Yael R.

Dragwyla First North American rights

Email: Polaris93@aol.com 29,155 words
http://polaris93.livejournal.com/

Qaballah and Tarot: A Basic Course in Nine

Lessons
Lesson II: Keys 1-10 – the Lower Arcana and the
Court Cards
© 1997 by Yael R. Dragwyla

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

the Tree of Life, continued

♣ ♥ ♠♦
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.

♣ ♥ ♠♦

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 is
the Invisible Sephirah, Da’ath, “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 compleat 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 a Sephirah 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
Binah united 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 Unsymbolized and Unmanifest. 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 ℜ. In the first case, the
hypothetical trans-Plutonian Planet “Anteros,” meaning “Strife” or “Response,” or “Persephone,” after
the consort of Pluto/Hades, is assigned to Da’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
posit Da’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 with Chokmah, 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 superclusters 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, 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, that 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 context 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 of Da’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 all the 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 of Da’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 through Da’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 who goes
out the 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 himself, 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 and Binah. 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 of Da’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 ∅, 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. The Qlippoth 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 realises 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, Daath. 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: Llwellyn
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 they decompose 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 = √-1,
irrational numbers of all kinds, and ℵ0 (the Cantorian transfinite quantity equal to the Number of All
Numbers); ∅ (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 my 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), ℵ, ℜ, ∏, ∅, 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 my New 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.

♣ ♥ ♠♦

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 or Sephiroth 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’ath into 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 in Binah 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 – in Yesod – 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! ). 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 of Chesed 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 this Sephirah, 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 the Messiah 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. And Chesed 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 and
Chokmah, 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
does Chesed’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 of Chesed 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, called messenger 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 or polysome. 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, y and 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 and Binah, 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 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, and Netzach, 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 shochet 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 (α Scorpii, Cor
Scorpio), and, to a lesser extent, the Stars
Aldebaran (α Tauri) and Betelgeuse (α
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 to Binah, 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
Chokmah and 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 rulership
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, