follows:

Ch’ien – The Creative (Heaven, primordial creative force/Air/Wood;  also associated with Void as well as
with Quintessence,  a Solar force associated with Tiphareth)

-------

-------

-------

Chên – The Arousing (Thunder and Lightning, primordial Fire, associated withChokmah)

--    --

--    --

-------

 
K’an – The Abyss (primordial Water, associated with Binah)

--    --

-------

--    --

Kên –Keeping Still (Mountain, derived Earth or Metal, associated with Netzach)

-------

--    --

--    --

K’un – The Receptive (primordial Earth, a Lunar force, associated with Yesod)

--    --

--    --

--    --

Sun – The Gentle (derived Wind/Wood, associated with Chesed)

-------

-------

--    --
 

Li – The Clinging (derived or artificially created Fire, associated with Geburah)

-------

--    --

-------

Tui – The Joyous (Lake, derived Water, associated with Hod)

--    --

-------

-------

Using these ascriptions, each of the 64 Hexagrams of the I Ching can be correlated with exactly one of
the cards from the Lower Arcana or Court Cards of this expanded Tarot.  Every card in the Lower Arcana
from the Twos through the Tens is associated with one decanate of a Sign of the Zodiac, hence with the
Element associated with that Sign, its Mode (Cardinal, Fixed, or Mutable), and the Mode of that
decanate.  E.g., the Six of Swords is associated with the second decanate of Aquarius, which is co-ruled
by Gemini.  Aquarius is Fixed Air, and the Fixed Signs are associated with Water, while Gemini is Mutable
Air, the Mutable Signs being associated with Air.  So the Six of Swords is associated with
Air/Water/Air/Air, i.e., derived Air and primordial Air, hence with the Hexagram

-------

-------

--    --

-------

-------
-------

which is Hexagram 9 of the King Wen arrangement, Hsiao Ch’u, “The Taming Power of the Small.”*

*See The I Ching or Book of Changes, Richard Wilhelm/Cary F. Baynes translation (Bollingen Series
XIX.  Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 1967), pp. 40-43, 255-365, 430-435, 730-731, and the
end piece, inside back cover.

2):  The Court Cards

        The number of Court Cards in the new Tarot pack associated with the 16-Sephiroth Qaballah
is n = p x q, where p, the number of Suits, is as before and q is equal to qv1 x qv2 x qv3,  respectively the
number of generations in a typical family group is the culture for which the pack is designed, the
number of genders or reproductive modes recognized and legitimized by that culture, and the number
of sexual orientations recognized and legitimized by it.

        As we have seen concerning the Lower Arcana in this pack, in the previous section of this chapter,
ideally p = 6 for this new pack.  Usually the number of Persons in the Court Cards of a Tarot pack is equal
to the number of its Suits.  So we could set q =qv1 x qv2 x qv3  = 6, giving us (e.g.) two genders
(male/female), one sexual orientation (straight), and three generations (child/adult/elder =
child/parent/ grandparent);  two genders (male/female), three sexual orientations
(straight/gay/bisexual);  or some other permutation of these factors.

        From time out of mind, the number of Woman has been 3, as the generations of the Power of
Woman are three:  Maiden, Matron, and Elder/Crone/Shaman/Wise Woman/Protectrix.  But shouldn’t
this also apply to Man, whose life goes through the basic stages of Youth, Warrior, and
Elder/Sage/Shaman/Wizard/ Protector?  Certainly six Persons would be necessary and sufficient for the
representation of all three life-stages (child/adult/elder) of the two primary genders (female/male),
those life-stages being equivalent to the three basic generations included in a healthy extended family:

 
(a) the Child – uninitiated youth of either sex, any young person who has never borne, sired, or raised
children, the larval form of the species;

(b) the Matron or Warrior – the parents and guardians of children, the providers, those who do the
major mundane     work of the community, the imago or sexually mature form of the species who
physically reproduces and/or  cares for individual children (in many cultures the latter include many
young monks, nuns, teachers, etc.);  and

(c) the Elder of either gender – grandparents, shamans, protectors of the entire community, warriors on
either the physical planes or those of Spirit and Psyche, the post-imago form of the species, which
usually begins after cessation of the physical production of children, though one which can be highly
sexual active and vital (the Magus, Adept, Abbot, Archbishop, Hierophant, etc.).

        But what does this do for sexual orientations and the actual number of genders in the world?  There
are actually more than two genders, and the number of possible sexual orientations and preferences is
enormous.

        For example, among the vertebrates, especially fish and birds, as well as the insects and other
invertebrates, the following genders can be found:  invariant female (female from birth to
death);  invariant male (male from birth to death);  neuter (e.g., the worker bee);  hermaphrodite (e.g.,
snails, sponges);  female-to-male (beginning as a female, laying eggs or giving birth, then changing to
male);  male-to-female (beginning as a male, later becoming female);  and some intermediate
combinations of these.  There are thus at least six primary genders in the animal kingdom, and God
alone knows how many secondary ones.

        With respect to sexual preferences, the situation is even more complex.  Sexual preferences include
straight (male prefers female, and vice-versa);  gay (male prefers male);  lesbian (female prefers
female);  bisexuals and other sexually eclectic people; pedophilic (adult desires child);  gerontophilic
(those who desire as partners people far older than they are);  sadistic (wants to hurt
others);  masochistic (wants to be hurt by others);  bondage addicts, active (likes tying up the
partner);  bondage-addict, passive (likes being tied up by the partner);  predatory-thanatophilic (is sexual
stimulated to orgasm by murdering others, e.g., Ted Bundy, Jeff Dahmer); necrophilic (is sexually
attracted to the dead and things associated with them);  those who are interested in the aesthetic as
well as erotic possibilities of the body-arrangements that can take place during orgies;  and all possible
combinations of these.  In addition, there are asexuals, or neuters;  foot-fetishists;  leather- and rubber-
freaks;  coprophiliacs;  aficionados of Golden Showers;  and an unknown but probably very large number
of other types of sexual preference.
        Apparently it’s possible for people to be imprinted on anything during the first sexual experience, if
this occurs at a young enough age and entails sufficient emotional intensity.  In the case of rape or other
traumatization of a young child by an older one or by an adult, this is especially true.  In cases in which
the first sexual experience is that of being sexually terrorized, overwhelmed, and assaulted in such a
way, the fear, terror, rage, and hate experienced by the child at the time are so overwhelming and so
toxic that they distort and confuse the overall functioning and subsequent development of the child’s
limbic brain and the rest of his or her nervous system.  As a result, any perception by the victim of
anything in his or her general environment at the time can be transmuted by the experience
into anything at all, depending upon a host of variables, and be built into the child’s future emotional
and sexual neuroendocrinological development in any way at all.  After such an experience, what the
child – and the adult who he or she becomes – may associate from then on with sex, sexual
attractiveness, or anything else connected with sex could be anything.

        So the varieties of sexual preference are potentially infinite.  Multiply this by six primary genders
and a host of secondary ones, and the result could be any number at all, on up to infinity, for the
number of Court Cards in the Tarot pack under consideration.

        But the Court Cards don’t have to represent everything, only those things that are of primary
importance to the members of the culture for which the Tarot pack is designed.  With six Suits, most
likely there would be six Persons in the Court Cards, giving a total of 36 cards in all in that sub-pack of
the new Tarot.  Surely 36 cards should be enough to represent the most important primary
classifications of generations, genders, and preferences.  And since 36 x 35 = 1,260 pairs could be drawn
from these 36 cards, probably every significant or interesting secondary category of sexual-preferences-
vs.-gender-type could be represented using appropriate pairings or even 3-, 4-, or higher-numbered runs
of the Court Cards from such a pack, as long as the basic designs of the cards themselves allow this.

        Certain design parameters of the sort suggested in the previous section of this chapter for the
Lower Arcana could be utilized for the Court Cards as well.  For example, backgrounds of cards in the
Suit of Chaos could suggest Chaos, and those in the Suit of Quintessence could likewise suggest that
Element, in the manner described in the previous section, above.

        Also, each of the Persons of the Court Cards of the traditional Tarot packs is associated with one of
the four Pythagorean Elements:  Knights, with Fire;  Queens, with Water;  Kings (Princes) with Air;  and
Pages (Princesses) with Earth.  The two additional Persons of this new Tarot could likewise be correlated
with the new Elements, Chaos and Quintessence.  One useful scheme for the six Persons of the new
Tarot and their correspondences with the Elements, old and new, might be as follows:

 
a. The Shaman – Elder Male;  Element, Fire;  Mutable Signs;  Cadent Houses (traditional associations of
the Knights of the Tarot)

b.  The Matron – Adult Female in Prime;  Element, Water;  Cardinal (Movable) Signs;  Angular Houses

(traditional associations of the Queen)

c.  The Warrior – Adult Male in Prime;  Element, Air;  Fixed (Cherubic or Power) Signs;  Succeedent

Houses (traditional associations of the King/Prince)

d.  Puella or The Maiden – Prepubescent or Prepartum Female;  Element, Earth; the Quadrants of the

physical     Globe and Quarters of the Compass (traditional associations of the Page/Princess)

e. The Hag or Crone – Elder Female;  Element, Quintessence;    the Starry Heavens

f.  Puer or The Youth – Prepubescent Male;  Element, Chaos;  Black Holes and other inchoate or weird
phenomena

Then the design for each Person of a given Suit should incorporate aspects of the natures of both the
Person and the Suit.  For example, for the sub-pack of Court Cards of the Suit of Chaos, the designs for
its six Persons might be as follows:

The Shaman of Chaos:  Fire of Chaos.  A background of dancing     flames, with fractal patterns in and
behind them,   overlain by an image of the Shaman, the Old Man of Wisdom, Power, and Magick, the
Grandfather, the male Teacher and Protector.  He is engaged in directing his fiery Wand at the landscape
around him, bringing forth gigantic fires all around.

The Matron of Chaos:  Water of Chaos.  A background of a waterscape boiling with whirlpools, rapids,
and waves, fractal patterns embedded in it, overlain by an image of the Matron, a dignified woman of
early middle age, the Mother, the female Head of the Household.  She opens a valve that allows the
waters of a great lake to flood down upon the land below.

 
The Warrior of Chaos:  Air of Chaos.  A background of boiling clouds in which are embedded fractal
patterns, overlain by the image of the Warrior, a powerful man of early middle age, the Father, the male
Head of the Household.  He wields a gigantic bellows, out of which comes a wind that blows everything
around him into a disastrous incoherency.

The Maiden of Chaos:  Earth of Chaos.  Sand-dunes, rock-patterns, and dust-clouds in which are

embedded fractal patterns, overlain by an image of the Maiden, a graceful young girl, the Daughter.  She
hurls whole worlds down to their destruction in a vast, fiery pit that looks like a crematorium of
universes, the grave of Time.

The Hag or Crone of Chaos:  Quintessence of Chaos.  Chaotic Starscapes, nebulae, and so forth in which
are embedded fractal patterns, overlain by the image of the Crone or Hag, the Old Woman of Wisdom,
Power, and Magick, the Grandmother, the female Teacher and Protector.  In the background, behind
her, comets can be seen crashing against Planets, a la whatever brought about the end of the
Cretaceous on Earth.  A handsome woman in old age who may resemble Kali, the Crone is engaged in
butchering the corpse of some unidentifiable human being.  Out of the pile of bones, flesh, and assorted
other material which she has already removed from the corpse emerges a newborn child (á la Salvador
Dali’s Geopolitical Man Emerging from the World-Egg?), who resembles the image of

The Youth of Chaos:  Chaos of Chaos.  The Youth, an energetic, gracile, and athletic young boy, the
Son.  He dances joyously against an incomprehensible, incoherent background of boiling light in which
are embedded fractal patterns and random-number arrays done in chaotic rainbow colors.

The six Persons of the Suit of Quintessence might be

The Shaman of Quintessence:  Fire of Quintessence.  The Shaman against a background of fiery Stars.  He

wields a great Wand or Staff, from which streams of fiery flood of Starry sparks resembling spermatozoa
in shape;  around him are the tools of the Smith.

The Matron of Quintessence:  Water of Quintessence.  The Matron, against a Starscape containing

nebulae, galaxies, and so forth.  She seines the Stars with a gigantic net.  Around her are the tools of the
Alchemist.

 
The Warrior of Quintessence:  Air of Quintessence.  The Warrior, against a background of interstellar gas
and dust.  He scans the starry background with a sextant;  beside him is a case full of surveyor’s
equipment, the tools of the Engineer.

The Maiden (Puella) of Quintessence:  Earth of Quintessence.  The Maiden, against a background

consisting of various Planetary landscapes.  She holds a globe of the Earth in one hand, an astrolabe in
the other, the tools of the Planetary scientist and astrologer.

The Hag or Crone of Quintessence:  Quintessence of Quintessence.  The Crone, against a background of

iridescent spider-web, on which hang supernovae like drops of water overlaying the Big Bang.  A huge,
translucent spider with a hag’s head hangs high up in the shadows.  The Crone holds an artist’s palette,
and is engaged in creating still more of the Universe, painting Stars, Planets, and Galaxies onto a large
blank area surrounding her and the objects in the background around her.

The Youth of Quintessence:  Chaos of Quintessence.  The Youth, against a background of random space

junk, e.g., swarms of comets, clusters of asteroids, etc.  He holds a monkey-wrench or a hammer, and is
busily engaged in breaking apart anything near him that still retains any form or coherency at al.

The Persons of the other four Suits would of course likewise have backgrounds appropriate to their
Elements.

        The costumes, ethnic makeup, cultural symbolism, and other characteristics of the designs of these
Persons in each Suit could vary enormously without any problem.  I do suggest that those of the persons
of the traditional four Suits (Wands = Fire, Cups = Water, Swords = Air, and Coins/Disks/Pentacles =
Earth), particularly the original Persons re-cast as Shaman (Knight, Fire), Matron (Queen, Water),
Warrior (King, Air), and Maiden (Page, Earth) be coordinated with the four Quadrants of the Globe as
these are respectively associated with those Elements.  That is, Fire, Wands, and the Shaman would be
associated with the Circle of Volcanic Fire of the Pacific Rim, and all Polynesian peoples and others
native to the Ring of Fire;  Water, Cups, and the Matron would be associated with the Americas,
including North, Central, and South America, together with the lands contiguous with the Arctic Circle
and the Arctic Ocean, and the peoples of those lands;  Air, Swords, and the Warrior would be associated
with Europe and Africa combined and the peoples inhabiting them;  and Earth, Disks (Coins, Pentacles)
would be associated with Asia, Australia, and Antarctica and the peoples of those continents.

        Thus the Matron of Wands might be the Matron of a Polynesian native household; the Warrior of
Swords might be a middle-aged man, a husband, father, member of some profession in a Celtic or a
native African household;  the Maiden of Cups might be a young girl in a Native American
community;  and the Shaman of Coins might be a wise old judge, hermit, or Hermetic Adept from
somewhere in China, Tibet, or Japan, or a native Australian shaman – or, perhaps, an upper-echelon
administrator in a scientific community in a base in Antarctica.

        These are but mere sketches, of course.  Much more work needs to be done on a proper design for
such a new Tarot pack.  But the suggestions and ideas outlined here might form the basis for beginning
such a design.

        For the Court Cards of America’s Tarot, I suggest the following:

Card Number Design of Person(s) Design Motifs Associations

*

Crone of Wands F        

Shaman of Wands E Martin Luther King,      

Jr./Cotton Mather

Warrior of Wands C Chief Joseph of Nez Percé      

Matron of Wands D        

Puella of Wands B        

Puer of Wands A        

Crone of Cups F        

Shaman of Cups E Salvador Dali      

Warrior of Cups C        

Matron of Cups D        

Puella of Cups B        

Puer of Cups A        

Crone of Swords F        

Shaman of Swords E Hyman George Rickover      

(upright)/Edward Teller
(reverse)

Warrior of Swords C Red Cloud      

(upright)/George
Armstrong Custer
 (reverse)

Matron of Swords D        

Puella of Swords B        

Puer of Swords A        

Crone of Discs F        

Shaman of Discs E Adam Smith      

(upright)/John D.
Rockefeller(reverse)

Warrior of Discs C        

Matron of Discs D        

Puella of Discs B        

Puer of Discs A        

Crone of Mandelbröts F Harriet Tubman/Carrie      

Nation

Shaman of E Joshua Norton      

Mandelbröts (upright)/Ivan Stang
(reversed)

Warrior of C Tom Paine (upright)/the      

Mandelbröts Unabomber (reverse)

Matron of D Betty Friedan or Susan B.      

Mandelbröts Anthony

Puella of Mandelbröts B Little Iodine/Little Lulu      

Puer of Mandelbröts A Dennis the Menace or      

Bugs Bunny

Crone of Stars 1F        

Shaman of Stars 1E Robert A. Heinlein      

Warrior of Stars 1C Astronauts on background      

of landing on the Moon,
7/16/1969
(upright); Senator
Proxmire (Reverse)

Matron of Stars 1D        
 Puella of Stars 1B        

Puer of Stars 1A        

*In hexadecimal or base-16 notation.  Thus: A16 = 1010; B16 = 1110; C16 = 1210; D16 = 1310; E16 = 1410; F16 =
1510;

Nota bene:  Additional associations may be made for the Court Cards for the new Tarot for many other
systems.  For example, the Warriors of the various Suits may be associated with various ranks in the
Bujinkan Budo school of warrior arts, the Matrons with various niches occupied by women the world
over, etc., as follows:

Card Number Bujinkan Budo ranks and Female niches Motifs Associations
* persons

Crone of Wands F        

Shaman of Wands E        

Warrior of Wands C Male  sensei      

Matron of Wands D   The “flaming    

faggot,”
campy gay
male

Puella of Wands B        

Puer of Wands A        

Crone of Cups F        
Shaman of Cups E        

Warrior of Cups C Female sensei      

Matron of Cups D   The Lady    

Puella of Cups B        

Puer of Cups A        

Crone of Swords F        

Shaman of Swords E        

Warrior of Swords C Male Grandmaster      

Matron of Swords D   The    

“screaming
queen” who
used to
represent gay
men as far as
the regular
public was
concerned; th
e female
impersonator
or female
transsexual

Puella of Swords B        

Puer of Swords A        

Crone of Discs F        

Shaman of Discs E        

Warrior of Discs C Female student (lowest      

dan rank)

Matron of Discs D   Woman as    

breadwinner

Puella of Discs B        

Puer of Discs A        

Crone of Mandelbröts F        
Shaman of E        
Mandelbröts

Warrior of C Male student (lowest dan      

Mandelbröts rank)

Matron of D   Carrie Nation*    

Mandelbröts

Puella of B        
Mandelbröts

Puer of Mandelbröts A        

Crone of Stars 1F        

Shaman of Stars 1E        

Warrior of Stars 1C Female Grandmaster      

Matron of Stars 1D   Mother and    

wife

Puella of Stars 1B        

Puer of Stars 1A        

*Carrie Nation, whose good right arm and handy ax were used to demolish many a saloon, was the
patron saint of the Temperance Movement, whose “good work” had much to do with the passage of the
18th Amendment to the US Constitution in 1919 e.v.  It was said of her, paraphrasing a jingle that had
been coined upon the acquittal of Lizzie Borden for the murder of her parents,  that

Carrie Nation took an ax

And gave the nation 40 whacks.

And when she found what she had done –

She turned and gave it 41!

 
 

3)  Other Considerations

        As discussed above, it is likely that the Tarot pack for the new 16-SephirothQaballah would have 22
+ 94 + (6 x 6) + (6 x 16) = 22 + 94 + 36 + 96 = 248 cards. Such a large Tarot pack would constitute a very
unwieldy pack of cards, however, as far as normal use for Tarot readings or card games similar to the
venerable Tarot Whist. Hand-shuffling of it would be nearly impossible, certainly very difficult;  so would
dealing it out and otherwise handling it manually.

*See Lesson 3 of this course for a discussion of the number of Trumps needed for the new Tarot pack.

        But a set of distinct numerical codes for these cards could be created and stored in a computer or
on disk, and the computer could call up their numerical analogs, shuffle them electronically at very near
the speed of light, and display the results on a screen or print them out on a printer for the
reader.  Color images of the original cards in the pack could be stored on disk;  the computer could call
up the ones corresponding to the result of the shuffle and display them in full color rather than just their
numerical codes.  Since the Qaballah associated with this pack was originally developed to help meet
the spiritual needs of people living in today’s highly cyberneticized world, among other reasons, this
seems rather fitting.  Certainly the complete 248-card pack could be electronically stored, shuffled, and
displayed;  in that case, its bulkiness wouldn’t be a consideration.

        If using a physical pack of cards and shuffling it by hand were desirable, a somewhat cut-down
version of the full pack could be used.  For example, two of the six Suits of its Lower Arcana and Court
Cards, the Suits of Quintessence and Chaos,  could be dropped from this smaller version, along with two
of the six Persons of its remaining four Suits of Court Cards, the Hag (Crone) and the Boy (Puer).  In
addition, six of the sixteen cards in each Suit of the Lower Arcana, those associated with the new,
“Transcendental” Sephiroth, could be eliminated for the cut-down version of the pack, as could some or
all of the 94 new Greater Trumps could be eliminated from the cut-down pack.

        Alternatively, the six persons of the new Court Cards could be retained, but rather than being given
new cards of their own as a distinct new set of Court Cards, they could be represented by those cards of
the Lower Arcana in the new pack dedicated to the six new Sephiroth.  For example, the Hag (Crone) and
Quintessence could be associated with Hera/Durga (Sephirah À2);     the Warrior and Air with
Tubman/Hekate (SephirahÆ [Null or Empty Set]);  the Shaman and Fire, with Amphitrite
(Sephirah À1);  the Girl or Puella and Earth with Norton (Sephirah À0);  the Matron and Water with
Lobachevski (Sephirah Zero);  and the Boy or Puer and Chaos with Persephone/Kali (Sephirah i = Ö-
1).  So there would only be 16 cards per Suit, those of the Lower Arcana, which would include the Court
Cards as a sub-pack of itself.  Even with all 94 additional Greater Trumps in addition to the original 22
included in it, this cut-down version of the full new pack would have only 22 + 94 + (6 x 16) = 22 + 94 +
96 = 212 cards, as opposed to 248 – a significant reduction in the number of cards from that of the full
pack.

        Numerous modifications are possible.  Which ones would prove to be most useful and enduring,
whether for pedagogical, divinatory, or Magickal purposes, can only be determined by experiment and
field-trials.

        As a final consideration, since one of the Ten Commandments and an article of the Bill of Rights can
be associated with each of the ten traditional Sephirah, each of the six new Sephiroth and the Tarot
cards associated with them should likewise be associated with a Commandment and some amendment
to the U. S. Constitution.

The original source of Qaballistic philosophy and metaphysics is the Pentateuch, which comprises the
first five books of the Old Testament.  The foundation of Qaballah is Torah, the Law given on Mount
Sinai to Moishe Rabbinu by God, and to the people by Moishe, as revealed and developed in Exodus,
Leviticus, and Deuteronomy.  Since the core of Torah is the Ten Commandments, given in Exodus XX: 2-
17 and Deuteronomy V: 6-21, the core of Qaballistic teaching is the living spirit of these Commandments
– i.e., the Sephiroth themselves, each one of which is the Soul and Will of one of these ten great Organs
of the Living Body of the Law.

In a form which, though somewhat paraphrased, still preserves their essential meaning, these
Commandments are:

1.  I am your God, the source of your salvation; don’t worship other Gods.

2.  Don’t worship or serve idols, ideas, or images of any kind.

3.  Don’t misuse the name of God or swear by it falsely.

4.  Keep aside one day out of seven as a day of rest, my Sabbath, dedicated to me;  Zon that day, rest,
take joy in life, and do no work.

5.  Honor your ancestors if you would have your name endure long in the land.

6.  Don’t kill wrongfully.

7.  Don’t sleep mischievously.*

8.  Don’t steal.
9.  Don’t lie or gossip maliciously about your neighbors.

10. Don’t look with desire on your neighbor’s lover, spouse, or wealth.

*I am indebted to James Michener for transmission of the story of this delightful translation of the
Seventh Commandment in the Hawaiian language by Protestant missionaries to the Hawaiian Islands
during the 19th Century.  See James Michener,Hawaii (New York:  Fawcett Crest Books, 1959), pp. 328-
329.

In other words, don’t do those things which erode and ultimately devastate and destroy community;  for
it is the matrix of community upon which not only the lives of individual human beings, but ultimately
the preservation of human culture, the vessel of the spirit, depend.  The survival of these, including
understanding of the nature of the relationship between God and humanity and its meaning in our lives,
which take precedence above and beyond the survival of any individual, depends above all upon the
survival and well-being of human community.  The Ten Commandments categorize and prohibit the
most basic types of actions which could harm human community, and are fundamental to all three of
the great world religions which have grown out of Judaism, including Christianity and Islam as well as
modern forms of Judaism.

        Qaballistic teaching is further fleshed out by other laws given in the Pentateuch;  by Talmud, the
levitical exegesis of Torah;  by the other books of the Old Testament;  and by the Commentaries and all
related works, the later rabbinical analyses of both Torah and Talmud.  All other Qaballistic texts and
commentaries are derived from these, including all non-Judaic Qaballistic thought and lore.

        The Ten Commandments are an excellent digest of basic rules of life for any human
community.  According to some sociopsychological philosophers, these are bad laws, because they imply
– and therefore teach – that human beings are necessarily fierce, dangerous, over-sexed, power-hungry,
and greedy beings that have to be told not to exercise such predilections.  Supposedly, if we “didn’t
have laws like this,” no one would ever realize that we have in ourselves a capacity for any other way of
life than kindliness, gentleness, and generosity.

However, as Baroness Jane Van Lawick-Goodall et al. have clearly shown via a wealth of documentation
of actual cases taken in the field, all primates, including ourselves, whether in a “natural” or a “civilized”
state, have well-developed capacities for rage, greed, and aggression which can be and very often are
taken to terrible extremes, including mate-stealing, rape, theft of things which a neighbor needs for
survival, outright murder, and all the other sins to which primate flesh seems to be heir.  Even
premeditated, deliberate torture and murder of infants of their own species by adult primates – and not
just among Homo sapiens – is not, unfortunately, uncommon; though it is, of course, much more
frequent in conditions of confinement and overcrowding, e.g., zoos and cities, where the animal is kept
in a state of disempowerment and, often, great boredom, conditions which seem to accelerate
whatever mechanisms give rise to such crimes.

Animals which are potentially capable of doing great injury to their own kind, especially to their own
young – e.g., raptors, among avians;  carnivores, among the mammals;  etc. – have apparently
genetically built-in, hard-wired inhibitions against doing so.*  These inhibitory mechanisms are usually
triggered by certain forms of behavior on the part of potential targets of intraspecies aggression, such as
lupine throat-bearing or primate or feline (sexual) presenting behaviors, indicating surrender and
submissiveness. The more powerful an animal is, and the deadlier the equipment it possesses for taking
and eating prey and for defense against other predators, the stronger such built-in inhibitions tend to
be, and the more regularized, ritualized, and automatic the forms of the behaviors that trigger
them.  For example, the hawk, ironically the namesake of political groups which favor war, is, in terms of
physical aggression, one of the gentlest of all creatures as far as its behavior toward the younger, less
powerful, and less experienced members of its own species goes.  It is just about impossible to drive a
hawk or other raptor into the gratuitous killing of its own kind, especially its young.  In almost all cases, a
hawk will go mad and die before it succumbs to attempted conditioning toward uninhibited intraspecies
aggression.

*One exception to this rule is found among those predatory species which, like many species of bony
fish, produce vast numbers of offspring at a time.  In such cases, the proportion of their own young
which such animals can prey upon and consume relative to the total number of offspring which they
produce in a season is insignificant in terms of selective pressure, so that inhibitory mechanisms to keep
such predation upon one’s own young in check are not needed and not, in general, provided for.

On the other hand, the dove, which is, equally ironically, the namesake of a nation’s parties of peace,
liberalism, sweetness and light, can be very easily and quickly conditioned into pointless bloody murder
of its own kind using the simplest forms of operant conditioning.  The dove does not have the terrible
ripping talons and rending beak of the hawk.  All it has is its short, rather blunt beak and its feet, which
possess “talons” scarcely deserving the name, fit only for gaining traction on the ground or holding a
perch.  Its lack of armament and weapons therefore renders it relatively harmless to its own kind –
except in cases in which it might take it into its little pea-brain to practice deliberate and sustained
aggression against another dove, young or old.
Normally, in the wild, where its attention is almost entirely taken up with finding food, avoiding
predators, seeking and courting a mate, and raising its young, the dove has little or no opportunity for
cultivating the joys of brutality and murder.  Since Nature had no reason to predict the invention of
operant conditioning, Skinner Boxes, and behavioral psychologists armed with battalions of eager
graduate students ready to do anything to get a decent grade, there was no reason for Her to use up
precious metabolic energy or other resources to build into itself the dove the sort of inhibitions that
prevent the hawk, the eagle, the wolf, the bear, and the big cats from savaging their neighbors, their
mates, their own young, or the young of others of their kind.  So there is little or no built-in inhibitory
barrier to overcome in using operant conditioning to seduce a dove, pigeon, or other poorly armed and
armored animal into behavior at which even Freddie Krueger or Jack the Ripper might balk.

The primates are neither sharks nor doves, in this respect.  We and our primate cousins almost certainly
had our origins in a small, rat-like animal possessing little in the way of talons, teeth, or other dangerous
armament.  But somewhere along the way we developed an astoundingly inventive brain and a
tremendous capacity for aggression, probably for dealing with the sort of predators and other
environmental problems requiring such equipment.  Rather than growing our own weapons, we
began buildingthem, so that we could, in effect, carry out teeth, claws, and venom along with us or leave
them at home, as we chose.

        We also became intensely political animals, living in tightly hierarchically structured associations
with strong chief executives, competition for whose jobs became at times quite strenuous – again, for
reasons of evolutionary necessity.  A survival premium was thus often put on such traits as a great
capacity for aggression, a rather diabolical ingenuity and delight in the cultivation and elaboration of
emotional states comprising chronic rage and hyper arousal.  Usually, these were counterbalanced with
growing wisdom, tenderness toward others, delight in the company of the young, and, in many cases, a
strong and artful sexuality.  Sometimes, however, these checks and balances either broke down or
weren’t present in the first place, in which case a monster was loosed on the community.

        What has traditionally been called “Original Sin” is a capacity in us which, directed one way, will
eventually take us to the Stars and seat us beside the Archangels at the Throne of God – but used in
certain other ways, will turn us against ourselves in bloody internecine or even suicidal, self-directed
warfare, so that we end in utter extinction, our world a deadly, poisoned desolation totally devoid of Life
or even the ability ever again to harbor it.  We are Life’s means of making sure there will be more Life
when our aging, Star, growing hotter and hotter, finally roasts our world to death in a cosmic holocaust,
or some cosmic wayfarer, such as a giant meteorite or swarm of comets, batters our Planet to death a
little earlier.  But the very thing in us that makes that possible alsomakes it possible that we
ourselves may someday bring about that same Planet-murdering holocaust long before Sol does, in a
psychotic tantrum of self-directed aggression.  If we are capable of rising higher than the Angels, it is
only because we are also capable of sinking lower than the worst Hell has to offer.  We can’t give up the
latter without losing the former and destroying our ability to serve Life and the Gods as was intended, as
carriers of Earth’s Life to the Stars and Earth’s Spirit to the highest heavens.  So we have had to find a
way around the worst possibilities of our divine/diabolical nature that would keep the devil in us from
doing its worst without killing off that devil entirely – and with it, our nature as vessels of the Godhead.
        Just as we had learned to fashion the tools of rage, aggression, predation, and self-defense as
extensions of our own bodies that were not, however, part of those bodies, we also had to learn to
create the things that would prevent us from using those same tools to destroy ourselves, particularly
from causing our own extinction through aggravated, chronic abuse of our females and young.  Over
millennia, we have developed the latter,  invisible, spiritual tools, which we learned to grow in a matrix
of culture and tradition, into the awesomely complex, far-reaching systems of human law, such as Judaic
Torah and Talmud, and Christian Canon law, which teach us not to do harm to our own kind, and specify
sanctions to back up those teachings.

        This is the heart and soul of humanity, and thus of the Tree of Life:  our consciously
cultivated reverence for life and concern for our own kind, evolved separately from ourselves as a result
of our conscious and deliberate efforts to bring it into being, manifest in the mundane world in the form
of our various systems of law and jurisprudence, and spiritually as Qaballah and similar bodies of
wisdom.  We are spiritual rockets.  Whatever our genetic inheritance, apparently it includes a vast
Uranian power, the stuff of supernovae, on both spiritual and physical levels.  Left unchanneled and
untrained, that power either explodes in all its raw, Titanic fury, devastating everything and everyone
around it, or peters out impotently, in pathetic confusion and ineffectiveness.  But jacketed in the
restraining Saturnian power of the best of human law, such as Torah, and educated and self-disciplined
by Saturn’s aged, puissant wisdom, that volcanic Uranian power will take us to the Stars and the
uttermost heavens of the Spirit.

        That within us which cares to create such bodies of legal thought, understanding, and wisdom is as
truly Divine as that which makes human law necessary is diabolical.  It is that potential Divinity within
ourselves, together with its diabolical shadow of cruelty, murder, sadism, recreational mate- and child-
abuse, mate-stealing, theft, and other aspects of Original Sin which forms the subject of Qaballah.

        It is of interest here that the first amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America,
brought into being by American classical liberals such as Thomas Jefferson, are ten in number,
constituting the Bill of Rights.  Jefferson, like many of his colleagues, was a Mason, a Deist, and a
believer in the perfectibility of humanity through reason.  The ideals of liberty which he embraced had
been cherished and transmitted from generation to generation for several centuries by the Masons, who
taught a system of occult theory and practice ultimately grounded in Qaballah.  With some thought,
each one of the ten articles in the Bill of Rights can be correlated with one of the Sephirah of the Tree of
Life.  It is possible that, rather than being sheer coincidence, this came about because the authors of the
United States Constitution were Masons and Qaballists, and that as a result, the fruits of their work fell
into a framework strongly reminiscent of the architecture of the system of thought and practice of
which they were almost all members, the Masons.

Just as the mathematical structure developed here for the 16-Sephiroth English-language Qaballah is an
extension of the traditional Qaballah that in no way injures or distorts the latter, but rather includes it as
its core, so must the spiritual nature of the new Qaballah be an extension of that of the older one from
which it is derived that neither harms its parent nor subtracts from it in any significant way.  This means
that Torah, especially the Ten Commandments, should not be eliminated from our new Qaballah.  It
should, in fact, remain its core, regardless of what new additions are made to it.

        Clearly, genetically and otherwise, we are not the animals which our ancestors were, even those of
so recent a time as 300 years ago, the beginning of the industrial age.  Vastly increased industrial
pollution, the terrifying increase of human population densities, and the horrors of war that have
touched all nations on Earth insure this.  Yet this does not mean that we have lost anything of that
nature which made our ancestors at once both divine and demonic, little less than Gods and hardly
more than devils.  On the contrary, as even a superficial review of recent history and the burgeoning
files of our modern police departments will clearly show, the Old Adam, made in the likeness of God but
still capable of every conceivable sin, is with us yet, and probably always will be.

        If law is a burden, it is also our mitzvah, that “burden of diamonds,” the “onerous” gift from God
that enables us to have our spiritual cake and eat it, too, as it were, without which our lives would be
valueless and meaningless.  It isn’t the elimination of law, but rather the evolution of law into more
suitable forms, appropriate for today, that we need now.  This does not mean eliminating the Ten
Commandments.  On the contrary, it means adding to them a few more Commandments to take
account of the increasing, exquisitely demonic capacity we have for self-inflicted mayhem, to help keep
us from doing in ourselves and our living world long enough so that we fledgling angels can at last grow
our wings, both technological and spiritual, and head for the Stars and the Inner Heavens, taking with us
all the rest of Earth’s vast family of life, our companions on our long evolutionary trek down the
Aeons.  Rather than taking away any of the Commandments, which would eviscerate and destroy one or
more of the traditional TenSephiroth, we must add new ones, the legal avatars of the Elohim of the six
new, “Transcendental” Sephiroth.  Below, I tentatively propose six new Commandments which might be
basic enough, yet distinct enough from the traditional ten, to qualify. These new Sephiroth address
certain aspects and tendencies of humanity which have only become important since the advent of
what Buckminster Fuller called the Global Village, but are now of supreme importance due both to their
potential for enabling us to destroy ourselves and the whole living world with us, and that for enabling
us to attain the Stars and the company of the highest of the Archangels.  These are as follows:

11.  Thou shalt not devastate the Earth or Her life (S. i = Ö-1).*

12.  Thou shalt not knowingly do harm to any child;  for every child is a vessel of the future and the Spirit
of Life, the Will of God, the Great Spirit (S. À2).

13.  Thou shalt not molest, harm, or destroy the soul or spirit of another being (S. 0 [Zero]).

14.  Thou shalt not take pleasure in hatred, cruelty, or murder for their own sake, either vicariously or
directly (S. À1.)

15.  Thou shalt not cultivate hate for thy neighbor for her color, gender, age, or biological taxon.   For
you and she are both members of the same great community of Life, children of the Great Spirit, part of
Mother Earth, and thereby to be cherished, lest otherwise there should thereby come hurt to our
Mother, the Earth (S. Æ [Null Set].)

16.  Thou shalt not suppress the truth, or allow it to be suppressed, and thereby cause harm to the
innocent, guiltless, or young.  (S. À0).

*I am indebted to Sterling Lanier for the phrasing of this new Eleventh Commandment, as found in his
ecological science-fiction novel, Hiero’s Journey (1973), and referred to in exactly those words by the
characters of that novel.  This is obviously a higher-octave version of the Sixth Commandment, “Don’t
murder”.  It is of interest that on the traditional Tree of Life, Da’ath, the so-called Eleventh Sephirah,
which isn’t really a Sephirah at all but rather the overall energy of the entire living system of the Tree of
Life, has its focus in the Abyss between Chesed and Binah, directly above Tiphareth on the Middle Pillar
of Consciousness.  It thus stands in relation toTiphareth as a higher octave thereof, just as,
say, Binah does to Hod orChokmah.  How fitting, then, that the Eleventh Commandment is likewise a
higher-octave version of the Sixth, that is, the Sixth applied not only on an individual or even solely
human level, but indeed on the widest possible scale and domain of all , that of  the whole living world.

        It may be that another set of correspondences between these six Commandments and the six
new Sephiroth may be more appropriate.  But these new Commandments themselves, suggested here,
seem to address some of the worst evils of the late Twentieth Century, including ecological devastation
on a global scale as well as in the microcosm; epidemic child-abuse on an unspeakable scale;  the
egregious use of mind-control and mind-manipulation techniques by both private individuals and
corporate entities such as governments to enable them to use other individuals or whole populations
as things, means rather than ends;  the underground but horrifyingly widespread culture of blood-sport
some of the spin-offs of which include such delights as “kiddie-porn snuff-films,” “snuff-parties” at which
a victim kidnapped for the purpose is slowly tortured to death by some of the participants for the
edification and enjoyment of all, and worse, thus reinforcing “aboveground” sociocultural tendencies
toward widespread terrorization, torture, and murder of small children, helpless inhabitants of asylums,
civilian populations of opponent nations in war, up to and including possible global thermonuclear
war;  murderous bigotry of all kinds, sexist, racist, age-ist, and otherwise; and reinforcement of all these
and other evils by conscientious non-reporting of wrongdoing and evil by anyone in a position to expose
it.  The evils of our time are not really new;  they are all the evolutionary products of sins as old as
Adam.  But their manifestation today, alone,  is on a scale so terrifyingly vast as itself to constitute a
difference in kind from evils of earlier times, while the forms they frequently take, often making use of
technologies not even invented until this century, are unspeakably worse than any of their
manifestations in earlier, saner eras and cultures.  Just as Jews everywhere have been hard-put to come
to terms with the Holocaust of the Nazi era in Germany within the framework of traditional Judaism, so
the whole world is having great difficulty coming to terms with the general forms of such horrors, as
they impact on all peoples and nations today, within the framework of any traditional religion.  We need
something like the 16-Sephiroth Qaballah to add new dimensions to those traditional frameworks within
which we might be able to find some way of comprehending and coming to grips with these newest,
vilest, and most terrible demons of all that have ever beset this living world.  Otherwise, we and our
living world are not likely to survive very much longer.

        As for coordination of these new Sephiroth with Constitutional amendments, there are

problems.  The first ten amendments to the U. S. Constitution coordinate nicely, in order, with the ten
traditional Sephiroth.  But this isn’t precisely the case for coordination of the new Sephiroth with
amendments beyond the ten in the Bill of Rights.

Amendments XI is an elaboration of Articles V-VIII and X.  Amendment XII has to do with technicalities of
choosing members of the Executive Branch of the government. The Reconstruction Amendments, XIII-
XV, are much more seminal, concerned as they are with the elimination of chattel slavery in the United
States, but perhaps could be condensed into one Amendment that covers the provisions of all
three.  Amendment XVI authorizes the collection of income taxes, something the original founders
specifically decided should not be a power of the government;  potentially it makes all citizens into
wage-slaves, as well as creating the potential for an ever-expanding central government with ever-
expanding powers – an abomination if there ever was one, something directly contravening the spirit in
which this country was founded (shades of Trump XVI, The Tower!).  Amendment XVII mandates election
of Senators by direct popular vote, which may or may not have been a good thing, since it makes federal
government “more efficient” and therefore less controllable by the Constitution.  Amendments XVIII,
mandating Prohibition, is canceled out by Amendment XXI.  Amendment XXII takes control of
Presidential terms of office out of the hands of the people by limiting it to two terms – and therefore
creates the potential for “lame duck” Presidents who won’t be controlled in their actions in office by the
specter of losing the next election.  And so forth.  Tentatively, I would assign the Reconstruction
Amendments, in a body, toSephirah Æ.  As for the rest, I will leave that as an exercise for the reader (and
a mob of Constitutional lawyers! J).

F.     The Human Genome and Tarot

 
 

The 22 autosomes = the traditional Paths of the Tree of Life and the Greater Arcana of the traditional
Tarot;  the functions two sex chromosomes are represented by  the Court Cards of the Tarot.  Moreover,
there are 4 x 4 x 4 = 64 possible genetic codons of three nucleotides each, each of which codes for an
amino acid.  These 64 possible codons correspond exactly to the cards contained in four Suits containing
ten Lower Arcana and six Court Cards each as well as to the Hexagrams of the I Ching.  This may well
explain the fascination which Tarot, Qaballah, Alchemy, the I Ching, and Magick and their symbolism
have had for us over the millennia – they evoke things literally encoded in our very genes, as well as the
chemistry of life itself, and because they do so, we are drawn to them as to mirrors:  the mirrors of our
innermost nature.

ENDNOTES

 
1
Arthur E. Waite, The Holy  Kabbalah (Secaucus, NJ:  University Books/Citadel Press, n.d.), pp. 5-6.

 
2
”e.v.” = Era  vulgaris, or “common era.”  It is identical in meaning as far as dating goes to “c.e.”
(“common era”) and A.D. (“Anno  Domini”).

 
3
Waite, op. cit.

 
4
All these quotes are from Dion Fortune, The Mystical Qaballah (York Beach, ME:  Samuel Weiser, 1984),
pp. 110-111.

 
5
Aleister Crowley, Liber 777,  in Liber 777 and Other Qaballistic Writings of Aleister Crowley (York Beach,
ME:  Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1983), Column CXX.

5aGareth Knight, A Practical Guide to  Qabalistic  Symbolism (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1983),
vol. I, p. 65.

 
5b
Ibid, pp. 65-69.

 
6
Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth (New York:  Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1973), p. 177.

 
7
Crowley, Liber 777, op. cit., Cols. CXXXIII-CXXXVI.

 
8
Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (Secaucus, NJ:  Citadel Press, 1959), p. 196.

 
9
Crowley, Liber 777, op. cit., Col. XLIX.

 
10
The reader should make a direct examination of the original pack designed by Arthur Edward Waite
and illustrated by Pamela Coleman Smith, produced by University Books, Inc., New Hyde Park, NY.  Also,
see Waite’s the Pictorial Key to the Tarot,op. cit., passim, as well as notes on this pack in Bill
Butler’s dictionary of the Tarot(New York:  Schocken Books, 1977).

 
11
As given in Butler’s dictionary of the Tarot, op. cit., p. 40/

 
12
Ibid.

 
13
Ibid.

 
14
Ibid.

 
15
Ibid.

 
16
Knight, op. cit.,  Vol. I, p. 76.

 
17
Crowley, Liber 777, op. cit., Col. CXX (“Magical Images of the Sephiroth”)/

 
18
Ibid, Cols. XXXVIII, XXXIX, XL, XLII, and  XLIII.

 
19
Fortune, op. cit., p. 123.

 
20
Israel Regardie, A Garden of Pomegranates (St. Paul, MN:  Llewellyn Publications, 1978), pp. 48-49.

 
21
Crowley, Aleister Crowley’s Astrology (Stephen Skinner, editor.  New York: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1974),
p. 59.

 
22
Dion fortune, op. cit., pp. 140-142.

 
23
Knight, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 101-103.

 
24
Fortune, op. cit., p. 163.

 
25
Ibid, p. 174.

 
26
Ibid.
 
27
Ibid.

 
28
Ibid, p. 175.

 
29
Ibid, pp. 176-177.

 
30
Ibid, p. 189.

 
31
Ibid, p. 190.

 
32
Ibid, p. 191.

 
33
Ibid, p. 193.

 
34
Ibid, pp. 193-194.

 
35
Ibid, p. 195.

 
36
Ibid, pp. 195-196.

 
37
Ibid, pp. 199-200.

 
38
Ibid, p. 203.

 
39
Ibid, p. 222.

 
40
Ibid, p. 223.

 
41
Ibid, pp. 223-225.

 
42
Ibid, pp. 225-226.

 
43
Ibid, pp. 226-231.

 
44
Ibid, pp. 238-239.

 
45
Ibid, pp. 244-245.

 
46
Ibid, p. 247.

 
47
Ibid, p. 253.

 
48
Ibid, p. 254.

 
49
Ibid, p. 256.

 
50
Ibid, pp. 258-260.

 
51
Ibid, p. 266.
 
52
Ibid, pp. 267-268.

 
53
Ibid, pp. 53-56.

 
54
Ibid, p. 75-79.

Lesson III:  The 22 Paths of the Tree of Life and the Greater Arcana of the Tarot

A.  Introduction:  What Are the Paths?

                In the Sepher Yetzirah (The Book of Formation), all the aspects of the Tree of Life are called
“Paths,” but this term normally refers to the connections or relations between pairs of Sephiroth, and
that is how the term is used here. Traditionally there are 22 of these, corresponding to the number of
letters in the Hebrew alphabet. However, as they represent relations between Sephiroth, and as 55
possible such two-way relations exist, including Identity relations,* there are thus potentially 55 Paths
for a Tree of Life comprising 10 Sephiroth.

*For detailed discussion of the Identity relationship and other mathematical concepts relevant to
Qaballah and Tarot, see Lesson V of this course, “The Mathematics of the Atua.

                While a Sephirah primarily represents an objective state of being or existential truth, a Path is

the subjective experience which one undergoes in transferring consciousness from one Sephirah or state
to another.  Thus, e.g., the 22nd Path, Tav, connecting Sephirah 10, Malkuth, and Sephirah 9, Yesod,
represents what it is like, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and sensually, to transfer one’s
consciousness between the physical world (Malkuth) and the psychic, psychoanalytic, Magickal realm of
the Lower Astral, the “field”1 realm of Yesod.  This journey in consciousness can be carried out in either
of two directions:  from Malkuth to Yesod or vice-versa;  in general, the Path linking any other pair
of Sephiroth is likewise a two-way street.

                Each Path basically represents three things. First, it represents a letter of the Hebrew alphabet,
which Qaballists believe expresses the pure essence of the Path. The order in which the Hebrew letters
are assigned to the 22 Paths of the traditional Qaballah is revealed in the glyph of the Serpent of
Wisdom upon the Tree of Life (see, e.g., Col. IX of Crowley’s Liber 777;  Gareth Knight, passim; Dion
Fortune, passim; et al., op. cit.).  This serpent trails its way from Malkuth to Kether, on its way touching
or passing over every Path.  The order in which it does so reveals the order of numbering of the Paths,
and the Hebrew letters follow that numbering in order, i.e.,Aleph corresponding to the first Path it
touches, Beth to the second, and so on down toTav, the last Path which the Serpent of Wisdom visits on
its Journey down the Tree.

                Second, there is an astrological Sign, a Planet, the Sun, the Moon, or one of the four Elements
of Pythagorean mysticism associated with each Path.

                Third, a Tarot Trump is assigned to each Path.

                Now, written Hebrew doesn’t have a set of numerals or digits separate from the letters of its
alphabet.  Rather, each letter in its alphabet is associated with a number out of the set  A = {1, 2 ,. . ., 9,
10, 20, . . . , 90, 100, 200, . . ., 900} (the values {500, 600, 700, 800, 900} correspond respectively to final
forms -- that is, when they are the last letters in a word, taking different forms than when they are
elsewhere within a word -- of the letters Kaph, Mem, Nun, Peh, and Tzaddi). Additionally, when a letter
has a bar written over it, its value is multiplied by 100, while a letter written much larger than others has
its value multiplied by 1,000.  So every Hebrew letter thus has a multiple value:  First, it has that of its
individual position or order in the Hebrew alphabet, itsordinal value, e.g., first, second, third,
etc.  Second, it has a numerical or cardinalvalue, one of the counting numbers assigned to it out of the
set   A   given above. Third, it is associated with one of the 32 Keys (the 10 Sephiroth plus the 22 Paths) of
the Tree of Life.  Fourth, it has assigned to it a Tarot card, which has a number of its own, as
well.  Finally, when the name of a letter of the Hebrew alphabet is spelled out in full in Hebrew, each of
the letters with which it is spelled has a numerical value of its own, and when the values of those letters
are summed, that sum is yet another number associated with the letter, one with its own Qaballistic
meaning. Thus written Hebrew is freighted with a treasure of symbolic and allegorical meaning far
beyond its literal content.

                To a lesser extent, this is also true of such languages as Arabic and Greek.  It is no wonder that
the written word has been considered to be at least as Magickal and potent as the spoken one, to which
ancient peoples already assigned the powers of Gods, above and beyond the convenience and efficiency
for communication of information both near and far.*  It is this marvelous psychic, Magickal, and
spiritual richness and meaning of both spoken and written language, including its musical and
incantatory expressions, that the Tarot and similar symbol-sets were created to represent. The designs
of Tarot and its mantic cousins, e.g., astrology, palmistry, I Ching, etc., represent the links among our
internal, spiritual powers and potentialities and the manner in which we are able to actualize these in
our being and in their manifestations in the concrete, “here and now,” physical waking world.  They
were created the facilitate the acquisition and spread of spiritual and psychological literacy, as reading
primers are designed to facilitate intellectual literacy, and musical exercises are used to enable the
practitioner to become musically literate.  Language, oral and written, has enormous power on the
emotional and spiritual planes, far beyond anything that intellectual understanding alone can
accompoish,2 and it was to harness that power as well as to help the seeker or sufferer to achieve inner
healing and harmony that such systems as Tarot were invented.

*For example, see Genesis I:1-3 of the Old Testament, in Greek translation as well as in the original
Hebrew, which translates into English literally as “the word was a God,” i.e., the Logos.

Two good texts on this subject are Israel Regardie’s A Garden of Pomegranates,3Chapter IV, and Gareth
Knight’s A Practical Guide to  Qabalistic  Symbolism,4Volume II.  Aleister Crowley’s Magick in Theory and
Practice,5 Chapters 0-XXI, is also helpful for the advanced student

Lesson III:  The 22 Paths of the Tree of Life and the Greater Arcana of the Tarot 

B.  The Individual Paths

 See handouts for Keys 11-32, and examine the diagram of the Tree of Life.  Compare each Path with the
Tarot cards traditionally associated with it.

 1.       Key 11

 Aleph a, “the Ox.”  Trump 0, The Fool.  The Element Air (Ù, Õ,  or ©), the Planet Uranus n. Cardinal
(arithmetic) value of 1; first position in Hebrew alphabet (ordinal value of
2).  Connects Sephirah 1, Kether with Sephirah 2, Chokmah.  Roman-English equivalent:  A.

 a.       Qaballistic meanings and theory

 The Archangel Raphael, Who rules the Element Air, is the Archangel of this Trump, which is associated
with the Gods and Spirits Liberty, Ouranos, Urania, Eris, Hermes, Mercury, Raven, Coyote, etc.
Traditionally the letter “A” of the Roman alphabet corresponds to it.  Key 11
connects Sephirah 1, Kether with Sephirah 2, Chokmah; it represents the beginning of the descent of
Force into Form, the first step of the binding of energy into matter according to the Magickal formula E =
mc2.*  The numerical, cardinal, or arithmetic value of Key 11 is 1.  And when the numerical values of the
individual Hebrew letters – a (1), l (30), p (80) – that spell Aleph, the letter associated with this Key, are
added together, their sum is 111.  Aleph  is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, so that its ordinal
value is the same as its cardinal value. 

 *If you don’t think that’s a Magickal formula, examine photographs of Hiroshima taken a few days after
August 6, 1945 e.v. to see what a few pounds of metal can do to a city of several hundred thousand
inhabitants!  And after seeing films of hydrogen-bomb tests in the South Pacific, any medieval wizard
worth his salt would have readily sworn that only sorceries direct from Hell itself could accomplish such
marvels. 

            Each of the Keys has associated with it a complete sub-Universe of things. These are given in
detail in, e.g., Aleister Crowley’s Liber 7776, my own Liber 777 Updated and Extended,7 and my New
Magicks for a New Age,7a but here is an exemplary list of some of those that are associated with Key 11,
just to give you some idea of the range covered in each case.  (for the other Paths, please consult the
works just cited, or those of Gareth Knight, Dion Fortune, and Israel Regardie included in the
bibliography for this course for more complete selections of associations and the Qaballistic theory
behind them.)

 Yetziratic title: Fiery or Scintillating Intelligence.

             Hebrew letter: p l a  (Aleph), meaning “Ox.”

 Numerical value:  1.

 Element: Air, the parent of manifest existence;  Æther or Quintessence;  Void (Zen combat arts);  Chaos

 Title: The Spirit of Æther.

 Principle:  Breath or Ruach, the vital principle of all life. r w a  [ w s  } y a  (Ain Soph Aur), “Limitless Light”
prior to Creation. Breathe of the beasts of the field.

 Planet:  Uranus Ý

 Name of Planet in Hebrew:  r w r d (DRVR, Freedom”)

 Element (Alchemical): Air (Ù, Õ,  or ©)

 Element (chemical):  Uranium 92U

 Ecological process, realm, or principle:  the gaseous atmosphere of our Planet; meteorology

 Physical chemistry:  laws and principles pertaining to gases;  ionic bonding

 Colors:  bright pale yellow (King Scale);  sky blue (Queen Scale);  blue-emerald green (Emperor
Scale);  emerald, flecked gold (Empress Scale)

 Gods: 

      Greek:  Ouranos (Uranus), Zeus; Hermes;  the bisexual Zeus;  Dionysus Zagreus;  Bacchus

Roman:  Jupiter (Who is associated with Wood/Air (naturally growing things) in the Far East)

Egyptian:  Nu, Hippocrates

Scandinavian:  Odin, Wotan

USA, France:  Liberty-Urania

Celtic: The Green Man of Spring

Christian: The Holy Ghost, the Paraclete

Hindu:  Krishna

Other:  the Great Hags (with respect to Their agelessness and ability to transcend time); Parsifal;
Baphomet, the ass-headed “God” of the Templars

 Meditation:  on Wind, Air, or the Void (Sky) of ninpo and kendo cosmology.

 Magickal power:   Divination.

 Perfume:  galbanum (perfume from a resin from Persian fennel).

 Magickal Weapons:  the Dagger or Fan.

 Musical tone:  E natural.

 Qlippoth:  Amprodias, the demon of the Eleventh Path or kala of the Tunnels of Set.  Attributed to the
Element Air and its negative aspect. This demon or shadow is associated with the number 401.  It may
be evoked by vibrating its name in the key of ‘E.’  The sigil should be painted in luminous pale yellow on
a square ground of emerald flecked with gold.*  The Demon King associated with Aleph is Oriens, King of
the Demons of the Air.

 *See Kenneth Grant, Nightside of  Eden (London:  Skoob Books Publishing, 1994), pp. 154-161. 

           Stones:  Topaz, chalcedony;  any sky-blue stone;  artificial stones

 Metals and minerals:  uranium, radium, pitchblende

 Plants:  aspen;  mutated plants, sports, and hybrids

 Animals:  Eagle (Cherub of Scorpio, in which Uranus is exalted; also, the Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus
leucocephalus) is the national bird of the United States of America, in whose natal chart Uranus is rising,
conjunct the Ascendant and the Fixed Star Aldebaran, hence very strong in that chart); Man (Cherub of
Aquarius, which Uranus rules);  the bat, especially the vampire bat of South and Central America, a
genius among bats; the bear, man-like in form and intelligence;  the pig, manatee, and porpoise, which
have naked skins like human beings and are highly intelligent;
 Drugs:  peppermint;  homeopathic tincture of uranium, uranium ore, or pitchblende at ´11 dilution*

 Magickal image:  A bearded ancient, seen in profile.

 Lineal figures:  the Airy Triplicity – Amissio,  Puella, Trititia.

 Domain:  Lord of the Sylphs and Faery.

Archangel:  Raphael.

 Quarter:  the East.

 In Buddhist symbolism, the Head, the 1,000-petaled lotus.

  *I.e., dilution by (102)11 = 1022 parts of solvent (generally purified water) to one of substrate, in this
case, uranium or its ore. 

 Far Eastern cosmological associations:

 Wood/Air.  The East. Spring. Vitality. Production.  The Solid but Workable.  Sour. Blue or green.  Controls

liver and gall.  The Dragon. The Planet Jupiter.  Yang – the Pine.  Yin – the Bamboo.  Tin.  Air. Salt.
Produces Fire, is produced by Wood/Air (naturally grown things), destroys Earth, is destroyed by Metal
(made things).*

 Trigram from the I Ching:  Sun  (“The Gentle”/Penetrating, Wind)

––––

––––

 –    –

*For these and other cosmological associations from the Far East, see J. C. Cooper,Chinese
Alchemy:    The Taoist Quest for Immortality (New York:  Sterling Publishing Co., 1990), passim, but
especially Chapter 10;  Jack Hoban, Ninpo:  Living and Thinking as a Warrior (Chicago:  Contemporary
Books, 1988), Part III;  Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings (there are numerous translations of
this work; one useful one, in this context, is the one by Victor Harris, published by the Overlook Press of
Woodstock, New York, 1982), passim;  and the Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes translation of The I
Ching, or Book of Changes (the Richard Wilhelm translation rendered into English by Cary F.
Baynes;  forward by Carl Jung;  preface to the Third Edition by Hellmut Wilhelm.  New York:  Bollingen
Foundation Inc., 1930.  Bollingen Series XIX, Princeton University Press, 1973),passim.

 Many other associations are possible, but this gives some idea of the types of things that may be keyed
to a Path (or a Sephirah).
This path is the one by which the Illumined soul proceeds from the direct Vision of God face to face,
which is experienced in Sephirah 2, Chokmah, to the ultimate transcendental experience of Kether,
actual union with God.

The Element Air is attributed to this Path, a good symbol for the Spirit because of its unconfined nature
and the way in which it tends to permeate all things, as well as extending physically to a great height. In
turn, the Ether is even more extended than Air, for which reason the title of this Trump is “The Spirit of
Æther.”

Like the physical atmosphere of our world, Spirit can be taken for granted or even ignored in spite of the
fact that is essential for life – is, in fact, the essence of Life itself – but even so, it can make itself felt in
powerful ways, just as the atmosphere can produce hurricanes and tornadoes.  In addition, the
atmosphere disperses and attenuates whatever contaminates it; this is a good analogy of the Great
Unmanifest, which attenuates things into non-existence from the point of view of manifest reality.  In
this it resembles the action of God the Disintegrator, the great Fourth Aspect of God, associated with
Shiva, Kali, the Editor, the Critic, and all the other Gods of destruction. Earth confines, Water dissolves,
and Fire transforms, but it is predominantly Air that disperses.

      Like all the other Paths, the Eleventh Path can be traveled in two different directions.  Its ascent is
the final approach to Samadhi,  Union with God, leading to manifest dissolution:  those who walk with
God, like Enoch, “are not.”  Its descent, on the other hand, is the beginning of the Descent of Power
symbolized Qaballistically by the Lightning Flash; for this reason it represents first beginnings. 8

Uranus, the Planet associated with Key 11, is the Planet of precipitate action and violent change.  This is
very much in accord with the Trump for this Path, Trump 0, The Fool.  The Fool represents not only what
some have called “that folly of God which is wiser than the wisdom of all mankind,” but also the
tendency to leap before looking, A.K.A. Dam foolishness.

On the other hand, the God Ouranos, for Whom the Planet Uranus is named, is Lord of the Sky, hence
Lord of the Powers of Air.  Thus Uranus also fits well with the traditional association of this card and
Path with the Element Air.

Above all, the Goddess Liberty-Urania is associated with this card.  Both Air and Uranus represent
completely untrammeled freedom, especially freedom of Spirit.  There is no more Uranian sentiment
than that expressed in the poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty on Liberty Isle in New York
City Harbor:

            Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles.    From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome;    her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips.    “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost, to me.

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

The problem is that all too often, we tend to confuse liberty with libertinism, freedom with absolute
license.  The preservation of freedom requires an unceasing vigilance and an awesome responsibility to
live one’s life in such a way that one does not jeopardize either one’s own liberty or anyone
else’s.  While the ascending mode of this Path represents Liberty in all its sweetness, the descending
mode represents the terrible responsibilities and eternal vigilance necessary to keep Liberty alive:

 The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance;  which condition if he
break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.

 – John Philpot Curran (1750-1817 e.v.), speech upon the right of Election of the Lord May of  Dublin  (July
10, 1790  e.v.)

What country before ever existed a century and a half without rebellion? . . . The tree of liberty must be
refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.  It is its natural manure.

– Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826 e.v.), letter to William Stevens Smith (November 13, 1787  e.v.)

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never
will be.

 
– Thomas Jefferson letter to Colonel Charles Yancey (January 6, 1816)

  b.       Design and Title of Trump

 As the psychologist Carl Jung observes in his study appended to Paul Radin’s The Trickster, as an
archetypal figure the Fool is one of the most important symbols in the Collective Unconscious.  He
represents the Self at the beginning of the Journey of Life, the lack wit, the God-touched who has
abandoned his wits for something better, “that Folly of God which is wiser than the wisdom of all
mankind.”  He is the trickster whose practical jokes so often backfire, Wiley Coyote foiled yet again by
the Roadrunner.  He is Punch, Reynard the Fox, Alfred E. Neuman, and Harlequin.  He is Robert A.
Heinlein’s Max Jones of Starman Jones and Friday of the novel of the same name, Jack Sawyer of
Stephen King and Peter Straub’s The Talisman, Sister and Roland Croninger and, to some extent, Sue
Wanda of R. R. McCammon’s Swan Song.  He is the stupid sibling left sitting at home in the ashes on the
hearth when his or her older siblings go out into the world, who must eventually rescue them from that
world when all their intelligence proves to be of far less value than his/her cunning, kindness, and trust
in the Gods.  Both Simple Hans and Cinderella, the Fool fails in everything but folly – and by the latter
wins a kingdom.

He was known in medieval Germany and the Low Countries as Tyl Eulenspigel, inRussia as the Fool of
God, and in Charlemagne’s France as Our Lady’s Juggler.  He is Dostoevsky’s Prince Mishkin, the entire
citizenry of the wonderful land of Chelm, Merlin at King Arthur’s Court, and Coyote, Raven, and the
Trickster in American Indian tales. Above all, he is Hermes-Djehuti, Lord of the Winds, God of Practical
Jokers and Lord of Wisdom and Justice, Whose justice is sometimes rough indeed.

Whoever designed the first Tarot pack knew the Fool well in one or another of these guises, for legends
of the Fool were already part of the “family history” of European humanity.  But in general the Fool was
not known in Europe as a standard hero;  rather, he was known at the royal courts which first
commissioned production of and used the Tarot as the Court Jester or Court Dwarf who was, in spite of
his inferior status and strange appearance, one of the very few who could speak unpleasant truths to
the King and Queen and get away with it.  Today, here in America, as elsewhere, the Fool lives on in such
manifestations as the Clown of the great circuses, the Punch & Judy show, the television comedian, and
the latter’s cartoon clone, Wiley Coyote, Sylvester the Cat, Tweety Bird, Goofy, and all the other
escapees from the Toonworld asylums.  He is the hero of the New Orleans Mardi Gras, the Rio Carnival,
andMunich’s Fasching, conductor of one last, grand outbreak of insanity and indulgence before the
privation and self-discipline of Lent close life in for the last hard days of Winter.

At one and the same time the Fool is what we like least about and dare not repudiate in ourselves, the
irrepressible Child who is also the seed of tomorrow and tomorrow’s tomorrow, our most spontaneous
and untutored nature, the Spirit within us stripped naked.  Likewise, Trump 0, The Fool, represents the
Spirit of the entire Tarot pack.  In the earliest packs known the Fool is shown towering above tiny human
figures, the Giant of Folly who is also the Angel of Supra-Rational Sanity, crazy Tom O’ Bedlam who
nevertheless somehow, alone of us all, is capable of making that first journey “ten leagues beyond the
wide world’s end” without which the species can never hope to survive and thrive. His madness is that
of God’s Holy Fool, and it is that madness that illuminates the cards of the Tarot.  For in any reading of
Tarot, it is a Fool who asks the question, and another Fool who answers.

Another name for this card is The Alchemist.  Alchemy does produce consistent results upon consistent
operations, but even so, there is always an element of the unexpected in its products – above all, in the
changes in the Alchemist himself over the course of many years of study and practice of the
subject.  Alchemy is a spiritual discipline whereby one attempts to come to know the Spirit by working
directly with its ultimate Throne, Matter, an aim very much in the spirit of Trump 0, The Fool.

Images of The Fool have varied widely.  These include:

 Aquarian:  A dreamer, holding a blooming rod over his right shoulder, and a white rose in his right hand.

 Bembo:  A ragged fool, with feathers or straw in his hair.  This fool, like that of Gringonneur, may be
based on European carnival customs of burning or drowning an effigy of the carnival king on the last day
of carnival or the first of Lent.  In some festivals, the effigy was provided by a living man or woman,
which sometimes led to fatal misadventures when the crowd got a little too enthusiastic. This custom
very likely has its roots in the custom of killing the Solar King at the end of a Solar year.  Another custom
that may have contributed something to it is that of the burning of the Wicker Man.  The latter was a
custom of the Druids in which a colossus made of wicker, similar to a scarecrow, with a representation
of a man’s head at the top was built, its hollow interior filled with prisoners of war, criminals, and even,
sometimes, innocent persons;  the whole figure was then burnt as a sacrifice to the gods.

 Crowley:  A staring, horned fool, oblivious of a tiger biting his leg, a crocodile behind him, and a
landscape littered with occult symbolism

 Golden Dawn:  Entitled “The Spirit of Aiqhr,” the Trump shows “a bearded ancient seen in profile.”

 Gringonneur:  A gigantic fool, wearing only a jockstrap, stands in Gargantuan triumph over four not very
distressed people.

 Insight: The Fool setting forth on his journey. A grinning cat attacks him.

 Marseille:  Same basic design as Insight, except that the cat has torn away part of the Fool’s trousers.

The New Tarot:  Titled “The Nameless One,” the card shows a naked figure accompanied by a dog-like
being leaving a field of bones.  In one hand, the figure carries an open scroll, which he reads as he
journeys;  in the other hand he carries a furled scroll. Above him a spider hangs from its web.

 Swiss: A court fool in parti-colored red, blue, and yellow, very similar to the Joker in an ordinary playing
card pack as well as to the general portrayal of the character The Joker in the Batman comics

 Waite:  A young man in gorgeous vestments pauses on the edge of a precipice.  In his left hand he
carries a white rose;  in his left is a costly wand, from which a wallet embroidered with exotic designs
falls over his right shoulder.  A little white dog bounds joyfully at his side. Blue sky is above him, great
mountains in the background, a yawning abyss before him.  The Sun blazes out of the sky at the upper
right.

 Wirth:  A wildcat attacks the Fool’s left leg;  the Fool wears an expression of great pain.

 America’s Tarot*:  The color of the Fool is the gold or yellow of Air.  He has the horns of the Ox, and
between them is a phallic cone of white light, representing the influences of Kether, from whence he
comes.  He is shown against a background of Air, at the top of which is the star-spangled blackness of
Space, filled with a pulsing aurora of red, white, and blue. He dances above an Abyss. Bursting into the
world in a completely unexpected entrance, he dances through it with utter blithe innocence. He wears
green, like the Green Man and all the other Springtime traditions, but his shoes are the brilliant yellow-
gold of the Sun. His light-green coat is embroidered in a darker green with cartooned symbols of the
psilocybin mushroom, datura flower, morning-glories, and the peyote cactus. In his right hand he bears
a wand, tipped with a pyramid of white, representing both the Solar Father and Chokmah;  in his left he
carries a blazing pine-cone, representing both the phallic power of the Father and the fertility of plant
life. From his left shoulder hangs a bunch of purple grapes, representing fertility, sweetness, and the
basis of the divine drunkenness of the followers of Dionysus; their stems have the form of rainbow-hued
spirals, the same as that of the four-dimensional space-time continuum, and are intertwined
with Cannabis plants. Upon these spiral whorls are other attributions of divinity, from the vulture of
Maat and the Dove of Venus/Isis/Mary to the ivy sacred to the devotees of Dionysus;  the many-colored
Butterfly of Air;  the winged globe with its twin serpents, echoed by the twin infants embracing on the
middle spiral.  Above all are three Cannabis flowers forming one larger flower, representing the Trinity
giving Their blessing to the Fool.  A tiger, running up behind him, fawns upon him;  below his feet in
the Cosmic River, filled with lotus blossoms, crouches a crocodile.  The Sun is in the center, forming a
focus for the rest of the card. Symbols of Air and Uranus abound in this card.  Alternate:  Alfred E.
Neuman on a construction beam high above New York City, about to step off – in the windows of a near-
by building are All the Gang at MAD, who are cheerfully waving him on.  The New York City skyline and
the Statue of Liberty constitute the background.  A bald eagle flies overhead.  A pit-bull is clinging to the
calf of Alfie’s leg.  Ghost-over of Aleister Crowley.

The Divine Comedy Tarot*: Dante falls down the hole, beginning his journey into Inferno and on to
Purgatory and Paradise.

Biblical Tarot**:  Jesus of Nazareth, as a youngster;  Genesis.

*P proposed design by Yael R. Dragwyla.  The Deuces through the Tens would represent the nine Circles
of the Inferno, and the adventures experienced there;  the Aces would represent the Powers of
Hell;  the Greater Trumps, in order from 0, I, . . ., through XXI, would represent Dante’s descent through
Inferno and the lessons learned on the way; and the Court Cards would represent various characters
met along the way.
 

**Proposed design by Yael R. Dragwyla.  In the Twelfth Century, the Albigensians, a heretical sect of
Christianity, clandestinely taught the Bible to the common people, who were generally illiterate, by
using a set of cards with pictures very like today’s Tarot Trumps. (This was for safety’s sake.  If anyone
representing the Church happened to come in during a teaching-session, they could all pretend they
were just playing a game.  “Who, us, Ossifer?  We were just playing a friendly game of cribbage!”  Each
card represented one or more books of the Bible, and every symbol in it had a specific meaning related
to that/those book(s).  For a modern Tarot version of their teaching cards, the Greater Trumps would
depict the books of the Bible, for both the Old and New Testaments;  the Court Cards would represent
the Kings, Prophets, and Patriarchs as well as the Apostles;  and the Lower Arcana would illustrate
specific Biblical teachings, e.g., the Eight of Cups would represent the Beatitudes, the Seven of Wands
would symbolize the Seven Days of Creation, etc. Perhaps two different packs could be created, one for
the Old, the other for the New Testament.

 John Burt’s MAD Tarot**:  Alfred E. Neuman steps blithely off one moving girder towards another,
about 30 or 40 stories above the street, while a bulldog pulls at his pants cuff.

The Robert A. Heinlein Tarot†:  A starry-eyed young man dressed in the uniform of the Space Patrol at a
spaceport, just stepping aboard a Patrol space-ship.  In the middle ground are tall space-ships in the
form envisaged during the Golden Age of Science Fiction, in the shape of slender rockets. In the
background can be seen the Statue of Liberty, holding her torch high.  A scaly, umpteen-legged little
what sit clings to the young man’s pant’s-leg, obviously a creature of some world other than ours.

The H. P. Lovecraft Tarot‡: 

The Stephen King Tarot††:  Tom Cullen, from The Stand, and Jack Sawyer, from The Talisman, setting out
joyfully on a journey, Wolf (from The Talisman)  bounding along at Jack’s heels.  They are on the brink of
a precipice above a vast Abyss; behind them are “purple mountain majesties,” shining in the Sun, and
the sky is a deep, rich blue.  Tom and Jack each carry a bindle on a staff held over his shoulder, Tom
dressed in a T-shirt and blue bib-alls and Jack in a white silk blouse and tan trousers, both young men
wearing sandals;  Wolfie has only the clothes he wears, consisting just of dark blue bib-alls.  The bindles
are patterned in fantastically colored designs incorporating images suggesting boundless fertility (e.g.,
grapes), wealth, etc.

The R. R. McCammon Tarot‡‡:  At the center of the card is a circular shield, divided into three pie-
shaped wedges, in each of which is a different instance of the Fool, taken from McCammon’s
novel Swan Song, all of whom have their feet by the center of the shield (i.e., so that all are oriented
with heads toward the rim of the circle, feet at its center):  At the top are Swan and Josh, just after they
have emerged from their impromptu bomb-shelter in the middle of a burned-over Kansas;  to the left
are Roland Croninger and Colonel Macklin, with the Shadow Soldier standing just behind Macklin,
emerging from the survival redoubt into a burned-over Idaho;  and to the right are Sister, nee Sister
Creep and Artie Wisco, standing in the slagged-over, burned out ruins of Manhattan, Artie dressed in his
burned mink coat and pajamas, Sister in her Salvation Army cast-offs.  In the very center of the shield is
a much smaller circular area, concentric to the larger shield, on the rim of which the feet of these Fools
rest;  within this smaller circle is a cameo of Dante Alighieri and his guide Virgil, as they appear in Gustav
Doré’s illustrations for the Divine Comedy. 

 *Designed by the author of this course.  An artist has not yet been commissioned for it. The backs of
these cards show the Statue of Liberty with a bald eagle flying overhead; their backgrounds are red,
white, and blue.  Borders around the facing pictures bear the name of the Trump and are executed in
red, white, and blue.  As with the Lower Arcana and the Court Cards of this pack, each card has a
double-face, á la the Court Cards of playing-card packs, except that the two halves of the card
are not exact duplicates or even mirror-images of each other.  Rather, the one signifying the Reverse
position of the card is a parody (Qlippoth) or redemption of the one signifying the Upright position. For
example, if for Trump XIV, Temperance or Art, which is associated with the astrological Sign Sagittarius
and hence travel, religion, philosophy, etc., if the Upright half shows, say, a spaceship or train, Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., or Socrates, the lower half would show a traffic-jam on the L.A. freeway
interchanges, Elmer Gantry, or Hitler.

 *The MAD Tarot © 1997 by John Burt, Corvallis, OR 

†A proposed design for a Tarot pack depicting the works, life, and ideals of the libertarian writer Robert
Anson Heinlein, by Yael R. Dragwyla.  Each Trump contains a scene from one of his novels, or captures
an idea from one or more of his essays, and the Lower Arcana and Court Cards represent characters and
modalities from his work.  The CD-ROM version would play his song “The Green Hills of Earth” (from his
short story of the same title) to start whenever it was used.

‡Design proposed by Yael R. Dragwyla.  Each Trump represents one of Lovecraft’s best-known works
and/or a basic motif from the Cthulhu Mythos, and/or one of the Elder Gods or Great Old Ones;  the
Lower Arcana show specific scenes from his stories; and the Court Cards represent characters in his
work.

††Design proposed by Yael R. Dragwyla.  Each Trump represents one or more of King’s novels and
stories (those with common or interwove themes may be included in the same Trump).  The Lower
Arcana present specific scenes from his novels. The Court Cards represent characters from his novels.

 
‡‡Design proposed by Yael R. Dragwyla.  Possibly execution by Rowena, the artist who has produced
most of the covers for McCammon’s major work. Each Trump represents one or more of King’s novels
and stories (those with common or interwove themes may be included in the same Trump).  The Lower
Arcana present specific scenes from his novels.  The Court Cards represent characters from his novels.

 c.       Divinatory Meanings

Upright: Originality, audacity, venturesome quest.  Folly, eccentricity, insanity.  The consequences

following on every action, for better or worse. An original, subtle, sudden impulse or impact, coming
from a completely strange or unexpected quarter. The Mighty and Terrible One, or, the
Beast.  Unexpected, unplanned, or challenging influences. The dreamer confronted with choices must
act with great care.  The Crown of Wisdom.  The Primum Mobile acting through the Airy Signs of the
Zodiac.  Man progressing towards evolution.  The author, creating a story.   Anarchy.  The
irrational.  Mathematically speaking, “weird” numbers and structures, such as, e.g., Ö-1, e, the Klein
Bottle, a Wild Sphere, non-linear structures, etc. The Divine Bum, the Holy Fool.  A gambler. The end of a
cycle.  All of the virtues of a fool, including total openness to the Will and Word of God;  by another
reading, Jesus of Nazareth.  Chaos, the Void, Sky.  The spiritual innocent containing within himself
cosmic racial wisdom.  The spirit evolving inward toward its source. Will. Will-power.  True Will.
Magickal intention. Dexterity.  High adept of Ninjutsu combat arts.  The wisdom of the unconscious
mind.  That which comprises allpossibilities of movement, an infinite number of degrees of freedom.
The transfinite, transfinite quantities, transfinite sets.  Fractal dimensions, an infinite number of
dimensions, etc.  The omnipresent, the infinite, the eternal.  That which cannot be helped, that which
will take care of itself, that over which we have no control.  Alpha and Omega, beginning and end.  0 or
infinity.  Both the Void before Creation and the accomplishments of God on the Seventh Day of
Creation.  Random chance or contingency.  The reverse of the Hanged Man.  The spirit in search of
experience. The flesh, fleshly life.  The life of the senses.  The Alchemist (used in the sense of those who
pursue and attain ultimate wisdom). Folly.  Mania.  Extravagance. Intoxication.  Delirium.  Success and
achievement through unconsciously-directed actions.  The Querent.  A conception, pregnancy, or
child.  Any of the Airy Signs (Gemini, Libra, Aquarius) or dwads (twelfths of a Sign; the first dwad or 2½°
of a Sign is ruled by that Sign itself;  the second, by the Sign that follows the given Sign; the third, by the
second Sign following the given Sign;  etc., e.g., the first dwad of Libra is ruled by Libra, the second by
Scorpio, the third by Sagittarius, etc.) of the Zodiac. Uranus direct (the astrological condition);  if next to
a card signifying an astrological Sign, means Uranus direct in that Sign, and all indicated associations.

 Reversed: Inconsiderate or thoughtless action.  The slave of material things, who is inevitably ruined.
The respiratory organs and functions.  Epilepsy, insanity, fluxes, rabies, viral infections.  Impulses leading
to major problems.  Careless promises.  Insecurity. Mishandled intention.  All of the drawbacks which a
fool could possess. Will applied to evil ends. Weakness of will.  Low cunning.  Knavishness.  A knave.
Madness. Foolishness.  The Puffer (the sort of idiot who takes up the work of Alchemy solely for the
purpose of getting rich, or for idle thrills – another word for such persons is frequently “maimed,”
“dead,” “dismembered,” “mad as a hatter,” etc.). Negligence. Apathy.  A really bad mistake, one which
may be potentially fatal. Uranus retrograde (the astrological condition);  if next to a card signifying an
astrological Sign, means Uranus retrograde in that Sign, and all indicated associations.  Power politics.

 d.  Interrelationships of the Path and the Trump

 This card is attributed to the letter a (Aleph), meaning “Ox.”  Aleph is the first of the three Mother
letters, a (Aleph), m (Mem), and c (Shin), which correspond in various, interwoven ways with all the
Triads of esoteric cosmology, e.g. Fire, Water, Air; Father, Mother, Child;  Sulphur (an oil extracted from
a substance by Alchemical means), Salte (a mineral ash extracted from a substance by complete
calcinations or combustion of the substance), and Mercury (a vapor extracted from a substance by
Alchemical processing);  etc.

The number of this card is 0.  Because of this, it is associated with the Negative or Three Veils of the Zero
above the Tree of Life, Ain (Zero or Nothingness),  Ain Soph(Limitlessness), and Ain Soph Aur (Limitless
Light), the source of all things.  It is the Qaballistic Zero, and as such it is virtually identical with the Zen
concept of Void or Sky, representing the Unconscious, the “space through which eagles (brilliant ideas
and impulses) fly,” and the Greek idea of Chaos, the Mother of all that exists, the Great Ground of Being
that was before anything was.  As Crowley says, “It is the equation of the Universe, the initial and final
balance of the opposites;  Air, in this card, therefore quintessentially means a vacuum.”*  In modern
physical cosmology, it refers to the nothingness out of which was born the Universe, the void in which
somehow came to be equal numbers of virtual particles and anti-particles which, coming together in
mutual annihilation, produced the energy that provided the raw material for Creation at the Big Bang. 

 *Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth, op. cit., p. 53. 

 In medieval Tarot packs, the title of this card is Le Mat, adapted from the Italian word matto, meaning
“madman” or “fool.”  But according to some legends, the Tarot, or at least that part of it which
comprises the Greater Arcana, had its origins in Egypt; and the Egyptian Mat, Maut, or Maat is the
Goddess of Wisdom, Who takes the form of a vulture.  This Goddess is an earlier and more sublime
modification of the idea of Nuith (the night sky, the Void, empty space, the space-time continuum) than
is Isis, Who is associated with Trump II, The High Priestess.

Two legends are connected with the vulture that are of interest here.  The first is that it has a spiral
neck.  There is a theory, first postulated by Zoroaster in his Oracles and in modern times by Albert
Einstein and his colleagues, that the shape of the Universe, regarded as a space-time holon, is
a spiral.  According to the other legend, the vulture was supposed to reproduce by “the intervention of
the wind,” that is, that the female vulture was impregnated by the spirits of the wind.  By analogy, the
Element Air is the father of all manifest existence, an idea that is also echoed in Anaximenes’ school of
philosophy.

Therefore this card represents both the father and the mother, albeit in the most abstract sense of
these ideas.  Thus it identifies male with female, stripping gender away from the idea of “the
parent.”  This has a reflection in developmental biology;  the newly fertilized ovum or zygote is sexually
neutral, and only begins to exhibit gender during much later stages of its development – a course of
development which can be deliberately guided in one or another direction by judicious administration of
hormones to the mother’s body at various stages of pregnancy, regardless of the actual sex-
chromosomes possessed by the fetus. On a more abstract level, this is represented by the fact that 0 =
(+1) + (-1).

There are a number of traditions, legends, and ideas that go into this card.  The first has to do with times
and cultures when a man became king not by right of birth, but rather as a result of
conquest.  Frequently the new king was a foreigner, an outsider, who killed the old king and married
that king’s daughter.  The upside of this arrangement was strong selection for virility and competency in
the new king, who had to win his bride in open competition.  In the oldest fairy-tales, this motif is
repeated again and again.  The ambitious young stranger is often a troubadour;  he is almost always in
disguise, often in a repulsive form – “The Beauty and the Beast” is typical of such tales. The king’s
daughter may also be camouflaged, e.g., “Cinderella,” “Snow White,” “The Sleeping Beauty,” etc.  The
story of Aladdin and his fabulous Lamp is an extremely elaborate version of this sort of tale, replete with
instances of the use of Magick.  In these stories are the beginnings of the legend of the Wandering
Prince – who, by the way, is always and ever the fool of his family, the “lack witted” younger son who
sits at home while his brothers go marching off in search of fame, fortune, and glory.  There is an old
saying:  “the family nitwit had better go into the church,” which isn’t entirely in the spirit of ridicule:  in
the East, the madman is believed to be possessed by spirits, a holy man or a prophet, God’s Holy
Fool.  So deep does this idea run that it is actually embedded in our language: “silly” means empty, as in
the Vacuum of Air, the Zero, the Void, e.g., “the silly buckets on the deck.”  The word itself comes from
the Germanselig, “holy,” “blessed.”  The Fool is most strongly characterized by his sheer innocence, one
of the most important features of the story.

To ensure the succession in such cultures, it was devised that the blood royal shouldreally be royal
blood, and that the succession should be fortified by the introduction of the germ-plasma of the
stranger, rather than letting it go to hell as the result of continuous and ever more involutedly
inbreeding. Sometimes this idea was pushed a little too far, and the introduction of the “disguised
prince” may often have been due to a set-up arranged by the king, the father, who furnished the
younger man with secret letters of introduction.  After all, the only profession older than the Oldest One
is politics! J

The Green Man of the Celtic Spring Festivals and the April Fool are still other expressions of the
idea.  The Green Man personifies the mysterious influences that generate the Springtime and the rebirth
of life in a frozen world.  The April Fool represents the urge to gambol and play that comes upon all of us
at the return of the light and heat of the Sun of the Vernal Equinox, the joy and return of spirits that
rises in all living things at that time.  The folly, foolishness, and release of Mardi Gras are also part of
these traditions.

Yet another tradition is that of the Paraclete, the Dove of the Holy Spirit, descending on Mary to
impregnate her with the Christ-child. Both Easter and the traditional conception of Jesus of Nazareth
occur around the time of the Vernal Equinox (since the traditional birthday of Jesus is The Winter
Solstice).

The origins of the legend of Parsifal (Percival or Percivale), the core of the mystery of the Savior Fish-
God, and of the Sangraal or Holy Grail are disputed.  Apparently it arose first in Brittany,
the land of Merlin and the Druids;  the Welsh version of this tradition, which lends much of its power
and beauty to the Arthurian Cycle, may have come into existence even earlier.  This legend, like that of
The Fool, is purely pre-Christian in origin, not a trace of which is found in Nordic mythologies.  Parsifal
represents the Western form of the tradition of the fool, who graduates from wanton innocence to
sanctification.

Another tradition of relevance here is that of Mako, the son of Set, or Sebek, the various forms of the
Crocodile God of Egypt. Indeed, in some versions of the card, it is a crocodile rather than a dog that
pursues and worries the leg of the dancing Fool.  The crocodile represented the enormous fertility of
the Nile and the importance of the Nile’s annual flooding to ancient Egypt.  Dagon of the Sumerians and
the Fish as the representation of the name of the Christ are other representations of this idea.  And in
the mythology of Yucatán it was “the old ones covered with feathers that came up out of the sea” who
were the first men, and the beginning of human history, the human world.

Harpocrates or Hoor-pa-Kraat, the God of Silence, is another image of the Fool.  It is out of the Silence of
Eternity that Creation comes, and the moment of its coming is represented by these Gods, as it is
represented by Trump 0, The Fool.

Zeus Arrhenothelus, the bisexual Zeus, is another association for this card.  So is Dionysus Zagreus, an
avatar of Dionysus Who possesses horns, as the Ox does.  And so is Bacchus Diphues, associated with
the ecstasy of intoxication, the mania, frenzy, or divine drunkenness of the Holy Fool. Shiva, Whose
sacred herb is Cannabis, and Mescalito, the Spirit of Mescaline, are likewise associated with the card.

Finally, Baphomet, the “God” of the Templars, is associated with this card because of the various ideas
represented by its image: ambisexuality, extreme fertility, and so forth.

The design of the card generally embodies all these various ideas and their corollaries.  The color of the
Fool is the gold or yellow of Air.  He has the horns of the Ox, and between these horns there is phallic
cone of white light that represents the influences of Kether, from whence he comes.  He is shown
against a background of Air, sheer open Space, above an Abyss. He bursts into the world completely
unexpectedly, dancing through it with utter blithe innocence.  He wears green, like the Green Man and
all the other Springtime traditions, but his shoes are the brilliant yellow-gold of the Sun. In his right hand
he bears a wand, tipped with a pyramid of white, representing both the Solar Father and Chokmah;  in
his left he carries a blazing pine-cone, representing both the phallic power of the Father and the fertility
of plant life.  From his left shoulder hangs a bunch of purple grapes, representing fertility, sweetness,
and the basis of the divine drunkenness of the followers of Dionysus;  the ecstasy lying in wait in the
grapes is represented by their stems, which have the form of rainbow-hued spirals, the same as that of
the four-dimensional space-time continuum.  This suggests the Threefold Veil of the Zeros manifesting in
divided light as a result of his intervention.  Upon this spiral whorl are other attributions of divinity, from
the vulture of Maat and the dove of Venus/Isis/Mary to the ivy sacred to the devotees of Dionysus; the
many-colored Butterfly of Air; the winged globe with its twin serpents, echoed by the twin infants
embracing on the middle spiral.  Above them all are three flowers in one, representing the Trinity giving
Their blessing to the Fool.  A tiger fawns upon him;  below his feet in the Cosmic River, filled with lotus
blossoms, crouches a crocodile.  Resolving all the many symbols and images, the Sun in the center forms
the focus of the microcosm.  The picture as a whole symbolizes Creative Light.

In terms of eukaryotic multicellular (and thus human) development, this Path represents conception and
the first few stages of cell-division involved in the formation of a blastula.  It also signifies the neonate,
whether the chick or beetle newly emerged from its egg, the butterfly from its cocoon, or the newborn
mammal.

 2.       Key 12

 Beth b, “House.”  Trump I, The Magician or The Magus.  Mercury Ø Cardinal or arithmetic value of

2.  Second letter of Hebrew alphabet (ordinal value of
2).”  ConnectsSephirah 1, Kether with Sephirah  3, Binah. Roman/English equivalent:  B.

 According to the Yetziratic Text, this Path is called the Intelligence of Transparency, implying the ability
to see things as they really are.  The form no longer conceals the luminous image of the Creator, but
instead reveals it. As it were, the Veil of the Templeis no longer opaque; no longer does one see “in a
glass, darkly.”  This isn’t surprising, since this Path leads from Binah, representing the principle of form in
Spirit, to Kether, the very source both of Form and its inherent energy.

This state of consciousness is a ‘species of Magnificence’; its special title, given in the Yetziratic Text,
‘Chazchazit,’ derives from the Hebrew word j z j (ChZCh), “seer” or “one gifted with the abilities of a
seer” (from t w z j [Chazuth], “a vision”).  The highest form of this faculty is implied here, i.e., the ability
to acquire spiritual knowledge by means of transcendental abilities, a very much more delicate and
accurate form of inner perception than even intuition, which is in turn a very much higher and more
accurate form of awareness than clairvoyance, clairaudience or any of the other various forms of lower
psychism.10

a.       Qaballistic meanings and theory

 This Path is an extremely advanced mode of consciousness entailing awareness of things as they are in
reality, together with an ability to perceive the true plan of Creation as it exists in the realms
of Kether  and then bring it down in the form of a true imprint intoBinah, the Lord of Form.  A good
analogy of this is the graphic artist who paints thingsexactly as he or she perceives them, including the
changes in color lent to a scene by shadow;  the lay-person, viewing the finished painting, generally
unconsciously translates the scene in his or her mind into a three-dimensional image in which the
overall color of a thing is invariant, the changes in its hue from one side to another illusions due to the
play of light and shadow, but as painted by the artist, these changes are quite real differences in
hues.  The viewer perceives a mood, an atmosphere, or an aura in the painting due to these
differentiations of hue where the artist simply rendered the play of light and shade in his or her original
subject with absolute accuracy, the mood/atmosphere/aura being only the viewer’s projection into or
interpretation of the painting according to that play.

Just as the dedicated artist must eventually reproduce his or her ideas and inspirations into some
physical form, such as a painting, sculpture, written work, or other artistic work, so it is necessary to
bring the plan, will, or intention that first arises inKether down into the regions of form, since without a
manifest result, the acquisition of knowledge is ultimately sterile and without value. However, the
knowledge and effects produced here are far beyond what is normally understood by these terms.
Eventually, the impulses of Kether must be brought all the way down into the levels of mind and physical
manifestation, but here only the formulation in the concrete part of Spirit of those impulses is
considered.

The Tarot Trump for this Path, Trump I, is called The Magickian  or Magus.  A Magickian or Magus is one
who brings things from the regions of Spirit down to lower levels of the Inner Planes;  in this context, it is
from Kether to Binah that the transfer is accomplished.  Generally the Magickian is shown on the card as
wielding the Wand, Rod, or Staff of Power, standing before the Table of Manifestation.  He or she wears
a hat in the form of a figure-eight laid on its side, i.e., an infinity symbol ¥, representing the Veil of the
Negatives or Three Zeroes from which Kether first arises and the immortality of the soul and spirit.

The Planet assigned to this Path is Mercury, Who is also associated with Hod, theSephirah of
Magick.  However, the Magick of Hod takes place at a far lower or denser level of reality than that
considered here.  The shape of the astrological glyph assigned to this Planet,  Ø, gives an appropriate
indication of the nature of this Path;  it includes the glyph of Venus,  Ù, the Circle of Spirit or the Sun
above the Cross of Manifestation, crowned with the Lunar Crescent of the Receptive Soul. This sigil thus
represents the idea of Spirit active on all the levels of Matter together with receptivity toward the higher
forces of the cosmos.

The Hebrew letter for this Path, b (Beth), means “House.”  It is on this Path that the House of Spirit is
being built, or at least its foundations, though at this stage the effects of the functioning of this path
upon the Individuality, the primary target of the influences of the 18 th Path, j (Cheth), aren’t really very
noticeable.  The House under consideration is a holy one, which might better be called the Temple of
the Spirit or the Ark of the Covenant.  In one sense, this Temple is the mortal body, or, collectively, all
bodies occupied by Spirit, the whole man living in the real world, who should be a living expression of
the blueprint laid down in his or her own microcosmic Kether. The aims of initiation, the apotheosis of
mortal development and evolution, is the creation of a fit dwelling for Spirit. When this is achieved in
the real world, here on Earth, the result is equivalent to what has been called the new Jerusalem,
descended from Heaven to Earth.  This is indicated by the shape of the Hebrew letter, which
incorporates a thin horizontal line at the top joined by a vertical bar to the thick horizontal line at the
bottom.  This shows that the abstract impulses of the Spirit in Kether descend as a true imprint in the
dense world of manifestation: in other words, that the Kingdom of Heaven shall be made manifest on
Earth.
Hebrew letter:  b (Beth), “House”

 Numerical value:  2

 Planet:  Mercury

 Name of Planet in Hebrew:  b k w k (Kokab)

 Colors:  Yellow (King Scale);  purple (Queen Scale);  gray (Emperor Scale); indigo, rayed violet (Empress
Scale).

 Gods:

      Egyptian:  Djehuti, especially as the Dog-Faced Baboon

Greek:  Hermes, especially in His role as Psychopompos

Roman:  Mercurius

Norse:  Odin

Hindu:  Hanuman;  Vishnu (as Parasa-Rama)

American Indian:  Raven, Coyote, Trickster, Spider Woman

West African:  Anansi-Spider

Haitian Voudon:  Legba

United States of America:  Alfred E. Neuman, the Yellow Kid (of Sunday Comics fame), the Katzenjammer
Kids (ditto;  since Hans and Fritz may also be twins, they also represent Mercury as the ruler of
Gemini);  Bugs Bunny (comics, cartoons);  Little Lulu (comics, cartoons);  Little Iodine (Jimmy Hatlo’s
creation in the Sunday funnies)

 Archangel: l a p r (Raphael)

 Choir of Angels:  \ y h l a  y n b  (the Beni Elohim (the Sons of God, who came down to mate with mortal
women))

 Angel:  l a p r (Raphael)

 Intelligence:  l a y r m  (Tiriel)

 Spirit:  t r t r t p t  (Taphthattharath)

 Buddhist meditation:  Yellow

 Precious stones:  Opal, agate

 Plants, real and imaginary:  vervain, herb Mercury, marjolane, palm

Animals, real and imaginary:  swallow, ibis, ape, weasels, ferrets, martins, skunks

 Christian associations:  Church of Sardis, the Holy Ghost

 Mineral drugs:  mercury metal

 Magickal powers:  Miracles of Healing, the Gift of Tongues, Knowledge of the Sciences – i.e., control of
forces and things below the level of consciousness;  the focus by concentration of energy from above
(i.e., from Kether)

 Vegetable drugs (plant extracts):  all cerebral excitants, e.g., caffeine

 Vice:  Falsehood, the Lie, Dishonesty, Envy

 Mathematical entities:  the Octagon, the Octagram, the Calvary Cross

Magickal image: A fair youth with winged helmet and heels, equipped as a Magickian, displaying his art

 Title of Tarot Trump:  The Magus of Power

 Legendary order of being:  “Voices”;  witches and wizards

 The body:  the nervous system

 Diseases:  ataxia, aphasia, leprosy, Lou Gherig’s disease (from which Stephen Hawking, one of the Great
Magi of the 20th century, has suffered since he was 20, which was supposed to have killed him six
months after he contracted it – but 35 years later, he’s still going strong), multiple sclerosis, polio, rabies

 Perfumes:  mastic, white sandalwood, mace, storax, all fugitive odors

 Magickal weapons:  the Wand or Caduceus

 Element (chemical):  Mercury (metal),  80Hg

 Ecological process, realm, or principle:  the winds

 Physical chemistry:  vaporization, sublimation (Mercury is one of the three major products of the
Alchemical decomposition of matter;  in this case, the word means a sort of vapor, the other two
products being Sulphur, meaning an oil, and Salte, meaning the ash resulting from complete calcinations
of the substance;  these three decomposition products are respectively associated with the Mutable,
Fixed or Cherubic, and Cardinal or Movable Signs of astrology)

 Qlippoth:  Baratchiel, attributed to the 12th Path or kala of the Tunnels of Set.  His number is 260.  The
number should be painted in a yellow deeper than that used for the sigil of Amprodias, upon a vesica-
shaped plaque of indigo rayed with violet.  The name should be vibrated in the key of ‘E,’ as with the
previous sentinel;  but with a suggestion of chattering or tittering accompanying the vibration, which
should not be even.*  The traditional Demon associated with this Planet is l a m s  (Samael, “The False
Accuser”).

Far Eastern cosmological associations:

Water.  The North. Winter. The Hidden.  Cold.  Fluid. Salt.  Black.  Controls kidneys and bladder.  The

Black Tortoise.  The Planet Mercury.  Yang – a Wave.  Yin – a Brook.  Mercury metal (quicksilver).  Aqua
fortis.  Produces Wood/Air (naturally grown things), is produced by Metal (made things, ores), destroys
Fire, is destroyed by Earth.

 Trigram from the I Ching:  K’an

–    –

––––

–    –

  

*Grant, Nightside of  Eden, op. cit.,  pp. 162-165. 

 Musical note:  E natural.

Qaballistic Intelligence:  Transparency.

 b.       Design and Title of Trump

 Title:  The Magus or Magickian

 Design:  Generally, a juggler, prestidigitator, or actual Magickian holding a wand, standing before a table
upon which are the symbols of the Four Elements and the Suits of the Tarot, i.e., a Wand, Cup, Sword,
and Pentacle.

 Bembo’s Tarot:   This pack shows an unhappy juggler, seated;  on the table before him are a covered
dish, a glass, a knife, and two pennies;  his left hand holds a Rod.

  The Swiss Tarot shows a fairgrounds mountebank.  On a table before him are several balls, horns, cups,
and an open box. He holds a Rod.  The overall suggestion is of a juggler.

  The Insight Tarot is more or less the same as The Swiss Tarot, with the addition of a hat in the shape of
a lemniscate.

 The Italian Tarot is also similar to the Swiss Tarot, with the addition of two closed boxes.
  Wirth’s pack:  Here, the symbols on the table have been replaced by those for Suits of the Tarot, i.e., a
Cup, a Sword, and three Pentacles or Coins.  The Magus himself holds a Wand.

 Waite’s Tarot:  A Magickian standing behind a table.  In his upraised right hand is a Wand, and his left
hand is extended downward, pointing toward the Earth.  Above his head is a lemniscate, symbolizing
Eternity.  On the table before him are the symbols of the four Suits, i.e., a Wand, Cup, Sword, and
Pentacle.   Red roses bloom above him, and red roses and lilies in front of him.

 Crowley’s Tarot shows Hermes, leering.  Above Hermes’ head is the Hindu symbol for male/female
joined, with wings.  At the lower right is the Ape of Thoth.  Hermes plays with the symbols of the four
Suits.  Behind Hermes’ head is a snake, symbolizing both the Uraeus headdress of the pharaohs and the
caduceus of Hermes, and perhaps also Kundalini energy, the Wisdom gained through study of the
Qaballah, and sheer phallic energy. According to Crowley, no true representation of this card is possible,
since it represents perpetual motion.

 The New Tarot:  Retitled “The Changer.” It shows a man, dressed as an Eastern monk, standing astride a
white sphere, his arms outstretched to either side.  In his right hand is a lotus, from his left water falls,
on his left shoulder there is a hooded vulture or falcon that has sunk its claws into his flesh, and before
him, on a blanket, are the symbols of the four suits of the Minor Arcana of this pack:  Snakes (Wands),
Pears (Cups), Scimitars (Swords), and Stones (Pentacles).

America’s Tarot:  a montage of American genius, including Bill Gates, Thomas Edison, Hyman G.
Rickover, Nikola Tesla, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington Carver, Mark Twain, Jack Benny, Jellyroll
Morton, etc.  Article I of the Bill of Rights.

 The Divine Comedy Tarot:   Virgil appears to Dante to be his guide through Purgatory

  Biblical Tarot:  Melchizedik, the priest who circumcised Abraham; Joseph, in his coat of many colors,
interpreting dreams for Pharaoh;  Moses, parting the Red Sea;  Jesus in his ministry.

 John Burt’s MAD Tarot:  Alfred E. Neuman with a table full of MAD merchandise (sign: “Our prices

cheap!” – with outrageous prices on the labels on the merchandise . . .)

 John Burt’s Nerd Trumps*:  What kind of monitor is the Magician’s infinity-sign running on?  (Sounds
more like the problem is the platform – Windows 95 caught in some sort of GPF.)

 The Robert A. Heinlein Tarot:  Michael Valentine Smith of Stranger in a Strange Land. On the left side of
the card are images of Mars á la Heinlein, e.g., bouncers, old ones, the red desert, etc., as depicted
in Red Planet Mars, and on the right are images of Earth.

 The H. P. Lovecraft Tarot:  Nyarlathotep, High Priest of the Starry Wisdom cult and an agent of the
Crawling Chaos.

 The Stephen King Tarot:  Jack Sawyer, of The Talisman, bringing the Talisman home in triumph
  The R. R. McCammon Tarot:  Swan of Swan Song after her transformation and acquisition of her “inside
face,” pressing her hands to the Earth, bringing it to life.  Plants spring up from the burned, lifeless Earth
at her touch.  Her adoptive father, Joshua Hutchins, a tall, broad-shouldered black man with a handsome
face and burn-scars on his hands, watches her with fatherly pride;  something about him suggests
Hermes Psychopompos.

*The Nerd Trumps © 1997 by John Burt, Corvallis, OR.

c.       Divinatory Meanings

 Upright: In Freemasonry, “house-building” refers to esoteric Masonry itself.  Hence the Path, the name
of whose Hebrew letter means “House,” suggests the Hermetic Arts and Sciences as one meaning of this
card.  The control of forces and things below the level of the conscious mind. Energy from above,
focused by attention, through either Magick, meditation,  combat arts, the fine arts, or the practical
arts.  Magick.  Human Will as the Earthly reflection of God’s Will, promoting good and preventing evil.
Skills, wisdom, adroitness, elasticity, craft, cunning.  Occult wisdom and power.  The willing acquiescence
of control of one’s life to the skilled and educated unconscious, as in Ninjutsu combat arts.  The
beginnings of consciousness.  The intellect.  Strength of Will. Adaptability. The search for meaning.  The
Will in general, and its exercise, either alone or in harmony with God.  The Crown of Understanding.  The
beginning of material production.  The Primum Mobile acting through Alchemical or Philosophical
Mercury on Saturn. Skill, wisdom, adaptation.  Craft or cunning depending on neighboring cards. The
destiny of man struggling with the undercurrents of the occult.  Dexterity. Psychopompos leading the
Querent into new experience (where Hermes is not only the conductor of souls, but is also the Divine
Magus).  A Magus or Magickian.  Ability with women.  Agility. Wit.  The Spirit, receptive to cosmic forces
and, at the same time, activating matter.  Mercury in His apotheosis.  Abstract Will.  A female
inquirer.  Man seeking for the God in Heaven and, simultaneously, the demon below.  The Creator.  A
striving toward unity.  Initiation. The Querent him- or herself. Beginnings.  Time, seen as an ironic spirit,
looking forward.  A torch waved in the Void.  The possession and communication of gifts of the Spirit.
The divine Will as it is manifest in mortals.  Skill. Diplomacy.  Address.  Subtlety. Illness.  Pain.  Loss.
Disaster.  Snares of enemies. Mercury direct (the astrological condition; if next to a card signifying an
astrological Sign or part of one, means the Planet Mercury direct in that Sign, which all the indicated
associations).

 Reverse: The nervous system.  Any diseases of or injuries to the nervous system, including aphasia,
ataxia, rabies, epilepsy, leprosy, tertiary syphilis, etc.  Black Magick, sorcery.  Fraud and trickery in the
context of mercantilism, politics, etc. Prestidigitation, juggling.  Low cunning.  Deceit.  Theft. Messages
and business transactions. Interference of one’s acquired preconceptions with the matter at hand.  Over
control by the conscious mind of one’s actions and life, with resultant problems.  Weakness of
will. Weakness of intellect.  Indecisiveness.  The use of power for destructive or evil
ends. Hesitation.  Guile. Uncertainty.  Change caused by chance.  Trickery.  Extremes of
difficulty.  Instability. Impotence.  Will applied to evil ends.  Knavishness, knaves, a knave.  A physician or
healer.  A veterinarian.  Mental illness.  Disgrace. Disquiet. Mercury retrograde (the astrological
condition;  if next to a card signifying an astrological Sign or part of one, means the Planet Mercury
retrograde in that Sign, which all the indicated associations).

 d.  Interrelationships of the Path and the Trump

 Mercury is above all the Bearer of the Wand, representing Energy sent forth.  This card therefore
represents the Word or Logos by Whom the world were created, the Will and Wisdom of God, and the
True Will of the Magus.  Beth is the Path connecting Ketherto Binah, so that Mercury, the Messenger of
God, is appropriate for this Path. Another appropriate symbol for the Path is thus Lucifer.

However, Mercury is also associated with action in all forms and phases.  He is the fluidic basis of the
transmission of all activity, the living Intelligence informing the substance of such transmission.  In terms
of modern physics, He is the principle of electric charge.  He represent continuous Creation.

He represents the Law of Reason, or of necessity, or chance, the secret meaning of the Word, which is
the essence of the Word and the condition of its utterance.  Because of this, together with the fact that
Mercury represents duality (as in His ruler ship of Gemini, the Twins), He represents truth and
falsehood, wisdom and falsehood, dichotomies, oxymorons, and paradoxes of all kinds. The spirit of the
unexpected, He overturns all established ideas.  He is the Lord of the trickster, the prestidigitator, and
the practical joker, as well as of the thief:  if He can’t accomplish His desires by fair means, He will do so
by foul, as shown by Greek and Roman legends of the youthful Mercurius-Hermes.  Because He is the
unconscious Will, he cannot be understood by the conscious mind;  His position on the Tree of Life is
above Binah, “Understanding,” which from His point of view has not yet been formulated; still farther
down the Tree of Life from Him is Da’ath, “Knowledge.”  He is thus above all things which can be
consciously analyzed and understood.

As the second emanation from Kether, He is in a sense the adult form of the first emanation, Aleph, the
Fool, Whose number is Unity.  According to LaVey, the Child is a natural Magickian, spontaneously and
unconsciously, instinctively performing Magick – the Art and Science of producing Change in conformity
with Will – throughout all his or her waking and sleeping hours. The essentially Magickal world-view of
the small child, so derided by Freud, is in fact essential to the child’s ability to practice exercise and
control of his or her own Will via spontaneous play and other activities, without which the competency
of the adult in any sphere will never been realized.  Later on, as the young child passes the threshold
represented by his or her first introduction to society and school, he or she “learns” (Da’ath) that belief
in and practice of Magick is “silly” and “childish” or even “mad,” and tries to adopt an “adult” (i.e.,
reductionist and socialized) point of view.  For a while, this is necessary for the child’s further
socialization, for otherwise he or she would not find enough value in others to respect their wishes
enough to refrain from pushing his or her own agenda at the expense of everyone else’s.  But later, “the
Magick may return,” either accidentally and spontaneously or through training and education, e.g.,
through combat-arts, artistic, or mathematical training.  At this stage, the now-grown child, a young
adult, must go back and consciously  recover all those instinctive skills and abilities which he or she
exercised so easily and spontaneously as an infant and toddler, but which he or she “put away as
childish things” upon introduction to society at the age of 5 or 6, repressing them and then forgetting
that he or she had done so.  Now, through tremendous effort and concentration, he or she once more
begins to exercise and focus those ancient, primordial Magickal skills, learning to trust in the
Unconscious and make the Ego its servant.

In terms of mammalian development, this card represents the acquisition of language.  In human beings
this generally occurs between the ages of one and three years of age; in other animals, such as cats,
elephants, dogs, etc., it occurs at different ages depending upon the species. It is also associated with
toilet-training in such organisms as human beings, cats, and other organisms that bury their scat.  In a
more general sense, it is associated with that time in one’s life during which all the most basic, necessary
skills are acquired, from walking to communication. And it is also associated with the nervous system in
general, and the mammalian and cephalopod nervous systems in particular.

3.       Key 13

 Gimel g  “Camel.” Trump II, the High Priestess.  Luna ×.  Cardinal value of 3, ordinal value of 3.

Connects Sephirah 1, Kether with Sephirah 6, Tiphareth. Roman/English equivalents:  G, C.

 a.       Qaballistic Meanings and Theory

 According to the Yetziratic Text:

 The Thirteenth Path is named the Uniting Intelligence, and is so called because it is itself the Essence of
Glory;  it is the Consummation of Truth of individual spiritual things.

 This is an elegantly concise summary of the fundamental basis of spiritual reality: Unity = the Essence of
Glory = Truth.  Moreover, this Path is on the direct line of contact between Spirit (Kether) and
Individuality (Tiphareth).  It is part of what might be called the backbone or spinal column of the Tree of
Life, the long Path between Spirit and Earth, Kether and Malkuth, which, for purposes of analysis, are
split into three:   the 32nd, 25th, and 13th Paths. The Atziluthic colors of all three of these Paths are the
same:  the Blue of Love and Aspiration, darkening to indigo in the denser levels of Form.

The vertical line up the Tree is the Path of the Arrow, the Way of the Mystic, who seeks not the
manipulation of occult powers, but rather Union with God.  The blue of the lower levels of this Way is
darker.  The reason that the 32nd Path has the color indigo on the Atziluthic Scale is because that color is
associated with Saturn, the planet of Form and Limitation.   One cannot, must not, undertake the Way of
the Mystic unless one is completely grounded in Form and has learned all its lessons.  To try to ascend to
the higher realms before the lowest levels of the Tree of Life are mastered is cowardice, not holiness,
not saintliness but sin, a regression on the Path of Involution.  Such a regression is a form of sorcery,
regardless of the wannabe mystic’s ostensible high intentions.   In such a case, ‘holiness’ is used merely
as a way of escape, as a tool for personal use – i.e., as a means of blaspheming against { r a h  y n d
a  (Adonai ha-Aretz) – God inherent in the living world.
The Path of the Mystic ascends from Malkuth along the 32nd Path, the Gateway to the inner planes, and
passes through the Unconscious domain of Yesod.   From Yesodthe Mystical Way leads through the
‘wilderness’ of the 25th Path, the Intelligence of Probation, the first Dark Night of the Soul before the
golden dawn of Tiphareth   is reached, and contact with the ‘God within’ is achieved.  Even so, this
contact withTiphareth is just the lowest aspect of the ‘God within,’ for this Path leads still further on,
right up to the ground of Spirit, Kether.  This latter half of the Mystical Way is the
13thPath,  g (Gimel).  Gimel means “Camel,” a reminder that here is another Desert, a higher octave of
the 25th Path, and therefore the second Dark Night of the Soul.  As the first Dark Night of the Soul might
be termed a symbolical crossing of the Gulf, so this second one indicates the way across the Abyss

For anyone who has taken up the “occult” way, developing the powers in action of the Individuality in
Earth, most, if not all, the excrescences should have been cleared away from his or her soul on the
19th Path, which links Geburah, Sephirah 5, withChesed, Sephirah 4.  For any such, making his or her way
across the Abyss fromChesed through Da’ath to Binah, he or she would undergo this experience yet
again, but this time more “by reason of the altitude of the Divine Wisdom,” which “exceeds the
comprehension of the soul,” than because of any “baseness and impurity.”

This way out of Chesed to Binah is known as the “secret silent Path.”  It is called “secret” because it does
not appear on the traditional Tree of Life, and “silent” refers to its quality of “nothingness.”  The
experience of this Secret Path is one of loneliness and desolation, the Path of Chiron and the Shaman.  In
other words, it is the same as the Dark Night of the Soul encountered on the 13 th Path, which is to be
expected since both Paths are Ways across the Abyss, through the crepuscular realms of Da’ath.  It is, in
fact, a final purification, one leading to the experience of the approaches to the finalUnion with God, the
Spiritual Experience of Kether.

In Qaballistic terms, this is the initiation known as “The Babe of the Abyss.”   This is nothing that can be
conferred by means of a simple ritual;  rather, it is a condition attained only by means of years of
spiritual striving.  At best, a so-called “initiation ceremony” on the physical plane can only be a triggering
mechanism for getting a process started within a soul, and a confirmation of what has already been
achieved. Real initiation is a subjective realization which comes about as a result of a natural process of
growth;  it is not a thing that can be bought, sold, given, or received. By analogy, consider graduation
ceremonies and commencement rituals: they do not confer education or maturity upon the graduate,
but only serve to acknowledge what has already been accomplished and (it is hoped) to inspire the
graduate to go on to achieve great things in the real world.  Even more to the point, consider a Marine
recruit going through Boot Camp and then getting advanced to PFC:  this advancement on paper at best
only acknowledges whatever skills the new Marine has acquired in Boot Camp as well as his or her
potential for accomplishment in the field.  Initiation isn’t merely a question of knowing a great number
of symbols and their traditional meanings.  Instead, it is a state of being.

The High Priestess of Tarot Trump II is frequently compared to Isis.  There is a great deal of truth in this
comparison. The Silver Star of Crowley’s A\A\ is the Star Sothis, or Sirius, the star sacred to Isis* and
attributed to the Sephirah Da’ath.**  Isis is also associated with the Moon, the astrological ascription of
this Path. 
 *Also to Djehuti, Lord of Magick, Divination, Justice, and Wisdom.

 **It is also the Star of the new Aeon of Horus, i.e., of the Age of Aquarius. 

 Now, the Moon is intimately connected with the Earth, as well as with the lower Astral, ruled
by Malkuth, Sephirah 10, and Yesod, Sephirah 9 on the Tree of Life.  Luna is the Lord of Flux and Reflux,
and is as well an archetype of receptivity. Thus Da’ath is akin to Yesod; in fact, Da’ath could be called a
higher octave of Yesod.  In terms of the ascent of the Tree of Life, Da’ath is a gateway to Outer
Space:  Sothis or Sirius, associated with Gimel, is the extra-Solar body most closely connected with this
Solar System.* Descending the Tree, however, looking at things entirely from the point of view of the
living Solar System, the Lunar aspect of Da’ath has to do with the fundamental working of the laws of
cyclic action and polarity.  The close analogy to the lower Astral is also important, for the latter has two
aspects:  it unites all things in Earth, and it holds them in dense physical existence.  It is evasion of these
two factors that constitutes the bulk of mortal troubles, obvious in the chaotic state of the world
today; the causes are denial of the unit of all things, the sin of separation, and refusal to face Earthly
reality.

 *Actually, though Sirius is only about 8 light-years away from us, there are several Stars even
closer.  The closest is Alpha Centauri, Sagittarius A, a Star rather like our own Sun in many respects, and
one which may harbor carbon-based life similar to our own worlds. Sirius, on the other hand, is a young,
hot blue Star that will probably end as a supernova, and which is unlikely to have Earth-like Planets with
terrestrial life-forms. While Sirius has long been recognized for its occult influence, there is no reason
that any other Star doesn’t have some sort of influence on us, however small or strange, and this surely
goes for all those Stars closer to us than Sirius.

According to Qaballistic theory, this wholesale deviation from spiritual reality resulted in the formation
of the Gulf and the Abyss. It is these two obstacles along the line of contact between Spirit and Earth
that cause most of the trouble, and result in unpleasant experiences of both of these Dark Nights of the
soul. However, the repercussions of these blockages go further than just giving mystics a bad time, for
they also play an important part in all world conditions, especially in the area of sexuality and
relationships of all kinds.

The human Spirit is androgynous and thus any attempt to deny the conditions of existence in Earth
manifests as an urge for Independence. This, it is true, is the Virtue of Yesod, but an exaggerated or
compulsive manifestation of a Virtue results in a Vice. So we may have the androgynous Da’ath state of
the Spirit attempting to exert itself in the lower analogue of Da’ath, Yesod.  This means an inability to
form any satisfactory relationship, particularly a sexual one.  There is no such thing as independence in
the physical universe;  all are related and complementary to each other, bound together on the one
hand by the etheric Machinery of the Universe, and on the other hand unified in Love in Earth to the
degree that spiritual redemption is achieved.  Where Love is missing, one has only the mechanics of sex,
enslaved by the false image of androgynous independence.  “Independence” shouldn’t be regarded as a
dirty word, and is in fact often necessary. The problem arises from compulsive behavior and appetites.
 Such things may first arise out of what seem at the time to be the highest of motives, aspirations, and
ideals;  but when they become compulsive, they turn deadly.  This is particularly so on a group level in
the inhuman, depersonalized bureaucratic government of any large, organized social unit, the
functioning of which depends upon adherence to a book of rules rather than the dynamic initiative of
individual human beings.  This applies to private business corporations as well as government
departments:  no one has a monopoly on inhumanity.  A red hot coal will burn the hand that picks it up,
however commendable the motives involved.  The Laws of any plane are paramount upon that plane, so
one shouldn’t try to rise onto a plane until the laws of that plane one is on are mastered.

The letter of this Path, Gimel, can be likened to a cosmic battery, the two Yods at top and bottom being
terminals of the battery. If the power is suddenly switched through the line in between, the channel
must be capable of standing up to it. Thus the contacts of higher mystical experience should not be
attempted until life in Malkuth, the real world of the Outer Planes, has been mastered.  Above all, this
requires acceptance and full control of the forces and conditions of the dense physical universe. 11

 The Qaballistic associations for this Path include the following:

 Astrological:  Luna

 Colors:  blue; silver;  cold pale blue;  and silver, rayed sky-blue.

 Gods:

 Egyptian:  Hathor;  Chomse; Djehuti;  Isis

Greek:  Artemis, Hekate, Persephone (as the Maiden Koré)

Roman:  Selene, Luna

United States of America: Liberty, Freedom

Revolutionary France:  Liberté

Hindu:  Chandra, Kali, Shiva, Chandi, Parvati, Durga

Norse:  None

Haitian Voudon: None

Jewish:  Queen Shabbat;  the Archangel Gabriel

 Christian associations:  Mary, Mother of God;  Laodicea

 Buddhist Meditation:  Loathsomeness of Food

 Precious stones:  moonstone, pearl, crystal, coral

 Plants, real and imaginary:  almond, mugwort, hazel, moonwort, ranunculus, aloe, white ginger
 Animals, real and imaginary:  dog, cat, Woman, camel

 Magickal Powers:  the White Tincture, Clairvoyance, Divination by Dreams

 Mineral drugs:  silver nitrate (in homeopathic dilutions of not less than 10 22 parts pure water to one of
silver nitrate)

 Plant-derived drugs:  juniper, pennyroyal, all emmenogogues

 Perfumes:  menstrual blood, camphor, aloes;  all sweet, virginal odors

 Magickal Weapons:  the Bow and Arrows

 Lineal figure:  the Enneagram (9-pointed Star), Nonagon (9-sided regular polygon), Triskedekagram (13-
pointed Star), a regular polygon of 13 sides, etc.

 Musical note:  G Sharp

 Qlippoth:  Gargophias. This name should be vibrated or “howled” in the key of G Sharp.  Her sigil should
be painted in silver on a black circle.  Her number is 393, which is allied to the numbers 39 2 and 933.  Just
as Gimel is associated with AL, its Qlippothic shadow or Tunnel of Set is concerned with
LA. Traditionally, l a y l m g (Gamaliel, the Obscene Ass) is the Regent of Hell or Demon associated
with Gimel.

Far Eastern cosmological associations:

 Trigrams of the I Ching:

Yin. Silver.  The Female.

Line:  Yin   –    –

b.       Design and Title of Trump

The High Priestess of Trump II is a memorial for two medieval legends, that of Pope Joan, and that of the
Visconti Papess.

The Visconti Papess, Sister Manfreda, was elected by the Guglielmites, an Italian religious sect.  One of
their beliefs concerned the sect’s founder, Guglielma of Bohemia, who died in 1281 e.v. but supposedly
would be resurrected in 1300 e.v. on the Feast of Pentecost, initiating a new age wherein women would
be Popes, rather than men.  In preparation for this, the Guglielmites nominated Manfreda Visconti to be
their papess. However, when Sister Manfreda was burned at the stake in 1300 e.v., that scotched the
idea of a female Pope for quite awhile.

On the other hand, the legend of Pope Joan has exerted a powerful effect on the European imagination
since the late 13th Century.  The first popular report of Pope Joan was in 1282 e.v., in the writings of
Martin Polonus. According to Polonus, after the death of Pope Leo IV (c. 855 e.v.), one John Anglus, a
native of Metz, was elected to the throne of St. Peter, remaining Pope for two years, five months, and
four days.  It was discovered that this Pope was in fact a woman when, on a procession from St.Peter’s
to the Lateran, she collapsed as a result of the process of childbirth. At this point, the story becomes
somewhat vague.  Either Pope Joan was torn to pieces by the enraged mob, who thought they’d been
conned (after all, the election of a woman to the office of Pope was at the time a dire sacrilege), or else
she died in childbirth.  In either case, it was a great story.  Many were all too eager to believe the worst
of Rome and of the Popes, a it was, and the legend of Pope Joan simply confirmed their most delightfully
evil imaginings about the Vatican.  However, there is just one tiny flaw in the story:  after the death of
Leo IV, only one and a half months elapsed before the consecration of Pope Benedict III, for the
coronation as Pope of whom a wealth of high dependable evidence exists.

Another source for the story may have been Crusaders returning from the Middle East who brought
back the story of “The Fisherman’s Wife” from One Thousand and One Arabian Nights.  In this story, the
fisherman’s wife asked for several things from a miraculous Flounder she found among the rest of her
husband’s catch:  that she become Empress (granted), then that she become Pope (granted), and finally
that she become God.  At that point the pious Flounder returned her, by the same Magickal means as
before, to the humble cottage wherein she had first conceived her delusions about assuming the power
and grandeur of God.  If this is the true origin of the story, it explains the lack of any real historical
existence for the existence of a medieval female Pope; the story, once spread to the people of Europe
by the returning soldiers, would have undergone the inevitable transmutations which always attends the
reception of one culture’s stories by another, vastly different culture, ultimately taking the form of the
story of a disguised female Pope.

Knowledge of these legends was readily available to the early designers of the Tarot.  Sister Manfreda
was immortalized in the Bembo Tarot cards, which were painted for her distant relative, Bianca Maria
Visconti, now preserved in the Pierpont Morgan Library; it is her face which looks longingly towards
Heaven in the card of the Papess in the Visconti Tarot.  As for Pope Joan, she became something of an
ecclesiastical joke, turning up in the writings of many Church Fathers anxious to prove or disprove the
story, according to their beliefs.  Later on, she appears in the novel Pope Joan by Emmanuel Royidis,
which was translated into English by Lawrence Durrell.

Whatever the ultimate sources of the story, it continues to exert a strong influence on Tarot design.  The
design of The High Priestess is one of the strongest of the all the Major Arcana in both Waite’s and
Crowley’s packs, though in both she actually represents the High Priestess of the Eleusinian Mysteries,
Persephone as the bride of Hades (Whose Planet is Pluto, associated with Kether, the upper terminus
of  this Path), as well as Isis and other Lunar Great Mother Goddesses.

The following are the various designs for this card:

Bembo: A nun, wearing the triple crown and the habit of the Umiliata Order, holding a breviary or Bible
in her left hand. This card, dating from about 1450 e.v., may be the earliest representation of the Papess
in the Tarot.
Swiss: Juno, standing with her peacock.* In many Tarot packs of Southern France, the Papess was
replaced by Juno in order to avoid giving offense to the Church.  

*The peacock is a symbol of the Sign Aquarius. See footnote, below, for America’s Tarot. 

 Insight: A high priestess of Isis, seated on a throne, flanked by lotus pillars.  She holds a partially visible
scroll bearing the legend “Torah,” meaning the first few books of the Old Testament and the Law of
Deuteronomy.  On her breast is a Solar cross;  at her feet is a waxing crescent Moon.  On the pillar to her
right the word Boaz, signifying negation, is partially visible; on that to her left is the word Jachin,
meaning “Beginning.”

  Marseille:  A seated female Pope, wearing the triple crown.  She has an open Bible on her lap.

Wirth: Similar to the traditional, with the addition of a crescent Moon to the crown of the high
priestess.  In addition, she holds the Keys of St. Peter.

Waite: A priestess of Isis, the Solar cross upon her breast and the waxing crescent Moon beneath her
left foot.  She sits between the pillars Boaz and Jachin, in front of a screen decorated with
pomegranates.  In her lap is a rolled-up Torah scroll.  On her head is a crown symbolizing the waxing,
waning, and full Moon and, by extension, the Great Triple Goddess (Maiden, Matron, and Crone).

B.O.T.A.:  Like Waite’s, except that the pillars between which the priestess sits are lotus buds rather than
opened flowers, signifying that she is a virgin, symbolizing latent or undeveloped powers.

Aquarian:  A pensive priestess sits in front of a curtain upon which are figures of pomegranates. In her
left hand are several flowers. Two rods stand on her left, signifying Boaz and Jachin.

Crowley: Isis enthroned.  She is Isis because in her lap are the bow and arrows of the Virgin Goddess
Diana (the Maiden aspect of the Triple Goddess).  On her head is the crown of Isis.  Between her and the
viewer is a screen, in front of which are grapes, a lotus, crystals, a cone, and a camel.

New: Retitled “The Mother,” this card shows a nearly naked woman standing between the two pillars,
one of which is light and the other dark.  In her upraised left hand is a lotus, and in her right is a lightning
bolt.  Between her breasts is a seven-pointed Star.  She is crowned with a double-headed snake.  Above
her head is the Sign of Aquarius.

America’s Tarot:  Lady Liberty,* ghost-over.  Haji Ali the Camel-Driver, leading a train of camels across
the deserts of the American South-West.  Sojourner Truth.  Article II of the Bill of rights. 

 *In the traditional natal horoscope of the United States of America, erected for July 4, 1776e.v.
at 2:14:55 a.m. Standard Time, Liberty Hall, Philadelphia, PA, Luna is the highest Planet in the chart. Her
position in that chart is 18° 10’ Aquarius, while that of the Midheaven (10 th House cusp) is 13° 57’
Aquarius.  The number 13 is repeated frequently in this chart in the positions of the Planets and House
Cusps, especially the placement of Sol, Who is in the 13 th degree of Cancer (at 12° 44’ Cancer).  Uranus,
the Planet associated with the Goddess Liberty, is rising, at 8° 53’ Gemini, conjunct the Fixed Star
Aldebaran; the Ascendant’s placement is 7° 35’ Gemini;  the ruler of Gemini, Mercury, is at 24° 28’
Cancer;  and the ruler of Cancer, Luna, is in the Sign ruled by Uranus, Aquarius.  Thus three Planets
together dominate the destiny and nature of that nation:  Luna, associated with all great Mother
Goddesses, including Lady Liberty, Mother of Exiles;  Mercury, the Lord of Speech and Wisdom;  and
Uranus, Mercury’s higher octave, Lord of technological innovation and expertise, of breakthrough
discoveries, and of the universal brotherhood of humanity and, by extension, of all life, everywhere in
the Universe. 

The Divine Comedy Tarot:

Biblical Tarot:

John Burt’s MAD Tarot:  Moxie Cowznowski, with a pillow stuffed into the front of her jeans.

The Robert A. Heinlein Tarot:  A montage of scenes from “The Man Who Sold the Moon,”
“Requiem,” The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,  and Rocket Ship Galileo.

The H. P. Lovecraft Tarot: 

The Stephen King Tarot: 

 

The R. R. McCammon Tarot:   

 c.       Divinatory Meanings

 Upright: Alternate titles:  “The Priestess of the Silver Star” (Crowley), “The Crown of Beauty” (the
Golden Dawn).  Memory. The unconscious mind.  The Collective Unconscious (another link with Hades,
husband of Persephone).  A high priestess.  The possibility of form.  A Goddess of Fertility.  Fertility as an
attribute.  Pure, exalted, and gracious influence.  Change, alternation, tides, fluctuation, flux, increase
and decrease (in any astrological chart, Luna rules changes of all kind;  like Saturn, the progressed Moon
manifests form and is a ruler of Time). A liability to be overcome by enthusiasm. Potential.
Inspiration.  Revelation.  Divination. Intuition.  A wise or prophetic woman giving good advice.  The
beginning of sovereignty and beauty.  The Primum Mobile acting through the Moon upon the Sun. The
occult.  Intuition.  The forces of nature. Safety. Power over events.  A revealing of something
hidden.  Certainty triumphing over evil.  Doors opening, new opportunities.  Psychic abilities.  Astral
projection.  Primordial instincts.  The path of secrecy or silence.  Desolation.
Nothingness.  Purification.  The acceptance of absolute despair.  Illumination. Spiritual enlightenment.
Science. Wisdom.  Knowledge. Education.  Wise adaptation of Solar power.  Enlightenment brought to a
previously unillumined mind.  A link between the Unmanifest (Kether) and phenomenal reality.  A
woman of authority, with the powers of persuasion. God the Woman or the Divine Mother. The eternal
feminine. Constancy.  Fidelity.  Repose. Stability.  Endurance.  Art and artistic ability.  Wealth. The
Masonic Lodge.  The formative.  The healing. Nature’s great Web of Life.  The World Wide
Web.  Internet. Destiny. Kismet.  Moira.  The spiritual bride and mother.  The Queen of the Borrowed
Light.  The cohabiting glory.  Supernal understanding and indwelling glory.  Pregnancy. Gestation.
Secrets.  Mystery.  The future as yet unrevealed.  Silence. Tenacity.  Justice, especially divine justice
(with reference to the fact that this Path passes through Da’ath; also, Djehuti, the Egyptian Lord of
Justice and Wisdom, rules the Moon). Transmutation.  The Black Dragon of Alchemy.

Reversed:  The physical Moon, and by extension a Moon of any Planet or a satellite of any larger primary
body.  A camel. Blood plasma and its fractions; the brain;  the left eye of a man, the right eye of a
woman;  lungs;  lymph (the fluid);  spinal fluid; the stomach;  the uterus.  Emotional instability or
enslavement.  Lack of foresight. Reluctance to take advice, which gives rise to serious
problems.  Conceit.  Sensuality. Superficiality.  Intuition or psychic perception blocked or destroyed by
hostility, hypocrisy, or some other negative influence.  A virgin.  An outgoing woman.  A woman with
many lovers.  A prostitute. A vampire.  Decadence.  Cynicism. Ignorance. Incompetence.  Superficial
knowledge.  Lack of skill, dyslexia, lack of coordination, etc.  Dumbness, laziness, resistance.  Passive
opposition.  Passion. Moral or physical ardor.

d.  Interrelationships of the Path and the Trump

 This card is associated with Luna and all the Lunar Gods and Goddesses from the Babylonian Shin and
the Hindu Kali and Shiva to today’s Lady Liberty.  In earlier versions of this card, the concern was with
the Spirit of Nature above the Abyss; the High Priestess is the first card connecting the Supernals with
the Sephiroth below the Abyss, and this Path makes a direct connection between the Father in his
highest aspect,Kether, and the Son in his most perfect manifestation, Tiphareth.  Part of the Central
Pillar of Consciousness, in exact balance with the Pillars of Severity and Mercy, this Path represents the
purest and most exalted idea of the Moon (at the other end of the same scale is Trump XVIII, The Moon,
associated with the Sign Pisces, the lower Astral and the Qlippoth).

This card represents the most spiritual form of the Great Triple Goddess, Artemis of the Greeks, clothed
only in luminous veils of Light.  In terms of the higher initiations, Light should be regarded not as the
perfect manifestation of Spirit, but rather as the veil hiding that Spirit, doing so all the more effectively
because of its dazzling brilliance.  Thus the High Priestess is light, and the body of light, the truth behind
the veil of light, the soul of light.  Upon her knees is Artemis’ bow, for she is the Divine Huntress,
Hunting by enchantment. The bow is also, however, the framework of a lyre or lute, for the highest form
of enchantment is through music.

From behind the Veil of Light, the third Veil of the Three Negatives (Ain, Ain Soph, and Ain Soph Aur),
matrix of manifestation, the Goddess Nuit, the potential for Form, this first, most spiritual manifestation
of the Feminine takes unto herself a corresponding masculinity by formulating from within herself a
geometrical point from which to begin manifesting potentiality.  She is the idea behind all form.  As soon
as the influence of the Supernals, through her, descends below the Abyss, that idea is made complete in
the form of concrete reality.

She is the Moon, Who, in every astrological chart, represents change and manifestation, Time, Form,
and Completion.  She indicates birth, death, and every important life-change in between.  She is Womb
and Tomb – and the Opened Tomb from whence issues forth the redeemed, resurrected Soul, reborn in
the Light of God. Maiden, Mother, and Crone, it is she who births life, sees it through its infancy and
youth, and lays it in the tomb at the last.  She is fertility – and the Death made necessary by that fertility,
without which there could be no creativity, nothing new in the world. She kills that Life may continue
and realize all its potentials;  she heals, that its mortal wounds shall not be fatal.  She is the Womb of
God and the indwelling Wisdom, Sophia, of the power behind that Womb.  She is Persephone, linking
Hades, Kether, to new life and the possibility of Redemption, Tiphareth.  She is Divine Justice, restoring
the Balance of the World by means of judicious selective pressure.  She is, in short, the Soul of Gaia, who
counters every negative impact on our living world’s life and well-being by means of the development of
new strategies for Life to use to continue itself in the face of an ever-changing, dangerous Universe.

Above all, she is Liberty, the Great Mother Goddess of Exiles and the Polyglot Universe of North
America, who breaks all chains, provides hope and a new start for even the most down-trodden.

4.       Key 14

 Daleth d,  “Door.”  Trump III, The Empress.  Venus Ù.  Cardinal value, 4;  ordinal value,

4.  Connects Sephirah  2, Chokmah, with Sephirah 3, Binah.  Roman/English equivalent:  “D.”
 a.       Qaballistic Meanings and Theory

 Just as the lower transverse Paths, the 27 th (which connects Sephirah 8, Hod, withSephirah 7, Netzach)

and 19th (which connects Sephirah 4, Chesed, with Sephirah 5,Geburah), are respectively, the “girders” of
the Personality and Individuality, this Path is the main girder of the Spirit itself. It is the hidden
foundation of all manifest being.  The root of our existence is in Kether, but stable manifestation
requires the functioning of the principle of Polarity, which at this level is facilitated by the archetypal
principles ofChokmah and Binah – which are connected together by the 14 th Path, Daleth.

Thus this Path is itself an archetype of all subsequent manifestation.  It is a first true formation of the
principles inherent in the incoming flow of spiritual power from the Unmanifest and Kether.  It is
therefore the gateway to manifestation, or, in the symbolism of the Hebrew letter, the Door to
it.  Likewise, it could also be called the Door to the World of the Spirit, for Daleth is part of the Path of
the Lightning Flash: when returning upon that Way from Malkuth to Kether, this Path is the last channel
of consciousness wherein the Pillars of Manifestation in their function as upholders of Form have
dominion.  It is the Door to “the Complete Illumination of the Vision of God face to face in Chokmah.”

It is upon its aspect of manifestation that the symbolism of the Tarot Trump lays emphasis.  This
foundation stone of the building of the Temple of the Spirit in manifest existence is called the Daughter
of the Mighty Ones, thereby emphasizing its aspect of receptive Form.  The Mighty Ones are the
Principles of manifest existence which are facilitated within the Tree of Life by Sephiroth
Chokmah and Binah, primordial force and archetypal form, root potency and root latency, Supernal Fire
and Supernal Water, Alchemical Sulphur and Alchemical Salt, together with all the vast complex of
symbolism and meaning implied by these two great Sephiroth, which represent the two Pillars of
manifestation on the highest causal levels.  The Daughter of the Mighty Ones is another aspect of the
feminine aspects of God.  She is a synthesis of all the Goddesses of the pagan pantheons. 12

 The Qaballistic associations with this Path include:

Yetziratic Title:  The Illuminating Intelligence.

Astrological:  the Planet Venus

 Colors:  emerald green (King Scale);  sky blue (Queen Scale);  early spring green (Emperor Scale);  bright
rose or cerise, rayed pale green (Empress Scale).

 Gods:

Egyptian:  Hathoor

Greek:  Aphrodite;  Demeter

Roman:  Venus;  Ceres

Sumerian:  Astarte
Babylonian: None

Hindu:  Lalita (sexual aspect of Shakti)

Norse:  Freya

 Buddhist meditation:  Dark blue

 Precious stones:  emerald, turquoise, any green stone

 Plants, real and imaginary:  myrtle, rose clover

 Animals, real and imaginary:  sparrow, dove, swan, leopard

 Christian associations:  Thyatira

 Magickal powers:  Love-philters

Mineral drugs:  homeopathic tincture of copper compounds at a dilution of 10 22 or greater parts pure
water to substrate

 Vegetable drugs (plant extracts):  all aphrodisiacs

 Perfumes:  sandalwood; myrtle;  all soft, voluptuous odors

 Magickal weapons:  the Girdle

 Lineal figures and numerological associations: the numbers 4, 7, 16, and 28;  the Heptagram (seven-
pointed Star), the seven-rayed Star (seven rays radiating from a central point), a regular seven-sided
polygon;  the square, the equal-armed cross

 Title of Tarot Trump:  Daughter of the Mighty Ones

 Alchemical associations:  copper;  Salte (the completely calcined ash of a substance being processed

Alchemically), which must be energized by Sulphur (the oil that is one of the main products of the
Alchemical decomposition of substances, along with Salte and Mercury [vapor]) in order to maintain the
whirling equilibrium of the universe.

 Legendary order of being:  succubae

 Parts of the body:  genitals (and see entries under “reverse” for Trump, below)

 Diseases:  all STDs (sexually transmitted diseases):  hypersexuality;  diseases affecting the uterus,

fallopian tubes, vagina, etc.;  sociopathology (insofar as Venus rules society and relationships of all kinds,
any dysfunction involving skills necessary to be a fully functioning member of society and of one’s
community would therefore be ruled by Venus)

 Vice:  Unchastity (Lust)
 Musical note:  F Sharp

Qlipphotic associations:  The guardian of the Tunnel of Set associated with Daleth is Dagdagiel.    She

may be evoked by vibrating her name in the key of F Sharp, accompanied by a crooning or lilting
sound.  Her sigil should be painted in vivid sky blue on a circle of bright rose rayed with pale green.  Her
number is 55, a mystic number of Malkuth, the Sphere of Earth.  The traditional Demon associated with
this Path is  q r z  b r u (A’arab Zaraq, the Raven of Dispersion).

Far Eastern cosmological associations:

 Metal.  The West. Autumn.  Destruction and decline.  The solid but molded (as in

casting).  Acrid.  White. Controls lungs and larger intestine. The White Tiger.  The Planet Venus.  Yang – a
Weapon.  Yin – a Kettle.  Copper.  Sublimate of mercury metal.  Produces Water, destroys Wood, is
destroyed by Fire.

 Trigram:  Ch’ien

–––

–––

–––

b.       Design and Title of Trump

 The different designs of the various packs are as follows:

 Bembo: A seated Germanic queen who holds her husband’s jousting shield, upon which is the German
Imperial Eagle.  The card is also decorated with repeated designs of the three interlocked diamond rings
of the Sforza family.

Swiss: A seated queen, holding a Rod in her right hand, her left hand partially raised with her forefinger
pointing upwards.

Insight: A seated queen in flowing robes. Crosses repeated through the card. A general impression of
abundance.

Marseille:  A German empress, seated, bearing in her left hand a sceptre surmounted by an orb and a
cross.

 
Italian: Similar to the Marseille  and Bembo  packs, with the addition of angel’s wings and a second head
for the eagle on the shield.

Wirth: A throned empress with the wings of an angel, her head surrounded by a corona of Stars.  Her left
foot rests upon a crescent waxing Moon.

Waite: A seated empress who wears a crown decorated with pomegranates.  On her head is a crown of
Stars.  She holds a Rod upraised in her right hand.  A heart-shaped shield with the sigil of Venus on it sits
on the ground at her right.  In the background, a river can be seen;  it becomes a waterfall in the middle
distance on the right side of the card.  Ripe wheat covers the land at her feet.

B.O.T.A.:  Similar to Waite’s, but here the Empress holds a heart-shaped shield with a dove upon it in her
right hand.  In her left hand, she holds a sceptre that terminates in an orb.  There are no pomegranates
visible here, but on her left are roses in full bloom.

Aquarian:  Repeats the motif of ripe wheat, the crown of Stars, and the symbol of Venus upon her
shield.

Crowley’s:  This card shows the Empress seated, holding an opened lotus in her right hand.  On her head
is the Crown of Isis surmounted by a Maltese Cross.  On her left hand is the waxing crescent Moon, on
her right, the waning Moon.  In the foreground to her left is a shield that bears the Imperial German
Eagle.  In the foreground at her right is a swan sitting upon a nest of cygnets.

New: In this pack, the card is retitled “Feeler.” It shows a priestess standing between two cypresses.  In
the night sky above her is the Sign of Cancer. Her head is crowned with an ankh; snakes wrap
themselves around her ankles.

America’s Tarot:  Mae West, Marilyn Monroe, other American Goddesses.  The reverse shows American
female anti-heroes and porn stars against a street-scene of prostitutes.  Article III of the Bill of Rights.

The Divine Comedy Tarot:   Beatrice

 

Biblical Tarot:  Ruth;  Mary Magdalene.

John Burt’s MAD Tarot:  Annie Gaines dressed as the Statue of Liberty.

The Robert A. Heinlein Tarot:  A scene from Farmer in the Sky;  possibly with Lazarus Long’s mother,
Maureen Johnson, as pictured on the cover of To Sail Beyond the Sunset, in the foreground, rising up in
naked glory out of the seashell.

The H. P. Lovecraft Tarot:  

The Stephen King Tarot: 

The R. R. McCammon Tarot: Swan from Swan Song, as a married woman, surrounded by fertile fields
and great forest, clothed and posed much as in traditional packs.

 c.       Divinatory Meanings

 Upright: That through which something passes. Ingress.  Egress.  Transmission.

Diffusion.  Dissemination.  Division. Wisdom and folly.  Luminous intelligence.  The warm Mother
Goddess.  Nature. The supreme power balanced by the eternally active mind and absolute wisdom.  The
universal fertility of God.  Nature in labor.  Success, provided that productive activity is united with
righteousness.  The implication that the fundamental law of the universe is Love.  Love.
Beauty.  Happiness.  Pleasure. Success.  Completion.  Good fortune. Graciousness.  Elegance.  Luxury.
Friendship. Gentleness.  Delight. Feelings or emotions (as distinct from intuition, which belongs to
Trump II, The High Priestess, or to the Suit of Cups).  Maternity. Fertility.  Sensuality in a general
sense.  Reassurance or security that comes from sensory input.  Isisunveiled;  the maternal aspect of the
Great Triple Goddess.  The wisdom of understanding.  The union of the powers of originality and
production.  The sphere of the Zodiac (Chokmah), associated with Neptune (Venus’ higher octave),
acting through Venus upon Saturn.  The passive power of the material world.  A force against which one
cannot react.  A state of affairs that nothing can alter.  The Sorrowing Mother, as Mary weeping over the
body of her crucified son.  A hostess. A wife.  Social organization.  Society. Community.  Relationships of
any kind.  The Gate of Manifestation.  The face-to-face vision of God.  The complete illumination.  The
seed in the darkness of night.  Mother Goddesses.  Goddesses of fruitfulness or fertility.  Action.
Plan.  Undertaking.   Progress in a matter.  Initiative. Love in its carnal aspects.  Love between mental
complements. Affection.  Creative inspiration.  The Hermaphrodite: wisdom and understanding united in
cosmic or universal love.  The love of master and student in the Mysteries.  She reigns with Her love over
all that has been born, all that is, and all that ever will be.  Knowledge.  Universal fertility.  The Corn-
Woman.  Earth, maternal and material, at the time of Eden, before any human cultures existed. The
matrix of civilizations.  The fruitful mother of thousands.  Action.  Length of days.  The unknown.
Clandestine matters. Difficulty.  Doubt.  Ignorance.

 Reversed:  The Planet Venus.  Kidneys, bladder;  the urogenital system;  ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus,

vagina;  palate, tongue;  saliva; female sex organs;  skin (along with Tav and Saturn);  urine;
veins.  Diseases or dysfunctions involving any of the foregoing.  Idleness
(Sloth).  Dissipation.  Debauchery. Fixation upon the role of motherhood, which can turn one into the
devourer of one’s own children.  The Crone (although that attribution is better associated with Trump
XVIII, The Moon).  Sterility. Maternal tyranny.  Domestic strife.  Psychic alienation.  Poverty. A sense of
the universe as impersonal or malevolent. Delay in the accomplishment of something.  Lust. Loneliness.
A nymphomaniac. Overindulgence.  Extravagance.  Inaction. Frittering away of power.  Want of
concentration.  Vacillation.  Light. Truth.  The unraveling of involved matters.  Public rejoicing.

 d.  Interrelationships of the Path and the Trump

 This card is attributed to the letter Daleth, “Door,” and the Planet Venus.  To some extent, this card is
the complement of Trump IV, The Emperor, but its attributions are much more universal than are those
of the latter.

Daleth is the Path leading from Chokmah to Binah, uniting the Father (Chokmah) with the Mother
(Binah), Fire with Water, Wisdom with Understanding.  This is one of the only three Paths that lie
completely above the Abyss, the other two being Aleph andBeth.

The symbol of Venus, associated with this card, is the only one of all the Planetary symbols which
comprises all the Sephiroth of the Tree of Life.  In order, the circle touches the Sephiroth 1, 2, 4, 6, 6, 3,
while the Cross is formed by 6, 9, 10 (the upright) and 7, 8 (the crossbar).  This implies that the
fundamental formula of the Universe is Love.

Venus has been called the “many-throned, many-minded, many-wiled daughter of Zeus.”  Likewise, the
woman in this card recurs in infinitely varied form, making it impossible to summarize her meanings.  In
this card, she is shown in her most general manifestation, combining the highest spiritual qualities with
the lowest material ones.  She thus represents one of the three major products of Alchemical
decomposition, Salte, the completely calcined ash of a substance, representing the inactive principle of
nature and the Cardinal Signs.  Salte must be energized by Sulphur, another Alchemical decomposition
product that is associated with the Fixed or Cherubic Signs, in order to maintain the dynamic equilibrium
of the Universe.  The figure’s arms and torso therefore suggest the shape of the Alchemical symbol of
Salte.

She is usually represented as a woman with an imperial crown and vestments, seated upon a
throne.  In Crowley’s pack, these uprights suggest blue, twisted flames, symbolizing the birth of Venus
from water, the feminine, fluid element.  In her right hand she bears the lotus Wand of Isis, representing
the feminine or passive, Yin power.  The roots of the lotus are in the Earth beneath the water, or in the
water itself, but it opens its petals to the Sun, whose image is reflected within its chalice. The lotus is
thus a living form of the Holy Grail, sanctified by the light of the Sun (in Christian terms, by the blood of
Christ).  Also in Crowley’s pack, two of Venus’ most sacred birds, the sparrow and the dove, perch upon
her throne’s uprights;  on her robe are bees as well as dominos, surrounded by continuous spiral lines.
She wears the Zodiac for her girdle. At the back of the card is the Arch or Door, representing the
letter Daleth. Summed up, this card may be called the Gate of Heaven.

Overall, this card represents the balance of the Universe, the marriage of Wisdom and Understanding,
and the bonds which unite all things into one coherent whole, without which there would be nothing
more than a random collection of unrelated particles, drifting without reference to one another out to
infinity.  The Empress  thus represents the cohesive powers which knit the Multiverse together, from
gravity through the electromagnetic forces up to the strong forces that hold the subatomic particles of
the atomic nucleus together, as well as the bonds that knit lovers, families, communities, societies,
civilizations, ecosystems, and worlds together.  She thus represents, e.g., love, affection, fondness,
kindness, fellowship, marriage, partnership, social interactions of all kinds, and all other phenomena
involving relationship.  In the abstract, she represents mathematics, the Queen of the Sciences, the
science of pure relationship.  In this she is like Neptune, the higher octave of Venus, Who is the lord of
mathematics, computer software, systems theory, information theory, etc.

5.       Key 15

 Heh h “Window.”  Trump IV, The Emperor.*  Aries ò.  Cardinal value, 5;  ordinal value,

5.  Connects Sephirah 6, Tiphareth, with Sephirah  2, Chokmah. Roman/English equivalents:  H, E. 

 *In Crowley’s system, this Key instead accesses Trump XVII, The Star.  See Key 28, below. 

 a.       Qaballistic Meanings and Theory

 . . . [Two] things are necessary before our present phase of evolution is achieved:  a)perfect adjustment
between all human beings, (and with the non-human beings that make up the physical and
superphysical worlds as well.  This means joyful acceptance of the conditions of the natural physical
world, and a vital religious and mystical awareness.) b) the attainment of the Vision of God face to face,
which should never have been lost in the first place.  As things are now, the Gulf and the Abyss between
man’s different levels of being have to be bridged before this can be truly achieved.

The means to this goal of all mankind could be put in even simpler terms, and has already been done
so.  ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength,
and with all thy mind;  and thy neighbour as thyself.’ (Luke x.27. and also Mat. Xxii.37., Mark xii.30., etc.)
….13

 Path 15, Trump IV, The Emperor, allows the penetrating Wisdom of Chokmah to descend into Tiphareth,
the Sphere of the Mystic Intelligence, where it becomes available to ordinary human intelligence and
applicable to our mundane affairs as well as to our striving to the rarefied heights of the Tree and,
ultimately, to Union with God.  It is Truth translated for and made available to our ordinary
consciousness so that it can be applied to our most prosaic problems and needs.  Its avatar is indeed the
Emperor who translates his vast, comprehensive vision of universal principles of human existence into
tactical principles necessary in day-day-administrative executive decision-making at the most concrete
level.  It is pure Force particularized and reified for use in practical affairs.

                        The Emperor thus demonstrates that the Power and Might of God are manifest at the densest,
most individualized and particularized levels of existence as well as at the most rarefied and purified
ones – that God is manifest in all Creation, on every level of it, and that the Truth and Light of God
illuminate the humblest, earthiest, most prosaic aspects of existence rather than being confined only to
special regions, times, ceremonies, and similar limiting factors and conditions.  The Emperor is Jesus
teaching in the world, mingling with publicans and sinners, making such simple, humble decisions as to
what he and his disciples would eat for dinner, finance their day-to-day needs, and similar earthy, basic,
pragmatic things.

The Emperor  teaches us that God isn’t the exclusive property of priests and mystics. God is present in all
things, at every level and in every aspect of existence. Ultimately all things move, evolve, and come to
completion as aspects of the thrusting glory of Divinity as Pure Energy.

The Yetziratic Text for this Path says that the Fifteenth Path is the Constituting Intelligence, so called
because it constitutes the substance of creation in pure darkness, and men have spoken of the
contemplations;  it is that darkness spoken of in Scripture, Job xxxvii. 9, ‘and thick darkness a swaddling
band for it.’

 (The complete passage from Job quoted above is:

 Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb?  When I
made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling band for it, and brake up for it my
decreed place, and set bars and doors, And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further:  and here
shall thy proud waves be stayed.)

 Yetziratic title: Constituting Intelligence.

Hebrew letter: h h   (Heh), meaning “Window.”

Numerical value:  5.

Title:  Sun of the Morning, Chief among the Mighty.

Principle:  All the functions of the sense of sight, such as vision, introspection, reconnaissance,
watchfulness, care, vigilance, examination, calculation, analysis, induction, inquiry, investigation.

Astrological assignment:  Aries ò;  the mundane Lords of Aries are Mars and Pluto, Sol and Luna are
exalted in Aries, and the esoteric Lords of Aries and Mercury and Persephone

Element (Alchemical):  Cardinal Fire (¼), Fire in its most active and primordial form
Element (chemical): None

Ecological process, realm, or principle:  Birth, hatching, the beginning of Spring, the thawing of Winter’s
ice by Spring’s heat, etc.; fire, and all fire-related phenomena, including fire-selected plants such as
manzanita, and the use of fire for “anting” by crows, ravens, and their relatives;  the ability to use fire
and create a technology of fire, as seen in human beings

Physical chemistry:   plasma physics, the chemistry and physics of a flame

Colors:  Scarlet (King Scale);  red (Queen Scale);  brilliant flame (Emperor Scale); glowing red (Empress
Scale)

Gods: 

Greek: Pallas Athena (in Her battle-aspect Medusa);  Ares; the story of the Golden Fleece; Hercules

Roman:  Mars;  Venus Victrix

Egyptian:  Isis;  Men Thu

Scandinavian:  Thor

USA:  The Pioneer

France of the Enlightenment: 

Celtic: The horned God Herne, Cernunnos, or Cerne,  the Hunter. The Green Man.

Christian:  Jesus as the Lamb of God

Hindu:  Shiva, Kali (as Gods of Battle and War)

Voudon:  Maîtresse Ezeli (in Her battle-aspect)

Other:  Any priapic progenitor

Biblical associations:  Easter, the Resurrection;  Jesus as the Lamb of God; Moses; Benjamin, son of

Jacob;  St. Peter, disciple of Jesus, founder of the Church of Christ

Countries:  England, Germany, Denmark, Palestine, Burgundy

Cities:  Florence, Naples, Verona, Marseilles, Birmingham, ancient Athens, Sparta

Peoples:  Jews, Muslims

Meditation:  Bloody Corpse

Magickal power:   Power of Consecrating Things.

Perfume:  Dragon’s Blood.

Magickal Weapons:  The Horns, Energy, the Burin;  the Battering-Ram (as a Weapon of Mars)

Musical tone:  C natural.

  

 Metals, stones, and minerals: Bloodstone, firestone, ocher, brimstone, diamond, all minerals of a
reddish hue (including cinnabar, HgO [mercuric oxide], which is associated with Mercury, Who is an
esoteric Lord of Aries)

Plants, real and imaginary: Radish, rhubarb, peppers, garlic, hemp, poppies, broom, holly, thistle,
nettles, onions, dock, fern, mustard, tiger lily, germanium

Animals, Real and Imaginary: Ram, Owl (for Pallas Athena), Salamander

Vegetable drugs (plant extracts): All cerebral excitants

Mineral drugs:  

The Body:  The head, the brain (especially the cerebrum), the eyes, the nose, the face, the upper jaw,
the skull

Diseases:  Apoplexy (stroke), cataracts, sinus problems, all other conditions affecting the brain, the eyes,
the nose, or any other Aries-ruled part of the body

Magickal image:  A flame-clad God bearing equivalent symbols.

Lineal figures: Puer                                                       ·

·     ·

 Domain:  First third of Spring.

 Archangel:  Raphael.

 Quarter of the Heavens:  due East (during evocations of Spirits, the Triangle of Art, into which spirits are
evoked, is placed either East or North of the Circle, East for neutral or benign spirits, North for evil or
malefic ones)

 Buddhist symbolism:

Qlippoth:  } w r y r y u b  (Ba’airiron, “The Flock”);  Hemethterith, whose sigil should be lurid red,

inscribed on a glowing red inverted triangle, suggesting a face above three equal-armed crosses
arranged in the form of a descending triangle with two serpentine forms dividing the crosses, and who
should be invoked in the key of A sharp, whisperingly, almost inaudibly

Far Eastern cosmological associations:

 Wood/Air.  The East. Spring. Vitality. Production.  The Solid but Workable.  Sour. Blue or green.  Controls

liver and gall.  The Dragon. The Planet Jupiter.  Yang – the Pine.  Yin – the Bamboo.  Tin.  Air. Salt.
Produces Fire, is produced by Wood/Air (naturally grown things), destroys Earth, is destroyed by Metal
(made things).*

 Trigram from the I Ching:  Sun  (“The Gentle”/Penetrating, Wind)

––––

––––

 –    –

  b.       Design and Title of Trump

 Gringonneur:  A seated emperor, holding a sceptre in his right hand and an orb in his left.  Two children
kneel at his left.

Bembo: A seated emperor (probably a portrait of Frederick III), holding the imperial orb in his left hand
and an orb in his right.

Insight: An emperor seated on a throne embellished with rams’ heads.  In his left hand he olds an orb
surmounted by a cross, and in his right he bears a sceptre terminating in the Crux Ansata (Ankh).

Marseille:  An emperor seated in profile.  On the side of his throne is the Imperial German Eagle.  His
legs are crossed to make a “4.”

  Italian: The same as in the Marseille, except that the eagle is double-headed.

Wirth: Similar to the Marseille, except that the sign of “4” made by the emperor’s crossed legs is
exaggerated for effect.

Waite: The design may have been derived from that of the Insight Tarot.  Here, the emperor is seated on
a throne embellished with rams’ heads.  The orb is held in his left hand, and lacks the cross.  In his right
hand, he holds a sceptre, which terminates in a Crux Ansata.

 
B.O.T.A.:  The design is derived from Wirth.  It shows the emperor seated in profile on a cubical throne,
on the side of which is a rams’ head.  The symbol of the rams’ head is repeated on his left shoulder-
plate.  As in Wirth’s Tarot, the “4” made by his crossed legs is exaggerated.  In his right hand, he holds a
sceptre bearing a Crux Ansata, and in his left an orb. The zodiacal sign for Aries appears at the top of his
helmet.

The Aquarian Tarot:  The emperor upon a rams’-head throne.  In his right hand is a sceptre with a Crux
Ansata, and in his left an orb without a cross. Before him are lilies.

Crowley’s The Book of Thoth:  An emperor, seated, his legs firmly crossed to make a “4,” bearing a
rams’-head sceptre in his right hand.  In his left hand is an orb with a Maltese Cross.  His shield bears the
Imperial Double Eagle.  Behind him, at either side, are rams.  At his feet is a lamb with a circle suggesting
a halo and a flag draped casually over its shoulders.* 

*In Crowley’s pack, however, this card is attributed to Tzaddi, the Path connecting Netzach andYesod. 

The New Tarot:  Retitled “Actor.”  A figure stands before a throne upon which is a crown and a two-
horned dog.  His left foot rests upon the neck of a lion which sleeps beneath him.  In his left hand is an
orb without a cross.  There are two rather sinister bluebirds in the card, and a pattern of Stars upon the
ground.

The Fantasy Showcase Tarot:  An emperor holding an orb in his left hand, his right hand, made into a fist,
resting on the head of a ram.  He wears a chain around his neck;  hanging from the chain is a pendant
metal figure of an Ankh over a circle. He wears a jeweled crown.  Beyond that, it is not clear whether he
is seated or not, for the background as well as the emperor himself from the breast down is indistinct.

America’s Tarot:  Follows Crowley’s assignments, so this is Trump XVII, The Star. Shows the Statue of

Liberty against the New York City skyline and hopeful or lost-looking immigrants coming through Ellis
Island.  In the skies above, a MADZeppelin floats;  ghost-over of the landing on the Moon on July 20,
1969;  a computer chip;  and Harriet Tubman (“General Moses”).

The Divine Comedy Tarot: 

Biblical Tarot:  OT:  Solomon. NT: 

 

John Burt’s MAD Tarot:  Follows traditional assignment.  Bill Gaines in his electric cart.

The Robert A. Heinlein Tarot:  Jubal Harshaw of Stranger in a Strange Land; Wilhelm ofOrange in Double

Star

The H. P. Lovecraft Tarot: 

The Stephen King Tarot:  the king in Eyes of the Dragon

The R. R. McCammon Tarot:   

 c.       Divinatory Meanings

 Upright: Authorship.  Invention.  Rulership. Government.  Authority.  Guidance.

Leadership.  Force.  Strength. Energy.  Courage.  Activity. He who sets in order.  The ruling mental
activity.  Realization.  The necessity of a firm will strengthened by the knowledge of truth and
justice.  The realization of hope depends upon finding someone more powerful than the Querent to be
of assistance.  Caesar, Tsar, Sirdar, Senate, senior, Signor, etc. War, conquest, strife, victory.
Ambition.  Originality.  Energy. Vigor.  Vitality.  The Wisdom of Sovereignty and Beauty, the originator of
these.  The Sphere of the Zodiac acting through Aries upon the Sun and initiating Spring.  Transient
wealth and power.  Protection. Potency.  Stability.  The God-king, the divine king.  The emperor
reinterpreted as a modern captain of industry.  One who is dedicated and disciplined.  One who
embodies or suffers from a lack of the Roman virtues.  Natural intelligence.  Temporal or mundane
power. Effect.  Development.  Domination of spirit over matter.  Active creation.  An engineer, a
constructor.  Virile power. Lordship of thought.  A great person.  Aid. Will.  Benevolence.  Compassion.
Confusion to enemies.

Reversed:   Aries, the first third of Spring.  Easter (as a time of year).  The Vernal Equinox.  The brain, the
cerebrum, the face, the eyes, the upper jaw, the sinuses, the nose, the skull.  O’erweening
confidence.  Megalomania, Quarrelsomeness. Stubbornness.  Impracticability.  Rashness. Ill-
temper.  Immaturity.  Subservience. The possibility of being defrauded in one’s inheritance.  Loss of
wealth or authority. Paternalism. Tyranny.  Stoppage, blockage, check, obstruction.  Unripe.

d.  Interrelationships of the Path and the Trump

 Trump IV, The Emperor, is associated with h (Heh), the Path connecting Chokmahwith Tiphareth.*  Its

astrological attribution is the Sign Aries, whose mundane rulers are Mars and Pluto, in which the Sun
and Moon are exalted, and whose esoteric rulers are Mercury and Persephone.  Chokmah is associated
with Neptune, one of the rulers of the Fiery Sign Sagittarius, and with the Element Fire;  Tiphareth is
associated with the Sun, and the Sun’s Fiery energy;  so this Path is a Fiery one, a Path of primordial Will
and Spirit.  This card represents that stage of a child’s growth and development in which he or she first
truly perceives the Father as an important figure in his or her life, and as consort of the Mother.  It is a
card of virility and male energy, and more generally of beginnings of all kinds, the card of the Pioneer.  It
symbolizes the Will in action and its manifest results, and the Spirit upon the Throne of Matter. 

 *In Crowley’s pack The Book of Thoth, however, it is attributed to x (Tzaddi),

connecting Netzach with Yesod. 

 6.       Key 16

 Vav w “Nail.”  Trump V, The Hierophant.  Taurus ó.  Cardinal value, 6;  ordinal value,

6.  Connects Sephirah 2, Chokmah, with Sephirah 4, Chesed.  Roman/English equivalents:  F, O, U, V, W.

 a.       Qaballistic Meanings and Theory

 The 16th Path parallels the 18th.  Both of these Paths are links between Spirit and Individuality, again
with emphasis on form in their symbolism.  In the formula of JHVH,w (Vau, the “V” in JHVH) signifies
active manifestation in form, the result of the union of opposites of Yod and Heh.  From the standpoint
of  esoteric Christianity, the Nail (Vavmeans “nail”) is a significant symbol, signifying (in triplicate) that
which nails the Spirit to the Cross of Matter.

The shape of the letter Vau is similar to z (Zain, “sword” [see Key 7]).  Zain can be considered to be made
up of a y (Yod), representing Spiritual reality, extending a line of communication down into
manifestation.  A similar line of interpretation can be applied to Vau.  However, in the case of Vau,
the Yod is positioned differently.  Rather than being athwart the vertical line of communication, it is
instead inclined down into it, as if the dynamic force of Chokmah were driving its spiritual influence
down into the pristine form of the Individuality housed in Chesed.  So whereas the emanations
of Binah are Faith, the emanations of Chokmah are Spiritual Will.

Since Chesed is that part of the Individuality which beholds the face of its creator, the Spirit, containing
within itself a pattern of the Spirit on which to mold its further manifestation, while Chokmah is pure
Spiritual being, the direct reflection of the very source of Being itself that resides in Kether, so this Path
can be taken to be, in the words of the Yetziratic Text “the pleasure of the Glory, beyond which is no
other Glory like unto it.”  When all aspects of manifest existence radiate and reflect truth to and from
one another in this way, then will ‘the Kingdom come.’ So this Path can be thought of as a pattern for
the future, and a promise of what will be;  for this reason it is also called “the Paradise prepared for the
Righteous.”14

 Yetziratic Text:  The Sixteenth Path is the Triumphal or Eternal Intelligence, so called because it is the
pleasure of the Glory, beyond which is no other Glory like unto it, and it is called also
the Paradise prepared for the Righteous.
 Yetziratic title:  Triumphal or Eternal One

 Hebrew letter:   w  (Vav, “Nail”)

 Numerical value:  6

 Title:  The Magus of the Eternal

 Principle:  Cultivation, acquisition.  The union of the Microcosm with the Macrocosm (“5 = 6”), in the
sense of uniting terrestrial and universal realms. 

Astrological assignment:  ó  (the Sign Taurus), whose mundane rulers are Venus and Hera/Durga, in
which Sol and Luna are exalted, and whose esoteric Lords are Mercury and Persephone;  the Pleiades

 Element (Alchemical):  Fixed (Cherubic) Earth

 Element (chemical):  None

 Ecological process, realm, or principle:  nurturance; fertility, fertilization

 Physical chemistry:   None

 Colors:  Red-orange (King Scale);  deep indigo (Queen Scale);  deep warm olive (Emperor Scale);  rich
brown (Empress Scale)

 Gods: 

 General:  Gods and Goddesses of fertility

Greek:  Minos, the Minotaur;  Europa

Roman:  Venus

Egyptian:  Osiris, Asar Ameshet Apis

Scandinavian:  None

USA:  None

France of the Enlightenment: 

Celtic:  None

Christian:  None

Hindu:  the sacred cow

Voudon:  None

Other:  None
 Biblical associations:  Issacher, son of Jacob;  Simon Zelotes, disciple of Jesus

 Countries:  Ireland, Russia (pre-Soviet), Switzerland, Poland, Cyprus, Persia,Crete

 Cities:  Dublin, Mantua, Leipzig, Lucerne

 Peoples:  the ancient Egyptians, the Druids, the ancient Cretans

 Meditation:  Beaten and Scattered Corpse

Magickal Power:  The Secret of Physical Strength

 Perfume:  Storax

 Magickal Weapons:  The Labor of Preparation

 Musical tone:  C sharp or B flat

  Metals, stones, and minerals: topaz, agate, emerald, alabaster, and coral

Plants, real and imaginary: moss, spinach, lilies, daises, dandelions, beets, larkspur, flax, myrtle, mallow

 Animals, Real and Imaginary:  the Bull (Cherub of Taurus)

 Vegetable drugs (plant extracts): sugar

 Mineral drugs:   None

 The Body:  adenoids, cerebellum, lower jaw, jugular vein, larynx, mouth, neck, pharynx, salivary glands,
throat, thyroid gland, tongue, tonsils, vocal cords, parathyroids.  The sense of hearing.

 Diseases:  Indigestion;  dysfunctions associated with the cerebellum;  dislocated jaw;  blockage of or

wound in jugular vein;  laryngitis; diseases of the tongue, mouth and throat, both infectious, such as
thrush, and functional/organic, such as cancer; Graves’ disease, hypothyroidism, etc.; tonsillitis;  broken
neck, dislocated neck, etc.;  problems with the voice

 Magickal image:  between the Pillars sits an Ancient

 Lineal figures:  Amissio

·  ·

·  ·

 Domain:  Second third of Spring;  the stage of Spring at its fullest;  the fullness of resurrected life
 Archangel: 

 Quarter:  ENE, S-by-E

 Buddhist symbolism:  success in Hatha Yoga, Asana and Prana-yama.

  Qlippoth:  } w r y m y d a  (ADIMIRON, “Bloody);  Uriens, whose name is evoked in the key of C sharp

and should be roared or bellowed, and whose sigil should be inscribed in lines of flame on a brown
triangle (the sigil shows a seven-armed figure, whose upper four arms terminate in Yods, the lower
three in crosses)

Far Eastern cosmological associations:

 The Snake (the Chinese month corresponding to the Western Sign Taurus);  grain rains come, Summer
begins; Fire;  the South; Summer;  brilliance, heat, bitter, red, controls heart and small intestines; the
Vermilion Bird (Phoenix); Mars;  Yang, burning wood; Yin, lamp-flame;  iron; realgar.

 Trigram from the I Ching: NA

 b.       Design and Title of Trump

 Gringonneur:  It shows a seated pope who bears the keys of Saint Peter, flanked by two seated figures,
perhaps cardinals.

Bembo: In this pack, the Hierophant is seated, his right hand raised in benediction.

Swiss: This pack shows a weary Jupiter, seated on a throne.  His eagle is on the sand before him.  Like
Trump II, The Papess, this card is a substitution to spare the feelings of the Church.

Insight: Here, the Hierophant is seated in front of two lotus-topped pillars.  His left hand holds a staff
terminating in a triple cross, and his right hand is raised in blessing. Two monks (or, perhaps, Cardinals)
petition him.

Italian: Similar to the Insight, but here the Hierophant has his hand on his breast.

Waite: Similar to the traditional design, but with the following changes:  the garments of the monks are
patterned, one with red roses, one with white lilies. The pillars are decorated in a pomegranate (or
grape) motive.  A device in the shape of a “W” surmounts his crown.
 

B.O.T.A.:  Like Waite’s, except that the Hierophant’s crown lacks the “W” that tops the crown of the
Hierophant in Waite’s pack, while the throne bears devices indicative of the Solar winged disc or Taurus
the Bull.

Aquarian:  Here, the pope wears a stylized version of the triple crown.  In the left foreground are the
crossed keys of St. Peter, and in the right foreground is the Papal Cross.

Crowley: Here, the Hierophant is seated on a throne decorated with the heads of elephants.  A bull
stands behind him, part of its body twisted around him.  At the four corners of the card are the four
Evangelical Beasts of the Apocalypse:  the Angel, the Eagle, the Bull, and the Lion.  In his right hand he
carries a rod terminating in a triple circle which may represent a combination of the Holy Trinity, the
Keys, the Triple Cross, and the Lingam.  Crowley’s pack is frequently ambiguous in its meaning (probably
deliberately so).  For example, the “benediction” of this card shows the forefinger and middle finger the
Hierophant’s lefthand extended downward in a gesture which totally reverses the normal meaning of
the card.  At the Hierophant’s feet is the figure of Isis, standing, bearing in her left hand a bow or
crescent Moon, and in her right a staff. Behind the Hierophant’s head is a pattern of nails, representing
the literal meaning of Vav, the letter associated with this card.  On the Hierophant’s breast is an upright
Pentagram in which is inscribed a running figure.

The New Tarot:  Retitled “Speaker.”  A naked figure stands on a narrow land-bridge above turbulent
waters.  In his right hand he holds up a dark circle;  in his left, a golden key.  His heart is visible in
splendor.  From his mouth issue forked lightning.  Behind him is a volcano in eruption.

The Fantasy Showcase Tarot:  Dressed in gorgeous, gold-trimmed robes and wearing a turban with a
jeweled headband, the Hierophant stands on a cobbled pave before a strangely-cut window opening on
the cosmos.  He carries a staff headed by a great jewel within a gold ring.

America’s Tarot:  A montage of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and that portion of the
Constitution that has to do with the Presidency.  Article V of the Bill of Rights.

The Divine Comedy Tarot:  Minos, one of the Judges of the damned in Hell

 
Biblical Tarot:  Moses discovers the children of Israel making sacrifices to the Golden Calf.

John Burt’s MAD Tarot:  Al Feldstein.

The Robert A. Heinlein Tarot: 

The H. P. Lovecraft Tarot:  Shub-Niggurath, the Goat with a Thousand Young

The Stephen King Tarot:  

The R. R. McCammon Tarot:   

 c.       Divinatory Meanings

 Upright: The Voice of the Hierophant giving verbal form to the Vision of the Fool. Revelation (implying
that which is not revealed, as well).  Latent powers and energies. Secretiveness and reserve.  The powers
of the unconscious mind, memory, and recollection in their highest manifestation.  “Revealer of Sacred
Things.”  Intuition as an unconscious response to reason.  The master of the Arcana, or occult
intelligence. Stubborn strength.  Toil.  Endurance. Placidity.  Manifestation.  Explanation.
Teaching. Goodness of heart.  Help from superiors.  Patience. Organization.  Peace.  “Pontifex” or
Bridge-Maker, one who links the outer world of flesh and substance with the inner one of spirit and
transubstantiality  The linking of man to God through the inner voice. Openness to new
ideas.  Unconventionality.  The inventor. The hippie. The Wisdom and Fountain of Mercy.  The Sphere of
the Zodiac acting through Taurus upon Jupiter.  The Magus of the Eternal Gods.  Divine
wisdom.  Manifestation.  Occult wisdom. Resembles the Magician, the Hermit, and The Lovers in some
respects.  The occult power of man.  A secret revealed.  Religious or scientific vocation.  An advisor of
the Querent’s, such as a psychoanalyst, father-confessor, or rabbi. General paternal characteristics, in an
emotional, sexual, and social sense.  Orthodoxy.  Someone who mediates power between higher and
lower levels.  Mercy.  Beneficence. Kindness. Goodness.  The exoteric Magickal method of
instruction.  The creative will expressed. The dispenser of welfare, well-being, riches, or political and
social virtue.  The universal life.  Enlightened will power.  Active authority.    Sanction in the sense of
inner consent rather than external law.  Natural authority.  Inner directedness, in the sociopsychological
sense.  The codifier in relation to the source of power.  The priest as one of two media of Truth, Art, and
Religion.  He who makes the sacrifice.  The King as the annual sacrifice, and, by extension, a
scapegoat.  The ruling power of external religion.  The power of the keys.  The Keys to the
Kingdom.  Exoteric orthodox doctrine and the outer life which leads to the doctrine.  Al things that are
righteous and sacred.  The channel of institutionalized (as distinct from natural)
grace.  Marriage.Alliance.  Captivity.  Servitude. Inspiration.  The man to whom the Querent has
recourse.

Reversed:  Adenoids, cerebellum, lower jaw, jugular vein, larynx, mouth, neck, pharynx, salivary glands,
throat, thyroid gland, tongue, tonsils, vocal cords.  Taurus, the second Solar month, from about April 20
to around May 20.  A tendency toward superstition. A delayed project.  A late vocation.  Someone who
can accomplish practical affairs in a mysterious or deceptive manner. Iconoclasm, radicalism, rebellion.
Over-kindness. Weakness.  Foolish generosity.  The sum of theology in its most rigid
forms.  Society. Good understanding.

d.  Interrelationships of the Path and the Trump

 According to Bill Butler, in Dictionary of the Tarot (New York:  Schocken Books, 1977), Arland Ussher,
in The XXII Keys of the Tarot (Dublin:  Dolmen, 1969), associates this card with Aries and the sacrificial
ram:

. . . (Thus Ussher incorporates ideas of the king as an annual sacrifice, and, by extension, a scapegoat.)  . .
. Ussher’s suggestion of sacrificial ram and thus the connection between the priest (as killer) and the
king (as annual sacrifice) which would seem to follow from it is ingenious.  It not only completely
delineates power, both temporal and heavenly or spiritual;  but it also indicates the pairing which occurs
between the emperor and the high priest. They are bound together, each necessary for the other and
ultimately the same figure, just as the papess and the empress are identical.

            Butler, op, cit., p. 132

 Vav, the Path associated with Trump V, Chokmah  with Chesed, signifying Mercy tempered with
Wisdom, beneficence inspired by the Will of God.  A good part of its meaning is inherent in Taurus, the
Solar month associated with Vav. In Taurus, the seeds planted when the Sun was in Aries now begin to
germinate and rise upward to the light, putting forth shoots of green, struggling mightily for a place in
the Sun and the Hidden Treasures of Hades, the minerals, water, and gases in the soil which provide the
food the new plants need to live and thrive.  Deep in the soil, a fierce battle rages among the young
plants:  some plants, the strongest, manage to drive their new roots far and wide, sequestering as much
of the soil’s wealth as possible, while others, less strong or lucky, are starved out by their abler (or
luckier) neighbors.  Insects and nematodes begin to feed on the young plants, some of which secrete
toxins that sicken or kill the predators. Algae team up with fungi in the union known as lichen;  together
they are able to survive and thrive as they could not apart.  And so it goes.  Beneath the beauty of mid-
Spring – indeed, the matrix that gives rise to it – are battle, strife, horror, and tragedy in every sort of
stage and expression, the manifestations of Scorpio.  Thus each Sign is supported, nurtured, even
conceived by its opposite.  Here, Spring is nurtured and schooled by Autumn, the Maiden, Persephone,
taken to wife by Hades, Lord of the Dead.

 7.       Key 17

 Zain z    “Sword.” Trump VI, The Lovers.  Gemini ô .  Cardinal value, 7;  ordinal value,

7.  Connects Sephirah  3, Binah, with Sephirah 6, Tiphareth.  Roman/English equivalent:  Z.

 a.       Qaballistic Meanings and Theory

 The most concrete of the three Supernal Sephiroth, Binah contains the image of the Spirit and its
destiny in Earth.  This Path, Zain, is the means by which knowledge of the Spirit’s destiny is brought into
the central focus of consciousness in manifestation,Tiphareth.

Binah is “the parent of Faith, from which doth Fate emanate.”  This Path “. . . provides Faith to the
Righteous,”  by which the latter “clothed with the Holy Spirit.”  In this context, Faith is “the Foundation
of Excellence in the state of higher things.”

The Holy Spirit is the Third Aspect of God, or Third Person of the Trinity, and is attributed to Binah.  It
may be associated with both Yesod and Binah;  indeed, these two Sephiroth have much in common, as
meditation on the symbolism of the Moon and Water associated with Yesod and the Great Sea
of Binah reveals.  Binah is also closely connected with the Holy Guardian Angel, in spite of the fact that
the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel is the Spiritual Experience of
Malkuth.*  Again, there is a close link between Binah and Malkuth, the Superior Mother and the Inferior
Mother.  According to Gareth Knight,

 The Holy Guardian Angel is not the Individuality, but that aspect of the “Group Thought-Form of God”
which impressed the Swarm of Divine Sparks at the beginning of Time.  When the Swarm broke up to
undergo individual experience in manifestation the ‘Group Thought-Form’ broke up also, each fragment
connected with a particular Divine Spark.  . . . [The] Holy Guardian Angel may be considered to be that
part of a human being which reveals his purpose in manifestation to him in accordance with the Divine
Plan.  

 *See remarks concerning various definitions of the Holy Guardian Angel by different esoteric schools in
the previous lesson.  Gareth Knight’s description here of the functional reality of the H.G.A. – which is
corroborated by most other schools and in the experience of most practicing occultists – lends strong
support to the idea that it is a phenomenon of Malkuth and either analogous to the superego or
identical to it.  On my own, however, I experienced something very like – if not, in fact, identical to –
what is commonly reported as the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel
inBinah rather than Malkuth, i.e., as a Uranian, rather than a Solar or Terrestrial, phenomenon.  Why
and how this happened, I am unsure, but it did give me the experience which Knowledge and
Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel is supposed to confer, albeit on a far higher level than that is
normally experienced. 
Here is the explanation of the origin of the esoteric titles of the Tarot Trump and also of the astrological
Sign, Gemini, associated with this Trump.  The Holy Guardian Angel may manifest as an Oracle of the
Mighty Gods, each Holy Guardian Angel being a child of the Logos.  Such manifestations are above the
levels of mind, thus manifesting as faith. This may be not only a general faith in God, but the faith in
himself that every healthy being has to persevere at what he considers to be his true calling in spite of
all opposition.

Gemini, the Twins, represents the ideal relationship between the Holy Guardian Angel and the
Individuality:  each should be a reflection of the other.  This applies equally to the Spirit
and Individuality, and to the Individuality and Personality. In esoteric writing, it is to the latter pair that
the Heavenly Twins, Castor and Pollux (the Gemini), are more commonly referred.  Castor and Pollux
were children of Leda.  Pollux and Helen of Troy were sired by Zeus in the form of a swan, and Castor
and Clytemnestra were the true children of Leda’s husband, Tyndereus.  Here is an analogy of the Holy
Guardian Angel which, like Pollux, was formed directly by God, and the incarnating Spirit which, like
Castor, is essentially human.  Castor was mortal, Pollux an immortal; Pollux bought immortality for
Castor by consenting to spend half his time in Hades, the realm of the dead.  This represents downward-
directed meditation on the Holy Guardian Angel, the Spirit, or the Individuality, according to the level of
interpretation, when the lower unit is the mortal person.  The final goal of incarnation also has its
analogy in the myth:  Zeus, deeply moved by this example of brotherly love, placed the Twins together
in the sky as a single constellation, signifying the spiritual future of humanity and also its means of
attaining it – through Love to the Stars. 

 *Is our biology reflected in our esoteric models and theories, or vice-versa?  It is of interest here to
point out that with the advent of sexually-reproducing organisms, Earthly life began to evolve toward
forms that would eventually try to attain the Stars, literally. Asexual life has little or no community, the
basis of which is love, if only neighborly love. Asexual life strives merely to reproduce its numbers and
expand into as much territory as possible.  Sexual life, on the other hand, has to evolve some sort of
communal life and a culture to go with it, if only to ensure a ready supply of mates and optimize its
ability to give its young a good start in the world.  And only with the skills and advantages given by a true
community and culture can a species – and its world – attain the Stars.  Space makes the grimmest
terrestrial desert or hellhole look like paradise, and only a truly social organism, which can develop an
advanced technology and cooperate in highly intricate, complex tasks has the slightest chance to survive
in outer space.  So we evolve:  through love – love of friends, neighbors, mates, children, Planet – to the
Stars. 

 The Tarot Trump associated with this Path is called The Lovers.  It shows three people, one male, two
female, over whom hovers Eros in the form of Cupid, armed with bow and arrow.  One of the women is
crowned and faces the couple, who are obviously the Lovers.  The couple are the counterpart of the
Dioscuroi, the heavenly Twins;  the crowned woman is the principle of Form;  and the Cupid is the
driving principle behind manifestation, the primordial Eros of Kether. (Mighty Eros, a figure of dynamic
Divine Love, has been popularized down the ages into the sentimental Cupid, just as the true
significance of this card was for a long time considered to be that of man’s choice between Good and
Evil, with Evil about to get an earful of arrow from the winged figure of Justice.  An even shallower
interpretation regarded it as a card upholding the sanctity of marriage.  This process of evolution of
different levels of interpretation of this or any other card is inevitable, and it must be borne in mind that
the significance of the symbols in each cared will change as one’s own understanding matures.  If a
symbol is a good one, all levels of its interpretation are correct, and there is no ultimate meaning for any
esoteric symbol. This fact must always be borne in mind in esoteric work.)  There is an interesting
confirmation in the design of this Trump in ‘The Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosenkreutz’ wherein a
Virgin is mistress of ceremonies and the young King and Queen about to be married have a Cupid
constantly hovering over their heads.

The Key to the Path, the Hebrew letter Zain, means “Sword.”  The shape of the letter suggests a
sword;  in another way, it signifies the action of the Holy Guardian Angel.  The Holy Guardian Angel,
Knowledge and Purpose on its own high level, is represented by the Yod at the top of the letter. The
Holy Guardian Angel projects a “rod” of Knowledge and Purpose downward into manifestation,
represented by the vertical lines of the letter.  There is nothing attached to the lower end of this shaft,
signifying that the inner opportunity presented by the Holy Guardian Angel has to be seized and acted
upon.

The attribution of the Sword may seem strange at first in connection with the Lovers and Twins, for the
Sword is a symbol of separation. It is, however, appropriate to the rest of the symbolism.*  This Path is
essentially one of separation, for the separation of the individual monads of Spirit that make up the
human group-soul is essential for individual evolution;  and the part of the Self that stays in Heaven and
the part that descends into manifestation must likewise be separate.  This separation is part of the
Vision of Sorrow of Binah, one of whose Magical Images is a heart pierced with Swords (i.e., the Three of
Swords).  Furthermore, the Heavenly Twins, though similar, and united by relationship and
love, are separate beings.  Without separation there could be no love.

 *Also, the Sword is a symbol of Air, and that Gemini, the astrological Sign associated with this Trump,  is
an Air Sign.

 The Sword is also a weapon of destruction.  As such, it symbolizes the fourth aspect of God: God the
Destroyer or Disintegrator, Whose avatars include, e.g., Kali, Shiva, theArchangel Mikhail, Medusa, etc..
This represents an aspect of the ascent of this Path during which all manifestation is eventually
reabsorbed into the Great Sea.  On one level, this is Binah on one level; ultimately it refers to Binah’s
analogue beyond Kether, Ain Soph, Limitlessness.

There are countless legends having to do with the Sword. There are singing swords, and swords which
speak, though perhaps the most famous of all is Excalibur, the Magickal Sword belonging to King
Arthur.  Through all Brythonic legend there are accounts of Divine Purpose being revealed by means of a
sword in a stone or, sometimes, found floating in the water.  It was by means of such an oracle that
Arthur was made king.  The association with the stone represents manifestation in dense matter, and
the water in which the stone floats is a reminder of the Waters of Binah or Ain Soph (Excalibur itself
came from and was returned to the lady of the Lake!).
There is of course an obvious sexual element in the symbolism of the Sword.  This is just one facet of the
principle of polarity which produces manifestation;* hence the relevance of this Path to Binah and the
symbolic relationship of this Path shown in the design of Trump VI as well as in the myth of the
Constellation Gemini.  The Sword represents thepower of polarity, on all its levels.  The myth of
Excalibur is an obvious case in point, and its scabbard, which according to Merlin was worth more than
the sword itself and which was stolen by the sorceress Morgan Le Fay, represents the knowledge of the
application  of this power.**  The whole Arthurian story-cycle is an esoteric treatise on the principle of
polarity.  Although this principle may be expressed in the guise of mere love-affairs between various
lords and ladies, the implications of such symbolism run very deep, for polarity is the very principle of
existence.†  When dealing with the higher aspects of the Tree of Life, we are dealing with fundamentals,
and at those levels, the stories involving Excalibur, the Knights and Ladies, the Holy Grail and the Round
Table, are not merely examples of human behavior, as they might be lower on the Tree, but indeed
principles of cosmic reality.‡

 *As indicated in the discussion concerning Key 14, above, this polarity is associated with the Planet
Venus.  In turn, Venus is one of the esoteric rulers of Gemini, the Sign associated with Trump VI and Key
17.

 **Knowledge per se is ruled by Saturn, traditional ruler of Aquarius, another Air Sign (see Key 28.,
below).

 †This is literally, physically true. The Big Bang with which the physical Universe began only took place
with the birth of equal masses of virtual particles and their corresponding anti-particles.  Most of these
annihilated one another in one gigantic, cataclysmic event, the energy of which gave birth to our
universe.  For detailed discussion of current models of the birth of the universe, see James Cornell
(editor),Bubbles, Voids, and Bumps in Time:    The New Cosmology  (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1989); Alan Dressler, Voyage to the Great Attractor:    Exploring Intergalactic Space  (New York:
Alfred A.  Knopf, 1994);  and Karel A. Velan, The Multi-Universe Cosmos:    The First Complete Story of the
Origin of the Universe (New York:  Plenum Press, 1992).

 ‡If there is anything to the esoteric Arts and Sciences, then what is Above (on the Inner Planes, the
realms of Spirit) must be reflected in that which is Below (our everyday, mundane, historical
reality).  The Arthurian Romance cycle grew out of what Britons remembered of the early history, which
included the occupation of the British Isles by the Old Roman Empire and the Dark Ages which followed
the retreat from Britain of the Empire in its last, dying phase.  The reader might want to see how well
the events of that time correspond to the symbolism of this Trump and its exegesis given here by
Knight. See Sir Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (New York: Dodd, Mead,
1956-1958.  4 volumes) for a description of the historical Arthur and his times.

 Resh,  the Path from Yesod to Hod, associated with Trump XIX, The Sun, has to do with the division
between the sexes, and the problems that come about from refusal to recognize this division or accept
it.   Zain parallels Resh,  thus representing the same tendencies, but at a higher level.* According to
Knight,
 It is a point of some academic nicety where exactly the roots of the Prime Deviation lie. The Spirit is said
to have been perfect until it learnt of the Plan of the Manifest Universe; then it took on
imperfection.  Thus one could put the root of the trouble in Binah [Eve], but it is perhaps safer until
more is known, to follow the more traditional idea of the Serpent of Confusion rising only as far as
Daath.  The fact is that the wrong image was projected into Chesed and the Spirit is responsible, for it is
the Spirit which projects, and should act through, all the vehicles of man. 15

*As discussed in the section on Key 30, below, this Trump is associated with Sol, Who is one of the
esoteric Lords of Gemini.

 Yetziratic Text:

The Seventeenth Path is the Disposing Intelligence which provides Faith to the Righteous, and they are
clothed with the Holy spirit by it, and it is called the Foundation of Excellence in the state of higher
things.

 Yetziratic title:  Disposing One

 Hebrew letter:  z  (Zain, “Sword”)

 Numerical value:  7.

 Title:   The Children of the Voice, the Oracle of the Mighty Gods

 Principle:   Separation, the union of opposites, twinning

 Astrological assignment:  the Sign Gemini, the third third of Spring; the Fixed Stars Castor and Pollux

 Element (Alchemical):  Mutable Air;  mercury (the vaporous products of Alchemical decomposition of a

substance)

 Element (chemical): 

 Ecological process, realm, or principle:  the transition between Spring and Summer, the beginning of the
process that will make young organisms independent of their parents;  wind

 Physical chemistry:  the tendency of any gas to disperse

 Colors:  Orange (King Scale);  pale mauve (Queen Scale);  new yellow leather (Emperor Scale);  reddish-

gray, inclined to mauve (Empress Scale)

 Gods: 

 General:  All twinned Gods

Assyrian:  Nebo and Tasmit

Greek:  Castor and Pollux

Roman:  Romulus and Remus;  Mercury; Janus

Egyptian:  the twin Merti, the twin Rehti, etc.

Scandinavian:  NA

USA:  in the natal horoscope of the USA that is generally accepted today, Gemini is rising, hence
Mercury, ruler of Gemini, rules our country, as do Castor and Pollux, the Gemini Themselves

France of the Enlightenment:  NA

Celtic:  NA

Christian:  Boanerges, the Sons of Thunder; James, “the lesser,” disciple of Jesus5t

Hindu:  Sunda and Upusunda (from the Mahabharata);  Rama and his twin brother (from
the Ramayana)

Voudon:  NA

Other:  NA

 Biblical associations:  Simeon and Levi, sons of Jacob who avenged the rape of their sister Dinah by
slaughtering many of the tribe of Shechem

 Countries:  United States of America, Belgium, Wales, Sardinia, northeast coast of Africa, Lower

Egypt, Flanders, Lombardy

 Cities:  London, Melbourne, San Francisco, Cordoba, Versailles, Plymouth,Nuremberg, Cardiff

 Peoples:  Gypsies

 Meditation:  White

 Magickal Power:  Bilocation and Multilocation (the power of being in two or more places at once,
Prophecy.

 Perfume:  Wormwood

 Magickal Weapons:  The Tripod

 Musical tone:  D natural.

 Metals, stones, and minerals:  alexandrite, tourmaline, Iceland spar, beryl, crystal, garnet, topaz,
aquamarine, marble, chrysolite, and all striped stones
Plants, real and imaginary: yarrow, woodbine, vervain, tansy, dog grass, madder, orchids, all cloned
plants, all hybrids

Animals, Real and Imaginary:  all cloned and hybrid animals, magpies, parrots, ravens, parakeets, all
other talking birds 

Vegetable drugs (plant extracts): ergot, all ecbolics

Mineral drugs:   NA

The Body:  Arms, breath, organs of respiration, bronchi, capillaries, diaphragm, fingers, hands, sense of
hearing, lungs, neurons, oxygenation of the blood, nervous system, brain, sympathetic nervous system,
parasympathetic nervous system, autonomic nervous system as a whole, peripheral nervous system
(nerves), upper ribs, sense of sight, sense of smell, memory, sense of taste, thoracic cavity, thymus
gland, sense of touch, trachea

Diseases:  Phthysis, pneumonia, asthma, and all other diseases or dysfunctions of the above

Magickal image:  A young prophet, in the Sign of Osiris Risen

Lineal figures:  striped patterns of all kinds;  the Swastika;  Albus:

·  ·

·  ·

·  ·

 Domain:  Third third of Spring;  one’s neighborhood or immediate environment; elementary

school;  students; small appliances;  short-distance journeys; books;  libraries; communication in all
forms; learning;  memory;  writing

 Archangel: 

 Quarter:  NNE;  W-by-S

 Buddhist symbolism:  .

Qlippoth:  } w r y m y l l x  (TzALALIMIRON, “Clangers”)

Far Eastern cosmological associations:

 The Horse (Chinese month equivalent to Western Sign Gemini);  grain fills, grain forms ear;  Fire; the
South;  Summer;  brilliance, heat, bitter, red, controls heart and small intestines;  the Vermilion Bird
(Phoenix);  Mars;  Yang, burning wood;  Yin, lamp-flame;  iron;   realgar.

 Trigram from the I Ching: NA

 b.       Design and Title of Trump

 Gringonneur:  Three pairs of lovers, promenading.  The central pair appear to be quarreling.  In the

heavens, two Cupids are taking aim at them with bow and arrow.

  Bembo: This card shows Cupid, blindfolded, standing on a pedestal.  Before him is a pair of lovers,
probably modeled on Francesco Sforza and Bianca Maria Visconti, the lady for whom these cards were
designed.  In this card, as in Gringonneur’s, “love” refers to “courtly love,” a concept which owes its
origin to Provençal poetry of the twelfth century and the works of the Roman writer Ovid.  From these
sources it is developed in the writing of Boccaccio and Margaret of Navarre.  The themes are literally
“courtly”:  the books in question were to be read at royal courts.  Not surprisingly, a disproportionately
large number of the characters in them were aristocrats of one stripe of another.

Swiss: The card shows two lovers, and Cupid taking aim at them from the heavens;  the scene is
observed by an old man leaning on a staff.

Insight: A young man, apparently choosing between an older and a younger woman. Cupid is in this
card, as well, taking aim at figures below;  He is set against the Sun in glory.

Italian: Like the Insight Tarot, but here Cupid is blindfolded.

Waite: An angel blesses Adam and Eve. Even stands before the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil,
around the trunk of which is wrapped a smiling Serpent.  Adam stands before a tree filled with flame
(the flame design reappears in Card XV, The Devil).

Aquarian:  Two lovers, with iris flowers in bud.

 
Crowley: A king and queen join in marriage before a figure like an Arch-Druid, whose hands are raised
over them in blessing. The queen wears the crown of Isis; the king wears a traditional king’s
crown.  They are attended by two naked boys, one of whom is black and carries a club, and the other of
whom is white and carries flowers.  The queen offers a chalice with a dove sitting on it with her left
hand; the king holds a spear in his left hand. Their right hands are joined.  Below them is a winged egg,
wrapped around with a serpent.  Below, to the right, is an eagle;  below and to the left is a lion.  Both of
these heraldic animals are plainly laughing.  In some respects this card recapitulates the Alchemical
teaching-tale of Christian Rosenkreutz.

The New Tarot:  Retitled “Unity.”  A man and woman stand on the periphery of a circle, hands and feet
just touching. Within the circle is an ocean and two fish who might be dolphins.  There are two ladders,
one white and one brown, at either side.  The Moon is shown at the top in all four quarter-phases. At
the bottom, from left to right, are a sword, a Pentagram, ripe corn, an ibis standing upon a tortoise, and
a pear tree.

The Fantasy Showcase Tarot:  The design of this card is explicitly sexual.  It shows a naked man and a
naked woman, the man kissing the woman, the woman caressing a serpent rising from the area of the
man’s genitalia.  Behind them is a winged Solar disc upon which is a face with eyes half shut and a
pouting mouth.  The woman wears a headpiece with stylized wings over her ears, and the man wears an
odd scarf patterned with flowers that has spines like a dragon’s over the back of his head.

America’s Tarot:  Alfred E. Neuman and Moxie Cowznowski, his girlfriend, holding hands in Golden
Gate Park, San Francisco;  the Golden Gate Bridge is in the background.  (San Francisco is a Gemini
city.)  Article VI of the Bill of Rights. (Alternate:  Alfred with a black eye and a bright-red palm-print on
one cheek, looking dazed, Moxie stomping away in high dudgeon.)

The Divine Comedy Tarot:

Biblical Tarot:  Jacob and his Coat of Many Colors (OT);  Boanerges  (the Sons of Thunder) (NT);  James
the Lesser (NT);  Simeon and Levi, brothers of Dinah (OT)

John Burt’s MAD Tarot:  Alfie and Moxie.

 
The Robert A. Heinlein Tarot: 

The H. P. Lovecraft Tarot: 

The Stephen King Tarot: 

The R. R. McCammon Tarot:   

 c.       Divinatory Meanings

 Upright: Diversity, contrast, antithesis, distinction, discrimination, perception, acuity, sharpness.  The

physical senses.  The two roads.  Analysis followed by synthesis. Openness to inspiration.  Intuition.
Intelligence.  Second sight.  Choice. The understanding of beauty.  The production of beauty and
sovereignty. Saturn acting through Gemini upon Sol. Passive or, in some cases, mediumistic
inspiration.  Motive, power, and action arising from inspiration and impulse.  The thought of physical
love. Union.  Marriage. A choice that must be made.  A possible change in someone’s love-life.
Love.  Sacred (as opposed to profane) love.  The necessity of trial and testing. Virtue.  Wise
dispositions.  Proof. Trials surmounted.  Unwise plans.  Failure when put to the test.  Someone who is in
love.  By seeing, one is transformed, as is that which one sees (as distinct from perception, in which that
which is seen is clearly distinct from that which sees).  Limerance. All that relates to light and
brilliancy.  The choice between submitting to the passions, and conquering them and becoming an
initiate. Decision.  The nervous system and everything acting as an organ.  The eye included as an
organ.  The law of duality.  The law of good-vs.-evil.  Wisdom versus pleasure (pleasure being the likely
winner, as the choice is up to a use, and pleasure is appropriate to his age). Human love, as part of the
way, the truth, and the love.  A mystery of the Covenant and Sabbath. Attraction.  Love.  Beauty. Trials
overcome.

Reversed: Arms, breath, organs of respiration, bronchi, capillaries, diaphragm, fingers, hands, sense of
hearing, lungs, neurons, oxygenation of the blood, nervous system, brain, sympathetic nervous system,
parasympathetic nervous system, autonomic nervous system as a whole, peripheral nervous system
(nerves), upper ribs, sense of sight, sense of smell, memory, sense of taste, thoracic cavity, thymus
gland, sense of touch, trachea; Phthysis, pneumonia, asthma, and all other diseases or dysfunctions of
the parts of the body ruled by Gemini.  A sword, a weapon of any kind.  The Solar month of Gemini, May
21 through June 19. Struggle between passion and conscience. Childishness. Frivolity.  Thoughtfulness
divorced from practical consideration.  Indecision.  Self-contradiction.  Union with others in a shallow
degree.  Instability. Contradiction. Triviality.  The highbrow or snob.  A bad choice. Many
unions.  Infidelity.  Love affairs. Divorce.  Dissatisfaction.  Unhappy love. Vice.  Reunion or antagonism,
with all their consequences.  Failure.  Foolish designs.  Marriage frustrated.  Contrarieties of all kinds.
d.  Interrelationships of the Path and the Trump

 Zain  connects Binah with Tiphareth, representing the congress of the Spheres of Uranus, ruler of the
Heavens, and the Sun, the Giver of Life.  On a spiritual level, it therefore represents the relationship
between the Will of God and the Source of Life, the Breath (Ruach) breathed into Adam by God that
brought him alive, the Spirit that informs living beings.  It also represents inspiration, the impulses
“breathed” into us by the Gods.  And since Binah is associated with the Sorrowing Mother
and Tipharethwith Jesus, Zain is also associated with the sorrow of Mary upon receiving the body of her
murdered son, as well as the relationship in life between Jesus and his mother.

On a physical level, Zain represents the desire of terrestrial life to literally attain the Stars, to colonize
worlds of Stars other than Sol.

8.       Key 18

 Cheth h  “Fence.”  Trump VII, the Chariot.  Cancer  õ. Cardinal value, 8;  ordinal value,

8.  Connects Sephirah 5, Geburah, with Sephirah 3, Binah.  Roman/English equivalent:  Ch, as in Scots
“loch.”

 a.       Qaballistic Meanings and Theory

 Cheth joins Geburah, the Sephirah of manifest spiritual activity, and Binah, theSephirah of archetypal

form.  The Chariot, the device of Cheth’s Trump, is a good symbol for it, because a chariot is a vehicle
designed for active movement.  The vehicle of the spirit for its activity in manifestation is that of
manifestation of one body for each level from Sephirah to Malkuth, the physical world.

According to esoteric theory, each body builds up around a permanent “atom” or core on its
corresponding plane;  this core, sometimes called a “seed-atom,” remains attached to the Spirit over a
series of incarnations.  The “seed-atoms” therefore hold the memory of all previous incarnations of the
Spirit, while the primordial particles of the various planes that gather around them each time to form a
body are subsequently dispersed to form the common pool of matter for that plane which is utilized by
other manifesting Spirits.

It is possible that a portion of astral or mental substance may be utilized by an incarnating being before
that substance has been completely broken down into its component parts.  It will therefore still retain
the signature of the imprint of the previous entity to some degree or another.  This may account for
strange positive and negative tropisms, seemingly out of character, that occur in some persons.  Such
tendencies wouldn’t be evident in a spirit in good control of its vehicles, but it can and does happen, and
it is well to bear this in mind before jumping to conclusions about former incarnations, pre-terrestrial
ties, “Karma,” or the doubtful theory of “soul mates.”  Like the horse who continued to turn in at his
former master’s gate long after being sold to a series of new masters, in such cases it may be simply that
that the physical or a spiritual or astral body of a person who exhibits such tendencies is haring off on its
own, independent of the will of the spirit for which it is a vehicle, to fulfill the desires or habits of beings
which have long since sloughed it off for new bodies.

The symbols of this Path all stress the aspect of Form: the House of Influence, the astrological Sign
Cancer and the 4th House of the Horoscope, ruled by Cancer, the Crab with its hard carapace;  the Fence;
and the Chariot, which, on the Tarot Trump, has a square, house-like superstructure.  Form is again
emphasized in the Lunar symbolism of the card, images of the Moon appearing on the king’s sceptre and
his epaulettes.  The Moon is a general symbol of Form;  like Form, it is predominantly receptive, its great
power over the tides of the oceans being a drawing or actively receptive power like all other aspects of
the Feminine Aspect of God.*  The polarity of manifestation is represented by the two horses which
draw the chariot, the design of the king’s crown, the two wheels of the chariot, and the two sets of
pillars which support the chariot’s canopy.  A chariot can be regarded as a mobile throne, another
reference toBinah, whose Angelic Choir is the Aralim, “Thrones.”  The mobility of this throne or chariot
represents Geburah, the lower terminus of this Path:  since the war-hose is attributable to Geburah it
might be better to leave the animals that draw the chariot as horses, rather than to make them
sphinxes, as in the usual modern formula. Part of the basis of the mobility of the chariot comes
from Chokmah, as well, whose Choir of Angels is the Auphanim, “Wheels.”16

 *Astrologically speaking, Luna brings all things into manifestation as well as ending them.  She rules
Change in all forms, and is a lower octave of Pluto because of Her ability to transmute everything from
non-being to being to other forms of being and back again to non-being.  In progressions of astrological
charts, She moves through the sky at the rate of about 2½° per month – which is very close to the
magnitude of the average motion of transiting Saturn.  Saturn is Lord of Manifestation, ruler of the
physical world; Luna is also one of His lower octaves, because of Her power to manifest, change, and
destroy all things, so like Saturn’s, reflected in the equivalence between the speed of Her progressed
motion and His transiting motion. What Saturn rules on the physical plane, Luna rules on the Inner
Planes.  Saturn is the traditional Planet of Binah, the Mother, the ruler of Water;  Saturn is exalted in
Scorpio, the Cherubic Sign of Water, and in horary and natal charts, like His dominion of Capricorn and
the Tenth House He rules the Mother.  Luna is also associated with Water and the Mother, and Yesod,
the Sphere of Luna, reflects Binah on a lower plane.

Trump VII, The Chariot, represents the Great Work, that process by which a man comes to know the
Crown, and attains to the Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel, perfect self-
integration and consciousness.17

            Cancer and the Fourth House of the Horoscope rule the roots of personal being, i.e., the ancestry
of the individual as well as inheritance from ancestors, especially those at not more than five removes
from the person in question.  They rule the land of one’s birth, the homeland, one’s native country,
one’s home and dwelling-place.  Like the Eighth and Twelfth Houses of the Horoscope, the Fourth
House, ruled by Cancer, is a House of Endings – and thus of Beginnings.  See also Keys 24 and 29, below,
concerning Scorpio/the Eighth House and Pisces/the Twelfth House.
 Yetziratic Text:  The Eighteenth Path is called the Intelligence of the House of Influence (by the
greatness of whose abundance the influx of good things upon created beings is increased), and from its
midst the streams and hidden senses are drawn forth, which dwell in its shade and which cling to it from
the Cause of all causes.

 Yetziratic title:  Intelligence of the House of Influence

Hebrew letter:   j  (Cheth, “Fence”)

Numerical value:  8.

Title:  The Child of the Powers of the Waters, the Lord of the Triumph of Light

Principle:  Sensitivity;  conservation; ancestry

Astrological assignment:  õ  Cancer, the fourth Solar month of the year, the first third of astrological
Summer; the Summer Solstice;  the Aselli (Stars representing the donkeys ridden by Bacchus and
Hephaestos in the war between the Olympians and the Titans, part of the Constellation Cancer),
Praesepe (another Star in the Constellation Cancer, representing the manger of the donkeys ridden by
Bacchus and Hephaestos, popularly called the Beehive, Manger, or Crib)

Element (Alchemical):  Cardinal Water Ñ

Element (chemical): NA

Ecological process, realm, or principle:  the tides of the ocean and great lakes;  increase of biomass
through growth attained by ingestion of nutrients;  the flowing waters of the world, e.g., rivers and
streams

Physical chemistry:   H2O (oxygen dihydride, the ashes of hydrogen), capable of dissolving almost
anything (it is thus virtually the Universal Solvent which all Alchemists have striven to find down the
ages);  the liquid phase of any material

Colors:  Amber (King Scale), maroon (Queen Scale), rich bright russet (Emperor Scale), and dark
greenish-brown (Empress Scale)

Gods: 

General:  NA

Greek: Apollo the Charioteer, Artemis, Praesepe, the Aselli

Roman:  Mercury, Apollo the Charioteer, Diana

Egyptian:  Kephra, Hormakhu

Scandinavian:  NA
USA:  NA

France of the Enlightenment:  NA

Celtic:  NA

Christian:  NA

Hindu:  Shiva, Kali, other Luna deities

Voudon:  NA

Other: NA

Biblical associations:  the tribe of Zebulon (OT);  the disciple Andrew (NT), who was also a follower of
John the Baptist

Countries:  Scotland,* Holland, Paraguay, Burgundy, New Zealand, and most ofAfrica.  In the natal

horoscope of the United States of America, the Sun is in Cancer (July 4); since Gemini, ruled by Mercury,
is on the Ascendant of that chart, our country is thus doubly ruled by Mercury Who, in China, is
associated with quicksilver (mercury metal) and thus with Water, the Element of Cancer.**

 *The four nations of Great Britain are represented by the first four Signs of the Zodiac: England by
Aries;  Ireland by Taurus;  Wales by Gemini;  and Scotland by Cancer. What esoteric significance this has
isn’t certain.

 **In addition, in that chart Mercury is in Cancer, ruled by Luna;  Luna is in Aquarius, ruled by Uranus
and Saturn;  and Uranus is in Gemini, ruled by Mercury, as well as being conjunct the Ascendant, while
Saturn is in Libra, ruled by Venus Who, in that chart, like Mercury, is in Cancer.  Mercury’s influence is
thus reflected throughout the chart via two systems of tripartite mutual
reception:  (Mercury/Luna/Uranus) and (Luna/Saturn/Venus), with Venus in Cancer. 

 Cities:  New York,* Constantinople (Istanbul),  

 *This assignment, by Alan Oken, is debatable.  Some astrologers assign either Gemini and Mercury to
this archetypally American city, others to Aquarius and Uranus.  Which assignments are more
appropriate depend upon whether Mercury, Luna, or Uranus are stronger in the U.S. chart (Mars, Who
rises in that chart, is associated with Geburah, the lower terminus of Cheth, and thus may be considered
in this context to be related to Cancer) and its history.  At any rate, since it is New York City that now
most strongly symbolizes America to the rest of the world, certainly one of these assignments – Gemini,
Cancer, or Aquarius – is appropriate for that city.  It may be that NYC is jointly ruled by all three, to one
degree or another, an idea which is supported by the polyglot, multi-ethnic makeup of that great city,
which has been the port of entry for countless millions who have immigrated to our country to make
their home there.

 Peoples:  Black Africans*
*Black or African Americans, on the other hand, are ruled by the Signs and Planets associated with
the USA.  Certainly Cancer and the Moon are associated with them, because of the Cancerian birthday of
our country, but so also are Gemini and Mercury. And because so many Black Americans have American
Indian ancestors, they are also strongly ruled by Uranus and Aquarius, the astrological Lords of the
North American continent and its native peoples.  In other words, to paraphrase a famous old saying
about Jews vs. the rest of humanity, Black Americans are just like all other Americans – only more so. J

 Meditation:  Worm-Eaten Corpse

Magickal Power:  Power of Casting Enchantments.

Perfume:  Onycha (derived from a mollusk, primordially Cancerian animals, it represents Water in the
incense of Moses)

Magickal Weapons:  The Furnace (which is connected with the energy of the Sun in Cancer;  also, it is
the Furnace or Forge which is used by the smith to melt metallic ores, turning them into molten metal,
which flows like water)

Musical tone:  D natural.

  

 Metals, stones, and minerals: Selenite, moonstone, chalk, crystal, pearl, emerald, onyx, coral, amber,
mercury metal (quicksilver);  all soft, white stones;  all molten metal

Plants, real and imaginary: Cucumbers, squashes, melons;  all plants which grow in water, such as water-
lilies, lotus, rushes, and phytoplankton (which is also, as it happens, the basis of the food-pyramid in the
waters of the world, from the merest pond to the Pacific Ocean, which from the beginning have been
the womb of all terrestrial life; Cancer rules the stomach and everything that nurses or nurtures life, so
the assignment of phytoplankton to Cancer is doubly appropriate)

Animals, Real and Imaginary:  The Crab;  the Turtle or Tortoise (the ancient Babylonians assigned this
animal to the Constellation of Cancer);  the Sphinx (for its silence, the silence of midnight);  the Scarab or
Dung-Beetle (which was associated with midnightand the Fourth House of the horoscope by the ancient
Egyptians)

Vegetable drugs (plant extracts): Watercress

Mineral drugs:   Mercury metal (used as a specific against venereal disease right up past the invention of
penicillin;  the expression “Mad as a Hatter” comes from the weird behavior resulting from nervous-
system damage done by overdoses of mercury, which was also used in the making of hats up until this
century)

The Body:  Alimentary canal, breast, esophagus, lower ribs, stomach, uterus

Diseases:   Cancer, in all its forms, including leukemia;  rheumatism (according toCrowley, in Column
CLSSSVI of Liber 777);  diseases and dysfunctions of all parts of the body ruled by Cancer, including
spontaneous abortion (which is also ruled by Pisces)

Magickal image:  A young, holy king under the Starry canopy

Lineal figures:  Populus and Via:

·  ·

·  ·

·  ·

·  ·

Populus

Via

 Domain:  The first third of Summer;  the waters of the world;  real estate, land; ancestors, ancestry,
one’s ancestral lands

 Archangel:  l a y r w a (Auriel)

 Quarter:  The North (this Quarter of the Heavens is traditionally considered to be that from which
demons come, and during evocations of evil or malefic spirits, the Triangle of Art, into which they are to
be evoked, is placed just outside the Circle at the North – the Eastern Quarter is used for evocation of
good or neutral spirits)

 Buddhist symbolism:  .

Qlippoth:  } w r y r j y c  (ShIChiRIRON, “Blackness” or “Darkness,” associated with the midnight-black of

the sky of the Sun in the Fourth House of the horoscope, which is ruled by Cancer, often called “the
Witching Hour”);  Characith, whose sigil should be painted in dark greenish brown on an amber-hued
circle, showing a downward-facing mummy overshadowed by a camel-headed entity, and whose name
should be vibrated in the key of D sharp, accompanied by the plashings associated with Magickal
fountains or waterfalls

Far Eastern cosmological associations:

 The Sheep (the month corresponding to the Western Solar month of Cancer);  Summer Solstice,
moderate heat;  Fire, the South;  Summer; brilliance, heat, bitter, red, controls heart and small
intestines;  the Vermilion Bird (Phoenix);  Mars;  Yang, burning wood; Yin, lamp-flame;  iron;   realgar

Trigram from the I Ching:   K’an

---    ---

---------

---    ---

 b.       Design and Title of Trump

 During the time of ancient Imperial Rome, it was customary in Germany, Gaul, andBritain to exhibit the
spoils of conquest and prisoners of war in triumphal parades.  The ideas was that the more magnificent
the spectacle, the more political bonus-points would accrue to the general responsible for the triumph,
who would probably use them later in an attempt to become emperor.  Even that long ago, the tradition
was enormously ancient. According to Curtius, Plutarch, and Diodorus, after his conquest of India,
Alexander the Great made a triumphal progress through Carmania (now Iran) in gigantic chariot filled
with his close friends and loaded with musical instruments, food, and wine. Reportedly Alexander did
this in imitation of the Dionysiac revels or triumphal marches of Dionysos through Asia (Thriambus,
“Triumph,” was one of Dionysos’ titles).  From this, the connections between Triumph (Dionysos),
Triumph (Alexander), and Triumph (Roman) arises.  This tradition continues down through the Tarot
cards to such varied forms of expression as the 137 woodcut designs by Hans Burgkmair and others for a
projected triumph of the Emperor Maximilian the Great.  A more grotesque example of the triumphal
chariot is the funeral car of the Duke of Wellington, which may give this card an added dimension of
meaning.

The legendary significance of the chariot probably lies in the chance that chariot races give every bettor,
regardless of his or her circumstances, to win.  For this reason it may be connected with Trump X, The
Wheel of Fortune.

  Gringonneur:  A warrior or the statue of one drawn in a triumphal car by two spirited horses.

  Bembo: A seated empress in a chariot drawn by two winged white horses, holding an orb in her left
hand.

  Swiss: The card is divided into two parts. In the upper part, a king looks out from under a canopy.  In the
lower part, two horses pull an empty chariot in two directions at once.
  Insight: A king borne in a triumphal car. He is armored and his shoulder-plates resemble
the Urim and Thummim (talismans on the breastplate of the high priest of Israel).

  Marseille:  Like the Insight Tarot card, but here, one horse is red, the other blue.

  Wirth: Like the Insight Tarot, with the following changes:  the triumphal car is drawn by sphinxes, the
canopy is embellished with Stars, and the winged Solar disc appears on the chariot.

  Waite:  Similar to Wirth’s, except that the Lingam and Yoni appear on the front of the chariot (see the
description of this card in The Fantasy Showcase Tarot, below).  On the king’s breast is a radiant
square;  there is an eight-pointed Star on his crown.

  B.O.T.A.:  Similar to Waite’s, except that the king’s crown incorporates several Pentagrams instead of
the Octagram;  the device on his breast is a square figured with three Tau Crosses;  and his sceptre,
which he carries in his right hand in the traditional manner, ends in a variant of the lemniscate or
infinity-sign combined with the conjoined Lingam and Yoni.

  Aquarian:  Similar, but the charioteer wears shoulder-plates and has a Pentagram upon his head.

  Crowley: A fully armored knight, the visor of his helmet closed, holding a rapidly rotating disc or
gleaming metallic bowl (it isn’t clear which) in his hands before his abdomen.  His helmet is surmounted
by a crab.  His chariot is drawn by four fabulous beasts that bear a resemblance both to the four Beasts
of the Apocalypse and the four Cherubim of the Fixed Signs.

  The New Tarot:  Retitled “Victorious One,” this card shows a warrior with one sandal leading a gentle
white beast and a savage dark one away from a chariot. Above his head flies an eagle with arrows held
in its talons. His unshod feet are winged.  A pair of dice lie in the foreground;  each die shows three of its
faces to the observer, and any two corresponding faces of the two dice total seven (e.g., the spots on
the two top faces of the two die total seven, those on the two left faces total seven, etc.).  Behind the
figure is a flock of birds bearing a curtain in their beaks which contains the images of wild bests, possibly
horses or wolves).

  The Fantasy Showcase Tarot:  The card shows a young charioteer dressed only in blue briefs and a
minimalist, stylized crown standing in a chariot, lashing the two sphinxes who pull it with a whip.  The
sphinx on the left is dark brown, and male;  that on the right is white, and female.  The chariot, its
occupant, and the sphinxes that pull it are coming through an opening in a dark-blue curtain or drape
that is spangled with white spots to mimic the Starry heavens.  The background, beyond the curtain, is
scarlet above, yellow below, and the ground beneath is brown.  On the front of the chariot is a winged
shield bearing a device representing the Yoni penetrated by the Lingam.

 America’s Tarot:  The Chariot.  Scenes depicting America’s love-affair with the automobile, from

portraits of classic American cars such as the Pierce-Arrow, Cadillac and Lincoln Continental to Stephen
King’s Christine (perhaps the former on the Upright portion of the card, the latter on the Reverse
section).
 

The Divine Comedy Tarot:

Biblical Tarot:  The disciple James the Lesser (NT);  the tribe of Zebulon (OT)

John Burt’s MAD Tarot:  Alfred drives an Edsel (or maybe a Yugo) with one busted headlight & a
crumpled fender.

The Robert A. Heinlein Tarot:   The signing of the Declaration of Independence of the original thirteen
colonies from Britain;  Heinlein himself (his date of birth was July 4, 1907)

The H. P. Lovecraft Tarot: 

The Stephen King Tarot: 

The R. R. McCammon Tarot:   

  c.       Divinatory Meanings

Upright:   A fence. A field and the fence enclosing it. A corral.  Anything that encloses it.  Psychic
abilities.  Receptivity. Tenacious memory.  Triumph, victory.  Hope. Nutrition, nurturance.  Violence used
to try to maintain traditional ideas in force. Political conservatism, political conservatives.  Conservative
attitudes, whether political or any other kind. Tradition, traditionalists. Ancestry.  Diehard
ruthlessness.  Obedience. Faithfulness.  Delegated authority.  Understanding (Binah, Saturn or Uranus)
inspiring severity or strength (Geburah, Mars).   Saturn or Uranus acting through Cancer upon
Mars.  Health.  Unstable or transient triumph, victory, health, or success.  The material currents which
carry individuals along. Unexpected new.  Conquest.  News spread abroad by word of mouth.  A timely
good word.  Libel or slander.  Struggle, the outcome of which, ranging from victory to disaster, is
determined by surrounding cards. Balance. Accomplishment.  Stamina.  Trouble or adversity, possibly in
the past.  The Magus, having completely mastered his animal passions, is now ready to move on to the
next stage of development.  Overcoming obstacles.  Overthrow. The chariot of incarnation.  That which
is fixed and concrete.  Adam Kadmon, the higher self or reincarnating aspect of the self.  A conqueror
advancing in a powerful chariot.  One who has vanquished and directed the Elementary forces.
War.  Ruthless power.  Will in application.  Triumph of the mind.  Triumph over
nature.  Succor. Providence. Presumption.  Vengeance. Trouble.  A nursery.  A newborn. Birth.  The fluid
that fills the womb during gestation.  An egg, especially one covered with a hard shell. Motherhood.

Reversed:  Alimentary canal, breast, the chest (a fence of rib-bones), esophagus, lower ribs, stomach,
uterus.  Digestion, lactation, gestation, nurturance.  Cancer, in all its forms, including
leukemia;  rheumatism (according to Crowley, in Column CLSSSVI ofLiber 777);  diseases and
dysfunctions of all parts of the body ruled by Cancer, including spontaneous abortion (which is also ruled
by Pisces).  The Solar month of Cancer, the first third of Summer, spanning the time from the Summer
Solstice, around June 20, to about July 22. Lust of destruction.  Bad news.  A card which isn’t strong by
itself, but which asserts authority over other cards.  Imbalance. Instability.  Failure. Weakness.
Overthrown.  Conquered by obstacles at the last moment.  The ecological fallout of acting on a ruthless
and ecologically stupid point of view, such as strip-mining, discharging of industrial effluent into rivers
and aquifers, etc.  Water-pollution.  Riot. Quarrel.  Dispute.  Litigation. Defeat.  A vampire.  Midnight.

d.  Interrelationships of the Path and the Trump

 Cheth is the Path connecting Binah, associated with Saturn and Uranus, withGeburah,, associated with
Mars.  Wholly part of the Pillar of Severity, it signifies controlled strength guided by high intelligence.  A
good analog of this card is a modern rocket or missile.  The firing-chamber of a rocket rifles, channels,
and directs the tremendous force unleashed by the rocket’s ignition-system and thereby causes the
rocket to move swiftly and with imperative force toward a far-away target; otherwise the force would
be dispersed in all directions, doing no useful work.  Another good analogy is a hard-shelled egg or a
mammalian uterus, which contains the developing zygote until the latter is ready to enter the world
unprotected by amniotic fluid or the shell of its egg (with corollary associations with the mammalian
vagina, down which the infant must travel during the birth-process).  All such analogies are indicated by
the literal meaning of Cheth, “fence,” meaning something which contains and restrains. And since such a
container or fence is often used to protect something, the ideas of protection, nurturance, housing,
nursing, and so on are also associated with this Path and The Chariot.

 9.       Key 19

 Teth f “Serpent.”  Trump VIII, Strength (in Crowley’s pack, The Book of Thoth, this Trump is numbered XI

and is called Lust, but otherwise has the same attributions).  Leoö.  Cardinal value, 9;  ordinal value,
9.  Connects Sephirah 5, Geburah, with Sephirah4, Chesed.  Roman/English equivalent:  T.

 In the same way that Key 27, Peh, Trump XVI, The Tower,   is the main cross-bar of the personality, Key
19 is that of the Individuality.  Just as the spiritual meaning of Key 27 is shown by the strong, fiery planet
Mars, so that of Key 19 is expressed by the equally strong and fiery sign of Leo. The “packing force” of
Key 27, analogous to the strong force of particle physics, is that which holds together the various aspects
of the personality, the unit of incarnation;  in the same way, the “packing force” of Key 19 holds
together the individuality, the unit of evolution.  So the Tarot Trump of this Path is Trump
VIII, Strength:  a woman holding the jaws of a lion open, apparently without any appreciable effort on
her part.18*
 *In Crowley’s Book of Thoth pack, this card is numbered XI, and titled “Lust.”  See Key 22, below,
concerning Trump XI, Justice, which in Crowley’s pack is numbered VIII, and titled “Adjustment.”

 Those horizontal Paths on the Tree which join together a male and a female Sephirahare termed
“reciprocal Paths.”  The first of these is Key 14, Daleth, Trump III, The Empress, linking Binah, the
Mother, with Chokmah, the Father, Woman with Man, Female with Male;  Key 19 is the second,
linking Geburah,  Might, with Chesed, Mercy, Divine Justice with Divine Love;  and Key 27 is the third,
linking Hod, Brilliance, with Netzach, the Triumph of Love, Intellect with Emotion, Analysis with
Synthesis, Facts with Meaning.

Bast, Pasht, Sekhet, and Mau, are all associated with this Path because They are cat Goddesses.  Ra-
Hoor-Khuit and Apollo are also associated with it, because They are Gods of the Sun, ruler of
Leo.  Demeter and Venus, Who are  agricultural Goddesses, are also attributed to it.  Its animal is the
Lion;  its flower is the sunflower;  its jewel is the cat’s eye;  and its perfume is olibanum.19

 a.       Qaballistic Meanings and Theory

 Yetziratic text: The Nineteenth Path is the Intelligence of the secret of all the activities of the spiritual
beings, and is so called because of the influence diffused by it from the most high and exalted sublime
glory.

 Yetziratic title:  Intelligence of all the Activities of the Spiritual Being

 Hebrew letter:  m  Teth,

 Numerical value:  9.

 Title:  The Daughter of the Flaming Sword, Leader of the Lion

 Principle:  Cosmic splendor;  love in all its forms;  pleasure; warmth;  radiance

 Astrological assignment:  Leo

 Element (Alchemical):  Fixed Fire D

 Element (chemical):  NA

 Ecological process, realm, or principle:  photosynthesis;  thermonuclear fusion, the force that powers

the Stars

 Physical chemistry:   the biochemistry of photosynthesis;  the atomic and subatomic interactions

underlying thermonuclear processes;  combustion, whether internal (as in an automobile motor) or
open (as in a bonfire)

 Colors:  Yellow, greenish (King Scale);  deep purple (Queen Scale);  gray (Emperor Scale);  reddish amber
(Empress Scale)
 Gods: 

Greek:  Demeter (borne by lions);  Apollo

Roman:  Venus (repressing the fire of Vulcan)

Egyptian:  Ra, Horus, Bast (Pasht), Sekhet

Scandinavian:  Baldur the Beautiful

USA:  Pecos Bill (taming the catamount)

France of the Enlightenment:  NA

Celtic:  NA

Christian:  Jesus Christ (the Lion of Judah)

Hindu:  Vishnu (Nara-Singh) avatar

Voudon:  NA

SubGenius:  “Bob”

Other:  NA

 Biblical associations:  Judah, son of Jacob, and Samson (OT);  John the Beloved and Christ the King (NT)

 Countries:

 Modern:  Italy, Sicily, France, Bohemia, Northern Wallachia (Romania), and the Alps

 Ancient:  Chaldea, Phoenicia, Macedonia, Phrygia, Rome

 Cities:  Chicago, Philadelphia, Rome, Bath, Bombay, Portsmouth, Bristol,Damascus, Prague, LosAngeles,
and, to some extent, Hollywood, California(which is co-ruled by Pisces)

 Peoples:  Rastafarians

 Meditation:  Corpse gnawed by wild beasts

 Magickal Power:  Powers of Taming Wild Beasts

 Perfume:  Olibanum

 Magickal Weapons:  The Discipline (Preliminary)

 Musical tone:  E natural

 
 

*See Kenneth Grant, Nightside of  Eden (London:  Skoob Books Publishing, 1994), pp. 202-206.

 Metals, stones, and minerals: Ruby, diamond, cat’s-eye, gold, hyacinth, chrysolite, carnelian, sardonyx,
peridot, alexandrite, and all soft yellow minerals

Plants, real and imaginary:  The sunflower. In general, Leo rules many plants that are also ruled by the
Sun, e.g., chamomile, celandine, European angelica, eyebright, marigold, orange, rue, and
saffron.  Other plants ruled by Leo include borage, bugloss, peony, and poppy. In addition, mugwort is
associated with Regulus, and thus with Leo

Animals, Real and Imaginary: Traditionally the Lion, the Cherub of Fire, is associated with Leo.  Other
animals associated with this Sign include wild beasts in general, especially all the big
cats;  honeybees;  and birds with gaudy, brilliant plumage, such as the peacock

Vegetable drugs (plant extracts): All carminatives and tonics

Mineral drugs:   NA

The Body:   The heart, aorta, upper back, the sides of the body, spine, spinal cord, spinal fluid, inferior
and superior vena cava

Diseases:  Syncope, cardiac diseases and problems of all kinds; inability to love

Magickal image:  A smiling woman holds open the jaws of a fierce and powerful lion

Lineal figures:  Fortuna Major and Fortuna Minor

· ·

· ·

Fortuna Major

·
·

· ·

· ·

Fortuna Minor

 Domain:  The second third of Summer;  the heart of the Sun or a thermonuclear explosion;  a blast-
furnace;  the king, emperor, ruler, or other chief of state;  the theater and allied arts;  all activities
carried out for the pleasure they give;  games;  trusted messengers;  Tantric Magick;  ambition

 Archangel:  Michael

 Quarter:  East-by-North

 Buddhist symbolism:  .

Qlippoth:

 } w r y b h l c, ShaLeHBIRON, Flaming (associated with the burning sun of August?)

 The Tunnels of Set:  Tunnel 19, the Qlippoth of Key 19, is guarded by the demon Temphioth.  His
number is 610.  His sigil is etched in a sharp greenish-yellow hue upon a gray arrow-shaped ground.  The
predominant influence is that of the lion-serpent, Teth, which is a symbol for the spermatozoon, shown
in the sigil in the shape of four vesicas depending from a serpentine form attached to a leonine
head.  His name should be vibrated in the key of E natural, with a roaring, hissing, explosive force behind
it.  While the Path is the domain of the Lion, the Tunnel is the den of the Serpent, and this symbolism
should be included in that of the Qlippoth of Key 19.

Far Eastern cosmological associations:

 The Monkey:  July 22-August 7, Great Heat;  August 7 to August 22, Autumn Begins. Yang, Metal.  West,
Autumn, destruction and decline;  the solid but molded;  acrid, white; controls lungs and large intestine;
the White Tiger;  the Planet Venus.  Yang:  a weapon. Yin:  a kettle.  Copper. Sublimate of
mercury.  Produced by Earth; produces Water;  destroys Wood;  destroyed by Fire.

 Trigram from the I Ching: NA

 b.       Design and Title of Trump

 Early cards show a woman opening or closing the jaws of a lion, or, in some cases, a male figure
(possibly Hercules) beating a lion with a club.  During the Middle Ages, the Lion was an Alchemical
symbol of the Sun, gold, and (Alchemical) sulphur.
In a 16th-century text presented in the form of a dream, the dreamer is required to subdue a lion in
order to be admitted to a group of scholars. At first, he approaches the lion, which is very old, and
attempt to pet it.  Then he wrestles with it, and finally kills it. The scholars applaud his effort, but give
him the additional task of restoring the lion to life.  By that point, the lion has been rendered down into
red blood and a large quantity of white bone (Alchemical Sulphur and Salte, the oily and ashy aspects of
matter).  The tasks set for the dreamer are thus the Alchemical decomposition and recomposition of
matter.

Other Medieval associations with Leo are the Lion of St. Mark, one of the Apocalyptic Beasts, and the
Cherub of Fire.  Others include Samson and Androcles.*

 *An early Christian martyr who had once pulled a thorn from a lion’s paw, where it had been festering
for a long time, thereby delivering the lion from great pain and illness. Eventually Androcles was thrown
to the lions, by order of Caesar;  but the lion that came out to meet him happened to be the one whom
he had earlier succored, and spared his life out of gratitude.  The awed multitude in the circus who were
watching voted to release Androcles, who was thus saved from death.

 Gringonneur:  A seated woman breaking a pillar.

Bembo: Hercules, armed with a club, beating a lion which seems to be trying to slink away, its tail
between its legs.

Swiss: Hercules with a lion.  Hercules appears to be wrestling with it, and has discarded his club.  Might
be a reference to Androcles and the Lion.

Insight: A woman wearing a hat with a lemniscate on its brim, who opens the jaws of a lion.

Waite: As above, except that the woman is closing the lion’s jaws.  She is crowned with flowers, and the
lemniscate hovers over her head.  She wears a garland of flowers around her waist.

B.O.T.A.:  Like Waite’s, except that the woman is now opening the lion’s jaws.  The flowers around her
waist are connected to a garland around the neck of the lion, implying some sort of relationship
between them other than simple domination.

Aquarian:  A stern knight with his dog.  A motif of arrowheads or spear-points.

 

Crowley: Retitled “Lust,” and numbered XI, the card shows a woman riding a seven-headed beast,
representing Crowley’s “Scarlet Woman” and “Babalon,” i.e., Babylon the Great of Revelations 17:3-6.

The New Tarot:  Retitled “Deliverer,” it shows a woman being sacrificed by fire before a lion over whose
head hovers a fiery lemniscate.  At the left, a serpent rises from a cubical box;  at the right, a man is
drinking what might be blood from a chalice.

America’s Tarot:  Follows Crowley’s assignment, so this card’s number is XI, and it is titled “Lust.”  Shows
a puma strolling through the hills above the Los Angeles basin (L.A. is a Leo city).  Article VIII of the Bill of
Rights.  Ghost-over of Simon Rhodia’sWatts Towers.  Reverse:  Hollywood, CA, at its most tinseltownish

The Divine Comedy Tarot:

Biblical Tarot:  Samson and the Lion;  Christ as King.

John Burt’s MAD Tarot:  Moxie holds a butcher-knife and a balance-scale that holds a fish and an older
sneaker;  she wears a clothespin on her nose.

The Robert A. Heinlein Tarot:  Lummox, the star of The Star Beast

The H. P. Lovecraft Tarot:  Hastur

The Stephen King Tarot:   The young and old kings of Eyes of the Dragon

The R. R. McCammon Tarot: “The Red House” from his short-story collection Blue World (Pocket Books,
1990)

 c.       Divinatory Meanings
 Upright:  Serpent power or cosmic electricity.  Regeneration. Reincarnation. Immortality.  The fiery vital
force which is the source of all human action.  Intelligence of all the activities of the Spirit.  The joy of
strength exercised.  Vigor and the rapture of vigor.  Courage, strength, energy, action.  A grand
passion.  Resort to Magick, the employment of Magickal power.  The courage to take risks.  Defeat of
unworthy impulses.  Reconciliation with external or internal enemies.  Spiritual strength, strength of
Will.  Fortitude, endurance.  The glory of strength.  Jupiter acting through Leo upon Mars.  Power not
arrested as in the act of judgment, but instead passing on to further action. Momentum.  Raw force or
power.  The mind can always dominate matter. Events overcome by willpower.  The situation mastered
with right on your side.  A card providing good counsel:  a time to be firm, courageous,
steadfast.  Hanging tight. Consolidation of energy, coming to a reasonable assessment of oneself in
relation to the world.  Grasp on reality, a workable alternative, truthful direction, discovery of one’s
center, inspiration (i.e., as by a God), help from friends or loved ones. Traditional meanings of this card
combined with those of a pope or emperor.  A test of what has happened so far in personal
evolution.  Acceptance of both fact and responsibility.  The enchantress.  The reconcilement of two or
more sides of one’s nature.  Power, might, force, strength, fortitude. Dichotomy  resolved.  Generation
(Yang or Solar force) kept in exact balance with disintegration (Yin or Lunar force).  Vitality. The spirit of
inner strength.  The exercise of Will.  Union and friendship with that which we have mastered, with
people who are able to respond to our thoughts, or to whose thoughts we are able to
respond.  Renewed youth.  Legendary feats.  Wisdom as power, weakness as strength, innocence as
generative virtue. Innocence and strength residing in contemplation.  Fortitude connected with the
divine mystery of union.  Power, energy, action, courage, magnanimity, complete success and honors.

Reversed:  August; July 23-August 22, the “Dog Days.” The heart, aorta, upper back, the sides of the
body, spine, spinal cord, spinal fluid, inferior and superior vena cava. Syncope, cardiac diseases and
problems of all kinds;  inability to love.  The sense of taste.  Digestion. Cowardice.  Indulgence in vices
without any attempt to refrain, libertinage, license.  Hatred. Domination of the material.  Fear of the
unknown.  Abuse of power.  Obstinacy, inertia.  Events or people overcome you;  you become the victim
of superior forces.  Stubbornness.  Decadence, addiction, disaster, a friend or lover who will cause harm
or unhappiness, loss of reputation, perversity, putrefaction, deprivation. Pomposity.  An overbearing
manner.  Want of fortitude.  Despotism, abuse of power, weakness, discord, disgrace, fall from power.

 d.  Interrelationships of the Path and the Trump

 The 19th Path links Geburah, Power, with Chesed, Grace, and represents the influence
of Chesed upon Geburah, Power tempered with Mercy and Wisdom.  This Path is balanced both
vertically and horizontally on the Tree of Life, being level (horizontal) and situated between two other
such horizontal Paths.  One is reminded of the legendary Wisdom of King Solomon, which enabled him
to wield power which nonetheless was graced with mercy, and to employ mercy with objectivity and
reason, in order to bring about justice rather than compound injustice, as in the story of the two women
disputing over which was the mother of a certain child.

One of my favorite images for this Path is that of the surfer, who “walks on the water,” harnessing his or
her own momentum in order to master the wave and the surf and exulting in the ecstasy of that
mastery. This can also be seen as a metaphor for Tantric Magick, in which the ecstasy of sexual
stimulation, rather than being allowed to run its course to an explosive climax and the wanton
dissipation of its energy in thetrieste of the aftermath, is constrained and harnessed, built up to heights
so great that it literally touches the Stars, and thereby used to fuel the Magickal Machine, the force
behind the most powerful Magick.  Another analogy of this Path is the Rocket:  the containment of its
firing chambers represents the iron Will of the true Magickian, the raw force contained in those
chambers representing Kundalini energy, and the direction of flight and the final effect of the rocket’s
actions representing the Magickian’s Desire, in accordance with which he or she aims to bring about
change in conformity with his or her Will.

10.  Key 20

Yod y  “Hand.”  Trump IX, The Hermit.  Virgo  ÷. Cardinal value, 10;  ordinal value,

10.  Connects Sephirah 4,   Chesed with Sephirah 6, Tiphareth. Roman/English equivalents:  I, J, Y.

 a.       Qaballistic Meanings and Theory

 Yod, the 20th Path, is the link within the Individuality that gives the vision of what the pattern of destiny
is, which pattern ultimately comes from the spiritual levels of being. This pattern is the Individuality’s
own idea of itself, and upon it the Individuality strives to mould its succession of Personalities, which in
turn gives the experience of dense manifestation upon which the Individuality itself is built. Thus at one
and the same time, this image is a kind of alpha and omega, a beginning and an ending.  The alpha
image is the image of the Spirit itself, inexperienced and unevolved.  The Individuality tries to project a
Personality for itself based upon this image. At first, the effort is unsuccessful, due to its inexperience,
but gradually, in life after life, it is more and more accurate, sometimes manifesting different types of
Personality altogether to redress the unbalance of development.  Eventually it can project a Personality
just the way it wants to, which means that it has become competent at controlling dense matter for
such purposes.  But all the hundreds of Personalities built up through its evolution go to enrich the
make-up of the Individuality, and by this time the Individuality isn’t limited to the simplistic image of
itself that the Spirit laid down at the beginning of its evolution.  The image itself has evolved into a form
of what the Individuality should be at the end of its evolution – which might be called the omega
image.  Thus there is the image of the beginning and that of the ending, and the way in between is the
path of individual destiny.  In terms of Biblical symbolism, the image of the beginning is the Garden of
Eden, while that of the ending is the Heavenly Jerusalem, and the way in between is the history of man.

This Path is called the Intelligence of Will, that is, the Spiritual Will. As the Yetziratic Text goes on to say,
by this Intelligence, or action of the Spiritual Will, “the existence of the Primordial Wisdom becomes
known.”  The Primordial Wisdom is the knowledge of the spiritual realities of the Supernal levels, and
the continuous contemplation of the true image is also “the means of preparation of all and each
created being,” for it acts as a guide to individual evolution and the types of vehicle that need to be
developed to follow through with that evolution.  For this reason the Tarot card associated with this
Path shows a Hermit, a holy man, who carries a light to guide him along the path. 20
 Yetziratic text:  The Twentieth Path is the Intelligence of Will and is so called because it is the means of
separation of all and each created being, and by this intelligence the existence of the Primordial Wisdom
becomes known.

 Yetziratic title:  Intelligence of Will

 Hebrew letter:   y (Yod)

 Numerical value:  10.

 Title:  The Prophet of the Eternal, the Magus of the Voice of Power

 Principle:  Purification, in the sense of developing an utter one-pointedness of Will and of total

elimination of anything not essential to the subject under consideration.  Purification of the Will, of
food, of aim are all expressions of the principle.

 Astrological assignment:   ÷  Virgo

 Element (Alchemical):  Mutable Earth

 Element (chemical):   rare-earth elements (lanthanides, elements 57-71)

 Ecological process, realm, or principle:  weathering, the reduction of materials to finer and finer grinds,
as in the creation of sand, powder, etc., hence the beaches and tidal habitats of the world, river-deltas,
etc.  The sorting and grading of materials at harvest-time.

 Physical chemistry:   Pauli Exclusion Principle (which affirms that two particles of like kind cannot
occupy the same space at the same time)

 Colors:   According to Liber 777, these are green, yellowish (King Scale); slate gray (Queen Scale);  green-
gray (Emperor Scale);  and plum color (Empress Scale).  According to Geraldine Davis, in Horary
Astrology (Los Angeles:  Tate Printing Co., 1942), they are black, speckled (ibid., p. 38). According to
Nicholas de Vore, in Encyclopedia of Astrology (New York:  Philosophical Library, 1947), it is black with
blue splotches. Opalescent colors, thin and dense striping, paisleys, and similar intricate patterns of
many colors also represent Virgo.

 Gods: 

 Greek:  Hermes, Attis, Ceres, all harvest-Gods and –Goddesses, Hestia, Astraea, Erigone (daughter of
Icarus), the Mermaid, Orpheus and Eurydice, Persephone and the Eleusinian Mysteries

Roman:  Attis, Ceres, Adonis, Vesta and Her virgin priestesses

Egyptian:  Isis;  Heru-pa-Kraath (Harpocrates), the Sphinx

Zidonia:  Ashtoreth

Syria:  Astarte
Scandinavian:  NA

USA: NA

France of the Enlightenment:  NA

Celtic:  NA

Christian:  the Virgin Mary

Hindu:  the Gopi girls, the Lord of Yoga

Voudon:  NA

Other:  NA

 Biblical associations:  OT:  Esther; Asher, son of Jacob;  Esther;  the story of Ruth and Boaz.  NT: Philip,
disciple of Jesus;  Mary, mother of Jesus

 Countries:  Ancient:  Assyria, Arcadia, Babylonia, Ionia, Mesopotamia,Rhodes, and the Doric Plains.

Modern:  Crete, part of Greece, Croatia,Brazil, Turkey, Switzerland (co-ruled by Taurus), the West Indies,
and the country between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

 Cities:  Boston, Paris, Heidelberg, Baghdad, Jerusalem, Lyons, Corinth,Athens, Toulouse,
and Strasbourg.  Most towns that are connected in some way with the growing of fruit and its various
industries are ruled by Virgo, as are health spas and resorts and cities associated with them.

 Peoples:  All farming and agricultural peoples, the farmers and peasants of the world.  The tribe of Cain,
an agriculturist, are thus ruled by Virgo, just as Abel and his people, who were hunters who stalked wild
animals for their meat, hides, and fur, were ruled by Pisces.

 Meditation:  A bloated corpse.

 Magickal Power:  Invisibility, Parthenogenesis, Initiation

 Perfume: Narcissus

 Magickal Weapons:  The Lamp and the Wand (Virile Force Reserved), the Bread

 Musical tone:  F

 *See Kenneth Grant, Nightside of  Eden (London:  Skoob Books Publishing, 1994), pp.  

 Metals, stones, and minerals: jasper, agate, marble, sand and powders of all kinds (especially of the
finest grinds), topaz, aquamarine, hyacinth, flint, peridot, sapphire
Plants, real and imaginary: Snowdrop, lily, narcissus, all cereals (corn, rye, rice, millet, barley, oats,
wheat) and grasses, sedges, endive, valerian, skullcap, woodbine.  All medicinal plants are ruled or co-
ruled by Virgo, as are herbs which animals seek out when they are ill.

Animals, Real and Imaginary:  Any solitary or virginal person or animal, hence hermits, unicorns, virgins

Vegetable drugs (plant extracts): Anaphrodisiacs (e.g., the legendary salt-peter, with which the food in
boys’ schools and military academies is supposedly laced to keep the young gentlemen chaste by
inclination)

Mineral drugs:   salt-peter (see above)

The Body:  The small intestines, the back, the abdominal cavity, metabolism, digestive system and
function, gall bladder, pancreas,* Solar plexus, capillaries (Virgo co-rules these because of their finely-
divided character) 

 *However, since this is an endocrine gland, a member of the endocrine, system, which is ruled by Venus
and Neptune, it is possible that Pisces is the actual ruler of this gland. 

Diseases:   Appendicitis, inability to absorb nutrients in the upper bowel, backaches, metabolic

disorders, disorders of the digestive system, gall-bladder ailments, obstructions or diseases of the
capillaries

Magickal image:  wrapped in a cloak and cowl, an ancient walks along bearing a staff and a lamp

Lineal figures:  Conjunctio

· ·

· ·

 Domain:  the third Third of Summer, the time of Harvest

 Archangel:  NA

 Quarter:   South by West, WNW

 Buddhist symbolism:  .

 Qlippoth:   } w r y r p x (TzaPhiRIRON, Scratchers); Yamatu, whose name should be intoned in the key of
F in a lower register and with sighing or murmuring undertones, and whose sigil is painted in yellowish
green on a silver of gray slate – his number is 131.

Far Eastern cosmological associations:

 Trigram from the I Ching: NA

 b.       Design and Title of Trump

 Gringonneur:  A hermit carrying an hourglass.

Bembo: A hunchback carrying an hourglass

Swiss: A monk carrying a lantern

Wirth: The same, except that the monk shields the light with his cloak.  Also, nearby there is a snake
coiled to strike, though not at the hermit

Waite: As traditional, except that the light is from a hexagrammatical Star within the lantern

Aquarian:  As Waite, except that the Star has eight points

Crowley: As Waite, except that the Star has sixteen points.  Also, in his right hand the hermit carries an
egg around which a snake is coiled.  He is accompanied by a three-headed dog (Kerberus, guardian of
the Underworld).  He walks through a field a ripe grain.  Something that may be a spermatozoon springs
up at the Hermit’s feet from the lower left side of the card.

The New Tarot:  A blindfolded, naked man prays to a volcano or possibly to a fleeing woman, who
abandons him, an open book, and a bouquet of flowers as she hurries toward a distant city.

The Fantasy Showcase Tarot:  A hermit stands at the end of a cliff, looking out over the land.  It is
night.  In his right hand he carries a lantern containing a blazing hexagrammatical Star;  in his left is the
Serpent Rod of Moses.  He wears a gorgeous gown of silver-gray patterned with astrological and other
esoteric symbols, and a cape of Tyrian purple.  Standing on the foothills below is a figure who may be a
woman, looking up at him, apparently preparing either to climb up to meet him or to wait for him to
descend.

America’s Tarot:  Paul Morphy, America’s great genius of chess;  Henry Hollerith; Claude

Shannon.    Reverse shows Carrie Nation and the XXIIIrd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
(Prohibition).  Article IX of the Bill of Rights.

The Divine Comedy Tarot:   Images of Purgatory and its purification

Biblical Tarot:  Mary with her infant son; Esther;  Asher, son of Jacob;  Esther;  the story of Ruth and
Boaz; Philip, disciple of Jesus

John Burt’s MAD Tarot:  Harvey Kurtzman, holding a flashlight and carrying a walking-stick, walks away
from the MAD  offices (with a pink-slip in his pocket).

The Robert A. Heinlein Tarot:  Friday, the heroine of the novel of the same name

The H. P. Lovecraft Tarot:  His various scholars who go mad studying volumes of arcane lore etc.

The Stephen King Tarot:  Rose, heroine of Rose Madder;  Thinner, one of his “Bachman Books”;  King
himself (he was born 9/21/47 at 4:18 a.m., Portland, Maine)

The R. R. McCammon Tarot:  scenes and characters from his short stories “Blue World” (prostitutes as
priestesses of Eros, the purification of a life), “Yellachile’s Cage” (since Pisces rules prisons, Virgo rules
opposition to and triumph over them), and “Night Calls the Green Falcon” (one-pointed Will) from his
collection of short stories Blue World  (New York:  Pocket Books, 1990);  Sheila Fontana (prostitute,
recovery of one’s True Will) and Sister (exercise of True Will) from Swan Song

  c.       Divinatory Meanings

 Upright: The hand of man;  the open hand.  Touch.  Coition. Self-training in the correct interpretation of
experience, in concentration, in work with the Unconscious mind leading to eventual union with God or
the True Self.  The Veiled Lamp.  Prudence. Silence is golden.  Illumination from within, secret impulse
from within, practical plans based upon inner knowledge, retirement from participation in current
events.  The start of the journey towards spiritual perfection.  A councilor, retreat from the world, a
need for caution, patience, discretion, and silence.  A veterinarian.  A healer. A dentist.  A hermit or
anchorite.  A teacher, a wise man or woman.  The mercy of beauty, the magnificence of sovereignty, the
glory of strength (Jupiter acting through Virgo on the Sun).  The Magus of the Voice of Light.  Wisdom
sought and obtained from above. Divine inspiration (but active, as opposed to that in Trump VI, The
Lovers).  It is one of the three Magi among the mystical cards, the other two being Trump V, the
Hierophant, and Trump I, The Magician.  The inner life.  A secret which shall be revealed.  Saturn, bringer
of the wisdom of old age, Who also confers longevity. Planning.  The summit, perspective,
circumspection, preparation, precautionary measures, care, isolation, separation, solitude, correct
choice.  A man beyond desire for personal gain who has the vision to benefit the world. Awareness,
scrutiny, a corner on the market.  A wise man in action in the world.  The search, the hunt, the
quest.  Inner wisdom or truth and the quest for them.  The Quest of the Holy Grail, linking Spirit with
Individuality.  The focusing point of the whole being of man in manifestation.  The hidden, cosmic mind
of man which serves to guide and inspire the soul in all its ways. The realization of the existence of a
balance between material and spiritual realms;  the necessity to continue working to maintain that
balance and to progress.  Prudence, caution, deliberation.  The House of the Master:  “Where I am,
there you may be.” Very important to initiatory experience.  Safety and protection ensured by wisdom
or circumspection.  Enlightenment in all three worlds.  Protectors, initiation, prudence. Ideas,
perspectives, spiritual or moral influences.  Teachers, legal authorities, bureaucrats, guides.  A
serpent.  An adept of Tantra.  A card of attainment:  “Where I am, there you may be.”  A pilgrimage, a
pilgrim.  Concentration of all one’s faculties on one small area in order to force growth. Meditation, one
who meditates.  A shaman, one who has undergone a shamanic journey into the Underworld, either
physically or psychically.

Reversed:  Late August through mid-September;  harvest season;  the parts and functions of the body
ruled by Virgo, and any diseases or injuries of them. Refusal to listen.  Foolhardy reliance on one’s own
resources.  Stupid rejection of wisdom. Suspicion of others’ motives or of innovation.
Neophobia.  Paranoid schizophrenia.  A tendency to play the eternal Peter Pan.  Great delay in the
revelation of a secret. Manipulation, plans, or delays caused by unreasonable caution, fear,
stubbornness, oppression, or even deceit.  A rogue.  An arch-criminal.  Immaturity, rashness,
overproduce, a total lack of prudence (the courage or terror of a child inexperienced in the ways of
reality).  Over-prudence, timorousness, fear.  Illness of all kinds, especially mental and
spiritual.  Bureaucracy.  Dogma, as opposed to faith.  Twisted power.  An evil old man.  Treason,
dissimulation, roguery, corruption.  Concealment, disguise, policy, fear, unreasoned caution.  Loneliness.

d.  Interrelationships of the Path and the Trump

 Yod represents the relationship between Chesed and Tiphareth, between Mercy and Beauty or Glory,

between sagacity and strength.  This is the Path of the wisdom of the great lawgivers attained by the
young and strong through many tests and trials.
Yod means “the Hand,” the primordial tool or instrument.  As it is the Hand that carries out the Will, so
Virgo represents the Magickian at work – not only the wizard, but also the artisan, the engineer, and all
others who strive to bring about change in the real world in conformity with Will.  Essentially, this card
means Fertility in its most exalted sense, and for that reason in many packs the Hermit is pictured either
walking through or standing above a field full of ripe grain.

The ruler of Virgo is Mercury, Whose Grecian avatar is Hermes, Lord of Magickians, teachers, healers,
veterinarians, and, in general, all seekers after wisdom. Hermes is the Psychopompos, Who conducts the
souls of the newly dead down to the Underworld, and those who are about to reincarnate up to the
world of light and life. Hence this card is one of seeking after ultimate truths, and of the communication
of those truths back to the world of the living.  It is thus a card of shamans and of the experiences that
give them their powers. In line with that, it is therefore the card of the knight-errant, especially one who
goes dragon-slaying – if he lives, he inherits a kingdom, a king’s daughter, and the vast horde of gold,
silver, and precious gems which the dragon guarded during its long life.

This is the Path of Koré, the feminine avatar of Hermes, and Her journey to the Underworld, during
which She was initiated into the Mysteries of Womanhood, thereby becoming Persephone, Queen of
the Underworld, wife of Hades.  One of the symbols frequently used on this card is therefore a field of
ripe grain, the gift of Ceres, mother of Persephone.

In general, this Path is the Path of the Quest, through which the young are initiated into the inheritance
of maturity, after which they may take their place in their communities as full citizens.  It is a Path of
tremendous strength tempered by vast wisdom, a good modern symbol of which is the Saturn-V, whose
steel firing-chamber contains and directs the tremendous raw power of its engines, reflecting the
esoteric dominion over Virgo of Saturn (adamantine strength) and Uranus (blasting power).  An
appropriate ancient symbol for it is Tantric Magick, in which the enormous strength and trained skill of
the adept’s mind controls the raw blasting energy of Kundalini energy raised by Tantric practice,
directing it to cause successful change in the real world in conformity with the Will of the adept.

 11.    Key 21

 Kaph k “Palm of the Hand.” Trump X, The Wheel of Fortune.  Jupiter Û.  Cardinal value, 20;  ordinal

value, 11.  Kaph also has a final form ] for use at the end of words; when used as such its cardinal value
is 500.  Connects Sephirah 4, Chesed, withSephirah 7, Netzach.  Roman/English
equivalent:  K (sometimes also C, for the sound; but the Roman/English C is more commonly associated
with Gimel, Path 13).

 a.       Qaballistic Meanings and Theory

. . . [Kaph] is attributed to . . . Jupiter, and as it connects Chesed (the sphere of Û) to Netzach, . . . the
sphere of . . . Venus, . . . [Kaph] partakes both of the magnanimous and generous expansive character
of Û and the love nature of Ù.  It repeats on a considerably lower plane the attributions of Jupiter, Zeus,
Brahma, and Indra . . . .  Pluto is also attributed, since he is the blind giver of wealth, symbolical of the
infinite and abundant prodigality of Nature. . . .
. . . [Its Tarot card], in some packs, is a wheel of seven spokes, with a figure of Anubis on one side
bearing a caduceus, and on the other a demon with a trident.  On top of the circumference [of the
wheel] is a Sphinx bearing a sword. The wheel represents the ever-whirling Karmic cycle of Samsara, of
existence after existence, at one moment elevating us above princes and the kings of the land, and at
others throwing us below the level of slaves and the dust of the earth. . . . 21

This is a Path which connects Individuality and Personality – apart from the organic fusion of the two
in . . . Tiphareth. Chesed represents that part of the Individuality where the pure image of what the
Individuality intends to be is held. This image should be a true reflection of the Will of the Spirit.  The
Sephirah into which the influence of Chesed flows, via the 21 st Path, is Netzach, representing the
creative imagination and higher emotions within the Personality.  Thus the potencies of this path are
responsible for the ideals and aspirations which capture the imagination of man.

Foremost of these, perhaps, in Western European man is the ideal of the Quest of the Holy Grail. . . . 22

 Yetziratic title:  Intelligence of Conciliation

Hebrew letter:   Kaph

Numerical value:  .20 500

Title:  The Lord of the forces of life

Principle:  --

Astrological assignment:  Jupiter

Element (Alchemical):  Tin

Element (chemical): --

Ecological process, realm, or principle:   --

Physical chemistry:   --

Colors:  (King Scale) Violet (Queen Scale) Blue (Emperor Scale) Purple (Empress Scale) Blue Rayed yellow

Gods: 

Greek: Zeus

Roman:  Jupiter

Egyptian:  Amoun Ra

Scandinavian:  --

USA:  --
France of the Enlightenment: --

Celtic:  --

Christian:  --

Hindu:  Brahma. Indra

Voudon:  --

Other:  --

Biblical associations:  Sachiel (SChYAL) Divine Outpouring

Countries: --

Cities: Philadelphia

Peoples: 

Meditation:  Liberality

Magickal Power: .Power of Acuiring Political and other Ascedency

Perfume: Saffron

Magickal Weapons: Sceptre

Musical tone:. A#

Metals, stones, and minerals:  Tin

Plants, real and imaginary:  Hyssop, Oak, Poplar, Fig

Animals, Real and Imaginary:  Eagle, Praying Mantis

Vegetable drugs (plant extracts): Cocaine

Mineral drugs:   --

The Body:  Hand

Diseases:  --

Magickal image:  Closed Hand

Lineal figures: Square, Rhombus

Domain:  --

Archangel:  Tzadqiel

Quarter: --

Buddhist symbolism:  Liberality

 Qlippoth: 

Gha’agsheklah

Far Eastern cosmological associations:

                                                                                                Wood.  East. Spring. Vitality.  Production. The solid

but workable. Sour.  Blue or green.  Controls liver and gall.  The Dragon. Jupiter.  Yang – the Pine.  Yin –
the Bamboo.  Tin. Air.  Salt. Produces Fire, destroys Earth, is destroyed by Metal.

 Trigram from the I Ching:  Sun

-------

-------

---  ---

Trigram from the I Ching:

 b.       Design and Title of Trump

 America’s Tarot:  “Oh beautiful for spacious skies / And amber waves of grain . . .” Has the Wheel of
Fortune in the center of the card. Top half (Upright):  amber fields of grain waving in the breeze, with a
background of purple mountains and blue skies. Bottom half (Reverse):  a factory city with smoggy skies,
slag pits, sick and hungry people crowding the littered streets.  Article X of the Bill of Rights.

 The Divine Comedy Tarot:

 Biblical Tarot:

 John Burt’s MAD Tarot:  Alfred, holding a battered top hat in one hand and a cream pie in the other,
stands over the Wheel of Fortune (as seen on TV).

 The Robert A. Heinlein Tarot: 

 The H. P. Lovecraft Tarot: 

 The Stephen King Tarot: 

 The R. R. McCammon Tarot:   

 c.       Divinatory Meanings

Most commonly, the Wheel of Fortune in a reading means change and cycles: Whether this change is
good or bad for the querent should be assessed by looking at the surrounding cards if there are any, or
by examining the current situation of the querent. If the querent is currently going through a difficult
time, the Wheel of Fortune probably indicates change for the better.

This card can also point to an emotional rollercoaster, where the querent’s life is going through
immense ‘ups and downs’, with no sign of stopping. It represents destiny working in the querent’s life,
but also suggests that the querent should take action and try to change it if they wish to.

This card could also indicate gambling, either metaphorically (taking a chance) or physically (gambling
games such as Poker, etc). It could also point to cycles of return: What has been sown will be reaped,
and the effects of the querent’s actions will come full circle and affect them.

In an advisory position, the Wheel of Fortune advises the querent to get used to change and accept it,
since that is the only way it can be coped with. It suggests that taking a gamble will be a good idea, and
that the querent should start trying to change a few things in their lives if they wish to get ahead.

 d.  Interrelationships of the Path and the Trump

 12.    Key 22

 Lamed l  “Ox-Goad.”  Trump XI, Justice (in The Book of Thoth this Trump is numbered VIII and is

called Adjustment.  See Key 19, above).  Libra ø.  Cardinal value, 30;  ordinal value,
12.  Connects Sephirah 5, Geburah, with Sephirah 6,Tiphareth.  Roman/English equivalent:  L.

a.       Qaballistic Meanings and Theory

 This Path . . . is generally known as the Path of Karmic Adjustment. . . .

. . . [All] factors of existence below Daath are bound to be riddled with sin and error. This requires the
action of karma to rectify it. . . .  The Lords of karma may be likened to physical surgeons, though more
properly they are restorers of Cosmic Balance or Lords of Truth.

These terms, which are the esoteric titles of the Tarot Trump, give the whole theory of the Path very
well.  The implications of the figure of justice on the card, with sword and scales, are resumed in the
astrological sign of the Path, Libra – the Scales.  The Path leads toward Geburah, which . . . has aspects
which may be likened to a Judgment Hall.  Like its opposite number, the 20th Path, this Path has affinities
with Daath, for Daath is also a sphere of Cosmic Balance.

Perhaps the most complete analysis of the 22 nd Path is to be found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead,
particularly the judgment scene.  It was the Egyptian belief that each individual was judged after death
and, according to the result, either went to a life of everlasting bliss or was instantly annihilated.
. . . [Although] it is not widely believed that any souls are completely annihilated, . . . the general
Egyptian idea is in accord with esoteric tenets.  When the Personality is judged in accordance with
Spiritual Principle, that part which measures up favourably will be assimilated by the Individuality as part
of its fund of manifest experience;  so the Individuality becomes enriched.  Evil traits, however, will be
completely rejected, not through any policy of separation of sheep from goats or wheat from tares, but
because that which does not conform with Spiritual Truth cannot, by that very fact, have any reality.

Non-existence of evil from a Spiritual viewpoint does not mean that it may just be written off – ignored. .
. . [While] spirit itself must be perfect and free from evil on noumenal levels, we live and move and have
most of our being in phenomenal existence, and on these levels evil is certainly very real.  So evil which
is not absorbed into the Individuality remains to be accounted for, for it must be absorbed in the end,
though after transmutation or sublimation.  This task the Individuality often does not care to face, but
puts the matter off.  The principle is much like that of the Personality not being able to face up to certain
home truths about itself.  The scientific term for this almost universal situation is dissociation or
repression, and the symptoms are varying degrees of neurosis, or even psychosis, which are so common.

We have here . . . the elements of a psychiatry of the Individuality in addition to the more familiar
orthodox psychiatry of the Personality.  These aspects of former incarnations which are not absorbed
remain linked to the Individuality with a certain autonomous life of their own.  This accounts for the
phenomenon of ‘magical bodies.’

Magical bodies reveal themselves in much the same way as do the Jungian archetypes of the
unconscious;  that is, they may have a temporary obsessing effect.  Usually they stem from Incarnations
when great power was possessed and abused. . .

While most magical bodies seem to build up round instances of abuse of power, this is not necessarily
always so.  They could equally involve an abuse of wisdom or love. . . .

Such magical bodies may be met with, and they may be considered as elements in one’s past experience
rejected from the Judgment Hall of Osiris, or, in other words, not assimilated by the Individuality.  . . .
[Their] continued existence in the manner outlined above is a pathology, albeit a common one.  What is
to be done.

The answer lies in . . . Redemption[,  which] . . . means the ability to face up to the true situation within
oneself coupled with the willingness to change it.  . . . [This] requires ruthless honesty, considerable
powers of discernment, and not a little courage, but prolonged intention and aspiration, which can be
easier achieved by dedication to some religious organisation, esoteric or exoteric, will help to attain it.*
With a magical body, the aim is to face up to it, see exactly what it is, what it has done, accepting this
however hideous or disgusting it may be, and once this confrontation has been fully achieved then one
has power over that magical body instead of being the passive victim of its arbitrary and unpredictable
restimulation.**

 *This depends upon the religious organization, of course.  Dedicating oneself to a life of service to,
say,  the Royal Order of Gtrls’t, which requires sacrificing nubile young virgins on the altar of your
choice, or the Church of Blgfrx, which promotes jihads against anyone not belonging to the One True
Church, might not be the way to go. Just as there is no Royal Road to Geometry, there is no Divine
Road to Spiritual Sanity.  Ya gotta be careful about these things, that’s all.

 **In fact, Dante Alighieri did just this for the entire West of his day in his Divine Comedy.

 The 22nd Path has an additional importance in that it is on the line of The Lightning Flash representing
the line of the descent of involution of the Sephiroth.  The Hebrew letter of the Path, Lamed, has
reference to this. Geburah represents the condition of the Spirit in action in the higher levels of Form
and the subsequent descent to Tiphareth via the 22 ndPath is the establishment of the spirit as a unit of
Individuality at these sub-Supernal levels, from which levels the further projection of a Personality into
Earth is made.  The highest Path on the Tree, the 11 th, connects the first coming forth of the Spirit into
manifestation and is assigned the letter Aleph, meaning an Ox.  The ox is one of the earthiest of symbolic
animals and so we see that manifestation in Earth is implicit in the Spirit’s purpose from the very
beginnings of things. Thus, the processes of the Spirit, active in Geburah, driving its own projection
down to the relative stability of the Tiphareth, is well symbolized under the form of an Ox-goad.

The shape of the letter itself, suggestive of two Yods, (one above and one below a lateral dividing line),
suggests the Hermetic axiom ‘As above, so below’ – a reference to the aim of producing a Personality
which is a true reflection of the Individuality, just as the Individuality should be a true reflection of the
Spirit.

The symbol of the Ox-goad, like the symbols of Geburah, may evoke suggestions of punishment, but this
is not strictly accurate. The drive to fulfill destiny or the need to work out karma are not in themselves
punishments, though they may appear so to a deviated Personality which insists on ‘kicking against the
pricks.’ . . . [Although] man tends to make God in his own image, . . . man has distorted his own image by
his Prime Deviation, so we should not think God’s works to be too close a reflection of man’s
works.  Divine Justice is a very different thing from human ‘justice’ . . . in terms of suffering.  It would be
interesting to know which caused the most misery in the history of mankind – criminality, or the
punishments for it inflicted by society.

A truer approach to the potencies of this path might be gained by considering the Hebrew letter under
its lesser known, somewhat apocryphal symbolism of a King, for it is by the Wings of Faith that the soul
can best achieve its destiny and escape from the shadow of karma. Faith emanates primarily from Binah,
and flows into Geburah via the 18th Path [Cheth]. . . .  Binah is . . . ‘the Creator of Faith’ and ‘the parent
of Faith from which doth Faith emanate.’

So we have a link shown to us by the Yetziratic Texts, which also describe the 22 nd Path as the Faithful
Intelligence, by which ‘spiritual values are increased.’  ‘All dwellers on earth are nearly under its shadow’
and we may well assume that by striving to become completely under the protection and shadow of the
Wings of Faith we shall attain to the realisation that Divine Justice or Absolute Balance is not a system of
remorseless punishment, but our protection against Cosmic Darkness, ‘Spiritual wickedness in high
places,’ and complete annihilation.
As Jesus said:  ‘If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto the mountain, Remove hence
to yonder place;  and it shall remove;  and nothing shall be impossible unto you.’  (Matthew.xvii.20). This
has particular relevance to the man-made mountains of sin, corruption and ignorance, which the
astringent tests of this Path serve to remove. 23

 Yetziratic title:  Faithful Intelligence

 Hebrew letter:   Lamed

 Numerical value:  .30

 Title:  The Daughter of the Lords of Truth, The Ruler of Balance

 Principle:  --

 Astrological assignment:  Libra

 Element (Alchemical):  Airy

 Element (chemical): --

 Ecological process, realm, or principle:  --

 Physical chemistry:   --

 Colors:  (King Scale) emerald green, (Queen scale) Blue, (Emperor Scale) Deep Blue Green, (Empress
Scale) Pale Green

 Gods: 

 Greek: Themis, Minos, Aeacus and Rhadamanthus

Roman:  Vulcan, Venus, Nemesis

Egyptian:  Maat

Scandinavian:  --

USA:  --

France of the Enlightenment:  --

Celtic:  --

Christian:  --

Hindu:   Yama

Voudon:  --
Other:  --

 Biblical associations:  Chedeqiel (ChDQYAL) Thorn of God

 Countries:--

 Cities:--

 Peoples:  --

 Meditation:  Hacked in pieces corpse

 Magickal Power: .Works of Justice and Equilibrum

 Perfume:  Galbanum

 Magickal Weapons: Scales, Cross of Equilibrium

 Musical tone:. F#

 Metals, stones, and minerals:  Emerald

 Plants, real and imaginary:  Aloe

 Animals, Real and Imaginary:  Faries, Harpies, Elephant, Spider

 Vegetable drugs (plant extracts): Tobacco

 Mineral drugs:   --

 The Body:  --

 Diseases:  --

 Magickal image:  A dark man in his right hand a spear and laurel and in his left a book

 Lineal figures: Puella

 Domain:  --

 Archangel:  Zuniel (ZVNYAL) God Nourishes

 Quarter:

 Buddhist symbolism:  .

  Qlippoth:  A'ABIRIRON - Clayey

 Far Eastern cosmological associations:

 Trigram from the I Ching:  --

b.       Design and Title of Trump

 America’s Tarot:  Follows Crowley’s system, so this card is numbered VIII and is called Adjustment.  A

montage of American Supreme Court justices against a background of the building in which they
work;  Andrew Vachss, the legal advocate for children;  Jeff Masson, author of The Assault on
Truth (1984 e.v.).

The Divine Comedy Tarot:

 Biblical Tarot:

 John Burt’s MAD Tarot:  Bill Gaines pries open the jaws of a patched, moth-eaten lion costume to reveal
a terrified Joe McCarthy.

 The Robert A. Heinlein Tarot: 

 The H. P. Lovecraft Tarot: 

 The Stephen King Tarot: 

 The R. R. McCammon Tarot:   

 c.       Divinatory Meanings

In a reading the Justice card could mean one of many different things, and as always it is important to
examine the surrounding cards or the querent’s situation in order to ascertain what it means.

Often this card points to a balance that needs to be reached in order for the querent to progress any
further, or it highlights a problem the querent is having adjusting to the changes in his or her life. It
suggests objectivity and a weighing up of all sides of the issue or problem, and also suggests that the
querent may be getting what they deserve in the near future. This may be good or bad for the querent,
and this is to be ascertained through the surrounding cards.

On a more mundane level, this card could point to laws, bureaucracy, paperwork, and situations to do
with law enforcement or the courts.

In an advisory position, the Justice card says that balance in all things is needed, and that the querent
needs to be objective and make decisions soon, or take decisive action. It advises the querent to ‘read
the small print’ both physically and metaphorically, and to try and listen to all sides of the story before
making any decisions or judgments.

 d.  Interrelationships of the Path and the Trump

13. Key 23

 
 

Mem m “Water.” Trump XII, The Hanged Man. The Element Water s; the Planet Neptune Þ. Cardinal
value, 40; ordinal value, 13. At the end of a word, Kaph takes the form \ and has the value 600. Connects
Sephirah 5, Geburah with Sephirah 8, Hod. Roman/English equivalent: M.

a. Qaballistic Meanings and Theory

The Sephirah Hod, in common with Binah and Chesed, is a ‘Water’ Sephirah.* . . . A principle of Water is
reflection, and it is in Hod that the reflections of the principles of the higher worlds may be discerned.
Hod . . . refers to mind, and so the reflections of this Sephirah are intimations of pure reason rather than
the images of lower psychism which are to be seen in the magic Mirror of Yesod. Where images occur in
Hod they are more in the nature of abstractions [e.g., mathematical models] . . . than that teeming
welter of subconscious elements [which are basically emotional in content] . . . of Yesod. . . .

*Mercury, the Planet associated with Hod, rules the Airy Sign Gemini and the Earthy Sign Virgo, so it
may seem strange to associate Hod with Water. However, in Chinese cosmology as well as in Alchemy
both East and West, Mercury is associated with Water because His metal, mercury, flows like water at
room-temperature and under one atmosphere of pressure, rather than being hard and solid, like most
metals. So His Sephirah, Hod, likewise has Watery characteristics.

Geburah, on the other hand, is not a ‘Water’ Sephirah but, like Chokmah and Netzach, a “fire” one. Yet
there is an aspect of it that is much akin to the action of water.* It is very easy to regard Geburah solely
as a violent, intensely active Sephirah, but it achieves its effects also by the slow wearing away of
accretions over a great length of time. . . . Thus we have, on this Path, in one case, the stability necessary
to reflect the higher worlds without distortion [Sephirah 8, Hod}; and in the other case, stability of effort
over countless eons of time [Sephirah 5, Geburah].

*Mars, the Planet associated with Geburah, is a Lord of Scorpio, the Cherubic Sign of Water. Mars is
associated with Fire, but one aspect of His Fire is the phenomenon of rust, the oxidation of iron or other
metal by dissolved oxygen in water, and His Fire is thus commingled with Water. This is reflected in the
fact that He is a Lord of both Scorpio and Aries, the Cardinal Fire Sign.

Broadly speaking, Chesed is the Sephirah associated with what the Individuality is, Geburah is the
Sephirah associated with what the Individuality does. Geburah also has a corrective or assessing
element in it which implies the ability to see what is, the ability to see what should be, and then the
ability to take action to merge the two kinds of reality so that after the Geburic action everything that is
is as it should be.

These principles of action are also available to the Personality and the link in consciousness which
causes this to be so is, on the Tree, the 23 rd Path. . . .
...

Esoterically, the symbol of the man hanged upside down is one of sacrifice[, meaning] a) utterly
unselfish cooperative effort for the good of the whole and every individual within that whole; and b) the
exchange of something for something better. . . .

. . . The Hanged Man is upside down, indicating that the values of the higher worlds are the reverse of
the lower. . . .

...

. . . [Perhaps] the most basic Spiritual Law of the Universe is, however much appearances may seem to
indicate the contrary, you get out of life exactly what you put into it. 24

. . . [The] first task is to make the mind into a clear receptive vessel, capable of registering pure reason
without being occluded by false opinions or mental taboos.

Once the light of pure reason is achieved, one’s destiny becomes clear, as the symbolic links of this Path
will show. The Water symbolism immediately refers us to Binah, theGreat Sea, whose influence passes
to Geburah,* and thence to this path and Hod, by the 18 th Path. Binah is of the Spirit, the most concrete
form of the Spirit qua Spirit, wherein the true image of the Self and Destiny rests. Also, the Spirit of the
Mighty Waters, the title of Tarot Trump, well repays meditation. The Mighty Waters are those of the
Anima Mundi, the Universal Soul, wherein is reflected the True Luminous Image of the Creator. . . . On a
yet deeper level the Mighty Waters are those of Ain Soph in the Unmanifest wherein each Spirit’s
Cosmic Atom lies, projecting the Divine Spark itself into manifestation. 25

*Geburah’s Planet is Jupiter, the traditional ruler of Pisces. Pisces is the Sign of theOcean Sea.

Each of the four Elements is associated with one of the four Outer Planets, which include Saturn,
Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Earth is represented by Saturn; Air, by Uranus; Water, by Neptune; and
Fire, by Pluto. Path 23, which is associated with Water, also clearly has symbolic ties with Neptune, the
modern ruler of Pisces and of altruistic self-sacrifice, as the above quotations from Knight suggest.
(Neptune and Pisces are, however, also associated with such goodies as stealth, sabotage, murder,
poison, adultery, and all other things Dark and Dreadful that do their dirty work from behind and out of
the shadows. Let’s not get too carried away with the sweet-and-light side of Neptune, gang . . .)

Yetziratic text

Yetziratic title:  Stable Intelligence

Hebrew letter:  MEM

Numerical value: .40, 600

Title:  The Spirit of the Mighty Waters

Principle: --

Astrological assignment:  Neptune

Element (Alchemical):  water

Element (chemical): --

Ecological process, realm, or principle: --

Physical chemistry: --

Colors:  (King Scale) Deep Blue, (Queen Scale) Sea Green, (Emperor Scale) Deep Olive Green, (Emperess
Scale) White Flecked Purple

Gods:

Greek: Poseidon

Roman: Neptune, Rhea

Egyptian: Tum, Ptah, Auramoth, Asar, Hekar, Isis, Hathor

Scandinavian: --

USA: --

France of the Enlightenment: --

Celtic: --

Christian:  John, Jesus as the Hanged Man

Hindu:  Soma

Voudon: --

Other:

Biblical associations: John, Jesus, Taliahad (TLYHD() The One Adornment

Countries:--

Cities:--

Peoples: --

Meditation: Water
Magickal Power: .The great work, talismans, crystal-gazing

Perfume:  onycha, myrrh

Magickal Weapons: Cup and Cross of Suffering

Musical tone:. G#

Metals, stones, and minerals: Beryl, Aquamarine, Pearl

Plants, real and imaginary:  Lotus, all water plants

Animals, Real and Imaginary:  Eagle, snake, scorpion, Nymphs and Undines

Vegetable drugs (plant extracts):  Caseara, all purges, sulphates

Mineral drugs: --

The Body: mouth

Diseases: --

Magickal image: The picture of a hanged or crucified man

Lineal figures: Those of Triplicity

Domain: --

Archangel: Gabriel (GBRYAL) The Strength of God

Quarter: West (Maareb)

Buddhist symbolism: .Water

Qlippoth: Ariton

Far Eastern cosmological associations:

Trigram from the I Ching:

      Tui

                   - -

                  ___

                  ___

 
b. Design and Title of Trump

America’s Tarot: Center: Timothy Leary as the Hanged Man. Background: Hollywood,California. Upright:
great American artists, especially Elizabeth Taylor (a Pisces). Ghost-over of John F. Kennedy and David
Koresh. Reverse: Ronald Reagan. Ghost-over of nuclear submarine, with armies cowering before it,
illustrating Chapter 3, Verse 46 of Crowley’s Liber Al vel Legis: “I am the warrior Lord of the Forties: the
Eighties cower before me, & [Key 38 of the new, 16-Sephiroth Tarot; see below] are abased. . . .”

The Divine Comedy Tarot:

Biblical Tarot:

John Burt’s MAD Tarot: Alfred sits on a swing that hangs upward in defiance of gravity (in all senses).

The Robert A. Heinlein Tarot:

The H. P. Lovecraft Tarot:

The Stephen King Tarot:

The R. R. McCammon Tarot:

c. Divinatory Meanings

When interpreting the Hanged Man card in a reading, it is important to assess and know something
about the querent’s current situation, since this card often points to a complete turn around in life. It
can also represent cutting away the obstacles and useless parts of the querent’s life, as well as the
querent going through a period of self-assessment, and spiritual re-definement. 

The Hanged Man sometimes suggests that the querent will need to sacrifice something in order to gain
something better. They may need to go through a difficult time before things will start to look up, or
they may go through a time of standstill. During this time of standstill the querent will be given an
opportunity for reflection and a ‘spiritual coffee break’. 

This card can also point to the querent seeing things differently or from a different perspective, or of
suddenly turning their philosophy or view of life around. 

In a more spiritual level, the Hanged Man can signify a new spiritual outlook on things, and a time when
the querent will start to really evolve spiritually.

In an advisory position, this card could tell the querent that the best course of action is to sacrifice
something they no longer need, in order to grow or progress. It advises them to look at things from a
different perspective, and to take time out from the situation to think about things properly and reflect
upon the situation. It also suggests that being a little unconventional is a very useful trait to have in the
situation.

d. Interrelationships of the Path and the Trump

14. Key 24

Nun n “Fish.” Trump XIII, Death. The Sign Scorpio ù. Cardinal value 50. Ordinal value 14. At the end of a
word, has the form } and the value 700. Connects Sephirah 6, Tiphareth, with Sephirah 7, Netzach.
Roman/English equivalent: N.

a. Qaballistic Meanings and Theory

The Tarot Trump of this Path is Death and one of the esoteric titles of this card is Lord of the Gates of
Death. It may be noted that there is no reference to birth through the symbolism of the Trump 26 and this
is because birth is death and death is birth, each being opposing sides of the same coin. Whenever there
is change there is death to the former condition and birth to the new condition and this is shown in the
other title of the . . . Trump, Child of the Great Transformers.

...

The ascent of the 24th Path . . . is the process of the . . . death of the Personality, whether this be
consequent upon physical death or whether it be a part of that greater death – the death of Initiation. In
the former case the Personality still exists and functions in the world, though not for its own sake, but
for the ends of the Individuality wherein the centre of consciousness is now situated. . . .

...

Although all three Paths to Tiphareth, the 24 th, 25th, and 26th, are of equal importance, being ways to
union between Individuality and Personality, the 24 th Path carries additional significance in that it is on
the Path of the Lightning Flash and thus represents the fundamental birth and death of the Personality. .
..

...
There is one aspect of the Tree which is concerned with the Fall and that is the Abyss, bridging which is
the Sephirah Daath. The Abyss has an analogue which is met with on all three Paths before Tiphareth,
and this is known as the Gulf. The Gulf is something that has to be leaped, and leaped alone, stripped of
all hindering burdens, in faith. It could be called the dead-point between Personality orientation and
Individuality orientation. On the 26th Path [A’ain, connecting Sephirah 6, Tiphareth, with Sephirah 8,
Hod], the intellect has to be laid aside before the powers of the intuition can take over. On the 25 th Path
[Samekh, connecting Sephirah 6 with Sephirah 9, Yesod], the will, memory and intellect have to be set
aside before the powers of charity, faith and hope can take over. And on the 24 th Path, death has to be
accepted before rebirth into higher consciousness can be achieved. It is thus one of the crisis points of
spiritual progress because of the great temptation to turn back from the unknown to the apparent
safety of known things, and to succumb to the temptation is to lose all the fruits of past endeavour. . . .

Death and Rebirth are concepts at the base of all true occultism and all true religions and one comes
upon the symbolism again and again. . . .

The symbolism of the 24th Path . . . is concerned with the same motif. The Tarot Trump is Death, or the
Skeleton Mower, wielding a scythe. The scythe may be considered a symbol of time. . . . Conception as
well as birth and has its place on this path – and sexual intercourse has ever been closely associated with
death. . . . [Sex has] profound relevance to this Path, for the beginnings of the approach to Individuality
consciousness is an act of Divine Love, and also the fertilisation of the seed of higher consciousness
which will gestate and eventually come to birth. The initiate who has attained Tiphareth consciousness
is, after all, called the Twice-Born. The heads and hands lying about the field on the Tarot card are often
considered to be new life growing, but the significance of the skeleton is often missed. The skeleton is
the basic structure of the body upon which all else is built and so may well be regarded as a symbol for
the Individuality or even the Spirit upon which the outer vehicles are built.

...

. . . The Spiritual Significance of the Path is shown in the astrological sign Scorpio – a Water sign which
gives a link with the Hebrew letter Nun, which means a Fish. . . . 27

Scorpio and the Eighth House of the horoscope rule the history and biological or evolutionary roots of
being from the viewpoint of DNA and the species. They rule sex, death, birth, resurrection, regeneration,
and other primordial processes of life as such, on the level of biochemistry, as well as the occult.

Yetziratic text

Yetziratic title: Imaginative Intelligence

Hebrew letter: NUN

Numerical value: .50, 700

Title: The Child of the Great Transformers, The Lord of the Gate of Death

Principle: --

Astrological assignment:  Scorpio

Element (Alchemical):  Watery

Element (chemical): --

Ecological process, realm, or principle: --

Physical chemistry: --

Colors:  (King Scale) Green Blue, (Queen Scale) Dull Brown, (Emperor Scale) Very Dark Brown, (Emperess
Scale) Indigo Brown

Gods:

Greek: Ares, Apollo, Thanatos

Roman: Mars

Egyptian:  Merti Goddesses, Typhon, Apep, Khephra

Scandinavian: --

USA: --

France of the Enlightenment: --

Celtic: --

Christian: --

Hindu:  Kundalini (Yama)

Voudon: --

Other: --

Biblical associations: Saitziel (SAYTzYAL) God has regarded his child

Countries:--

Cities:--

Peoples: --

Meditation:  Skeleton Corpse
Magickal Power: .Necromancy

Perfume: Siamese Benaoin, Opoponax

Magickal Weapons:  The Oath, Scythe, Poisons, Pain of the Obligation

Musical tone:. G

Metals, stones, and minerals: Snakestone

Plants, real and imaginary:  Cactus, Nettle, all poisonous plants

Animals, Real and Imaginary: bettle, scorpion, crayfish, lobster, wolf, all reptiles, shark, crablouse

Vegetable drugs (plant extracts): --

Mineral drugs: --

The Body: --

Diseases: --

Magickal image: A man with a lance in his right hand and a human head in his left.

Lineal figures: Rubeus

Domain: --

Archangel:  Berakiel (BRKYAL) The Blessing of God

Quarter: --

Buddhist symbolism: . Skeleton Corpse

Qlippoth:  NECHESHTHIRON - The Brazen

Far Eastern cosmological associations:

Trigram from the I Ching: --

b. Design and Title of Trump

America’s Tarot: Center: a montage of America’s great creators of horror fiction and cinema, from Poe,
Hawthorne, and H. P. Lovecraft to Stephen King, R. R. McCammon, and George Romero, in a circle, with
the Grim Reaper, holding up a blooming flower in his skeletal right hand, at the center of that circle.
Upright: Seattle,Washington; the Bandini Fertilizer Corporation in Los Angeles, California.
Reverse:Washington, DC; the alligators in the NYC sewer system, contentedly munching on New York
White (you know, that outtasight primo crop that grows there due to all the pot-seeds flushed down
toilets by paranoid NYC Hippies). Images suggesting recycling, sewers. Xaviera Hollander, Dr. Ruth, etc. A
molecular diagram of the AIDS (HIV) virus.

The Divine Comedy Tarot:

Biblical Tarot:

John Burt’s MAD Tarot: The Old Crypt-Keeper stands behind a wealthy, smugly self-satisfied,
prosperous-looking man, about to plink him with a bony finger.

The Robert A. Heinlein Tarot:

The H. P. Lovecraft Tarot:

The Stephen King Tarot:

The R. R. McCammon Tarot:

c. Divinatory Meanings

In a reading, the Death card is most likely to indicate change of some sort, usually a difficult, inevitable
change that the querent is going through or will go through in the near future. Often the querent
doesn’t want to go through the change, and will try to resist it. 

This card could also indicate new beginnings occurring due to the ending of something else. It could
suggest transformation or metamorphosis either in the querent’s external world or within themselves. 

It could signify an ending of something, the death of the old self, or the letting go of pain and old habits.
In very rare circumstances it could point to physical death, but the querent’s situation and the
surrounding cards should be examined first before such a prediction is made.

In an advisory position, the Death card advises the querent to accept any changes that are happening in
their lives, and let go of anything that is holding them back. It advises the querent to not be afraid of
change within them.

d. Interrelationships of the Path and the Trump

 

15. Key 25

Samekh s, “Prop.” Trump XIV, Temperance. 28 Sagittarius (ú). Cardinal value, 60; ordinal value, 15.
Connects Sephirah 6, Tiphareth, with Sephirah 9, Yesod. Roman/English equivalent: S.

a. Qaballistic Meanings and Theory

This path, leading from Yesod to Tiphareth, is the direct line of contact between the Individuality and
Personality and on it are developed the first dimensions of mystical or higher consciousness. Before
mystical consciousness can gain a hold in the lower vehicles however, these vehicles have to be
quietened and this process is symbolised by likening the process of development to a journey through a
desert or wilderness, when the soul is thrown entirely upon its own resources, assisted only by Faith. . . .
[Those] whose courage or Faith fails them will scurry back to the apparent security of consciousness in
the lower worlds. All three ways to Tiphareth, the 24 th, 25th and 26thPaths, contain that experience
known as the Dark Night of the Soul, and in the symbolism of the 25 th Path the soul has to advance on
the Desert Way, leaving behind the life of the outer and lower worlds, not yet conscious of the life of the
inner and higher worlds, invoking the inner light that will become a golden dawn in the darkness.

...

The Tarot Trumps . . . shows . . . an angel, presumably Raphael, standing in a wilderness and pouring the
waters of life from a golden vessel into a silver one – two obvious symbols of the Sun Sephirah,
Tiphareth, and the Moon Sephirah, Yesod, which this Path conjoins. The title of the card, Temperance,
may also be considered in the sense of the tempering of souls, as with metals, to make them fit to be
used as tools in the Great Works of God.

The astrological sign, Sagittarius, is the sign of aspiration, and is well fitted to this Path as is the colour
blue, the Atziluthic Colour of the Path. This colour of aspiration extends the whole length of the centre
of the Tree from Malkuth to Kether, though of a darker colour, indigo, at the more material end.
Sagittarius is associated with the Centaur, a creature . . . half god, half beast, which man is; and it was
one of these creatures, Chiron, who consented to die that Prometheus might have eternal life. In other
words, this is the tradition of human existence from terrestrial humanity to Divine Lords of Humanity.

...

. . . [Ascending], the . . . Path is one of apparent darkness and aridity, the soul aspiring to the light of
higher consciousness, sustained only by its own resources; and descending, it is the downflow of Life,
Light and Love . . . from the Individuality, seeking to make and establish contact with its projection in
incarnation. . . .

To this end is the Tarot Trump called Daughter of the Reconcilers, for the Path reconciles the
Evolutionary and Incarnationary vehicles of man, the Individuality and Personality. It is also called the
Bringer Forth of Life, for in this manner is new life brought to birth, the higher life into the outer world,
and the life of experience into dense manifestation. 29

Yetziratic text

Yetziratic title: Intelligence of Probation or Tentative One

Hebrew letter:  Samekh

Numerical value: .60

Title: The Daughter of the Reconcilers, Bringer-Forth of Life

Principle: --

Astrological assignment: Sagittarius

Element (Alchemical):  Fiery

Element (chemical):  --

Ecological process, realm, or principle: --

Physical chemistry: --

Colors:  King Scale) Blue, (Queen Scale) Yellow, (Emperor Scale) Green, (Emperess Scale) Dark Vivid Blue

Gods:

Greek:  Apollo, Artemis

Roman: Diana, Iris

Egyptian:  Nephthys

Scandinavian: --

USA: --

France of the Enlightenment: --

Celtic: --

Christian: --

Hindu:  Vishnu (Horse-Avatar)

Voudon: --

Other: --

Biblical associations: Saritiel (SRYTYAL) Authority of God

Countries:--

Cities:--

Peoples: --

Meditation: Limited Aperture

Magickal Power: . Transmutations

Perfume: Lign-Aloes

Magickal Weapons: The Arrow

Musical tone:. G#

Metals, stones, and minerals:  Jacinth

Plants, real and imaginary: Rush

Animals, Real and Imaginary:  Centaur, Horse, Hippogriff, Dog

Vegetable drugs (plant extracts): --

Mineral drugs: --

The Body: --

Diseases: --

Magickal image: A man with 3 bodies – 1 black, 1 red, 1 white

Lineal figures: Acquisito

Domain: --

Archangel:  Adukiel (ADVKYAL) Fine Grinding fo God

Quarter: --

Buddhist symbolism: . Limited Aperture

Qlippoth:  NECHESHIRON - The Snakey

Far Eastern cosmological associations:

Trigram from the I Ching: --

b. Design and Title of Trump

America’s Tarot: Background: the buildings of a great university; a cathedral, a synagogue, a Baptist
chapel, a Mormon Temple, etc.; spacecraft ready to launch; an express freight-train running on rails that
stretch to the horizon (ghosted). Center foreground: an Indian warrior with bow and arrow (ghosted).
Upright: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and other positive Sagittarian persons of this country. Reverse:
Cotton Mather* and other negative Sagittarian types.

The Divine Comedy Tarot:

Biblical Tarot:

John Burt’s MAD Tarot: Moxie pours from one cup into another, mixing a spark-throwing cocktail as she
stands in front of a bar stocked with Sterno, cough-syrup, and rat-poison.

The Robert A. Heinlein Tarot:

The H. P. Lovecraft Tarot:

The Stephen King Tarot:

The R. R. McCammon Tarot:

*But let us also remember that it was due in great part to the efforts of Cotton Mather and his father,
Increase Mather, both judges, that the Salem witch-trials and attendant hysteria were brought to an end
much sooner than they might have been. The Mathers, father and son, found the commotion over the
“witchcraft” to be no more than mob hysteria and the witch-trials to be therefore unjust in the extreme,
and ruled to close the latter.

 
c. Divinatory Meanings

In a reading the Temperance card most often means that the querent needs to be moderate in his or her
actions or thoughts: they need to temper anger with calm, desire with distraction, thought with action.
This card suggests that the querent will possibly be burning the candle at both ends in the near future,
and they should try not to do this since it could adversely affect them. (Health is usually the things most
adversely affected by immoderation.) 

This card also suggests that in the future the querent may find himself or herself in a position to balance
things out, or they may find themselves manipulating the situation. 

The Temperance card usually comes up as an advice card, and if this is the case it advises moderation in
all things, and common sense. It advises the querent to try and unite the polarities existing in his life, or
to live in two different worlds at the same time, whether those worlds are mind and spirit, work and
play, or something else. 

The Temperance card also advises the querent to adapt him/herself to fit the situation and to be flexible
and fluid in the face of difficult times. It advises the querent to test the waters before diving in.

d. Interrelationships of the Path and the Trump

16. Key 26

A’ain u, “Eye.” Trump XV, The Devil. Capricorn (û). Cardinal value, 70; ordinal value, 16. Connects
Sephirah 6, Tiphareth, with Sephirah 9, Yesod. Roman/English equivalents: O (long); A’a; Ng.

a. Qaballistic Meanings and Theory

As the 25th Path is a Dark Night of the Soul on the Way of Love, or Devotional Mysticism, so may the
26th Path be considered a similar test on the Way of Wisdom, the Hermetic Path; and the 24 th Path on
the Way of Power or Nature Mysticism and Art. This three-fold division does not mean that one person
will only have one or the other experience according to his ‘Path.’ On the contrary, everyone gets the lot
– for the three-fold division is merely for convenience of study and is by no means a system of water-
tight barriers.
Some may feel the tests of one Path more than the others according to personal bias but the balanced
soul will feel the tests more equally. And it is well to work subjectively over all these Paths on the Tree of
Life for all must in the end be assimilated – by experience and understanding. Perhaps it would be truer
to say that the 24th Path tests the driving emotions, the 25 th Path the devotional aspirations, and the
26th Path the intellect as the soul makes its journey from consciousness centered in Yesod to
consciousness centered in Tiphareth; thus, according to the bias will either of the three Paths be
experienced the more. And the Tree is useful here for it enables the other Paths to be sought after and
worked upon in meditation so that more balanced progress is made.

The Yetziratic Text gives a clue to the problem the mind faces in coming to a mental conception of what
God is, for as man changes so does his idea of God change. For man’s mind, God is, and can only be, the
idea of man. Thus we get in the many races of man and the many ideas of what God is: a ferocious tribal
deity among savages, ruler of a Divine city-state with the ancient Greeks, a stiff formal hieratic figure
with the ancient Egyptians, an oriental despot with the Old Testament Jews, 30 and so on up to modern
times.31 And just as the religion and mythology of a race reflects that race’s psychology so does the
religion and faith of an individual reflect that individual’s psychology.

This of course does not disprove the existence of God, but recognises that all ideas of God are the
creation of man’s mind. Mind cannot come to grips with that which transcends it – the spiritual levels of
being. Thus the attribution of the Devil to this Path is apposite, for the Devil is an illusion, just as are all
men’s formulated ideas of God. The mind just does not have the means to get reality on the matter. This
is inferred, amongst other things, by [Key 23, Mem, Trump XII, The Hanged Man]. To the mind, spiritual
reality seems topsy-turvey – and the closer the mind gets to truth, the more it is led into paradox.

Yet this inability of the mind does not mean that all religions are deluded and worthless; they all lead
towards the one light. And anyone who throws over orthodox religion misses a lot. If one has the
spiritual insight to see the essential unity of all religions then one ought to have the ability to get the
most out of, and to contribute one’s share to, any one religion. The best religion is that which makes the
greatest appeal to one.**

*On the other hand, what about those religions that encourage jihads, mass-murder, and other
interesting pastimes? Such religions and movements have always had plenty of followers – but that
doesn’t necessarily make them good. Apparently Knight here is either ignoring or ignorant of a lot of
human history. To claim that the existence of such spiritual disaster areas “just helps others work out
their karma” and are “needed” by their adherents is to reveal that one has never loved anyone else – or
even one’s own skin – at all, or else is a complete idiot who is not capable of extrapolating ten minutes
ahead from even the best and most complete data in the universe. Moral idiot or intellectual cretin,
either way, if one can casually dismiss the hideous dangers presented to anyone around them by
potential jihads – which, once activated, inevitably become no-brake Juggernauts – one either has no
brains, no heart, or both conditions. “Karma” or no karma, what has anyone to affirm that it is “all right”
for others to be massacred and worse and the natural world torn to pieces in the wake of a jihad, a
sorcerous campaign for sacrifices, or any other sort of murder-orgy? -- Obviously, the same anyone who
cries “Foul! Unfair!” when he gets mugged . . .
Also, while the appreciation of the universal validity of all religions is the best means of approaching
spiritual reality by means of the mind, it must be borne in mind that the rationale of a religion is to be
irrational. Ultimately, in its gropings towards an understanding of the Godhead, the mind is faced with
the conception of ‘the infinite.’ In the words of the nineteenth century French occultist, Eliphas Levi,
‘The infinite is the inevitable absurdity which imposes itself on science. God is the paradoxical
explanation of the absurdity which imposes itself on faith. Science and faith can and ought mutually to
counterbalance each other and produce equilibrium, they can never amalgamate.’* (‘Paradoxes of the
Highest Science.’ Theosophical Publishing House translation.)

*Clearly Knight is no mathematician, and apparently Levi wasn’t either. See, e.g., Georg Cantor,
Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers (New York: Dover Publications,
1955; original published in 1915), passim; Philip J. Davis, Reuben Hersh, and Elena Anne Marchisotto, the
Mathematical Experience, Study Edition (Boston: Birkhäuser, 1995), passim, esp. pp. 168-173; Ernest
Nagel and James R. Newman, Gödel’s Proof (New York: New York University Press, 1958, 1968), passim;
John D. Barrow, Pi in the Sky: Counting, Thinking, and Being (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1992); passim,
esp. Part 5; and Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (New York: Vintage
Books, 1980), passim. There are ways by which the intellect can grasp infinity – neither Knight nor Levi
had caught up with them yet. One era’s or individual’s profundity is another’s joke – one very good
reason for my extensions of the traditional Qaballah, to deal with concepts and systems of thought that
hadn’t been invented in earlier eras, which make older ways of conceptualizing and discussing esoteric
matters obsolete, such as our current mathematical understanding, quantum-mechanics, biochemical
genetics, and so forth.

Here is another aspect, and it is shown on the Tarot Trump, one can be voluntarily enslaved by science
or by faith if either is unsustained by the other and it will be seen on the card that the figures chained to
the Devil are not themselves devils, but human beings wearing devil’s caps and holding their tails on
behind them. Putting the Devil ‘up on a pedestal’ in the later packs is a nice touch and on
the Marseilles version he is also raised up – but on two stones. This duality is further resumed in the
Devil’s horns and the two forks of the Hebrew letter Ayin – signifying one can be spiked on either one of
the Devil’s horns, rational science or irrational dogma.* It will be noted that the Devil holds a sceptre in
the left hand instead of the right – thus it is as an image reflected in a mirror – the noumenal appears
inverted in the phenomenal worlds – again as hinted by [Trump XII].

*Here I agree with him completely. For an outstanding discussion on this point, see Roger Shattuck,
forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), passim.

The astrological sign Capricorn is also attributed to this Path and this sign is said to govern all things of
authority, limitation and concretion, as may be gathered from its planetary ruler, Saturn, and the
Atziluthic colour of this Path, indigo, the same as the 32 nd Path, which is directly attributed to Saturn.

. . . [No] criticism can be made of real religious Faith . . . it is the folly of the faith in dogmatic authority
that is at issue really, and needs only the memory of Galileo to serve as an example, though there are
countless other examples, particularly in modern political faiths from Liberal laissez-faire to Marxist
determinism. In our day it is more the authority of science and reason that has replaced the
ecclesiastical authority, though the pendulum is beginning now, in the middle of the twentieth century,
to move back towards the equilibrium point, and doubtless, human nature being what it is, will
eventually swing to move back towards the irrational side, and then back again, and back again, and
back again, and back again, until humanity achieves some semblance of permanent balance in its
outlook – or even stops being the dupe of irrational authority.*

*Unfortunately, because we are primates, and even more, closely related to the great apes, like our
primate cousins we are band animals, organisms for which a bad leader is often far better than no leader
at all. Though the type of leader we prefer to follow, and whether or follow actual, real-world, real-time
leaders or internalized ones that even have died long ago, seems to be pedagogically and culturally
determined by our experiences from birth on, the tendency as such appears to be genetically hardwired.
Knight’s vision here is lovely – but it will remain only a vision until Homo sapiens evolves into some other
type of organism, which is less likely than the probability of our becoming extinct long before that could
happen due either to collective suicide or cosmic accident, e.g., planetary death by comet. See, e.g.,
Hans Kummer, Primate Societies: Group Techniques of Ecological Adaptation (Chicago: Aldine-Atherton,
1971), concerning typical primate groups and group dynamics.

The abuses of authority, whether rational or irrational, are . . . based on one cause, and that cause is
ironically appropriate to this Path of Knowledge. It is ignorance. As Levi went on to say in the world
quoted above:

It is through Ignorance that a man is proud since he then fancies to make himself honored by rendering
himself ridiculous and contemptible.

It is through Ignorance that a man is avaricious since he thus makes himself the slave of what is made to
serve us. It is through Ignorance that a man becomes a debauchee, since he then makes a deadly abuse
of what should relate to and propagate Life.

Through Ignorance men mutually hate in lieu of loving, isolate themselves instead of helping one the
other, separate instead of associating, corrupt instead of improving each other, destroy in place of
preserving and weaken themselves in egoism in lieu of strengthening themselves in universal charity.

Man naturally seeks that which he believes to be good, and if he almost always deceives himself,
foolishly and cruelly, it is that he does not know. The Despots of the old world did not know that the
abuse of Power involves the fall of power, and that in digging the earth to hide their victims they were
digging their own graves. The Revolutionists of all times have not known that anarchy being the conflict
of Lusts and the fatal reign of Violence, substitute might for right, and pave the way ever for the rule of
the most audaciously criminal. . . .32*

*Levi here is speaking as (a) a man of the Enlightenment, and (b) a Frenchman. As for (a) the
Enlightenment conceived of man as basically good and wise, corrupted only by experience. Police
records the world over seem to show otherwise – that there are many who not only, though lucidly
aware of right and wrong, take great pleasure in doing evil, knowing it is evil and even that it will
eventually destroy them. Also, many addicts, whether of sex, alcohol, hard drugs, or whatever, are very
aware that eventually indulging their particular jones will destroy them – and go right on indulging
themselves, either out of suicidal despair or profound love of the thing to which they are addicted. See,
e.g., Lyall Watson, Dark Nature: A Natural History of Evil ((New York: HarperCollins, Publishers, 1995),
passim. As for (b), Levi was well aware of the excesses of the French Revolution of the late Eighteenth
Century, which had occurred not so long before he wrote this passage. Writing as a true son of France,
he apparently did not count the hopeless barbarians of the New World and their pretensions to a new
libertarian nation – i.e., the American Revolution of 1776, which was a matter of men fighting to throw
off a tyrannical form of government imposed from without and substitute for it one of their own
making, clearly not a rebellion fomented by the sort of “Revolutionists” of whom Levi writes in the
above passages.

...

What then are the means of overcoming such ignorance – the Ignorance of the real, spiritual basis of
life? Theology does not seem to be the answer. Levi, in fact, took a very poor view of it:

The most dangerous and the saddest of sciences is Theology, for it constitutes itself wrongly a science of
God. Rather it is a science of the foolishness of man when it seeks to explain the inscrutable mystery of
the Divine.

His reason for this view is that:

It is through blackened glasses that we can alone gaze on the sun; looked at through a clear glass, it
seems to us black, and blinds us. God is for us as a sun; we must walk by His light with lowered eyes; if
one tries to gaze fixedly on Him our sight fails.

. . . Levi here puts his finger straight to the crux of the matter and the secrets of the Path. . . . It may be
that . . . in our present life we can see but as ‘through a glass darkly’ but the apparent difficulties to the
mind are insurmountable only if the concrete mind remains fixed as concrete mind – that is, remains in
Hod content merely to gaze up towards the Sun of Tiphareth. But the Path is meant to be trod, and the
attribution of Capricorn, the Goat, signifies that by treading it nimbly, leaping from crag to crag, we can
attain great heights. And in the process the mind will be changed, for this Path is, after all, called the
Renewing Intelligence, and as the mental air becomes more rarefied, so will the mental processes be
transformed from intellect to intuition. The Path is a transformation process of intellectual Hod
consciousness to illuminated Tiphareth consciousness. The Goat, supremely creative but with its legs
shackled, once released, can leap higher and higher until eventually it can sail off the highest pinnacle
and become the winged All-seeing eye of the Egyptians. . . .

...

The ascent of this Path is a process of transferring from the concrete to the abstract mind – from
intellect to intuition – and the descending way is perhaps of even greater use, for it is an occult maxim
that to understand anything it is best to aim at the highest point of understanding and work downwards.
Thus one makes an intuitive leap and then comes down to logic and observation to see if the facts fall
into the right place. . . . [It] is the method of scientific discovery. . . . In this way are the forces of the Lord
of the Gates of Matter, Child of the Forces of Time, transcended, and, to paraphrase the Yetziratic Text,
all things renewed which can be renewed by the construction of a new creative orientation upon them.

The fact that the Devil is called Lord of the Gates of Matter and Child of the Forces of Time does not
mean that matter and the phenomenal worlds are evil, it means that our mental conceptions of matter
and time are, like the Devil, illusory: and the only way to see things correctly is with the Spiritual Eye,
beyond time and space. The development of that type of Pure Reason which makes such perception
possible is an aspect of the Renewing Intelligence, or, if one prefers, a ray of light from the One in
Revelations who spake from the throne, saying, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’

This Path is a difficult one, for it is the intellect’s approach to God, which, if it is not prepared to be
transformed or renewed, but attempts to ‘define’ God on its own terms, meets only with the monstrous
image of itself – a Caliban-like figure – reflected in the glass of its own illusions. 33

Yetziratic text:

Yetziratic title: Renovating Intelligence

Hebrew letter:  Ayin

Numerical value: . 70

Title: Lord of the Gates of Matter, Child of the Forces of Time

Principle: --

Astrological assignment: Capricorn

Element (Alchemical):  Earthy

Element (chemical): --

Ecological process, realm, or principle: --

Physical chemistry: --

Colors:  (King Scale) Indigo, (Queen Scale) Black, (Emperor Scale) Blue-Black, (Empress Scale) Cold Dark
Grey

Gods:

Greek: Pan, Priapus, Hermes, Bacchus

Roman: Pan, Vesta, Bacchus

Egyptian:  Khem (Set)

Scandinavian: --

USA: --

France of the Enlightenment: --

Celtic: --

Christian: --

Hindu:  Lingam, Yoni

Voudon: --

Other: --

Biblical associations: Mequriel (MQVRYAL) Wellspring of God

Countries:--

Cities:--

Peoples: --

Meditation:  Putrid Corpse

Magickal Power: . The Witches’ Sabbath, the evil-eye

Perfume:  musk, civet

Magickal Weapons:  secret force, lamp, horns

Musical tone:. A

Metals, stones, and minerals: Black Diamond

Plants, real and imaginary: Indian Hemp, Orchis Root, Thistle

Animals, Real and Imaginary:  goat, ass, oyster, Satyrs and Fauns, Panic Demons

Vegetable drugs (plant extracts):  orchis

Mineral drugs: --

The Body: --
Diseases: --

Magickal image:  A man holding in his right hand a javelin and in his left a lapwing

Lineal figures: Carcer

Domain: --

Archangel:  Hanael (HNAL) Favour of God

Quarter: --

Buddhist symbolism: . Putrid Corpse

Qlippoth:  DAGDAGIRON - The Fishy

Far Eastern cosmological associations:

Trigram from the I Ching: --

b. Design and Title of Trump

America’s Tarot: The Soviets, Sputnik, American mountain ranges. Personages such as Nikita Kruschev
and Mikhail Gorbachev (Upright), and Josef Stalin (Reverse). The entrance to Club Vesta*. Ghost-over of
Anton Szandor LaVey to the waist in a pool; his reflection in the pool is Jesus of Nazareth.

Alternate: Upright: Alfie with an arm around his good buddy the Russian Krokodil. Reverse: Alfie inside
the smiling Krokodil.

*From Club Vesta. A work-in-progress by Yael R. Dragwyla.

The Divine Comedy Tarot:

Biblical Tarot:

John Burt’s MAD Tarot: A hapless Devil is dragged protesting down the street by an eager, leashed
Alfred & Moxie, like Dagwood trying to walk Daisy.

The Robert A. Heinlein Tarot:

The H. P. Lovecraft Tarot:

The Stephen King Tarot:

The R. R. McCammon Tarot:

 

c. Divinatory Meanings

In a reading the Devil card could mean many different things, and once again it is important to examine
the other cards in the reading as well as the querent’s situation in order to ascertain the meaning.

Most often the card means addiction to something or somebody: It may refer to a drug or alcohol
addiction or to a relationship where the querent is very unhappy yet ‘addicted’ to their partner through
fear or low-self esteem. The Devil card could also indicate an unhealthy obsession with something: sex,
money, a person… 

Sometimes it can point out that the querent may be either scapegoating somebody else or being
scapegoated themselves and being blamed for things they didn’t do. In a destructive relationship, the
partner may be treating the querent badly through verbal or physical abuse, and using them as a
scapegoat for their own downfalls by doing so. 

The Devil may indicate that the querent has self-esteem or self-doubt issues, or that they are in great
fear of something. It may also point to materialism and false beliefs, self-mutilation (which is often
caused by self-doubt and low self-esteem), or a feeling of being chained to a situation and unable to
break free. 

It could also indicate raw sexuality and desire, and funnily enough, marriage! This is because the Devil
represents bonds and chains, and the marriage certificate can be seen as a chain of sorts, since both
partners are being joined together and cannot ‘escape’ except through divorce. Marriage is, of course,
one of the ‘nicer’ chains associated with the Devil! 

In an advisory position, the Devil card tells the querent that they have issues they need to overcome in
order to solve the situation, or they have repressed feelings/issues that need to be brought out into the
open. It also advises moderation and caution, and reminds the querent that the material world isn’t all
there is to life.

On the other hand, the Devil card can advise the querent to stop being so stuffy and go out and enjoy
life!

d. Interrelationships of the Path and the Trump

17. Key 27
 

Peh p, “Mouth.” Trump XVI, The (Blasted) Tower. Mars Ú. Cardinal value 80; ordinal value, 17. At the
end of a word, takes the form [ and has the value 800. Connects Sephirah 7, Netzach, with Sephirah 8,
Hod. Roman/English equivalents: P; also, Ph, as in Greek f (phi).

a. Qaballistic Meanings and Theory

This Path, a lateral one, is the main girder of the Personality, linking the centre of creative power in
Netzach and the centre of concrete ideation in Hod. It is a Path, therefore, which holds tremendous
dynamism; it links directly the basal Sephiroth which are aligned with the opposite poles of the
Principles of Manifestation, the Positive and Negative Pillars.

It is rather like the principles in the structure of the physical atom, which is a complex of forces of
differing polarity held in together as a unit with tremendous force . . . so [that] the psychic energy bound
up within a unit of human life may be considered to be . . . [an] astronomical figure similar to the
amount of physical energy locked up in the atoms of the body of that human being, by the formula E =
mc2, through the binding energy of the Strong Force. It is energy on this scale that may account for
certain types of hauntings, particularly those of a violent or long-lasting type. Great shock such as
murder or sudden death may cause a splitting off of certain aspects of a Personality, resulting in the
great force that must be present for entities to build up etherically without prepared conditions and to
throw heavy physical objects about.

This kind of thing relates to rare types of spiritual pathology and need not detain us, but it does give a
concrete example of the high potencies involved in the makeup of the lower vehicles of a human being.
It is this force – again in direct line on this Path with the Lightning Flash – through which ‘every existent
being receives its spirit and motion.’ The Yetziratic Text also calls the powers of this Path the Active or
Exciting intelligence, for it is the manifestation of life-force in the lower worlds.

For this reason . . . Mars is well attributed to this Path, for Mars is essentially the planet of activity and
excitation and is indeed the Mundane Chakra of Geburah, the great Sephirah of Force in Activity. . . . The
colors of the Path are also varieties of red, essentially the Mars colour.

The Hebrew letter of the Path is Peh, signifying the Mouth. The mouth is that part of the organism that
takes in nourishment and utters speech. The receptive aspect can be regarded as the receiving of the
downflow of life-force from Netzach via the Path of the Lightning Flash. By this means the lower being is
kept in existence. Again, as this Path represents the structure of the Personality, the attribution of the
Mouth reminds us that the purpose of incarnation is the seeking of the food of experience in Form for
the benefit of the Individuality and the Spirit.

Considered in its positive aspect, as an organ of speech, objective communication, it is obvious that the
Personality also serves this purpose. There is, however, the deeper significance of the symbol in that the
mouth is that which acts as a vehicle for the Word. The Word . . . stands for the first manifestation of
Spirit itself. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God.’ (John
i.1.) In the case of the 27th Path the Word as reverberated down to the astro-mental levels of being and
formed a vehicle for itself – the Personality. It is through this Personality that the Word is uttered in the
densest level of existence, Malkuth, the physical world.

The shape of the letter Peh suggests a mouth and the Yod like shape inside may be considered as the
tongue, which formulates the Word in action, or else as the Word itself. The shell of the mouth is
represented by a shape like the letter Kaph, which also [appears] on the 32 nd Path as the scarf
enwrapping the figure of the soul or Spirit on [that] Tarot Trump, The Universe. The higher meanings of
the letter Kaph are a part of the 21 st Path which joins Chesed to Netzach, that channel between
Individuality and Personality where the purity of the Spirit first in form imprints its image on the as yet
formless levels of the lower self.

The idea of a vehicle for the Spirit is also given in the Tarot Trump, in this case in the form of a building,
called the House of God, a fitting name for what the Personality should be. Its esoteric title is Lord of the
Hosts of the Mighty, implying a conjunction of the forces of Netzach and Hod whose God-names are
Jehovah Tzabaoth and Elohim Tzabaoth, Lord of Hosts and God of Hosts respectively.

At first sight the design of the Tarot Trump calls to mind the Biblical story of the Towerof Babel by which
man attempts to build an edifice reaching the Heavens; and the resulting confusion of Tongues after the
failure of this project is confirmed by the letter Peh attributed to this Path – the Mouth.

The Bible states that the Tower of Babel was struck down by a wrathful Jehovah, who would not tolerate
man reaching such heights. However, the wrathful Jehovah is a minor tribal deity and there is an obvious
distortion of motives here. It is man’s ultimate destiny to become a God, and so the Solar Logos would
obviously not thwart the achievement of this aspiration.

It is probably quite true that Babel fell and tongues were confused because of man’s pride, but in the
sense that the pride of man, (the sin of separation), caused man to build wrongly, or prematurely, and
thus, by operation of Cosmic Law, to bring confusion and defeat upon themselves. It is indeed typical of
man to put the causes of the failure upon the jealous pride of God. ‘And the Lord said, Behold, the
people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be
restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their
language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.’ A priesthood, of whatever religion, once
it has attained earthly power, is very prone to find divine reasons to keep men humble and preserve the
status quo. But there is pride and pride, and man gains little by that false humility – (really spiritual
laziness or even cowardice) – that is content to leave everything to the priesthood, or to Jesus, or to
God. Christ’s parable of the talents has relevance here, the man who buried his talent received short
shrift.*

*On the other hand, the story of the fall of Babel could be the preservation, however garbled, of some
real historical event (see, e.g., Victor Clube and Bill Napier, The Cosmic Winter [Oxford, UK: Basil
Blackwell, 1990], concerning the possibility that events recorded in the Old Testament and other
documents from “primitive, superstitious” cultures actually happened, however distorted the memory
of them through time became as it was passed on from one generation to the next via oral and written
tradition). This doesn’t mean that Knight’s esoteric interpretation of the story is correct – after all, “As
above, so below.” But if Knight’s interpretation, given here, is apposite, that also does not mean that it is
the only possible appropriate interpretation of this or any other story. “There are many roads up the
Mountain – but only one Mountain.”

The story of Babel in connection with this Path and Tarot Trump then is a reminder to build one’s
foundations true – (on the rock of Faith, to quote another parable) – and true Faith at that, certainly not
the prideful Faith . . . which sets one up supposedly as better than other men. The modern occult
movement has tended to go very much in this direction but such an attitude is again the sin of
separation, and an illusion, for all paths to God are ways of synthesis, as ways to the One must be.

There is another meaning to this Trump which is revealed by . . . examination of the traditional design. . .
. [The Tower is not struck down. . . . [Its] bodywork . . . is unscathed and the crown-like roof merely lifts
up to receive the bolt of fire or lightning. The falling pieces are not bricks or stones but radiations from
the sky . . . [and] their number in the old Marseilles Tarot is 37, the mystic number – ‘the unity itself in
balanced trinitarian manifestation’ according to Crowley – which, multiplied by any multiple of three,
gives the numbers 111, 222, 333, 444, etc. Similarly, the number of courses of bricks in the Tower is 22,
the number of the Hebrew letters and Paths upon the Tree. The top of the Tower is a Crown, symbol of
Kether, with four battlements, aligning with the Four Aspects of God, and there are three windows, one
above two, showing the means of manifestation of force and again emphasizing ‘trinitarian
manifestation.’

The two figures falling from the Tower, though their sex is not plain on the old cards, are generally
considered to be a man and a woman. . . . [This calls] to mind the alchemical symbolism given in . . . ‘The
Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosenkreutz’ . . .

The story tells us of the summoning of Christian Rosenkreutz to go on a quest on Easter Day which lasts
for several days. His adventures are a summary of the initiation process. The first day he is summoned to
a strange marriage of a King and queen. The second day he sets out and chooses one of three ways – the
hard stony way of initiation is the one he chooses, almost inadvertently, from the broad way of normal
evolution and the fantastically difficult way endurable only to one in a thousand, presumeably saintship.
The third day he is tested along with his [fellow] pilgrims by being weighed in a balance[,] when all the
unworthy are chastised and sent away. The fourth day he is presented to the King and Queen and is
initiated into the secret knowledge of a strange temple, and shown a play in seven acts depicting
symbolically the history of the relationship between God, his Son . . ., and Earth the Bride. After this, the
King and Queen submit to be mysteriously beheaded. The fifth day he steals a glimpse of ‘the naked
Venus’ – Isis unveiled, which act subsequently causes him to be sent back to the world, no doubt as a
teacher, instead of remaining in bliss in the eternal company of the mysterious Order and the
resurrected King and Queen,, their real bodies having been secretly sent to a strange Tower in the night,
followed by them all journeying to the Tower. The sixth day they all take part in the alchemical process
of transmuting the dead bodies of the King and Queen into new life in the strange Tower of seven
storeys. On the seventh and last day they return with the resurrected King and Queen to the original
castle and are invested with the Knighthood of the Order of the Golden Stone and in view of his having
seen Isis unveiled, Christian Rosenkreutz is returned to the outer world..

The sevenfold alchemical process in the Tower is of great interest, for this Tower may be aligned with
the Tower of the Tarot Trump. In the ground floor of the Tower they are set to work extracting essences
from plants and gems to be used in the subsequent regenerating process. On the second level the
bodies are distilled in a retort and the liquor obtained run off into a golden globe. On the third level the
globe is heated by means of sunlight reflected in many mirrors, and when the glove is finally cut open by
means of a diamond, a large white egg is revealed. On the fourth level the egg is incubated in a square
sand-bath and a bird hatched out which is at first black and wild but which, on being fed some of the
liquor distilled from the bodies, becomes tame, the feathers turning to white. On the fifth level the bird
is put in a [bath] of a milk-like liquid and all the feathers are boiled off, revealing the bird naked and
shining, which process turns the bath blue. The bath itself is heated strongly and [processed into] a blue
powder which is used to paint the bird, all but its head. On the sixth level the bird is placed on a strange
altar which was in the Temple on the fourth day of the adventure, and there pecks and drinks the blood
of a white serpent in a skull. The serpent is revived and the bird then becomes a willing sacrifice,
suffering its head to be chopped off. There is no blood until the breast of the bird is opened, which
blood is then caught in a receptacle. The body is then burned and the ashes saved. On the seventh level
only certain of the pilgrims are allowed, the others being told that the sixth level is the highest and being
put to making gold from some of the bird’s ashes. The four who are allowed on the seventh level are put
to mixing the ashes with water and moulding a little man and woman, which are then heated and
become of a most beauteous aspect. These beautiful homunculi are then fed with the blood of the bird
– which after all was made from the original bodies – and grown to life size. Then trumpets are placed in
the mouths and fire enters through a hole in the roof, ensouling them, the now regenerated and
resurrected King and Queen.

The whole process is a resumé of higher initiation. The King and Queen before regeneration may be
considered to be the two aspects of the Personality represented by Netzach and Hod, and the initial
engagement to marry is well placed on the 27 th Path, for this Path directly unites these two Sephiroth.
The aim is, however, a higher synthesis, so the Personality is sacrificed, that is, the interests are no
longer paramount and its forces are turned in upon itself in a kind of ‘distillation’ representing the early
initiatory process which results in an egg, the germ of contact with the Individuality. This egg is hatched
out, that is, the Individuality takes over, at first crudely and in an unbalanced way, but eventually in
harmonious control of its lower vehicles. This is symbolized by the bird being at first wild and black and
then tame and white. Its Qabalistic analogue is in the Tiphareth stages of the Child, the first stumbling
efforts of the Individuality to gain control, and the King, the Individuality in full control. The bird has its
feathers boiled off and is painted with the blue tincture obtained from the liquid and the bath. This . . .
[represents] the processes of the soul on the 22 nd and 19th Paths, Tiphareth-Geburah-Chesed, where all
past karma is worked out and the Individuality/Personality realises itself for what it is, all its outer
vehicles accounted for and all evolutionary experience distilled to make the general ‘colour’ of the Spirit
in Form. In this archetypal example it is blue, the colour of Chesed and aspiration. There then comes the
high Daath initiation which is part of the Qabalistic Sacrificed God formula of Tiphareth. The pecking of
the serpent in the skull is a breakthrough to the Supernal Worlds, after which the Spirit ceases existence,
voluntarily, as a separate being in Form. The results of this very high Daath contact are all that most can
attain and it is indeed an achievement, symbolised by the ability to make gold. But this is a material
achievement, that is to say, the worlds of Form are not completely transcended. The highest initiation is
that of the Supernals where new vehicles of a spiritual nature are made and ensouled with the Divine
Fire from the Unmanifest – that is, a contact is made with the Cosmic Atom of the self, which originally
projected the Divine Spark into manifestation. . . .

(In passing, it is interesting to note that the Divine Fire was directed into the new bodies through the
mouth, the significance of the . . . letter Peh.)

In this process we have a completely new line of interpretation for the apparently downthrown King and
Queen on the Tarot Trump and for the Fire of Heaven entering through the Crown-like roof. The
implications lead us right into the Unmanifest beyond Kether, but the beginnings of the process are in
the Personality and the ‘engagement’ is the intention to unify the opposite poles of the self to the very
highest level.

On a lower level of interpretation the descending Fire . . . [comes] down the 25 th Path. Wherever Paths
cross is an important point upon the Trees of Life. Thus, applied to the etheric vehicle of man, the
junction of the 27th and 25th Paths may be aligned with the Spleen Centre, the centre which takes in
force from the environment. Thus the Tower, the House of God, in this instance symbolizes the body,
and the Fire of Heaven the inflow of pranic force. In line with this attribution is one of the titles of the
Tarot Trump of the 25th Path, the Bringer Forth of Life, and also Daughter of the Reconcilers.

The treading of this Path, then, may be rough going unless the Personality is well balanced and open to
the descending Fire. It is a Path of the simultaneous use of vertical and horizontal polarity in the vehicles
of the Personality. It is also on the line of the Lightning Flash, and the higher pole, or source of power, is
Netzach, which power is received into the form consciousness of Hod. If the personality has built itself
too rigid a form the downcoming Fire from Tiphareth may prove very disrupting because it has to blast
through the rigid blockages – if it can get through at all. On the other hand, too much ‘Netzach’ in the
build-up of the Personality may cause the Tower to be unstable, the mortar binding its bricks having too
little binding force – thus diffusion of consciousness would probably result.

It will be obvious then that the first essential of occult work is a balanced Personality, for without that,
the Interior Castle, to use St. Teresa’s term, (‘I thought of the soul as resembling a castle, formed of a
single diamond or a very transparent crystal, and containing many rooms, just as in heaven there are
many mansions.’), will be built on insecure foundations. 34

There was always an initiatory tradition in alchemy, both eastern and western. The transmission of vital
knowledge could only take place from a master to a pupil, following certain lines of working which were
within a spiritual environment – that is, the sacred and the intuitive, rather than the profane and
reasoning intelligence. Craftsmen formed secret and initiatory societies and guilds and, travelling from
one place to another in search of materials, carried their myths and lore with them. This initiatory
succession had existed from the beginning in Chinese alchemy and was implicit in the Hermetic tradition
in the West.

Initiation is the archetypal pattern of transition from one state to another, from life to death to rebirth,
the return to the darkness of the womb before rebirth into the light. In alchemy the ‘death’ of the
metals, the black, nigredo stage, is not only the death-experience of the initiation rites; it is also
psychologically the descent into the chaotic, undifferentiated realm of the unconscious, again; to return
to the womb, the embryonic state from which the new person is born. To go through the initiation rites,
both physical and mental, often so severe as to amount to torture, is spoken of in alchemy as the
‘torture’ of the metals, or of the vermilion bird, the phoenix of Chinese alchemy. For the ordeal, rigorous
dedication and strength of character were required. Indian alchemy held the adept must be ‘intelligent,
devoted to his work, without sin and master of his passion.’ Initiation is essentially a ritual confrontation
with death that vouchsafes the knowledge of immortality and kills fear of death.

Two of the artificers most concerned with alchemy and necessary for its work were the miner and the
smith. The miner operates in the early stages, bringing forth the ores, helping and hastening the process
of birth. That he was involved in the sacred aspect of the work is shown by the fact that the opening of a
new mine required a religious ceremony and elaborate ritual: fasting, prayer or meditation, incantation,
ritual cleanliness and sexual abstinence were necessary as in any other branch of alchemy. To interfere
with the Earth Mother is to tread on dangerous ground, indeed, in some cultures, such as the Tibetan
and Amerindian, it was altogether prohibited by sacred scruples. Even on the lower folk-level,
mountains, mounds and the underworld are treated with extreme caution as the homes of spirits,
fairies, dwarfs, trolls and gnomes. These underground workers were always mysterious and feared for
being in touch with underworld and dark powers.

There is a vast background of myth which incorporates all transformers; among these the smith
occupies an important but extraordinarily ambivalent position; he can be venerated as a god or royalty,
or despised as an outcast. In some cases he is the First Ancestor who came down from heaven to found
civilization. Like Prometheus, he brought the secret and use of fire to humanity and had a close
association with the sky and thunder gods. These were the white smiths. Among shamanistic tribes
these smiths were also descendants of a celestial smith who came to earth to teach men the use of fire
and metals. The smiths’ sons married the daughters of earth and all smiths are descended from them.
Smiths held a high position at court, or were treated as royalty, on account of their divine descent; they
were the divine artisans and the smithy was a centre of ritual and worship. Among Mongols and
in Turkistan the smith was also a culture here, ‘a free horseman.’ There is a tradition that Ghengis Khan
was a smith before he rose to become ruler of the Mongols and a world-conqueror. There were also
king-smiths in Africa. On the other hand, also in Africa, among the Massai, the smith was ‘an unclean
one’ and it was dangerous to go near his hut, while to sleep with a woman of the smith class could cause
a man to go mad or beget deformed offspring.

It was largely the pastoral, nomadic and hunting tribes, with the exception of the Mongols, who looked
down on the smith and regarded him as an untouchable. But in all cultures the smith was held in awe
and feared as a Master of Fire. He could reduce solid matter to liquid, something without form, and then
could turn the pliable liquid into the solid again. Like all ‘creation’ craftsmen, and like the alchemist, he
was a transformer and a transmuter of matter and dealt with the mysterious and magical; like the potter
he turned the pliable into form; like the carpenter he brought form out of the formless, the prima
materia. In his ambivalent position the smith could be creator or destroyer; he made both the weapons
of death, the sword and the spear, and the tools of life and growth, the spade and the plough. As the
blacksmith he handled iron, an almost universally disliked and feared metal, though it was sacred in
some cases as an apotropaic. This association with iron was also ambivalent; the metal is everywhere
dreaded by the spirit world, evil spirits, witches or fairies will not go near it or cross an iron object: ‘Iron
scares spirits.’ As an evil metal it was not allowed to be used in the construction of any sacred place, but
since it repels evil spirits, the shaman loads himself and his ritual robes with iron articles and iron is used
for this purpose in amulets. The blacksmith, as a master of fire, is naturally associated with the hearth
and this puts him in touch with the powers of the underworld; the hearth gives access to the forces of
the dark regions and the blacksmith originally learned his craft from an underworld divinity. In the
Hebrew tradition the craft was brought down to earth by the fallen angel Azazel. With this connection
with the powers of the underworld it was natural that smiths were credited with other magical powers,
such as prophecy and healing.

Another reason for the fear of the smith was the practice of blood sacrifice, both human and animal, in
the smelting of metal, although sometimes the sacrifice was voluntary. Also he was constantly
surrounded by evil spirits, menacing him and against which he had to take every precaution and there
had to be absolute silence accompanying his movements, all of which made him worth avoiding. Then,
again, his tools, the hammer, anvil and bellows have magic powers of transformation, while the stove,
cauldron and furnace all have the function of dissolution and death. Smelting is a work of fusion, the
abolition of individual identity, the return to primordial chaos. The ores, regarded as male and female,
yang and yin, become one in union. This has a sex symbolism which is further accentuated by the ‘heat’
involved; a symbolism also present in the hammer and anvil, the hammer being the formative,
masculine force in nature, with the anvil as the passive feminine. The hammer is the weapon of the
Thunder Gods, the Divine Smiths, with the anvil as the earth, matter. The striking of the hammer on the
anvil, bringing down fire from heaven, represents divine justice and power, this is why oaths were taken
on the anvil, a practice which continued until recent times when marriages over the anvil, at such places
as Gretna Green, perpetuated the smith’s ancient religious functions.

The power of fire is also associated with the stove, oven or athanor, in which transformation took place.
In Chinese alchemy the Deity of the Stove was frequently appealed to for help in bringing about a
successful transmutation, especially when the recipe entailed roasting the mixture for as many as five
hundred times. The stove was one of the five annual objects of sacrifice. . . .

Later the alchemy Deity of the Stove degenerated into the ubiquitous God, or Goddess, of the Kitchen,
seen in all Chinese homes. This deity . . . looks after the occupants of the home. As the ancient goddess
she was the ‘Old Wife’ of the first cook . . . . As God of the Kitchen the deity makes an annual journey to
heaven to report to the Jade Emperor on the conduct of the family during the year. Both god and
goddess have obvious associations with alchemy in the brewing of medicines and the roasting of
ingredients.
The Stove of Chinese Alchemy is the Athanor of the West. It has many names: a kiln, sphere, vase, egg or
prison, or it can be the grave, again symbolic of death and rebirth from the womb as a place of warmth,
growth and transformation. The heart can also symbolize, esoterically, the vessel in which transmutation
takes place, it is the ‘secret place’, and the melting of the heart is associated with the womb in the idea
of return to primordial unity – that is to say, the embryonic state of the return to the origins. This, in
Taoism, is the return of the Void.*

*In Japanese, the word for Void is one meaning “Sky,” hence Void is also associated with the Sky-Gods
and thus with Saturn, Uranus, and Aquarius. In this connection, see Keys 11, above, and 28 and 32,
below.

There were some alchemical cults, outside the Taoist tradition, which required blood sacrifice in the
concoction of medicines, rites of exorcism, or the casting of metals, but these were condemned by true
Taoists. Blood sacrifice, being based on the idea of blood as the essence of life, maintained that only life
can give life. There is also the universal theme in mythology and religion that the soul of one life can be
transferred to another; the god dying to bring new life to the world. Stories of unsuccessful castings of
such items as swords or bells, both sacred objects, tell of the deliberate sacrifice of a wife or daughter
throwing herself onto the molten metal, where upon the casting immediately took place, ‘life’ having
been given to it.34a*

*This quotation, which is taken from J. C. Cooper’s Chinese Alchemy: The Taoist Quest for Immortality
(New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., 1990), also applies to Key 31, below, which is associated with the
Planet Pluto and the metal plutonium. Oddly, plutonium is a chemical analog of iron, one of its higher
octaves, as it were, lying directly below it in the Periodic Table of the Chemical Elements, in Column 1 of
Group VIII of that table (old arrangement). See Keys 58 (iron) and 126 (plutonium) in Part C, below. –
Know anyone named ‘Smith’? J

Yetziratic text:

Yetziratic title: Exciting Intelligence

Hebrew letter:  Peh

Numerical value: . 80, 800

Title: The House of God / The Lord of the Hosts of the Mighty

Principle: --

Astrological assignment: Mars

Element (Alchemical):  Iron

Element (chemical): --
Ecological process, realm, or principle: --

Physical chemistry: --

Colors:  (King Scale) Scarlet, (Queen Scale) Red, (Emperor Scale) Red, (Empress Scale) Bright Red rayed
with Azure or Orange

Gods:

Greek: Ares, Athena

Roman: Mars

Egyptian: Hours

Scandinavian: Tuisco

USA: --

France of the Enlightenment: --

Celtic: --

Christian: --

Hindu:  Krishna

Voudon: --

Other: Kan

Biblical associations: Zamael (ZMAL) God has determined

Countries:--

Cities:--

Peoples: --

Meditation: Blood-Red

Magickal Power: . Works of Wrath and Vengeance

Perfume: pepper, Dragon’s Blood, all hot pungent odors

Magickal Weapons: sword

Musical tone:. C
Metals, stones, and minerals: ruby, any red stone, iron

Plants, real and imaginary: Absinthe, Rue

Animals, Real and Imaginary: horse, bear, wolf, boar, Furies, Chimaeras

Vegetable drugs (plant extracts): --

Mineral drugs: --

The Body: feet

Diseases: --

Magickal image: A tower struck by forked lightening

Lineal figures:  Pentagram

Domain: --

Archangel: Kamael (KMAL) Desired / Treasure of God

Quarter: --

Buddhist symbolism: . Blood-Red

Qlippoth:  Golachab

Far Eastern cosmological associations:

Fire. South. Summer. Brilliance. Heat. Bitter. Red. Controls heart and small intestines. The Vermilion Bird
(the Phoenix). Mars. Yang – Burning Wood. Yin – Lamp-flame. Iron. Realgar. Fire produces Earth (ashes),
destroys Metal, is destroyed by Water.

Trigram from the I Ching: Li

-------

--- ----------b. Design and Title of Trump

America’s Tarot: The Blasted Tower. Portraits of war. Upright: montage of images from the American
Civil War, World War I, World War II, a mushroom cloud in the background to express the consequences
of unprovoked aggression. Alternate Upright image: The Branch Davidian estate in Waco, Texas, aflame
after assault by the BATF on April 19, 1993 e.v. (signifying the catastrophic destruction of the image
of Americaas a land of real justice and freedom, and of Article II of the Bill of Rights). Reverse: The
American Revolutionary War, Ned Buntline, the planting of the U.S. flag on Mount Suribachi, other
positive Mars images to express the principle of self-assertion. Center: the Pentagon.

The Divine Comedy Tarot:

Biblical Tarot:

John Burt’s MAD Tarot: The Empire State Building, up which King Kong is climbing, is struck by an
airplane (or the MAD zeppelin, with Alfie grinning from the helm).

The Robert A. Heinlein Tarot:

The H. P. Lovecraft Tarot:

The Stephen King Tarot:

The R. R. McCammon Tarot:

c. Divinatory Meanings

In a reading, the Tower card often indicates a very difficult time in the querent’s life during which they
will feel very low and depressed. To them, it will seem like the worst thing in the world, but in reality it
will lead to something better for them. 

This card also points to the destruction of addictive and destructive thought patterns and behaviors, and
says that the querent will be able to break free from whatever has been holding them back and chaining
them down.

Sometimes, the Tower indicates a reality check, where the querent will be confronted with the true
nature of who he or she really is, or the true nature of the lives they are leading. This reality check will
help them see beyond the superficial and begin to develop themselves. 

This card can also suggest an upheaval in the querent’s life, or a sudden and difficult change. 

As an advisory card, the Tower tells the querent that they need to wake up and realize who they really
are and what their life is based on. This card advises the querent to look for the silver lining in the
turbulent clouds, and to try and look on the bright side during difficult times.

d. Interrelationships of the Path and the Trump

18.    Key 28

            Tzaddi x, “Fish-Hook.”  Trump XVII, The Star.35 Aquarius ü.  Cardinal value, 90;  ordinal value,

18.  At the end of a word, has the form { and the value 900. Connects Sephirah 7, Netzach,
with Sephirah 9, Yesod.  Roman/English equivalents: Ts;  Tz.

a.       Qaballistic Meanings and Theory

. . . [The] Tarot card, . . . XVII.  – The Star, depicting a nude female kneeling by a body of water, pouring
water from two jugs, held one in each hand[, shows above] her . . . seven eight-pointed stars
surrounding a larger star.  The subsidiary title is ‘The Daughter of the Firmament.  The Dweller Between
the Waters.’

This Path is distinctly feminine, joining . . . Venus to . . . [the] Moon, both feminine influences;  and Juno,
the Greek goddess36 who watches over the female sex and was regarded as the Genius of womanhood,
in its main attribution. Athena as the patroness of both useful and elegant arts (the arts are the
astrological characteristics of the native of Aquarius) is a correspondence;  as is Ganymede, also,
because of his almost feminine beauty and because he was the Cup-bearer.  Ahepi andAroueris are the
Egyptian equivalents.

The plant . . . is the Olive, which Athena is believed to have created for mankind;  its animal the
Eagle,37 which is said to have carried Ganymede away to Olympus;  its perfume Galbanum, and
its colour Sky Blue.  Its Yetsiratic title is ‘The Natural Intelligence.’  The jewel is Chalcedony, suggesting as
it were the soft watery clouds and the stars by appearance. . . . 38

Yetziratic text:

Yetziratic title:  Natural Intelligence

Hebrew letter:   Tzaddi

Numerical value:  . 90, 900

Title:  The Daughter of the Firmament, Dweller between the Waters

Principle:  --

Astrological assignment:  Aquarius

Element (Alchemical):  Airy

Element (chemical): --
Ecological process, realm, or principle:  --

Physical chemistry:   --

Colors:  (King Scale) Violet, (Queen Scale) Sky Blue, (Emperor Scale) Blueish Mauve, (Empress Scale)
White tinged purple

Gods: 

Greek: Athena, Ganymede

Roman:  Juno

Egyptian:  Ahepi, Aroueris

Scandinavian:  --

USA:  --

France of the Enlightenment:  --

Celtic:  --

Christian:  --

Hindu:  The Maruts

Voudon:  --

Other:  --

Biblical associations: Tzaqmeqiel (TzQMQYAL) God has Poured Out as a Fountain

Countries:--

Cities:--

Peoples:  --

Meditation:  Purple Corpse

Magickal Power: . Astrology

Perfume: Galbanum

Magickal Weapons: Censor or Aspergillus

Musical tone:. A#

Metals, stones, and minerals:  Artificial Glass, Geodes

Plants, real and imaginary:  Olive, Coconut

Animals, Real and Imaginary:  man, eagle, peacock, Sirens, Water Nymphs, Mermaids

Vegetable drugs (plant extracts): all diuretics

Mineral drugs:   --

The Body:  --

Diseases:  --

Magickal image:  A man with bowed head and a bag in his hand

Lineal figures: Tristitia

Domain:  --

Archangel:  Kambriel (KMBRYAL) Champion of God

Quarter: --

Buddhist symbolism:  . Purple Corpse

Qlippoth:  BAHIMIRON - Bestial

Far Eastern cosmological associations:

Trigram from the I Ching: --

b.       Design and Title of Trump

America’s Tarot: Follows Crowley’s system, hence is numbered IV and has the title The Emperor.  Elvis
Presley;  Ned Buntline; a montage of famous American handguns; Article IV of the Bill of Rights.

The Divine Comedy Tarot:

Biblical Tarot:

 
John Burt’s MAD Tarot:  Moxie, in a “Mafiato X” coverall, puts a finger to her lips, embarrassed but still
grinning, as she pours toxic waste from two barrels into a pristine river.  Eight stars look down,
disgusted.

The Robert A. Heinlein Tarot: 

The H. P. Lovecraft Tarot: 

The Stephen King Tarot: 

The R. R. McCammon Tarot: 

c.       Divinatory Meanings

Suggested meanings:  Upright:  Liberation, freedom, liberty, the Goddess Liberty. Homosexuality as a

preference, not a perversion.  Aquarius-ruled cities, e.g., New York City.*  Reversed:  Libertinism, license
(to indulge all whims), whim, a way of life dedicated to perversion of all good things, especially
sex.  Deviation from the normal or healthy.

*NYC is also ruled by Gemini. New York City has been the gateway to America for a great majority of
immigrants since the late 19th century, and for many has come to symbolize the United States of
America, whose natal chart has Gemini rising, Uranus in Gemini rising and conjunct the Ascendant, and
Aquarius, ruled by Uranus, on the Midheaven (natal data: July 4, 1776 e.v., 2:15 a.m. [as translated from
local to Eastern Stand Time], Independence Hall, Philadelphia, PA [75° 9’ West longitude, 39° 57’ North
latitude].  With both Gemini and Aquarius so strong in that chart,America’s showcase city, New York
City, clearly exhibits archetypal traits of and is ruled by those two Signs.

d.  Interrelationships of the Path and the Trump

19.    Key 29

Qoph q, “The Back of the Head” (referring to the cerebellum, ruled by this Path). Trump XVIII, The
Moon.  Pisces ý.  Cardinal value, 100;  ordinal value, 19.  ConnectsSephirah 7, Netzach,
with Sephirah 10, Malkuth.  Roman/English equivalent:  A guttural sound represented by the Roman
“Q,” closer to the “Ch” of Cheth, like the Scots “loch” or German “Achtung!” than to the Roman “k,”
but not the “kw” sound of “Qu” as used in written English.
a.       Qaballistic Meanings and Theory

. . . [This] Path has much to do with the physical body, the great complex of blood, flesh, bone and sinew
that the Spirit uses to manifest in Earth.  It is also concerned with the basic instincts, particularly sex, the
reproduction of further physical bodies.  It is thus a Path in which the mind plays little part and so may
cause a certain feeling of repugnance in any who operate more or less exclusively in the sphere of the
mind, or who . . . do not care to dwell upon the facts of physical life and the chemical and biological
factors of their own being in Earth.

. . . The fact of our biological physical roots is one of the things which has to be faced on the 29 th Path.

This does not mean though that we are entirely conditioned by them, or a mere product of
them . . . .  The Spirit and Individuality are, or should be, capable of controlling the instrument of the
Personality in spite of the . . . more automatically reflex parts of man.  We are rooted in instinct and in
the mindless protoplasmic regions of physical existence – and necessarily so – but this does not mean
that we have no responsibility for our actions. . . . 40

The Tarot card assigned to this Path is The Moon – Ruler of Flux and Reflux, Child of the Sons of the
Mighty.  This card shows a crayfish emerging from a stream or pond onto a path which leads between
two towers into a wild range of hills lit by the light of the Moon.  On either side of the path are a dog
and a wolf and drops of blood fall from the Moon.

This is a good compositive symbol of the processes of physical evolution, the primitive amphibious form
emerging from the brackish water onto land and essaying a long journey of evolution.  The towers can
be said to represent the opposite poles of manifestation and the dog and the wolf show the wild and
domesticated versions of a same general species.  The dog is an animal sacred to Hecate, goddess of the
Moon, and the primitive sexual side of the card is also apparent when one considers that to the Greeks
the sound of a dog howling at the Moon was the apotheosis of sexuality.  The blood dripping from the
Moon is a reminder of the ‘red in tooth and claw’ aspect of nature 40 – sometimes shown in the form of
Yods,41 signifying spermatozoa. . . .  The Moon is associated with the great cyclic movements of tides . . .
and also with the growth of vegetation and with the menstrual cycle of woman [see endnote 40]. This
cyclic activity no doubt accounts for the title of the Trump, Ruler of Flux and Reflux. The alternative title,
Child of the Sons of the Mighty, seems to signify the primitive Elemental aspects of the path, the
Elemental Kingdoms being ‘creations of the created,’ that is, creations of the Sons of God, not of God,
the Mighty Logos Itself.

The Key to the Path, the . . . letter Qoph, bears . . . the symbolism of the Back of the head.  This
attribution is strongly suggested by the shape of the letter, which is like the hind part of the cranium
with the top of the spinal column attached.  The spinal cord is the centre for many automatic responses
and reflexes.  The hindbrain contains the medulla oblongata, through which pass nerve fibre tracts
uniting the spinal cord and brain, also the cerebellum, which receives impulses from muscles, tendons
and joints via the spinal tracts, and thus regulates postural activity. 42  . . . The intimate connection of the
Back of the  Head with the physical coordination of the body recalls the description of the path in the
Yetziratic Text – the Corporeal Intelligence.
The astrological significance of this Path is Pisces, the Fishes.  In the heavens the two fish are spaced
quite widely apart and joined by a long ribbon or string – a kind of umbilical cord. . . .  At one level of
interpretation this could be taken to be the Individuality and personality linked together in the world of
Form.  In early Form experience the Individuality is held captive in Form by the Personality, but as
evolution progresses the situation is reversed so that the Personality is held under the control of the
Individuality. This is the long-term view of the principle of Flux and Reflux, the ebb and flow of the
direction of growth of the Spirit’s vehicles into and out of form. . . . 43

The following poem, a slightly paraphrased adaptation from Dion Fortune’s novelsMoon-Magic and the
Sea-Priestess, gives a very good feeling for the essential meaning of this card:

I am She Who, ere the Earth was formed,

Was Rhea, Binah, Ge.

I am that soundless, boundless, bitter Sea

Out of Whose Deeps life wells eternally.

Astarte, Aphrodite, Ashtoreth,

Giver of life and bringer-in of death;

Hera in Heaven, on Earth, Persephone;

Kali and Black Isis, dancing on Their hills of skulls,

Mikhail and Ezeli, Black Mary and Athena,

Battling demons in the sky,

Star-flecked Nuit, o’er-arching all the world,

Diana of the Ways, and Hekate:

All these am I, all are found in Me.

The hour of the high full Moon draw near;

I hear the invoking words, hear and appear:

ShaDdaI EL ChaI, Kether, and Rhea, Binah, Ge,

And ELITh, self-creating Creation

In Aspects three,

I come unto the one who calleth Me.

***

O  Isis  Veiled and Rhea, Binah,  Ge,

Lead us to the Well of Memory,

The Well-Head where the pale white cypress grows,

By secret twilight paths that no man knows,

The shadowy path dividing into three --

Diana of the Ways, and Hekate,

Selene of the Moon, and Persephone,

Mother Mary, Lilith, and Tsou-Mou,

Kali-Shiva-Chandi-Durga, Parvati,

And the Lord of Magick, Djehuti,

Thrice-Great Hermes, Psychopompos

And Divine Hermaphrodite.

The high full Moon at the zenith shines clear!

O hear the invoking words, hear and appear!

ShaDdaI EL ChaI, Kether, and Rhea, Binah,  Ge!

***

Sink down, sink down, sink deeper and sink deep,

Into eternal and primordial sleep.

Sink down, forget, be still and draw apart

Into the Inner Earth’s Most Secret Heart.

Drink of the Waters of Persephone,

The Secret Well beside the Sacred Tree.

I am that secret Queen, Persephone.

All Tides are Mine, and answer unto Me.

Tides of the Airs, Tides of the Inner Earth,

The secret, silent Tides of Death and birth:

Tides of men’s souls, and dreams, and destiny --

Isis Veiled, and Rhea, Binah, Ge --

ELITh, self-creating Creation

In Aspects three.

***

I am that Star that rises from the Twilight Sea,

Bringing men dreams that rule their destiny.

I bring the Moon-Tides to the souls of men,

The Tides that flow and ebb and flow again,

That flow and ebb and flow alternately:

These are My Secret, these belong to Me.

***

I am eternal Woman, I am She --

The Tides of all men’s souls belong to Me.

The Tides that flow and ebb and flow again,

The secret, silent Tides that govern men:

These are My Secret, these belong to Me.

***

Out of My Hands he takes his destiny,

The touch of My Hands bestows serenity.

These are the Moon-Tides, these belong to Me.

Durga in Heaven, on Earth, Persephone,

Diana of the Ways, and Liberty,

Athena-Medusa, Aphrodite from the Sea,

All these am I, and They are found in Me.

***

The high full Moon at the zenith shines clear;

I hear thy prayer of invocation, and appear:

ShaDdaI EL ChaI, Kether, and Rhea, Binah, Ge,

I come unto those who call upon Me.

***

Sink down, sink down, sink deeper and more deep

Into eternal and primordial sleep.

Sink down, be still, forget and draw apart

Into the Inner Earth’s Most Secret Heart.

Drink of the Waters of Persephone,

The Secret Well beside the Sacred Tree.

Waters of life and strength and inner light --

Eternal joy born from the Deeps of Night.

Then rise, made strong, with life and hope renewed,

Reborn from darkness and from solitude,

Blessed with the blessing of Persephone

And secret strength of Rhea, Binah, Ge.

***

Persephone, O Moon of men’s desire,

Thy lambent light illumines with cold moon-fire!

Persephone, Persephone,

Moon of the night, we long for Thee.

In Outer Space, the Springs of Being arise;

With tidal sweep, Life streams across the skies,

And in men’s hearts awake the slumbering fires:

Thou art the Queen of Dreams and of Desires.

Persephone, Persephone,

Moon of the Night, we come to Thee!

***

The Moon is riding high and clear,

O Lovely One, draw near, draw near;

To lonely ones on lonely ways,

Come down in dream of silver haze.

Persephone, Persephone,

All in the end shall come to Thee,

Radiant ELITh, self-creating Creation

In Aspects three.

Astrologically, Luna has diurnal esoteric dominion over Pisces, which rules the oceans and seas of the
world.  The Moon generates the great ocean tides as well as ruling the tides of Life itself and the
emotions that power those tides -–sex, reproduction, death, and evolution.  This Path is also beautifully
represented by the musical piece Bolero, which builds and builds on a simple theme to a crescendo of
enormous power, like the great rushing tidal-waves of emotion which build and build upon relatively
simple biochemical processes taking place within the body to impel us to waking, sleeping, sex, rage,
and all the rest of the vast spectrum of emotional and instinctual life, whether we will it or not.

Pisces and the Twelfth House of the Horoscope rule hidden things and things conducted from or in
hiding, including sabotage, espionage, covert operations, guerrilla warfare, murder, poisons, anonymous
contributions to charity, anonymous actions of any kind;  charity;  hospitals;
martyrdom;  masochism;  the past; past incarnations, the history and evolutionary roots of the individual
soul;  the unconscious, both individual and collective;  the oceans;  the evolution and extinction of
species and the development of the individual as processes.

Yetziratic text:

Yetziratic title:  Corporeal Intelligence

Hebrew letter:   Qoph

Numerical value:  .100

Title:  The Ruler of Flux and Reflux, Child of the Sons of the Mighty

Principle:  --

Astrological assignment:  Pisces

Element (Alchemical):  Watery

Element (chemical): --

Ecological process, realm, or principle:  --

Physical chemistry:   --

Colors:  (King Scale) Crimson, (Queen Scale) Flecked Silver White, (Emperor Scale) Translucent Pinkish
Brown, (Empress Scale) Stone color

Gods: 

Greek:  Posiden

Roman:  Neptune

Egyptian:  Khephra, Anubi

Scandinavian:  --

USA:  --

France of the Enlightenment:  --

Celtic:  --

Christian:  --

Hindu:  Vishnu (Matsya Avatar)

Voudon:  --

Other:  --

Biblical associations: Nakabiel (NKBYAL) Made Plenteous by God

Countries:--

Cities:--
Peoples:  --

Meditation:  Conduct

Magickal Power: . Bewitchments, Casting Illusions

Perfume: Ambergris

Magickal Weapons:  The twilight of a place and magic mirror

Musical tone:. B

Metals, stones, and minerals:  Pearl

Plants, real and imaginary:  unicellular organisims, opium, mangrove

Animals, Real and Imaginary:  fish, dolphin, beetle, dog, jackal, Were-Wolves

Vegetable drugs (plant extracts):  all narcotics

Mineral drugs:   --

The Body:  --

Diseases:  --

Magickal image:  A man with two bodies but joining their hands

Lineal figures: Laetitia

Domain:  --

Archangel:  Amnitziel (AMNYTzYAL) Born of the Covenant of God

Quarter: --

Buddhist symbolism:  .Conduct

Qlippoth:  NASHIMIRON - Malignant Women

Far Eastern cosmological associations:

Trigram from the I Ching: --

b.       Design and Title of Trump

America’s Tarot: The Moon.  Upright: J. Edgar Hoover, Harry Anslinger, Al Capone. Background

(ghost):  mushroom cloud.  Reverse: Hollywood and a montage of famous film-stars;  the martyred John
F. Kennedy.
 

The Divine Comedy Tarot:

Biblical Tarot:

John Burt’s MAD Tarot:  Spy vs. Spy bat at the Moon above a pool wherein crawls a crab with markings
on its back that form Alfred’s face.

The Robert A. Heinlein Tarot: 

The H. P. Lovecraft Tarot: 

The Stephen King Tarot: 

The R. R. McCammon Tarot:   

c.       Divinatory Meanings

In a reading, the Moon card indicates deception and fraud, and that somebody is keeping something
from the querent. It suggests that the querent isn’t being told the whole truth, and instead is only being
given the bits that best suit another person’s interest. 

This card also points to a difficult time for the querent, when they will find themselves unsure as to
where they should be going. They will feel lost, confused, and in the dark, and they may have been
distracted from their spiritual path. 

The Moon card may also suggest that the querent is going through some confusion at the time of the
reading, or that they will be confused in the future. This confusion will most likely take the form of
spiritual confusion, though it could also be to do with the situation the reading is about. It may also be
confusion about who the querent thinks they are. This card could indicate that what the querent thinks
and what the reality of the situation is are two totally different things!

It can point to secrets, and can suggest that the querent is keeping some secrets, or that there is a
clandestine (secret) relationship going on somewhere…
As an advisory card, the Moon tells the querent to follow his or her intuition and instinct, and try not to
fear hidden things and the unknown.

d.  Interrelationships of the Path and the Trump

20.    Key 30

Resh r, “Head.”  Trump XIX, The Sun. Sol  Ö.  Cardinal value, 200;  ordinal value,

20.  Connects  Sephirah  8, Hod, with Sephirah 9, Yesod.  Roman/English equivalent: R.

a.       Qaballistic Meanings and Theory

The thirtieth Path is the Collective Intelligence and astrologers deduce from it the judgement of the stars
and celestial signs, and perfect their science according to the rules of the motions of the stars.

Yetziratic Text:  The Flashing Colours and the emphasis on the Sun show this to be a Path of
enlightenment.  The Hebrew letter means the Head and so implies intelligence, while the Yetziratic
Text emphasises the perfection of science.  In this text, astrology may be taken to represent all sciences,
for the aim of all sciences, as with astrology, is the formulation of laws by which predictions of future
occurrences may be made. . . . This is the means of man’s technological evolution – the formulation of
laws in order to predict the operation of cause and effect on the physical plane.

There is also . . . the operation of causes on higher planes, as yet little understood by science, which
results in effects on the lower planes.  Thus the reference to astrology is apposite;  it refers not so much
to the largely superstitious newspaper astrology as the ‘starry wisdom’ of the spiritual realms, the
interaction of the great Logoi or Gods whose vehicles of physical manifestation are shown forth in the
heavenly bodies.  The Sun represents our own Solar Logos, who is omnipotent as far as this solar system
is concerned.  Thus the forces attributed to the Zodiacal signs are not so much emanations to Earth of
the constellations themselves, but are markers on a great clock which serve to indicate the type of force
emanating from the Solar Logos at any particular time. . . .

The term Collective Intelligence is a useful indicator to the factors of this Path for in its ultimate sense it
implies knowledge of the whole gamut of forces on every level synthesized into a centre of
knowledge. . . .

The Path leads from Yesod to Hod, connecting the Vision of the Machinery of the Universe with the
Vision of Splendour.  Hod . . . has . . . its roots in Chesed, the Sephirah of the Vision of Love.  Thus the
sunny aspect of this Path stems largely from the realisation of the Divine Love and Splendour which
motivates the lower planes of manifestation which in themselves are known as the Machinery of the
Universe, the etheric structures of Yesod.
Hod is the Sephirah of the Divine Messenger and of the Lord of Books and of Learning, and also of the
Archangel Michael who disperses the forces of darkness. 44  All this implicit in the gift of mind to the
human race;  and the flowering of rational thought after the ages of barbarity and . . . superstition has
been well called the Age of Enlightenment . . . .

Once can have too much of a good thing however. The Sun shining unremittingly causes life to wither
and die, and Reason unremitting and unbalanced has a similar effect.  The pendulum swings to and fro
just as night and day, or summer and winter alternate and the gross materialism of the nineteenth
century, the effects of which persist to this day, represents Reason gone beyond its due limits.  When
such is the case, no longer do we have the life giving Sun of the 30 th Path but the life enchaining Devil of
the 26th. . . .*

*On the level of neurobiology, neuropsychology, and neurobehavior, this has been amply confirmed by
current research.  See, e.g., Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars:    Seven Paradoxical Tales (New
York:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1995),passim;  Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes’ Error:    Emotion, Reason, and the
Human Brain (New York:  A Grosset/Putnam Book, 1994), passim; and Richard E. Cytowic, M.D., The
Man Who Tasted Shapes:    A Bizarre Medical Mystery Offers Revolutionary Insights into Emotions,
Reasoning, and Consciousness(New York:  Jeremy Tarcher/Putnam Books, 1993), passim.

This Path is also the polar opposite of the 28 th Path from Yesod to Netzach and it has great potentialities
and also . . . weaknesses brought about by human misuse.  The Person enmeshed emotionally in an
unbalance of the 28th Path is usually appealed toto ‘use his reason,’ which is, in effect, an appeal to get
his subjective Tree of Life balanced up within himself.  . . . [The] effect of the two Paths relates to the
‘thinking’ and ‘feeling’ types respectively – two opposite functions. . . .  Thus, concentrated working
upon one or other of the Paths should, in a normal person, effect a balancing up of the psyche, or an
integration process.

Just as an imbalance of the forces of the 28 th Path leads to a ‘glamour’ so does an unbalance of the
30th Path lead to aridity.  The Tarot Trump, Lord of the Fire of the World, (Divine Reason), shows
however, the true powers of the Path, the Sun showering golden rain upon two near-naked
children.  This is the outpouring of the forces of Life, Light and Love upon the young human race. The
wall signifies an enclosure, the limitation which is a protection, the cultivated growth within a garden
which is sealed off from wild nature.  This has its higher implications on a Cosmic level, for it is by
limitation only that growth can be attained. . . .

The 30th Path, moreover, in that it is the Path from Yesod, the unconscious mind, to Hod, is a Path on
which great wisdom can be attained, for Hod is the means of contact with the Greater Beings of
evolution concerned with teaching . . . whose main sphere of influence is in Chesed.  There being a
strong link between Chesed and Hod means that teaching from these high sources is projected down
the planes to form a pool of teaching, as it were, in Hod. . . .

Thus the 30th path . . . is the beginnings [sic] of the great hermetic Key, the path of Wisdom, which leads
via the 26th Path to Tiphareth. . . .
But Hod is no more a Sephirah only of barren reason than Netzach is of weak sentimentality. . . .  So just
as there is the lithe, hard splendour and the power of the 28th Path so there the expanding of
consciousness is the light of Pure Reason on the 30 th Path.  It is essentially a Path of Light – Sun Light –
the Light of the whole concourse of Solar Logoi throughout the Cosmic Space – hence, Light in
Extension.

There is a further range of powers upon this path of vast implication which is suggested by the Magical
Image of Hod – the Hermaphrodite.  The Path . . . is on a direct line with the course of the Lightning
Flash . . ., the glyph of which shows the order of the increasingly denser manifestation of the Spirit.  The
path represents the stage where the differentiation of the sexes came about.

The main cause of suffering within man is the gulf within himself . . . and the . . . gap between vision and
reality gives . . . ever unsatisfied nameless desire within man . . . .

. . . [There] are many still refusing to incarnate fully by hedging themselves behind a protective barrier of
mind and dodging experience as human beings.  As many of these are naturally attracted to science, and
the scientist has become a figure of power these days, there is some cause for concern. Such are quite
capable of destroying or experimenting with life for the sake of a theory and are quite able to do it
owing to the self-imposed deadness of their own feelings.  And when such Spirits choose for their
sphere of interest politics or warfare then, with the means of destruction now available, humanity had
better beware.

*A point well-taken, and one which we would do better in today’s high-tech, high-energy world to keep
well in mind.  See Roger Shattuck, Forbidden Knowledge:  From Prometheus to Pornography (New
York:  St. Martin’s Press, 1996) on the perils of taking too lightly the power and influence of the Word.

The Sun on the 30th Path . . . can throw a glaring light on the deviations within the self as they manifest
in the Personality, and thus it can . . . be seen that the Archangel Michael’s sword and spear are not
merely symbolic weapons for use against medieval pantomime demons, but are points of accusation
and cauterisation directed at the inmost heart of whoever treads this Path on its deeper levels.  The
Qlippoth need no mighty conjurations, they are embedded deeply and inextricably entwined within
ourselves, and so from this it will also be obvious why Hod should be at the base of the Pillar of
Severity. . . .  The 30th Path is a Path of great light but this Divine Light may be uncomfortably self-
revelatory, for the path corresponds in the Personality to the 22 nd Path of Karmic45 Adjustment in the
Individuality. . . .46

Yetziratic text:

Yetziratic title:  Collecting Intellegence

Hebrew letter:   Resh

Numerical value:  .200

Title:  The Lord of the Fire of the World

Principle:  --

Astrological assignment:  Sun

Element (Alchemical):  Gold

Element (chemical): --

Ecological process, realm, or principle:  --

Physical chemistry:   --

Colors:  (King Scale) Orange, (Queen Scale) Gold Yellow, (Emperor Scale) Rich Amber, (Empress Scale)
Amber Rayed with Red

Gods: 

Greek: Apollo, Helios

Roman:  Apollo

Egyptian:  Ra

Scandinavian:  --

USA:  --

France of the Enlightenment:  --

Celtic:  --

Christian:  --

Hindu:  Agni (Tejas), Yama

Voudon:  --

Other:  --

Biblical associations: Michael (MKYAL) Who is Like to God

Countries:--

Cities:--

Peoples:  --

Meditation:  Light

Magickal Power: .Power of Aquiring Wealth

Perfume: Olibanum, Cinnamon, all glorious odors, Frankinsence

Magickal Weapons:  The Lamen or Bow and Arrow

Musical tone:. D

Metals, stones, and minerals:  Crysolith, Gold

Plants, real and imaginary:  Sunflower, laural, Heliotrop, Nut, Galangal

Animals, Real and Imaginary:  Lion, Sparrowhawk, Leopard, Will o the wisp

Vegetable drugs (plant extracts):  Alcohol

Mineral drugs:   --

The Body:  Head

Diseases:  --

Magickal image: 

Lineal figures:  Hexagram

Domain:  --

Archangel:  Raphael (RPAL) Deliverance of God

Quarter: --

Buddhist symbolism:  . vision of Surya

Qlippoth:  Thagiriron

Far Eastern cosmological associations:

Trigram from the I Ching:  Khien   ______

                                                     ______

                                                     ______

b.       Design and Title of Trump

America’s Tarot: The Sun.  Children of all races and ethnic backgrounds, playing under a great golden
Sun in a fertile meadow.  “Purple mountain majesties” and “amber waves of grain” in background.

 
The Divine Comedy Tarot:

Biblical Tarot:

John Burt’s MAD Tarot:  Two boys pee against a wall while a Sun with Alfred’s smiling face rises above it.

The Robert A. Heinlein Tarot: 

The H. P. Lovecraft Tarot: 

The Stephen King Tarot: 

The R. R. McCammon Tarot:   

c.       Divinatory Meanings

The Sun card is one of the most wonderful cards to get in a reading for somebody else I think, since you
then have the joy of telling the querent the good news! This card represents all the joyful and happy
things in life. It indicates growth of the querent, physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually, and it
represents the growth and improvement of their life in general or the situation at hand. It suggests an
excellent state of health, and a newfound vitality and vigor within the querent, as well as a return of the
querent’s inner child and a natural curiosity and wonder at life. It also suggests shedding light on an
issue, or the revealing of truth and secrets that were once hidden. Whether the querent wants this or
not is another matter, and not one that this card will tell you about. No matter what happens, the truth
will out.

The Sun card indicates that the querent will ‘see the light’ and reach a realization or conclusion about
the situation in the near future, or that the outcome will benefit the querent and they will be very happy
with it. As an advisory card, the Sun says ‘enjoy yourself’ and warns the querent to stop worrying and
see the bright side of life. It advises the querent to stop being a stick-in-the mud and instead start seeing
life for what it really is. It also advises an open mind and optimism.

d.  Interrelationships of the Path and the Trump

 
21.    Key 31

Shin c, “Tooth.”  Planet:  Trump XX, The Last Judgment (in the Crowley Harris pack, this card is called The
Aeon).  Fire r or Spirit p (usually symbolized as a small circle above r, the symbol for Fire, but such was
not in any of the fonts available to me);  also, the Planet Pluto -- î or ß.  Cardinal value, 300; ordinal
value, 21.  ConnectsSephirah 8, Hod, with Sephirah 10, Malkuth.  Roman/English equivalent:  Sh, as in
“sheep”;  aspirated S (as if the S were preceded by a consonant or vowel and the H following it were to
be sounded separately, itself preceding a vowel), e.g., “Hats-hep-sut,” the Egyptian Pharaoh.

a.       Qaballistic Meanings and Theory

. . . [The] symbolism [of this Path] is primarily Fiery as opposed to the Watery nature of the 29 th Path
[which is] . . . the Corporeal Intelligence and is much concerned with the biological foundation of man’s
existence.  The 31st Path imparts direction, or the revelation of mental factors, which, developed to
grater and greater degree, cause the ultimate vast difference between man and the beasts. 47  . . . [It] is a
Path of instruction of mental levels. . . .

The title of Perpetual Intelligence indicates the spiritual factor behind the psychological evolution, for
although Hod is very much the Sephirah of mentality, its own Yetziratic Text states that it ‘has no root by
which it can cleave, nor rest, except in the hidden places of Gedulah, Magnificence, from which
emanates its own proper essence.’ The Sephirah Gedulah, or Chesed, represents that sphere where the
greater Intelligences that guide evolution abide, and is itself representative of the principle of law and
order in the Universe.  Thus the mind of Hod is of little evolutionary use without the informing ethical
principle of Chesed.

Hence this path is said to regulate the motions of the Sun and Moon, the supreme symbols of radiation
and receptivity.  In men this is the relationship between Individuality and personality, and also,
particularly on this path, the relationship between leader and led, for on this path are the analogues of
the first struggles towards civilisation by man and the formation of the family, the tribe and eventually
the nation.

Esoteric tradition says that primitive man was guided by inner plane beings, or Manus, examples of such
being Narada, Hermes, Merlin, and so on.  One of the keys to this path then is an understanding of
anthropology, just as keys to the 29th and 32ndPaths are a study of biology and primitive religion.

The beginnings of civilisation one equates with the discovery of the making of fire and its use for the
preparation of food, making of tools, protection from wild beasts, and as a centre for communal
life.  The astrological* symbol for this path is thus aptly the Element of Fire;  and the revelation of the
way towards higher levels of physical existence is shown on the Tarot card with an Angel awakening the
dead.  This need not be confused with the  . . . Christian belief in the one final assumption of humanity in
physical bodies to heaven – the principle behind the Tarot Trump is the awakening to new and higher
levels of life.
*Actually, Alchemical.  Astrology shares many of its concepts with Alchemy; but the idea of Fire is
primarily Alchemical in meaning, since it refers to a physical process with spiritual aspects. Originally
astrology was believed to apply only to metaphysical or purely spiritual entities – the sky or Heavens
were not perceived as essentially physical in nature by earlier civilizations, and the study of Heavenly
phenomena was of things conceived to be primarily spiritual in nature.  Alchemy, on the other hand,
was the study of the Spirit as manifest in “crude” matter.  The two disciplines thus complimented each
other, but worked from essentially different viewpoints.

. . . [On] a higher level the fire could be considered as an awakening of the Spiritual Will in man.

This . . . is borne out by the esoteric title of the Tarot Trump – Spirit of the Primal Fire. When the word
‘Primal’ is used in mystical symbolism it usually refers to spiritual factors, because spiritual
being was before anything is. The awakening of the Spiritual Will implies the sense of individual identity
in man, the realisation of himself as a separate immortal being so that civilisation becomes the co-
operation of individuals rather than the natural aggregation by instinct into herds.*

*By this criterion, beavers, numerous species of primates, ants, termites, bees, wasps, and a host of
other organisms are all civilized – which in fact is true, though their civilizations are not generally like
human ones.  Civilization – “city-izing” or “state-izing” -- is just as “natural” as herding behavior, no more
nor less.  In fact, “herd-animals” can be just as “civilized” as band-, pack-, colony-, solitary-, and other
organisms, in the sense that individuals in herds frequently co-operate quaindividuals on various
projects, from raising young and defending one another against attacks by predators to obtaining food,
water, etc.  Knight here displays a profound – and, unfortunately, typical – ignorance about the nature
of real living non-human beings.  See, e.g., Jane Goodall, In the Shadow of Man, Revised Edition
((Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1971, 1988); Paul Corey, Do Cats Think?:    Notes of a Cat-
Watcher (Edison, NJ:  Castle, 1977);  Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy, When Elephants
Weep:    The Emotional Lives of Animals (New York:  Delacorte Press, 1995);  Elizabeth Marshall
Thomas, The Tribe of Tiger:  Cats and Their Culture (New York:  Simon & Schuster, 1994);  Lyall
Watson,Beyond  Supernature:    a New Natural History of the Supernatural (New York: Bantam Books,
1988);  and Lyall Watson, Lifetide:    A Biology of the Unconscious (New York:  Bantam Books, 1980).

In fact our one – dubious – claim to uniqueness among all the rest of the living world is the fact that we
have a technology of fire shared by no other organism, the ability to make fire at will and create high-
energy technologies that could not otherwise exist on Earth.  Even then, we aren’t entirely unique, for
there are a number of other organisms who, though they cannot make fire at will, can use it for their
own purposes:  the Corvidae or ravens and crows, who like to “ant” with fire, and can even learn to
strike a match and touch it to a heap of trash to make a fire for that purpose.  Many birds have a sort of
vice involving picking up red ants and placing them in their wing-pits, where the ants, stimulated by the
bird’s body-heat and anxious to get free, bite the flesh in which they are thus trapped.  Apparently the
stimulation this causes the bird gives him or her some sort of exquisite pleasure, one which such birds
will go far out of their way to seek out and inflict on themselves.  If a small fire is available to them in the
form of a brazier or barbecue fire, they will often hover over the flames and “ant” with the sparks that
rise up from the fire, spreading their wings out to catch the sparks in their wing-pits. Possibly the legend
of the Phoenix – which is also associated with this Trump – came from observations by priests and other
bystanders of such birds who, flying by temples in which torches and braziers were available to them,
flew in and began to hover over the flames of the sconces or braziers, ecstatically “anting” with their
sparks.

Frighteningly, the organisms that come closest to rivaling us in our use of fire are not animals at all, but
rather trees, members of the various forms of botanical crud known as chaparral.  These trees, which
include, e.g., manzanita and true chaparral, have their origin and primary territory in areas bordering
the great deserts of the American Southwest, e.g., the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas and California
Coastal Ranges, where conditions much of the year are dry and hot. Typical succession-ecology
organisms, they move in quickly once other trees and shrubs which might otherwise have been too
difficult for them to compete with have been removed from their preferred terrain, generally by brush-
fires and forest-fires that have been endemic to such regions since the beginnings of life on land.  They
are not alone in this;  the gorgeous sequoias or California redwoods are likewise fire-selected, and like
manzanita and chaparral they set seed in the presence of fire, reproducing when a really hot fire wipes
out everything in the area, like the Phoenix going forward into the future in the form of their gametes
even as they themselves are consumed by the flames, dying that they might live on through their
young.  This strategy gives the gigantic sequoias a competitive edge right from the start over would-be
competitors who cannot emulate this trick, for the seed lands in an area that has been cleaned out by
fire, so that the growing young sequoia isn’t overshadowed during its vulnerable youth by older, taller
plants, which might otherwise block out the sunlight and garner all the nutrients and water from the soil
it needs to live.

However, these pyromaniacal little botanical monsters, the chaparral, not content to wait their turn
after an impersonal disaster strikes their habitat, go one step further:  they have learned to start their
own fires, generally by building up a vast positive charge in their roots that attracts Summer lightning
that is so frequent in the hot season in their native habitats.  The lightning starts hot brush-fires which
burn the chaparral along with all their neighbors – but unlike many of their neighbors, the fire-selected
chaparral sets seed under fire, and their offspring have a clear field, devoid of rivals, in which to
establish themselves.  Like their two-legged kindred spirits, human pyros, for chaparral, Fire = Sex, in a
big way.  Next thing you know, the little ****s’ll start smelting metal, and then where will we be?! J

Thus the gift of  Melchisedek which relates to this Path is asbestos, the strange mineral that resists the
all-conquering fire and thus symbolizes immortality and the powers of existence transcending Elemental
life.  This symbol stresses the factor ofindividualisation just as the beehive stresses corporate existence. .
..

Whilst the Path has high spiritual principles behind it, it is very much a down to earth one so there are
great opportunities to be found upon it.  It is a Path of living out spiritual principles rather than the
application of the mind to them of the 26 thPath or the more purely mental bias of the 30 th.  As the
29th Path could be pictorially summarised as a lush wilderness teeming with wild life, so the 31 st Path
could well be imagined in the form of the fires of a semi-nomadic tribe seen in the desert darkness.
The psychological factors of the 31st Path could be said to include . . . the higher instincts, . . . the more
tender feelings of parenthood and mating as opposed to the more selfish self-preservation and
procreative instincts of the 29th Path. . . .

. . . [The] Spiritual Significance of the path is aptly summed up the attribution of the Element of Fire, for
Fire implies the development . . . of individualised will, the fore-thinking of the higher brain, 48 with the
consequent formation of social units in conscious cooperation, and the development of technology in
order to gain dominance over the natural world. . . .

As this Path leads to Hod there is an influence upon it of the civilising aspects of number and speech. . . .
There are many . . . who use the power of speech to corrupt or even prevent communication but this is
a Qliphotic abuse of the Divine Powers of this Path.

Speech is of profound occult significance as is hinted at in the term Logos [Gr.:  “the Word”] for God, and
the bible is by no means the only religious book which reveals the profound higher import of speech in
‘In the beginning was the Word.’ There is a traditional belief that to discover the real name of a thing is
to gain power over it. . . .

Number, like speech, represents actual potencies, and is not merely symbolism.  The difference between
chemical elements, for example is purely one of number,* as is also the difference between
differentcolours, the notes of the musical scale, the temperature of a substance and also its different
states as solid, liquid or gas, and so on.69 . . .

*This is essentially true.  All that distinguishes an atom of one chemical element from one of a different
element is the number of protons in its nucleus.  All that distinguishes, say, red from green at the
physical level is the wavelength of the light wavicles(particle which has a massy aspect, the photon, and
a wave-aspect;  the term “wavicle” was coined by Einstein to encompass both aspects of light, wave and
particle) that gives rise to the sensations of the different colors.  The only physical difference between E
above high C and middle A#, say, is the frequency and wavelength of the two different notes.  See next
paragraph, and also Keys 33-126, below, for more on this.

As an example, the atom of the element Krypton has orbital tracks of 2, 8, 18, and 8 electrons about its
nucleus (the number of electrons in a particular orbit corresponding to the mathematical series 2(1) 2,
2(2)2, 2(3)2, [and so on], and the outer ring of the most stable elements such as Krypton, the ‘inert’
gases, always being 8), and differs from itsneighbour, Bromine, in that Bromine has only 7 electrons in
the outer* ring.  This difference of number accounts for the widely different physical properties that the
elements display in the world of appearances – Malkuth. On the other hand the nucleus of any element
contains charges of a different polarity [i.e., protons and neutrons], which are held packed in together
with tremendous force, a force which, when released, gives us such necessities of modern life as atomic
and hydrogen warheads. . . .  The factor of number could be attributed to the 31 st Path and the factor of
the latent power to the 29th Path and the differences of chemical properties, colour, density and so on to
the Sephirah Malkuth, the physical world.  Thus we can see how the 29thand 31st Paths complement each
other in their convergence on Malkuth.
*Aw, gee . . . and here we always thought that the Krypton atom proudly displayed a picture of
Superman inside a big circle with a slash over it on its little electronic chest . . . J

. . . [Also the] 29th Path represents the hereditary factors which make up man in the world, the power of
his instincts, the forces of his body;  the 31st Path holds the key to temperament, that is, not hereditary
factors of physique and nervous system, but the projection of a Personality from an Individuality;  and
the important keys to character here are not in physical ancestry but the ancestry of former projections
or incarnations.  Thus, as a treading of the 29th Path is a confrontation with the whole gamut of the
biological past, which has been recapitulated in the womb . . ., so a treading of the 31 st Path can be
revealing of past lives, or at any rate the factors in past lives which play an important part in the
temperamental make-up in the present life, for all cannot be revealed until the consciousness of
Tiphareth is attained, the focussing point of the Individuality.

To sum up, the ascent of the 31st path is an appreciation of the inner forces that make up the physical
appearances of Malkuth, objectively or subjectively.  The descent of it is the bringing down of the factors
of the soul which are important for the present incarnation. . . .  In one way, the Path may be seen to be
a lower reflection of the 22nd path . . . for all the Paths, particularly those on the same side of the Tree,
interlink and are analogous on lower or higher arcs with one another. 50

Spiritually speaking, Shin is the Path of the Alchemist, ruled by Pluto, Lord of the Underworld and all its
treasures.  The latter include the mineral wealth of the soil which nourishes plant-life and thus the
cultivars upon which civilization depends, and the subtler properties of matter which are made manifest
through Alchemical processing andpotentiation.  See the quotation from J. C. Cooper under Key 27,
above, as well as Keys 58 and 126, which have to do respectively with iron and plutonium, below.

Yetziratic text:

Yetziratic title:  Perpetual Intelligence

Hebrew letter:   Shin

Numerical value:  .300

Title:  The Aeon / The Spirit of the Primal Fire

Principle:  --

Astrological assignment:  Pluto

Element (Alchemical):  Fire

Element (chemical): --

Ecological process, realm, or principle:  --

Physical chemistry:   --
Colors:  (King Scale) Orange-Scarlet, (Queen Scale) Vermillion, (Emperor Scale) Scarlet flecked with Gold,
(Empress Scale) Vermillion flecked Crimson and Emerald

Gods: 

Greek: Hades, Iacchus

Roman:  Vulcan, Pluto, Liber, Bacchus

Egyptian:  Thoum-Aesh-Neith, Mau, Kabeshunt, Horus, Tarpesheth

Scandinavian:  --

USA:  --

France of the Enlightenment:  --

Celtic:  --

Christian:  Holy Ghost

Hindu:  Surya

Voudon:  --

Other:  Kan

Biblical associations: Mark, Aral (ARAL) Lion of God

Countries:--

Cities:--

Peoples:  --

Meditation:  Fire

Magickal Power: . Evocation, Pyromancy

Perfume: Olibanum, all fiery odors

Magickal Weapons: The Wand or Lamp

Musical tone:. C

Metals, stones, and minerals:  Fire Opal, Flint

Plants, real and imaginary:  Red Poppy, Hibiscus, Nettle, Almond in Flower

Animals, Real and Imaginary:  Lion, Sphinx, Salamanders

Vegetable drugs (plant extracts):  Nitrates

Mineral drugs:   --

The Body:  Feet

Diseases:  --

Magickal image:  Israfel blowing the last trumpet, the dead arising from their tombs

Lineal figures: Those of Triplicity

Domain:  --

Archangel:  Michael (MKYAL) Who is Like to God

Quarter:  South (Daron)

Buddhist symbolism:  . Vission of the Higher Self

Qlippoth:  Paimon

Far Eastern cosmological associations:

Trigram from the I Ching:  Kan ___  ___

                                                ___  ___

                                                _______

b.       Design and Title of Trump

America’s Tarot:  Title:  The Aeon (following Crowley’s associations).  Upright:  Images of Alchemy

(Transformation)  and Power surrounding Red Adair, the Magus of Fire-Fighting.  Reverse:  the Fat Man
(the A-bomb that destroyed Nagasaki) in its cradle prior to use.  Ghost-over: David Koresh and the
Branch Davidian holocaust of April 19, 1993 e.v., Koresh as Haar-Poor-Kraat.

The Divine Comedy Tarot:

Biblical Tarot:

John Burt’s MAD Tarot:  Alfred plays an accordion while buildings all around collapse from the awful
racket.
 

The Robert A. Heinlein Tarot: 

The H. P. Lovecraft Tarot: 

The Stephen King Tarot: 

The R. R. McCammon Tarot:   

c.       Divinatory Meanings

In a reading, the Judgment card most often signifies the querent is letting go of the past and breaking
free from any limitations they may have in relation to the situation. It could also indicate a new start in
life, or a new outlook on life, and a turn towards the more spiritual side of life. The querent may
suddenly change his or her views of the situation, or manage to break away from it completely and leave
it behind.This card indicates leaving problems and old attitudes and beliefs behind, and transcending
petty or pointless problems and quarrels. It suggests the rebirth of the querent in some way, or the
rebirth of their life, or a preparation for a new start. attitudes, and move on without them. It may also
advise that the querent remain detached from the situation, or that they focus on the spiritual side of
life a bit more from now on. It advises balanced judgment from a spiritual perspective, and freedom
from the conventions of society that may hold the querent back.

d.  Interrelationships of the Path and the Trump

22.    Key 32

Tav t, “Tau Cross” (t or T).  Trump XII, the World (in the Crowley/Harris pack, its title is the
Universe).  The Element Earth " or t;  the Planet Saturn Ü;  the Planet Earthï.  Cardinal value,
400;  ordinal value 22.  Connects Sephirah 9, Yesod, with Sephirah10, Malkuth.  Roman/English
equivalents:  T; aspirated T, sounded as Greek q (Theta); soft “th” sound, as in our words “thing” and
“thought.”

a.       Qaballistic Meanings and Theory

This Path joins Malkuth, the physical world, and Yesod, the universal unconscious and etheric web which
forms the foundations of physical existence.  It is therefore a path of introversion from the sensory
consciousness to the consciousness of the deeps of the inner world.  When one treads it one is boring
down into the unconscious mind and many and strange are the things that one may meet there.
It is like the hole in the earth into which Alice fell, leading to her strange adventures in Wonderland.  It is
also . . . the way down to the Underworld, trod by Oedipus atColonos, Orpheus in search of Eurydice and
many others;51  but primarily it is Persephone’s descent into the world of Pluto, the King of the
Underworld. Alice, indeed, might be said to be a modern version of Persephone, for Carroll . . . wrote of
the deeps of the unconscious mind.

The Path is also the way of psycho-analysis. . . .

The importance of Persephone is that she was the daughter of the Earth Mother, Demeter, and the
whole of this Path is intimately connected with Earth through the Sephirah Malkuth.  It is also linked to
Yesod, . . . the Foundation, . . . not only of physical existence but also of the whole of the higher worlds
whose emanations are reflected in Yesod.

Yesod is the Moon Sephirah reflective, magnetic, of hidden power.  In the earliest known version of the
myth, the Homeric hymn to Demeter, the nearest witness to the rape [of Persephone by Hades/Pluto],
apart from the Sun, who sees all, was Hecate, who, seated in her cave, heard the cries of the virgin
victim.  Hecate is of course a goddess of the Moon.

There is, therefore, a strong connection between this myth and the 32 nd Path, and it is significant that
this myth was the foundation of the teaching of the Eleusinian Mysteries, for as this Path is the way to
the inner life it is also the Path of Initiation.

. . . [The] aim of all initiation can be summed up in one word, Regeneration.

Regeneration is the bringing to birth of new life and so the initiate is often referred to as the Twice-
Born52 as opposed to the non-initiate Once-Born.  This re-birth is the contacting of the personality
consciously to the Individuality and ultimately to the Spirit.  . . . The processes of the Second Birth are
summed up in the upward line of the 32 nd and 25th Paths from Malkuth to Tiphareth, their
main colours being the blues of aspiration. The First birth is of course physical birth and could be
represented by the downward journey of those Paths, daily life being the nadir of these two journeys, in
Malkuth.

. . . [The] symbolism of the Eleusinian Mysteries was that of the growth of wheat. Wheat, together with
the honey-bee and asbestos are things said to have been brought to Earth from Venus by the great
Melchisedek.53  . . . The symbol of wheat applies to the 32 nd Path as the other two symbols apply to the
other two Paths leading from Malkuth, the honey-bee to the 29 th Path to Netzach, and asbestos to the
31st Path to Hod. . . .

The wheat grows and is then cut down, the sacrifice . . . of John Barleycorn, or even Christ.  Again, part
of the grain that is not made into food for man is sacrificed by burying it in the earth, but it springs up
again in the Spring, each grain producing yet more grains.  It is cut down again and the cycle repeats
itself with the Solar year. . . . In the cycle of nature death leads to birth and birth to death and in
accordance with the hermetic axiom ‘As above, so below’ the same process occurs in the psyche of man.
. . . The more apparent meaning of the symbolism is that Demeter represents the Earth . . . and
Persephone the corn, planted, remaining under the Earth, apparently dead, until it springs up anew and
Demeter rejoices, covering the Earth with growth.

There are aspects of the myth . . . which are not so easily accounted for by reference only to the
processes of vegetable life.

Persephone was carried off by Pluto when she was gathering flowers in a water-meadow near
the cave of Hecate. There is much Yesodic symbolism in this picture, and this is to be expected, for the
Underworld lies in the subconscious and the 32 nd Path leads to Yesod.

Yesod is the Sephirah whose Mundane Chakra is the Moon, that is to say the Moon is the heavenly body
which most nearly symbolises the powers of the Sephirah.  The Moon goddess, Hecate, sitting in her
cave nearby is an evocative symbol of the elements of the unconscious lying in wait.  Also, in some
accounts, the companions of Persephone were Artemis and Aphrodite. Artemis is again a Moon
goddess, while Aphrodite, while associated with Venus rather than the Moon, is strongly connected with
water, being born of the sea-foam.*54  There is of course an intimate connection between the Moon and
Water, and Water plays a prominent part in this myth, for in a probably purer version of it Persephone’s
companion in the lush, damp, water-meadow were the daughters of Oceanus.  Oceanus was a very
ancient Greek deity;  he was a river god who girdled the Universe and gave birth not only to
the Oceanids but to all rivers and all stars with the exception of those of the Great Bear.  Here we are
lifted into the supernal regions, the Great Starry River of the Milky Way, the Waters of Cosmic Space,
theGreat Sea, Marah, of Binah, and so on.  Oceanus is a cosmic symbol, the strange lands about his
outer shores can, on a lower level, be interpreted as the strange worlds of the subconscious, but they
refer ultimately to the outer verges of the Ring-Pass-Not of the Universe and the subconsciousness of
the Logos.**55

*Astrologically speaking, Venus is the esoteric Lord of the Sign Cancer and is exalted in Pisces.  Originally
Aphrodite, the Greek counterpart of Venus, was a Great Mother Goddess and had Her own cult as
such.  The Great Mother Goddesses are all associated with the full Moon.  It is of interest here also that
Luna, traditional Lord of Cancer, has Her exaltation in Taurus, of which Venus is the traditional Lord, and
is the esoteric Lord of Pisces, in which Venus is exalted.

**For additional aspects to the symbolism of Oceanus that might be useful here, see Victor Clube and
Bill Napier, The Cosmic Winter (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1990), p. 182 and passim.  Oceanus may
originally have been associated not with what we now call the Milky Way, but with the Zodiacal Light, a
trail of dust left over from fragmented comets that can be seen before dawn and after sunset, streaming
upward from the horizon, which at various times in history may have been far larger and brighter than it
is today.  The same is true of the term “Milky Way,” which also may have once applied to the Zodiacal
Light rather than to the band of Stars known by that term today.

The flowers that Persephone is picking are roses, lilies, crocuses, violets, hyacinths, narcissi, for the most
part sweet smelling flowers reminiscent of the attribution of perfumes to Yesod. The flower she pulls
when the Underworld opens is a narcissus, and there is a parallel between the mythological origin of this
flower, the youth Narcissus who peered in the pool, (the Magic Mirror of Yesod?), to gaze at himself,
and one of the entrance phrases of the Delphic Oracle, KNOW THYSELF.

The God of the Underworld, Pluto, then seizes her and drags her down to his kingdom in a golden
car.  The Greek conception of the Underworld, a world of shadowy figures, gives a good image of the
shadowy world of the etheric place represented by Yesod.  However, some hint of the potentialities of
death is given in the very name of Pluto, which means ‘riches.’

Meanwhile Demeter . . . sorrows for her daughter and even appeals, unsuccessfully, to the Sun, who has
seen all.  The Sun is a symbol of the Individuality, the consciousness of Tiphareth, which sees all that
occurs to the personality although it may not have complete or indeed very much control over
it.  Demeter finally sits in sorrow and mourning by the Maiden’s Well under the shadow of an olive
tree. Again there is much symbolism in this image, recalling the Binah symbolism of the Water
Dolorosa;  and the olive tree is sacred to Pallas Athene,* the goddess of Wisdom, a Chokmah
figure.  Thus we have a profound illustration of the workings of the Feminine-Side of God.

*Also originally a Great Mother Goddess, in this case, from the Lake Triton region ofLibya, ca. 4,000 B.C.
At that time She had three aspects: Pallas, the Maiden; Athena, the Warrior-Queen Mother
Goddess;  and Medusa, the Crone.  SeeDemetra George, Asteroid Goddesses:    The Mythology,
Psychology and Astrology of the Reemerging Feminine (San Diego: ACS Publications, 1986), Chapter 6
and passim. 

The well by which Demeter sits is a symbol of the 32 nd Path and the way into the Underworld and here
also we have the water symbolism.  The Divine Sorrow under the olive tree calls to mind . . . that Christ’s
Agony took place on the Mount of Olives.

In the Underworld Pluto gives Persephone a pomegranate of which she eats, a symbol of femininity and
fructification.  By eating of the pomegranate, or taking of the principle of fructification within herself,
she binds herself automatically to return to the Underworld every year, for only in the descent into the
Underworld is new life possible, it requires death to gain rebirth.  It is interesting that grief is the
experience undergone by Demeter at this time, for grief is also a species of death, a process of fallowing
which leads to new life.  The pomegranate, a fruit full of seeds, is strongly connected with Yesod. It
figures on the tops of the pillars of the Temple of Solomontogether with images of the Kerubim and
other Lunar symbolism.  There is a link here also . . . with Artemis, the Divine Huntress, a Moon goddess
who protected all pregnant beasts.

The symbolism of pregnancy and new life was also carried into the Eleusinian Mystery symbolism in that
pregnant sows were sacrificed to Demeter as well as fragments of decaying pork, which were later dug
into the ground.  Decaying matter is the basis for new growth.

Death and decay are under the presidency of the Fourth Aspect of God, God the Disintegrator,* the
other aspects being God the Father, God the Sun and God the Holy Spirit.  On this 32nd Path the
symbolism is very predominantly feminine, thus the Feminine Side of God predominates and instead of
Father, Son and Holy Spirit we have Mother, Daughter and Virgin Wisdom.**
*Originally this, too, was connected with the Moon.  Astrologically speaking, the Moon brings all things
into being and also eventually destroys or decomposes them.  The Great Mother Goddess of India,
Durga, also has Her Destroyer Aspects:  Kali, Chandi, and Parvati.  Kali, Goddess of War and Battle as well
as of Plague, is a Goddess of the Eclipse, especially of the total eclipse of the Sun;  Her husband, Shiva,
the Destroyer, is a God of the Full Moon.  The same symbolism applies to Pallas Athena, Whose Crone or
Destroyer aspect is Medusa; to Persephone Herself, wife of Hades, the Lord of Death;  to Ezelie, the
Voudon Goddess of Justice and Love, Who, like Kali and Venus Victrix, is also a Goddess of Battle as well
as the wife of Baron Samedhi, Lord of Death;  the Egyptian Goddess Isis, Whose crone aspect is Black
Isis, and Goddess of Vengeance and Retribution;  and Diana or Artemis of the Classical World, the name
of Whose Crone aspect, Hekate, means One Hundred, referring to Diana Far-Shot, the Huntress, Whose
great hunting-bow could shoot arrows one hundred stadia or more.  Of interest here is the astrological
relationship between Luna and Saturn, the Lord of the 32 nd Path.  On the average, transiting Saturn
moves at roughly the same speed through the sky as progressed Luna, about 2½° per month or one Sign
every 2½ years.  Like the Waning Moon, Saturn destroys and otherwise rules all manner of evils. Saturn
is also the traditional Lord of Binah, the Mother, the Great Sea. This is yet another set of
correspondences between this Path and the Moon.

There is a curious correspondence here in the biological realm.  The cnidaria or coelenterates  --

members of phylum Cnidaria -- are invertebrate animals, mostly marine, including jellyfish, hydrozoans,
and anthozoans, characterized by stinging cells and a saclike body cavity with a single opening for both
ingesting food and eliminating wastes. Some members of this phylum have an odd, two-phase
reproductive strategy involving alternating generations of asexual and sexual forms. One generation is
an asexual hydrozoan form, resembling tiny versions of the monster Hydra that was slain by the
hero Herakles (if one of her many venomous heads was severed from her body, one or more would
grow back in its place; Herakles killed her by using a torch to cauterize the stump after he cut off one of
her heads, so a replacement couldn’t grow back, and eventually managed in this way to cut off all her
heads and do her in). This form is sessile, occupying a territory which it defends from others of its kind,
eating and growing until it reaches reproductive maturity.  At that time, it buds off gametes, haploid
sexual forms, some of which are male and some female.  These sexual forms are motile, and often move
great distances from their parent’s home territory before taking mates, reproducing, and dying.  They
eat little before this time;  their value for the species is essentially reproductive, and once they have
reproduced they die off, because otherwise they would consume food and other resources needed by
their offspring.  Because they move far from their birthplace before mating, however, they also ensure
that their offspring are likely to begin life in areas far from others of their kind, giving them a free field to
establish themselves and grow to maturity during the most vulnerable phase of their lives.  Their
offspring are not the jellyfish-like sexual forms like their parents; instead, they are asexual hydra-like
forms, like their grandparents.  It is of interest here that the sexual phase of such organisms is called
the medusa, in contrast to the alternating, asexual phase of the species.  In connection with the myth of
Medusa and Her historical relation to Pallas Athena, by Classical times Pallas Athena was universally
regarded as the Virgin Goddess, i.e., as asexual.  As related in the myth of Perseus, Medusa had as Her
lover Poseidon, Who was frequently at loggerheads with Athena in many of the myths, jealous of Her
following and always conniving to get it for Himself.  Pallas Athena became enraged when She learned
that Medusa consummated Her tryst with Poseidon in one of Athena’s own temples.  To avenge Herself
on Medusa for this sacrilege, Athena equipped the hero Perseus with various weapons and words of
wisdom and sent him out to kill Medusa, Who had already been changed into a horrible monster by
Athena as well, by means of a curse.  Perseus managed to kill Medusa successfully, trapping her in
atemple of Poseidon.  In Her death-throes, Medusa gave birth to twin children, sired on her by
Poseidon, a beautiful winged horse, Pegasus, and the hero Chrysaor, whose weapon was a sword
shaped like the Crescent Moon.  Biology recapitulates history, apparently, at least as far as
nomenclature of the science goes;  the sexual phase of the aforementioned coelenterate is called a
medusa, as opposed to its asexual phase, just as, by Classical times, the sexual or Crone aspect of Pallas
Athena, Medusa, had become culturally alienated from Her asexual aspects!

For more on the Greek religious stories concerning Pallas Athena and Medusa, see Robert Graves, The
Greek Myths (in two volumes.  New York:  Penguin Books, 1955, 1960), especially Chapters 25 (Volume I,
pp. 96-100) and 73 (Volume I, pp. 237-244).

**The Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost may have been a patriarchist revision of the Triune
Goddess of all ancient human cultures, which comprised Crone or Hag (Destroyer/Protector), Matron,
and Maiden or Virgin.  In that case, the symbolism is exactly the same:  God the Father is the Full Moon,
God the Son is the Young or Waxing Moon, God the Holy Ghost is the New Moon, and God the
Destroyer is the Waning Moon.  The Gnostic Quartet of God the Father, Mary the Mother, Jesus the Son,
and Shekina or Sophia the (Feminine) Holy Spirit transcends both
these matriarchist and patriarchist configurations of God, combining Masculine and Feminine in a
balanced way, symbolized by the formula Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh (IHVH), which can be easily associated with
the Tree of Life as follows:  Father-God = Chokmah; Mother-Goddess = Binah;  God the Son
= Tiphareth;  and the Divine Daughter, Sophia, as Malkuth.  In the Tarot, these are respectively
symbolized by the Knights, the Queens, the Kings, and the Pages of the Court Cards;  the Deuces, Treys,
Sixes, and Tens of the Lower Arcana;  and Trumps IX, IV, VI, and IV’ of the Major Arcana.

In feminine terms, the Fourth Aspect is best symbolised by the Medusa, who had a wild, cold beauty
that no man could bear to look upon without the shield of the Divine Wisdom. . . . Lacking the ability to
look calmly and clearly at the beautiful and terrible face, men were turned to stone; they fell into the
mortal idea of death.56

*See Demetra George, op. cit.,  concerning the relationship between Pallas Athena and

Medusa.  Medusa seems to be the wild, uncontrolled or unconscious aspect of Pallas Athena, Pallas
Athena in Her aspect as the Destroyer or as the fearsome Crone Who is in control of inconceivably
powerful and frightening Magick, assumed by calling up Kundalini energy via Tantric Magick or the use
of strange drugs. Magick of that sort is something that destroys the practitioner unless he or she is
prepared in advanced by the acquisition of true Athenian wisdom and perspective. (There is also a much
bawdier interpretation of the Medusa: that aspect of Woman quite capable of turning certain parts of
men into stone, in which condition they – let’s just say that such is the case of the Little Head doing all
the thinking instead of the Big Head . . .

As all the Gods are aspects of one God so are all the goddesses aspects of one Goddess, and the one
God and the one Goddess are of course the two sides of the same God, the androgynous Elohim of
Genesis.

In the fragments of a rite of Isis given in Dion Fortune’s novels ‘The Sea Priestess’ and ‘Moon Magic’ . . .
the all-inclusiveness of the Feminine Side of the Deity is given as follows:

I am she who ere the earth was formed

Was Rhea, Binah, Ge.

I am that soundless, boundless, bitter sea

Out of whose deeps life wells eternally.

Astarte, Aphrodite, Ashtoreth

Giver of life and bringer-in of death;

Hera in heaven, on earth Persephone;

Diana of the Ways and Hecate.

All these am I and they are seen in me.

And the same source also gives a version of the entrance to the 32 ndPath:

Sink down, sink down, sink deeper and more deep

Into eternal and primordial sleep.

Sink down, be still, forget and draw apart

Into the inner earth’s most secret heart.

Drink of the waters of Persephone,

The secret well beside the sacred tree . . .

Who drinks the waters of that hidden well

Shall see the things whereof he dare not tell –

Shall tread the shadowy path that leads to me –

Diana of the Ways and Hecate,

Selene of the Moon, Persephone.

...

. . . [The] etheric polarity of sex . . . has the directest relevance to the 32nd Path and while a knowledge of
the spiritual factors is necessary for an understanding of a path this is no substitute for experience,
which, when on the lower levels of the Tree, must and should be of Earth earthy.

But the sensory world applies in the main to Malkuth and the 32 ndpath is an Inner Way, although still
very much connected with the Earth. On the personal level Demeter is a part of the self, as is
Persephone and indeed all the gods.  Categorizing crudely, one could say that in the myth the Sun was
the Individuality looking down upon all that happens as a portion of the personality, (Persephone), is
drawn into the unconscious depths to be apparently destroyed, to the grief of the rest of the
Personality, (Demeter);  only to re-emerge later, like the Spring corn, bearing life even more
abundantly.  In Christian terms the myth is expressed in terms of the Agony, Trial, Crucifixion and
Descent into Hell followed by the Resurrection and Ascension.

The teaching is basic to eternal principles and so appears again and again in different guises in
accordance with the imaginative needs of the times and the nations.  It is a process of withdrawal and
return and is dealt with at some length in P. W. Martin’s ‘Experiment in Depth’ . . ., the poetry of T. S.
Eliot and the historical work of A. J. Toynbee. Toynbee’s thesis is that at a time of crisis in
any civilisation certain individuals turn from the outer world to the inner life of the psyche and
discovering there a new way of life return to the outer world to form a creative minority which acts as a
leaven for the renewal of that civilization.

The process is also summarised in a portion of the rite of Isis:  ‘In death men go to her (Persephone)
across the shadowy river, for she is the keeper of their souls until the dawn.  But there is also a death in
life, and this likewise leadeth on to rebirth.  Why fear ye the Dark Queen, O men?  She is
the Renewer.  From sleep we arise reborn;  by the embraces of Persephone are men made powerful.

‘For there is a turning-within of the soul whereby men come to Persephone;  they sink back into the
womb of time;  they become as the unborn;  they enter into the kingdom where she rules as
queen;  they are made negative and await the coming of life.

‘And the Queen of Hades cometh unto them as a bridegroom, and they are made fertile for life and go
forth rejoicing, for the touch of the Queen of the Kingdoms of Sleep hath made them potent.’*
*See Part 11 of Volume II, Book 2 of my textbook on the esoteric Arts and Sciences,New Magicks for a
New Age, on Persephone and the Sephirah Hod-i = Ö-1.

It is obvious from this that the Path of Return is as important as the path of Withdrawal. In other words,
the 32nd path has to be trodden both ways – the Withdrawal from Malkuth to Yesod and the Return
from Yesod to Malkuth.  This can hardly be stressed enough for it is the refusal to come down to Earth,
literally, that is the cause of the bulk of spiritual pathology – the root of sin, disease, ignorance.  It is the
real blasphemy, a rejection of the work of the Father in Heaven, a rejection of the Universe.  (The
Universe, let it be noted, is the Tarot Trump of this Path.) Until physical existence in the Universe is
willingly accepted by the spirit the Initiation of the Nadir cannot take place.  Malkuth is the gate, the
door to evolution and the work of destiny.  Evolution cannot take place until Involution is complete.

Hubbard has stated that one of the marks of an unabberated human being is the ability to face chaos or
disorder and stick with it;  in other words, not to escape into apathy, grief, anger,
facetiousness, intellectualising, sanctimony, false mysticism or any other of the myriad methods of
running away.  As a result of Original Sin this planet is in a state of chaos and disorder. It need not have
been, but it is, and this fact must be accepted.  The Initiation of the Nadir is the ability to face things as
they are, to accept oneself and one’s sins and distortions, to accept others and their sins and
distortions, realising that the way each has come is the way each has come, and that mutual
recriminations or flattering falsifications will not help matters one hairs-breadth.

This attitude has been put forward by writers such as Nietzsche and Whitman amongst others, together
with a certain amount of varying personal distortion, and it has of recent years even become something
of an intellectual catchword – Acceptance. This is laudable in its way but the acceptance has to be a
complete and true one, (an attitude of the whole being, not a posture of the mind), for the Initiation to
be a real one.

. . . [One] must be willing to face, and go through with, one’s own Crucifixion before the subsequent
Resurrection and Ascension can be achieved – and all without fear or attempts to propitiate one’s own
particular Herod, Pilate, Caiphas, or mob – objective or subjective.

The symbols attributed to the 32nd Path confirm this process.  The Key to this path is the letter Tau,
meaning a Cross.  The Cross is not only the Cross of Calvary but the Equal-Armed Cross and the Tau
Cross.  The simple cross of equal arms is the Point, a symbol of Spirit and Light, extended in four
directions -–Light in Extension. It is also the Cross of the Elements, the Elements being a reflection in
Malkuth of the Four Holy Living Creatures in Kether which appear at the corners of the Tarot Trump of
the Universe.*  This card is called The Great One of the Night of Time and one of the contacts of this
Path is the contact with the Great One, who can be considered Godhead Itself.  The small fragment of
God-consciousness assigned to each man is the Holy Guardian Angel, the Knowledge and Conversation
of which is the Spiritual Experience of Malkuth.

*These are the Cherubim, which surround and shield the Throne of the Most High (God in Kether).  They
symbolize the four Aspects of the Moon: Waxing ×, Full O, Waning ñ, and New ð.  Astrologically they
correspond to the four Cherubic (Fixed) Signs:  Taurus, the Bull, mid-Spring;  Leo, the Lion, mid-
Summer;  Scorpio, the Scorpion, mid-Autumn;  and Aquarius, the Man, mid-Winter.

The Tau Cross is a three-armed cross, that is, a cross without the upper [portion of the vertical] bar, and
besides being the male or virile part of the Egyptian ankh, symbol of life, it also signifies two forces
impacting on a higher level and producing a form on a denser level. All form is built up of opposing
higher forces locked together. The shape of the letter Tau suggests the letter Resh, meaning a head, but
with a downward extension, ending with a virile Yod.  Thus it can signify the Spirit or Head, (a Kether
symbol), sending its force downward into densest manifestation. The downward projection could also
be likened to an inverted letter Vau, meaning a Nail.  This suggests the Spirit nailed to the Cross of
Matter to put it in rather grim terms, but terms which serve to show the parallel between Cosmic and
Christian symbolism.  Being upside down, as the Vau is, is a symbol of sacrifice or reflection –
exemplified for example in the Tarot Trump of the Hanged man – and it is also visual representation of
the Hermetic axiom ‘As above, so below.’

*Anent which it might be appropriate here to mention that Saturn, the Lord of this Path, also rules
history.  History as we have lived it is the mundane reflection of processes on the Inner Planes and the
Will of the Gods.  “As above, so below” – historically speaking, the crosses upon which Jesus of Nazareth
and so many others were crucified by the Romans was almost certainly in the form of a Tau cross rather
than either the cross represented on traditional Christian crucifixes, with four arms, the uppermost of
which is of shorter length than the lowermost one, or the equal-armed cross.

The astrological sign [sic;    actually, it’s a planet] of the Path is Saturn, a sign [i.e.,symbol or sigil, in the
sense in which Knight uses the term here;    obviously, he doesn’t mean by it “astrological sign,” which is
a Solar month!] composed of the Cross and the Moon, and thus apt for the linking of Malkuth and
Yesod.  Saturn is considered to be the planet of restriction and limitation and therefore implies Form.  It
is also a planet of Supernal contacts however and so, as with Malkuth, there is an intimate connection
between this Path and the Sephirah Binah, the Mother of Form.

The Sickle is also a symbol of Saturn, as implied by the shape of the astrological sign [i.e., symbol], and
this was the weapon with which Cronos (Time)** castrated his father Uranus (Space). 57  Here again in
symbolic guise is the limitation and constriction of Spirit into Time and Form.  The sickle is also the
reaping instrument, recalling the wheat and grain Mysteries.

*Many scholars believe that the equation of Cronos, Saturn, with Chronos, Time, was either a Greek pun
or a Classical confusion of etymology. However, see Clube and Napier, op. cit., pp. 57, 58, 65, 66, 170,
186.
The fact that one’s final journey up the 32 nd Path will be in the processes of physical death is emphasized
in the fact that the popular figure of Death is a skeleton holding a reaping hood [sickle].58  Father Time is
another popular figure similarly equipped.* 59

*For some outstanding parables concerning Death and Time, see the marvelous Discworld novels of
Terry Pratchett such as, e.g., Reaper Man (New York: ROC/Penguin Books, 1991), Mort (Signet/NAL
Books, 1987), Soul Music (New York:  Harper/Prism, 1995), Equal Rites  (New York: Signet/NAL, 1987),
etc.

The Tarot Trump of the Universe shows a maiden dancing within a framing wreath, usually holding a rod
in each hand, . . . images of the Four Holy Living Creatures at the corners of the card. There is a scarf
about the maiden in the shape of a letter Kaph [Key 21, Trump X,Fortune], said to conceal the fact that
she has male genitals and is thus really hermaphroditic.  Traditionally . . . Kaph means the palm of the
Hand, which according to cheiromancers reveals character as well as past and future. . . .

The figure on Trump XXI can be considered to be a symbol of the soul, as feminine, or the Spirit, as
androgynous.  The Androgyne can be referred to the Machinery of the Universe of Yesod.  The rods,
often spirals, may be either the positive and negative modes of force which make up manifestation of
the principles of involution and evolution. In brief, the card may be said to represent the Spirit, taken on
form, in the frame of the manifest Universe. In Eastern terms, Shiva dancing.

The Yetsiratic Text of the 32nd Path, which describes it as the Administrative Intelligence, indicates that
the Spirit should be in control of the whole of the seven vehicles of man, represented by the planets. In
etheric and physical terms these have their analogues in the Chakras and the endocrine glands. 60

The Saturn/Binah symbolism of this path relates closely to the Divine Mother, the Feminine-Side of God,
which in pre-Christian times was the vehicle for worship of the Second or Love Aspect of the Deity, now
known more generally as the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son. The full descent of the Spirit into
Matter is exemplified by the Crucifixion, the Beautiful Naked Man of Yesod on the Tau or Cross of the
32nd Path. The Path represents therefore the first stages of Devotional Mysticism as well as a Way-in to
the inner planes and the unconscious mind.  Its main lessons are, ascending, the existence of the
causality of things on a higher or deeper level than the physical world; and descending, the acceptance
of densest Form limitation by the Spirit. . . .61

Yetziratic text:

Yetziratic title:  Administrative Intelligence

Hebrew letter:   Tau

Numerical value:  . 400

Title:  The Great One of the Night of Time

Principle:  --
Astrological assignment:  Saturn

Element (Alchemical):  Lead

Element (chemical): --

Ecological process, realm, or principle:  --

Physical chemistry:   --

Colors:  (King Scale) Indigo, (Queen Scale) Black, (Emperor Scale) Blue-Black, (Empress Scale) Black rayed
Blue

Gods: 

Greek: Athena, Demeter, Gaia

Roman:  Saturn, Ceres, Terminus, Astraea

Egyptian:  Sebek, Mako

Scandinavian:  --

USA:  --

France of the Enlightenment:  --

Celtic:  --

Christian:  --

Hindu:  Brahma

Voudon:  --

Other:  Divine Mother, the Feminine-Side of God, Khan

Biblical associations: Luke, Ephesus, Cassiel (KSYAL) Fool of God

Countries:--

Cities:--

Peoples:  --

Meditation:  Quiescence

Magickal Power: . Works of Malediction and Death, Curses

Perfume:  Assafoetida, Scammony, Indigo, Sulphur, all evil odors

Magickal Weapons: The Sickle

Musical tone:. A

Metals, stones, and minerals:  Onyx, Lead, Black Marble

Plants, real and imaginary:  Ash, Cypress, hellbore, Yew, Nightshade, Elm, Oak, Ivy, Cereals

Animals, Real and Imaginary:  Crocodile, Bull, Ghouls

Vegetable drugs (plant extracts): --

Mineral drugs:   Lead

The Body:  Belly

Diseases:  --

Magickal image:  Quadrature of the circle

Lineal figures:  Triangle

Domain:  --

Archangel:  Tzaphqiel (TzPQYAL) Watchtower of God

Quarter: North (Tzaphon)

Buddhist symbolism:  .Quiescence

Qlippoth:   Amaimon

Far Eastern cosmological associations:

Earth.  The Center. The End of Summer.  The Nourishing.  Sweet.  Yellow. Controls stomach and

spleen.  Ox or buffalo.  Saturn.  Yang – a Hill.  Yin – a Plane or Valley. Saturn.  Planet Earth.  The Retort.
Earth produces Metal, destroys Water, is destroyed by Wood.

Trigram from the I Ching:  Ch’ien

---  ---

---  ---

---  ---

b.       Design and Title of Trump

America’s Tarot:  The Universe (after Crowley). Upright:  The famous Earth-from-space poster taken by
the Apollo astronauts.  Ghost-over:  Loren Eiseley, the great American archeologist and writer.  Reverse:
The deadly hell that our world would become after an all-out thermonuclear war and/or total collapse of
Her biosphere due to ecocatastrophe of any other sort.

The Divine Comedy Tarot:

Biblical Tarot:

John Burt’s MAD Tarot:  Moxie sits, cross-legged, with the world in her lap, shrugging her shoulders over
it.

The Robert A. Heinlein Tarot: 

R. R. McCammon’s Tarot:

c.       Divinatory Meanings

The World card in a reading is a wonderful card to get, because it points to completion and victory,
satisfaction and success. It suggests that the querent will soon be reaching the end of one cycle, and the
beginning of another, and that they will reach a higher understanding of themselves and the situation. It
suggests that a solution to any problems they are having is soon to occur, and that they will be able to
move on from it very soon. The World card can also indicate that the querent will be integrating various
aspects of their life into a more coherent whole, and trying to create their own version of reality. This
can take the form of the querent creating their own spiritual path, or of simply tying up any loose ends
in their life. As an advisory card, the World advises the querent to learn how to unite any conflicting or
opposite polarities within him or her, and it advises balance in all things. It also advises the querent to
remember that they do not need to be tied down by anything if they do not want to be.

d.  Interrelationships of the Path and the Trump

a.         Period I – First Plane of the Sphere of Life ( Kether)

            This Period and Plane are associated with the Olam Atziluth (t w l x a), the Archetypal World, the
highest levels of spirituality and consciousness, and with Chia (h y j), that part of the Self which
comprises the Will, the first creative vehicle, whose activities include Wisdom and Discrimination.

aa.  Key 33

Hydrogen 1H1,* Z=1.  Electron configuration:  1.  Atomic weight or mass: 1.008.**  Oxidation states:  +1,

-1. Column and row on the Periodic Table: 1a/K (1). †  Connects  Sephirah Ø to Sephirah 0.‡ ASCII
character:  ! Qaballistic value:  010=02.  Associations:  the Pythagorean Element Water (a higher octave
of Binah [Key 3] or of Mem [Key 23];  in a chemical sense, water is ashes of Hydrogen, the product of the
burning of that chemical element, and as such is equivalent to the Alchemical Salt of that compound,
since Salt is the result of the calcinations or complete burning of a substance);  Ain, Ain Soph, Ain Soph
Aur (associations with Zero);  Lobachevski, the trans-Plutonian Planet associated with Sephirah 0, and
therefore non-Euclidean geometries of all kinds;  Durga/Hera ï, Sephirah À2, Grace analog
ofChokmah/Neptune (Who is represented by Mem m, the Path connecting Sephiroth 5 and 8).

*The mass number, atomic number, number of atoms, and ionic charge of an element may be indicated
by means of four indices placed around the symbol.  The positions are to be occupied thus

left upper index mass number

left lower index atomic number

right lower index number of atoms

right upper index ionic charge

Ionic charge should be indicated by A n+ rather than by A+ n.

                                    32   2

Example:          16S2       represents a doubly ionized molecule containing two atoms of sulfur, each of which
has the atomic number 16 and mass number 32.  The following is an example of an equation for a
nuclear reaction:

                                                26             4              29            1

12 Mg + 2He = 13Al + 1H

The practice of American chemists and physicists in general has been to put the mass number at the
upper right of the symbol, which practice I will follow here as well, mostly because of the difficulty of
showing mass numbers directly above atomic numbers using ordinary word-processors such as
WORD;  but the advantage of putting it at the upper left so that the upper right is available for the ionic
charge as needed is clear.  See CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 54 th  Edition 1973-
1974  (Cleveland, OH:   CRC Press, 1973), p. B-41.

**Based on the assigned relative atomic mass of 12C =  12.  (12C  represents the stable isotope of the
element carbon.  See Key 39, below.

†The Periodic Table is divided into rows and columns according to the number of electron orbital (zones
or “shells” surrounding the nucleus in which electrons in which the electrons in a neutral example of the
atom are found) and unoccupied positions in an orbital, generally the outermost orbital or orbital,
within an electrically  neutral atom.  E.g., An atom of sodium, atomic weight Z=11, has three electronic
“shells”, two of them filled, one of them containing only one electron in a neutral sodium atom.  The
first “shell”, when filled, contains 2 electrons, the second, and 8 electrons.  So a neutral sodium atom
contains 2 + 8 + 1 = 11 electrons, equal in number to the number of protons (Z) in its nucleus. The first
such “shell,” which can contain at most 2 electrons, is referred to as the “K” orbital;  the second, which
contains at most 8 electrons, organized into two sub-orbital of 2 and 6 electrons each, is called the “M”
orbital;  the third, containing at most 18 = 2 + 6 + 10  = 2 x 1 + 2 x  3+ 2 x 5 = 2 x (1 + 3 + 5), is the “N,”
orbital, and so forth.  The ith  such “shell” can contain up to  2 x (1 +  3 + 5 + 7 + i) = 2 x i2 electrons, and
the atom as a whole up to 2 x (12 + 22 + . . . + i2) electrons.  If a neutral atom of an element has all its
orbital completely filled, it is a noble gas, unable to interact chemically with any other atom, either of its
own element or any other, except under extraordinary conditions of temperature and pressure.  At any
rate, the number of orbital in an atom determines its row in the Periodic Table, whereas the number of
electrons in the outermost orbital of a neutral atom of an element determines its column in the Periodic
Table, i.e.:

[include copy of Periodic Table here]

The electron configuration of an electrically  neutral atom refers to the numbers of electrons in each of

its outer electronic “shells.  E.g., silver, Z=47, has the electron configuration 2-18-18-18-1

The valance of an atom refers to the number of electrons which it can lose or gain before having
completely filled or completely empty outer orbital(s); this is also equivalent to the amount of electrical
charge it can acquire, since its charge is equivalent to the number of electrons it lacks or has in excess of
its electronic complement when in a neutral state.
The mass or atomic weight of an atom refers to the number of particles in its nucleus, i.e., the number
of protons (Z) plus that of the neutrons in its nucleus.  The latter can vary without changing the essential
chemical properties of an atom;  two atoms of the same element with differing numbers of neutrons in
their nuclei are different isotopes of the same atom.  Neutrons combine a proton, an electron, and a
neutrino (n) and weigh slightly more than a proton, so even when the number of neutrons and protons
in an atom is identical, the nucleus of that atom will weight somewhat more than twice as much as its
total complement of protons, and the atom as a whole will weigh more still, because of the neutrons in
its outer “shells.”  Atoms with too many or too few neutrons in their nuclei – this qualification
depending upon the particular element – become unstable, tending to break down over time into two or
more particles and emitting both sub-atomic particles and energy;  such unstable atoms are radioactive.

‡I am using the arrangement described in the footnote to Section C.2, above.  Other arrangements can
also be used, e.g., one which starts with Sephirah Ø, as above, but then goes first to SephirahÀ0, then
to Sephirah 0, then to Sephirah À1, then toSephirah i  =  Ö-1, then to Sephirah  À2, then to Kether, and so
on.  Or, one could begin the new system of Paths with Kether, go to Chesed (the first Sephirah not
connected to Kether  by a traditional Path) and so on down to Malkuth, then to the new Sephiroth, then
come back to Binah and repeat the process, etc.  Which system for establishing the new Paths is most
useful has yet to be determined, and may depend upon individual applications and the symbolism
involved.

            Alternate:  1H1 Hiheelium. Crystal structure:  r.*

*For this and the other new Keys, 33-126+, these alternate elements come from “The Lavender Valley
High School ‘Fighting Poodles’ Science Club” poster for “The Prom . . . You Never Went To” of Saturday,
April 27, 1991, 8:30 p.m. – 1:30 a.m. held at the Mountaineers Building, 300 Third Avenue West off
Elliot, Seattle, WA 98101 (poster concept © 1991 by Tacky Tourist Clubs of America).  According to
interviews with Bruce Stonewall, President of the Senior Class and head of the Lavender Valley High
School Science Club,

After its members had flunked several spot quizzes on the old-style elements, the Lavender Valley High
School Science Club intently studied the Theory of Relevance and soon discovered those elements which
really mean something to students at Our School.
 

      Made possible by grants-in-aid from the Emirate of Whywait and the Nationally Endowed for the
Sciences.

The word “Hydrogen” derives from the Greek words hydro, meaning “water,” andgenes, “forming.”  Its
atomic weight (as found in nature) is 1.0080 (in terms of 1/12 th of the atomic weight of an atom of
carbon-12);  ionized Hydrogen (H1) has an atomic weight of 1.007822.  Its atomic number Z = 1.  Its
melting point is  -259.14° C;  its boiling point is -252.87° C.  Its gaseous-phase density is 0.08988
grams/liter;  its liquid-phase density (at temperatures £ -253° C) is 70.8 gm/l;  its solid-phase density (at
temperatures £ -262° C) is 70.6 gm/l.

On the Periodic Table of the Chemical Elements, Hydrogen is located in Column 1a, which contains the
alkali-metal series whose members include, e.g., Lithium and Sodium, and Row K, whose members have
at most 2 x 1 = 2 valence electrons (and, in this case, no more than 2 electrons overall).  All the members
of the alkali-metal series have only one valence electron, i.e., only one electron in their outer electron
orbital.  An atom can either give up electrons from its outer electron orbital to other atoms, or accept
electrons from other atoms if it has room for them in that orbital;  which it does depends upon whether
it is, shall we say, to give than to receive or vice-versa.

In the current picture of the atom, its electrons are distributed in the form of clouds of charge around
the nucleus.  The densities of these clouds correspond to the likelihood that given electrons within them
will be found at various locations therein. The clouds are densest at the nucleus of the atoms, and thin
out in regions farther away from the nucleus. Therefore the most likely place to find an electron is the
nucleus itself.  This distribution of electrons in an atom is called an atomic orbital – the name “orbital” is
chosen to convey a less precise sense than that of “orbit,” since the position of any given electron in an
atom can be defined only stochastically (probabilistically or statistically), not in any absolute sense.  The
imprecision lies in the interpretation of the orbital in terms of an electron’s location.  We can’t be
confident that an electron will actually be found at a particular point in an atom;  all we can do is state
the probability that it will be found there (though we can do that with absolute precision).

Orbital can have a wide variety of shapes.  The basic orbital of Hydrogen, which is a model for all atoms,
is spherical in shape, and is called an s-orbital (here, “s” stands for “sharp,” which refers to certain lines
in the spectrum of Hydrogen).  Orbital can have a wide variety of different shapes – there are even many
different kinds of spherical orbital.  If enough energy is pumped into a Hydrogen atom, the electron in its
s-orbital can be puffed up into a second sort of s-orbital – if the first orbital is called a 1s orbital, the
second is called a 2s-orbital.  When an electron has a 2s distribution, it is said tooccupy a 2s
orbital.  With even more energy, the electron can be puffed up to occupy a 3s orbital – for which there is
a central cloud and two concentric cloud shells – and on into higher n-s orbital.

When the electron is given enough energy to occupy a 2s orbital, it can instead form a cloud of an
entirely different shape, a two-lobed p-orbital.  There are three such 2-lobed orbital, according to
whether the lobes lie along an imaginary x-, y-, or z-axis. This gives us 2px, 2py, and 2pz-orbital,
respectively.  The electron will never be found on the imaginary plane passing through the nucleus of
the atom and dividing the two lobes of the orbital, which is called a nodal plane.  An s-orbital does not
have such a nodal plane, and the electron it describes may be found at the nucleus.  Every p-orbital has
a nodal plane of this kind, and therefore an electron that has a p-orbital will never be found at the
nucleus.

When enough energy has been pumped into a Hydrogen atom, its electron can occupy a 3s-orbital – or
it can instead occupy any of three 3p-orbital, which are essentially puffed-up versions of the 2p-orbital
just described, or it can take up even more complex distributions. Clearly, an electron isn’t so much an
actual particle as it is acloud of charge, a cloud which takes its shape primarily from the amount of
energy it contains.  The pattern of possibilities for the distribution of an electron in a Hydrogen atom is
structured on the basis of evolution just described.  In its lowest energy state orground state, a
Hydrogen atom’s electron has the spherical cloud-like distribution of a 1s-orbital.  With more energy, it
can puff up into either a bigger s-orbital – a 2s-orbital – or one of three p-orbital.  With even more
energy, the electron distribution can occupy either a 3s-orbital, one of three p-orbital, or one of five 3d-
orbital, four-lobed cloud-like distributions.  Even more energy allows the electron to adopt the
distribution of a 4s-orbital, one of three 4p-orbital, one of five 4d-orbital, or one of seven six-lobed
distributions called f-orbital.*  And so, as Father Kurt is wont to say, it goes.

*In the same way that s came from the “sharp” lines of the Fraunhofer spectrum, the terms p, d,
and f denote spectroscopic features called “principal,” “diffuse,” and “fine.”

These s, p, d, and f orbital available to an electron in a Hydrogen atom correspond respectively to Cols.

1a/2a, 3a/4a/5a/6a/7a/0, and 3b/4b/5b/6b/7b/8 and the Lanthanide/Actinide groups of chemical
elements.  As for the numbers associated with the orbital, there is only one orbital available to an
electron in the ground state, and four available in the first higher-energy state.  There are two elements
in Period 1 (Row K of the Periodic Table), i.e., Hydrogen and Helium, and eight in Period 2 (Row L), from
Lithium to Neon, twice the number of orbital in Period 1.  The number of columns in thes-block (which
includes Cols. 1a and 2a of the Periodic Table) is exactly twice the number of s-orbital of a given rank of
energy, and the number of columns in the p-block (Cols. 3a through 0) is twice the number of p-orbital
of any given energy rank.  There are typically ten elements in each Period (Row) of the d-block (Cols. 3b-
8), which is exactly twice the number of d-orbital in any given rank.  As for the f-block, which includes
the Lanthanides (elements 58-71) and the Actinides (elements 90 on up), there are fifteen elements in
each row (rather than the fourteen which the existence of seven f-orbital of a given rank of energy
might lead us to expect;  however, the division of the electronic “territory” between these elements and
the rest of the atomic kingdom is extremely complex due to competition among atoms for energy).  In
short, the number of orbital in an atom is determined according to the formula (2 x 1 + 2 x 3 + 2 x 5 + . . .
+ 2 x (2n + 1)), where the first “shell” of orbital contains 2 x 1 = 2 orbital, the second contains 2 x 1 + 2 x
3 = 8 orbital, the third contains 2 x 1 + 2 x 3 + 2 x 5 = 18 orbital, . . . and the nth contains 2 x 1 + 2 x 3 + . . .
2 x (2n + 1) = 2( 1 + 3 + 5 + . . . + (2n + 1)) = 2 x (n + 2 x 0 + 2 x 1 + . . . + 2n)) = 2 x (n + 2 x å (1-n)) orbital,
where n is the Period or Row of an element in the Periodic Table.  In an atom of Z-number n, then, there
are 2 x (n + 2 x å (0-n)) orbital available for electrons in its outermost orbital.  In the case of Hydrogen,
there are thus 2 x (1 + 2 x 0) = 2 such orbital available to it.

Now, for various reasons having to do with the tendencies of atoms to take up the most stable possible
energy-state, electrically neutral atoms with less than exactly half of their outermost orbital occupied by
electrons easily give up the rest of the electrons in that orbital to other atoms, but acquire atoms from
other atoms with only the greatest difficulty and under unusual conditions.  For electrically neutral
atoms with more than exactly half of their outermost orbital occupied by electrons, the reverse is
true;  and it is about as easy for an electronically neutral atom with exactly half of its outermost orbital
occupied by electrons to give up one or more of those electrons (and so become positively charged) as it
is for it to acquire, by hook or crook, one or more electrons from other atoms to completely fill its outer
orbital.  In the case of electronically neutral Hydrogen, exactly half of its outermost orbital (identical in
this case to the totality of its orbital, i.e., 2) are occupied by electrons, or rather by one electron.  So it
can acquire one more electron to fill out that electronic shell* about as easily as it can give up its one
electron to empty it.  The long and short of this is that therefore Hydrogen is not only a member of the
Alkali Metal series (Col. 1a of the Periodic Table, those with at most one electron in their outer orbital),
but also of the Halogen Gas series (Col. 7a, those with all but one of their outer orbital filled when in an
electronically neutral state), which also includes such nasties as Chlorine and Fluorine, viciously active
gases which can, under certain circumstances, even form electronic bonds with the Noble Gases, which
bond with nothing else known (and can only bond with the Halogens under extremely unusual
conditions).  Thus Hydrogen is the Susie Roundheels of the Periodic Table, working both sides of the
electronic street, as it were – rather like its Z-number, 1, which is the first prime number, indivisible by
any other integer, but is also the most trivial of the primes, since it can divide all other integers.**  And
like its Qaballistic value, 0, which is not a positive integer (and which, when divided into an integer, gives
impossible results), Hydrogen stands alone in the Periodic Table, a proto-element which, however,
possesses no neutrons and therefore is not truly an element in its own right.  Mathematically speaking,
out of Zero comes everything – every mathematical entity is one of a matched pair of multilinear
multiples that are identical in absolute value and opposite in sign, negative and positive. Likewise, the
Multiverse itself comprises Universes each of which was formed out of fluctuations in a seething stew of
positive and negative virtual particles, equal in numbers, opposite in charge.†  Just so, all the atoms that
make up our physical universe, and therefore the molecules comprising those atoms and everything that
is built up from those molecules, including ourselves, are formed out of Hydrogen, the 0 th chemical
element, in its electro neutral as well as its electropositive and electronegative states.

*The Qlipphotic Inner-Planes residues cast off from the functioning of living beings are called
“shells.”  This may not be a coincidence.  The Inner Planes are apparently simply reality as lived on
quantum-mechanical levels, the way the universe looks from a sub-atomic viewpoint, as it were.  In the
brain, the throne or central locus of Intelligence and Will in multicellular animal life such as the
vertebrates, the cephalopodan, etc., the mechanics of the mind seem to operate at and are strongly
affected by events on the quantum-mechanical level, and it should be no different for mind at large in
the universe, in its Body

**For an absolutely marvelous Cook’s tour of the chemical universe, including a full and utterly lucid
discussion of the electronic infrastructure of the atom and the ways in which that structure determines
an atom’s chemical and radiological nature, see P. W. Atkins, The Periodic Kingdom:    A Journey Into the
Land of the Chemical Elements (New York:  Basic Books, 1995).  This is one of the most readable and
enjoyable books I have ever read on any subject, including fiction, and you’re a twit if you don’t at least
try to give it a good once-over.

†See Karel A. Velan, The Multi-Universe Cosmos:    The First Complete Story of the Origin of the
Universe (New York: Plenum Press, 1992) for a detailed description of this process.

Hydrogen was prepared many years before it was recognized as a distinct substance by Cavendish in
1766.  It was named by Lavoisier.  Hydrogen is the most abundant of all elements in the universe, and it
is thought that the heavier elements were, and still are being, built from Hydrogen and Helium by the
process of thermonuclear fusion in the cores of mature Stars and supernovae.  It has been estimated
that Hydrogen makes up more than 90% of all the atoms or three-quarters of the mass of the
universe.  It is found in Sol and most other Stars, and plays an important part in the proton-proton
reaction and carbon-nitrogen cycle which produces the energy of all Stars.  Hydrogen is believed to be a
major component of the Planet Jupiter;  deep in that Planet’s interior the pressure is so great that solid
molecular Hydrogen is converted into solid metallic Hydrogen. This transition is thought to take place at
a pressure of one mega bar.* Ultimately it may be possible to produce metallic Hydrogen in the
laboratory, but this has not yet been achieved.

*One million times one million bars; a bar is the international unit of pressure, and is equal to
106 dyne/cm2, or 0.987 times the pressure of Earth’s atmosphere at sea-level (enough to raise a column
of mercury metal 760 mm).  Not to be confused withbarye, which is a cgs pressure-unit equal to one
dyne/cm2, 1/1,000,000th of a bar.

On Earth, Hydrogen occurs chiefly in combination with oxygen as component of the water molecule, but
it is also present in organic matter, such as living plants, petroleum, coal, etc.  It is present as the free
element in our atmosphere, but only at levels of less than one part per million by volume.  It is the
lightest of all gases, and combines with other elements, sometimes explosively, to form
compounds.  Great quantities of Hydrogen are required commercially for the fixation of nitrogen from
the air in the Haber ammonia process and for the Hydrogenation of fats and oils.  It is also used in large
quantities in methanol production, hydrodealkylation, hydro cracking, and hydrodesulphurization.  It is
used as a rocket-fuel, for welding, for production of hydrochloric acid, for the production of metallic
ores, and for filling balloons and dirigibles.  The lifting power of one cubic foot of Hydrogen gas is about
0.076 pounds at 0° C and 760 mm pressure (one atmosphere).  Production of Hydrogen in the United
States alone now amounts to hundreds of millions of cubic feet per day.  Hydrogen is prepared by the
action of steam on heated carbon, the decomposition of certain hydrocarbons with heat, the electrolysis
of water, the displacement from acids by certain metals, or the action of sodium or potassium hydroxide
on aluminum.  Liquid Hydrogen is important in cryogenics and in the study of superconductivity, since its
melting-point is only a few degrees above absolute zero.

The ordinary isotope of Hydrogen, 1H1, is known as protium. In 1932 Urey announced the preparation of
a stable isotope, deuterium, with an atomic weight of 2 ( 1H2), symbolized as D. Two years later, an
unstable isotope of Hydrogen, 1H3, tritium, with an atomic weight of 3, was discovered.  Tritium has a
half-life of about 12.5 years. There is about one part of deuterium for ever 6,000 parts of ordinary
Hydrogen.  The quantity of naturally-occurring tritium is far smaller still.  Tritium is readily produced in
nuclear reactors, and is used in the production of the Hydrogen bomb.  It is also used as a radioactive
agent in making luminous paints, and as a tracer.  The current (1974 e.v.) price of tritium, to authorized
personnel, is about $2/curie; deuterium gas is readily available, without permit, at about $1/liter.  Heavy
water – deuterium oxide (D2O) – which is used as a moderator to slow down neutrons in nuclear
reactors, is available without permit at a cost of about $.06 to $1/gm, depending upon quantity and
purity.

Quite apart from purity, under ordinary conditions Hydrogen gas is a mixture of two kinds of molecules,
known as ortho-  and para-Hydrogen, which differ from each other by the spins* of their electrons and
nuclei.  At room temperature, normal Hydrogen is about 25% the para- form and 75%
the ortho- form.  The ortho- form cannot be prepared in the pure state. Since the two forms differ in
energy, the physical properties also differ.  The melting and boiling points of para-Hydrogen are about
0.1° C lower than those of normal Hydrogen.  Of current interest is a substance known
as polywateror anomalous water, which some observers believe to be a polymer** of water.†

*A quantity having to do with the angular momentum of a sub-atomic particle or a molecule.  The idea
that an electron actually rotates must not be taken too literally as a metaphor for quantum mechanical
spin;  the concept of spin was invented to account for certain otherwise incomprehensible quantum-
mechanical properties of the atom.  See Tony Hey and Patrick Walters, The Quantum Universe (New
York:  Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 75-77.

**Polymer:  a naturally occurring or artificial substance consisting of giant molecules formed by the
process of polymerization, i.e., a process of chaining together many simple molecules to form a more
complex molecule with different physical properties.

†The data for this text on Hydrogen and those for the other elements was taken fromCRC Handbook of
Chemistry and Physics, 54th  Edition 1973-1974  (Cleveland, OH:   CRC Press, 1973), pp. B1-555.

            In The Book of Lies,* Aleister Crowley dedicates a chapter of the book to each of the numbers 0-
93.  In addition, he includes two preliminary chapters which, in full, respectively comprise “?” and “!”
(which he refers to as “the soldier and the hunchback”). These two preliminary “chapters” together
illustrate the principle “2 = 0,” the Formula of the Aeon of Horus; they also, however, illustrate a number
of principles of modern cosmology and physics, such as the Symmetry Principle, which define the
possibilities inherent in matter, including those at the sub-atomic level.

            Those “chapters,” such as they are, are followed by another “non-chapter,”

“KEFADH H OUK ESTI KEFADH,” which could be associated not only with the “Three Zeroes” of Qaballah
(Ain [No-Thing], Ain Soph [No Limit], Ain Soph Aur[Limitless Light]), but also with the Big Bang with which
the physical universe that we know began and, on a quantum level, with Hydrogen, the proto-element
which, not really an element itself, is the basic building-block for all heavier atoms:

0!

THE ANTE PRIMAL TRIAD WHICH IS

NOT-GOD

Nothing is.

Nothing becomes.

Nothing is not.

THE FIRST TRIAD WHICH IS GOD

I AM.

I utter The Word.

I hear The Word.

THE ABYSS

The Word is broken up.

There is Knowledge.

Knowledge is Relation.

These fragments are Creation.

The broken manifests Light.

THE SECOND TRIAD WHICH IS GOD

GOD the Father and Mother is concealed in Generation.

GOD is concealed in the whirling energy of Nature.

GOD is manifest in gathering:  harmony:  consideration:

the Mirror of the Sun and of the Heart.

THE THIRD TRIAD WHICH IS GOD

Bearing:  preparing.

Wavering:  flowing: flashing.

Stability:  begetting.

THE TENTH EMANATION

The world.**

*Aleister Crowley, The Book of Lies, Revised edition (New York: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1952).

**Ibid.,   p. 10.

            The Qaballah of the Far East, including China, Japan, and other cultures which have inherited the
esoteric Arts and Sciences of Taoism, is based upon very different principles than is that of the West,
particularly with respect to the meanings of numbers. In his translation of The I Ching,* Richard Wilhelm
says:

. . . The original purpose of the hexagrams was to consult destiny.  As divine beings do not give direct
expression to their knowledge, a means had to be found by which they could make themselves
intelligible. Suprahuman intelligence has from the beginning made use of three mediums of expression –
men, animals, and plants, in each of which life pulsates in a different rhythm.  Chance came to be
utilized as a fourth medium;  the very absence of an immediate meaning in chance permitted a deeper
meaning to come to expression in it.  The oracle was the outcome of this use of chance.  The Book of
Changes is founded on the plant oracle as manipulated by men with mediumistic powers.

The established language for communication with suprahuman intelligence was based on numbers and
their symbolism.  The fundamental principles of the world are heaven and earth, spirit and
matter.  Earth is the derived principle;  therefore the number two is assigned to it.  Heaven is the
ultimate unity;  yet it includes the earth within itself, and is therefore assigned the number three.  The
number one could not be used, as it is too abstract and rigid and does not include the idea of the
manifold.  Following out of this conception, the uneven numbers were assigned to the world of heaven,
the even numbers to the world of earth.

-- Ibid., pp. 262-263

*The I Ching or Book of Changes, Third Edition.  Richard Wilhelm, translator (into German).  Translated
into English from the German by Cary F. Baynes. Foreword by C. G. Jung.  Preface to the Third Edition by
Hellmut Wilhelm. Bollingen Series XIX.  Princeton, NJ:  Bollingen Foundation/Princeton University Press,
1967.

ab.  Key 34

Helium 2He4, Z=2.  Electron configuration:  2. Atomic weight:  4.00260.  Oxidation states:  0. Column/Row

on the Periodic Table: 0/K.  Connects  Sephirah Æ toSephirah   i = Ö-1.  ASCII character:  “ Qaballistic
value:  110 = 12 (prime – trivial;  for 1 divides all).  Planets:   Pluto, Hades (associations with Kether, Key
Number 1); Mercury (association with “);  Sol  Ö; Sol, Helios, Baldur the Beautiful, Jesus Christ, Ra, other
Solar Gods;  Aleph, 11th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 1st letter of the Hebrew alphabet, hence Air,
Uranus, Liberty; 
 

            Alternate: 2He4, Helmsium.  Crystal structure: £.  An inert gas. Associations:, “Bob” of the Sub

Genii,*

*In some respects, “Bob” could be said to be associated with every single *****ing Key of any Qaballah
ever invented – at least according to fanatic Sub Genii, anyway.

Helium (from the Greek word Helios, meaning “the Sun”) is the first true element, possessing neutrons
as well as electrons and protons.  One of the so-called Noble Gases, Helium’s place on the Periodic Table
of the Chemical Elements is in Column 0 (the Noble Gases, those which do not react with themselves or
other chemical elements except under the most extraordinary conditions, generally those found in the
laboratory) and Period 1 (Row K), the latter of which it shares only with Hydrogen.  Like the other Noble
Gases, neutral Helium’s outermost electronic orbital is completely filled with electrons.  In order to
maintain their lowest energy states, the elements of Col. 0 of the Periodic Table hold on to all the
electrons in their outermost orbital with a fantastic tenacity, one only broken at extremely high
temperatures and pressures – if then.  Like its Z-number, 2, the first non-trivial prime and the only even
one, in many important respects Helium is unique among the elements.  It is the first “normal” atom
(i.e., one with neutrons in its nucleus), the first of the Noble Gases, and its behavior under conditions of
extreme cold and low pressure is like nothing else in the universe. And like its Qaballistic value, 1,
though a basic building-block of other, more complex material, because it is the first and lightest of the
true elements, it is made up of no others.

The atomic weight of Helium, 4.00260, reflects the fact that its nucleus comprises two neutrons in
addition to its two protons.* Its melting point is less than –272.2° C (at 26 atmospheres);  its boiling pint
is –268.934° C.  Its density is 0.178 gm/1 (0° C, 1 atm.);  its liquid density is 7.62 lb/cu. Ft. at its boiling-
point.  Generally its valence (electrical charge or degree of ionization) is 0 (exceptions have been created
in the laboratory at egregiously extraordinary pressures and temperatures, under which circumstances it
will sometimes bond electronically or covalently with various halogens, such as the viciously active
Fluorine).

 
*A neutron is an electrically neutral elementary particle of atomic mass number 1.  It is believed to be a
constituent particle of all nuclei of mass number greater than 1 (i.e., of all elements exclusive of
Hydrogen).  It is unstable with respect to b-decay, with a half-life of about 12 minutes when not part of
one or another atom.  It produces no detectable primary ionization in its passage through
matter;  instead, it interacts with matter predominantly via collisions and, to a lesser extent,
magnetically.  Its rest mass is equal to 1.00894 atomic mass units;  its spin quantum number is ½;  and its
magnetic moment is equal to –1.9125 nuclear Bohr magnetrons.  According to one model of sub-atomic
reality, a neutron is composed of one electron, one proton, and one neutrino.  An electron possesses
one unit of negative electrical charge ((4.80294! .00008) x 10-10 absolute electrostatic units), a mass that
is 1/1837 that of a Hydrogen nucleus (proton), and a diameter of about 10 -12 cm (cathode rays and b-
rays are electrons).  A proton has a positive charge equivalent in absolute value to that of the electron
and a mass approximately 1,837 times as great, and forms the nucleus of the Hydrogen atom (two
heavier isotopes of Hydrogen, deuterium and tritium, respectively possess one and two neutrons in
addition to their sole proton; tritium is radiologically unstable because of the extra mass).  A neutrino is
an electrically neutral particle of very small (approaching zero) rest mass and spin quantum number ½
(when the spin is oriented parallel to the linear momentum, the particle is the antineutrino;  when the
spin is oriented antiparallel to the linear momentum, the particle is the neutrino, postulated by Ernst
Pauli in explaining the b-decay process. Whenever a b-  particle or positron (anti-electron, with the mass
of an electron and a positive electrical charge) is created as a result of radioactive decay, so respectively
is an antineutrino or a neutrino.  The two particles and the parent nucleus share between them the
available energy and momentum.  Neutrinos and antineutrinos can penetrate amounts of matter
measured in light years without appreciable attenuation.  Neutrinos were detected first by Reines and
Cowan using antineutrinos from fission reactors and large scintillation detectors.  (Atomic weight is the
relative weight of the atom as compared to 12C º 12.  For a pure isotope of an element, the atomic
weight, rounded off to the nearest integer, gives the total number of nucleons [neutrons and protons]
making up the atomic nucleus.  When these weights are expressed in grams they are called gram atomic
weights.  The atomic mass unit or amu is equal to 1/12 th the mass of the carbon atom of mass number
12, and is equal to (1.660531 ! .000011) x 10-24 g (cgs units) = (1.660531 ! .000011) x 10-27 (SI units) =
931.4812 ! .0052 MeV.)

Evidence of the existence of Helium was first obtained by Janssen during the solar eclipse of 1868 e.v.
when he detected a new line in the solar spectrum.  Lockyear and Frankland suggested the
name Helium for the new element.  In 1895 e.v., Ramsay discovered Helium in Uranium mineral clevite,
and it was independently discovered in clevite by the Swedish chemists Cleve and Langlet about the
same time.  In 1907 e.v., Rutherford and Royds demonstrated that a-particles are Helium nuclei
(comprising two protons and two neutrons).
Except for Hydrogen, Helium is the most abundant element in the universe.  It has been detected
spectroscopically in great abundance, especially in the hotter Stars, and it is an important component in
both the proton-proton reaction and the carbon cycle, which give rise to the energy of the Sun and
other Stars. The fusion of Hydrogen into Helium provides the energy of the Hydrogen Bomb.

The Helium content of Earth’s atmosphere is about 1 part in 200,000.  Though present in various
radioactive minerals as a decay product, the bulk of the West’s supply of Helium is obtained from wells
in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.  The only Helium plant in the West outside of the U.S. (at least up until
1973 e.v.) is located near Swift River, Saskatchewan, Canada.  The cost of Helium fell from $2,500/cu. Ft.
in 1915 e.v. to 1.5 cent/cu. Ft. in 1940 e.v.  The U.S. Bureau of Mines has set the price of Grade A Helium
at $35/1000 cu. Ft. (1973).

Helium has the lowest melting-point of any element, and is widely used in cryogenic research since its
boiling-point is close to absolute zero.  Its use in the study of superconductivity is vital.  Using liquid
Helium, Kurti et al. have succeeded in obtaining temperatures of a few micro degrees Kelvin by means of
the adiabatic demagnetization of copper nuclei, starting from about 0.10° K.

Five isotopes of Helium are known.  Liquid Helium (He4) exists in two forms:  He4 I and He4 II, with a
sharp transition point at 2.174° K (3.83 cm Hg). He4 I (above this temperature) is a normal liquid, but
He4 II (below it) is unlike any other known substance.  It expands on cooling;  its conductivity for heat is
enormous;  and neither its heat-conduction nor viscosity obeys normal rules.  It has other peculiar
properties, as well.

Helium is the only liquid that cannot be solidified by lowering the temperature.  It remains liquid down
to absolute zero at ordinary pressures, but it can be readily solidified by increasing the pressure.  Solid
He3 and He4 are unusual in that both can be readily changed in volume by more than 30% by application
of pressure.

The specific heat of Helium gas is unusually high. The density of Helium vapor at the normal boiling-
point is also very high, the vapor expanding greatly when heated to room temperature.  Containers filled
with Helium gas at 5°-10° K should be treated as though they contained liquid Helium because of the
large increase in pressure that comes about as a result of warming the gas to room temperature.

While normally Helium has 0 valence, apparently it does possess a tendency, albeit a weak one, to
combine with certain other elements. Means of preparing Helium difluoride are being studied, and
species such as HeNe and the molecular ions He2+ and He2++have been investigated.  Helium is widely
used as an inert gas shield for arc-welding; as a protective gas for growing Silicon and Germanium
crystals and in the production of Titanium and Zirconium; as a cooling medium for nuclear reactors;  and
as a gas for supersonic wind-tunnels.  A mixture of 80% Helium and 20% Oxygen is used as an artificial
atmosphere for divers and others working under pressure.  Helium is extensively used for filling balloons
since it is a much safer gas for this purpose than is Hydrogen (which catch fire and burn explosively, as
witness the catastrophe of The Hindenberg). While its density is almost twice that of Hydrogen, it has
about 98% the lifting-power of the latter;  at sea-level, 1,000 cubic feet of Helium lifts 68.5 pounds.  One
of the recent uses for Helium has been for pressuring liquid-fuel rockets.  A Saturn booster, such as the
one used on the Apollo Lunar missions, requires about 13 million cubic feet of Helium for a firing, plus
more for checkouts.

KEFADH A

THE SABBATH OF THE GOAT

O! the heart of N.O.X. the Night of Pan.

PAN:  Duality: Energy:  Death.

Death:  Begetting: the supporters of 0!

To beget is to die:  to die is to beget.

Cast the Seed into the Field of Night.

Life and Death are two names of A.

Kill thyself.

Neither of these alone is enough.*

*Aleister Crowley, op. cit.,  p. 12.

 
 

Asteroid Symbol Path Connecting

Pallas ç Chokmah- Geburah

Juno è Chesed- Geburah

Vesta é Binah- Netzach

Ceres æ Yesod-Kether

Eros   Netzach-Geburah

Sappho   Netzach-Kether

Hidalgo   Yesod-Geburah

Toro   Geburah-Kether

Pandora   Hod-i = Ö-1

Psyche   Netzach-Chokmah

Urania   Binah-0 (Zero)

Chiron å Binah-Æ (Null Set)

Amor   Netzach-À0

Diana   Yesod-i = Ö-1

Icarus   Hod-Binah

Lilith   Geburah-i = Ö-1

New Paths Transcendental Description

Path ~ to
traditional
Path
connecting

Æ-0 5–8 Grace analog of Neptune/Chokmah =

Durga/Hera  À2

Æ- i = Ö-1 3-8 Analog of Path connecting S. 3/8

Æ-À0 7-8  
Æ-À1    

Æ-À2    

Æ-1    

Æ-2    

Æ-3   å Chiron

Æ-4    

Æ-5    

Æ-6 6-8  

Æ-9 8-9  

Æ-10 8-10  

0- i = Ö-1 3-5  

0-À0 ~ 5-7 5-7  

0-À1 ~ 5-4 4-5  

0-À2 ~ 5-2 2-5  

i = Ö-1-À0 3-7  

i = Ö-1-À1 3-4  

i = Ö-1-À2 2-3 Grace analog of Venus/Netzach =

Norton  À0

i = Ö-1-1 1-3 Power analog of Mercury/Hod = Beth

b

i = Ö-1-2    

i = Ö-1-3    

i = Ö-1-4    

i = Ö-1-5    

i = Ö-1-6    

i = Ö-1-7    
i = Ö-1-8    

i = Ö-1-9    

i = Ö-1-10    

À0-À1 4-7 Grace analog of Jupiter/Kaph k, Path

connecting Sephiroth 4 and 7

À0-À2 2-7  

À0-1 1-7  

À0-2    

À0-3    

À0-4    

À0-5    

À0-6 6-7  

À0-7    

À0-8    

À0-9    

À0-10 7-10 Grace analog of Aquarius/Tzaddi x,

Path connecting Sephiroth 7 and 10

À1-À2 2-4 Grace analog of Taurus/Vav w, Path

connecting Sephiroth 2 and 4

À1-1    

À1-2    

À1-3    

À1-4    

À1-5    

À1-6    

À1-7    
 À1-8    

À1-9 4-9  

À1-10 4-10  

À2-1 1-2  

À2-2    

À2-3    

À2-4    

À2-5    

À2-6 2-6  

À2-7    

À2-8    

À2-9 2-9  

À2-10 2-10  

b.         Period II – Second Plane of the Sphere of Life ( Chokmah-À2-Binah-i  = Ö-1

            This Period and its associated Plane of the Sphere of Life correspond to Olam Briah (h a I r b), the
Creative World, where the creative imagination of God first takes the beginnings of
form,                                            and Neschamah (h m c n), that part of the Self that comprises the true
spiritual vision of Intuition (Chokmah and   À2) or Imagination (Binah and i  = Ö-1 ).

                  ac.        Key 35

Lithium 3Li7, Z=3.  Electron configuration:  2-1. Atomic weight:  6.94.  Oxidation states:  +1. Column/Row

on the Periodic Table: 1a/K-L (2).  Connects Sephirah Æ toSephirah À0. ASCII character:  #.  Qaballistic
value:  210 = 102 (prime – the only even prime).  Earth, rock (a higher octave
of Tav);  Chokmah, Sephirah 2 (for the Qaballistic value of this Key), hence Neptune Þ and the Twos and
the Kings of the Tarot*; Beth b, 12th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 2nd letter of the Hebrew alphabet
(for the Qaballistic value), hence Mercury Ø and Trump I, The Magus;  VenusÙ, ruler of Libra ø (Libra
rules all face-to-face encounters and relationships, which aredyads, two persons or things in
relationship;  the atomic weight of Lithium, 7, is also the number of Venus’ Sephirah, Netzach); Power
Analog of Peh/Mars = 0/Lobachevski (Path connecting Sephirah Æ and Sephirah À0).

*In the Golden Dawn’s Tarot pack.  Crowley associates Chokmah with the Knights.

Alternate: 3Li7, Lithium.  Crystal structure:  o. 

The word “Lithium” comes from the Greek word lithos, “stone.”  The atomic weight of Lithium is 6.941,
and its atomic or Z-number is 3. It has a melting-point of 180.54°C;  its boiling-point is 1,347° C.  It has a
specific gravity of 0.534 at 20º C, and a valence of 1 (i.e., +1, a positive valence, since under all but the
most extraordinary conditions it can lose at most 1 electron from its outer electron orbital and gain
none).

Lithium, discovered by Arfvedson in 1817 e.v., is the lightest of all metals, with a density only about half
that of water.  It doesn’t occur free in nature;  combined with other elements in one compound or
another, it is found in small amounts in nearly all igneous rocks and in the waters of many mineral
springs.  Lepidolite, spodumene,petalite, and amblygonite are the more important minerals containing
it.  Currently (1973 e.v.), Lithium is being recovered from brines of Searles Lake, California, and from the
Great Salt Lake, Utah.  Large deposits of it are also found in Nevada and North Carolina.

Lithium metal is produced electrolytically from fused LiCl (Lithium chloride).  Much like Sodium and
Potassium, other members of the alkali metal series (Column 1a of the Periodic Table), Lithium is silvery
in appearance. It reacts with water, but not as vigorously as Sodium.  It imparts a beautiful crimson color
to a flame, but when the metal burns strongly the flame becomes a dazzling white.

Since World War II, the production of Lithium metal and its compounds have increased
enormously.  Because the metal has the highest specific heat of any solid element, it is used in many
heat-transfer applications.  However, because it is highly corrosive it requires special handling (i.e., it is
a bitch to work with, and often the only way to do so safely is in a pure nitrogen environment, working
with waldoes only!).  It is used as an alloying agent, synthesis of artificial compounds of various kinds,
and in nuclear applications.  It ranks as a leading contender as anode material for batteries, because of
its high electrochemical potential.*  It is also used in special glasses and ceramics – e.g., the glass for the
200-inch telescope at the Mt. Palomar Observatory in San Diego, CA, contains lithium in trace amounts.
Lithium chloride (LiCl) is one of the most hygroscopic materials known;  along with Lithium bromide
(LiBr), it is used in air-conditioning and industrial drying systems. Lithium stearate is used as an all-
purpose and high-temperature lubricant.  Other Lithium compounds are used in dry cells and storage
batteries. The metal is priced at about $8/lb (as of 1973 e.v.).

*An atom’s electrochemical potential is equivalent to the mass liberated by the passage of a unit
quantity of electricity via ions of that element.  The higher electrochemical potential of an element, the
stronger its electromagnetic “pull” on the electrons of other atoms or of those atoms on its electrons,
depending upon whether it has positive or negative valence.  Lithium, with a valence of +1 – i.e., it is a
ready, able, and egregiously willing donor of its one outer electron to other atoms – thus has an
extremely high electrochemical potential, higher even than those of the other Alkali Metals.  Whereas
the absolute value of an atom’s electrochemical potential is measured in terms of its ability either to
force its electrons on other atoms or rob electrons from other atoms, the direction of that potential –
the positive or negative sign on it – is determined by whether the atom belongs to the s group of
elements (electron donors, all with outer orbital less than half the total possible for the Periods to which
they belong) or p elements (electron borrowers, those with more than half that total).

            Chapter 2 of Crowley’s The Book of Lies (op. cit., p. 14), is:

KEFADH B

THE CRY OF THE HAWK

Hoor hath a secret fourfold name:  it is Do What Thou Wilt.

Four Words:  Naught – One – Many – All.

Thou – Child!

Thy Name is holy.

Thy Kingdom is come.

Thy Will is done.

Here is the Bread.

Here is the Blood.

Bring us through Temptation!

Deliver us from Good and Evil!

That Mine as Thine be the Crown of the Kingdom, even now.

ABRACADABRA.

These ten words are four, the Name of the One.

            ad.       Key 36

Beryllium 4Be9, Z=4.  Electron configuration:  2-2. Atomic weight:  9.01218. Oxidation

states:  +2.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  2a/K-L.  ConnectsSephirah  Æ to Sephirah À1.  ASCII
character:  $. Qaballistic value:  310 = 112 (prime – the first odd, non-trivial prime)  Pluto î, Mercury  Ø,
Luna ×, Jupiter Û (associations with money and wealth);  Venus Ù (due to the precious stones in which
this element is found, as well as its sweet taste, for more on which, see below);  Gimel g, 13th Key of the
traditional Qaballah and 3rd letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the Qaballistic value of this Key), hence
Luna × and Trump II, The High Priestess;  Binah, Sephirah 3 (for the Qaballistic value of this Key),
hence Ü and  Ý, and the Threes and the Queens of the Tarot;  to exist, existence (from the chemical
symbol, “Be”); 

Alternate: 4P9, Popularium.  Crystal structure:  ¤.  Associations: Venus.

            Beryllium comes from the Greek word berryllos, for “beryl.” It is also called Glucinium
or Glucinum, from the Greek word glykos, meaning “sweet” (an association with Taurus, ruled by
Venus).  It has an atomic weight of 9.01218 and an atomic number of 4.  Its melting-point is 1,278º ! 5º C
and a boiling-point of 2,970º C.  It has a specific gravity of 1.848 at 20º C, and a valence of +2.
            Beryllium was first discovered in the form of Beryllium oxide (BeO) byVauquelin in beryl and in
emeralds in 1798 e.v.  Metallic Beryllium was isolated in 1828 e.v. by Wöhler, and independently
by Bussy in the same year, by the action of Potassium on Beryllium chloride.

            Beryllium is found in some 30 mineral species, the most important of which include beryl,
chrysoberyl, and phenacite.  Precious forms of beryl include aquamarine and emerald (reinforcing its
association with Venus).  Beryl (3BeO*Al2O3*6SiO2) is the most important commercial source of the
element and its compounds.  Most of the metal is now prepared by reducing Beryllium fluoride (BeF)
with metallic Magnesium. Metallic Beryllium did not become readily available to industry until 1957 e.v.

            Metallic Beryllium, which is steel-gray in color, has many desirable properties. One of the lightest
of all metals, it has the highest melting-points of the light metals, with a modulus of elasticity about one-
third greater than that of steel.  It resists attack by concentrated nitric acid, has excellent thermal
conductivity, and is nonmagnetic.  It is highly permeable to X-rays, and when bombard by a-particles, as
from Radium or Polonium, it emits neutrons in a ratio of about 30 neutrons per 10 6 a-particles.  At
ordinary temperatures, Beryllium resists oxidation in air, although its ability to scratch glass is probably
due to the formation of a thin layer of Beryllium oxide on its surface.

            Beryllium is used as an alloying agent in producing Beryllium Copper, which is used extensively for
springs, electrical contacts, spot-welding electrodes, and non-sparking tools.  It has applications as a
structural material in high-speed aircraft, missiles, and spacecraft.  It is used in nuclear reactors as a
reflector or moderator because of its low thermal neutron absorption cross-section.  It is used in
gyroscopes, computer parts, and inertial guidance instruments which require lightness, stiffness, and
dimensional stability.  Its oxide has a very high melting-point, and is also used in nuclear and ceramic
applications.

            Beryllium and its salts are toxic, and should be handled with the greatest of care.  Though early
experimenters tasted it to verify its nature – it has a sweet taste* –Beryllium and its compounds
should not be tasted, due to their extreme toxicity.  The metal, its alloys, and its salts can be handled
safely if certain work-codes are observed, but no attempt should be made to work with them until one is
familiar with proper safeguards.  The recommended maximum allowable concentration of Beryllium
dust in an 8-hour day is about 2 micrograms per cubic meter in non-work areas.

*Hence its other name, Glucinium. This is yet another correspondence with Venus and Taurus.  The
great toxicity of this element corresponds nicely with Pisces, a Sign in which Venus is exalted.  (Luna,
which rules childhood, can also be associated with sweetness;  Luna is exalted in Taurus and is an
esoteric Lord of Pisces.)

 
            Beryllium metal in vacuum-cast billet form is priced roughly at $70/lb (as of 1973 e.v.);  fabricated
forms are more expensive.

            Chapter 3 of Crowley’s The Book of Lies (op. cit., p. 16):

KEFADH  G

THE OYSTER

The brothers of A\A\ are one with the Mother of the Child.

The Many is as adorable to the One as the One is to the Many.  This is the Love of These; creation-
parturition is the Bliss of the One; coition-dissolution is the Bliss of the Many.

The All, thus interwoven of These, is Bliss.

Naught is beyond Bliss.

The Man delights in uniting with the Woman; the Woman in parting from the Child.

The Brothers of A\A\ are women;  the Aspirants to A\A\are Men.

                                    ae.        Key 37

            Boron 5B11, Z=5.  Electron configuration:  2-3. Atomic weight:  10.81. Oxidation states:  +3.

Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 3a/K-L.  Connects SephirahÆ to Sephirah À2. ASCII
character:  %.  Qaballistic value:  410 = 1002. Isis, Djehuti, Hermes (associations with the mathematical
concept of %);  Chesed, Sephirah 4 (for the Qaballistic value of this Key), hence Jupiter Û;  Daleth,
14th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 4 th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the Qaballistic value of this
Key), hence Venus Ù and Trump III, The Empress;  the Pentagram and the Quintessence (for the Z-
number);  Beth  b, 12th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 2 nd letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the
symbol, B), hence Mercury Ø and Trump I, The Magus; Magick (because of associations with the
Pentagram, and also because Boron’s atomic weight is approximately equal to 11, the number of
Magick).

            Alternate:  5Bc11, Bigmacum.  Crystal structure: L  Mercury, Hermes (fast-food, rip-offs);  Eris, the

Pentagon (for the Z-number)
 

            The word “Boron” is etymologically related to the Arabic word Buraq and the Persian word Burah.

            Boron has an atomic weight of 10.81 and an atomic number of 5.  Its melting-point is 2,300º and
its boiling-point, at which it sublimes, is 2,550º C.  The specific gravity of its crystals is 2.34, and of the
amorphous variety of Boron is 2.37; its valence is +3.

            Boron compounds have been known for thousands of years, but the element as such wasn’t
discovered until 1808 e.v. by Sir Humphry Davy and simultaneously by Gay-Lussac and Thenard.

            The element doesn’t naturally exist in a free state, but occurs as orthoboric acid, usually in certain
volcanic spring waters, and in the form of borates in borax andcolemanite.  Ulexite, another Boron
mineral, is of interest as a natural manifestation of fiber optics.  The most important source of Boron by
far is the mineral rasorite, also known askermite, found in the Mojave Desert of California.  Extensive
borax deposits are also found inTurkey.

            Boron exists naturally as 19.78% 5B10 isotope and 80.22% 5B11 isotope. High-purity crystalline

Boron may be prepared by the vapor-phase reduction of Boron trichloride or tribromide with Hydrogen
on electrically heated filaments. The impure or amorphous Boron, a brownish-black powder, can be
obtained by heating the trioxide with Magnesium powder. Boron of 99.9999% purity has been produced
and is available commercially.

            Elemental Boron has an energy band gap of 1.50 to 1.56 electron volts, which is higher than that
of either Silicon or Germanium. It has interesting optical characteristics, transmitting portions of the
infrared spectrum.  It is a poor conductor of electricity at room temperature but a good conductor at
high temperature.

            Amorphous Boron is used in pyrotechnic flares to provide a distinctive green color, and in rockets
as an igniter.  The most important compounds of Boron are boric or boracic acid, which is widely used as
a mild antiseptic, and borax (Na2B4O7·10H2O), which serves as a cleansing flux in welding and as a water-
softener in washing powders.  Boron compounds are used in production of enamels for covering steel of
refrigerators, washing machines, and the like.  They are also used extensively in the manufacture of
borosilicate glasses.  Boron’s isotope 10 (5B10) is used as a control for nuclear reactors, as a shield for
nuclear radiation, and in instruments used for detecting radiation.  Boron nitride has remarkable
properties, and can be used to make a material as hard as diamond.  The nitrate also behaves like an
electrical insulator, but conducts heat like a metal.  It also has lubricating properties similar to
graphite.  The hydrides are easily oxidized with considerable energy liberation, and are being studied for
use as rocket fuels.  Demand is increasing for boron filaments, a high-strength, lightweight material
chiefly employed for advanced aerospace structures.

            Amorphous Boron (90-92% grade) costs about $12-$30 per pound, depending on quantity
ordered (as of 1973 e.v.).
            Elemental Boron is not considered to be a poison, but assimilation of its compounds has a
cumulatively poisonous effect on the body.

            Chapter 4 of Crowley’s The Book of Lies (op. cit., p. 18):

KEFADH  D

PEACHES

Soft and hollow, how thou dost overcome the hard and full.

It dies, it gives itself;  to Thee is the fruit!

Be thou the Bride;  thou shalt be the Mother hereafter.

To all impressions thus.  Let them not overcome thee;  yet let them breed within thee.  The least of the
impressions, come to its perfection, is Pan.

Receive a thousand lovers;  thou shalt bear but One Child.

This child shall be the heir of Fate the Father.

                  af.        Key 38

            Carbon 6C12, Z=12.  Electron configuration:  2-4. Atomic weight:  12.011. Valance: +2, +4,

-4.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  4a/K-L.  ConnectsSephirah Æ to Kether.  ASCII character:  &.
Qaballistic value:  510 = 1012 (prime). Venus Ù (association with & = joining, reflecting Carbon’s tendency
to form covalent bonds);  Sol Ö (association with Carbon’s critical role in all life-processes;  6, the atomic
number of Carbon, is also that of Sol’s Sephirah, Tiphareth); Tubman, Eris, Chaos, Nhee-Ghee
(associations with 5, reflecting Life’s chaotic properties);  perfect numbers (for the Z-number, 6 = 1 x 2 x
3 = 1 + 2 + 3), hence God, the Perfect Being; Geburah, Sephirah 5 (for the Qaballistic value of this Key),
hence Mars  Ú; Heh  h, 15th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 5th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the
Qaballistic value), hence Aries ò and Trump IV, The Emperor*;  Kaph k, 21st Key of the traditional
Qaballah and 11th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the symbol, C), hence Jupiter Û and Trump X, The
Wheel of Fortune;  Gimel g, 13th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 3rd letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for
the symbol, C), hence Luna × and Trump II, The High Priestess.

*In Crowley’s Tarot pack, The Book of Thoth, Aries and The Emperor are associated with Tzaddi x, the
17th letter of the Hebrew alphabet; while Aquarius and Trump VII, The Star, are associated with Heh h.

            Alternate: 6C12, Carbonation.  Crystal structure: õ.  Associations:  Coke, Pepsi, Jolt, “Now

you’re cookin’ with gas!”, etc.

            The word Carbon comes from the Latin word carbo¸  meaning  “charcoal.” Carbon (C12 ) has an
atomic weight of exactly 12 (natural Carbon has an atomic weight of 12.011)* and an atomic number of
6.

*Since the standard for atomic weight is defined relative to the weight of one C12 atom, one unit of
atomic weight being defined as exactly one-twelfth of that of that atom. Carbon as it occurs in nature is
a mixture of isotopes of Carbon, including, e.g., the unstable isotope C14, with a half-life of 5,730 years,
used extensively for dating organic materials.

The melting-point of Carbon is ~3,550º C, and its boiling-point is 4,827º C (graphite, an allotropic form of
Carbon, sublimes at 3,367º ! 25º C). The specific gravity of amorphous Carbon (soot) is 1,8-2.1;  that of
graphite is 1.9-2.3;  that of diamond is 3.15-3.53 (depending upon the variety;  that of gem-quality
diamond is 3.513 at 25º C).  Carbon has a valence of 2, 3, or 4.
Carbon, known in the form of soot from Life’s beginnings and in the form of diamond since human
prehistory, is one of the most widely distributed of all elements. It is found in abundance in the Sun,
other Stars, comets, and the atmospheres of most Planets.  It is found in some meteorites in the form of
microscopic diamonds.  Natural diamonds are found in kimberlite in ancient volcanic “pipes” such as
those located in South Africa, Arkansas,Australia, and elsewhere, and have been recovered from the
ocean floor off the Cape of Good Hope.  In its amorphous form, soot, it is found wherever the burning of
organic materials occurs, from hearth-fires to the burning of forests.  Synthetic forms of allotropic
Carbon exist, primarily in the form of synthetic diamonds (at least 30% of all industrial-grade diamonds
now used in the U.S. are synthetic).

The energy of the Stars is at least partially derived from the Carbon-Nitrogen-Oxygen cycle. In massive
Stars, where the central temperatures exceed 16 million degrees Kelvin, Carbon serves as a catalyst by
which Hydrogen burning proceeds.  Cornell University physicist Hans Bethe was instrumental in
discovering the steps whereby a Carbon nucleus absorbs protons and finally spits out a Helium
nucleus.  Along the way, the Carbon is transformed into Nitrogen and Oxygen, because of which this
process is call the CNO (Carbon-Nitrogen-Oxygen) cycle.  The CNO cycle occurs in six steps:

 
12
C + 1H  t 13N + c

            13N t 13C +  e+ + m
13
C + 1H  t 14N + c
14
N + 1H  t 15O + c
15
O  t 15N + e+ + m
15
N + 1H  t 12C + 4He

Like the proton-proton chain, the CNO cycle has the overall effect of converting four Hydrogen nuclei
(i.e., four protons) into one Helium nucleus, two positrons, two neutrinos, and some high-energy, short-
wavelength gamma radiation.  The 12C nucleus must be present to permit the CNO cycle to function, but
it is restored at the end of the cycle, so that Carbon isn’t used up by this process.

*For more on the thermonuclear reactions that power the Stars – not to mention those used in modern
weaponry – see, e.g., William J. Kaufman, III, Universe (New York:  W. H. Freeman and Co., 1985), pp.
357-360.

 
 

Carbon is found free in nature in several forms (allotropes*).  The commonest are amorphous (soot),
graphite (which is used as an industrial lubricant as well as for the “lead” in pencils), and diamond.

*Allotropy   is the property shown by certain elements of being capable of existence in more than one
form, due to differences in the arrangements of atoms or molecules of those
elements.  Monotropic forms of an element are those one of which is always metastable with respect to
the others.  Enantropic  forms are crystal forms capable of existing in reversible equilibrium with one
another.

Graphite, one of the softest materials known, is a form of pure Carbon in which all atoms are aligned in
the same plane, so that sheets of it are formed, which tend to slide over one another, giving it its
properties as a lubricant and a marking material.  It exists in two forms, alpha and beta.  These have
identical physical properties, except for their crystal-structures. Naturally-occurring graphites are
reported to contain as much as 30% of the rhombohedral (beta) form whereas synthetic materials
contain only the alpha form.  The hexagonal alpha form can be converted to the beta form by means of
mechanical treatment (pressure), and the beta form reverts to the alpha form when it is heated above
1,000º C.

Diamond, one of the hardest of all materials, is a highly-ordered form of pure Carbon in which the atoms
take up a cubical arrangement, forming crystals.

A fourth pure form, “white” Carbon, a transparent birefringent material, also exists, individual instances
of which are called buckminsterfullerenes, the formula of which is C60.  In this form, the atoms are
arranged in the form of “buckyballs” (named in honor of the late Buckminster Fuller and the geodesic
domes he designed, because of their shape) and “buckytubes” (a tubular version of the allotrope), 60 or
more atoms arranged in regular spheroidal polyhedra.  This form of Carbon, discovered only recently, is
finding important applications in industry, and extremely exciting new uses of it may be used in the
future – in particular, buckytubes, are far stronger than diamonds, may be eventually used as material
for building “space elevators,” enormous structures which, twice as long as the distance from Earth’s
surface to a geostationary orbit, may someday be used to convey passengers and freight from Earth’s
surface to free space with almost no net expenditure of energy.* Buckminsterfullerines were first
produced in 1969 e.v. during the sublimation of pyrolitic graphite at low pressures.  Under free-
vaporization conditions above ~2,550º K, “white” Carbon forms as small transparent crystals on the
edges of the basal planes of graphite.  The interplanar spacing of “white” Carbon is identical to those of
a Carbon form noted in the graphitic gneiss from the meteoritic Ries Crater of Germany.

*An object orbiting the Earth in a geostationary (geosynchronous) orbit, 36,000 kilometers above the
Earth’s surface, would remain positioned over the same spot on that surface, unmoving, as long as it
occupied that orbit and was not moved elsewhere along it by some outside force. Simply put, “space
elevators,” originally invented by the St. Petersburg engineer Yuri Artsutanov, who calls them “cosmic
funiculars,” would be enormous vertical towers, 72,000 kilometers in height, positioned such that their
midlines would be in geostationary orbits, their bases touching the surface of the Earth or hovering only
a few feet above it, their tops in airless space, a fifth of the way from Earth to the Moon.  Since their
mass above and below their midlines would be equal, once put in place, they would stay in place,
orbiting the Earth in geostationary orbits that kept them forever above the same points on Earth – at
least until they were knocked out of that orbit as a result of natural causes or sabotage.  Few materials
would be strong enough for production of such long, long structures.  The strain on any vertically-
oriented material of more or less homogenous composition varies directly as its length, since the longer
it is, the more it weighs, and therefore the more weight it has to hold up even without anything
attached to it.  Consider, now, a vertical structure some 72,000 kilometers – about 45,000 miles – in
height, built to ferry passengers and cargo between Earth and space, as well as house countless
numbers of maintenance and other personnel, along with all their tools, possessions, furniture, and
food, and the water necessary for their life and well-being as long as they remained on or in that
structure! The strain that would be placed on its main structural supports would many orders of
magnitude greater than anything that a corresponding support in one ofManhattan’s skyscrapers must
bear. Thus only a material such as the buckytubes could possibly withstand the stresses and strains
which the structural members of such a tower would have to bear every moment of its existence and
still hope to survive the strain.

As for how payloads would be carried up and down these enormous Earth-to-space “elevators, electrical
energy alone could boost payloads up to the GEO (Geostationary Orbital height above the surface of the
Earth), and rocket propulsion would be needed only for the remainder of the journey, up to the
outermost parts of the towers and free space.  In addition to avoiding the danger, noise, and
environmental hazards of rocketry, the space elevator would make astonishing reductions in the cost of
all space missions possible.  Electricity is cheap;  it would require at most about a hundred dollars’ worth
to take one person to from Earth to the GEO.  The round-trip cost, from Earth to GEO and back, would
cost about ten dollars, since most of the energy would be recovered on the downward journey.  So
existence of such structures would open the skies for the whole world, making it possible for even the
poorest countries to establish space-based industries, and enabling even individuals of modest means to
sample the delights of space-travel.  For the cost of travel from Earth to space up the elevators would
include only that of the electricity to travel from ground to GEO, and the propulsive power to boost from
there to free space.  Once at the top of the structure, very little more energy would be needed to break
free of Earth’s gravitational attraction entirely, and once beyond Earth’s gravity-well, space-travel would
be relatively inexpensive, as long as it did not require going down to a Planetary surface and back to
space again.  The asteroids could be mined with relative ease and low expense, the products of such
mining ferried back to Earth’s surface via the elevators at minimal cost. Factories and farms could be
placed in orbit around the Sun between Earth and Venus or Earth and Mars, their products likewise
delivered to Earth via the space elevator at a cost so low as to be negligible.  At least potentially, the
result would be an end to want and famine everywhere on Earth, and an open door to space
colonization – we would no longer have all Earth’s precious eggs in one fragile, blue-white basket, but
instead could nest them across many worlds in the Solar System and, someday, the worlds of other
Stars.

But only the tubular form of buckminsterfullerene has any hope of being strong enough to serve
successfully as structural material for space elevators.  Few materials have sufficient tensile strength to
hang all the way down to the Equator from an altitude of 36,000 kilometers, with enough margin left
over to raise useful payloads.  Diamond would do the job quite nicely, but the necessary megaton
quantities of the stuff aren’t readily available on the open market, and probably never will be. In The
Fountains of Paradise, Arthur C. Clarke suggests a more accessible source:  orbiting factories where
diamonds might be grown under zero-gravity conditions.  But such factories are still a long way in the
future.  And the “buckytube” variety of buckminsterfullerene, large quantities of which can now be
readily produced at very reasonable cost, is far harder than diamond and far more suitable to the
task.  So someday a trip to the Moon may involve little more expense than a trip to the Bahamas from
the East Coast of the United States does now, with less potential danger and hassle.  Instead of “Fly Me
to the Moon,” the song eventually may be:  “Press the Elevator Button of Love and Take Me to the
Stars.” J

In combination with other elements, Carbon is found in the form of Carbon dioxide in our Planet’s
atmosphere and dissolved in all natural waters.  It is a component of great rock masses in the form of
Carbonates of Calcium (limestone), Magnesium, and Iron.  Coal, petroleum, and natural gas are chiefly
hydrocarbon compounds, that is, compounds formed primarily of Carbon and Hydrogen.  Carbon is
unique among the elements in the vast number and variety of compounds it can form.  With Hydrogen,
Oxygen, Nitrogen, and other elements it forms a very large number of compounds in which Carbon
atoms are often linked to other Carbon atoms. There are more than a million known Carbon
compounds, many thousands of which are vital to organic and life processes. Chemically speaking,
Carbon is the basis for Life itself, and without it, Life – at least as we know it here on Earth – would be
impossible.  While it has been conjectured that Silicon might take the place of Carbon in forming a host
of similar compounds, it isn’t possible at this time to form compounds with very long chains of silicon
atoms analogous to the hydrocarbon compounds out of which living beings are built.
Some of the most important compounds of Carbon include:  Carbon dioxide (CO2), Carbon monoxide
(CO), Carbon disulfide (CS2), chloroform (CHCl3), Carbon tetrachloride (CCl4), methane (CH4), ethylene
(C2H4), acetylene (C2H2), benzene (C6H6), ethyl alcohol (C2H5OH), acetic acid (CH3COOH), and their
derivatives.

Carbon has seven isotopes.  In 1961 e.v. the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry adopted
the isotope Carbon-12 as the basis for atomic weights.  Carbon-14, an isotope with a half-life of 5,730
years, has been widely used to date such materials as wood, archeological specimens, and so forth
(though for dates much older than about 50,000 BC, its use for this purpose is dicey – at best;  other
radioactive materials, e.g., Uranium-235, are used for extreme long-range dating).  Carbon-13 is now
commercially available at a cost of about $700/gm (as of 1973 e.v.).

As previously mentioned, Carbon is able to participate in far more compounds than any other single
element, even Silicon.  As P. W. Atkins puts it in his marvelous The Period Kingdom:    A Journey Into the
Land of the Chemical Elements (op. cit.):

“. . . [The] overarching power of carbon to participate in molecule formation . . . results in such

complexity of structure and collaboration that the [chemical] alliances it forms become alive and reflect
upon themselves. The essential reason for this latent power of a single region [i.e., element] is . . .
carbon’s intrinsic mediocrity, its lack of self-assertion.  Sitting as it does in the middle of the northern
coast [Period II of the Periodic Table], it is neither an aggressive shedder of electrons, as are elements to
[its] left [in the Periodic Table], nor is it an avid receiver, like the atoms to its right. Carbon is mild in its
demands on the alliances it makes.  Moreover, it is even content with its own company, and can make
extensive liaisons with itself, forming chains, rings, and trees of atoms. Were it readier to give up its
electrons, it would do so at the demand of another atom, and then find that it had not retained
sufficient electrons to bind other atoms in a precise disposition. If it were more avid for electrons, it
would soon satisfy its tendency to bond and would lack the opportunity for subtle conspiracy with
others.  By being in the middle, undemanding and not particularly generous, it can spin lasting alliances
rather than hasty conspiracies.

– Ibid., pp. 145-146

To which we can add only:  Ah! Lucky Pierre! J

            Chapter 5 of Crowley’s The Book of Lies (op. cit., p. 20:

 
KEFADH E

THE BATTLE OF THE ANTS

That is not which is.

The only Word is Silence.

The only Meaning of that Word is not.

Thoughts are false.

Fatherhood is unity disguised as duality.

Peace implies war.

Power implies war.

Harmony implies war.

Victory implies war.

Glory implies war.

Foundation implies war.

Alas! For the Kingdom wherein all these are at war.

                                    ag.        Key 39

            Nitrogen 7N14, Z=7.  Electron configuration:  2-5. Atomic weight:  14.0067. Oxidation states:  +1,

+2, +3, +4, +5, -1, -2, -3.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 5a/K-L. Connects Sephirah Æ  to Chokmah.
ASCII character:  ‘.  Qaballistic value: 610 = 1102.  Associations: Tiphareth, Sephirah 6 (for the Qaballistic
value), hence SolÖ, and the Sixes and the Knights* of the Tarot;  Vav, 16th Key of the traditional Qaballah
and 6th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the Qaballistic value), hence Taurusó and Trump VI, The
Hierophant;  Nun, 24th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 14thKey of the Hebrew alphabet (for the
chemical symbol), hence Scorpio ù and Trump XIII, Death (which is necessary if there is to be the fertility
of soil and room in the world necessary for new life to come into existence); Venus Ù and Taurus ó (for
Nitrogen’s critical role in growth and metabolism in all living beings, especially the fertility of the
soil;  the atomic number of Nitrogen, 7, is also that of Netzach, the Sephirah of Venus, and 14, the
atomic weight of Nitrogen, is the Key Number of Daleth, the Path of Venus).

*That is, the Knights are associated with Tiphareth  in the Golden Dawn Tarot. Crowleyassociates the
Kings or Emperors with it.

            Alternate: 7Pp14, Pop.  Crystal structure: õ.  Party-favors (NO2);  El Daddio; weasels (obs.).

            The word Nitrogen is etymologically related to the Latin word nitrum and the Greek word nitron,
meaning “native soda,” and the Greek word genes,  “forming.” The atomic weight of Nitrogen is
14.0067, and its atomic number is 7.  It has a valence of 3 or 5.

The melting-point of Nitrogen is –209.86º C, and its boiling-point is –195.8º C.  Its density is 1,2506
grams per liter.  Its specific gravity in the liquid-phase is 0.808 at –195.8º C, and in the solid phase is
1.026 at -252º C.

Nitrogen was discovered by Daniel Rutherford in 1772 e.v., but at about the same time, Scheele,
Cavendish, Priestly, and others studied “burnt or dephlogisticated air,” as air without Oxygen – and thus
consisting almost entirely of Nitrogen – was then called.

Nitrogen makes up some 78% of the air by volume.  The estimated amount of this element in the Earth’s
atmosphere is more than 4,000 billion (4 x 10 12) tons.  From this inexhaustible source it can be obtained
by liquefaction and fractional distillation (it can also be easily prepared by heating a water solution of
ammonium nitrate).  The vibrant orange-reds, blue-greens, blue-violets, and deep violet hues of the
aurora borealis and aurora australis are due to nitrogen molecules in the atmosphere.

The element is so inert that Lavoisier named it azote, meaning “without life,” yet its compounds are so
reactive as to be extremely important components of foods, poisons, fertilizers, and explosives.  In its
gaseous phase, Nitrogen is colorless, odorless, and a generally inert element. In its liquid phase, it is
likewise odorless and colorless, and is similar in appearance to liquid water. Two allotropic forms of solid
Nitrogen exist, with the transition from the a to the b form taking place at -237° C.

When Nitrogen is heated, it combines directly with Magnesium, Lithium, or Calcium;  when mixed with
Oxygen and subjected to electric sparks, it first forms nitric oxide (NO) and then the dioxide
(NO2).  When heated under pressure with a catalyst with Hydrogen, ammonia is formed (this is called
the Haber  process).  The ammonia thus formed is of the utmost importance, because it is used in
fertilizers, and it can be oxidized to nitric acid (Ostwald process).

The ammonia industry is the largest consumer of Nitrogen. Large amounts of the gas are also used by
the electronics industry, which uses the gas as a blanketing medium during production of such
components as transistors, diodes, etc.  The drug industry also uses large quantities of the
element.  Nitrogen is used as a refrigerant both for the immersion-freezing of food products and for
transportation of foods.  Liquid Nitrogen is also used in missile-work as a purge for components,
insulators for space-chambers, etc., and by the oil industry to build up great pressures in wells to force
crude oil upward to levels at which it can then be siphoned out. Another use for pure nitrogen is in
preservation of books and paper documents of all kinds;  e.g., the originals of the Declaration of
Independence, the Bill of Rights, and other important American documents are kept in the Smithsonian
in sealed chambers filled with pure nitrogen atmospheres, which will not react at all with the fragile,
precious documents of which they are the guardians.

Sodium and Potassium nitrates are formed by the decomposition of organic matter with compounds of
the metals present.  In certain dry areas of the world, these salt peters are found naturally in great
quantity.

Ammonia, nitric acid, the nitrates, the five oxides (N 2), NO, N2O3, NO2, and N2O5), TNT, the cyanides, etc.
are but a few of the important compounds of Nitrogen.

Nitrogen gas prices vary from $0.02 to $2.75 per 100 cubic feet (ca. 1973 e.v.) depending on purity and
other considerations. Production of Nitrogen in the U.S.amounts to more than 160 billion cubic feet per
year.

Chapter 6 of Crowley’s The Book of Lies  (op. cit.,  p. 22):

KEFADH F

CAVIAR

The Word was uttered:  the One exploded into one thousand million worlds.

Each world contained a thousand million spheres.

Each sphere contained a thousand million planes.

Each plane contained a thousand million stars.

Each star contained a many thousand million things.

Of these the reasoner took six, and, preening, said:  This is the One and the All.

These six the Adept harmonised, and said:  This is the Heart of the One and the All.

These six were destroyed by the Master of the Temple, and hespake not.

The Ash thereof was burnt up by the Magus into the Word.

Of all this did the Ipsissimus know Nothing.

                                    ah.        Key 40

            Oxygen 8O16, Z=8.  Electron configuration:  2-6. Atomic weight:  15.994. Oxidation states:  -2.

Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 6a/K-L. Connects SephirahÆ to Binah. ASCII character:  (.  Qaballistic
value:  7. Associations:  Mercury Ø , Hermes (for Oxygen’s vital role in brain chemistry, etc.);  the
element Air (since Oxygen is a primary, critical  constituent of our atmosphere);  the waning Moon (for
the shape of the character), hence Hekate, Kali, Hel, and other Gods and Goddesses of the Waning
Moon; Vav   w , 16th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 6th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the symbol
of the element; 16 is also the atomic weight of Oxygen), hence Taurus ó and Trump V, The
Hierophant;  Netzach, Sephirah 7 (for the Qaballistic value), hence Venus  Ù, and the Sevens of the
Tarot.  Zain  z  , 17th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 7 th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the
Qaballistic value), hence Gemini ô and Trump VI, The Lovers;  Chiron å (Path connecting S. 0 withBinah).

            Alternate: 8O16, Oxygen.  Crystal structure:  p

The word Oxygen is derived from the Greek words oxys, “sharp,” and genes, “forming.”  Literally, it
means “acid-former.”

The atomic weight of naturally-occurring Oxygen is 15.9994, and its atomic number is 8.  It has a valence
of 2.
Oxygen has a melting-point of –218.4º Cm and a boiling-point of –182.962º C.  Its density is 1.429 grams
per liter at 0º C.  In its liquid phase, it has a specific gravity of 1.14 at –182.96º C.

For many centuries, from time to time researchers realized that air is composed of more than one
component.  The behavior of atmospheric Oxygen and Nitrogen led to the formulation of the phlogiston
theory of combustion, which was accepted as sound by chemists for at least a century.  Eventually
Oxygen was prepared by several researchers, e.g., Bayen and Borch, but they didn’t know how to collect
it, didn’t study its properties, and didn’t recognize it as an elementary substance.  Priestly is generally
credited with its official discovery, although his contemporary Scheele also independently discovered
it.  Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the sun, and it plays a part in the Carbon-Nitrogen
process from which the Stars derive their energy (see discussion under “Carbon,” above).

When excited, atmospheric Oxygen emits the bright red and yellow-green light that colors the Aurora
Borealis and Aurora Australis. Oxygen gas forms 21% of the Earth’s atmosphere by volume.  It can be
obtained directly from the atmosphere by means of liquefaction and fractional distillation.  The element
and its compounds make up 49.2% of the Earth’s crust by weight.  About two-thirds of the human body
is Oxygen. Pure water is nine-tenths Oxygen by weight.

In the laboratory, Oxygen can be prepared by the electrolysis of water or by heating Potassium chloride
(KCl) with Manganese dioxide (MnO2) as a catalyst.  Oxygen gas is colorless, odorless, and tasteless.  Its
liquid and solid forms are a pale blue in color, and are strongly paramagnetic.

*Paramagnetic materials are those within which an applied magnetic field is slightly increased by the
alignment of electron orbits.  The slight diamagnetic effect in materials having magnetic dipole moments
is overshadowed by this paramagnetic alignment.  As the temperature increases, this paramagnetism
decreases, leaving only diamagnetism.  The permeability of paramagnetic materials is slightly greater
than that of empty space.

Ozone (O3), a highly active allotropic form of Oxygen, is formed by the action of an electrical discharge or
ultra-violet light on Oxygen.  Ozone’s presence in the atmosphere (amounting to the equivalent of a
layer 3 mm thick at ordinary pressures and temperatures) is of vital importance in preventing most of
the ultraviolet light received from the Sun from reaching Earth’s surface, where it would otherwise
destroy all Earth’s surface-life.*  Undiluted ozone has a bluish color.  Liquid ozone is bluish-black, and
solid ozone is violet-black.
 

*Over the last decade or so, there has been increasing scientific and public concern over the growing
ozone “holes” – regions in the atmosphere where the percentage of ozone by volume falls sharply
below normal or even virtually disappears altogether – that form over the Earth’s Northern
and Southern polar regions during Winter and early Spring. In spite of repeated attempts by many
scientists and laypersons to rebut the contention that this is occurring, repeated atmospheric sampling
throughout the world, medical statistics for different areas of the world and different Seasons in those
areas, and field-studies of both land and marine life at high latitudes makes it clear that the problem is
real and growing worse every year.  The incidence of skin cancer of all kinds has sharply increased world-
wide over the last several years, especially in areas of the world which, such as Australia, are located
fairly close to one of the poles.  Rapidly increasing numbers of teratologies and cancers of all kinds have
been observed in wildlife throughout the world, even fish, as well as plant-life, especially organisms
living at high latitudes.  A sudden rise in epidemics of all kinds – including epidemics of once virtually
harmless infectious diseases which as certain varieties of influenza which have otherwise unaccountably
suddenly turned deadly – that suggests a lowered immune response in growing numbers of human and
non-human organisms that would be expected from too much exposure to high-intensity ultraviolet and
other radiation has been observed over the last two or three decades;  disturbingly, these include
epidemics and plagues in cattle, corn, wheat, rice, and other cultivars upon which most of the world now
depends for sustenance, as well as in our pets and in wildlife of all kinds.  Above all, atmospheric
samples taken repeatedly throughout the year and across the world over the last twenty years or so
make it clear that ozone “holes” occurring over both poles are not only growing in size but are persisting
for longer and longer periods of time once they have formed.

Some thinning of atmospheric ozone at the poles during the Winters is normal, but for the past two
decades both the size and duration of such “holes” has been far over what is normal and predicted
according to ideal conditions, the problem growing worse every year. Already Australia, which has now
one of the highest per-annum rates of incidence of skin-cancer, issues “Slip/Slap/Slop” – “Slip  on a
shirt,slap on a hat, slop on plenty of skin-block ointment” – every year, and other countries sited not far
from the poles are following suit.  The reason for the problem may be due to a combination of factors,
among them atmospheric emission of compounds that tend to rise high in the atmosphere and which
break down ozone, such as PCPs, by industry and perhaps other sources, and the growing “Greenhouse
Effect” responsible for a small but growing and steady and persistent rise in the average temperature of
our Planet that seems to have been in effect since the onset of the Industrial Revolution (though this
temperature-rise may have been in effect far longer than that, and could have begun for reasons having
little or nothing to do with human activities, however much it may have been exacerbated by them
lately).

What the ultimate solutions to it may be are anyone’s guess at this point.  It is possible that future
technological revolutions may eliminate the human contribution to the problem.  Catastrophes such as
cometary impacts on our Planet may do it by cutting human civilization back to nearly nothing and,
simultaneously, causing an “impact winter” which would precipitate a new Ice Age.  In the meantime,
however, we are stuck with the problem and its consequences, and I suggest investing heavily in Bullfrog
and other sun-blockers for the duration.  Not to mention wearing a lot of it whenever you got
outside.  After all, there’s no such thing as being too rich or too cancer-free . . .

Oxygen is very reactive, and is able to combine with most elements.  It is a component of hundreds of
thousands of organic compounds.  It is essential for respiration of all plants and animals, and for
practically all forms of combustion. Bottled Oxygen is frequently used in hospitals to aid the respiration
of patients.  The atomic weight of Oxygen was used as a standard of comparison for each of the other
elements until 1961 e.v., when the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry adopted Carbon-
12 as the new basis.

Oxygen has eight isotopes.  Natural oxygen is a mixture of thee isotopes, including Oxygen-16, Oxygen-
17, and Oxygen-18.  Oxygen-18 occurs naturally, is stable, and is available commercially.  Water (H2O)
1.5% of the oxygen of which is O18) is also available.

Commercial oxygen consumption in the U.S. is estimated to be more than 400 billion cubic feet per year,
and the demand is expected to increase substantially in the future.  Oxygen enrichment of steel bast-
furnaces accounts for the greatest use of the gas.  Large quantities are also used for making synthesis
gas for ammonia and methanol, ethylene oxide, and for oxy-acetylene welding.  Air separation plants
produce about 99% of the gas, electrolysis plants about 1%.  The gas costs $0.025 per cubic foot in small
quantities, and $6-$12 per ton in large quantities (circa 1973 e.v.).

Chapter 7 of Crowley’s The Book of Lies (op. cit.,  p. 24):

KEFADH Z

THE DINOSAURS

None are They whose number is Six;  else were they six indeed.

Seven are those Six that live not in the City of the Pyramids, under the Night of Pan.
There was Lao-tzu.

There was Siddartha.

There was Krishna.

There was Tahuti.

There was Mosheh.

There was Dionysus.

There was Mahmud.

But the Seventh men called PERDURABO;  for enduring unto The End, at The End was Naught to endure.

Amen.

                  ai.         Key 41

            Fluorine, 9F19, Z=9.  Electron configuration:  2-7. Atomic weight:  18.9984. Oxidation states:  -

1.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  7a/K-L.  ConnectsSephirah Æ to Chesed.  ASCII character:  ).
Qaballistic value:  8.  Associations: waxing Moon (for the shape of the character), hence Diana and other
Gods and Goddesses of the Waxing Moon, and thus the asteroid Diana;  Hod, Sephirah 8 (for the
Qaballistic value), hence Mercury Ø and the Eights of the Tarot;  Cheth, 18th Key of the traditional
Qaballah and 8th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, hence the Sign Cancer and Trump VII, The Chariot*;
Hermes Light-Fingers (both for the number 8, associated with Hod, the Sephirah of Mercury, and
because of Fluorine’s tendency to combine with – i.e., steal – all other available atoms in the
vicinity;  under certain circumstances of temperature and pressure, it will even combine with the Noble
Gases, which don’t combine with anything else);  Teth f, 19th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 9 th letter
of the Hebrew alphabet (for the atomic weight), hence Leo ö and Trump VIII, Strength (in The Book of
Thoth, Crowley’s pack, this Trump is numbered “XI,” and is called Lust).

*Curiously, in Taoist Alchemic traditions , Hermes is associated with the Element Water, because of the
properties of quicksilver (Mercury metal, which is liquid at room-temperatures). Cancer is the Cardinal
Sign of Water, so this association between Mercury and Water is one more link between Eastern and
Western Hermetic traditions.

 
 

            Alternate: 9Bf19, Fabian.  Crystal structure: ø

The word Fluorine comes from the Latin and French fluere, “flow” or “flux.”

Fluorine has an atomic weight of 18.9984, an atomic number of 9, and a valence of 1.  At one
atmosphere pressure, its melting-point is –219.62º C, its boiling-point is –188.14º C, and its density
1.696 grams per liter at 0º C.  The specific gravity of liquid Fluorine at its boiling-point under one
atmosphere of pressure is 1.108.

In 1529 e.v., Georgius Agricola described the use of fluorspar as a flux, and as early as 1670

e.v. Schwandhard that glass was etched when exposed to fluorspar treated with acid.  Scheele and many
later investigators, including Davy, Gay-Lussac, Lavoisier, and Thenard, experimented with hydrofluoric
acid (HFl), some experiments ending in tragedy.  The element was finally isolated in 1886 e.v.
by Moisson after nearly 74 years of continuous effort.

Fluorine occurs chiefly in fluorspar (CaF 2) and cryolite (Na2AlF6), but is also rather widely distributed in
other minerals.  A member of the Halogen family of elements, including Chlorine, Bromine, Iodine, and
Astatine as well, it is obtained by electrolyzing a solution of Potassium Hydrogen Fluoride in anhydrous
Hydrogen Fluoride in a vessel of metal or transparent fluorspar.  Modern commercial methods of
preparation are essentially variations on the procedures first used by Moisson.

Fluorine, the most electronegative and reactive of all elements, is a pale-yellow egregiously corrosive
gas which reacts with practically all organic and inorganic substances.  Under conditions of extremely
high pressure and temperature, it will even combine with the so-called Noble Gases, notably xenon,
radon, and krypton, which ordinarily combine with nothing, not even themselves.  Finely divided metals,
glass, ceramics, Carbon, and even water burn in Fluorine with a bright flame.  Elemental Fluorine and
the fluoride ion are extremely toxic.  The free element has a characteristic pungent odor, detectable in
concentrations as low as 20 parts per billion, which is well below the safe working level for the element
(the recommended maximum allowable concentration for a daily 8-hr exposure is 0.1 ppm).

Until World War II there was no commercial production of elemental Fluorine. However,

the Manhattan project and nuclear-energy applications made it necessary to produce large quantities of
it.  Safe handling techniques for it have since been developed, and it is now possibly to safely transport
liquid Fluorine by the ton.

Fluorine and its compounds are used in producing bomb-quality Uranium from Uranium hexafluoride, as
well as more than 100 commercial fluorochemicals, including many well-known high-temperature
plastics.  Hydrofluoric acid is used extensively for etching the glass of light bulbs, Pyrex measuring cups,
etc.  Fluorochloro hydrocarbons are widely used in air-conditioning and refrigeration.  It has been
suggested that Fluorine can be substituted for Hydrogen wherever it occurs in hydrocarbon compounds,
which could lead to an astronomical number of new Fluorine compounds.  The presence of at least 2
parts per million of Fluorine as soluble fluoride in drinking-water may cause mottled teeth in children
just acquiring permanent teeth; but in smaller amounts drinking-water fluorides may be beneficial,
preventing formation of dental cavities and strengthening teeth, for which reason it is often added by
municipalities to their drinking-water.  Elemental Fluorine is being studied (1973 e.v.) for possible use as
a rocket-propellant, since it has an exceptionally high specific impulse value.

Chapter 8 of Crowley’s the Book of Lies (op. cit., p. 26):

KEFADH H

STEEPED HORSEHAIR

Mind is a disease of semen.

All that a man is or may be is hidden therein.

Bodily functions are parts of the machine;  silent, unless in dis-ease.

But mind, never at ease, creaketh “I.”

This I persisteth not, posteth not through generations, changethmomentarily, finally is dead.

Therefore is man only himself when lost to himself in the Charioting.

                                    aj.        Key 42

 
            Neon 10Ne20, Z=10.  Electron configuration:  2-8. Atomic weight:  20.17. Oxidation states:  0.
Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 0/K-L.  Connects Sephirah Æto Geburah.  ASCII
character:  *.  Qaballistic value:  9. Associations:  Yesod, Sephirah9 (for the Qaballistic value), and
therefore the Fixed Stars, Luna ×, and  Neptune Þ(one of Luna’s higher octaves, Who is also associated
with Chokmah and the 9thDegree of Adept ship;  Luna and Neptune are also associated with Neon
because of Their elusive qualities), as well as the Nines of the Tarot;  Teth m, 19th Key of the traditional
Qaballah and 9th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (because of the Qaballistic value), hence Leo ö and
Trump VIII, Strength*; Pluto (because * signifies footnoting, i.e., something under the normal text, or
between the lines).

*In Crowley’s pack, The Book of Thoth, Trump VIII has the title Adjustment and is associated with
Libra;  in that pack, Leo is associated with Trump XI, Lust.

            Alternate: 10Sd20, Husseinium.  Crystal structure:  m.  An inert gas. Associations:

The word Neon comes from the Greek work neos, “new.”

The atomic weight of Neon is 20.179, its atomic number is 10, and it has a valence of 0.  Its melting-point
is –248.67º C, and its boiling-point is –246.048º C.  The density of its gas-phase is 0.89990 gm/l at 1
atmosphere pressure and 0º C;  the density of its liquid-phase at the boiling-point is 1.207 gm/cm 3.

Discovered by Ramsay and Travers in 1898 e.v., Neon is a rare gaseous element present in the
atmosphere to the extent of 1 part in 65,000 of air.  It is obtained by liquefaction of air and separated
from the other gases by fractional distillation.  Natural neon is a mixture of three isotopes;  five other,
unstable isotopes of Neon are also known.  Neon is extremely inert, but will form compounds with
Fluorine under extreme conditions of temperature and pressure.  The following ions are known from
optical and mass spectrometric studies:  Ne2+;  (NeAr)+;  (NeH)+;  and (HeNe)+.  Neon also forms an
unstable hydrate.  In a vacuum discharge tube, Neon glows reddish-orange.  Of all the rare gases, the
discharge of neon is the most intense at ordinary voltages and currents.

Neon is used in making the well-known Neon advertising signs, which accounts for its largest use.  It is
also sued to make high-voltage indicators, lighting arrestors, wave-meter tubes, and TV tubes.  Neon
and Helium are used in making gas lasers.  Liquid Neon is now commercially available and has important
applications as an economical cryogenic refrigerant.  It has over 40 times more refrigerating capacity per
unit volume than liquid Helium and more than three times that of liquid Hydrogen. Refrigeration-quality
Neon is compact, inert, and less expensive than Helium of a similar grade.  Neon gas costs about
$1.50/liter (ca. 1973 e.v.).

Chapter 9 of Crowley’s the Book of Lies (op. cit.,  p. 28):

KEFADH Q

THE BRANKS

Being is the Noun;  Form is the Adjective.

Matter is the noun;  Motion is the verb.

Wherefore hath Being clothed itself with Form?

Wherefore hath Matter manifested itself in Motion?

Answer not, O silent one!  For THERE is no “wherefore,” no “because.”

The name of THAT is not known;  the Pronoun interprets, that is, misinterprets, It.

Time and Space are Adverbs.

Duality begat the Conjunction.

The conditioned is Father of the Preposition.

The Article also marketh Division;  but the Interjection is the sound that endeth in the Silence.

Destroy therefore the Eight Parts of Speech;  the Ninth is nigh unto Truth.

This must also be destroyed before thou enterest into The Silence.

Aum.

 
 

*********

Asteroid Symbol Path Connecting

Pallas ç Chokmah- Geburah

Juno è Chesed- Geburah

Vesta é Binah- Netzach

Ceres æ Yesod-Kether

Eros   Netzach-Geburah

Sappho   Netzach-Kether

Hidalgo   Yesod-Geburah

Toro   Geburah-Kether

Pandora   Hod-i = Ö-1

Psyche   Netzach-Chokmah

Urania   Binah-0 (Zero)

Chiron å Binah-Æ (Null Set)

Amor   Netzach-À0

Diana   Yesod-i = Ö-1

Icarus   Hod-Binah

Lilith   Geburah-i = Ö-1

New Paths Transcendenta Description Element

l Path ~ to
 traditional
Path
connecting

Æ-0 5–8 Grace analog of Hydrogen

Neptune/Chokmah =
Durga/Hera À2

Æ- i = Ö-1 3-8   Helium

Æ-À0 7-8 Analog of Peh/Mars = Lithium

0/Lobachevski

Æ-À1 4-8   Beryllium

Æ-À2 2-8   Boron

Æ-1 1-8   Carbon

Æ-2     Nitrogen

Æ-3   å Chiron Oxygen

Æ-4     Fluorine

Æ-5     Neon

Æ-6 6-8    

Æ-9 8-9    

Æ-10 8-10    

0- i = Ö-1 3-5    

0-À0 ~ 5-7 5-7    

0-À1 ~ 5-4 4-5    

0-À2 ~ 5-2 2-5    

i = Ö-1-À0 3-7    

i = Ö-1-À1 3-4    

i = Ö-1-À2 2-3 Grace analog of  

Venus/Netzach = NortonÀ0

i = Ö-1-1 1-3 Power analog of  

 Mercury/Hod = Beth b

i = Ö-1-2      

i = Ö-1-3      

i = Ö-1-4      

i = Ö-1-5      

i = Ö-1-6      

i = Ö-1-7      

i = Ö-1-8      

i = Ö-1-9      

i = Ö-1-10      

À0-À1 4-7 Grace analog of  

Jupiter/Kaph k, Path
connecting Sephiroth 4 and
7 = À1/Amphitrite; Vesta é

À0-À2 2-7    

À0-1 1-7    

À0-2      

À0-3      

À0-4      

À0-5      

À0-6 6-7    

À0-7      

À0-8      

À0-9      

À0-10 7-10 Grace analog of  

Aquarius/Tzaddi x, Path
connecting Sephiroth 7 and
10
À1-À2 2-4 Grace analog of  
Taurus/Vav w, Path
connecting Sephiroth 2 and 4

À1-1      

À1-2      

À1-3      

À1-4      

À1-5      

À1-6      

À1-7      

À1-8      

À1-9 4-9    

À1-10 4-10    

À2-1 1-2    

À2-2      

À2-3      

À2-4      

À2-5      

À2-6 2-6    

À2-7      

À2-8      

À2-9 2-9    

À2-10 2-10    

1-4      

1-5      

1-7      
 1-8      

1-9   Ceres æ  

1-10      

2-5   Pallas ç  

2-7      

2-8      

2-9      

2-10      

3-4   Saturn (for Da’ath)  

3-7   Vesta é  

3-8      

3-9      

3-10      

4-8      

4-9      

4-10      

5-9      

5-10      

6-10      

C. Notes for Paths 0-93 of the New, English-Language ASCII and associations   with the Periodic Table and
Astrological Assignments

The following is taken from my 4-volume textbook, NEW MAGICKS FOR A NEW AGE, Volume I:  A New
Order of the Ages, Part 3: Applications, Chapter 3: The Tarot
 

1:  Notes toward the Design and Production of a Tarot Pack for the 16- SephirothEnglish-Language
Qaballah

With reference to the previous chapter, Keys 1-33 should continue to be associated with their traditional
correlates, including the cards of the standard, traditional Tarot pack.  It is for the new Keys, Keys 33+ as
well as the non-integral Keys such as À0and Æ, that we need new Tarot cards.  As discussed earlier, these
would include:

(1)  a set of 94 new Greater Trumps to represent Keys 33-126 (and more, for any Keys associated with
characters in the extended ASCII lexicon exclusive of the original 94 basic ASCII characters);

(2)  a set of m = p ´ r Lower Arcana, where p, also corresponding to the number of Elements, traditional
and otherwise, of the metaphysics underlying the new Qaballah and its associated Tarot pack, is the
number of Suits in the Lower Arcana and the Court Cards;  and

(3) a set of Court Cards, the number of which is n = p ´ q, where p again equals the number of Suits in the
Lower Arcana and q is equal to q1 ´ q2 ´ q3, the last three variables being respectively the number of
generations in a typical family group in the culture that will be using this pack, the number of genders or
reproductive modes recognized by that culture, and the number of sexual orientations recognized and
legitimized by it.

There are 94 new Paths in the extended Tree of Life, as discussed in Lesson 2 of this course.  The
chemical elements hydrogen (Z=1) through plutonium (Z=94) could be assigned to these new Paths in
various orders according to different rationales for doing so.  Astrological, mythological, or other
symbolism appropriate to the chemical element concerned could be incorporated into the design of the
Trump assigned to that element and the Path associated with it.  So could the ASCII character whose
computer-storage number was equal to the sum of the Z-number of that element (the number of
protons or positive charges in a normal atom of that element) and 33, as previously described, as well as
any psychological, esoteric, historical or other associations that went with that character.  In this way,
the designs for all 94 Greater Trumps could be worked out.

With 94 or more new cards to play with, some of them could even be used to represent the twenty or
thirty brightest Stars in our skies, the ones which traditionally have been the most important to us
Magickally and Qaballistically as well as astrologically.  Other cards might be assigned to the more
important asteroids, to famous comets,  or to historically important novae and supernovae, since these
do have real importance in all astrological charts in which they appear, in thus in any events for which
those charts have been erected;  or they could be assigned to any other important esoteric phenomena,
processes, or concepts, from Alchemy to modern cryptophenomenology, the science that studies and
analyzes such things as UFOs, crop-circles, Sasquatch, ESP, and so forth.  Clearly the intelligent addition
of such cards to traditional packs, like that of their associated Keys and Paths to the traditional Qaballah,
opens up vast arrays of useful possibilities for esoteric research, pedagogy, and practical application.

Nota bene:  Geometrical arrangements of these new Paths on the Tree of Life must take into
consideration that the geometry of the original, traditional Tree of Life must not be disturbed or
distorted in any way.  This is easy to achieve if all new Sephiroth are added to the Tree of Life in planes
orthogonal to that of the originals, i.e., by adding a 3 rd, 4th, or even more dimensions to the Tree.  One
easy way to do this is to add six new Sephiroth at a time, these six co-existing in their own plane with the
original central Pillar of Consciousness of the Tree which includes Kether, Tiphareth, Yesod,
andMalkuth.  The plane of each such new set of six Sephiroth will always include the Central Pillar of
Consciousness, but lie at right angles to the planes of any other such set.  The first such new set
of Sephiroth and its plane, which gives the Tree three dimensions, suggests the world of manifestation,
the solid world we normally live in.  The second such set and the 4th dimension it adds to the Tree
suggest time, history, by which our lives and the changes in us are measured.  The third
suggests choice and the exercise of will necessary to making choices, which make our lives something
more than absolutely predestined tracks on which our helpless souls are run.  And so on.  This method
of adding new Sephiroth to the Tree of Life also adds new dimensions of symbolism to Qaballah, and can
bequeath an additional richness on any new Tarot pack developed for such expanded Qaballah.

2:  General Correspondences of the New Keys of the 16-Sephiroth Qaballah – the Trumps

            As discussed above, at least 94 new Greater Trumps are required for such a new Tarot pack, in
addition to the twenty-two cards of the traditional Major Arcana. The designs of these new Trumps
should be based not only upon the characteristics of the chemical elements, ASCII symbols, and
whatever arithmetic values are associated with them, but also upon the pairs of Sephiroth, old and new,
by which the Paths with which they are associated are defined.  Therefore let us examine the
possibilities for design of the new Trumps in somewhat more detail than before.

            It has already been determined that the traditional Tree of Life is not to be changed, damaged, or
distorted in any way by its inclusion in this extended version of the traditional Qaballah. This means that
if a given pair of the traditional ten Sephiroth is already used to define a traditional Path, and therefore
the traditional Tarot Trump defining that Path, then that pair of Sephiroth may not be used to define any
of the new Paths or Trumps, though of course either of the two Sephiroth it comprises can, by itself, be
paired with a different Sephiroth with which it is not paired in traditional Qaballah, for this purpose.

            For example, Trump I, The Magus, Beth, is traditionally defined by the pair

ofSephiroth including Kether and Binah.  Therefore the pair Kether-Binah may not be used to define one
of the new Paths and its associated Trump. However, either Ketheror Binah, alone, may be paired with
some Sephiroth with which it is not traditionally paired, thereby defining a new Path and its associated
Trump.  We only have to be careful not to pair either of these with some Sephirah with which it is
traditionally paired. The other traditional pairs including these two Sephiroth are Kether-Chokmah (Key
11, Aleph, Trump 0, The Fool), Kether-Tiphareth (Key 13, Gimel, Trump II, The High Priestess), Chokmah-
Binah (Key 14, Daleth, Trump III, The Empress), Binah-Geburah (Key 18, Cheth, Trump VII, The Chariot),
and Binah-Tiphareth (Key 22,Lamed, Trump XI, Justice*), so we must avoid these.  Otherwise we may
establish pairs of Sephiroth which include either Kether or Binah (but not both) in any way that seems to
be appropriate for the Paths and Trumps we want to associate with these pairs.

*In Crowley’s system, as exemplified by the Tarot pack designed by him and executed by Lady Frieda
Harris, The Book of Thoth, this is Key 19, Teth, Trump IX, Lust).

            For example, in the case of the metals plutonium and uranium, one member of the pair
of Sephiroth defining the Path that represents each of these two elements could be associated with the
Planet ruling that element.  In the case of plutonium, this would beKether, associated with Pluto, Whose
metal plutonium is.  Similarly, in the case of uranium, it would be Binah, associated with the Planet
Uranus, ruler of uranium.  On the other hand, for the other member of the pair of Sephiroth defining
each of these Paths, both of these metals are best known by their use in war or war-related capacities,
secondarily for their use in generating electricity.  So the second Sephirah of the pair could be,
say, Geburah, for Mars, the War-God, or Hod, for Mercury, Lord of Electricity and the Sciences.

            In the case of plutonium, perhaps Kether-Geburah would be more appropriate than Kether-

Hod.  The metal of Mars is iron, 26Fe, and chemically—in particular, biochemically—plutonium and iron
are very similar.  Unfortunately, the bodies of vertebrates and other fauna with circulatory fluids based
on the haem- or iron-bearing molecule, including the blood in our bodies, can’t easily distinguish
between iron and plutonium.  Such organisms are well-adapted to using iron as a major part of the
oxygen-transport mechanism of their bodies;  they require iron to support respiration by carrying
oxygen in the bloodstream from the lungs or gills to the other tissues of their bodies. Plutonium, on the
other hand, is egregiously poisonous to all forms of earthly life, and is, in addition, one of the most
radiotoxic substances known.  But it will also, like iron, carry oxygen, and the valence properties of its
outer electron orbital are like those of iron, so that it “looks” just like iron to our tissues.  So we and
almost all other forms of life assimilate plutonium almost as readily as iron, storing it in fat or bone, in
which, or emerging from whence, it can eventually produce ghastly cancers or other diseases.  By the
principle of “as below, so above,” this tendency of the living body to perceive iron and plutonium as very
similar or identical to each other is mirrored by corollary tendency of the spirit and psyche—the
functioning of which is facilitated by the body and its biochemistry—to do the same for the spiritual
analogs of those metals.  So the Path of plutonium might better be represented as the pairing of Kether,
whose Planet is Pluto, Lord of plutonium, with Geburah, associated with Mars, Lord of iron.*

*It has been suggested to me that another, better arrangement of the new Trumps on the expanded
Tree of Life might be as follows.  The first new Trump and Path would go from Sephirah  Æ to Sephirah  0
(Zero), the second to Sephirah i = Ö-1, the third to Sephirah À0, the fourth to Sephirah  À1, the fifth
to Sephirah  À2, the sixth toKether,  the seventh to Chokmah, the eighth to Binah, the ninth to Chesed,
the tenth to Geburah, the eleventh to Tiphareth, the twelfth to Netzach, the thirteenth to Hod, the
fourteenth to Yesod, and the fifteenth to Malkuth. Going next toSephirah  0, the sixteenth new Path
would go from Sephirah 0 to  Sephirah i = Ö-1, the next to Sephirah À0, Sephirah  À1, the next
to Sephirah  À2, the next toKether, the next to Binah, the next to Chesed, the next to Geburah, the next
toTiphareth, the next to Netzach, the next to Hod, the next to Yesod, and the next toMalkuth.  Going
to Sephirah i = Ö-1, the next Path would go from it to SephirahÀ0, Sephirah  À1, the next to Sephirah  À2,
the next to Kether, the next to Binah, the next to Chesed, the next to Geburah, the next to Tiphareth, the
next toNetzach, the next to Hod, the next to Yesod, and the next to Malkuth.  Going next to Sephirah À0,
the next Path would go from it to Sephirah  À1, the next toSephirah  À2, the next to Kether, the next
to Binah, the next to Chesed, the next toGeburah, the next to Tiphareth, the next to Netzach, the next
to Hod, the next toYesod, and the next to Malkuth.  Going next to Sephirah  À1, the next Path would go
from it to Sephirah  À2, the next to Kether, the next to Binah, the next toChesed, the next to Geburah, the
next to Tiphareth, the next to Netzach, the next to Hod, the next to Yesod, and the next
to Malkuth.  Going next to Sephirah  À2, the next Path would go from it to Kether, the next to Binah, the
next to Chesed, the next to Geburah, the next to Tiphareth, the next to Netzach, the next to Hod, the
next to Yesod, and the next to Malkuth.

Now, however, coming to Kether, we run into a snag.  Since Paths already exist on the traditional Tree of
Life to Chokmah, Binah, and Tiphareth, and now on the extended one to Sephirah  Æ, Sephirah  0
(Zero), Sephirah i = Ö-1,Sephirah À0, Sephirah  À1, and Sephirah  À2, the next new Path would therefore go
to the first Sephirah  not now connected with Kether by a Path, in this case,Chesed, and the next would
go to Geburah, the next after that to Netzach, the next to Hod, the next to Yesod, and the next
to Malkuth.  Going next to Chokmah,  we do the same, avoiding Paths already existing on the both the
traditional Tree of Life and the extended one, giving paths
from Chokmah   to Geburah, Netzach, Hod,Yesod,  and Malkuth. Then from Binah we extend new Paths
to Chesed, Netzach,Hod, Yesod,  and Malkuth.  From Chesed we extend new Paths
to Hod, Yesod,and Malkuth.  From Geburah we extend new Paths to Netzach, Yesod,
andMalkuth.  From Tiphareth we extend a Path to Malkuth. Finally, from Netzach, Hod, and Yesod there
are no new Paths to be extended;  everything is taken by previously-defined Paths either on the
traditional Tree of Life or on the new, extended one.
In the order listed above, then, the new Paths are associated with the chemical elements Hydrogen
through Plutonium, and the ASCII characters “!” through “~” (see Section C.3, below, listing those
Trumps).

Other arrangements are possible, but this one, which is similar in its logic to that of the arrangement of
Paths on the traditional Tree of Life given, e.g., in Crowley’sLiber 777, has a certain logical consistency to
it that might be more useful than many other possible arrangements.

            An ASCII character is associated with each of these two chemical elements:  “|” with Uranus and
“~” with Pluto.  Each of these should also be worked into the design of the Trump that goes with its
associated chemical element.  In addition, of course, anything else that applies which can be worked
into the finished design without sacrifice or clarity or esthetic balance should also be included.

            For example, each of the new Trumps might consist of an illustration contained within some kind
of border, along the bottom of which might be the title of the Trump, printed in suitable characters from
an appropriate alphabet.  This label could be overprinted in black, say, across a faint reproduction of an
emission spectrum of the chemical element that is associated with that Trump, or in letters of any
desired colors over a reproduction of an absorption spectrum of that same element.  This spectrum
would, of course, be unique to that element and Trump, and would provide one more identifying
characteristic for the Trump and the concepts it was supposed to represent.

            Another approach to designing these new Trumps is based on the assignment of Trumps to Paths
and Pairs of Sephiroth in the traditional Tree of Life, as follows.

            Since the mythology and symbolism of the Planets can be of help in determining other
correspondences for the Sephiroth and Atua with which they are correlated, the following method of
establishing correlations between new Atua and the new Sephirothas well as traditional Tarot Trumps
may be helpful.

            If Sephirah X1  of the new Sephiroth, on its Pillar and Plane, corresponds toSephirah Y1 of the
traditional Qaballah, on its, and if Sephirah X2 of the newSephiroth, on its Pillar and Plane, corresponds
to Sephirah Y2 of the traditional Qaballah, on its, then the Path connecting S. X1 to S. X2 corresponds to
the traditional Path connecting S. Y1 to S. Y2, should the latter exist, or should the existing Path have such
a correspondence.

            To see how this works, consider the following:

            Sephirah i = Ö-1 lies at the intersection of the Pillar of Power (the Left-Hand Pillar of the
Transcendental Sephiroth) and the Second Plane of the Sphere of Life, corresponding
to Sephirah 3, Binah, of the traditional Sephiroth, which lies at the intersection of the Left-Hand Pillar of
Severity and the Second Plane of the Tree of Life.
            Sephirah À2 lies at the intersection of the Pillar of Grace (the Right-Hand Pillar of the
Transcendental Sephiroth) and the Second Plane of the Sphere of Life, corresponding
to Sephirah 2, Chokmah, of the traditional Sephiroth, which lies at the intersection of the Right-Hand
Pillar of Mercy and the Second Plane of the Tree of Life.

            Sephirah 0 (Zero) lies at the intersection of the Pillar of Power and the Third Plane of the Sphere
of Life, corresponding to Sephirah 5, Geburah, of the traditionalSephiroth, which lies at the intersection
of the Pillar of Severity and the Third Plane of the Tree of Life.

            Sephirah À1 lies at the intersection of the Pillar of Grace and the Third Plane of the Sphere of Life,
corresponding to Sephirah 4, Chesed, of the traditional Sephiroth, sited at the intersection of the Pillar of
Mercy and the Third Plane of the Tree of Life.

            Sephirah  Æ (Null or Empty Set) lies at the intersection of the Pillar of Power and the Fifth Plane of
the Sphere of Life, corresponding to Sephirah 8, Hod, of the traditional Sephiroth, which lies at the
intersection of the Pillar of Severity and the Fifth Plane of the Tree of Life.

            Sephirah À0 has its throne at the intersection of the Pillar of Grace and the Fifth Plane of the
Sphere of Life, corresponding to Sephirah 7, Netzach, of the traditionalSephiroth, which lies at the
intersection of the Pillar of Mercy and the Fifth Plane of the Tree of Life.

            Then, for example, since traditional Trump III, The Empress, associated with Venus, Who in turn is
associated with S. 7, connects Sephirah 3 to Sephirah 2, the new Path connecting S. i = Ö-1
to S. À2, should correspond to that new Sephirah sited at the same position on the corresponding Plane
and Pillar of the Sphere of Life that S. 7 has on the Tree of Life. S. 7, Netzach, lies at the intersection of
the Fifth Plane and the Pillar of Mercy of the Tree of Life, corresponding to the Fifth Plane and the Pillar
of Grace of the Sphere of Life, the position of Sephirah À0.  So the Path connecting S. i =Ö-1
and S.  À2 should correspond to S. À0 and whatever astronomical body or phenomenon should be
associated with it, the Transcendental equivalents of Netzachand Venus.

If a traditional Path analogous to the new one does not exist, or exists, but has no ready correlate
among the new Sephiroth, as shown above, then the new Path is associated with an asteroid, a fixed
Star, a Constellation, or whatever else is appropriate.

For example, the Path connecting S.    3 , Binah, and S.  5, Geburah, is Trump VII,The Chariot,
corresponding to the astrological Sign Cancer, for which no correlate exists among the
new Sephiroth.  So for the Path connecting S. i = Ö-1 and S. 0 (Zero), which have the same respective
positions on the Pillar of Power as Binah and Geburahdo on the Pillar of Severity, there exists nothing
corresponding to that Sign, and some other astrological/astronomical correspondence must therefore
be found for that Path.

In the case of the asteroids, possible correlations with new Paths might include, e.g.:

 
 Asteroid Path Connecting

Pallas Geburah-Chokmah

Juno Geburah-Chesed

Vesta Netzach-Binah

Ceres Yesod-Kether

Eros Netzach-Geburah

Sappho Netzach-Kether

Hidalgo Yesod-Geburah

Toro Geburah-Kether

Pandora Hod-i = Ö-1

Psyche Netzach-Chokmah

Urania Binah-0 (Zero)

Chiron Binah-Æ (Null Set)

Amor Netzach-À0

Diana Yesod-I = Ö-1

Icarus Hod-Binah

Lilith Geburah-I = Ö-1

In any event, the pairs of Sephiroth for the Paths appropriate to the other 92 elements and ASCII
characters, and the designs that go with these, could be worked out in ways similar to those described
above.  But in all cases care should be taken not to overcrowd a Trump with imagery, however;  designs
should be clear and economical, presenting the most information with as few symbols as possible, in the
smallest space possible, a certain elegant austerity being the keynote of their composition.  Or, in other
words, their composition should be like that of the best of photographic art:  including everything
necessary, nothing that is not, as elegantly as possible.

One other thing:  In addition to their strict correspondence with the chemical elements Z = 1-94, and the
basic character-set of the ASCII lexicon, other, similar correspondences also exist.  For example, there
are 92 characters in the syllabary for written Cherokee, and 78 characters in the Katakana, one of two
syllabaries for written Japanese.  The former, which is shown in the illustration below, could be
associated with the first 92 new Trumps, the latter with either the first 78 of these or with the cards of
the traditional Tarot, of which there are always 78.  For more on the Cherokee syllabary, see, e.g.,
Traveler Bird, Tell Them They Lie:    The Sequoyah Myth (Los Angeles: Westernlore Publishers, 1971), and
also Volume III, Book 9, Part 2 of my textbookNew Magicks for a New Age, “The Native-America Sized
Hole in Aleister Crowley’s Map of the World:  Liber Al vel Legis and the Ransom of Red Chief.”  For an
excellent overview of written Japanese for Westerners, see Florence Sakade, (general editor), A Guide to
Reading and Writing Japanese:    The 1,850 Basic Characters and the Kana Syllabaries, revised edition
(Rutland, VT:  Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1961).

[Illustration of Cherokee syllabary, from Traveler Bird’s Tell Them They Lie]

Nota bene:  This system is also geared to accommodate the nuances and implications of the
development of the Thelemic school of Magick by Aleister Crowleyet al.  It is therefore of interest here
that these 94 new Trumps would also have a perfect one-to-one correspondence with the chapters
of Crowley’s The Book of Lies (see Bibliography in the Appendices to this volume for publication
information for that work).

Other uses to which this system can be put include the following.

Since every atom has associated with it a Key from the new 16-SephirothQaballah, and thus an
alphanumeric symbol in the ASCII lexicon and the binary number associated with that symbol, every
molecule thus has a number associated with it, the sum of the Qaballistic values of the atoms which it
comprises.  By the same token, every English word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, etc. can be
transliterated via the new Keys, symbol by symbol, into a molecule (though possibly not one which can
exist, given the laws of chemistry). Thus molecules can be used to directly encode information.

As far as biochemistry goes, in the first place, clearly each of the 22 autosomes from the human
chromosome complement can be put into a one-to-one correspondence with the 22 letters of the
Hebrew alphabet, the 22 Paths of the traditional Qaballah, and the 22 Major Arcana of the traditional
Tarot.  As for the sex chromosomes, their functions can be associated with the Court Cards. And as for
the genes themselves, since each gene consists of a string of codons, each of which in turn consists of
three DNA nucleotides, genes can be represented in terms of strings of ASCII characters representing
the atoms of which those nucleotides are composed.

3. Extending the Tree of Life

 
Extensions of the Tree of Life such as the 16-Sephiroth Qaballah can be created according to the
following criteria:

Sephiroth must be added in groups of 6 at a time, the addition of which necessarily adds one new
dimension to the Tree of Life.  That is, the traditional Tree of Life, which comprises 10 Sephiroth and up
to 1 + 2 + . . . + 10 = (10 x 11)/ 2 =55 Paths, at least potentially, is two-dimensional;  adding six
new Sephiroth to it in a plane that passes through the Central Pillar and is Orthogonal to the plane
determined by the Pillars of Mercy and Severity, we get 16 Sephiroth and up to 1 + . . . 16 = (16 x 17)/2 =
136 Paths in a 3-dimensional construct;  adding an additional six Sephiroth in a plane passing through
the Central Pillar and orthogonal to the two planes containing the side-pillars for the last construct, we
get 22 Sephiroth, potentially 1 + . . . + 22 = (22 x 23)/2 = 253 Paths, and a four-dimensional construct,
etc.  The addition of each new set of 6 Sephiroth must always be in the form of two new side-pillars
which determine a plane passing through the Central Pillar of Consciousness, and which is orthogonal to
the planes of the side-pillars containing other Sephiroth.  Using this operation according to these
criteria, the Tree of Life may be extended indefinitely to contain as manySephiroth and Paths as desired.

3.  The Trumps

            Here will be made the barest sketch of designs for the 94+ new Trumps.  Note that if it is desired
to add more than 94 Trumps, the extras can be associated with real or hypothetical chemical elements
above plutonium, as well as ASCII characters other than those from the basic character set given here
(for more on which, see Lesson IX of this course).

            Upon reading the next several sections, the reader may well ask, Why in hell are you attaching all
this junk about the chemical elements to what is supposed to be a text on Qaballah, for ****’s
sake?!!  But as any Alchemist worth his Salt will readily agree, there is no ready ultimate distinction
between the Outer and Inner Planes of existence, the physical realm and the spiritual one.*  Curiously,
there are 94+ new Keys in the 16-Sephiroth English-language Qaballah, and as many elements in the
Periodic Table of the Chemical Elements.  According to Hermetic theory, there are no coincidences in
nature or elsewhere, so therefore there must be Hermetic significance in that fact. Further, the chemical
nature and behavior of each element is determined by the number of protons in its nucleus – and
Number is the basis not only of the physical sciences and the universe they study, but also of the
Hermetic Arts and Sciences and the esoteric aspects of reality. Therefore there must surely be esoteric
connections between the chemical elements and these new Keys, for which reason I have devoted so
much space to discussions of the elements in the sections below.  As P. W. Atkins puts it in The Periodic
Kingdom:    A Journey Into the Land of the Chemical Elements:**

 
I have always been struck by the opening of Somerset Maugham’sThe Vessel of Wrath.  The author sits
in his study, leafing through theYangtse Kiang Pilot, and in his mind’s eye the tide tables and navigation
directions gradually take on a sense of reality.  In his imagination the contours and tables give way to a
richer version, as he becomes aware of trees, roofs, and finally the people who are the subjects of his
tale.  So I would like you to accompany me on a journey of imagination through the austere navigation
chart of chemistry, the periodic table of the elements.  But in our mind’s eye we shall see it as a country
– the Periodic Kingdom – populated, as we shall see when we descend to its surface, by
personalities.  We shall fly through the landscape of the kingdom, see its rolling hills, its mountain
ranges, its gorges, and its plains.  We shall land, and walk among its broad meadows and across its hills.
We shall even burrow beneath the surface, and discover that there is a hidden structure, a mechanism,
that controls and governs the kingdom.  For this is a rational place.

The periodic table is arguably the most important concept in chemistry, both in principle and in
practice.  It is the everyday support for students, it suggests new avenues of research to professionals,
and it provides a succinct organization of the whole of chemistry.  It is a remarkable demonstration of
the fact that the chemical elements are not a random clutter of entities but instead display trends and
lie together in families.  An awareness of the periodic table is essentially to anyone who wishes to
disentangle the world and see how it is built up from the fundamental building blocks of chemistry, the
chemical elements.  . . . [It] is a part of scientific culture.

I have presented the periodic table as a kind of travel guide to an imaginary country, of which the
elements are the various regions.  The kingdom has geography:  the elements lay in particular
juxtaposition to one another, and they are used to produce goods, much as a prairie produces wheat
and a lake produces fish.  It also has a history.  Indeed, it has three kinds of history:  the elements were
discovered much as the lands of the world were discovered;  the kingdom was mapped, just as the
world was mapped, and the relative positions of the elements came to take on a great significance;  and
the elements have their own cosmic history, which can be traced back to the stars.

The Periodic Kingdom also has an administration, for the elements have properties governed by laws
that control their behavior and determine the alliances they form.  This administration is to be found in
the properties of atoms, and of the electrons and nuclei that constitute atoms.

. . . We shall fly through the landscape together, and land when it suits us.  In this way we shall discover
a rich kingdom, of which our actual world is a manifestation.

-- Ibid., pp. vii-viii

 
*Indeed, the Inner Planes may simply be the quantum-mechanical aspects of objective reality,
experienced from the inside – and as a matter of fact, that aspect of the functioning of the central
nervous systems of higher-order organisms such as cephalopodan and vertebrates associated with
consciousness and the mind in general seems to be all on that very level. By extension, it is quite
possible that mind is associated with the quantum-mechanical aspects of the universe as a whole, and
that while an individual mind may be associated with a particular, individual body, that association may
not be necessary for its continued existence.  As Lyall Watson et al. point out, mind, soul, and spirit
seem to be aspects of a field, one which, like all fields, is infinite in extent in all dimensions,
interpenetrating all other fields, including those associated with the minds, souls, and spirits of other
entities.  A field doesn’t necessarily cease to exist when part or all of the physical entity with which it is
associated ceases to be, and isn’t confined just to that entity at any time.  So perhaps we as psycho
spiritual entities are quantum-mechanical phenomena rather than mere “products of cerebral
functioning” – something which both religion and the esoteric Arts and Sciences have claimed all along,
and which is now beginning to be supported by the latest research by such workers as Nick Herbert,
Steven Penrose, and et. al.  For detailed discussions concerning this issue, see, e.g., Lyall
Watson,Lifetide (Bantam Books, 1980), The Secret Life of Inanimate Objects  (Destiny Books, 1992), The
Dreams of Dragons (Destiny Books, 1992), etc.;  Nick Herbert, Quantum Reality:    Beyond the New
Physics   (Doubleday, 1985);  Roger Penrose, Shadows of the Mind:  A Search for the Missing Science of
Consciousness (Oxford University Press, 1994);  etc.  A more complete listing of works that might be of
interest in this regard can be found in the bibliography of the Appendices to Volume I of my textbook on
the Hermetic Arts and Sciences, New Magicks for a New Age.

**P. W. Atkins, The Periodic Kingdom:    A Journey Into the Land of the Chemical Elements (New
York:  Basic Books/HarperCollinsPublishers, 1995.

           

            This section is lovingly dedicated to Tom Lehrer, author of “The Elements.”*

*Melody by Sir Arthur Sullivan. Recorded March 1959 in Cambridge, MA; included in the album An
Evening ^ Wasted    with Tom Lehrer.  Also included in Lehrer’s collection, Too Many Songs by Tom
Lehrer (New York:  Pantheon Books, 1981. With not enough drawings by Ronald Searle.  Piano
arrangements by Tom Lehrer and Frank Metis.  Includes all the songs from the revue Tomfoolery.
 

The subversive songs of Tom Lehrer, the sardonic piano-wielding fugitive from Harvard, have corrupted
generations of Americans since he first began recording and performing in the 1950s.  His uniquely
depraved wit has recently been forced again on an unsuspecting public via Tomfoolery, the new stage
revue based on his ever-trenchant observation of the American scene.  This new songbook, with old
favorites unavailable for years as well as never-published songs, is the most comprehensive ever
assembled.  It contains the words, tunes, piano accompaniments, and guitar chords for .  . .  thirty-four
classics . .  .  .

                                    From the back cover

C. Notes for Paths 0-93 of the New, English-Language ASCII and associations   with the Periodic Table and
Astrological Assignments

3.  The Trumps

                                b.             Period II – Second Plane of the Sphere of Life ( Chokmah-À2-Binah-i  = Ö-1

                This Period and its associated Plane of the Sphere of Life correspond toOlam Briah (h a I r b),
the Creative World, where the creative imagination of God first takes the beginnings of
form,                                            and Neschamah (h m c n), that part of the Self that comprises the true
spiritual vision of Intuition (Chokmah and  À2) or Imagination (Binah and i  = Ö-1 ).

                        ac.           Key 35

Lithium 3Li7, Z=3.  Electron configuration:  2-1. Atomic weight:  6.94.  Oxidation states:  +1. Column/Row

on the Periodic Table: 1a/K-L (2).  Connects Sephirah Æ toSephirah À0. ASCII character:  #.  Qaballistic
value:  210 = 102 (prime – the only even prime).  Earth, rock (a higher octave
of Tav);  Chokmah, Sephirah 2 (for the Qaballistic value of this Key), hence Neptune Þ and the Twos and
the Kings of the Tarot*; Beth b, 12th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 2nd letter of the Hebrew alphabet
(for the Qaballistic value), hence Mercury Ø and Trump I, The Magus;  VenusÙ, ruler of Libra ø (Libra
rules all face-to-face encounters and relationships, which aredyads, two persons or things in
relationship;  the atomic weight of Lithium, 7, is also the number of Venus’ Sephirah, Netzach); Power
Analog of Peh/Mars = 0/Lobachevski (Path connecting Sephirah Æ and Sephirah À0).

*In the Golden Dawn’s Tarot pack.  Crowley associates Chokmah with the Knights.

Alternate: 3Li7, Lithium.  Crystal structure:  o. 

The word “Lithium” comes from the Greek word lithos, “stone.”  The atomic weight of Lithium is 6.941,
and its atomic or Z-number is 3. It has a melting-point of 180.54°C;  its boiling-point is 1,347° C.  It has a
specific gravity of 0.534 at 20º C, and a valence of 1 (i.e., +1, a positive valence, since under all but the
most extraordinary conditions it can lose at most 1 electron from its outer electron orbitals and gain
none).

Lithium, discovered by Arfvedson in 1817 e.v., is the lightest of all metals, with a density only about half
that of water.  It doesn’t occur free in nature;  combined with other elements in one compound or
another, it is found in small amounts in nearly all igneous rocks and in the waters of many mineral
springs.  Lepidolite, spodumene,petalite, and amblygonite are the more important minerals containing
it.  Currently (1973 e.v.), Lithium is being recovered from brines of Searles Lake, California, and from the
Great Salt Lake, Utah.  Large deposits of it are also found in Nevada and North Carolina.

Lithium metal is produced electrolytically from fused LiCl (Lithium chloride).  Much like Sodium and
Potassium, other members of the alkali metal series (Column 1a of the Periodic Table), Lithium is silvery
in appearance. It reacts with water, but not as vigorously as Sodium.  It imparts a beautiful crimson color
to a flame, but when the metal burns strongly the flame becomes a dazzling white.

Since World War II, the production of Lithium metal and its compounds has increased
enormously.  Because the metal has the highest specific heat of any solid element, it is used in many
heat-transfer applications.  However, because it is highly corrosive it requires special handling (i.e., it is
a bitch to work with, and often the only way to do so safely is in a pure nitrogen environment, working
with waldoes only!).  It is used as an alloying agent, synthesis of artificial compounds of various kinds,
and in nuclear applications.  It ranks as a leading contender as anode material for batteries, because of
its high electrochemical potential.*  It is also used in special glasses and ceramics – e.g., the glass for the
200-inch telescope at the Mt. Palomar Observatory in San Diego, CA, contains lithium in trace amounts.
Lithium chloride (LiCl) is one of the most hygroscopic materials known;  along with Lithium bromide
(LiBr), it is used in air-conditioning and industrial drying systems. Lithium stearate is used as an all-
purpose and high-temperature lubricant.  Other Lithium compounds are used in dry cells and storage
batteries. The metal is priced at about $8/lb (as of 1973 e.v.).

*An atom’s electrochemical potential is equivalent to the mass liberated by the passage of a unit
quantity of electricity via ions of that element.  The higher electrochemical potential of an element, the
stronger its electromagnetic “pull” on the electrons of other atoms or of those atoms on its electrons,
depending upon whether it has positive or negative valence.  Lithium, with a valence of +1 – i.e., it is a
ready, able, and egregiously willing donor of its one outer electron to other atoms – thus has an
extremely high electrochemical potential, higher even than those of the other Alkali Metals.  Whereas
the absolute value of an atom’s electrochemical potential is measured in terms of its ability either to
force its electrons on other atoms or rob electrons from other atoms, the direction of that potential –
the positive or negative sign on it – is determined by whether the atom belongs to the s group of
elements (electron donors, all with outer orbitals less than half the total possible for the Periods to
which they belong) or p elements (electron borrowers, those with more than half that total).

                Chapter 2 of Crowley’s The Book of Lies (op. cit., p. 14), is:

KEFADH B

THE CRY OF THE HAWK

Hoor hath a secret fourfold name:  it is Do What Thou Wilt.

Four Words:  Naught – One – Many – All.

Thou – Child!

Thy Name is holy.

Thy Kingdom is come.

Thy Will is done.

Here is the Bread.

Here is the Blood.

Bring us through Temptation!

Deliver us from Good and Evil!

That Mine as Thine be the Crown of the Kingdom, even now.

ABRAHADABRA.

These ten words are four, the Name of the One.

                ad.           Key 36

Beryllium 4Be9, Z=4.  Electron configuration:  2-2. Atomic weight:  9.01218. Oxidation

states:  +2.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  2a/K-L.  ConnectsSephirah  Æ to Sephirah À1.  ASCII
character:  $. Qaballistic value:  310 = 112 (prime – the first odd, non-trivial prime)  Pluto î, Mercury  Ø,
Luna ×, Jupiter Û (associations with money and wealth);  Venus Ù (due to the precious stones in which
this element is found, as well as its sweet taste, for more on which, see below);  Gimel g, 13th Key of the
traditional Qaballah and 3rd letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the Qaballistic value of this Key), hence
Luna × and Trump II, The High Priestess;  Binah, Sephirah 3 (for the Qaballistic value of this Key),
hence Ü and  Ý, and the Threes and the Queens of the Tarot;  to exist, existence (from the chemical
symbol, “Be”); 

Alternate: 4P9, Popularium.  Crystal structure:  ¤.  Associations: Venus.

                Beryllium comes from the Greek word berryllos, for “beryl.” It is also called Glucinium
or Glucinum, from the Greek word glykos, meaning “sweet” (an association with Taurus, ruled by
Venus).  It has an atomic weight of 9.01218 and an atomic number of 4.  Its melting-point is 1,278º ! 5º C
and a boiling-point of 2,970º C.  It has a specific gravity of 1.848 at 20º C, and a valence of +2.

                Beryllium was first discovered in the form of Beryllium oxide (BeO) byVauquelin in beryl and in
emeralds in 1798 e.v.  Metallic Beryllium was isolated in 1828 e.v. by Wöhler, and independently
by Bussy in the same year, by the action of Potassium on Beryllium chloride.
                Beryllium is found in some 30 mineral species, the most important of which include beryl,
chrysoberyl, and phenacite.  Precious forms of beryl include aquamarine and emerald (reinforcing its
association with Venus).  Beryl (3BeO*Al2O3*6SiO2) is the most important commercial source of the
element and its compounds.  Most of the metal is now prepared by reducing Beryllium fluoride (BeF)
with metallic Magnesium. Metallic Beryllium did not become readily available to industry until 1957 e.v.

                Metallic Beryllium, which is steel-gray in color, has many desirable properties.  One of the
lightest of all metals, it has the highest melting-points of the light metals, with a modulus of elasticity
about one-third greater than that of steel.  It resists attack by concentrated nitric acid, has excellent
thermal conductivity, and is nonmagnetic.  It is highly permeable to X-rays, and when bombard by a-
particles, as from Radium or Polonium, it emits neutrons in a ratio of about 30 neutrons per 10 6 a-
particles.  At ordinary temperatures, Beryllium resists oxidation in air, although its ability to scratch glass
is probably due to the formation of a thin layer of Beryllium oxide on its surface.

                Beryllium is used as an alloying agent in producing Beryllium Copper, which is used extensively
for springs, electrical contacts, spot-welding electrodes, and non-sparking tools.  It has applications as a
structural material in high-speed aircraft, missiles, and spacecraft.  It is used in nuclear reactors as a
reflector or moderator because of its low thermal neutron absorption cross-section.  It is used in
gyroscopes, computer parts, and inertial guidance instruments which require lightness, stiffness, and
dimensional stability.  Its oxide has a very high melting-point, and is also used in nuclear and ceramic
applications.

                Beryllium and its salts are toxic, and should be handled with the greatest of care.  Though early
experimenters tasted it to verify its nature – it has a sweet taste* –Beryllium and its compounds
should not be tasted, due to their extreme toxicity.  The metal, its alloys, and its salts can be handled
safely if certain work-codes are observed, but no attempt should be made to work with them until one is
familiar with proper safeguards.  The recommended maximum allowable concentration of Beryllium
dust in an 8-hour day is about 2 micrograms per cubic meter in non-work areas.

*Hence its other name, Glucinium. This is yet another correspondence with Venus and Taurus.  The
great toxicity of this element corresponds nicely with Pisces, a Sign in which Venus is exalted.  (Luna,
which rules childhood, can also be associated with sweetness;  Luna is exalted in Taurus and is an
esoteric Lord of Pisces.)

                Beryllium metal in vacuum-cast billet form is priced roughly at $70/lb (as of 1973
e.v.);  fabricated forms are more expensive.
 

                Chapter 3 of Crowley’s The Book of Lies (op. cit., p. 16):

KEFADH  G

THE OYSTER

The brothers of A\A\ are one with the Mother of the Child.

The Many is as adorable to the One as the One is to the Many.  This is the Love of These;  creation-
parturition is the Bliss of the One; coition-dissolution is the Bliss of the Many.

The All, thus interwoven of These, is Bliss.

Naught is beyond Bliss.

The Man delights in uniting with the Woman; the Woman in parting from the Child.

The Brothers of A\A\ are women;  the Aspirants to A\A\are Men.

                                                ae.           Key 37

                Boron 5B11, Z=5.  Electron configuration:  2-3. Atomic weight:  10.81. Oxidation

states:  +3. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 3a/K-L.  Connects SephirahÆ to Sephirah À2. ASCII
character:  %.  Qaballistic value:  410 = 1002. Isis, Djehuti, Hermes (associations with the mathematical
concept of %);  Chesed, Sephirah 4 (for the Qaballistic value of this Key), hence Jupiter Û;  Daleth,
14th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 4 th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the Qaballistic value of this
Key), hence Venus Ù and Trump III, The Empress;  the Pentagram and the Quintessence (for the Z-
number); 
 Beth  b, 12th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 2 nd letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the symbol, B),
hence Mercury Ø and Trump I, The Magus;  Magick (because of associations with the Pentagram, and
also because Boron’s atomic weight is approximately equal to 11, the number of Magick).

                Alternate:  5Bc11, Bigmacum.  Crystal structure: L  Mercury, Hermes (fast-food, rip-offs);  Eris,

the Pentagon (for the Z-number)

 
                The word “Boron” is etymologically related to the Arabic word Buraq and the Persian
word Burah.

                Boron has an atomic weight of 10.81 and an atomic number of 5.  Its melting-point is 2,300º
and its boiling-point, at which it sublimes, is 2,550º C.  The specific gravity of its crystals is 2.34, and of
the amorphous variety of Boron is 2.37; its valence is +3.

                Boron compounds have been known for thousands of years, but the element as such wasn’t
discovered until 1808 e.v. by Sir Humphry Davy and simultaneously by Gay-Lussac and Thenard.

                The element doesn’t naturally exist in a free state, but occurs as orthoboricacid, usually in
certain volcanic spring waters, and in the form of borates in borax andcolemanite.  Ulexite, another
Boron mineral, is of interest as a natural manifestation of fiber optics.  The most important source of
Boron by far is the mineral rasorite, also known as kermite, found in the Mojave Desert of
California.  Extensive borax deposits are also found in Turkey.

                Boron exists naturally as 19.78% 5B10 isotope and 80.22% 5B11 isotope. High-purity crystalline

Boron may be prepared by the vapor-phase reduction of Boron trichloride or tribromide with Hydrogen
on electrically heated filaments. The impure or amorphous Boron, a brownish-black powder, can be
obtained by heating the trioxide with Magnesium powder. Boron of 99.9999% purity has been produced
and is available commercially.

                Elemental Boron has an energy band gap of 1.50 to 1.56 electron volts, which is higher than
that of either Silicon or Germanium. It has interesting optical characteristics, transmitting portions of the
infrared spectrum.  It is a poor conductor of electricity at room temperature but a good conductor at
high temperature.

                Amorphous Boron is used in pyrotechnic flares to provide a distinctive green color, and in
rockets as an igniter.  The most important compounds of Boron are boric or boracic acid, which is widely
used as a mild antiseptic, and borax (Na2B4O7·10H2O), which serves as a cleansing flux in welding and as a
water-softener in washing powders.  Boron compounds are used in production of enamels for covering
steel of refrigerators, washing machines, and the like.  They are also used extensively in the manufacture
of borosilicate glasses.  Boron’s isotope 10 (5B10) is used as a control for nuclear reactors, as a shield for
nuclear radiation, and in instruments used for detecting radiation.  Boron nitride has remarkable
properties, and can be used to make a material as hard as diamond.  The nitrate also behaves like an
electrical insulator, but conducts heat like a metal.  It also has lubricating properties similar to
graphite.  The hydrides are easily oxidized with considerable energy liberation, and are being studied for
use as rocket fuels.  Demand is increasing for boron filaments, a high-strength, lightweight material
chiefly employed for advanced aerospace structures.

                Amorphous Boron (90-92% grade) costs about $12-$30 per pound, depending on quantity
ordered (as of 1973 e.v.).
                Elemental Boron is not considered to be a poison, but assimilation of its compounds has a
cumulatively poisonous effect on the body.

                Chapter 4 of Crowley’s The Book of Lies (op. cit., p. 18):

KEFADH  D

PEACHES

Soft and hollow, how thou dost overcome the hard and full.

It dies, it gives itself;  to Thee is the fruit!

Be thou the Bride;  thou shalt be the Mother hereafter.

To all impressions thus.  Let them not overcome thee;  yet let them breed within thee.  The least of the
impressions, come to its perfection, is Pan.

Receive a thousand lovers;  thou shalt bear but One Child.

This child shall be the heir of Fate the Father.

                        af.            Key 38

                Carbon 6C12, Z=12.  Electron configuration:  2-4. Atomic weight:  12.011. Valance: +2, +4,

-4.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  4a/K-L.  ConnectsSephirah Æ to Kether.  ASCII
character:  &. Qaballistic value:  510 = 1012 (prime). Venus Ù (association with & = joining, reflecting
Carbon’s tendency to form covalent bonds);  Sol Ö (association with Carbon’s critical role in all life-
processes;  6, the atomic number of Carbon, is also that of Sol’s Sephirah, Tiphareth); Tubman, Eris,
Chaos, Nhee-Ghee (associations with 5, reflecting Life’s chaotic properties);  perfect numbers (for the Z-
number, 6 = 1 x 2 x 3 = 1 + 2 + 3), hence God, the Perfect Being; Geburah, Sephirah 5 (for the Qaballistic
value of this Key), hence Mars  Ú; Heh  h, 15th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 5 th letter of the Hebrew
alphabet (for the Qaballistic value), hence Aries ò and Trump IV, The Emperor*;  Kaph k, 21st Key of the
traditional Qaballah and 11th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the symbol, C), hence Jupiter Û and
Trump X, The Wheel of Fortune;  Gimel g, 13th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 3 rd letter of the Hebrew
alphabet (for the symbol, C), hence Luna × and Trump II, The High Priestess.

*In Crowley’s Tarot pack, The Book of Thoth, Aries and The Emperor are associated with Tzaddi x, the
17th letter of the Hebrew alphabet; while Aquarius and Trump VII, The Star, are associated with Heh h.

                Alternate: 6C12, Carbonation.  Crystal structure: õ.  Associations:  Coke, Pepsi, Jolt, “Now

you’re cookin’ with gas!”, etc.

                The word Carbon comes from the Latin word carbo¸  meaning  “charcoal.” Carbon (C12 ) has an
atomic weight of exactly 12 (natural Carbon has an atomic weight of 12.011)* and an atomic number of
6.

*Since the standard for atomic weight is defined relative to the weight of one C12 atom, one unit of
atomic weight being defined as exactly one-twelfth of that of that atom. Carbon as it occurs in nature is
a mixture of isotopes of Carbon, including, e.g., the unstable isotope C14, with a half-life of 5,730 years,
used extensively for dating organic materials.

The melting-point of Carbon is ~3,550º C, and its boiling-point is 4,827º C (graphite, an allotropic form of
Carbon, sublimes at 3,367º ! 25º C). The specific gravity of amorphous Carbon (soot) is 1,8-2.1;  that of
graphite is 1.9-2.3;  that of diamond is 3.15-3.53 (depending upon the variety;  that of gem-quality
diamond is 3.513 at 25º C).  Carbon has a valence of 2, 3, or 4.
Carbon, known in the form of soot from Life’s beginnings and in the form of diamond since human
prehistory, is one of the most widely distributed of all elements. It is found in abundance in the Sun,
other Stars, comets, and the atmospheres of most Planets.  It is found in some meteorites in the form of
microscopic diamonds.  Natural diamonds are found in kimberlite in ancient volcanic “pipes” such as
those located in South Africa, Arkansas, Australia, and elsewhere, and have been recovered from the
ocean floor off the Cape of Good Hope.  In its amorphous form, soot, it is found wherever the burning of
organic materials occurs, from hearth-fires to the burning of forests.  Synthetic forms of allotropic
Carbon exist, primarily in the form of synthetic diamonds (at least 30% of all industrial-grade diamonds
now used in the U.S. are synthetic).

The energy of the Stars is at least partially derived from the Carbon-Nitrogen-Oxygen cycle. In massive
Stars, where the central temperatures exceed 16 million degrees Kelvin, Carbon serves as a catalyst by
which Hydrogen burning proceeds.  Cornell University physicist Hans Bethe was instrumental in
discovering the steps whereby a Carbon nucleus absorbs protons and finally spits out a Helium
nucleus.  Along the way, the Carbon is transformed into Nitrogen and Oxygen, because of which this
process is call the CNO (Carbon-Nitrogen-Oxygen) cycle.  The CNO cycle occurs in six steps:

 
12
C + 1H  t 13N + c

        13N t 13C +  e+ + m
13
C + 1H  t 14N + c
14
N + 1H  t 15O + c
15
O  t 15N + e+ + m
15
N + 1H  t 12C + 4He

Like the proton-proton chain, the CNO cycle has the overall effect of converting four Hydrogen nuclei
(i.e., four protons) into one Helium nucleus, two positrons, two neutrinos, and some high-energy, short-
wavelength gamma radiation.  The 12C nucleus must be present to permit the CNO cycle to function, but
it is restored at the end of the cycle, so that Carbon isn’t used up by this process.

*For more on the thermonuclear reactions that power the Stars – not to mention those used in modern
weaponry – see, e.g., William J. Kaufman, III, Universe (New York:  W. H. Freeman and Co., 1985), pp.
357-360.

 
 

Carbon is found free in nature in several forms (allotropes*).  The commonest are amorphous (soot),
graphite (which is used as an industrial lubricant as well as for the “lead” in pencils), and diamond.

*Allotropy   is the property shown by certain elements of being capable of existence in more than one
form, due to differences in the arrangements of atoms or molecules of those
elements.  Monotropic forms of an element are those one of which is always metastable with respect to
the others.  Enantropic  forms are crystal forms capable of existing in reversible equilibrium with one
another.

Graphite, one of the softest materials known, is a form of pure Carbon in which all atoms are aligned in
the same plane, so that sheets of it are formed, which tend to slide over one another, giving it its
properties as a lubricant and a marking material.  It exists in two forms, alpha and beta.  These have
identical physical properties, except for their crystal-structures. Naturally-occurring graphites are
reported to contain as much as 30% of the rhombohedral (beta) form whereas synthetic materials
contain only the alpha form.  The hexagonal alpha form can be converted to the beta form by means of
mechanical treatment (pressure), and the beta form reverts to the alpha form when it is heated above
1,000º C.

Diamond, one of the hardest of all materials, is a highly-ordered form of pure Carbon in which the atoms
take up a cubical arrangement, forming crystals.

A fourth pure form, “white” Carbon, a transparent birefringent material, also exists, individual instances
of which are called buckminsterfullerenes, the formula of which isC60.  In this form, the atoms are
arranged in the form of “buckyballs” (named in honor of the late Buckminster Fuller and the geodesic
domes he designed, because of their shape) and “buckytubes” (a tubular version of the allotrope), 60 or
more atoms arranged in regular spheroidal polyhedra.  This form of Carbon, discovered only recently, is
finding important applications in industry, and extremely exciting new uses of it may be used in the
future – in particular, buckytubes, are far stronger than diamonds, may be eventually used as material
for building “space elevators,” enormous structures which, twice as long as the distance from Earth’s
surface to a geostationary orbit, may someday be used to convey passengers and freight from Earth’s
surface to free space with almost no net expenditure of energy.* Buckminsterfullerines were first
produced in 1969 e.v. during the sublimation of pyrolitic graphite at low pressures.  Under free-
vaporization conditions above ~2,550º K, “white” Carbon forms as small transparent crystals on the
edges of the basal planes of graphite.  The interplanar spacings of “white” Carbon are identical to those
of a Carbon form noted in the graphitic gneiss from the meteoritic RiesCrater of Germany.

*An object orbiting the Earth in a geostationary (geosynchronous) orbit, 36,000 kilometers above the
Earth’s surface, would remain positioned over the same spot on that surface, unmoving, as long as it
occupied that orbit and was not moved elsewhere along it by some outside force. Simply put, “space
elevators,” originally invented by the St. Petersburg engineer Yuri Artsutanov, who calls them “cosmic
funiculars,” would be enormous vertical towers, 72,000 kilometers in height, positioned such that their
midlines would be in geostationary orbits, their bases touching the surface of the Earth or hovering only
a few feet above it, their tops in airless space, a fifth of the way from Earth to the Moon.  Since their
mass above and below their midlines would be equal, once put in place, they would stay in place,
orbiting the Earth in geostationary orbits that kept them forever above the same points on Earth – at
least until they were knocked out of that orbit as a result of natural causes or sabotage.  Few materials
would be strong enough for production of such long, long structures.  The strain on any vertically-
oriented material of more or less homogenous composition varies directly as its length, since the longer
it is, the more it weighs, and therefore the more weight it has to hold up even without anything
attached to it.  Consider, now, a vertical structure some 72,000 kilometers – about 45,000 miles – in
height, built to ferry passengers and cargo between Earth and space, as well as house countless
numbers of maintenance and other personnel, along with all their tools, possessions, furniture, and
food, and the water necessary for their life and well-being as long as they remained on or in that
structure! The strain that would be placed on its main structural supports would many orders of
magnitude greater than anything that a corresponding support in one of Manhattan’s skyscrapers must
bear. Thus only a material such as the buckytubes could possibly withstand the stresses and strains
which the structural members of such a tower would have to bear every moment of its existence and
still hope to survive the strain.

As for how payloads would be carried up and down these enormous Earth-to-space “elevators, electrical
energy alone could boost payloads up to the GEO (Geostationary Orbital height above the surface of the
Earth), and rocket propulsion would be needed only for the remainder of the journey, up to the
outermost parts of the towers and free space.  In addition to avoiding the danger, noise, and
environmental hazards of rocketry, the space elevator would make astonishing reductions in the cost of
all space missions possible.  Electricity is cheap;  it would require at most about a hundred dollars’ worth
to take one person to from Earth to the GEO.  The round-trip cost, from Earth to GEO and back, would
cost about ten dollars, since most of the energy would be recovered on the downward journey.  So
existence of such structures would open the skies for the whole world, making it possible for even the
poorest countries to establish space-based industries, and enabling even individuals of modest means to
sample the delights of space-travel. For the cost of travel from Earth to space up the elevators would
include only that of the electricity to travel from ground to GEO, and the propulsive power to boost from
there to free space.  Once at the top of the structure, very little more energy would be needed to break
free of Earth’s gravitational attraction entirely, and once beyond Earth’s gravity-well, space-travel would
be relatively inexpensive, as long as it did not require going down to a Planetary surface and back to
space again.  The asteroids could be mined with relative ease and low expense, the products of such
mining ferried back to Earth’s surface via the elevators at minimal cost. Factories and farms could be
placed in orbit around the Sun between Earth and Venus or Earth and Mars, their products likewise
delivered to Earth via the space elevator at a cost so low as to be negligible.  At least potentially, the
result would be an end to want and famine everywhere on Earth, and an open door to space
colonization – we would no longer have all Earth’s precious eggs in one fragile, blue-white basket, but
instead could nest them across many worlds in the Solar System and, someday, the worlds of other
Stars.

But only the tubular form of buckminsterfullerene has any hope of being strong enough to serve
successfully as structural material for space elevators.  Few materials have sufficient tensile strength to
hang all the way down to the Equator from an altitude of 36,000 kilometers, with enough margin left
over to raise useful payloads.  Diamond would do the job quite nicely, but the necessary megaton
quantities of the stuff aren’t readily available on the open market, and probably never will be. In The
Fountains of Paradise, Arthur C. Clarke suggests a more accessible source:  orbiting factories where
diamonds might be grown under zero-gravity conditions.  But such factories are still a long way in the
future.  And the “buckytube” variety of buckminsterfullerene, large quantities of which can now be
readily produced at very reasonable cost, is far harder than diamond and far more suitable to the
task.  So someday a trip to the Moon may involve little more expense than a trip to the Bahamas from
the East Coast of the United States does now, with less potential danger and hassle.  Instead of “Fly Me
to the Moon,” the song eventually may be:  “Press the Elevator Button of Love and Take Me to the
Stars.”J

In combination with other elements, Carbon is found in the form of Carbon dioxide in our Planet’s
atmosphere and dissolved in all natural waters.  It is a component of great rock masses in the form of
Carbonates of Calcium (limestone), Magnesium, and Iron. Coal, petroleum, and natural gas are chiefly
hydrocarbon compounds, that is, compounds formed primarily of Carbon and Hydrogen.  Carbon is
unique among the elements in the vast number and variety of compounds it can form.  With Hydrogen,
Oxygen, Nitrogen, and other elements it forms a very large number of compounds in which Carbon
atoms are often linked to other Carbon atoms. There are more than a million known Carbon
compounds, many thousands of which are vital to organic and life processes. Chemically speaking,
Carbon is the basis for Life itself, and without it, Life – at least as we know it here on Earth – would be
impossible.  While it has been conjectured that Silicon might take the place of Carbon in forming a host
of similar compounds, it isn’t possible at this time to form compounds with very long chains of silicon
atoms analogous to the hydrocarbon compounds out of which living beings are built.
Some of the most important compounds of Carbon include:  Carbon dioxide (CO2), Carbon monoxide
(CO), Carbon disulfide (CS2), chloroform (CHCl3), Carbon tetrachloride (CCl4), methane (CH4), ethylene
(C2H4), acetylene (C2H2), benzene (C6H6), ethyl alcohol (C2H5OH), acetic acid (CH3COOH), and their
derivatives.

Carbon has seven isotopes.  In 1961 e.v. the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry adopted
the isotope Carbon-12 as the basis for atomic weights.  Carbon-14, an isotope with a half-life of 5,730
years, has been widely used to date such materials as wood, archeological specimens, and so forth
(though for dates much older than about 50,000 BC, its use for this purpose is dicey – at best;  other
radioactive materials, e.g., Uranium-235, are used for extreme long-range dating).  Carbon-13 is now
commercially available at a cost of about $700/gm (as of 1973 e.v.).

As previously mentioned, Carbon is able to participate in far more compounds than any other single
element, even Silicon.  As P. W. Atkins puts it in his marvelous The Period Kingdom:    A Journey Into the
Land of the Chemical Elements (op. cit.):

“. . . [The] overarching power of carbon to participate in molecule formation . . . results in such

complexity of structure and collaboration that the [chemical] alliances it forms become alive and reflect
upon themselves.  The essential reason for this latent power of a single region [i.e., element] is . . .
carbon’s intrinsic mediocrity, its lack of self-assertion.  Sitting as it does in the middle of the northern
coast [Period II of the Periodic Table], it is neither an aggressive shedder of electrons, as are elements to
[its] left [in the Periodic Table], nor is it an avid receiver, like the atoms to its right.  Carbon is mild in its
demands on the alliances it makes.  Moreover, it is even content with its own company, and can make
extensive liaisons with itself, forming chains, rings, and trees of atoms. Were it readier to give up its
electrons, it would do so at the demand of another atom, and then find that it had not retained
sufficient electrons to bind other atoms in a precise disposition. If it were more avid for electrons, it
would soon satisfy its tendency to bond and would lack the opportunity for subtle conspiracy with
others.  By being in the middle, undemanding and not particularly generous, it can spin lasting alliances
rather than hasty conspiracies.

– Ibid., pp. 145-146

To which we can add only:  Ah! Lucky Pierre! J

                Chapter 5 of Crowley’s The Book of Lies (op. cit., p. 20:

 
KEFADH E

THE BATTLE OF THE ANTS

That is not which is.

The only Word is Silence.

The only Meaning of that Word is not.

Thoughts are false.

Fatherhood is unity disguised as duality.

Peace implies war.

Power implies war.

Harmony implies war.

Victory implies war.

Glory implies war.

Foundation implies war.

Alas! For the Kingdom wherein all these are at war.

                                                ag.           Key 39

                Nitrogen 7N14, Z=7.  Electron configuration:  2-5. Atomic weight:  14.0067. Oxidation states:  +1,

+2, +3, +4, +5, -1, -2, -3.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 5a/K-L.
Connects Sephirah Æ  to Chokmah. ASCII character:  ‘.  Qaballistic value: 610 =
1102.  Associations: Tiphareth, Sephirah 6 (for the Qaballistic value), hence SolÖ, and the Sixes and the
Knights* of the Tarot;  Vav, 16th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 6th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for
the Qaballistic value), hence Taurusó and Trump VI, The Hierophant;  Nun, 24th Key of the traditional
Qaballah and 14thKey of the Hebrew alphabet (for the chemical symbol), hence Scorpio ù and Trump
XIII, Death (which is necessary if there is to be the fertility of soil and room in the world necessary for
new life to come into existence); Venus Ù and Taurus ó (for Nitrogen’s critical role in growth and
metabolism in all living beings, especially the fertility of the soil;  the atomic number of Nitrogen, 7, is
also that of Netzach, the Sephirah of Venus, and 14, the atomic weight of Nitrogen, is the Key Number
of Daleth, the Path of Venus).

*That is, the Knights are associated with Tiphareth  in the Golden Dawn Tarot. Crowley associates the
Kings or Emperors with it.

                Alternate: 7Pp14, Pop.  Crystal structure: õ.  Party-favors (NO2);  ElDaddio;  weasels (obs.).

                The word Nitrogen is etymologically related to the Latin word nitrum and the Greek
word nitron, meaning “native soda,” and the Greek word genes,  “forming.” The atomic weight of
Nitrogen is 14.0067, and its atomic number is 7.  It has a valence of 3 or 5.

The melting-point of Nitrogen is –209.86º C, and its boiling-point is –195.8º C.  Its density is 1,2506
grams per liter.  Its specific gravity in the liquid-phase is 0.808 at –195.8º C, and in the solid phase is
1.026 at -252º C.

Nitrogen was discovered by Daniel Rutherford in 1772 e.v., but at about the same time, Scheele,
Cavendish, Priestly, and others studied “burnt or dephlogisticated air,” as air without Oxygen – and thus
consisting almost entirely of Nitrogen – was then called.

Nitrogen makes up some 78% of the air by volume.  The estimated amount of this element in the Earth’s
atmosphere is more than 4,000 billion (4 x 10 12) tons.  From this inexhaustible source it can be obtained
by liquefaction and fractional distillation (it can also be easily prepared by heating a water solution of
ammonium nitrate).  The vibrant orange-reds, blue-greens, blue-violets, and deep violet hues of the
aurora borealis and aurora australis are due to nitrogen molecules in the atmosphere.

The element is so inert that Lavoisier named it azote, meaning “without life,” yet its compounds are so
reactive as to be extremely important components of foods, poisons, fertilizers, and explosives.  In its
gaseous phase, Nitrogen is colorless, odorless, and a generally inert element. In its liquid phase, it is
likewise odorless and colorless, and is similar in appearance to liquid water. Two allotropic forms of solid
Nitrogen exist, with the transition from the a to the b form taking place at -237° C.

When Nitrogen is heated, it combines directly with Magnesium, Lithium, or Calcium;  when mixed with
Oxygen and subjected to electric sparks, it first forms nitric oxide (NO) and then the dioxide
(NO2).  When heated under pressure with a catalyst with Hydrogen, ammonia is formed (this is called
the Haber  process).  The ammonia thus formed is of the utmost importance, because it is used in
fertilizers, and it can be oxidized to nitric acid (Ostwald process).

The ammonia industry is the largest consumer of Nitrogen. Large amounts of the gas are also used by
the electronics industry, which uses the gas as a blanketing medium during production of such
components as transistors, diodes, etc.  The drug industry also uses large quantities of the
element.  Nitrogen is used as a refrigerant both for the immersion-freezing of food products and for
transportation of foods.  Liquid Nitrogen is also used in missile-work as a purge for components,
insulators for space-chambers, etc., and by the oil industry to build up great pressures in wells to force
crude oil upward to levels at which it can then be siphoned out. Another use for pure nitrogen is in
preservation of books and paper documents of all kinds;  e.g., the originals of the Declaration of
Independence, the Bill of Rights, and other important American documents are kept in the Smithsonian
in sealed chambers filled with pure nitrogen atmospheres, which will not react at all with the fragile,
precious documents of which they are the guardians.

Sodium and Potassium nitrates are formed by the decomposition of organic matter with compounds of
the metals present.  In certain dry areas of the world, these saltpeters are found naturally in great
quantity.

Ammonia, nitric acid, the nitrates, the five oxides (N 2), NO, N2O3, NO2, and N2O5), TNT, the cyanides, etc.
are but a few of the important compounds of Nitrogen.

Nitrogen gas prices vary from $0.02 to $2.75 per 100 cubic feet (ca. 1973 e.v.) depending on purity and
other considerations. Production of Nitrogen in the U.S. amounts to more than 160 billion cubic feet per
year.

Chapter 6 of Crowley’s The Book of Lies  (op. cit.,  p. 22):

KEFADH F

CAVIAR

The Word was uttered:  the One exploded into one thousand million worlds.

Each world contained a thousand million spheres.

Each sphere contained a thousand million planes.

Each plane contained a thousand million stars.

Each star contained a many thousand million things.

Of these the reasoner took six, and, preening, said:  This is the One and the All.

These six the Adept harmonised, and said:  This is the Heart of the One and the All.

These six were destroyed by the Master of the Temple, and hespake not.

The Ash thereof was burnt up by the Magus into the Word.

Of all this did the Ipsissimus know Nothing.

                                                ah.           Key 40

                Oxygen 8O16, Z=8.  Electron configuration:  2-6. Atomic weight:  15.994. Oxidation states:  -

2. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 6a/K-L. Connects SephirahÆ to Binah. ASCII
character:  (.  Qaballistic value:  7. Associations:  Mercury Ø , Hermes (for Oxygen’s vital role in brain
chemistry, etc.);  the element Air (since Oxygen is a primary, critical  constituent of our
atmosphere);  the waning Moon (for the shape of the character), hence Hekate, Kali, Hel, and other
Gods and Goddesses of the Waning Moon; Vav   w , 16th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 6th letter of
the Hebrew alphabet (for the symbol of the element; 16 is also the atomic weight of Oxygen), hence
Taurus ó and Trump V, The Hierophant;  Netzach, Sephirah 7 (for the Qaballistic value), hence Venus  Ù,
and the Sevens of the Tarot.  Zain  z  , 17th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 7th letter of the Hebrew
alphabet (for the Qaballistic value), hence Gemini ô and Trump VI, The Lovers;  Chiron å (Path
connecting S. 0 withBinah).

                Alternate: 8O16, Oxygen.  Crystal structure:  p

The word Oxygen is derived from the Greek words oxys, “sharp,” and genes, “forming.”  Literally, it
means “acid-former.”
The atomic weight of naturally-occurring Oxygen is 15.9994, and its atomic number is 8.  It has a valence
of 2.

Oxygen has a melting-point of –218.4º Cm and a boiling-point of –182.962º C.  Its density is 1.429 grams
per liter at 0º C.  In its liquid phase, it has a specific gravity of 1.14 at –182.96º C.

For many centuries, from time to time researchers realized that air is composed of more than one
component.  The behavior of atmospheric Oxygen and Nitrogen led to the formulation of the phlogiston
theory of combustion, which was accepted as sound by chemists for at least a century.  Eventually
Oxygen was prepared by several researchers, e.g., Bayen and Borch, but they didn’t know how to collect
it, didn’t study its properties, and didn’t recognize it as an elementary substance.  Priestly is generally
credited with its official discovery, although his contemporary Scheele also independently discovered
it.  Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the sun, and it plays a part in the Carbon-Nitrogen
process from which the Stars derive their energy (see discussion under “Carbon,” above).

When excited, atmospheric Oxygen emits the bright red and yellow-green light that colors the Aurora
Borealis and Aurora Australis. Oxygen gas forms 21% of the Earth’s atmosphere by volume.  It can be
obtained directly from the atmosphere by means of liquefaction and fractional distillation.  The element
and its compounds make up 49.2% of the Earth’s crust by weight.  About two-thirds of the human body
is Oxygen. Pure water is nine-tenths Oxygen by weight.

In the laboratory, Oxygen can be prepared by the electrolysis of water or by heating Potassium chloride
(KCl) with Manganese dioxide (MnO2) as a catalyst.  Oxygen gas is colorless, odorless, and tasteless.  Its
liquid and solid forms are a pale blue in color, and are strongly paramagnetic.

*Paramagnetic materials are those within which an applied magnetic field is slightly increased by the
alignment of electron orbits.  The slight diamagnetic effect in materials having magnetic dipole moments
is overshadowed by this paramagnetic alignment.  As the temperature increases, this paramagnetism
decreases, leaving only diamagnetism.  The permeability of paramagnetic materials is slightly greater
than that of empty space.

Ozone (O3), a highly active allotropic form of Oxygen, is formed by the action of an electrical discharge or
ultra-violet light on Oxygen.  Ozone’s presence in the atmosphere (amounting to the equivalent of a
layer 3 mm thick at ordinary pressures and temperatures) is of vital importance in preventing most of
the ultraviolet light received from the Sun from reaching Earth’s surface, where it would otherwise
destroy all Earth’s surface-life.*  Undiluted ozone has a bluish color.  Liquid ozone is bluish-black, and
solid ozone is violet-black.

*Over the last decade or so, there has been increasing scientific and public concern over the growing
ozone “holes” – regions in the atmosphere where the percentage of ozone by volume falls sharply
below normal or even virtually disappears altogether – that form over the Earth’s Northern and
Southern polar regions during Winter and early Spring. In spite of repeated attempts by many scientists
and laypersons to rebut the contention that this is occurring, repeated atmospheric sampling
throughout the world, medical statistics for different areas of the world and different Seasons in those
areas, and field-studies of both land and marine life at high latitudes makes it clear that the problem is
real and growing worse every year.  The incidence of skin cancer of all kinds has sharply increased world-
wide over the last several years, especially in areas of the world which, such as Australia, are located
fairly close to one of the poles.  Rapidly increasing numbers of teratologies and cancers of all kinds have
been observed in wildlife throughout the world, even fish, as well as plant-life, especially organisms
living at high latitudes.  A sudden rise in epidemics of all kinds – including epidemics of once virtually
harmless infectious diseases which as certain varieties of influenza which have otherwise unaccountably
suddenly turned deadly – that suggests a lowered immune response in growing numbers of human and
non-human organisms that would be expected from too much exposure to high-intensity ultraviolet and
other radiation has been observed over the last two or three decades;  disturbingly, these include
epidemics and plagues in cattle, corn, wheat, rice, and other cultivars upon which most of the world now
depends for sustenance, as well as in our pets and in wildlife of all kinds.  Above all, atmospheric
samples taken repeatedly throughout the year and across the world over the last twenty years or so
make it clear that ozone “holes” occurring over both poles are not only growing in size but are persisting
for longer and longer periods of time once they have formed.

Some thinning of atmospheric ozone at the poles during the Winters is normal, but for the past two
decades both the size and duration of such “holes” has been far over what is normal and predicted
according to ideal conditions, the problem growing worse every year. Already Australia, which has now
one of the highest per-annum rates of incidence of skin-cancer, issues “Slip/Slap/Slop” – “Slip  on a
shirt,slap on a hat, slop on plenty of skin-block ointment” – every year, and other countries sited not far
from the poles are following suit.  The reason for the problem may be due to a combination of factors,
among them atmospheric emission of compounds that tend to rise high in the atmosphere and which
break down ozone, such as PCPs, by industry and perhaps other sources, and the growing “Greenhouse
Effect” responsible for a small but growing and steady and persistent rise in the average temperature of
our Planet that seems to have been in effect since the onset of the Industrial Revolution (though this
temperature-rise may have been in effect far longer than that, and could have begun for reasons having
little or nothing to do with human activities, however much it may have been exacerbated by them
lately).
What the ultimate solutions to it may be are anyone’s guess at this point.  It is possible that future
technological revolutions may eliminate the human contribution to the problem.  Catastrophes such as
cometary impacts on our Planet may do it by cutting human civilization back to nearly nothing and,
simultaneously, causing an “impact winter” which would precipitate a new Ice Age.  In the meantime,
however, we are stuck with the problem and its consequences, and I suggest investing heavily in Bullfrog
and other sun-blockers for the duration.  Not to mention wearing a lot of it whenever you got
outside.  After all, there’s no such thing as being too rich or too cancer-free . . .

Oxygen is very reactive, and is able to combine with most elements.  It is a component of hundreds of
thousands of organic compounds.  It is essential for respiration of all plants and animals, and for
practically all forms of combustion. Bottled Oxygen is frequently used in hospitals to aid the respiration
of patients.  The atomic weight of Oxygen was used as a standard of comparison for each of the other
elements until 1961 e.v., when the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry adopted Carbon-
12 as the new basis.

Oxygen has eight isotopes.  Natural oxygen is a mixture of thee isotopes, including Oxygen-16, Oxygen-
17, and Oxygen-18.  Oxygen-18 occurs naturally, is stable, and is available commercially.  Water (H2O)
1.5% of the oxygen of which is O18) is also available.

Commercial oxygen consumption in the U.S. is estimated to be more than 400 billion cubic feet per year,
and the demand is expected to increase substantially in the future.  Oxygen enrichment of steel bast-
furnaces accounts for the greatest use of the gas.  Large quantities are also used for making synthesis
gas for ammonia and methanol, ethylene oxide, and for oxy-acetylene welding.  Air separation plants
produce about 99% of the gas, electrolysis plants about 1%.  The gas costs $0.025 per cubic foot in small
quantities, and $6-$12 per ton in large quantities (circa 1973 e.v.).

Chapter 7 of Crowley’s The Book of Lies (op. cit.,  p. 24):

KEFADH Z

THE DINOSAURS

None are They whose number is Six;  else were they six indeed.
Seven are those Six that live not in the City of the Pyramids, under the Night of Pan.

There was Lao-tzu.

There was Siddartha.

There was Krishna.

There was Tahuti.

There was Mosheh.

There was Dionysus.

There was Mahmud.

But the Seventh men called PERDURABO;  for enduring unto The End, at The End was Naught to endure.

Amen.

                        ai.            Key 41

                Fluorine, 9F19, Z=9.  Electron configuration:  2-7. Atomic weight:  18.9984. Oxidation states:  -

1.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  7a/K-L.  ConnectsSephirah Æ to Chesed.  ASCII
character:  ). Qaballistic value:  8.  Associations:waxing Moon (for the shape of the character), hence
Diana and other Gods and Goddesses of the Waxing Moon, and thus the asteroid
Diana;  Hod, Sephirah 8 (for the Qaballistic value), hence Mercury Ø and the Eights of the Tarot;  Cheth,
18th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 8 th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, hence the Sign Cancer and
Trump VII, The Chariot*; Hermes Light-Fingers (both for the number 8, associated with Hod,
the Sephirah of Mercury, and because of Fluorine’s tendency to combine with – i.e., steal – all other
available atoms in the vicinity;  under certain circumstances of temperature and pressure, it will even
combine with the Noble Gases, which don’t combine with anything else);  Teth f, 19th Key of the
traditional Qaballah and 9th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the atomic weight), hence Leo ö and
Trump VIII, Strength (in The Book of Thoth, Crowley’s pack, this Trump is numbered “XI,” and is
called Lust).

*Curiously, in Taoistic Alchemic traditions , Hermes is associated with the Element Water, because of the
properties of quicksilver (Mercury metal, which is liquid at room-temperatures). Cancer is the Cardinal
Sign of Water, so this association between Mercury and Water is one more link between Eastern and
Western Hermetic traditions.

                Alternate: 9Bf19, Fabian.  Crystal structure: ø

The word Fluorine comes from the Latin and French fluere, “flow” or “flux.”

Fluorine has an atomic weight of 18.9984, an atomic number of 9, and a valence of 1.  At one
atmosphere pressure, its melting-point is –219.62º C, its boiling-point is –188.14º C, and its density
1.696 grams per liter at 0º C.  The specific gravity of liquid Fluorine at its boiling-point under one
atmosphere of pressure is 1.108.

In 1529 e.v., Georgius Agricola described the use of fluorspar as a flux, and as early as 1670

e.v. Schwandhard that glass was etched when exposed to fluorspar treated with acid.  Scheele and many
later investigators, including Davy, Gay-Lussac, Lavoisier, and Thenard, experimented with hydrofluoric
acid (HFl), some experiments ending in tragedy.  The element was finally isolated in 1886 e.v.
by Moisson after nearly 74 years of continuous effort.

Fluorine occurs chiefly in fluorspar (CaF 2) and cryolite (Na2AlF6), but is also rather widely distributed in
other minerals.  A member of the Halogen family of elements, including Chlorine, Bromine, Iodine, and
Astatine as well, it is obtained by electrolyzing a solution of Potassium Hydrogen Fluoride in anhydrous
Hydrogen Fluoride in a vessel of metal or transparent fluorspar.  Modern commercial methods of
preparation are essentially variations on the procedures first used by Moisson.

Fluorine, the most electronegative and reactive of all elements, is a pale-yellow egregiously corrosive
gas which reacts with practically all organic and inorganic substances.  Under conditions of extremely
high pressure and temperature, it will even combine with the so-called Noble Gases, notably xenon,
radon, and krypton, which ordinarily combine with nothing, not even themselves.  Finely divided metals,
glass, ceramics, Carbon, and even water burn in Fluorine with a bright flame.  Elemental Fluorine and
the fluoride ion are extremely toxic.  The free element has a characteristic pungent odor, detectable in
concentrations as low as 20 parts per billion, which is well below the safe working level for the element
(the recommended maximum allowable concentration for a daily 8-hr exposure is 0.1 ppm).

Until World War II there was no commercial production of elemental Fluorine. However, the Manhattan
project and nuclear-energy applications made it necessary to produce large quantities of it.  Safe
handling techniques for it have since been developed, and it is now possibly to safely transport liquid
Fluorine by the ton.
Fluorine and its compounds are used in producing bomb-quality Uranium from Uranium hexafluoride, as
well as more than 100 commercial fluorochemicals, including many well-known high-temperature
plastics.  Hydrofluoric acid is used extensively for etching the glass of light bulbs, Pyrex measuring cups,
etc.  Fluorochloro hydrocarbons are widely used in air-conditioning and refrigeration.  It has been
suggested that Fluorine can be substituted for Hydrogen wherever it occurs in hydrocarbon compounds,
which could lead to an astronomical number of new Fluorine compounds.  The presence of at least 2
parts per million of Fluorine as soluble fluoride in drinking-water may cause mottled teeth in children
just acquiring permanent teeth; but in smaller amounts drinking-water fluorides may be beneficial,
preventing formation of dental cavities and strengthening teeth, for which reason it is often added by
municipalities to their drinking-water.  Elemental Fluorine is being studied (1973 e.v.) for possible use as
a rocket-propellant, since it has an exceptionally high specific impulse value.

Chapter 8 of Crowley’s the Book of Lies (op. cit., p. 26):

KEFADH H

STEEPED HORSEHAIR

Mind is a disease of semen.

All that a man is or may be is hidden therein.

Bodily functions are parts of the machine;  silent, unless in dis-ease.

But mind, never at ease, creaketh “I.”

This I persisteth not, posteth not through generations, changethmomentarily, finally is dead.

Therefore is man only himself when lost to himself in the Charioting.

 
                                                aj.            Key 42

                Neon 10Ne20, Z=10.  Electron configuration:  2-8. Atomic weight:  20.17. Oxidation

states:  0. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 0/K-L.  Connects Sephirah Æto Geburah.  ASCII
character:  *.  Qaballistic value:  9. Associations:  Yesod, Sephirah9 (for the Qaballistic value), and
therefore the Fixed Stars, Luna ×, and  Neptune Þ(one of Luna’s higher octaves, Who is also associated
with Chokmah and the 9thDegree of Adeptship;  Luna and Neptune are also associated with Neon
because of Their elusive qualities), as well as the Nines of the Tarot;  Teth m, 19th Key of the traditional
Qaballah and 9th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (because of the Qaballistic value), hence Leo ö and
Trump VIII, Strength*; Pluto (because * signifies footnoting, i.e., something under the normal text, or
between the lines).

*In Crowley’s pack, The Book of Thoth, Trump VIII has the title Adjustment and is associated with
Libra;  in that pack, Leo is associated with Trump XI, Lust.

                Alternate: 10Sd20, Husseinium.  Crystal structure:  m.  An inert gas.Associations:

The word Neon comes from the Greek work neos, “new.”

The atomic weight of Neon is 20.179, its atomic number is 10, and it has a valence of 0.  Its melting-point
is –248.67º C, and its boiling-point is –246.048º C.  The density of its gas-phase is 0.89990 gm/l at 1
atmosphere pressure and 0º C;  the density of its liquid-phase at the boiling-point is 1.207 gm/cm 3.

Discovered by Ramsay and Travers in 1898 e.v., Neon is a rare gaseous element present in the
atmosphere to the extent of 1 part in 65,000 of air.  It is obtained by liquefaction of air and separated
from the other gases by fractional distillation.  Natural neon is a mixture of three isotopes;  five other,
unstable isotopes of Neon are also known.  Neon is extremely inert, but will form compounds with
Fluorine under extreme conditions of temperature and pressure.  The following ions are known from
optical and mass spectrometric studies:  Ne2+;  (NeAr)+;  (NeH)+;  and (HeNe)+.  Neon also forms an
unstable hydrate.  In a vacuum discharge tube, Neon glows reddish-orange.  Of all the rare gases, the
discharge of neon is the most intense at ordinary voltages and currents.
Neon is used in making the well-known Neon advertising signs, which accounts for its largest use.  It is
also sued to make high-voltage indicators, lighting arrestors, wave-meter tubes, and TV tubes.  Neon
and Helium are used in making gas lasers.  Liquid Neon is now commercially available and has important
applications as an economical cryogenic refrigerant.  It has over 40 times more refrigerating capacity per
unit volume than liquid Helium and more than three times that of liquid Hydrogen. Refrigeration-quality
Neon is compact, inert, and less expensive than Helium of a similar grade.  Neon gas costs about
$1.50/liter (ca. 1973 e.v.).

Chapter 9 of Crowley’s the Book of Lies (op. cit.,  p. 28):

KEFADH Q

THE BRANKS

Being is the Noun;  Form is the Adjective.

Matter is the noun;  Motion is the verb.

Wherefore hath Being clothed itself with Form?

Wherefore hath Matter manifested itself in Motion?

Answer not, O silent one!  For THERE is no “wherefore,” no “because.”

The name of THAT is not known;  the Pronoun interprets, that is, misinterprets, It.

Time and Space are Adverbs.

Duality begat the Conjunction.

The conditioned is Father of the Preposition.

The Article also marketh Division;  but the Interjection is the sound that endeth in the Silence.

Destroy therefore the Eight Parts of Speech;  the Ninth is nigh unto Truth.

This must also be destroyed before thou enterest into The Silence.

Aum.

 
 

*********

Asteroid Symbol Path Connecting

Pallas ç Chokmah- Geburah

Juno è Chesed- Geburah

Vesta é Binah- Netzach

Ceres æ Yesod-Kether

Eros   Netzach-Geburah

Sappho   Netzach-Kether

Hidalgo   Yesod-Geburah

Toro   Geburah-Kether

Pandora   Hod-i = Ö-1

Psyche   Netzach-Chokmah

Urania   Binah-0 (Zero)

Chiron å Binah-Æ (Null Set)

Amor   Netzach-À0

Diana   Yesod-i = Ö-1

Icarus   Hod-Binah

Lilith   Geburah-i = Ö-1

 
New Paths Transcendenta Description Element
l Path ~ to
traditional
Path
connecting

Æ-0 5–8 Grace analog of Hydrogen

Neptune/Chokmah =
Durga/Hera À2

Æ- i = Ö-1 3-8   Helium

Æ-À0 7-8 Analog of Peh/Mars = Lithium

0/Lobachevski

Æ-À1 4-8   Beryllium

Æ-À2 2-8   Boron

Æ-1 1-8   Carbon

Æ-2     Nitrogen

Æ-3   å Chiron Oxygen

Æ-4     Fluorine

Æ-5     Neon

Æ-6 6-8    

Æ-9 8-9    

Æ-10 8-10    

0- i = Ö-1 3-5    

0-À0 ~ 5-7 5-7    

0-À1 ~ 5-4 4-5    

0-À2 ~ 5-2 2-5    

i = Ö-1-À0 3-7    

i = Ö-1-À1 3-4    

i = Ö-1-À2 2-3 Grace analog of  

Venus/Netzach = NortonÀ0
i = Ö-1-1 1-3 Power analog of  
Mercury/Hod = Beth b

i = Ö-1-2      

i = Ö-1-3      

i = Ö-1-4      

i = Ö-1-5      

i = Ö-1-6      

i = Ö-1-7      

i = Ö-1-8      

i = Ö-1-9      

i = Ö-1-10      

À0-À1 4-7 Grace analog of  

Jupiter/Kaph k, Path
connecting Sephiroth 4 and
7 = À1/Amphitrite; Vesta é

À0-À2 2-7    

À0-1 1-7    

À0-2      

À0-3      

À0-4      

À0-5      

À0-6 6-7    

À0-7      

À0-8      

À0-9      

À0-10 7-10 Grace analog of  

Aquarius/Tzaddi x, Path
connecting Sephiroth 7 and
10
À1-À2 2-4 Grace analog of  
Taurus/Vav w, Path
connecting Sephiroth 2 and 4

À1-1      

À1-2      

À1-3      

À1-4      

À1-5      

À1-6      

À1-7      

À1-8      

À1-9 4-9    

À1-10 4-10    

À2-1 1-2    

À2-2      

À2-3      

À2-4      

À2-5      

À2-6 2-6    

À2-7      

À2-8      

À2-9 2-9    

À2-10 2-10    

1-4      

1-5      

1-7      

1-8      
 1-9   Ceres æ  

1-10      

2-5   Pallas ç  

2-7      

2-8      

2-9      

2-10      

3-4   Saturn (for Da’ath)  

3-7   Vesta é  

3-8      

3-9      

3-10      

4-8      

4-9      

4-10      

5-9      

5-10      

6-10      

c.     Period III – Third Plane of the Sphere of Life ( Chesed-À1-Geburah-0-Tiphareth-Netzach-À0-Hod-Ø-

Yesod)

        Periods III – VI and their associated Planes of the Sphere of Life together correspond toOlam
Yetzirah (h r y x y), the Formative World, where the imaginative ideas of God are formed into definite
coherent entities, the astral models which give rise to or serve as the stable foundations of the physical
world;  and that part of the self called Ruach (j w r), a composite of Reason, Imagination, Ego, Emotion,
and Memory.

 
                ak.   Key 43

Sodium 11Na23, Z=11.  Electron configuration:  2-8-1. Atomic weight:  22.9898.  Oxidation

states:  +1. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 1a/K-L-M.  Connects Sephirah Æ to Tiphareth. ASCII
character:  +.  Qaballistic value:  1010 = 2 x 5 = 10102.  Associations: Salt (sodium chloride), hence
Saturn Ü;  Uranus Ý, Magick, the Paths of the Tarot (for 11 and 22);  Venus Ù(for the character);  Alaska
(for the section number);  Malkuth, Sephirah 10 (for the Qaballistic value), hence Earth ï (both Planet
and Element), Saturn Ü, and Chiron å, as well as the Tens and Pages of the Tarot*;  Yod, 20th Key of the
traditional Qaballah and 10th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the Qaballistic value), hence Virgo ÷ and
Trump IX, The Hermit, of the Tarot; Chaos Magick (for the Z-number and atomic weight), hence Eris; 

*In the Golden Dawn Tarot, these are called Princesses;  in Waite’s pack, they are Pages;  in Crowley’s,
they are Princesses or Empresses

Alternate: 11Dk23, Lesbium.  Crystal structure:  f

The word Sodium comes from the English word “soda,” which derives from the Medieval Latin
word sodanum, “headache remedy.”  The symbol, Na, comes from the Latin word natrium.

The atomic weight of Sodium is 22.9898, and its atomic number is 11.  Its melting-point is 97.81 ± 0.03°
C, and its boiling-point is 882.9° C.  It has a specific gravity* of 0.971 at 20° C, and a valence** of
1.  Seven isotopes of Sodium are recognized.  Essentially, Sodium comprises a single 3s-electron outside
an inner core of Neon – a single s-electron outside a Noble Gas-like core – so that it can be symbolized
also as [Ne]3s1.  In this it resembles Lithium, which has the structure [He]2s 1, comprising a single s-
electron outside a core of Helium.  For this reason, Sodium lies in the same chemical group as Lithium,
because their electronic structures are analogous.

*Specific gravity:  the ratio of the mass of a body to the mass of an equal volume of water at 4º C or
other specified temperature.  Its dimension is unity.
 

**Valence:  the valence of an atom of an element is measured in terms of the number of atoms of

hydrogen (or its equivalent) which one atom of that element can hold in combination if negative; or can
displace in a reaction, if positive.

Long recognized in compounds, Sodium was first isolated by Davy in 1807 e.v. by electrolysis of caustic
soda.  Sodium is present in a fair abundance in the Sun and the Stars. The D-lines of Sodium are among
the most prominent in the Solar spectrum.  Sodium is the sixth most abundant element on Earth,
comprising about 2.6% of the Earth’s crust. It is the most abundant of the Alkali group of Metals of
which it is a member, which also includes Lithium, Potassium, Rubidium, Cesium, and Francium (though
technically Hydrogen is also in this group, because Hydrogen can have oxidation states of both +1 and –1
it is also thus a member of the Halogen group).

The most common compound of Sodium is Sodium chloride (NaCl), but it also occurs in numerous other
minerals, e.g., soda niter, cryolite, amphibole, zeolite, sodalite, etc.  Highly reactive, Sodium is never
found free in nature.  It is now commercially obtained by the electrolysis of absolutely dry fused Sodium
chloride, a method substantially less expensive than that of electrolyzing Sodium hydroxide (NaOH),
which was the method previously used.

Sodium is a soft, bright, silvery metal which floats on water, decomposing it with the evolution of
Hydrogen and the formation of NaOH.  It may or may not spontaneously ignite when in contact with
water, depending on the amount of oxide and metal exposed to the water.  Normally it doesn’t ignite in
air at temperatures below 115° C.  Sodium should be handled with respect, because it can be dangerous
when improperly handled.  Sodium metal should be maintained in an inert atmosphere and kept from
with water and other substances with which Sodium readily reacts.

Metallic Sodium is vital in the manufacture of sodamide and Sodium cyanide, Sodium peroxide, and
Sodium hydride.  It is used in preparing tetraethyl Lead, in the reduction of organic esters, and in the
preparation of organic compounds.  The metal may be used to improve the structure of certain alloys, to
descale metal, to purify molten metals, and as a heat-transfer agent. An alloy of Sodium with Potassium,
NaK, is also an important heat-transfer agent.  Sodium compounds are also important to the paper,
glass, soap, textile, petroleum, chemical, and metal industries.  Soap is generally a Sodium salt of certain
fatty acids.  The importance of common salt to animal nutrition has been recognized since prehistoric
times.  Among the many compounds that are of the greatest industrial importance are common salt
(NaCl), soda ash (Na2CO3), baking soda (NaHCO3), caustic soda (NaOH), Chile saltpeter (NaNO3), di- and
tri-Sodium phosphates, Sodium thiosulfate (hypo, Na 2S2O3·5H2O) and borax (Na2B4O7·10H2O).  Metallic
Sodium is priced at about $0.15-0.20/lb in quantity (1973 e.v.); on a per-cubic inch basis, it is the
cheapest of all metals.
 

Chapter 10 of Crowley’s the Book of Lies (op. cit., p. 30):

KEFADH I

WINDLESTRAWS

The Abyss of Hallucinations has Law and Reason;  but in Truth there is no bond between the Toys of the
Gods.

This Reason and Law is the Bond of the Great Lie.

Truth! Truth! Truth! Crieth the Lord of the Abyss of Hallucinations.

There is no Silence in that Abyss:  for all that men call Silence is Its Speech.

This Abyss is also called “Hell,” and “The Many.” Its name is “Consciousness,” and “The Universe,”
among men.

But THAT which neither is silent, nor speaks, rejoices therein.

                        al.    Key 44

        Magnesium 12Mg24, Z=12.  Electron configuration:  2-8-2. Atomic

weight:  24.305. Valance: +2.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  2a/K-L-
M.  Connects Sephirah Æ toNetzach.  ASCII character:  , . Qaballistic value:  1110 =
10112 (prime). Associations:  Magick (11 and 12);  Hermes-Djehuti (the Key Number of Mercury is
12;  Hermes is His Greek avatar, and Djehuti his ancient Egyptian apotheosis);  the 12 Apostles of
Jesus;  comets (for the character);  Air and Uranus Ý (for the Qaballistic value, which is equal to the Key
Number of that Planet and Element);  Hekate (the element was named after a district of Thessaly, Her
home).

 
        Alternate: 12Cq24, Cliqueium.  Crystal structure:   v

The word Magnesium comes from Magnesia, the name of a district in Thessaly, the home of
Hekate.  Magnesium originally came from ores obtained from a white earth, magnes carneus, found in
Magnesia.

The atomic weight of Magnesium is 24.305, its atomic number is 12, and it has a valence of 2. Its
melting-point is 648.8º ± 0.5º C, and its boiling-point is 1090º C.  Its specific gravity is 1.738 at 20º C.  It is
a light, silvery-white, and fairly tough metal.  It tarnishes slightly in air, and finely divided magnesium
readily ignites upon heating in air and burns with a dazzling white flame.  It is one-third lighter than
Aluminum.

Compounds of magnesium have been known for millennia, but it wasn’t until 1755 e.v. that it was
recognized as an element, by Black.  Isolated by Davy in 1808 e.v., it was prepared in coherent form by
Bussy in 1831 e.v.

Magnesium is the eighth most abundant element in the earth’s crust.  It doesn’t occur uncombined, but
instead is found in large deposits in the form of magnesite, dolomite, and other minerals.  In the United
States the metal is principally obtained by electrolysis of fused Magnesium chloride (MgCl 2) derived
from wells taken from wells and sea-water.

Magnesium is used in flash-light photography, flares, and pyrotechnics, including incendiary

bombs.  Because of its light weight, it is essential in alloys for use in airplane and missile
construction.  The metal improves the mechanical, fabrication, and welding characteristics of Aluminum
when used as an alloying agent.  It is used in producing modular graphite in cast iron, and is used as an
additive in conventional propellants.  It is also used as a reducing agent in the production of pure
Uranium and other metals from their salts.  Magnesium hydroxide (Milk of Magnesia), Magnesium
chloride, Magnesium sulfate (Epsom Salts), and Magnesium citrate are used in medicine.  Dead-burned
magnesite is employed for refractory purposes, such as brick and liners in furnaces and converters.

Organic Magnesium compounds have great importance in pharmaceutical preparations and in general
biological function – in fact, it is the Magnesium in chlorophyll that makes possible photosynthesis,
without which almost all Earthly life would cease to exist.  A molecule of chlorophyll, a Magnesium-
centered porphyrin, contains a single atom of Magnesium at its “eye,” and only Magnesium has the
ability to bind light and enable it to be stored for future use as food as chlorophyll does.  Magnesium is
found in both plant and animal tissues, and it has an important role in the functions of the vertebrate
nervous system – including the human brain. The average adult daily requirement of Magnesium is
about 300 mg/day (ca. 1973 e.v.), though this is affected by numerous factors, e.g., long sieges of illness
or malnutrition requiring much higher daily amounts of the element for the body to rebuild its internal
stores of Magnesium.*

 
 

*See, e.g., Adelle Davis, Let’s Get Well (New York:  Signet Books/New American Library, 1965, 1972), pp.
54-55, 67, 97, 220, 319 for the role of Magnesium in bodily function and effects of deficiencies in that
mineral upon human health.

Great care should be taken in handling Magnesium metal, especially in the finely divided state, as it can
generate dangerously hot, “fast” fires.  Water shouldn’t be used on burning Magnesium or on
Magnesium fires, on which only appropriate chemical or cryogenic extinguishers should be used.

Aleister Crowley, The Book of Lies,  Chapter 11 (op. cit., p. 32):

KEFADH IA

THE GLOW-WORM

Concerning the Holy Three-in-Naught.

Nuit, Hadit, Ra-Hoor-Khuit, are only to be understood by the Master of the Temple.

They are above The Abyss, and contain all contradiction in themselves.

Below them is a seeming duality of Chaos and Babalon; these are called Father and Mother, but it is not
so.  They are called Brother and Sister, but it is not so.  They are called Husband and Wife, but it is not
so.

The reflection of All is Pan:  the Night of Pan is the Annihilation of the All.

Cast down through The Abyss is the Light, the Rosy Cross, the rapture of Union that destroys, that is The
Way.  The Rosy Cross is the Ambassador of Pan.

How infinite is the distance from This to That! Yet All is Here and Now.  Nor is there any There or
Then;  for all that is, what is it but a manifestation, that is, a part, that is, a falsehood, ofTHAT which is
not?

Yet THAT which is not neither is nor is not That which is!

Identity is perfect;  therefore the Law of Identity is but a lie.  For there is no subject, and there is no
predicate;  nor is there the contradictory of either of these things.

Holy, Holy, Holy are these Truths that I utter, knowing them to be but falsehoods, broken mirrors,
troubled waters;  hide me, O our Lady, in Thy Womb! For I may not endure the rapture.

In this utterance of falsehood upon falsehood, whose contradictories are also false, it seems as if That
which I uttered not were true.

Blessed, unutterably blessed, is this last of the illusions;  let me play the man, and thrust it from
me!  Amen.

                        am.  Key 45

        Aluminum 13Al27, Z=13.  Electron configuration:  2-8-3. Atomic weight:  26.9815.  Oxidation

states:  +3. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 3a/K-L-M.  Connects Sephirah Æ to Hod. ASCII
character:  -. Qaballistic value:  1210 = 22 x 3 = 11002. Associations:  Luna (13, as well as the
color);  Woman (13);  Capricorn (26);  Wicca (13); sorcery and black Magick (13); the United States of
America (13); Aleister “Uncle Al” Crowley (from the abbreviation);  rubies and sapphires (since an ore of
aluminum, carborundum, is the poison or invading chemical which makes rubies red and sapphires
blue), hence Leo, Pluto, and Mars, hence Tantra and Kundalini energy (these are associated with
Leo); Hermes-Djehuti (12);  modern warfare (Napoleon Bonaparte was the first modern general to
realize the advantages of aluminum, which is much lighter than iron or even tin, for use in armor,
transport vehicles, etc.).

        Alternate: 13Al27, Aluminum.  Crystal structure:  \.  Associations: Aleister “Uncle Al” Crowley.

The word Aluminum is related to the Latin words alumen and alum.

The atomic weight of Aluminum is 27, its atomic number is 13, and it has a valence of 3.  Its melting-
point is 660.37º C, its boiling-point is 2467º C, and its specific gravity is 2.6989 at 20º C.

Aluminum is the most abundant metal in the Earth’s crust, comprising 8.1% thereof, but it is never
found free in nature.  In addition to cryolite and bauxite, Aluminum is also found in feldspars, granite,
and many other common minerals.
Pure Aluminum, a silvery-white metal, possesses numerous desirable characteristics.  It is light,
nontoxic, has a pleasing appearance, can easily be formed, machined, or cast, has a high thermal
conductivity, and has excellent resistance to corrosion.  It is nonmagnetic and no sparking, is the second
most malleable of all metals, and is the sixth most ductile metal.

The most important compounds of Aluminum are Aluminum oxide (alumina), Aluminum sulfate, and the
soluble sulfate with Potassium (alum). Alumina occurs naturally in rubies, sapphire, corundum, and
emery, imparting their colors.  It is used in glassmaking for the color it imparts to artificial
glasses.  Synthetic rubies and sapphires are used as the guts of lasers as the mechanisms by which light
is cohered.

The ancient Greeks and Romans used alum in medicine as an astringent, and as a mordant in dyeing.  In
1761 e.v. de Morveau proposed the name alumine for the base in alum, and Lavoisier, in 1787 e.v..,
thought this base to be the oxide of a still undiscovered metal.  Wöhler is generally credited with having
isolated the metal in 1827 e.v., although an impure form of it was prepared by Oersted two years
earlier.  In 1807 e.v., Davy proposed the name “Alumium” for the metal, which still had not been
officially discovered at that time;  later, he agreed to change it to “Aluminum.” Shortly thereafter, the
name “Aluminium” was adopted to conform with the “ium” ending of the names of most of the
chemical elements, and this spelling is now in use in many places outside the United States, such as the
United Kingdom.  It was also the accepted spelling of the name of the element in the U.S. until 1925 e.v.,
at which time the American Chemical Society officially decided to use the name “Aluminum” thereafter
in their publications.

In 1886 e.v., Hall, in the U.S., and Heroult in France at about the same time, discovered the method of
obtaining Aluminum metal by the electrolysis of alumina dissolved in cryolite.  Cryolite, a natural ore
found in Greenland, is no longer widely used in commercial production of Aluminum;  it has been
replaced by an artificial mixture of Sodium, Aluminum, and Calcium fluorides.  Bauxite, an impure
hydrated oxide ore, is found in large deposits in Arkansas, Jamaica, and elsewhere.  The Bayer process is
most commonly used today to refine bauxite so that it can be accommodated in the Hall-Heroult
refining process that is now used to produce most Aluminum.  Aluminum can now be produced from
clay, but the process isn’t economically feasible at present.

Aluminum is used extensively for kitchen utensils, outside building decorations, and in thousands of
industrial applications which require a strong, light, easily worked material.  Although its electrical
conductivity is only about 60% of that of Copper per area cross-section, it is used in electrical
transmission lines because of its light weight.  Pure Aluminum is soft and lacks strength, but it can be
alloyed with small amounts of Copper, Magnesium, Silicon, Manganese, and other elements, which give
it a variety of useful properties.  Such alloys of Aluminum are of vital importance in the aerospace
industry.

Evaporated in a vacuum, Aluminum forms a coating which reflects almost all heat and light. Such
coatings soon form a layer of protective Aluminum oxide and don’t deteriorate the way silver coatings
do.  They are used in coatings for telescope mirrors, in making decorative paper, packages, and toys, and
numerous other applications.

In 1852 e.v., the price of Aluminum was about $545/lb. Just before Hall’s discovery in 1886 e.v., it was
about $11/lb.  Thereafter the price rapidly dropped to $0.30/lb, and has been as low as $0.15/lb.

        Crowley’s The Book of Lies, Chapter 12 (op. cit., p. 34):

KEFADH IB

THE DRAGON-FLIES

IO is the cry of the lower as OI of the higher.

In figures they are 1001;  in letters they are Joy.

For when all is e equilibrated, when all is beheld from without all, there is joy, joy, joy that is but one
facet of a diamond, every other facet whereof is more joyful than joy itself.

                an.   Key 46

        Silicon 14Si28, Z=14.  Electron configuration:  2-8-4. Atomic weight:  28.086.  Oxidation states:  +2, +4,

-4. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 4a/K-L-M.  Connects Sephirah Æ toYesod.  ASCII character .
(period).  Qaballistic value:  1310 = 11012 (prime).  Associations: Helios (Æ-9 is the Power analog
of Resh r , the Path connecting Sephiroth 8-9, which is associated with Sol Ö); Luna (13, as well as the
color); Woman (13); Wicca (13);  sorcery and black Magick (13);  the United States of America
(13);  Venus (14, 28);  perfect numbers (28 = 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14, each of which is also a divisor of 28),
hence God, the Perfect Being;  computers, artificial life, hence Uranus Ý (silicon is a prime constituent of
computer chips, and like carbon, it is capable of forming strong covalent bonds of the sort necessary to
life).

 
        Alternate: 14Si28, Silicone.  Crystal structure:  à.  Associations: transsexuals;  rubber-freaks.

The word Silicon is related to the Latin words silex and silicis, “flint.”

The atomic number of Silicon is 14, its atomic weight is 28.086, and it has a valence of 4.

In 1800 e.v., Davy thought silica – Silicon dioxide (SiO 2), a hard, glassy mineral found in a variety of
forms, such as quartz, sand, opal, etc. – to be a compound rather than an element;  later, in 1811 e. v.,
Gay Lussac and Thenard probably prepared impure amorphous Silicon by heating Potassium with Silicon
tetrafluoride.  In 1824 e.v., Berzelius, generally credited with the discovery of the element, succeeded in
preparing amorphous Silicon by the same general method, but he went on to purify the product by
removing the fluorosilicates through repeated washing. Deville was the first to prepare crystalline
Silicon, the second allotropic form of the element, in 1854 e.v.

Silicon is present in the Sun and other Stars, and is a principal component of a class of meteorites known
as aerolites.  It is also a component of tektites, a natural glass formed as the result of meteorite impacts
or which are the actual remnants of rocky meteorites, at least some of which may be material ejected
from the Moon as a result of the impact that formed the Lunar crater Tycho.  Silicon makes up 25.7% of
the Earth’s crust by weight, and is the second most abundant element on Earth, only exceeded in this
regard by Oxygen.

Silicon is not found free in nature;  instead, it occurs chiefly in the form of oxides and silicates.Sand,
quartz, rock, crystal, amethyst, agate, flint, jasper, and opal are some of the forms in which the oxide
appears.  Granite, hornblende, asbestos, feldspar, clay, mica, etc. are only a few of the numerous silicate
materials.  It is a relatively inert element, but is attacked by Halogens and dilute Alkalis.  Most acids,
except for hydrofluoric acid (HFl), don’t affect it. Elemental Silicon transmits more than 95% of all
wavelengths of infra-red, i.e., electromagnetic energy from 1.3 to 6.7 microns in wavelength.

Silicon is commercially prepared by heating silica and carbon together in an electric furnace, using
carbon electrodes; several other methods exist for preparing the element, as well. Amorphous Silicon
can be prepared in the form of a brown powder which can be easily melted or vaporized.  Crystalline
Silicon has a metallic luster and grayish color.  The Czochralski process is commonly used to prepare
single crystals of Silicon used for solid-state or semiconductor devices.

Hyper-pure Silicon can be prepared by the thermal decomposition of ultra-pure trichlorosilane in a

Hydrogen atmosphere and by a vacuum float-zone process.  This product can then be doped with Boron,
Gallium, Phosphorus, Arsenic, etc., to produce Silicon for use in transistors, Solar cells, rectifiers, and
other solid-state devices which are used extensively in the electronics and space-age industries.

Silicones are important products of the element.  They may be prepared by hydrolyzing a Silicon organic
chloride, such as dimethyl Silicon chloride.  Hydrolysis and condensation of various chlorosilanes can be
used to produce a very great number of valuable polymeric products, ranging from liquids to hard, glass-
like solids with many useful properties.
Silicon is one of the most useful of all elements.  In the form of sand and clay, it is used to make concrete
and brick.  It is a useful refractory material for high-temperature work.  And in the form of silicates, it is
used in making enamels, pottery, etc.

In the form of sand, silica is a principal ingredient of glass, one of  the most inexpensive of materials,
which has outstanding mechanical, optical, thermal, and electrical properties.  Glass can be made in a
vast range of shapes, and is used for making containers, window-glass, insulators, and thousands of
other valuable products.  Silicon tetrachloride can be used to iridize glass.

Silicon is an important ingredient in steel.  Silicon carbide is one of the most important abrasives, and
has been used in lasers to produce coherent light of 4500 Å.

Regular grade Silicon (97% purity) costs about $0.20/lb (1973 e.v.).  99.7% pure Silicon costs about
$7.00/lb (1973 e.v.).  Hyper-pure Silicon may costs as much as $100/lb (1973 e.v.).

In the biological realm, Silicon is a profoundly important constituent of the bodies of numerous living
organisms.  Diatoms in both fresh and salt water extract silica from the water to build up their cell
walls.  Silica is present in ashes of plants and in the human skeleton. However, miners, stonecutters, and
others engaged in work where siliceous dust is breathed in large quantities often develop a deadly lung
disease, silicosis, more familiarly known as Black-Lung, indicating that with Silicon, as with so many other
things which are valuable or even essential to life in small quantities, there can be too much of a good
thing.

Aleister Crowley’s The Book of Lies, Chapter 13 (op. cit., p. 36):

KEFADH IG

PILGRIM-TALK

O thou that settest out upon The Path, false is the Phantom that thou seekest.  When thou has it thou
shalt know all bitterness, thy teeth fixed in the Sodom-Apple.

Thus hast thou been lured along That Path, whose terror else had driven thee far away.

O thou that stridest upon the middle of The Path, no phantoms mock thee.  For the stride’s sake thou
stridest.

Thus art thou lured along That Path, whose fascination else had driven thee far away.
O thou that drawest toward the End of the path, effort is no more. Faster and faster dost thou fall;  thy
weariness is changed into Ineffable Rest.

For there is no Thou upon That Path:  thou hast become The Way.

                        ao.   Key 47

        Phosphorus 15P31, Z=15.   Electron configuration:  2-8-5. Atomic weight:  30.9738. Oxidation

states:  +3, +5, -3. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 5a/K-L-M.  Connects SephirahÆ to Malkuth.  ASCII
character:  /.  Qaballistic value:  1410 = 2 x 7 = 11102.  Associations:Hades (Æ-10 is the Power analog
of Shin c, the Path connecting Sephiroth 9 and 10, which is associated with Fire and the God
Pluto î );  Lucifer (phosphorus is used in match-heads as a pyretic ingredient); Hell, the Underworld,
Satan (burning phosphorus is supposed to be a key stench of Hell;  also, the number of the Trump The
Devil is 15);  Venus Ù (14;  also because the ancient Greeks used the word for Venus when She rose
before the Sun, another connection with Lucifer, another name for the Dawn-Star ).

        Alternate: 15Mg31, Margarita.  Crystal structure:  (none given). Associations:  Dionysus, the afternoon

(the customary time for drinking Margaritas).

The word Phosphorus comes from the Greek work phosphoros, “light-bearing.”  It was an ancient name
for the Planet Venus when She rose before the Sun.

The atomic number of Phosphorus is 15, its atomic weight is 30.9738, and its valence is 3 or 5.  White
Phosphorus has a melting-point of 44.1º C, a boiling-point of 280º C, and a specific gravity of 1.82.  The
specific gravity of red Phosphorus is 2.20, and of black Phosphorus is 2.25-2.69. Phosphorus exists in
four or more allotropic forms:  white (or yellow), red, and black (or violet).

White Phosphorus has two modifications:  the a-  and the b- forms, with a transition temperature at –
3.8º.  Ordinary Phosphorus is a waxy white solid;  when pure, it is colorless and transparent.  It is
insoluble in water, but soluble in Carbon disulfide.  It catches fire spontaneously in air, burning to the
pentoxide.  White Phosphorus should be kept under water, because it is dangerously reactive and air,
and should be handled with forceps, because contact with the skin can cause severe burns.

When exposed to Sunlight or when heated in its own vapor to 250º C, it is converted to red Phosphorus,
which doesn’t phosphoresce in air as white Phosphorus does.  This form doesn’t ignite spontaneously,
and isn’t as dangerous as white Phosphorus. However, it should be handled with care, for it does
convert to the white form of Phosphorus at some temperatures, and it emits highly toxic fumes of
phosphoric oxides when heated.

Red Phosphorus is fairly stable.  It sublimes with a vapor pressure of 1 atmosphere at 417º C, and is used
in the manufacture of safety matches, pyrotechnics, pesticides, incendiary shells, smoke bombs, tracer
bullets, etc.

Never found free in nature, Phosphorus is widely distributed in combination with various
minerals.  Phosphate rock, which contains the mineral apatite – an impure tri-Calcium phosphate – is an
important source of the element.  Large deposits of Phosphorus are found in areas part of the former
USSR., Morocco, and in Florida, Tennessee, Utah, Idaho, and elsewhere in the United States.

Phosphorus is an essential ingredient of all cell protoplasm, nervous tissue, and bones. However, it is
extremely poisonous – 50 mg of Phosphorus constitutes a fatal dose for human beings.  The maximum
recommended allowable concentration in air is 0.1 mg/cubic meter.

The element as such was discovered in 1699 e.v. by Brand, who prepared it from urine.

White Phosphorus may be prepared by several methods.  In one process, tri-Calcium phosphate, the
essential ingredient of phosphate rock, is heated in the presence of Carbon and Silica in an electric
furnace or fuel-fired blast furnace.  Elementary Phosphorus is liberated as vapor and may be collected
under water.  If it is desired, the Phosphorus vapor and Carbon monoxide produced by the reaction can
be oxidized at once in the presence of moisture or water to produce phosphoric acid – an important
compound in making super-phosphate fertilizers.

In recent years, concentrated phosphoric acids, which may contain as much as 70-75% P 2O5content,
have become of great importance to agriculture and farm production.  World-wide demand for
fertilizers has caused record phosphate production in recent years.  Phosphates are used in the
production of special glasses, such as those used for Sodium lamps.  Bone-ash, Calcium phosphate, is
also used to produce fine chinaware as well as the mono-Calcium phosphate used in baking
powder.  Phosphorus is also important in the production of steels, phosphor bronze, and many other
products.  Tri-Sodium phosphate is important as a cleaning agent, a water-softener, and for preventing
boiler-scale and corrosion of pipes and boiler tubes.  Organic compounds of phosphorus are also
important for many uses.

Chapter 14 of Crowley’s The Book of Lies (op. cit., p. 38):

KEFADH ID
 

ONION-PEELINGS

The Universe is the Practical Joke of the General at the Expense of the Particular, quoth FRATER
PERDURABO, and laughed.

But those disciples nearest to him wept, seeing the Universal Sorrow.

Those next to them laughed, seeing the Universal Joke.

Below these certain disciples wept.

Then certain laughed.

Others next wept.

Others next laughed.

Next others wept.

Next others laughed.

Last came those that wept because they could not see The Joke, and those that laughed lest they should
be thought not to see the Joke, and thought it safe to act like FRATER PERDURABO.

But though FRATER PERDURABO laughed openly, He also at the same time wept secretly; and in Himself
He neither laughed nor wept.

Nor did He mean what He said.*

*For all the world the style of this chapter of The Book of Lies is eerily reproduced in the writing of
Harvey Kurtzman  in the early MAD Magazine.  As Grant Geissman says in MAD About the Fifties (Grant
Geissman, compiler and interior design;  Nick Meglin, contributing editor;  and the Usual Gang of Idiots,
contributing authors. New York:  Quality Paperback Book Club, 1997):

‘Anyone Can Build This Coffee Table’ (from [issue] #24 [of MAD]) introduces the magazine version of
Kurtzman’s humor.  Note the sustained repetition of certain key words or phrases, a Kurtzman
trademark. Note how Davis’s pictures perfectly compliment the text.  Note how Harvey has influenced
the writing of this paragraph!

-- Ibid., from section 1955-1959

Kurtzman’s use of sustained repetition of certain key words of phrases was one of his trademarks – but
it was apparently also one of Crowley’s.  There is no evidence to suggest that Kurtzman was any sort of
student or disciple of Crowley, so this similarity of prose style is either coincidence, synchronicity – or a
manifestation of 93 current in several different places not otherwise connected with one another.

                        ap.   Key 48

        Sulfur 16S32, Z=16.  Electron configuration:  2-8-6. Atomic weight:  32.06.  Oxidation states: +4, +6,

-2. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 6a/K-L-M.  Connects Sephirah 0 to Sephirah  Ö-1.  ASCII
character:  0 (Zero). Qaballistic value:  1510 = 11112 (prime). Associations:  Ain, Ain Soph, Ain Soph
Aur,  Lobachevski  (the Planet) (for Zero);  Lucifer, Hell, the Underworld, Satan (the stench of brimstone,
or burning sulfur, is another classical Underworld association);  Lucifer (matches, fire).  One of the three
major chemicals used in classical Alchemy (which also include quicksilver, or mercury metal, and salts of
various kinds).

Alternate: 16Fp32, Poodlium.  Crystal structure:  (a dog’s paw-print).  Associations: France; hunting

(poodles were originally bred as hunting dogs), hence Cernunnos, Herne, other Gods of the Hunt.

The word Sulfur is related to the Sanskrit word sulvere and the Latin sulphurium.

The atomic number of Sulfur is 16, its atomic weight is 32.06, and it has a valence of 2, 4, or 6.  The
rhombic crystalline form of Sulfur has a melting-point of 112.8º C and a specific gravity of 2.07 at 20º
C;  the monoclinic form has a melting-point of 119.0º C and a specific gravity of 1.957 at 20º C.  Sulfur
boils at 444.674º C.
Sulfur is a pale yellow, odorless, brittle solid which is insoluble in water but which does dissolve in
carbon disulfide.  In every one of its states, whether solid, liquid, or gaseous, elemental solid occurs in
more than one allotropic form or modification. Its various forms comprise a bewildering multitude of
forms whose relations aren’t yet fully understood (1973 e.v.).  Amorphous or “plastic” Sulfur is obtained
by fast cooling of the crystalline forms of the element.  X-ray studies indicate that amorphous Sulfur may
have a helical structure with eight atoms per spiral.  Crystalline Sulfur seems to be made of rings, each
containing eight Sulfur atoms, which fit together to give a normal x-ray pattern.

Ten isotopes of Sulfur exist.  Four of these occur in natural Sulfur, none of which is radioactive.A finely
divided form of Sulfur, known as flowers of Sulfur, is obtained by sublimation of Sulfur’s solid forms.

Sulfur readily forms compounds with numerous elements. Calcium sulfate, ammonium sulfate, Carbon
disulfide, Sulfur dioxide (SO2), and Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) are just a few of the important compounds of
sulfur.

Sulfur, which forms numerous important organic compounds, is essential to life.  It is a minor but highly
important and necessary constituent of fats, body-fluids, and skeletal minerals.

Carbon disulfide, Hydrogen disulfide, and Sulfur dioxide (which is a dangerous component of
atmospheric pollution) should be handled with great care.  In small concentrations, Hydrogen sulfide can
be metabolized, but in higher concentrations it can quickly bring on fatal respiratory paralysis. Hydrogen
sulfide  an insidious poison in that it quickly deadens the sense of smell, but fortunately its “rotten egg”
stench is so unmistakable and our reaction to it so reflexive and strong that in many cases we are driven
away from its source before we can be overcome by it.  The human nose is so sensitive to the smell of
Hydrogen sulfide that less than 1 ppm in air is more than enough for us to sense it and react to it as an
overwhelmingly repellent stench – a sensitivity which has obvious selective advantages for us and which
clearly has been evolutionarily driven.

Humanity has known of sulfur perhaps since its beginning, in the form of deposits in caves and around
other sites experiencing frequent tectonic activity, e.g., hot springs whose waters are heavily
impregnated with sulfides and other minerals, and in sulfur deposits around volcanoes. In the Bible,
Sulfur is referred to as brimstone.

Sulfur has been found in meteorites and in many places off the Earth, as well, e.g., in the volcanic
plumes photographed on Io by fly-by probes.  A dark area near the Lunar crater Aristarchus, which has
been studied by R. W. Wood et al. with ultraviolet light, and the results strongly suggest that it is a Sulfur
deposit.

Sulfur is widely distributed in nature in the form of iron pyrites, galena, sphalerite, cinnabar, stibnite,
gypsum, Epsom salts, celestite, barite, etc.  In the United States, Sulfur for commercial use is recovered
from wells sunk into salt domes along our Gulf Coast.  It is obtained from these wells via the Frasch
process, which forces extremely hot water into the wells to melt the Sulfur, which is then pumped to the
surface.
Sulfur also occurs in natural gas and petroleum crude, and must be removed from these products before
they can be used for their normal purposes.  Formerly, this was done chemically, which wasted the
Sulfur.  New processes now permit recovery from these of the Sulfur within them, and these have
proved to be important sources of the element. Large amounts of Sulfur are recovered from Alberta gas
fields in this way.

Sulfur is a component of black gunpowder, is used in the vulcanization of natural rubber, and is used as
a fungicide.  It is also used extensively in the making of phosphate fertilizers.  A tremendous amount of it
is used to produce sulfuric acid, the most important of all manufactured chemicals. Sulfur is used in
making sulfite paper and other papers, as a fumigant, and in the bleaching of dried fruits.  It is also good
electrical insulator.

High-purity Sulfur is commercially available in purities of 99.999+%.

        Chapter 15 of Aleister Crowley’s The Book of Lies (op. cit., p. 40):

KEFADH IE

THE GUN-BARREL

Mighty and erect is this Will of mine, this Pyramid of fire whose summit is lost in Heaven.  Upon it have I
burned the corpse of my desires.

Mighty and erect is this Falloz of my Will.  The seed thereof is That which I have borne within me from
Eternity; and it is lost within the Body of Our Lady of the Stars.

I am not I;  I am but an hollow tube to bring down Fire from Heaven.

Mighty and marvelous is this Weakness, this Heaven which draweth me into Her Womb, this Dome
which hideth, which absorbeth, Me.

This is The Night wherein I am lost, the Love through which I am no longer I.

                aq.  Key 49

 
        Chlorine 17Cl35, Z=17.  Electron configuration:  2-8-7. Atomic weight:  35.453.  Oxidation states:  +1,
+5, +7, -1.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  7a/K-L-M. Connects Sephirah 0 toSephirah  À0.  ASCII
character:  1. Qaballistic value:  1610 = (22)2 = 100002.  Associations: Vavw  (Key Number 16), hence
Taurus ó and Trump V, The Hierophant;  Venus Ù  (16 is one of the numbers of Venus, and is associated
with Taurus, Venus’ traditional dominion);  Kether,  Sephirah 1, hence Pluto î; Uranus Ý (the value of À,
Uranus’ Path, is 1);  Neptune  Þ, because of its intensely poisonous nature and its use as a chemical-
warfare weapon in World War I (hence all three of the Outer Planets are associated with this gas, which
is thus closely allied with the 93 Current of the New Age).

        Alternate: 17R35, Rocknrollium.  Crystal structure:  EE.  Associations:   Apollo, Dionysus, Bacchus,

Venus, and other Gods associated with music;  Hermes (God of tricks and humor);  Jerry Garcia, God of
the Dead (-Heads);  Zappa, God of Weirdness.

The word Chlorine comes from the Greek word chloros, “greenish-yellow,” the color of Chlorine gas.

The atomic number of Chlorine is 17, its atomic weight is 35.453, and it has a valence of 1, 3, 5, or
7.  Chlorine freezes at –100.98º C, boils at –34.6º C, has a density of 3.214 g/l, and a specific gravity of
1.56 at –33.6º C. At 10º C, one volume of water dissolves 3.10 volumes of Chlorine;  at 30º it dissolves
on 1.77 volumes of the gas.

Chlorine was discovered in 1774 e.v. by Scheele, who thought it contained oxygen.  It was named in
1810 e.v. by Davy, who insisted that it was an element.

In nature it is found only in combination with other elements, chiefly in the form of Sodium chloride
(NaCl), common table-salt; carnallite (KMgCl3·6H2O); and sylvite (Potassium chloride, KCl). It is a member
of the Halogen (salt-forming) group of elements and is obtained from chlorides by the action of oxidizing
agents or, more often, by electrolysis.  In its gaseous state it combines readily with nearly all elements.

Chlorine is widely used in making many everyday products. It is used for producing safe drinking water
the world over;  even the smallest water-supplies are now usually chlorinated.    It is also used
extensively in the production of paper products, dyestuffs, textiles, petroleum products, medicines,
antiseptics, insecticides, foodstuffs, solvents, paints, plastics, and many other consumer products. Most
of the Chlorine produced is used in the manufacture of chlorinated compounds for sanitation, pulp
bleaching, disinfectants, and textile processing.  Further use is in the manufacture of chlorates,
chloroform, and carbon tetrachloride, as well as in the extraction of bromine.  It is used extensively in
organic chemistry, both as an oxidizing agent and in substitution, since it often confers desired
properties on an organic compound when it is substituted for Hydrogen, as in one form of synthetic
rubber.

Chlorine is a respiratory irritant.  The gas irritates the mucous membranes, and the liquid burns the
skin.  As little as 3.5 pp. can be detected as an odor, and 1,000 ppm. is likely to be fatal after a few deep
breaths.  (For this reason, Chlorine was used as a war-gas in 1915 e.v.)  The recommended maximum
allowable concentration in air is about 1 ppm. for prolonged exposure.

KEFADH IS

THE STAG-BEETLE

Death implies change and individuality;  if thou be THAT which hath no person, which is beyond the
changing, even beyond changelessness, what hast thou to do with death?

The birth of individuality is ecstasy;  so also is its death.

In love the individuality is slain;  who loves not love?

Love death therefore, and long eagerly for it.

Die Daily.

                        ar.    Key 50

Argon, 18Ar40, Z=18.  Electron configuration:.  2-8-8. Atomic weight:  39.948.  Oxidation

states:  0. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 0/K-L-M.  Connects Sephirah 0 to Sephirah  À1.ASCII
character:  2.  Qaballistic value:  1710 = 100012 (prime).  Associations:  Neptune, Mercury (2).

        Alternate: 18ZZ40, Gaborium.  Crystal structure:  ø.  An inert gas. Associations:   twits; boredom; deep

sleep, hence Neptune and Luna.

The word Argon comes from the Greek word argos, “inactive.”

The atomic number of Argon is 18, its atomic weight is 39.948, and it has a valence of 0.  It has a
freezing-point of –189.2º C, its boiling-point is –185.7º C, and its density (gas-phase) is 1.7837 grams per
liter.  It is colorless and odorless in both its gas and liquid phases. Naturally occurring Argon is a mixture
of three isotopes;  five other, radioactive isotopes are known to exist.

Extremely inert, like Krypton, Xenon, and Radon, it is not known to form true chemical
compounds.  However, it does form a hydrate, which has a dissociation pressure of 105 atmospheres at
0º C.  Ion molecules, such as (ArKr)+, (ArXe)+, and (NeAr)+ have been observed spectroscopically.  Argon
also forms a clathrate with b-hydroquinone.  This clathrate is stable and can be stored for a considerable
time, but a true chemical bond does not exist;  Van der Waals’ forces act to hold the Argon within it.

In 1785 e.v., Cavendish noted his suspicion that Argon was present in air, but it was actually discovered
in 1894 e.v. by Lord Rayleigh and Sir William Ramsay.

The gas is prepared by fractionation of liquid air, of which Argon constitutes 0.94%.  It is 2½ times as
soluble in water as Nitrogen, having about the same solubility as Oxygen.  It is best recognized by means
of its characteristic lines in the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Argon is used in electric light bulbs and in fluorescent tubes at a pressure of about 3 mm, and for filling
photo-tubes, glow-tubes, etc. It’s also used as an inert gas shield for arc welding and cutting, as a
blanket for the production of Titanium and other reactive elements, and as a protective atmosphere for
growing Silicon and Germanium crystals.

Argon is available in high-purity form. Commercially, it is available at a cost of about 10 cents per cubic
foot.

KEFADH IZ

THE SWAN

There is a Swan whose name is Ecstasy:  it wingeth from the Deserts of the North; it wingeth through
the blue;  it wingeth over the fields of rice;  at its coming they push forth the green.

In all the Universe this Swan alone is motionless: it seems to move, as the Sun seems to move;  such is
the weakness of our sight.

O fool! criest thou?

Amen. Motion is relative:  there is Nothing that is still.

Against this Swan I shot an arrow;  then, perceiving that I was but a Pure Fool, they let me pass.
Thus and not otherwise I came to the Temple of the Graal.

*********

Asteroid Symbol Path Connecting

Pallas ç Chokmah- Geburah

Juno è Chesed- Geburah

Vesta é Binah- Netzach

Ceres æ Yesod-Kether

Eros   Netzach-Geburah

Sappho   Netzach-Kether

Hidalgo   Yesod-Geburah

Toro   Geburah-Kether

Pandora   Hod-i = Ö-1

Psyche   Netzach-Chokmah

Urania   Binah-0 (Zero)

Chiron å Binah-Æ (Null Set)

Amor   Netzach-À0

Diana   Yesod-i = Ö-1

Icarus   Hod-Binah

Lilith   Geburah-i = Ö-1

 
 

New Transcen- Description Element Z- Sym- Qa-

Paths dental Path ~ number bal-
bol
to traditional listic
Path of Value
Ele-
connecting
ment

Æ-0 5–8 Grace analog of Hydrogen 1 H 0

Neptune/Chokmah =
Durga/Hera À2

Æ- i =Ö- 3-8   Helium 2 He 1

1

Æ-À0 7-8 Analog of Peh/Mars = Lithium 3 Li 2

Lobachevski/0

Æ-À1 4-8   Beryllium 4 Be 3

Æ-À2 2-8   Boron 5 B 4

Æ-1 1-8   Carbon 6 C 5

Æ-2     Nitrogen 7 N 6

Æ-3   å Chiron Oxygen 8 O 7

Æ-4     Fluorine 9 F 8

Æ-5     Neon 10 Ne 9

Æ-6 6-8 Power analog of Sign Sodium 11 Na 10

Capricorn =
Constellation Capricorn

Æ-7     Magnesium 12    

Æ-8     Aluminum 13    

Æ-9 8-9 Power analog of Sol = Silicon 14    

Helios

Æ-10 8-10 Power analog of Pluto Phosphorus 15    

= Hades
0- i =Ö-1 3-5 Power analog of Sign Sulfur 16    
Cancer = Constellation
Cancer

0-À0 5-7   Chlorine 17    

0-À1 4-5 Grace analog of Sign Argon 18    

Leo (Libra*) =
Constellation Leo
(Libra*)

0-À2 2-5   Potassium 19    

0-1 1-5   Calcium 20    

0-2     Scandium 21    

0-3     Titanium 22    

0-4     Vanadium 23    

0-5     Chromium 24    

0-6 5-6 Power analog of Libra Manganese 25    

(Leo*)

0-7     Iron 26    

0-8     Cobalt 27    

0-9 5-9   Nickel 28    

0-10 5-10 Aphrodite Copper 29    

i = Ö-1- 3-7   Zinc 30    

À0

i = Ö-1- 3-4 Da’ath/The Gallium 31    

À1 Abyss/Choronzon

i = Ö-1- 2-3 Grace analog of Germanium 32    

À2 Venus/Netzach =
NortonÀ0

i = Ö-1-1 1-3 Power analog of Arsenic 33    

Mercury/Hod = Beth b

i = Ö-1-2   Selene Selenium 34    

i = Ö-1-3     Bromine 35    

i = Ö-1-4     Krypton 36    

i = Ö-1-5     Rubidium 37    

i = Ö-1-6 3-6 Power analog of Sign Strontium 38    

Gemini – Constellation
Gemini

i = Ö-1-7     Yttrium 39    

i = Ö-1-8     Zirconium 40    

i = Ö-1-9 3-9     41    

i = Ö-1- 3-10     42    
10

À0-À1 4-7 Grace analog of   43    

Jupiter/Kaph k, Path
connecting Sephiroth 4
and 7 = À1/Amphitrite;
Vesta é

À0-À2 2-7     44    

À0-1 1-7     45    

À0-2   Pallas Athena Medusa Palladium 46    

(Pallas ç)

À0-3     Silver 47    

À0-4       48    

À0-5       49    

À0-6 6-7 Grace analog of Sign Tin 50    

Scorpio = Constellation
Scorpio;  Zeus

À0-7       51    

À0-8       52    
À0-9 7-9 Grace analog of Sign   53    
Pisces/Qoph  –
Constellation Pisces

À0-10 7-10 Grace analog of   54    

Aquarius/Tzaddi x, Pat
h
connecting Sephiroth 7
and 10  (Aries*) =
Constellation Aquarius
(Aries*)

À1-À2 2-4 Grace analog of Sign   55    

Taurus/Vav w, Path
connecting Sephiroth 2
and 4 = Constellation
Taurus

À1-1 1-4     56    

À1-2       57    

À1-3       58    

À1-4       59    

À1-5       60    

À1-6 4-6 Grace analog of Sign   61    

Virgo/Yod =
Constellation Virgo

À1-7       62    

À1-8       63    

À1-9 4-9     64    

À1-10 4-10     65    

À2-1 1-2 Power analog of   66    

Uranus/Aleph = i = Ö-
1/Persephone

À2-2       67    

À2-3       68    
À2-4       69    

À2-5       70    

À2-6 2-6 Grace analog of Sign   71    

Aries (Aquarius*) =
Constellation Aries
(Aquarius*)

À2-7       72    

À2-8       73    

À2-9 2-9     74    

À2-10 2-10     75    

1-4       76    

1-5   Comets Iridium 77    

1-7     Platinum 78    

1-8   Apollo Gold 79    

1-9   Ceres æ;  Hermes Mercury 80    

1-10       81    

2-5   Chronos;  Pallas ç Lead 82    

2-7       83    

2-8       84    

2-9       85    

2-10     Radon 86    

3-4   Saturn (for Da’ath)   87    

3-7   Vesta é Radium 88    

3-8       89    

3-9       90    

3-10       91    

4-8   Liberty Uranium 92    

4-9     Neptunium 93    

4-10   Dis Plutonium 94    

5-9       95    

5-10       96    

6-10   Analog of Sign   97    

Sagittarius (6-9) =
Constellation
Sagittarius

n**-Ø            

N**-0            

n**-i =Ö            
-1

N**-À0            

n**-À1            

n**-À2            

n**-1            

n**-2            

n**-3            

n**-4            

n**-5            

n**-6            

n**-7            

n**-8            

n**-9            

n**-10            

(n+1)†-            
Ø
 . . . and            
so, as
Father
Kurt is
wont to
say, it
goes

*In Aleister Crowley’s Qaballah and Tarot, The Book of Thoth

**First new Sephirah added after Ø , 0, i = Ö-1, À0, À1, and À2

†Second new Sephirah added after Ø , 0, i = Ö-1, À0, À1, and À2, etc.

d.       Period IV – Fourth Plane of the Sphere of Life ( Tiphareth)

                        as.   Key 51

Potassium 19K38, Z=19.  Electron configuration:.  2-8-8-1. Atomic weight:  39.102.  Oxidation

states:  +1. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 1a/K-L-M-N.  Connects Sephirah 0 to SephirahÀ2. ASCII
character:  3.  Qaballistic value:  1810 = 2 x 32 = 100102.  Associations: Uranus Ý, Saturn Ü, Luna × (3);  Leo
(Key 19) ö;  Cancer (Key 18) õ;  Mercury Ø (since potassium plays such a prominent role in the central
nervous system);  Summer (since the Signs of the first two-thirds of Summer, Cancer and Leo, are
associated with this element).

        Alternate: 19Gk38, Geekium.  Crystal structure: '.  Associations:   Uranus, Neptune, Pluto (nuclear

energy and power-metals);  hot stuff  (Kundalini energy and Kali);  geeks; nerds, hence Microsoft,
Randian Objectivists, and Sub Genii.

The word Potassium comes from the English word potash, “pot ashes.”  Its symbol, K, is taken from the
Latin word kalium and is related to the Arab qali, both of which mean “alkali.” Potassium was discovered
in 1807 e.v. by Davy, who obtained it from caustic potash (KOH);  this was the first metal to be isolated
by means of electrolysis.

Potassium has an atomic number of 19, an atomic weight of 39.10, and a valence of 1.  Its melting-point
is 63.65º C, its boiling-point is 774º C, and it has a specific gravity of 0.862 at 20º C. Potassium is the
seventh most abundant metal, and makes up about 2.4% by weight of the earth’s crust. It is never found
free in nature, and is obtained by electrolysis of the hydroxide, much in the same manner as employed
by Davy.  Thermal methods are also commonly used to produce Potassium, e.g., by reduction of
Potassium compounds by CaC2, C, Sí, or Na.  It is one of the most reactive and electropositive of metals,
and except for Lithium is the lightest metal.  It is soft, easily cut with a knife, and its freshly-exposed
surfaces are silvery in color, though they quickly tarnish.  It oxidizes rapidly in air and must be preserved
in a mineral oil such as kerosene.  Like other metals of the Alkali group, it decomposes in water,
accompanied by the evolution of Hydrogen, and catches fire spontaneously when immersed in
water. Potassium and its salts impart a violet color to flames, and for this reason it is one of the minerals
used in “fireplace salts” which are thrown on the fire to give its flames a rainbow of rich
color.  Essentially, a neutral atom of Potassium has the structure [Ar]4s 1, i.e., a core of Argon with one
4s-electron outside it (and, of course, the additional proton to hold it).

Nine isotopes of Potassium are known.  Ordinary Potassium is composed of three isotopes, one of which
is K40 (0.00118%), a radioactive isotope with a half-life of 1.28 x 10 9 years, which presents no significant
hazard.

Most Potassium minerals are insoluble, and the metal is obtained from them only with great
difficulty.  However, certain minerals, such as sylvite, carnalite, langbeinite, and polyhalite, are found in
ancient lakes and sea beds, and form rather extensive deposits from which Potassium and its salts can
be obtained readily.

Potash is mined in Germany, New Mexico, California, Utah, and elsewhere.  Large deposits of potash,
found at a depth of some 3,000 feet in Saskatchewan, promise to be important in coming
years.  Potassium is also found in the ocean, but only in relatively small amounts as compared to the
marine presence of Sodium.

The greatest demand for potash has been in its use for fertilizers.  Potassium is an essential constituent
for plant growth, and is found in most soils. It is critical in the functions of the nervous-system and other
parts of the body, and deficiencies of Potassium in the diet can lead to such ailments as adrenal
exhaustion, diabetic complications, high blood pressure, inability to urinate, renal dysfunctions,
hypoglycemia, acute and continuous muscular spasms, problems with the excretion of salt, urine hyper
alkalinity, etc.*

*For detailed descriptions of the role played by Potassium in the body, and effects on health of dietary
deficiencies of Potassium, see Adelle Davis, Let’s Get Well (New York:  Signet/New American Library,
1965), passim (as indicated in the superb comprehensive index included in the book).

 
An alloy of Sodium and Potassium (NaK) is used as a heat-transfer medium.  Many Potassium salts are of
the utmost importance, including the hydroxide, nitrate, carbonate, chloride, chlorate, bromide, iodide,
cyanide, sulfate, chromate, and dichromate.  Metallic Potassium is available commercially for about $2
per pound in large quantities (1973 e.v.).

Chapter 18 of Aleister Crowley’s The Book of Lies (op. cit., p. 46):

KEFADH IH

DEWDROPS

Verily, love is death, and death is life to come.

Man returneth not again;  the stream floweth not uphill;  the old life is no more;  there is a new life that
is not his.

Yet that life is of his very essence;  it is more He than all that he calls He.

In the silence of a dewdrop is every tendency of his soul, and of his mind, and of his body;  it is the
Quintessence and the Elixir of his being.  Therein are the forces that made him and his father and his
father’s father before him.

This is the Dew of Immortality.

Let this go free, even as It will;  thou art not its master, but the vehicle of It.

                at.    Key 52

Calcium 20Ca40, Z=20.  Electron configuration:  2-8-8-2. Atomic weight:  40.08.  Oxidation

states:  +2. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 2a/K-L-M-N.  Connects Sephirah 0 to Sephirah1.  ASCII
character:  4. Qaballistic value:  1910 = 100112 (prime) Associations:  Jupiter (Kaph, value 20);  Neptune
(Mem, value 40);  Luna (the electron configuration of calcium is symmetric, i.e., a thing and its
reflection);  Saturn (calcium is a primary constituent of the skeleton);  Mercury (calcium has a prominent
role in CNS function);  Leo (Key 19);  California (for the element’s abbreviation);  ninjas and ninpo (the
philosophy behind ninjutsu combat arts) (see Chapter 19 of Aleister Crowley’s The Book of Lies,
reproduced below, for the reasons for this correspondence), hence Mars Ú and Neptune Þ, rulers of
ninpo taijutsu (in addition, Neptune is Lord of the Oceans, in which limestone, the primary source of
Calcium, is formed due to the eons-long Alchemical processes of Gaia’s planetary physiology and the
living world).

        Alternate: 20Pa40, Partyanimalium.  Crystal structure:  £. Associations:   Heh-heh-heh. . . .

The word Calcium is etymologically related to the Latin word calx, “lime,” which is made from limestone,
a principal source of this element.

The atomic number of Calcium is 20, its atomic weight is 40.08, and it has a valence of 2.  Its melting-
point is 839 ± 2º C, its boiling-point is 1,484º C, and its specific gravity is 1.55 at 20º C.

Calcium is a metallic element, fifth in abundance in the Earth’s crust, of which it forms more than three
percent.  Never found free in nature, it occurs abundantly in limestone (CaCO 3), gypsum (CaSO4·2H2O),
and fluorite (CaF2);  apatite is its fluorophosphates or chlorophosphate. The metal has a silvery color, is
rather hard, and is prepared by electrolysis of the fused chloride to which Calcium fluoride is added to
lower the melting-point.  One of the Alkaline Earth elements, all of which have two s-electrons in their
valence shells, it readily forms a white coating of nitride in air, reacts strongly with water, and burns
with a yellow red flame, largely forming the nitride. Essentially, a neutral atom of Calcium has the
structure [Ar]4s2, i.e., a core of Argon with two 4s-electron outside it, in its valence shell (and, of course,
the additional protons to hold them).

An essential constituent of leaves, bones, teeth, and shells, Calcium is indispensable to the metabolism
of all living organisms. Deficiencies of calcium can cause severe dysfunctions of the central nervous
system in higher chordates and invertebrates, and in female mammals can produce dysmenorrhea,
disturbances of the fertility cycle, and even infertility.  Many so-called “mental” illnesses respond quite
favorably to addition of Calcium and Magnesium, in a ratio of 2:1, to the diet, as do physical problems
ranging from a tendency to dental caries to certain forms of epileptoid seizures.

Though lime, which they called calx, was prepared by the Romans in the first century e.v., it wasn’t until
1808 e.v. that the metal itself, a constituent of limestone, was discovered.   After learning
that Berzelius and Pontin prepared Calcium amalgam by electrolyzing lime in Mercury (quicksilver), Davy
was able to isolate an impure form of the metal.

The metal is used as a reducing agent in the preparation of other metals, such as Thorium, Uranium,
Zirconium, etc., and is used as a deoxidizer, desulferizer, or decarburizer for various ferrous and
nonferrous alloys.  It is also used as an alloying agent for Aluminum, Beryllium, Copper, Lead, and
Magnesium alloys, and serves as a “getter” for residual gases in vacuum tubes, etc.
The natural and prepared compounds of Calcium are widely used. Quicklime (CaO), made by heating
limestone, then changed into slaked lime by the careful addition of water, is the great cheap base of
chemical industry, with countless uses.  Mixed with sand, it hardens as mortar and plaster by taking up
Carbon dioxide from the air.  Calcium from limestone is an important limestone in Portland cement. The
solubility of Calcium carbonate in water containing Carbon dioxide is responsible for the formation of
caves possessing stalagmites and stalactites, and is the reason for “hardness” of water.

Other important Calcium compounds include the carbide (CaC 2), the chloride (CaCl2), cyanamide
(Ca(CN2)), the hypochlorite (Ca(OCl)2), the nitrate (Ca(NO3)2), and the sulfide (CaS).

        Chapter 19 of Crowley’s The Book of Lies (op. cit.,  p. 48):

KEFADH IQ

THE LEOPARD AND THE DEER

The spots of the leopard are the sunlight in the glade;  pursue thou the deer stealthily at thy pleasure.

The dappling of the deer is the sunlight in the glade;  concealed from the leopard do thou feed at thy
pleasure.

Resemble all that surroundeth thee;  yet be Thyself – and take thy pleasure among the living.

This is that which is written – Lurk! – in The Book of The Law.

                        au.   Key 53

Scandium 21Sc42, Z=21.  Electron configuration:  2-8-9-2. Atomic weight:  44.9559.  Oxidation

states:  +3. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 3v/K-L-M-N.  Connects Sephirah 0 to Sephirah2.  ASCII
character:  5. Qaballistic value:  2010 = 24 x 5 = 100102. Associations:  Jupiter Û Tarot Trump X, The Wheel
of Fortune (for its Qaballistic value, 20, which is the value of Kaph  k, Key 21 of the Qaballah);  Saturn Ü,
Earth ï  (Tarot Trump XXI, The World/Universe);  Eris, Chaos, Mars Ú(because of the character,
5);  Scandinavia (after which the element was named);  UranusÝ, because of its potential value to the
space industry; Aries þ and Tarot Trump IV, The Emperor(the value of whose Path, Heh  h, is 5)
 

        Alternate: 21Sl42, Scandalium.  Crystal structure:  &. Associations:   Luna, Neptune, Mercury, and the

Twelfth and Third Houses of the Horoscope (gossip).

The word Scandium comes from the Latin word Scandia, “Scandinavia.”

Scandium has an atomic number of 21, an atomic weight of 44.9559, and a valence of 3.  It is a silvery-
white metal which develops a slightly yellowish or pinkish cast upon exposure to air. Relatively soft, it
reportedly resembles Yttrium and the Rare-Earth metals more than it resembles Aluminum or
Titanium.  A very light metal, it has a higher melting-point than Aluminum, making it of interest to
designers of ballistic missiles, rockets, space shuttles, etc. It is impervious to a 1:1 mixture of
concentrated HNO3 and 48% hydrofluoric acid, a mixture which can thus be used to dissolve Titanium
from a mixture of that element and Scandium. However, Scandium does react rapidly with many
acids.  Eleven isotopes of Scandium are recognized now (1973 e.v.).  Little is known yet about its toxicity,
and it should therefore be handled with care.  A neutral atom of Scandium has the structure [Ar]4s 24p1,
i.e., a core of Argon with two 4s-electrons and one 4p electron outside it (and, of course, the additional
protons to hold them).

Scandium is apparently much more abundant in the Sun and certain Stars than it is on Earth.  It is about
the 23rd most abundant element in the Sun, compared to its rank as 50 th most abundant on
Earth.  Widely distributed on our world, it occurs in very minute quantities in over 800 mineral
species.  The blue color of the aquamarine variety of beryl is due to this element.  It occurs as a principal
component in the rare mineral thortveitite, which is found in Scandinavia and Malagasy (implying that at
some point in Earth’s distant past, those two areas of the world were in very close proximity;  since
then, due to the action of plate tectonics, they have moved to their currently widely separated
locations).  It is also found in the residues remaining after the extraction of tungsten from Zinnwald
wolframite, and in wiikite and bazzite. Currently, most Scandium is recovered from thortveitite or as a
by-product of the extraction of uranium from davidite, which contains about 0.02% Sc 2O3.

On the basis of the Periodic System, Mendeleev predicted the existence of ekaboron, which would have
an atomic weight between 40 of Calcium and 48 of Titanium.  The element was actually discovered by
Nilson in 1876 e.v.; he found it in the minerals euxenite and gadolinite, which hadn’t yet been found
anywhere save in Scandinavia. By processing 10 kg of euxenite and other residues of Rare-Earth
minerals, Nilson was able to prepare about 2 grams of Scandium oxide of high purity. Cleve later pointed
out that Nilson’s Scandium was identical with Mendeleev’s ekaboron.

Metallic Scandium was first prepared in 1937 e.v. by Fischer, Brunger, and Grieneisen, who electrolyzed
a eutectic melt of Potassium, Lithium, and Scandium chlorides at 700º-800º C. Tungsten wire and a pool
of molten Zinc served as the electrodes in a graphite crucible.  Current methods of producing the metal
are more complicated.  The production of the first pound of 99% pure Scandium metal was announced
in 1960 e.v., as having been made under a US Air Force contract.
The metal is still expensive, costing about $20-$60 or more per gram, or about $7,500 per pound, with a
purity of about 99.9%.  As of 1973 e.v., several hundred pounds of Scandium had been produced, and
probably far more by now (1997 e.v.), because of its potential value for the space industry.  Scandium
oxide costs about $8/gram.

Chapter 20 of Aleister Crowley’s The Book of Lies (op. cit., p. 50):

KEFADH K

SAMSON

The Universe is in equilibrium;  therefore He that is without it, though his force be but a feather, can
overturn the Universe.

He is not caught within that web, O child of Freedom!  Be not entangled in the universal lie, O child of
Truth!

                        av.   Key 54

Titanium 22Ti44, Z=22.  Electron configuration:  2-8-10-2. Atomic weight:  47.90.  Oxidation states:  +2, +3,

+4. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 4b/K-L-M-N.  Connects Sephirah 0 toSephirah  3.  ASCII
character:  6.  Qaballistic value:  2110 = 2 x 32 = 101012.  Associations:Magick (11), the Tarot (22);  the
Titans, led by Saturn;  Sol (6).

        Alternate: 22Ti44, Titanium.  Crystal structure:  ¸.  Associations:   Hunks, [censored].

                aw.  Key 55
 

Vanadium 23V46, Z=23.  Electron configuration:  2-8-11-2. Atomic weight:  50.941.  Oxidation states:  +2,

+3, +4, +5.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  5b/K-L-M-N. Connects Sephirah 0 to Sephirah  4.  ASCII
character:  7. Qaballistic value:  2210 = 2 x 11 = 101102. Associations:  The Tarot (22);  Eris, Chaos,
Discordianism, Sub Genius (23);  the human chromosome compliment (23), hence, to some extent,
humanity and human beings, hence Aquarius (Sign of the Man);  Venus (7);  the Scandinavian Goddess
Vanadis (after whom this compound was named).

        Alternate: 23V46, Vannadium.  Crystal structure:  p.  Associations:   ???.

                        ax.   Key 56

Chromium 24Cr48, Z=24.  Electron configuration:  2-8-13-1. Atomic weight:  51.996. Oxidation states:  +2,

+3, +6. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 6b/K-L-M-N.  ConnectsSephirah 0 to Sephirah  5.  ASCII
character:  8.  Qaballistic value:  2310 = 101102 (prime). Associations: Eris, Chaos, Discordianism
(23); Mercury, Hermes, Djehuti (8).

        Alternate: 24Cr48, Chromium.  Crystal structure:  ß.  Associations:   Christine (from Stephen King’s

novel).

                        ay.   Key 57

Manganese 25Mn50, Z=25.  Electron configuration:  2-8-13-2. Atomic weight:  54.9380. Oxidation

states:  +2, +3, +4, +7.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  7b/K-L-M-N. ConnectsSephirah 0
to Sephirah  6.  ASCII character:  9. Qaballistic value:  2410 = 23 x 3 = 110002.Associations:  Luna (9);  Venus
(25); Sagittarius (Key 25 of the traditional Tarot is the PathSamekh, associated with that Sign).

        Alternate: 25Fa50, Faith.  Crystal structure:  e. Associations:   Neptune (faith).

 

az.  Key 58

Iron 26Fe52, Z=26.  Electron configuration:  2-8-14-2. Atomic weight:  55.847.  Valence:+2,

+3.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  8/K-L-M-N. Connects Sephirah 0 to Sephirah  7. ASCII
character:  :. Qaballistic value:  2510 = 52 = 110012. Associations:  Traditionally, iron is the metal of
Mars;  Venus (25);  Capricorn (Key 26 of the traditional Qaballah);  the lower bowel (for the character
“:”, i.e., a colon);  a regular pack of playing cards (which contains 52 cards);  Arizona (for the section
number).

        Alternate: 26An52, Aquanet.  Crystal structure:  á.  Associations:   Neptune (hair);  Hair, the musical.

        ba.   Key 59

Cobalt 27Co54, Z=27.  Electron configuration:  2-8-15-2. Atomic weight:  58.9332.  Oxidation states:  +2,

+3. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 8/K-L-M-N.  Connects Sephirah 0 toSephirah  8.  ASCII
character:    ; .  Qaballistic value:  2610 = 2 x 13 = 110102.  Associations:Jupiter (for the color);  the
vermiform appendix (;);  Capricorn (26);  Mars (27; Mars is exalted in Capricorn)

        Alternate: 27Mt54, Midtermium.  Crystal structure:  X. Associations:  Term-paper eating dogs.

bb.  Key 60

Nickel 28Ni56, Z=28.  Electron configuration:  2-8-16-2. Atomic weight:  58.71.  Oxidation states:  +2,

+3. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 8/K-L-M-N.  Connects Sephirah 0 toSephirah  9.  ASCII
character:  <. Qaballistic value:  2710 = 33 = 110112. Associations:  A pinochle card-pack (which contains 28
cards); Venus (28);  Mars (27);  the number 5, buffaloes, Eris, Discordianism, etc. (for the value of and
symbol on the nickel coin);  the small (for the character).

        Alternate: 28A56, Pass.  Crystal structure:  J. Associations:   Gold stars, keys to Dad’s car.

                bc.   Key 61

Copper 29Cu58, Z=29.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-1. Atomic weight:  63.546.  Oxidation states:  +1,

+2. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 1b/K-L-M-N.  Connects Sephirah 0 toSephirah  10.  ASCII
character:    =.  Qaballistic value:  2810 = 22x 7 = 111002.  Associations:Venus (the traditional metal of
Venus is copper; also, 28 is a number of Venus);  Egalité (the second of the great Trinity of the French
Revolution – the first is Liberté, the third, Fraternité [Brotherhood]) (for the symbol), hence Uranus and
Aquarius;  British Columbia (for the section number).

        Alternate: 29D58, Decorum.  Crystal structure:  R. Associations:   restriction, being grounded,

setbacks, risk, edge, danger.

                        bd.  Key 62

Zinc 30Zn60, Z=30.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-2. Atomic weight:  65.37.  Oxidation

states:  +2. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 2b/K-L-M-N.  Connects Sephirah i = Ö-
1  toSephirah  À0.  ASCII character:  >. Qaballistic value:  2910 = 111012 (prime). Associations:  The large
(for the character);  Pluto (for the role which zinc plays in physical regeneration as well as both meiosis
and mitosis);  Sol (30); Pisces (29);  Samekh (the value of which is 60).

        Alternate: 30Zt60, Zit.  Crystal structure: ß.  Associations:   Clearasil; greasy

foods; adolescence;  dweebs, dorks, and other nerds;  small mountains.

                        be.   Key 63
 

Gallium 31Ga62, Z=31.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-3. Atomic weight:  69.72.  Oxidation

states:  +3. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 3a/K-L-M-N.  Connects Sephirah i = Ö-1
toSephirah  À1.  ASCII character:  ? . Qaballistic value:  3010 = 2 x 3 x 5 = 111102. Associations: The Book of
the Law  (31);  God (l a = AL = 30 + 1 = 31);  Mystery (for the character), hence Neptune, Poseidon, Mara,
and other associations with Key 2;  France (“Gallium” comes from the same etymological root as
“Gallic,” “Gaul,” and other words associated with France, from which the element takes its
name); Georgia (for the section number).

        Alternate: 31Nz62, Clearasilium.  Crystal structure: ß.  Associations:   See previous entry;  also, glass

and crystal, hence Saturn.

                bf.   Key 64

Germanium 32Ge64, Z=32.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-4. Atomic weight:  72.59. Oxidation states:  +2,

+4. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 4a/K-L-M-N.  Connects Sephirah i= Ö-1 to Sephirah  À2.  ASCII
character:  @. Qaballistic value:  3110 = 111112  (prime). Associations: the 32 Keys of the traditional
Qaballah; the 64 Hexagrams of the I Ching;  Saturn, Earth (32);  Germany (this element takes its name
from that country);  Liber Al vel Legis, God (31);Fire and Pluto (for Key 31 of the Traditional
Qaballah);  Norton À0 (Grace analog ofNetzach/Venus and Daleth d, the Path connecting Sephiroth 2 and
3).

        Alternate: 32St64, Stridex.  Crystal structure: ß.  Associations:   See previous two entries;  also,

shrillness (strident).

                        bg.  Key 65

Arsenic 33As66, Z=33.  Electron configuration: 2-8-18-5.  Atomic weight:  74.9216. Oxidation states:  +3,

+5, -3.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  5a/K-L-M-N. Connects Sephirah i = Ö-1 to Sephirah  1.  ASCII
character:  A.  Qaballistic value:  3210 = 25 = 1000002.  Associations:Saturn, Earth (32);  Hydrogen (Key
33);  Magick (11, one-third of 33);   a  Aleph, “Ox” (for the character), hence Uranus Ý and Air s*; l b a,
sorrow, wept, mourned (the value of the letters of the word in Hebrew add to 33);  l a b, name of Day-
Demon of 1st decanate of ò (adds to 33);  a l b, to destroy (Ch.), a King of Edom (33); l g, spring, fountain
(33); l g l g, a wheel (68);  Æ/Tubman, Power analog of Mercury/Hod = Beth b; 

        Alternate: 33As66, Oldlace.  Crystal structure:  e. Associations: The Bee-Gees (section

number!);  Agatha Christie, Alfred Hitchcock;  in general, murder mysteries, hence Neptune, Pluto, and
Saturn.

*The traditional symbol for the Element Air is an equilateral Triangle with apex upward, representing
Male or Yang energy, crossed by a horizontal bar about halfway between the base and the
apex; similarly, that for Earth is an equilateral Triangle with the apex downward, symbolizing Female or
Yin energy, crossed by a horizontal bar about halfway between the base and the apex. These are taken
from the symbols for Fire, an equilateral Triangle with apex upward, and that for Water, an equilateral
Triangle with Apex downward, with no horizontal bars;  those two symbols combined to form the Star of
David, a regular Hexagram, represent the “marriage” of Fire and Water, producing two “offspring,” Earth
and Air.  When combined in the Hexagram, the base of each of the two Triangles crosses the other
about halfway up, hence the bar crossing the Triangles representing the “offspring” of those
representing their “parents.”  At any rate, currently my lexicon of symbols does not include the barred
Triangles, so I have chosen to use filled Triangles to represent Air and Earth.  Other symbols that could
respectively represent them include, e.g., {â}wgua}and {çßx} (taken from the Invoking Pentagrams of the
Elements;  see Part B, Chapter 4 of the Appendices to Volume I of my New Magicks for a New Age for a
complete description of the Invoking Rituals of the Pentagrams and of the Triangles used in those
rituals).

                        bh.  Key 66

 
Selenium 34Se68, Z=34.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-5. Atomic weight:  78.96.  Oxidation states:  +4,
+6, -2. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 6a/K-L-M-N.  Connects Sephirah i = Ö-1 to Sephirah  2.  ASCII
character:  B. Qaballistic value:  3310 = 3 x 11 = 1000012. Associations: Luna, Diana, Artemis (Selene) was
one of the Graeco-Roman names for the Moon);   b Beth, “House” (for the character), hence
Mercury;   all associations with 33.

        Alternate: 34In68, Matriculation.  Crystal structure:  å. Associations:   Graduation, rites du passage,

maturation, achievement of status..

                bi.    Key 67

Bromine 35Br70, Z=35.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-7. Atomic weight:  79.904.  Oxidation states:  +1,

+5, -1.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  7a/K-L-M-N.  Connects Sephirah i = Ö-1 to Sephirah  3.  ASCII
character:  C.  Qaballistic value:  3410 = 2 x 17 = 1000102  Associations:Bismuth (section-number; cross-
correlates to Element 83 (Key 115);  sleep and dreams, hence Neptune, Luna (bromides are used to
induce sleep); pacifying clichés, frequently referred to as “bromides”; u , A’ain, Eye (the value of which is
70), hence Capricorn, associated with this letter;g,  Gimel, “Camel” (for the character), hence (e.g.) a
certain brand of cigarettes, hence Luna; k,Kaph, “Palm of the Hand” (for the character), hence Jupiter; all
associations with 34, 35, 70.

        Alternate: 35Ky70, Lubricatium.  Crystal structure:  +. Associations:   (Ahem!).

                        bj.    Key 68

Krypton 36Kr84, Z=36.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-7. Atomic weight:  83.80.  Oxidation

states:  0. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 0/K-L-M-N.  Connects Sephirah i = Ö-1 toSephirah  4.  ASCII
character:  D. Qaballistic value:  3510 = 5 x 7 = 1000112. Associations:  The court cards of the Tarot for the
new, 16-Sephiroth Qaballah;  Superman’s nemesis, hence Lex Luthor and assorted other DC
villains;  d , Daleth, “Door,” (for the character), hence Venus; 62 =S(1-8), the Mystic Number
of Hod (36);  alga, “AGLA”, a name of God (35);  theShemhamforash or “Divided Name of God” (72).

        Alternate: 36Jh84, Haynerium.  Crystal structure:  *.  An inert gas.  Associations:   You will notpay any

attention to the section number.
 

**********

Asteroid Symbol Path Connecting

Pallas ç Chokmah- Geburah

Juno è Chesed- Geburah

Vesta é Binah- Netzach

Ceres æ Yesod-Kether

Eros   Netzach-Geburah

Sappho   Netzach-Kether

Hidalgo   Yesod-Geburah

Toro   Geburah-Kether

Pandora   Hod-i = Ö-1

Psyche   Netzach-Chokmah

Urania   Binah-0 (Zero)

Chiron å Binah-Æ (Null Set)

Amor   Netzach-À0

Diana   Yesod-i = Ö-1

Icarus   Hod-Binah

Lilith   Geburah-i = Ö-1

 
New Transcen- Description Element Z- Sym- Qa-
Paths dental Path ~ number bal-
to traditional Bol listic
of
Path Value
connecting Ele-
ment

Æ-0 5–8 Grace analog of Hydrogen 1 H 0

Neptune/Chokmah =
Durga/Hera À2

Æ- i =Ö- 3-8   Helium 2 He 1

1

Æ-À0 7-8 Analog of Peh/Mars = Lithium 3 Li 2

Lobachevski/0

Æ-À1 4-8   Beryllium 4 Be 3

Æ-À2 2-8   Boron 5 B 4

Æ-1 1-8   Carbon 6 C 5

Æ-2     Nitrogen 7 N 6

Æ-3   å Chiron Oxygen 8 O 7

Æ-4     Fluorine 9 F 8

Æ-5     Neon 10 Ne 9

Æ-6 6-8 Power analog of Sign Sodium 11 Na 10

Capricorn =
Constellation Capricorn

Æ-7     Magnesium 12    

Æ-8     Aluminum 13    

Æ-9 8-9 Power analog of Sol = Silicon 14    

Helios

Æ-10 8-10 Power analog of Pluto Phosphorus 15    

= Hades

0- i =Ö-1 3-5 Power analog of Sign Sulfur 16    

Cancer = Constellation
Cancer
0-À0 5-7   Chlorine 17    

0-À1 4-5 Grace analog of Sign Argon 18    

Leo (Libra*) =
Constellation Leo
(Libra*)

0-À2 2-5   Potassium 19    

0-1 1-5   Calcium 20    

0-2     Scandium 21    

0-3     Titanium 22    

0-4     Vanadium 23    

0-5     Chromium 24    

0-6 5-6 Power analog of Libra Manganese 25    

(Leo*)

0-7     Iron 26    

0-8     Cobalt 27    

0-9 5-9   Nickel 28    

0-10 5-10 Aphrodite Copper 29    

i = Ö-1- 3-7   Zinc 30    

À0

i = Ö-1- 3-4 Da’ath/The Gallium 31    

À1 Abyss/Choronzon

i = Ö-1- 2-3 Grace analog of Germanium 32    

À2 Venus/Netzach =
Norton À0

i = Ö-1-1 1-3 Power analog of Arsenic 33    

Mercury/Hod = Beth b

i = Ö-1-2   Selene Selenium 34    

i = Ö-1-3     Bromine 35    

i = Ö-1-4     Krypton 36    
i = Ö-1-5     Rubidium 37    

i = Ö-1-6 3-6 Power analog of Sign Strontium 38    

Gemini – Constellation
Gemini

i = Ö-1-7     Yttrium 39    

i = Ö-1-8     Zirconium 40    

i = Ö-1-9 3-9     41    

i = Ö-1- 3-10     42    
10

À0-À1 4-7 Grace analog of   43    

Jupiter/Kaphk, Path
connecting Sephiroth 4
and 7 = À1/Amphitrite;
Vesta é

À0-À2 2-7     44    

À0-1 1-7     45    

À0-2   Pallas Athena Medusa Palladium 46    

(Pallasç)

À0-3     Silver 47    

À0-4       48    

À0-5       49    

À0-6 6-7 Grace analog of Sign Tin 50    

Scorpio = Constellation
Scorpio; Zeus

À0-7       51    

À0-8       52    

À0-9 7-9 Grace analog of Sign   53    

Pisces/Qoph  –
Constellation Pisces
À0-10 7-10 Grace analog of   54    
Aquarius/Tzaddi x, Pat
h
connecting Sephiroth 7
and 10  (Aries*) =
Constellation Aquarius
(Aries*)

À1-À2 2-4 Grace analog of Sign   55    

Taurus/Vav w, Path
connecting Sephiroth 2
and 4 = Constellation
Taurus

À1-1 1-4     56    

À1-2       57    

À1-3       58    

À1-4       59    

À1-5       60    

À1-6 4-6 Grace analog of Sign   61    

Virgo/Yod =
Constellation Virgo

À1-7       62    

À1-8       63    

À1-9 4-9     64    

À1-10 4-10     65    

À2-1 1-2 Power analog of   66    

Uranus/Aleph = i = Ö-
1/Persephone

À2-2       67    

À2-3       68    

À2-4       69    

À2-5       70    
À2-6 2-6 Grace analog of Sign   71    
Aries (Aquarius*) =
Constellation Aries
(Aquarius*)

À2-7       72    

À2-8       73    

À2-9 2-9     74    

À2-10 2-10     75    

1-4       76    

1-5   Comets Iridium 77    

1-7     Platinum 78    

1-8   Apollo Gold 79    

1-9   Ceres æ;  Hermes Mercury 80    

1-10       81    

2-5   Chronos;  Pallas ç Lead 82    

2-7       83    

2-8       84    

2-9       85    

2-10     Radon 86    

3-4   Saturn (for Da’ath)   87    

3-7   Vesta é Radium 88    

3-8       89    

3-9       90    

3-10       91    

4-8   Liberty Uranium 92    

4-9     Neptunium 93    

4-10   Dis Plutonium 94    

5-9       95    

5-10       96    

6-10   Analog of Sign   97    

Sagittarius (6-9) =
Constellation
Sagittarius

n**-Ø            

N**-0            

n**-i =Ö            
-1

N**-À0            

n**-À1            

n**-À2            

n**-1            

n**-2            

n**-3            

n**-4            

n**-5            

n**-6            

n**-7            

n**-8            

n**-9            

n**-10            

(n+1)†-            
Ø
 . . . and            
so, as
Father
Kurt is
wont to
say, it
goes

*In Aleister Crowley’s Qaballah and Tarot, The Book of Thoth

**First new Sephirah added after Ø , 0, i = Ö-1, À0, À1, and À2

†Second new Sephirah added after Ø , 0, i = Ö-1, À0, À1, and À2, etc.  It should be remembered that

additional new Sephiroth  should be added six at a time, along with their own vertical plane, i.e., a new
dimension to the Hyper-Tree of Life.  The traditional Tree of Life is of course 2-dimensional.  The Sphere
of Life, developed to accommodate the 16-Sephiroth Qaballah, is 3-dimensional (for more on which, see
Part 2, Chapter 1 of Volume 3 of my textbook, New Magicks for a New Age).  A 22-Sephiroth Qaballah
would be 4-dimensional.  And so on.

 
 

A Second Arrangement of the New Paths

Other arrangements of the new Paths of the 16-Sephiroth Qaballah are possible.  Below, one such is
given.  As to which is the arrangement, that must be determined by determining which set of
correspondences is most appropriate, and which proves out in use Hermetically.

New Transcen- Description Element Z- Sym- Qa-

Paths dental Path ~ number bal-
Bol
to traditional listic
Path of Value
Ele-
connecting
ment

1-4     Hydrogen 1 H 0

1-5     Helium 2 He 1

1-7     Lithium 3 Li 2

1-8     Beryllium 4 Be 3

1-9   Ceres æ Boron 5 B 4

1-10     Carbon 6 C 5

2-5   Pallas  Athena Medusa Nitrogen 7 N 6

(Pallas ç)

2-7     Oxygen 8 O 7

2-8     Fluorine 9 F 8

2-9     Neon 10 Ne 9

2-10     Sodium 11 Na 10

3-4   Saturn (for Da’ath) Magnesium 12    

3-7   Vesta é Aluminum 13    

3-8     Silicon 14    

3-9     Phosphorus 15    

3-10     Sulfur 16    

4-8     Chlorine 17    

4-9     Argon 18    

4-10     Potassium 19    

5-9     Calcium 20    

5-10     Scandium 21    

6-10   Analog of Sign Titanium 22    

Sagittarius (6-9) =
Constellation
Sagittarius

Æ-0 5–8 Grace analog of Vanadium 23    

Neptune/Chokmah =
Durga/Hera À2

Æ- i =Ö- 3-8   Chromium 24    

1

Æ-À0 7-8 Analog of Peh/Mars = Manganese 25    

Lobachevski/0

Æ-À1 4-8   Iron 26    

Æ-À2 2-8   Cobalt 27    

Æ-1 1-8   Nickel 28    

Æ-2   Aphrodite Copper 29    

Æ-3   å Chiron Zinc 30    

Æ-4     Gallium 31    

Æ-5     Germanium 32    

Æ-6 6-8 Power analog of Sign Arsenic 33    

Capricorn =
Constellation Capricorn
Æ-7   Selene Selenium 34    

Æ-8     Bromine 35    

Æ-9 8-9 Power analog of Sol = Krypton 36    

Helios

Æ-10 8-10 Power analog of Pluto Rubidium 37    

= Hades;  Power aspect
of Fire = Vesta é

0- i =Ö-1 3-5 Power analog of Sign Strontium 38    

Cancer = Constellation
Cancer

0-À0 5-7   Yttrium 39    

0-À1 4-5 Grace analog of Sign Zirconium 40    

Leo (Libra*) =
Constellation Leo
(Libra*)

0-À2 2-5     41    

0-1 1-5     42    

0-2       43    

0-3       44    

0-4       45    

0-5   Pallas Athena Medusa Palladium 46    

(Pallasç)

0-6 5-6 Power analog of Libra Silver 47    

(Leo*)

0-7       48    

0-8       49    

0-9 5-9   Tin 50    

0-10 5-10     51    

i = Ö-1- 3-7     52    
À0
i = Ö-1- 3-4 Da’ath/The   53    
À1 Abyss/Choronzon

i = Ö-1- 2-3 Grace analog of   54    

À2 Venus/Netzach =
Norton À0

i = Ö-1-1 1-3 Power analog of   55    

Mercury/Hod = Beth b

i = Ö-1-2       56    

i = Ö-1-3       57    

i = Ö-1-4       58    

i = Ö-1-5       59    

i = Ö-1-6 3-6 Power analog of Sign   60    

Gemini – Constellation
Gemini

i = Ö-1-7       61    

i = Ö-1-8       62    

i = Ö-1-9 3-9     63    

i = Ö-1- 3-10     64    
10

À0-À1 4-7 Grace analog of   65    

Jupiter/Kaphk, Path
connecting Sephiroth 4
and 7 = À1/Amphitrite;
Vesta é

À0-À2 2-7     66    

À0-1 1-7     67    

À0-2       68    

À0-3       69    

À0-4       70    

À0-5       71    
À0-6 6-7 Grace analog of Sign   72    
Scorpio = Constellation
Scorpio; Zeus

À0-7       73    

À0-8       74    

À0-9 7-9 Grace analog of Sign   75    

Pisces/Qoph  –
Constellation Pisces

À0-10 7-10 Grace analog of   76    

Aquarius/Tzaddi x, Pat
h
connecting Sephiroth 7
and 10  (Aries*) =
Constellation Aquarius
(Aries*)

À1-À2 2-4 Grace analog of Sign Iridium 77    

Taurus/Vav w, Path
connecting Sephiroth 2
and 4 = Constellation
Taurus; comets

À1-1 1-4   Platinum 78    

À1-2   Apollo Gold 79    

À1-3   Hermes Mercury 80    

À1-4       81    

À1-5   Chronos Lead 82    

À1-6 4-6 Grace analog of Sign   83    

Virgo/Yod =
Constellation Virgo

À1-7       84    

À1-8       85    

À1-9 4-9   Radon 86    

À1-10 4-10     87    
À2-1 1-2 Power analog of Radium 88    
Uranus/Aleph = i = Ö-
1/Persephone

À2-2       89    

À2-3       90    

À2-4       91    

À2-5   Liberty Uranium 92    

À2-6 2-6 Grace analog of Sign Neptunium 93    

Aries (Aquarius*) =
Constellation Aries
(Aquarius*);  Poseidon

À2-7   Dis;  Tartaros Plutonium 94    

À2-8       95    

À2-9 2-9     96    

À2-10 2-10     97    

n**-Ø            

N**-0            

n**-i =Ö            
-1

N**-À0            

n**-À1            

n**-À2            

n**-1            

n**-2            

n**-3            

n**-4            

n**-5            

n**-6            
 n**-7            

n**-8            

n**-9            

n**-10            

(n+1)†-            
Ø

. . . and            
so, as
Father
Kurt is
wont to
say, it
goes

*In Aleister Crowley’s Qaballah and Tarot, The Book of Thoth

**First new Sephirah added after Ø , 0, i = Ö-1, À0, À1, and À2

†Second new Sephirah added after Ø , 0, i = Ö-1, À0, À1, and À2, etc.

e.     Period V – Fifth Plane of the Sphere of Life ( Netzach-À0-Hod-Æ)

                        bk.   Key 69

Rubidium 37Rb74, Z=37.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-8-1. Atomic weight: 85.467.  Oxidation

states:  +1. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 1a/K-L-M-N-O. Connects Sephirah i = Ö-1
to Sephirah  5.  ASCII character:  E. Qaballistic value:  36. Associations: Heh, 5th letter of Hebrew alphabet
and 15th Path of the traditional Qaballah, hence the Sign Aries (for the character); associations with the
number 36.

        Alternate: 37Pc74, Politicum.  Crystal structure:  t.  Associations:   Viva la soixante-neuf!

 
                bl.    Key 70

Strontium 38Sr76, Z=38.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-8-2. Atomic weight: 87.62.  Oxidation

states:  +2. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 2a/K-L-M-N-O. Connects Sephirah i = Ö-1
to Sephirah  6.  ASCII character:  F. Qaballistic value:  37. Associations: Mystic Number of the Prophet (37
x 3 = 111, the Number of the Prophet of the New Aeon of Horus;  see Key 111, below);  cuckoos,
parasites in general, sabotage and saboteurs, guerrilla warfare, the Twelfth House, etc. (since Sr 90, a
radioactive isotope of strontium found in fallout from nuclear testing, is preferentially taken up by the
growing bones and central nervous systems of young children, which mistake it for calcium, a disastrous
mistake frequently leading to leukemia and cancer later in life, hence a covert-destroyer-from-
within);  Vav, the 16th Path of the traditional Qaballah and 6 th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, hence the
Sign Taurus (for the character); Capricorn (for the Key Number;  70 is the value of the Hebrew
letter A’ain, associated with Capricorn).

        Alternate: 38S76, Studious.  Crystal structure:  .. Associations: Grinds, nerds, four-eyes, etc..

                        bm.  Key 71

Yttrium 39Y78, Z=39.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-9-2. Atomic weight: 88.9059.  Oxidation

states:  +3. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 3b/K-L-M-N-O. Connects Sephirah i = Ö-1
to Sephirah  7.  ASCII character:  G. Qaballistic value:  38. Associations:.  Gimel, 13th Path of the
traditional Qaballah and 3rd letter of the Hebrew alphabet, hence Luna (for the character)

        Alternate: 39Gm78, Gymnasium.  Crystal structure:  .  Associations: Number Two (for the section

number);  Sock-Hops;  jocks.

                        bn.  Key 72

Zirconium 40Zr80, Z=40.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-10-2. Atomic weight: 91.22.  Oxidation

states:  +4. Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  4b/K-L-M-N-O.Connects Sephirah i = Ö-1
to Sephirah  8.  ASCII character:  H.  Qaballistic value:  39. Associations:  93-Current as reflected by Luna,
hence Luna, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto; Mem, 23rd Path of the traditional Qaballah and 13 th letter of the
Hebrew alphabet, value 40, hence the Planet Neptune;  Peh, 27th Path of the traditional Qaballah and
17th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, value 80);  Heh, 5th letter of the Hebrew alphabet and 15 th Path of the
traditional Tarot, hence Aries (for the character).

        Alternate: 40Zr80, Zirconium.  Crystal structure:  o.  Associations: buns (for the section number).

                bo.  Key 73

Niobium (Columbium) 41Nb82, Z=41.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-12-1.Atomic

weight:  92.9064.  Oxidation states:  +3, +5. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 5b/K-L-M-N-
O.  Connects Sephirah i = Ö-1 to Sephirah  9.  ASCII character: I. Qaballistic value:  40.  Associations:
“whiskey bo” (uisque beath), hence Dionysus; ninja 6-foot staff and the art and science of its
employment, hence taijutsu and, by implication, ninpo, Mars, and Neptune; Mem, 23rd Path of the
traditional Qaballah and 13th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, value 40, hence the Planet Neptune;  Yod,
the 20thPath of the traditional Qaballah and 10 th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, hence the Sign Virgo (for
the character).

        Alternate: 41Pg82, Bubblegum.  Crystal structure:  ¥.  Associations:   annoyances, irritations;  pee-

yew!, gym-lockers (the section number); bubble-heads.

                        bp.  Key 74

Molybdenum 42Mo84, Z=42.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-13-1. Atomic weight:  95.94.  Oxidation

states:  +6. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 6b/K-L-M-N-O.  Connects Sephirah i = Ö-1
to Sephirah  10.  ASCII character:  J. Qaballistic value:  41.  Associations: Yod, the 20th Path of the
traditional Qaballah and 10th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, hence the Sign Virgo (for the character); 

        Alternate: 42Mo84, Molybdenum.  Crystal structure:  £.  Associations:   ???.

                        bq.  Key 75

 
Technetium 43Tc86, Z=43.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-13-2. Atomic weight: 98.9062.  Oxidation
states:  +4, +6, +7. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 7b/K-L-M-N-
O.  Connects Sephirah À0 to Sephirah  À1.  ASCII character:  K. Qaballistic value:  42.  Associations: Kaph k,
Key 21 of the traditional Qaballah, and 11 th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (the character); technology,
hence Saturn, Uranus, and Aquarius; Homo faber (Man the Tool-Maker); À1, Grace analog of
Jupiter/Kaph, which connects Sephirah 4 and 7.

        Alternate: 43Ho86, Hope.  Crystal structure:  ,. Associations: Trump XVII, The Star, of the traditional

Tarot (one of whose meanings is hope), hence Aquarius andTzaddi, Key 28 of the traditional Qaballah
and the 18th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, associated with this card (in Crowley’s system, this card is
associated with Heh, Key 15, and Aries).

                br.   Key 76

Ruthenium 44Ru88, Z=43.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-15-1. Atomic weight: 101.07.  Oxidation

states:  +3. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 8/K-L-M-N-O. Connects Sephirah À0 to Sephirah  À2.  ASCII
character:  L. Qaballistic value:  43. Associations: Lamed, Key 22 of the traditional Qaballah and
12th letter of the Hebrew alphabet;  Magick (since 44 and 88 are multiples of 11, the Number of Magick
and the Magickian); Ruth, the Biblical heroine, hence faithfulness, devotion, selfless love, and other
attributes of Venus in Pisces as well as of a well-aspected Neptune.

        Alternate: 44Wr88, Whiterain.  Crystal structure:  X. Associations:   Neptune.

                        bs.   Key 77

Rhodium 45Rh90, Z=45.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-16-1. Atomic weight: 102.9055.  Oxidation

states:  +3. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 8/K-L-M-N-O. Connects Sephirah À0 to Sephirah  1.  ASCII
character:  M. Qaballistic value:  4410 = 1011002.  Associations:  Magick, Jupiter conjunct Uranus, Jupiter
in Aquarius) (44 = 4 x 11);  MAD Magazine (in Hebrew, MAD is spelled d s ;  the value of d  is 4 and that
of  is 40); the Isle of Rhodes, Rhodes Scholars, etc.;  Tzaddi, the value of which is 90; Mem, Key 23 of the
traditional Qaballah and 13th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the character), hence Neptune and
Water.

 
        Alternate: 45Mb90, Maybelline.  Crystal structure: X.  Associations: What do you think “bs” (the
section number) stands for?

                bt.   Key 78

Palladium 46Pd92, Z=46.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-18-0. Atomic weight: 106.4.  Oxidation

states:  +2, +4. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 8/K-L-M-N-
O. Connects Sephirah À0 to Sephirah  2.  ASCII character:  N. Qaballistic value:  4510 =
1011012.  Associations:  Pallas Athena (name of the chemical element);  the 78 cards of a standard pack
of Tarot cards (for the Key #);  Nun, the 24th Key of the traditional Qaballah and the 14 th letter of the
Hebrew alphabet, hence Scorpio and Trump XIII,Death.

        Alternate: 46F92, Flunk.  Crystal structure:  ÷. Associations:   Failure, despondency, being grounded for

a month, no permission to use the car..

                bu.  Key 79

Silver 47Ag94, Z=47.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-18-1. Atomic weight: 107.868.  Oxidation

states:  +1. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 1b/K-L-M-N-
O. Connects Sephirah À0 to Sephirah  3.  ASCII character:  O (the letter).  Qaballistic value:  4610 =
1011102.  Associations: Luna (the traditional metal of Luna is silver); Magick (4 + 7 = 11, the number of
Magick);  A’ain, the 26th Key of the traditional Qaballah and the 16 th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (long
O), thus Capricorn;  Vav, the 16th Key of the traditional Qaballah and the 6th letter of the Hebrew
alphabet (short O), thus Taurus, the tongue, the palate, the sense of taste, the throat, and the thyroid.

        Alternate: 47Ag94, Silver.  Crystal structure:  h.  Associations:   The Lone Ranger, the Lone Haranguer,

etc..

                        bv.  Key 80

 
Cadmium 48Cd96, Z=48.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-18-2. Atomic weight: 112.40.  Oxidation
states:  +2. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 2b/K-L-M-N-
O. Connects Sephirah À0 to Sephirah  4.  ASCII character:  P. Qaballistic value:4710 =
1011112.  Associations: Cadmus;  Peh, Key 27 of the traditional Qaballah and the 17 thletter of the Hebrew
alphabet  (both for the character and for the Key Number, which is the value of the letter Peh), thus
Mars and the muscular system;  the color orange, a color of Mars and Mercury (cadmium oxide has that
color, and is used to make orange paint).

        Alternate: 48Md96, Tantrum.  Crystal structure:  ¢. Associations:   Alfred E. Neuman;  mad

dogs;  Englishmen; Luna, ruler of madness.

                        bw.  Key 81

Indium 49In98, Z=49.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-18-3.  Atomic weight:114.82.  Oxidation

states:  +3. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 3a/K-L-M-N-
O. Connects Sephirah À0 to Sephirah  5.  ASCII character:  Q (for the character). Qaballistic value: 4810 =
1100002.  Associations: India, the sub-continent, and its inhabitants;  the West Indies and their
inhabitants;  Native Americans;  Venus (49 = 7 x 7);  Qoph, the 29th Key of the traditional Qaballah and
19th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the character), hence Pisces and the cerebellum.

        Alternate: 49Sa98, Sarcasm.  Crystal structure:  6. Associations:   Satire, lampoon.

                bx.   Key 82

Tin 50Sn100, Z=50.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-18-4. Atomic weight:  118.69. Oxidation states:  +2,

+4. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 4a/K-L-M-N-O. Connects Sephirah À0 to Sephirah  6.  ASCII
character:  R. Qaballistic value: 4910 =1100012.  Associations: Jupiter (the traditional metal of Jupiter is
tin), Britain (in the ancient world, Britain was a major source of tin);  Resh, the 30th Key of the traditional
Qaballah and 20th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the character), hence Sol and the head;

        Alternate: 50Bz100, Busysignal.  Crystal structure:  %. Associations:   Ma Bell, America Online.

 
                        by.  Key 83

Antimony 51Sb102, Z=51.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-18-5. Atomic weight: 121.75.  Oxidation

states:  +3, +5, -3. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 5a/K-L-M-N-
O.  Connects Sephirah À0 to Sephirah  7.  ASCII character:  S. Qaballistic value:
5010 = 1100102.  Associations: Nun, 24th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 14thletter of the Hebrew
alphabet (the value of this letter is 50);  Samekh, 25th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 15th letter of
the Hebrew alphabet (for the character), hence Sagittarius and the thighs and loins;  Shin, 31st Key of the
traditional Qaballah and 21stletter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the character), hence Fire, Spirit, and
Pluto.

        Alternate: 51Ex102, Exaggeration.  Crystal structure: 6.  Associations:   Bragging, boasting, expansion,

hence Jupiter.

                        bz:  Key 84

Tellurium 52Te104, Z=52.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-18-6. Atomic weight: 127.60.  Oxidation

states:  +4, +6, -2. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 6a/K-L-M-N-
O.  Connects Sephirah À0 to Sephirah  8.  ASCII character:  T. Qaballistic value:
5110 = 1100112.  Associations: The hydrogen bomb (invented by Dr. Edward Teller, after whom this
element was named), hence nuclear winter, the Fimbulwinter, universal holocaust, other associations
with ultimate disaster, the Solar Phoenix (the same thermonuclear reaction which powers the hydrogen
bomb is the source of the Sun’s light and heat);  Teth, the 19th Key of the traditional Qaballah and the
9th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the character), hence Leo (which is ruled by the Sun) and the
heart;  Tav, 32nd Key of the traditional Qaballah and 22nd letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the
character), hence Saturn (also associated with the hydrogen bomb, great cold, etc.), Earth (the Planet
and the Element);  egoism (a Qlippoth of Leo and Sol, as well as an egregious failing of the
aforementioned Dr. Teller);  Luna (the Qaballistic value of this Key in binary format is reflective – 110-
011 – and the Moon rules reflection).

        Alternate: 52Ou104, Graduation.  Crystal structure:  æ.  Associations:   This way to the Egress.

 
 

                ca.  Key 85

Iodine 53I106, Z=53.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-18-7. Atomic weight: 126.9045.  Oxidation states:  +1,

+5, +7, -1.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 7a/K-L-M-N-O. Connects Sephirah À0 to Sephirah  9.  ASCII
character:  U.Qaballistic value: 5210 = 1101002.  Associations: Oceanus, Poseidon, Neptune (since Iodine,
a halogen, is more prevalent in sea-water than almost anywhere else); the thyroid gland (which needs
iodine to make thyroxin, absolutely necessary to all metabolic processes), hence Venus and Mercury,
joint Lords of that gland, and Taurus, ruling the throat, the location of the gland;  Vav, Key 16 of the
traditional Qaballah, and 6th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the character), hence Taurus; Little
Iodine, the character in the comic-strip created by Jimmy Hatlo.

        Alternate: 53I106, Irony.  Crystal structure:  6.  Associations:   ???.

                        cb.  Key 86

Xenon 54Xe108, Z=54.  Electron configuration:.  2-8-18-18-8 Atomic weight: 131.30.  Oxidation

states:  0. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 0/K-L-M-N-O. Connects Sephirah À0 to Sephirah  10.  ASCII
character:  V. Qaballistic value: 5310 =1101012.  Associations: CB radio (for the section-number); aliens,
strangeness;  Vav,Key 16 of the traditional Qaballah, and 6th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the
character), hence Taurus.

        Alternate: 54W108, Vanderzanium.  Crystal structure:  £.  An inert gas.Associations:   ???.

**********

Asteroid Symbol Path Connecting

Pallas ç Chokmah- Geburah

 Juno è Chesed- Geburah

Vesta é Binah- Netzach

Ceres æ Yesod-Kether

Eros   Netzach-Geburah

Sappho   Netzach-Kether

Hidalgo   Yesod-Geburah

Toro   Geburah-Kether

Pandora   Hod-i = Ö-1

Psyche   Netzach-Chokmah

Urania   Binah-0 (Zero)

Chiron å Binah-Æ (Null Set)

Amor   Netzach-À0

Diana   Yesod-i = Ö-1

Icarus   Hod-Binah

Lilith   Geburah-i = Ö-1

New Paths Transcendenta Description Element

l Path ~ to
traditional
Path
connecting

Æ-0 5–8 Grace analog of Hydrogen

Neptune/Chokmah =
Durga/Hera À2

Æ- i = Ö-1 3-8   Helium

Æ-À0 7-8 Analog of Peh/Mars = Lithium

Lobachevski
Æ-À1 4-8   Beryllium

Æ-À2 2-8   Boron

Æ-1 1-8   Carbon

Æ-2     Nitrogen

Æ-3   å Chiron Oxygen

Æ-4     Fluorine

Æ-5     Neon

Æ-6 6-8    

Æ-9 8-9    

Æ-10 8-10    

0- i = Ö-1 3-5    

0-À0 ~ 5-7 5-7    

0-À1 ~ 5-4 4-5    

0-À2 ~ 5-2 2-5    

i = Ö-1-À0 3-7    

i = Ö-1-À1 3-4    

i = Ö-1-À2 2-3 Grace analog of  

Venus/Netzach = NortonÀ0

i = Ö-1-1 1-3 Power analog of  

Mercury/Hod = Beth b

i = Ö-1-2      

i = Ö-1-3      

i = Ö-1-4      

i = Ö-1-5      

i = Ö-1-6 3-6 Power analog of Libra (Leo*)  

i = Ö-1-7      

i = Ö-1-8      
i = Ö-1-9 3-9    

i = Ö-1-10 3-10    

À0-À1 4-7 Grace analog of  

Jupiter/Kaph k, Path
connecting Sephiroth 4 and
7 = À1/Amphitrite; Vesta é

À0-À2 2-7    

À0-1 1-7    

À0-2      

À0-3      

À0-4      

À0-5      

À0-6 6-7    

À0-7      

À0-8      

À0-9 7-9 Grace analog of Pisces/Qoph  

À0-10 7-10 Grace analog of  

Aquarius/Tzaddi x, Path
connecting Sephiroth 7 and
10  (Aries*)

À1-À2 2-4 Grace analog of  

Taurus/Vav w, Path
connecting Sephiroth 2 and 4

À1-1 1-4    

À1-2      

À1-3      

À1-4      

À1-5      

À1-6 4-6 Grace analog of Virgo/Yod  

À1-7      

À1-8      

À1-9 4-9    

À1-10 4-10    

À2-1 1-2 Power analog of  

Uranus/Aleph = i = Ö-1

À2-2      

À2-3      

À2-4      

À2-5      

À2-6 2-6 Grace analog of Aries  

(Aquarius*)

À2-7      

À2-8      

À2-9 2-9    

À2-10 2-10    

1-4      

1-5      

1-7      

1-8      

1-9   Ceres æ  

1-10      

2-5   Pallas ç  

2-7      

2-8      

2-9      

2-10      
 3-4   Saturn (for Da’ath)  

3-7   Vesta é  

3-8      

3-9      

3-10      

4-8      

4-9      

4-10      

5-9      

5-10      

6-10      

 f.      Period VI – Sixth Plane of the Sphere of Life ( Yesod)

cc.   Key 87

Cesium 55Cs110, Z=55.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-18-1. Atomic weight: 132.9055.  Oxidation

states:  +1. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 1a/K-L-M-N-O-
P.  Connects Sephirah À1 to Sephirah  À2.  ASCII character:  W. Qaballistic value:
5410 = 1101102.  Associations: Magick (55 and 110 are integral multiples of 11, the number of
Magick); Vav,  Key 16 of the traditional Qaballah, and 6th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, hence Taurus
(for the character).

        Alternate: 55Ce110, Ceasium.  Crystal structure:  Ì. Associations:   Stop, desist; Gaius Julius.

                        cd.  Key 88
 

Barium 56Ba112, Z=56.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-18-8-2.  Atomic weight: 137.34. Oxidation

states:  +2.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  2a/L-L-M-N-O-
P.  Connects Sephirah À1 to Sephirah  1.  ASCII character:  X. Qaballistic value:  55. Associations: Martial
Magick (the number of Mars is 5; that of Magick is 11;  55 = 5 x 11);  Cheth, Key 18 of the traditional
Qaballah and 8th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, hence Cancer (the Sign;  for the character).

        Alternate: 56Ds112, Desistum.  Crystal structure: Ì.  Associations:   CDs (the section number);  stop,

desist, end.

                ce.   Key 89

Lanthanum 57La114, Z=57.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-18-9-2.  Atomic weight:  138.9055. Oxidation

states:  +3.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  3b/K-L-M-N-O-
P.  Connects Sephirah À1 to Sephirah  2.  ASCII character:  Y. Qaballistic value:  56.  Associations: the
Tarot, minus the Trumps (there are 16 Court cards and 40 numbered cards in a standard Tarot
pack);  Yod, Key 20 of the traditional Qaballah the 10 th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, hence Virgo.

        Alternate: 57Ad114, Auditorium.  Crystal structure:  +.  Associations:   Recitals, auditions, speeches.

                cf.    Key 90

Cerium 58Ce116, Z=58.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-20-8-2.  Atomic weight: 140.12. Oxidation

states:  +3, +4.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  4b/K-L-M-N-O-
P.  Connects Sephirah À1 to Sephirah  3.  ASCII character:  Z. Qaballistic value: 57.  Associations: Zain, Key
17 of the traditional Qaballah and 7 th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, hence Gemini;  Ceres and Demeter,
hence cereal grains of all sorts, i.e., grass cultivars such as corn, wheat, oats, etc.

        Alternate: 58Zn116, Mezzanine.  Crystal structure:  *.  Associations:   ???.

 

                        cg.   Key 91

Praseodymium 59Pr118, Z=59.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-21-8-2.  Atomic

weight:  140.9077. Oxidation states:  +3.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  5b/K-L-M-N-O-
P.  Connects Sephirah À1 to Sephirah  4.  ASCII character:  [. Qaballistic value:  58.  Associations: ???

        Alternate: 59Fd118, Cafeterium.  Crystal structure: *.  Associations:   Food, munchies, calories.

ch.   Key 92

Neodymium 60Nd120, Z=60.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-22-8-2.  Atomic weight:  144.24. Oxidation

states:  +3.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  6b/K-L-M-N-O-
P.  Connects Sephirah À1 to Sephirah  5.  ASCII character:  \. Qaballistic value:  59.  Associations: the new,
the alien, hence Uranus

        Alternate: 60Nm120, Needaman.  Crystal structure:  4.  Associations:   ???.

                ci.    Key 93

Promethium 61Pm122, Z=61.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-23-8-2.  Atomic weight:  (145). Oxidation

states:  +3.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  7b/K-L-M-N-O-
P.  Connects Sephirah À1 to Sephirah  6.  ASCII character:  ]. Qaballistic
value: 60.  Associations: Prometheus, hence rebels, revolutionaries, and benefactors of humanity;  the
Number of the Current of the New Aeon (93) – see Keys 125 and 126, below, as well;  Samekh, 15th letter
of the Hebrew alphabet (for the value, 60), hence Sagittarius, religion, travel, higher education, etc.; the
93 Current, hence Saturn, Uranus, Aquarius, Horus, etc. (for the Key Number).
 

        Alternate: 61Nw122, Needawoman.  Crystal structure: 4.  Associations:   ???.

                        cj.    Key 94

Samarium 62Sm124, Z=62.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-24-8-2.  Atomic weight:  150.4. Oxidation

states:  +2, +3.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  8b/K-L-M-N-O-
P.  Connects Sephirah À1 to Sephirah  7.  ASCII character:  Ø. Qaballistic value:  61. Associations: Kali, the
letters of Whose name, when transliterated into Hebrew, add to 61;  Ain, Nothingness, because the
value of the sum of its letters is equal to 61;  Samaria, the country (Biblical reference), and Samaritans.

        Alternate: 62Gv124, Groovium.  Crystal structure: _.  Associations:   Grooves, hence platters (records,

CDs, etc.) and, by extension, all recording media..

                        ck.   Key 95

Europium 63Eu126, Z=63.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-25-8-2.  Atomic weight: 151.96. Valence: +2,

+3.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  8b/K-L-M-N-O-P. Connects Sephirah À1 to Sephirah  8.  ASCII
character:  _. Qaballistic value:  62 Associations: Europe, the continent;  Europa, who was abducted and
ravished by Zeus in the form of a bull

        Alternate: 63Rk126, Hudson.  Crystal structure:  P.  Associations:   “Every man and every woman is a

Star – but some are more stellar than others”  (The Law is for All, Mach II, Ch. 1, v. 3, by Magistra
Batrix, To Mikron Qerion DXCV).

                cl.    Key 96

Gadolinium 64Gd128, Z=64.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-25-9-2.  Atomic weight:  157.25. Oxidation

states:  +3.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  8b/K-L-M-N-O-
P.  Connects Sephirah À1 to Sephirah  9.  ASCII character:  ¢ (accent grave).  Qaballistic
value:  63. Associations:  ???
 

        Alternate: 64Wt128, Whitman.  Crystal structure:  G.  Associations:   Grass (leaves of, or boo, take your

pick).

cm.  Key 97

Terbium 65Tb130, Z=65.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-27-8-2.  Atomic weight: 158.9254. Oxidation

states:  +3.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  1b/K-L-M-N-O-
P.  Connects Sephirah À1 to Sephirah  10.  ASCII character:  a. Qaballistic
value: 64.  Associations: Connects i = Ö-1 to Kether. Ü(see Key 32, above);  the 64 Hexagrams of the I
Ching; Aleph, Key 11 of the traditional Qaballah, and 1 st letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the
character), hence Air  s, Uranus Ý; 

        Alternate: 65Sm130, Sistermarium.  Crystal structure: P.  Associations:   ???.

                cn.   Key 98

Dysprosium 66Dy132, Z=66.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-28-8-2.  Atomic weight:  162.50. Oxidation

states:  +3.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  2b/K-L-M-N-O-
P.  Connects Sephirah À2 to Sephirah  1.  ASCII character:  b. Qaballistic value:  65.  Associations: Beth,
Key 12 of the traditional Qaballah and 2nd letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the character), hence
Mercury  Ø;

        Alternate: 66Ab132, Toklasium.  Crystal structure: P.  Associations:   Brownies.

                        co.   Key 99

 
Holmium 67Ho134, Z=67.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-29-8-2.  Atomic weight: 164.9303. Oxidation
states:  +3.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  3a/K-L-M-N-O-
P.  Connects Sephirah À2 to Sephirah  2.  ASCII character:  c. Qaballistic value: 66.  Associations: Gimel,
Key 13 of the traditional Qaballah and 2nd letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the character), hence ×;  the
Greek letter n, the name of which in Hebrew is spelled w n , the sum of the values of the letters of which
add to 66;

        Alternate: 67Fe134, Frednethyl.  Crystal structure: P.  Associations:   Joe Camel (for the ASCII character

“c”).

                        cp.   Key 100

Erbium 68Er136, Z=68.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-30-8-2.  Atomic weight: 167.26. Oxidation

states:  +3.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  4a/K-L-M-N-O-
P.  Connects Sephirah À2 to Sephirah  3.  ASCII character:  d. Qaballistic value:  67. Associations: America
(67 is a numerological cognate of both 76 and 13, which are closely linked to American history and
symbolism);  Daleth, 14th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 4th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (the
character), hence Ù;

        Alternate: 68Ep136, Elvisium.  Crystal structure: P.  Associations:   Kings, including Stephen;  the pelvis

(anatomy).

        cq.   Key 101

Thulium 69Tm138, Z=69.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-31-8-2.  Atomic weight: 168.9342. Oxidation

states:  +3.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  5a/K-L-M-N-
O. Connects Sephirah À2 to Sephirah  4.  ASCII character:  e. Qaballistic value:  68. Associations: Room
101 in Orwell’s 1984, hence fear, trembling, horror, etc.;  US Highway 101;  Heh, 15th Key of the
traditional Qaballah and 5th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the character;  also, the value of Heh is 5,
which happens to be the sum of 6 + 8, the digits comprising the Qaballistic value of Thulium), hence
Aries;  Thule, the Isle of the Blessed (which may historically have been Greenland, which has only been
glaciated since the Little Ice Age a few centuries ago, but before that was, for a long time, a most green
and pleasant, fertile land)
 

        Alternate: 69Gs138, Gertrium.  Crystal structure: G.  Associations:   Beer (steins), hence Dionysus,

Bacchus

                        cr.    Key 102

Ytterbium 70Yb140, Z=70.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-8-2.  Atomic weight:  173.04. Oxidation

states:  +2, +3.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  6a/K-L-M-N-O-
P.  Connects Sephirah À2 to Sephirah  5.  ASCII character:  f.  Qaballistic value:  69.  Associations: 69 = 3 x
23, hence Eris as the Great Goddess in all three of Her Aspects, Maiden, Matron, Crone;  Vav, 16th key of
the traditional Qaballah (for the character), hence ó  and Trump V, The Hierophant; 

        Alternate: 70Bg140, Gittings.  Crystal structure:  q.  Associations:   Brew 102;hence brewskis in

general;  good luck, Mr. Gorski (heh-heh-heh) (for the Qaballistic value);  the Trinity of Little Iodine, the
Dragon Lady, and Maggie Jiggs, as the three Aspects of Eris

                cs.   Key 103

Lutetium 71Lu141, Z=71.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-9-2.  Atomic weight: 174.97. Oxidation

states:  +2, +3.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  7a/K-L-M-N-O-
P.  Connects Sephirah À2 to Sephirah  6.  ASCII character:  g. Qaballistic
value: 70.  Associations: A’ain,  26th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 16th letter of the Hebrew
alphabet (for the Qaballistic value of this element), hence Capricorn û  and Trump XV, The Devil;  Gimel,
13th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 3 rd letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the character), hence
Luna  ×;

        Alternate: 71Hh141, Hayum.  Crystal structure: q.  Associations:   ???.

                        ct.    Key 104

 
Hafnium 72Hf144, Z=72.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-10-2.  Atomic weight: 178.49. Oxidation
states:  +4.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  4b/K-L-M-N-O-
P.  Connects Sephirah À2 to Sephirah  7.  ASCII character:  h. Qaballistic value:  71. Associations: Heh,
15th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 5 th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the character), hence
Aries ò, Trump IV, the Emperor,  and the number 5, the value of Heh; 

        Alternate: 72Tk144, Tracklight.  Crystal structure: R.  Associations:   ???.

                        cu.   Key 105

Tantalum 73Ta146, Z=73.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-11-2.  Atomic weight:  180.947. Oxidation

states:  +5.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  5b/K-L-M-N-O-
P.  Connects Sephirah À2 to Sephirah  8.  ASCII character:  i. Qaballistic value:  72.  Associations: Yod,
20th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 10 th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the character), hence
Virgo, Trump IX,  the Hermit (7 + 2 = 9!), and 10, the value of Yod;  Tantalus, punished by Zeus for an
unknown crime by being forever tormented by food and drink that recedes whenever he reaches for it

        Alternate: 73Fm146, Formica.  Crystal structure: R.  Associations:   extremely hard, tough, durable

substances which can only be scratched with a dull kitchen knife

cv.    Key 106

Tungsten (Wolfram) 74W148, Z=74.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-12-2. Atomic

weight:  183.85. Oxidation states:  +6.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 6b/K-L-M-N-O-
P.  Connects Sephirah À2 to Sephirah  9.  ASCII character:  j.Qaballistic value:  73.  Associations: Yod,
20th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 10 thletter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the character), hence
Virgo, Trump IX,  the Hermit, and 10, the value of Yod;  the Taming of Light (this element is used to make
the filaments of modern electric light-bulbs;  in this context it is of interest that the sum of the digits of
the Z-number of this element, 7 + 4, is equal to 11, the number of Magick and the Key Number
of Aleph and Uranus, the Planet of Liberty, in Whose upraised hand is the “imprisoned lightning,” i.e.,
tamed electricity and the light that it gives)

        Alternate: 74Lp148, Tonguesten.  Crystal structure:  ª.  Associations:   France (obsc.);  smooch.

 

                cw.  Key 107

Rhenium 75Re150, Z=75.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-13-2.  Atomic weight:  186.2. Oxidation

states:  +4, +6, +7.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 7b/K-L-M-N-O-
P.  Connects Sephirah À2 to Sephirah  10.  ASCII character:  k.Qaballistic value:  74.  Associations: Kaph k ],
Key 21 of the traditional Qaballah and 11 th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the character), hence
Jupiter Û, Magick (the number of which is 11, which, incidentally, is also the sum of the digits – 7 and 4 –
of the Qaballistic value of this element), and 20, the value of Kaph (the value of its final form, ], is 500); 

        Alternate: 75Cy150, Charity.  Crystal structure:  E.  Associations:   Perfected love, Agape.

cx.     Key 108

Osmium 76Os152, Z=76.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-14-2.  Atomic weight: 190.2. Oxidation

states:  +3, +4.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  8/K-L-M-N-O-P.  Connects Sephirah 1
to Sephirah  4.  ASCII character:  l. Qaballistic value:  75. Associations: Lamed l, Key 22 of the traditional
Qaballah and 12th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the character), hence Libra ø and 30, the value
of Lamed

        Alternate: 76Fn152, Finalnet.  Crystal structure:  [.  Associations:   Hair, styles, hence Neptune Þ.

                cy.   Key 109

Iridium 77Ir154, Z=77.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-15-2.  Atomic weight: 192.22. Oxidation

states:  +3, +4.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  8/K-L-M-N-O-P.  Connects Sephirah 1
to Sephirah  5.  ASCII character:  m. Qaballistic value: 76.  Associations: Nuclear and thermonuclear war
(the connection between Kether, Pluto ß, and Geburah, Mars  Ú);  Mem m \, 23rd Key of the traditional
Qaballah and 13th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, hence the Element Water  s, Neptune Þ, and 40, the
value of Mem (the value of its final form, \, is 600);  thus, in the context of the preceding two
associations, Chapter III, Verse 46 of Liber Al vel Legis;  also, great planetary extinctions events, as those
caused by cometary impacts of the sort that put paid to the dinosaurs and many of their contemporaries
(the tell-tale signature of that particular event comprises the massive amounts of iridium – far higher
than any terrestrial source could possibly supply – at the so-called K-T boundary, the point in the record
of the rocks at which the fossils of Mesozoic life, that is, dinosaurs and many of the species with which
they shared their world, abruptly cease to be, and those of Cenozoic life, the children of that world-
wounding catastrophe, including ourselves, begin manifesting) as well as, possibly, those caused by
nuclear wars and other ecocatastrophes caused by “sentient” beings such as Homo  (!) sapiens);  Tantric
Magick (for the Z-number;  77 = 7 x 11, the numbers of Venus and Magick), hence Kali);  the nuclear
submarine, a creature of Mars, Neptune and Pluto and of Ta’aroa, the Polynesian God of Hell and the
Deep Sea

        Alternate: 77Zp154, Velcro.  Crystal structure: [.  Associations:   Charity (for the section-number;  see

Key 107; PK-ZIP/UNZIP;  in general, sticky things

                        cz.   Key 110

Platinum 78Pt156, Z=78.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-16-2.  Atomic weight: 195.09. Oxidation

states:  +2, +4.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  8/K-L-M-N-O-P.  Connects Sephirah 1
to Sephirah  7.  ASCII character:  n. Qaballistic value:  77. Associations: Tantric Magick (see previous
entry); Nun n }, Key 24 of the traditional Qaballah and 14 th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the
character), hence Scorpio ù, 50 and 700 (values of the letter Nun), fish (the name of the letter means “a
fish”), and Joshua ben Nun, who led the children of Israel into the valley of the Jordan to take the city of
Jericho for their own (the Book of Joshua, Old Testament).

        Alternate: 78Pt156, Platinum.  Crystal structure:  h.  Associations:   Hitting the chart with a bullet, Elvis,

etc..

                        da.   Key 111

Gold 79Au158, Z=79.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-18-1.  Atomic weight: 196.9665. Oxidation

states:  +1, +3.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  1b/K-L-M-N-O-P.  Connects Sephirah 1
to Sephirah  8.  ASCII character:  o. Qaballistic value: 78.  Associations: The Number of the Prophet of the
New Aeon (for the Key Number);  the number of cards in a traditional Tarot pack (for the Qaballistic
value);  the number of characters in the Japanese Katakana and Hirigana syllabaries
(same);  Vav wand A’ain u (for the character), hence Taurus ó and 6 (for Vav) and Capricorn û and 70
(for A’ain)

        Alternate: 79Au158, Golda.  Crystal structure: h.  Associations: Golda Meier, Elvis ( s y w l h ), the King
of the New Aeon of Rock (111, the Key Number).

                db.  Key 112

Mercury 80Hg160, Z=80.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-18-2.  Atomic weight:  200.59. Oxidation

states:  +1, +2.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  2b/K-L-M-N-O-P.  Connects Sephirah 1
to Sephirah  9.  ASCII character:  p. Qaballistic value:  79 (prime).  Associations:  Peh p (for the character
as well as the Z-number), hence Mars Ú;  Mercury Ø (for the chemical element itself;  as it happens,
Mercury is an Emperor of [is exalted in] Capricorn); 

        Alternate: 80Fs160, Frankincense.  Crystal structure: h.  Associations:   ???.

dc.    Key 113

Thallium 81Tl162, Z=81.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-18-3.  Atomic weight: 204.37. Oxidation

states:  +1, +3.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  3a/K-L-M-N-O-P.  Connects Sephirah 1
to Sephirah  10.  ASCII character:  q. Qaballistic value:  80 = 8 x 10 = 24 x 5.  Associations:  Qoph  q, Key 29
of the traditional Qaballah and 19thletter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the character), hence Trump
XVIII, The Moon, of the Tarot, Pisces ý , and the value 100; 

        Alternate: 81Mr162, Myrrh.  Crystal structure: h. Associations:   DC comics (for the section number).

dd.   Key 114
 

Lead 82Pb164, Z=82.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-18-4.  Atomic weight: 207.2. Oxidation states:  +2,

+4.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  4a/K-L-M-N-O-P.  Connects Sephirah 2 to Sephirah  5.  ASCII
character:  r. Qaballistic value:  81 = (3)4.  Associations: Mars-Neptune (the U. S. Marines, Article II of the
Bill of Rights); Pallas Athena (see chart in previous section of this lesson);  Resh  r, Key 30 of the
traditional Qaballah and 20th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the character), hence Trump XX, The
Sun, of the Tarot, Sol  Ö, and 200;  Saturn  Ü (Whose traditional metal is lead), hence Da’ath, Binah,
and Tav, Path 32 of the traditional Qaballah and 22 nd letter of the Hebrew alphabet (the value of which is
400); 

        Alternate: 82Mm164, Dialtone.  Crystal structure:  %. Associations:   Telephone tag;  phone

sex; psychic hotlines, telemarketing; Mercury, Lord of Communication;  Ma Bell, Goddess of Long
Distance.

                de.   Key 115

Bismuth 83Bi166, Z=83.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-18-5.  Atomic weight: 208.9806. Oxidation

states:  +3, +5.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  5a/K-L-M-N-O-P.  Connects Sephirah 2
to Sephirah  7.  ASCII character:  s. Qaballistic value: 82 = 2 x 41.  Associations:  Venus-Neptune (altruism,
benevolence, kindness, etc.); Samekh s, 25th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 15th letter of the Hebrew
alphabet (for the character), hence Trump XIV, Temperance, of the Tarot, Sagittarius ú, and 60 (the value
of Samekh).

        Alternate: 83Tr166, Terrarium.  Crystal structure:  i.  Associations:   microecologies.

                        df.   Key 116

Polonium 84Po209, Z=84.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-18-6.  Atomic weight:  (209)*. Oxidation

states:  +2, +4.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  6a/K-L-M-N-O-P.  Connects Sephirah 2
to Sephirah  8.  ASCII character:  t. Qaballistic value:  83 (prime).  Associations:  Poland; Tav t, Key 32 of
the traditional Qaballah and 22nd letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the character), hence Trump
XXI, The World/Universe, Saturn Ü, Earth (the Planet) ï, Earth (the Element) t, 400.

 
        Alternate: 84Rr209, Raygon.  Crystal structure: £, >.  A radioactive gas. Associations: Tinseltown, the
Death Star, Bedtime for Bonzo, “Where’s the rest of me?!”.

*Values for atomic weight enclosed in parentheses are those of most stable isotopes of the elements.

                        dg.  Key 117

Astatine 85At210, Z=85.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-18-7.  Atomic weight: (210). Oxidation

states:  +2, +4.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  7a/K-L-M-N-O-P.  Connects Sephirah 2
to Sephirah  9.  ASCII character:  u. Qaballistic value:  84 = 22 x 3 x 7.  Associations:  Psychic phenomena,
ESP parapsychology, dreams, visions, the ocean, etc. (connection of × with Þ );  Vav, Key 16 of the
traditional Qaballah and 6th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the character), hence Trump V, The
Hierophant,the number 6, and Taurus ó, hence Emperor Joshua Norton

        Alternate: 85Kr210, Kryptonite.  Crystal structure:  .  Radioactive. Associations:  Lex Luthor and other

foes of Superman.

                dh.  Key 118

Radon 86Rn222, Z=86.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-11-2.  Atomic weight: (222). Oxidation

states:  0.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  0/K-L-M-N-O-P. Connects Sephirah 2
to Sephirah  10.  ASCII character:  v. Qaballistic value:  85 = 5 x 17.  Associations: Vav, Key 16 of the
traditional Qaballah and 6th letter of the Hebrew alphabet (for the character), hence Trump V, The
Hierophant,  the number 6, and Taurus ó, hence Emperor Joshua Norton; 

 
        Alternate: 86Ra222, Dixielium.  Crystal structure:  £.  An inert gas. Associations:  “When you’ve seen
one tree, you’ve seen ‘em all,” “Who needs the wetlands?”, etc.

**********

Asteroid Symbol Path Connecting

Pallas ç Chokmah- Geburah

Juno è Chesed- Geburah

Vesta é Binah- Netzach

Ceres æ Yesod-Kether

Eros   Netzach-Geburah

Sappho   Netzach-Kether

Hidalgo   Yesod-Geburah

Toro   Geburah-Kether

Pandora   Hod-i = Ö-1

Psyche   Netzach-Chokmah

Urania   Binah-0 (Zero)

Chiron å Binah-Æ (Null Set)

Amor   Netzach-À0

Diana   Yesod-i = Ö-1

Icarus   Hod-Binah

Lilith   Geburah-i = Ö-1

New Paths Transcendenta Description Element

l Path ~ to
traditional
 Path
connecting

Æ-0 5–8 Grace analog of Hydrogen

Neptune/Chokmah =
Durga/Hera À2

Æ- i = Ö-1 3-8   Helium

Æ-À0 7-8 Analog of Peh/Mars = Lithium

Lobachevski

Æ-À1 4-8   Beryllium

Æ-À2 2-8   Boron

Æ-1 1-8   Carbon

Æ-2     Nitrogen

Æ-3   å Chiron Oxygen

Æ-4     Fluorine

Æ-5     Neon

Æ-6 6-8    

Æ-9 8-9    

Æ-10 8-10    

0- i = Ö-1 3-5    

0-À0 ~ 5-7 5-7    

0-À1 ~ 5-4 4-5    

0-À2 ~ 5-2 2-5    

i = Ö-1-À0 3-7    

i = Ö-1-À1 3-4    

i = Ö-1-À2 2-3 Grace analog of  

Venus/Netzach = NortonÀ0

i = Ö-1-1 1-3 Power analog of  

Mercury/Hod = Beth b
i = Ö-1-2      

i = Ö-1-3      

i = Ö-1-4      

i = Ö-1-5      

i = Ö-1-6 3-6 Power analog of Libra (Leo*)  

i = Ö-1-7      

i = Ö-1-8      

i = Ö-1-9 3-9    

i = Ö-1-10 3-10    

À0-À1 4-7 Grace analog of  

Jupiter/Kaph k, Path
connecting Sephiroth 4 and
7 = À1/Amphitrite; Vesta é

À0-À2 2-7    

À0-1 1-7    

À0-2      

À0-3      

À0-4      

À0-5      

À0-6 6-7    

À0-7      

À0-8      

À0-9 7-9 Grace analog of Pisces/Qoph  

À0-10 7-10 Grace analog of  

Aquarius/Tzaddi x, Path
connecting Sephiroth 7 and
10  (Aries*)

À1-À2 2-4 Grace analog of  

Taurus/Vav w, Path
 connecting Sephiroth 2 and 4

À1-1 1-4    

À1-2      

À1-3      

À1-4      

À1-5      

À1-6 4-6 Grace analog of Virgo/Yod  

À1-7      

À1-8      

À1-9 4-9    

À1-10 4-10    

À2-1 1-2 Power analog of  

Uranus/Aleph = i = Ö-1

À2-2      

À2-3      

À2-4      

À2-5      

À2-6 2-6 Grace analog of Aries  

(Aquarius*)

À2-7      

À2-8      

À2-9 2-9    

À2-10 2-10    

1-4      

1-5      

1-7      

1-8      
 1-9   Ceres æ  

1-10      

2-5   Pallas ç  

2-7      

2-8      

2-9      

2-10      

3-4   Saturn (for Da’ath)  

3-7   Vesta é  

3-8      

3-9      

3-10      

4-8      

4-9      

4-10      

5-9      

5-10      

6-10      

g.     Period VII – Seventh Plane of the Sphere of Life ( Malkuth)

        This Period and its associated Plane of the Sphere of Life correspond to Olam Assiah (h y s a). The
Physical World, and Guph (c p g), the Physical Body of the Self.

di.     Key 119

 
Francium 87Fr223, Z=87.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-18-8-1.  Atomic weight:  (223). Oxidation
states:  +1.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  1a/K-L-M-N-O-P-Q.  Connects Sephirah 3
to Sephirah  4.  ASCII character:  w. Qaballistic value:  86 = 2 x 43.  Associations:  Chesed-
Binah = Da’ath;  France; Associations:Vav, Key 16 of the traditional Qaballah and 6 th letter of the Hebrew
alphabet (for the character), hence Trump V, The Hierophant,  the number 6, and Taurus ó, hence
Emperor Joshua Norton;  Pallas (Pallas Athena Medusa)  ç;

        Alternate: 87Wf223, Wallflowerium.  Crystal structure:  c. Associations:   ???.

                dj.    Key 120

Radium 88Ra226, Z=88.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-18-8-2.  Atomic weight:  (226). Oxidation

states:  +2.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  2a/K-L-M-N-O-P-Q.  Connects Sephirah 3
to Sephirah  7.  ASCII character:  x. Qaballistic value:  87 (prime).  Associations:  Uranus Ý (for the Z-
number;  88 = 8 x 11;  8 is the number of Mercury, 11 of Magick;  hence 8 x 11 = 88 signifies a higher
octave of Mercury, hence Uranus); Cheth   j, Key 18 of the traditional Qaballah and 8 th letter of the
Hebrew alphabet (for the character), hence Cancer õ, Trump VII, The Chariot,and the number 8.

Alternate: 88Jk226, Jockium.  Crystal structure:  ™. Associations: disk-jockeys (both name and section-

number), hence rock-‘n’-roll;  Vesta (see chart in previous section of this lesson);  hunks, beefcake; 

                        dk.   Key 121

Actinium 89Ac227, Z=89.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-18-9-2.  Atomic weight:  (227). Oxidation

states:  +3.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  3b/K-L-M-N-O-P-Q.  Connects Sephirah 3
to Sephirah  8.  ASCII character:  y.  Qaballistic value:  88 = 23 x 11.  Associations: Mercury-Uranus =
Liberty, computer revolution; Yod  y, Key 20 of the traditional Qaballah and 10 th letter of the Hebrew
alphabet (for the character), hence Virgo ÷, Trump X, The Hermit, and 10

        Alternate: 89 Up227, Actupium.  Crystal structure:  q. Associations:   Stonewall.

 

dl.     Key 122

Thorium 90Th232, Z=90.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-18-10-2.  Atomic weight:  232.0381. Oxidation

states:  +4.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  4b/K-L-M-N-O-P-Q.  Connects Sephirah 3
to Sephirah  9.  ASCII character:  z. Qaballistic value:  89 (prime).  Associations:  Thor, Scandinavian God
of battle and the thunder, son of Odin;  Zain  z, 17th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 7 th letter of the
Hebrew alphabet (for the character), hence Gemini ô, Trump VI, The Lovers, and 7 (Venus, Whose
number is 7, is nocturnally exalted in Gemini).

        Alternate: 90Lv232, Lavatorium.  Crystal structure:  +. Associations:   Seeing a man about a dog.

                dm.  Key 123

Protactinium 91Pa231, Z=91.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-20-9-2.  Atomic

weight:  231.0359. Oxidation states:  +5, +4.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 5b/K-L-M-N-O-P-
Q.  Connects Sephirah 3 to Sephirah  10.  ASCII character:  {.Qaballistic value:  90 = 2 x 32 x
5.  Associations:  Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Trinity, Bikini Atoll, Eniwitok (for the connections
among Sephiroth, the fall of Uranus to Earth); beginnings of special things, first element of an ordered
set (for the characters);  Tzaddix, 28th Key of the traditional Qaballah and 18th letter of the Hebrew
alphabet (for the Qaballistic value), hence Aquarius ü and Trump XVII, The Star.

        Alternate: 91Rx231, Latex.  Crystal structure:  [Slippery When Wet symbol]. Associations:   ???.

                        dn.  Key 124

Uranium 92U238, Z=92.  A higher octave of Chromium.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-21-9-2.  Atomic

weight:  238.029. Valence: +3, +4, +5, +6. Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 6b/K-L-M-N-O-P-
Q.  Connects Sephirah 4 to Sephirah  8. ASCII character:  |.  Qaballistic value:  91
(prime). Associations:  Uranus Ý, the sky, Hiroshima, space-travel, Liberty, all sky-
Gods/Goddesses;  Aleph a, Trump 0, The Fool, Air, 1; 
 

        Alternate: 92U184, Uranium.  Crystal structure:  £. Associations:   ???.

                        do.  Key 125

Neptunium 93Np237, Z=93.  A higher octave of Manganese.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-22-9-

2.  Atomic weight:  237.0482. Oxidation states:  +3, +4, +5, +6.  Column/Row on the Periodic
Table:  7b/K-L-M-N-O-P-Q.  ConnectsSephirah 4 to Sephirah  9.  ASCII character:  }. Qaballistic value:  92 =
22 x 23. Associations:  End of a special matter, last element of an ordered set (for the character); 93
Current and the Aeon of Horus/Aquarius (for the Z-number);  benevolent aspects of Eris (22 = 4 is a
number of Venus and Jupiter, the Benefics, while 23 is a number of Eris);  Neptune Þ, hence Mem  m  ,
Poseidon, Trump XII, The Hanged Man, and 40 (see also Liber Al vel Legis, Chapter 3, Verse 46 [46 =
92/2!])

        Alternate: 93Sb237, Suburbium.  Crystal structure:  .. Associations: Steven Spielberg.

        dp.  Key 126.

Plutonium 94Pu244, Z=94.  A higher octave of Iron.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-24-8-2.  Atomic

weight:  (244). Oxidation states:  +3, +4, +5, +6. Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  8/K-L-M-N-O-P-
Q.  Connects Sephirah 4 toSephirah  10.  ASCII character:  ~. Qaballistic value:  93.  Associations: Pluto î,
hence Hades, Shin c, Fire, Trump XX, The Aeon/The Last Judgment, and the number 300; the
thunderbolts of Jove (the connection between Jupiter [Chesed] and Earth [Malkuth];  the Gods of the
smith and smithy;  the Alchemist, Alchemy, transmutation; 93 Current and the Aeon of Horus/Aquarius
(hence the interchangeability of Aquarian influences with those of Aries, which is ruled by
Pluto);  Nagasaki

        Alternate: 94Pu244, Ptownium.  Crystal structure:  2. Associations:   Bleechhhh.

 
 

                        dq.  Key 127

Americium 95Am243, Z=95.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-25-8-2.  Atomic weight:  (243). Oxidation

states:  +3, +4, +5, +6.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 8/K-L-M-N-O-P-Q.  Connects Sephirah 5
to Sephirah  7.  ASCII character:  ?.Qaballistic value:  9410 = 2 x 47 = 10111102. Associations:  the Americas

        Alternate: 95Bv243, Believium.  Crystal structure: ?. Associations:   ???.

                dr.   Key 128

Curium 96Cm247, Z=?.  Electron configuration:  2-8-18-32-25-9-2.  Atomic weight:  (247). Oxidation

states:  +3.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  8/K-L-M-N-O-P-Q.  Connects Sephirah 5
to Sephirah  9.  ASCII character:  ?. Qaballistic value:  9510 = 5 x 19 =10111112. Associations:  Marie
Sklodowska Curie (1867-1934 e.v.) and Pierre Curie (1859-1906 e.v.) , discoverers of polonium and
radium; physicians, post-graduate study (section-number)

        Alternate: 96Sf247, Sanfranciscum.  Crystal structure:  ª. Associations:   I left my heart in, if you’re

going to, etc.

                        ds.   Key 129

Berkelium 97Bk247, Z=97.  Electron configuration: 2-8-18-32-27-8-2.  Atomic weight:  247. Oxidation

states:  +3, +4.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  1b/K-L-M-N-O-P-Q.  Connects Sephirah 5
to Sephirah  10.  ASCII character:  ?. Qaballistic value:  9610 = 3 x 25 = 11000002. Associations:  Bishop
Berkeley;  Berkeley, CA;

        Alternate: 97Kw247, Keywestium.  Crystal structure:  U. Associations:   ???.

 
 

                        dt.   Key 130

Californium 98Cf251, Z=98.  Electron configuration: 2-8-18-32-28-8-2.  Atomic weight:  251. Oxidation

states:  +3.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table: 2b/K-L-M-N-O-P-Q.  Connects Sephirah 6
to Sephirah  10.  ASCII character:  ?.  Qaballistic value:  9710 =
11000012 (prime).  Associations: California;  Califa, Queen of the Amazons, and Amazons in general,
hence the Amazon Basin of South America; supernovae (the half-life of Californium is about 2 weeks,
and so is that of the light from supernovae, whose spectral signatures reveal relatively enormous
amounts of this element, created by thermonuclear implosion of the lighter elements which make up
the Star prior to its catastrophic demise)

        Alternate: 98Cf251, Californium.  Crystal structure:  (. Associations:   ???.

By adding new Sephiroth to the Tree of Life, new Paths can be added as well.  The nthnew
such Sephiroth added allows (n + 10) new Paths to be added to the Tree. Bearing this in mind, additional
new Keys for the extended Tree of Life beyond Key 130 are, e.g.:

                du.  Key 131

Einsteinium 99Es254, Z=99.  Electron configuration: 2-8-18-32-29-8-2.  Atomic weight:  254. Oxidation

states:  ?.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  3a/K-L-M-N-O-P-
Q.  Connects Sephirah n to Sephirah  Æ.  ASCII character:  ?.  Qaballistic value: 9810 = 2 x 72 =
11000102.  Associations: The space-time continuum, quantum mechanics, relativity, hence
Neptune  Þ;  Albert Einstein (1879-1955 e.v.), developer of the Special and General Theories of Relativity
and seminal contributor to various aspects of modern physics (he may be said to be one of the Initiators
of the Aeon of Horus)

        Alternate: 99Es254, Einsteinium.  Crystal structure:  Y. Associations:   Masochism (beats me!).

                        dv.  Key 132
 

Fermium 100Fm257, Z=?.  Electron configuration: 2-8-18-32-30-8-2.  Atomic weight:  (257). Oxidation

states:  ?.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  4a/K-L-M-N-O-P-Q.  Connects Sephirah n to Sephirah
i  = Ö-1.  ASCII character:  ?. Qaballistic value:  9910 = 32 x 11 = 11000112.  Associations:  Urania (Uranus as
the Great Mother Goddess;  the asteroid of the same name represents Her), hence Liberty, Goddess of
America;  Enrico Fermi (1901-1954 e.v.), nuclear physicist, born in Italy, who helped develop the atomic
bomb, but more importantly, was one of the seminal contributors to quantum mechanics and other
aspects of modern physics

        Alternate: 100Di257, Driveinium.  Crystal structure:  ¤.  Associations:   Squirm, The Blob, Attack of the

Killer Tomatoes, and other platinum turkeys.

                        dw.  Key 133

Mendelevium 101Md256, Z=101.  Electron configuration: 2-8-18-32-31-8-2. Atomic weight:  ?. Oxidation

states:  ?.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  5a/K-L-M-N-O-P-
Q.  Connects Sephirah n to Sephirah  À0. ASCII character:  ?.  Qaballistic value:  10010 = 22 x 52 =
11001002. Associations:  Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (1834-1907 e.v.), Russian chemist who invented
the Periodic Table of the Chemical Elements, and the Periodic Table itself

        Alternate: 101Mk256, Makeoutium.  Crystal structure: ¤.   Associations:   Er.

                dx.   Key 134

Nobelium 102No254, Z=102.  Electron configuration: 2-8-18-32-.  Atomic weight: 254. Oxidation

states:  ?.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  6a/K-L-M-N-O-P-
Q. Connects Sephirah n to Sephirah  À1. ASCII character:  ?.  Qaballistic
value:  1011011001012.  Associations: Alfred Bernhard Nobel (1833-1896 e.v.), Swedish industrialist and
philanthropist who was the inventor of dynamite (the Nobel Prize is named for him); 

 
Alternate: 102Fb254, Firstbasium.  Crystal structure: ¤.   Associations: Uh-oh . . .; also, Brew 102 and
therefore brewskis and beer in general, hence Bacchus, Dionysus, and other Gods of Saturnalia,
Debauch, Ecstasy, etc.

                        dy.  Key 135

Lawrencium 103Lr257, Z=103.  Electron configuration: 2-8-18-32-9-2.  Atomic weight:  ?. Oxidation

states:  ?.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  7a/K-L-M-N-O-P-
Q.  Connects Sephirah n to Sephirah  À2. ASCII character:  ?.  Qaballistic value: 10210 = 2 x 3 x 17 =
11001102. Associations:  Ernest Orlando Lawrence (1901-1958 e.v.). U. S. physicist; 

        Alternate: 103Sc257, Scorium.  Crystal structure:  ¦. Associations:   Whoopee!;Tonight’s the

night!;  Good luck, Mr. Gorski!;  etc.

                        dz.   Key 136

?? 104????, Z=104.  Electron configuration: 2-8-18-32-10-2.  Atomic weight:  ?. Oxidation

states:  ?.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  0/K-L-M-N-O-P-
Q. Connects Sephirah n to Sephirah  1.  ASCII character:  ?.  Qaballistic value: 10310 =
11001112 (prime).  Associations:  ???

        Alternate: 104????, ???.  Crystal structure:  §. Associations:   Uhhh . . ..

                ea.   Key 131

?? 105????, Z=105.  Electron configuration: 2-8-18-32-.  Atomic weight:  ?.Oxidation

states:  ?.  Column/Row on the Periodic Table:  1a/K-L-M-N-O-P-Q-
R. Connects Sephirah n to Sephirah  2.  ASCII character:  ?.  Qaballistic value: 10410 = 23 x 13 =
11001112. Associations:  ???

 
        Alternate: ??????, ???.  Crystal structure:  ¨. Associations:   Well, you see . . ..

And so, as Father Kurt is wont to say, it goes . . .

**********

Asteroid Symbol Path Connecting

Pallas ç Chokmah- Geburah

Juno è Chesed- Geburah

Vesta é Binah- Netzach

Ceres æ Yesod-Kether

Eros   Netzach-Geburah

Sappho   Netzach-Kether

Hidalgo   Yesod-Geburah

Toro   Geburah-Kether

Pandora   Hod-i = Ö-1

Psyche   Netzach-Chokmah

Urania   Binah-0 (Zero)

Chiron å Binah-Æ (Null Set)

Amor   Netzach-À0

Diana   Yesod-i = Ö-1

Icarus   Hod-Binah

Lilith   Geburah-i = Ö-1

 
New Paths Transcendenta Description Element
l Path ~ to
traditional
Path
connecting

Æ-0 5–8 Grace analog of Hydrogen

Neptune/Chokmah =
Durga/Hera À2

Æ- i = Ö-1 3-8   Helium

Æ-À0 7-8 Analog of Peh/Mars = Lithium

Lobachevski

Æ-À1 4-8   Beryllium

Æ-À2 2-8   Boron

Æ-1 1-8   Carbon

Æ-2     Nitrogen

Æ-3   å Chiron Oxygen

Æ-4     Fluorine

Æ-5     Neon

Æ-6 6-8    

Æ-9 8-9    

Æ-10 8-10    

0- i = Ö-1 3-5    

0-À0 ~ 5-7 5-7    

0-À1 ~ 5-4 4-5    

0-À2 ~ 5-2 2-5    

i = Ö-1-À0 3-7    

i = Ö-1-À1 3-4    

i = Ö-1-À2 2-3 Grace analog of  

Venus/Netzach = NortonÀ0
i = Ö-1-1 1-3 Power analog of  
Mercury/Hod = Beth b

i = Ö-1-2      

i = Ö-1-3      

i = Ö-1-4      

i = Ö-1-5      

i = Ö-1-6 3-6 Power analog of Libra (Leo*)  

i = Ö-1-7      

i = Ö-1-8      

i = Ö-1-9 3-9    

i = Ö-1-10 3-10    

À0-À1 4-7 Grace analog of  

Jupiter/Kaph k, Path
connecting Sephiroth 4 and
7 = À1/Amphitrite; Vesta é

À0-À2 2-7    

À0-1 1-7    

À0-2      

À0-3      

À0-4      

À0-5      

À0-6 6-7    

À0-7      

À0-8      

À0-9 7-9 Grace analog of Pisces/Qoph  

À0-10 7-10 Grace analog of  

Aquarius/Tzaddi x, Path
connecting Sephiroth 7 and
10  (Aries*)
À1-À2 2-4 Grace analog of  
Taurus/Vav w, Path
connecting Sephiroth 2 and 4

À1-1 1-4    

À1-2      

À1-3      

À1-4      

À1-5      

À1-6 4-6 Grace analog of Virgo/Yod  

À1-7      

À1-8      

À1-9 4-9    

À1-10 4-10    

À2-1 1-2 Power analog of  

Uranus/Aleph = i = Ö-1

À2-2      

À2-3      

À2-4      

À2-5      

À2-6 2-6 Grace analog of Aries  

(Aquarius*)

À2-7      

À2-8      

À2-9 2-9    

À2-10 2-10    

1-4      

1-5      
 1-7      

1-8      

1-9   Ceres æ  

1-10      

2-5   Pallas ç  

2-7      

2-8      

2-9      

2-10      

3-4   Saturn (for Da’ath)  

3-7   Vesta é  

3-8      

3-9      

3-10      

4-8      

4-9      

4-10      

5-9      

5-10      

6-10

Endnotes

        1As the term is currently defined in physical science.  A field is a region of space or the space-time
continuum where energy and matter are constrained to behave in certain ways, the nature of the
constraints defining the nature and structure of the field. The field is generally named after its proximal
cause, the phenomenon in the proximity of which it arises, e.g., the electromagnetic field that is
associated with a magnet, an electric motor, or an alternating current generator;  a gravitational field
associated with a massy object; etc.

        2Since intellectual understanding in isolation has produced such minor matters as, say, the Bomb,
heart-transplants, LSD, and space-travel, one begins to wonder what it would accomplish if fully
harnessed, via Magick or Qaballah, to the emotions and the spirit!

        3Israel Regardie, A Garden of Pomegranates, 2nd Edition (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1978).

        4Gareth Knight, A Practical Guide to  Qabalistic  Symbolism (York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, Inc.,
1983).  Two volumes under one cover.

        5Part III of his Magick (John Symonds and Kenneth Grant, editors.  London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1981).  Magick also includes Parts I and II of Crowley’sbook 4.

        6Book II of 777 and Other  Qabalistic  Writings of Aleister Crowley(Israel Regardie, editor.  York
Beach, ME:  Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1983).  Book I of that work is Crowley’s essay, “Gematria,” extrapolated
from its original form in The Equinox, Vol. I, No. 5; it gives the general theory of Qaballah and describes
something of the way in which it is used in practical Magick and divination.  Book III is Sepher Sephiroth,
extrapolated from The Equinox, Vol. I, No. 8 and originally begun by Allan Bennett; this is a lexicon in
which the entries are Hebrew words indexed by the sum of the numerical values of their individual
letters, together with their English translations, to which are added various mathematical tables and
other useful information.

        7Yael R. Dragwyla, Liber 777 Updated and Extended.  Work in progress.

        7aYael R. Dragwyla, New Magicks for a New Age, Volume 2, The Magickal Sky, passim. Work in
progress.

        8Knight, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 200-201.

 

        9(Eliminated during revision of original manuscript.)

        10Ibid., p. 194.

        11Ibid., pp. 145-156.

 
            12
Ibid., pp. 185-186.

        13Ibid., pp. 168-169.

        14Ibid., pp. 179-180.

 
15
Ibid., pp. 158-164.   Here, Knight says, “The Spirit is said to have been perfect until it learnt of the Plan
of the Manifest Universe;  then it took on imperfection.”  The physical analogue of spiritual imperfection
is the Second Law of thermodynamics, popularly mythologized as Murphy’s Law, that states that the
disorder in any closed system must always increase over time.*  Or, since the apparent disorder of any
system, or its entropy, is an inverse measure of how much we know about and how much order we can
perceive in that system, then the detailed knowledge we have of any closed system must always
decrease over time.  This means that from the moment timebegan, imperfection was introduced into
Creation.  Yet without time there cannot be existence in any manifest sense. So imperfection is
necessary for physical existence.

*The Three Laws of Thermodynamics, re-stated as Finagle’s (Murphy’s) Laws, are as follows:

1)       You can’t win.

2)       You can’t even break even.

3)       And you can’t even leave the game.

 

Yet it is the task of Life and living beings to turn imperfection to good account as a series of creative
acts:  every disaster, every death, every evil in Creation becomes a challenge to Life to master that evil,
first in the case of the individual, through luck and learning, then in whole populations and species, via
evolution. In this way imperfection becomes a means to a greater, higher-order    perfection than existed
before.  Thus evil becomes the servant of good, helping to produce greater and greater, ever-more
complex and resourceful good, Creation forever unfolding and evolving from Perfection to Greater
Perfection.  But this is only possible in time.  So Kronos,  Whose Planet is Saturn and Whose cognate is
thus Shaîtan or Satan, the figure of the Grim Reaper and the Lord of Hell, is therefore necessary to the
fulfillment of Creation in a greater glory and perfection than that in which it began.

“As below, so above.”  We had to fall so that we could rise again in glory – and a greater glory than we
had at the beginning.  Without sin, there is no redemption;  without entropy, Life cannot exist.  This may
be part of the lesson of Trump VI, The Lovers.

 
16
Ibid., pp. 173-74.

 
17
Regardie, op. cit.,  p. 78.

 
18
Knight, op. cit., p. 122.

 
19
Regardie, op. cit., p. 79.

 
20
Knight, op. cit., pp. 104-105.

 
21
Regardie, op. cit., pp. 80-81.

 
22
Knight, op. cit., p. 131.

 
23
Ibid., pp. 110-120.

 
24
This is not precisely true.  The Second Law of Thermodynamics guarantees thatno law is perfect,*
Capital Letters or not.  In the first place, you don’t always get to put into life what you wanted or
expected to; in the second, you don’t have perfect control over your universe, and so can’t guarantee
what life will make of what to put into it – the principle of quantum indeterminacy is another guarantee
of this.   As the mathematician-cum-satirist Tom Lehrer put it, attributing it to his apocryphal friend
Hen3ry (“The ‘3’ is silent, you see . . .”),

Life is like a sewer – what y9ou get out of it depends upon what you put into it.

*Which guarantees, of course, that somewhere, somehow, there are exceptions to the Second Law of
Thermodynamics. As an acquaintance of mine once put it, “I can see the headlines now:  “Second Law
Self-Destructs!” J

 
25
Knight, op. cit.,  139-143.

 
26
This isn’t strictly true, either.  For example, in the Crowley/Harris Book of Thothpack, this card clearly
represents the genetic and spiritual underpinnings of conception and, implicitly, birth.

 
27
Knight, op. cit., pp. 89-100.

 
28
In the Crowley/Harris pack, this card is titled “Art.”

 
29
Knight, op. cit., pp. 69-76.

 
30
Knight’s knowledge of cultural anthropology, as reflected in what he presents here of his
understanding of various peoples’ theologies and conceptions of God, leaves a great deal to be desired
and is in fact extremely biased, not to mention lacking a great deal of data that would give a rather
different picture of the religions of such cultures.

 
31
As, in many cases, are pictured on certain pieces of paper, on which also appear the motto
“Anno Coeptis” and the numbers 1,2,5, 10, 20, 50, etc. . . .

 
32
Eliphas Levi was a monarchist, and it shows here. Also, his view of human psychology is more than a bit
simplistic;  so is his understanding of political science and sociology.  Knight’s discussion here of
ignorance as the “root of all evil,” along with the quotations he cites from Levi, are apposite – but
egregiously incomplete.

 
33
Knight, op. cit., pp.78-87.

 
34
Ibid., pp. 56-67.

        34aJ. C. Cooper, Chinese Alchemy:    The Taoist Quest for Immortality  (New York:  Sterling Publishing
Co., Inc., 1990), pp. 72-77.

 
35
In The Book of Thoth, Tzaddi is assigned to Trump IV, The Emperor, in line with Chapter 1, Verse 57 of
Crowley’s The Book of the Law.  See also Key 15, above.

 
36
Sic. Actually, she was a Roman Goddess, specifically, the Roman Queen of heaven and wife of
Jupiter.  “Jupiter” is derived from Deus IAO-Pater, God All-Father; Juno’s proper title is Dea  IAO-Mater,
“God(dess) All-Mother.  Historically, Juno’s Greek counterpart and historical forerunner is Hera, wife of
Zeus, the Monarch of Heaven.

 
37
This is only one of several possible attributions. Two others are “The Man,” who, like the Eagle,
represents the Cherub of the Element Air;  and “The Peacock.*  The Eagle is also the Cherub of Water
and as such is assigned both to the astrological Sign Scorpio (Key 24), along with the Snake, the
Scorpion, and the Phoenix, as well as to Key 23, Trump XII, The Hanged Man, which represents the
Element Water and the Planet Neptune.** Possibly the American White-Headed or Bald Eagle and its
cousins, the other Fisher-Eagles, would be the best avian representative of Aquarius, other genera of
eagles then being assigned to Scorpio.

*The Peacock is also the symbol of Shaîtan or Satan, Who, in the form of a gigantic blazing plume of
flaming natural gas emerging from the desert sands in their home territory, was worshipped the
Peacock God by the Yezidi, a Bedouin tribe of the Arabian sub-continent. The Yezidi were eventually
converted to Islam, giving rise to the Shi’ite sect of Islam.  Today their former God is known to them as
the Peacock Angel, Whose Planet, Saturn, co-rules Aquarius.

**Neptune is also the esoteric ruler of Scorpio, as well as the natural ruler of Pisces and co-ruler of
Sagittarius. Crowley said of Neptune that “the heart of Neptune is Mars”;  Mars is the traditional ruler of
Scorpio, so the association of the Eagle with Neptune is rather appropriate.  The American White-
Headed or Bald Eagle, on the other hand, is a fisher-eagle, taking his food from Neptune’s domains,
which does confuse the issue a bit.

Further, along with the Eagle, the Man is likewise assigned to Key 11, Trump 0, and the Fool. This Key
represents the Element Air and the Planet Uranus.  Uranus is the ruler of Aquarius and is exalted in
Scorpio.  This interlocking of associations among the Keys is quite strikingly prevalent and is in fact a
side-effect of the dynamics of astrology, Qaballah, and Magick as languages with inherent grammars
whose ultimate reference is to the entire Cosmos as a holon, a perfectly unified entity.  These holistic,
recursive natural languages are, in effect, high-level programming languages which the Magickian
literally uses to re-program the Universe, or at least his or her local corner of it, so that its dynamics,
changed by this means, will then conform to his or her Will and Desire.

Other animal attributions for Aquarius include the Bear and the Bat.  Both have man-like
characteristics;  American Indians still refer to the Bear as Man-with-Fur and similar titles, and the Bat is
the closest living relative to the primates, from whom evolved human beings, i.e., Man.  Furthermore,
the Bat, which has wings and flies, is a creature of the Air, like the Eagle;  and of all the bats, the vampire
bats of South America (generaDesmodus and Diphylla) have an eerily high intelligence as well as being
social animals, and so resemble men in more than form and biological lineage.  The Bear, on the other
hand, is omnivorous, tends to walk bipedally much of the time, and also has high intelligence, again
manlike characteristics.  So both these animals are excellent representatives of Aquarius.

There are other animals that could be associated with this Sign, for example, the
porpoise, Tursiops  truncatus,  a creature of water with extremely high intelligence and even a genuine
liking for human company.  One entire class of such representatives comprises all animals that are the
product of mutations due to radioactivity, which characterizes uranium, the metal of Uranus, Lord of
Aquarius.  The interested reader might want to do more research in this area, as well as on what plants,
gems, and other things could be usefully associated with this Sign.  See Aleister Crowley’s Liber 777and
his Magick in Theory and Practice for further discussion on these points.

 
38
Regardie, op. cit., pp. 87-88.

 
39
The idea that non-human life is somehow “inferior,” and that it is essentially “mindless” and/or
without sensitivity, is a leftover from nineteenth-century materialism (of which, unfortunately, there
seems to have been enough leftovers remaining even today to feed an army of philosophical
gluttons!).  There may also be in that idea some residue of guilt over the way in which we have treated
our fellow-travelers on our poor, battered Planet, a rationalization designed to let those guilty of such
mistreatment via stockyards, abattoir, laboratory, etc. off the hook.  At any rate, there is a great deal of
evidence to show that at all levels of life, organisms of all kinds are quite capable of mentation, emotion,
sensory sensitivity, and wisdom at least the equal of ours, if not grater.  Even at the level of the
individual cell, organisms all show ability to make intelligent decisions and act on them appropriate,
strong sensory and even esthetic sensitivity, and reactions which must be in all honesty called emotional
because of their evident nature.  To demonstrate this, put a few Volvox cells or a planarian worm into a
Petri dish, along with a small salt crystal, some chemically neutral barriers to hinder movement, and
other obstacles and hazards necessitating some intelligent choices and behavior, and watch what the
organism does!

*Which we know now does not exist and never did.  From the beginning, Life has individuated itself in
elegant, enormously complex variety, a pattern selected for because the alternative was a rapid
submission to the Second Law of Thermodynamics and extinction.

 
Given that, at least in the general case, all of life, down to the level of the “primordial slime,”* is
intelligent, sensitive, and wise, then as Knight says, here, we have no biological excuses whatsoever for
irresponsibility and thoughtlessness, even at a “gross physical level.”

If Key 29, Trump XVIII, the Moon rules our basic biology, including reproduction, Knight’s remarks here
should be altered to accord with the findings of modern sociobiology.  For more on this subject, see,
e.g., Jane Goodall, In the Shadow of Man, Revised Edition ((Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1971,
1988); Paul Corey,Do Cats Think?:    Notes of a Cat-Watcher (Edison, NJ:  Castle, 1977);  Jeffrey
Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy, When Elephants Weep:    The Emotional Lives of Animals (New
York:  Delacorte Press, 1995);  Elizabeth Marshall Thomas,The Tribe of Tiger:    Cats and Their
Culture (New York:  Simon & Schuster, 1994); Lyall Watson, Beyond  Supernature:    a New Natural
History of the Supernatural(New York:  Bantam Books, 1988);  and Lyall Watson, Lifetide:    A Biology of
the Unconscious (New York:  Bantam Books, 1980).

 
40
And also of menstrual blood.  See Chapter 3, Verse 24 of The Book of the Law, as well as Aleister
Crowley’s Astrology (New York:  Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1974), pp. 47-48 and 50, which discuss the
astrological Sign Pisces and the Twelfth House of the Horoscope, which are represented by this Trump.

 
41
See Trump IX, The Hermit (Key 20).  That card is associated with the Sign Virgo, which is 180° across the
sky from Pisces and is thus diametrically opposed to it. Virgo also rules bureaucracies and bureaucrats,
which in organized religion have ever been a hindrance to the true mystics and visionaries who come
forth from such religion and are also ruled by Pisces.  See remarks under endnote 41, following,
concerning religious despotisms and the charismatic despots, so characteristic of the Aeon of Pisces,
who are also ruled by Pisces, whose following inevitably forms a bureaucracies whose sole aim seems to
be to prevent the free-flowing of the religious spirit (which may not be a bad thing;  consider the “free-
flowing religious spirit” so evident in jihads and pogroms! Perhaps there are times when we should get
down on our knees and thank God for humankind’s indefatigable bureaucratic spirit . . .)

 
42
It also contains the reticular activating system (RAS), which facilitates arousal and hence a general level
of alertness. Certain forms of damage to this system have been found, via post-mortem examination of
accident victims and others, to be associated with paranoid schizophrenia and megalomania á la Jim
Jones of the People’s Temple debacle. This sort of damage can be induced by means of long-term use of
“uppers” such as Benzedrine, methedrine, caffeine, and various forms of cocaine (long-term use of crack
cocaine has also been implicated in Parkinson’s Disease, which involves dysfunctions of the medulla and
cerebellum caused by accident or disease).  Also, the corpus coerleus, which facilitates REM and other
levels of dream-sleep, and the pons, damage to which can destroy reflex breathing, causing fatal sleep
apnie, or interfere lethally with the heartbeat, are located in this part of the central nervous system.
This entire complex is part of the “primitive reptilian” brain-system, which neurologists now think is
strongly involved in the sort of charisma found in band-leaders of primate groups of all kinds.  They
speculate that it has had much to do with the stunning, otherwise incomprehensible success, for better
or worse, of such human leaders as Adolph Hitler, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Josef Stalin, Winston Churchill,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Harry Truman – or, in an earlier time, Yeshua benYoseph of Nazareth.

Significantly, Jesus of Nazareth was the avatar of the Aeon of Pisces/Osiris, which might also be called
the Age of Charismatic Dictators. During this period, on the first day of Spring each year the Sun rose
against the Constellation Pisces.  This Constellation has the same influence as the Sign of that name, but
the Sign is the last month of the astrological year, the last 30 days or so before the Vernal Equinox, the
first day of Spring. Because on any given day of the year the Sun’s position in the sky lies about 50” of
arc Westward of where it was on that same date the previous year, the Signs shift Westward by the
same amount per year and so are no longer coterminous with the Constellations whose names they
bear.

Further the Signs, as defined by tropical astrology, are all exactly 30° wide, so that the twelve of them
together make up the 360° round of the sky.  But the Zodiacal Constellations are not all of identical
widths, some being much larger than 30° and others consequently much smaller.  For this reason as well
the Signs never quite correspond exactly to the Constellations, even when the first degree of
the sign Aries – the position of the Sun in the sky on the first day of Spring in a given year – corresponds
to the first degree of the Constellation Aries.  Given this, since about 250 b.c.e we were in the Aeon of
Pisces/Osiris which, around 1904 e.v., after some 2,100 years, we left for the Aeon of Aquarius/Horus
(during which, it is hoped, we will leave behind our tendency to play follow-the-leader behind anyone
who radiates such quasi-sexual charisma, whether or not said leader is actually competent politically or
has our best interests at heart).

Women having such charisma would include, e.g., Elizabeth I of England, Golda Meier, and Dr.
Helen Caldicott, one of the founders of the anti-nuclear movement. Male examples would include, e.g.,
Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the aforementioned Jim Jones, and the Ayatollah Khoumeini of
Iran.  In most cases, none of these have very much to do with one another except with respect to the
overwhelmingly evident ability to compel the adulation, even worship, of upwards of millions of
followers, which all of them have had in common.

At any rate, most of what is unconscious, reflex, and instinctive in ourselves is sited in and facilitated by
our hindbrain and upper spinal cord.  These are located in the back of the head, and so because of the
tendencies and faculties associated with them, their bodily locus, the back of the head, is associated
with this Path, Key 29, Trump XVIII, and   Moon.

 
43
Knight, op. cit., Vol. II, [[. 16-19.

 
44
Most scholars attribute the Archangel Raphael to Mercury and Sephirah 8, since he is the Hebrew
equivalent of Hermes-Djehuti, the Graeco-Egyptian God of Wisdom, Scholarship, and Intellect, though in
the Golden Dawn and O.T.O. Pentagram rituals, He is associated with Sol
and Tiphareth, Sephirah 8.  Michael, on the other hand, is normally associated with Sol, Mars
(Sephirah 5), or Pluto (Sephirah 1).  Why Knight attributes Michael to Hod is not at all clear, since this
isn’t a Magickally fitting attribution.

Also, Hermes-Djehuti/Raphael may be associated with Sephirah 9, Yesod, theSephirah of Luna, since

Djehuti was originally the Egyptian Lord of the Moon. He was the inventor of arithmetic, used to
calculate the Moon’s phases and cycles and its impact upon fertility, pregnancy, crops in the field,
etc.;  because of this and other such gifts of the mind to humanity, He is therefore also Lord of Wisdom
and intellect, hence is simultaneously associated with Mercury (Sephirah 8) and the Moon (Sephirah 9).

 
45
”Karma” is a term which has been so badly misused in the West that it is worse than useless when
employed by Western mystics, occultists, or anyone else.  As currently used, it tends to mean “What I’d
like to see happen to you” or “What will happen to you if you don’t do as I say or aren’t one of the
Chosen Few [of whom I am of course a member].”  The ambiguity with which it has become so heavily
loaded has made it an Orwellian weapon for maximizing social mystification and minimizing justice in
proportion to the hoped-for benefits accrued by its use by the various in-groups that use it.  Or, as an
acquaintance of mine put it, the concept has become yet another weapon in the psychological arsenal
of Neo-Calvinism.

In addition, it is frequently employed to mean “automatic and perfect restoration of balance.”*  Since

the Second Law of Thermodynamics together with Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle insure that no
process can ever be either perfect or perfectly automatic in its working, then acceptance of this
definition of karma requires us to throw out the guts of modern physics, which is based squarely on
these two principles, and vice-versa.

This should be kept in mind when reading any passage by any author using the word “karma,” here or
elsewhere.  In particular, mention of “karma” in the context of Key 32, Trump XXI, The
World/Universe should be a flag for the alert reader that what the author has to say might need so
modifications if it is to be both accurate and just, or at least not inciting to injustice.

*Originally the term didn’t apply to individuals as such, but rather to the stochastic dynamics of
groups.  That is, if someone behaves in a way that crates trouble, hardship, or grief for others, he or she
is thereby destroying the balance of the community of which he/she is part and upon which he/she
depends in many ways for his/her survival, well-being, and happiness.  There is thus a certain probability
that eventually this will rebound upon the miscreant in some form, either because the neighbors get up
a nice lynching-bee or other appropriate means to deal with said miscreant, in reaction, or because the
effects of his/her behavior upon the community upsets its balance so badly that he/she is harmed along
with everyone else as a result.  If we also assume that reincarnation is a fact, the probability of such
consequences of his/her behavior for him/her increase dramatically, assuming that he/she will
eventually reincarnate in the same community for which he/she caused the original trouble.  Even so,
however probable it may be that eventually he/she will suffer one way or the other from the direct or
indirect consequences of his/her actions, probability isn’t certainty, and there is always a certain
probability, however small, that he/she will never  suffer or even be mildly inconvenienced as a result of
his/her actions. But this isn’t how the term has come to be used lately.  Instead, it is assumed that (a)
whatever you do that is proscribed by the Powers That Be will invariably and automatically  be inflicted
on you in the form of “karma,” and that (b) everything bad that happens to you in this lifetime has to
have been the result of “bad karma” earned in previous lifetimes by “bad behavior,” and that you
yourself chose to have it happen to you before you were born  in order to “work out the bad karma.”  If
that is true, then there is no such thing as evil or injustice, for everything bad that happens to anyone is
something they  chose  to have happen, before they were born, to “work out bad karma.”  This is the sort
of argument that only a bone-deep sociopath would use to “justify” his or her crimes, a philosophy that
would be prized by the Marquis de Sade – as something for the “cattle” to believe that would make it
that much easier to use them any way one wanted without incurring any serious protest from anyone
who could do anything about it.  This is the New Age?!  Who the hell needs it!?!

 
46
Knight, op. cit., pp. 49-57.

 
47
Or, at least, Knight’s idea of “beasts.”  His species chauvinism is a little too evident here;  I don’t agree
with it – and neither do the findings of modern biological science.

 
48
It was the Titan Prometheus who first stole the Fire of the Gods to give it to man. Prometheus is the
Greek word for “foresight” or “forethought” (Prometheus’ brother, the unfortunate husband of
Pandora,  was named Epimetheus, “hindsight.”

 
49
All the atoms of the chemical elements are composed of the same basic elementary particles.  Only the
numbers of each type of these subatomic particles vary from one element to another, or, for a given
element, from one isotope to another. The differences in the physical and chemical behavior of different
elements or of different isotopes of a given element arise entirely out of the differences in numbers of
particular types of subatomic particles, e.g., the protons, neutrons, or electrons within atoms, or the
quarks which compose them.

Similarly, objectively speaking red differs from blue, or the note A from the note G on the tonic scale,
only in terms of the frequency of light or sound involved, that is, as the number of cycles per second of
each color or tone in question.  And temperature – hence physical state – is likewise just a measure of
the kinetic energy, i.e., the motion, of the particles of the substance under consideration.

 
50
Knight, op. cit., pp. 29-36.

 
51
For a marvelous new version of this old, old tale, elegantly presented in modern symbolic form but
missing nothing of the essence of the original, see Samuel Delaney’s novel The Einstein Intersection (ca.
1971).

 
52
This is, in fact, what Charismatic Christians mean by the phrase “born again”: Initiation into the
Mystery of the Christ, i.e., the ritual killing of one’s Personality and its spiritual resurrection into Christ-
consciousness.

 
53
Melchizedek, king of the Biblical Salem, was the “priest of God most high” who
blessed Avram (Abraham) in the name of God.  Where Venus enters into all this, I’m not sure.  The
Biblical account of Avram’s meeting with Melchizedek  in Genesis XIV:18-20 makes no mention of
Venus.  The idea that Melchizedek brought certain things to Earth from Venus may have come from the
Theosophical movement.

 
54
Astrologically speaking, Venus, the traditional and mundane diurnal ruler of Taurus,  is exalted in
Pisces, which rules the oceans and seas of the world, and is the esoteric Lord of Cancer.  On the other
hand, Luna, the traditional and diurnal mundane ruler of Cancer, is exalted in Taurus, and is the esoteric
Lord of Pisces, with even more strength in that Sign than Venus has.  (A Planet is strong in Signs of its
mundane dominion, stronger still in Signs of its exaltation, and strongest of all in Signs of its esoteric
dominion.  For a complete table of the astrological dignities, see the Appendix to these notes.)

 
55
See Lesson IV concerning “The Three Zeroes.”
 
56
This is a bit fanciful.  Also, there is historical evidence that before the Greek Classical period, at a time
when Persia was expanding her empire and the Greek city-states were either trying to make alliance
with her or aligning themselves against her, a matriarchal kingdom existed whose queen was the model
for the mythological Medusa, a kingdom whose great ally at the time was a Mediterranean island-based
civilization that was probably Minoan or Cretan in origin (the origin of the myth that Poseidon was the
lover of Medusa).  A world-wide change was then in process in the form of a transformation of various
societies from more or less sexually egalitarian forms to patriarchal ones. Politically and militarily, the
latter tended to have the advantage over the former, at least in the short run, and Medusa’s kingdom,
her people, and their culture became casualties of this struggle.  Persia (Perseus) and one or more Greek
kingdoms (giving rise to Athena’s part in the myth of Medusa) combined to conquer this little kingdom,
for reasons that were in part political and military, and partly for the economic and other resources that
it had, which may have included fine horses, like those of Scythia (one Greek myth-cycle attributed the
origin of the horse to Poseidon). Once the conquest was complete, the reigning queen was beheaded
and/or the entire royal family was executed (later memorialized as the beheading of Medusa, i.e., either
the literal beheading of the queen who was the historical model for Medusa or the elimination of the
kingdom’s aristocracy, its “head”), and the kingdom itself laid waste (some of the myths about Medusa
refer to her as “barren”).  Additionally, two kingdoms that were neighbors of Medusa’s were probably
conquered and laid waste during this campaign, as well (in the myth, Medusa was supposed to have had
two sisters, all three of them referred to collectively as “the Gorgons”).

Astrologically speaking, Medusa is associated with the Star Algol.  According to Vivian E. Robson, in The
Fixed Stars and Constellations in Astrology (York Beach, ME:  Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1979), Algol is “the
most evil star in the heavens” (Ibid., p. 124). Currently (1997 e.v.) the celestial latitude of this Star is
about 41° North;  Her longitude is now 26° 1’ Taurus (like all other Stars, She moves eastward through
the Heavens at a rate of about 50” of arc per year).  This same Star is also associated with the
Hebrew vampiress, Lilith, “Queen of the Demons”;  Ra’as al Ghul, “the Demon’s Head, by the
Arabs;  Tseih  She, “Piled-Up Corpses,” by the Chinese;  and by the names of various demon-queens all
over the world.  But significantly “Lilith” is a corruption of Al-ITh, “God the Mother” or “God-ess,” i.e.,
God-with-a-Womb, the supreme divinity of early, matriarchal Bedouin and Hebrew tribes, the Mother
Goddess out of Whose Body came the whole Universe and all in it.  The change in the connotation of
this name, as applied to the Star Algol, from “Divine Mother” to “Supreme Female Lord of Evil,”
occurred several thousand years ago, at a time when the transformation of sexually egalitarian societies
was taking place over all the Old World* -- oddly enough, probably right about the time that Algol, now
known to be an eclipsing binary, a variable Star whose variability is due to the fact that it is regularly
eclipsed by a less-bright companion, first became noticeably variable.  Before that time, Algol was
considered to be one of two of the “Luckiest Stars in the heavens,” the other being Spica, situated about
150° Eastward around the Zodiac from this Star.  Al-IThwas female to Spica’s male, and together they
represented the supreme Feminine and Masculine polarities of Divinity.

 
 

*Apparently, however, not the New, for unknown reasons;  the native peoples of New World have
retained their basically sexually egalitarian or even matriarchal orientation up to the present day.  See,
e.g., William Brandon, The Last Americans:    The Indian in American Culture (New York:  McGraw-Hill,
1974.

        For more information about Algol, see Volume III, Book 10, Part 1 of  my textbook New Magicks for
a New Age, “The Esoteric Significance of the Star Algol.”

 
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Space is also represented by Jupiter,  The number of Jupiter’s Sephirah, Chesed, is 4, as is the value of
the Hebrew letter associated with His Path, Kaph.  Jupiter represents the Point in Extension, the
Cross.  Additionally, Jupiter is nocturnally exalted in Aquarius, whose traditional Lord is Saturn and
modern Lord is Uranus.

 
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Saturn rules the bones and the skeleton as a whole, so the skeleton-figure of the Grim Reaper is clearly
associated with this Planet.

 
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Saturn rules time.

 
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These are the Bull, the Lion, the Eagle, and the Man. These four figures represent the four Cherubim
who guard the Throne of God the Most High.  The Bull is Taurus, Key 16, Trump V, The Hierophant;    the
Lion is Leo, Key 19, Trump VIII, Strength; the Eagle is Scorpio, Key 24, Trump XIII, Death; and the Man is
Aquarius, Key 28, Trump XVII, The Star.

There are four Stars in the heavens associated with these four Signs, which some cultures believed to be
the four Cherubim themselves, surrounding the Throne which presumably was directly overhead, in the
Empyrean.  These four Stars, called the Royal Stars or Watchers of the heavens by the Persians about
3,000 B.C. called them, are Aldebaran, whose dawn rising then marked the Vernal Equinox, associated
with the constellation Taurus;  Regulus, marking the Summer Solstice, associated with Leo; Antares,
marking the Autumnal Equinox, associated with Scorpio;  and Fomalhaut, herald of the Winter Solstice,
associated with Aquarius.

At that time, almost 5,000 years ago, the Sun conjoined Aldebaran on the Vernal Equinox;  Regulus, on
the Summer Solstice;  Antares, on the Autumnal Equinox;  and Fomalhaut, on the Winter Solstice.  This
of course is no longer true, for two reasons. The first is the precession of the Earth’s axis of rotation, like
that of a spinning top;  as viewed from Earth, the position of the Sun in the heavens at the Vernal
Equinox moves Westward at the rate of about 50” of arc per year, or about 30° of arc every 2,160 years
or so, making a complete circuit of the sky about once every 25,920 years.  So about 5,000 years ago,
the Sun rose in the Constellation Taurus on the Vernal Equinox;in that of Leo at the Summer solstice; in
Scorpio at the Autumnal Equinox; and in Aquarius at the Winter Solstice.

The second reason has to do with the proper motion of the Stars.  This has nothing particularly to do
with the apparent Eastward trend of the Stars due to equinoctial precession.  Instead, it can be in any
direction and at any speed, and is essentially unique to each Star.  Due to their proper motions, the four
Royal Stars no longer have exactly the same geometrical relationships to all other Stars, including Sol,
which they did 5,000 years ago.  Some have moved relatively far from others to which, at the time, they
were “near neighbors.” For example, at that time, five millennia ago, Fomalhaut lay within the
longitudinal boundaries of the Constellation Aquarius;  now, it lies outside and somewhat east of it,
inside the longitudinal boundaries of the Constellation Pisces.  The other three Royal Stars have similarly
shifted their positions relative to the rest of the heavens since then, so that even if all four were
somehow simultaneously all moved Westward 69° degrees or so to compensate for their
Eastward processional drift during those five thousand years, they would not end up in the same
positions they occupied at that time.Instead, they would be displaced some distance North, South, East,
or West of where they originally were then due to their various individual proper motions.

For more on these and related topics, see, passim, Richard Hinckley Allen, Star Names:    Their Lore and
Meaning (New York:  Dover Publications, Inc., 1963; Robert Burnham, Jr. Burnham’s Celestial
Handbook (in three volumes.  Volume I:Andromeda Through Cetus.  Volume II: Chamaeleon  Through
Orion.  Volume III:Pavo Through Vulpecula.  (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1966, 1978); and Vivian
E. Robson, op. cit.

 
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Knight, op. cit., pp. 1-14.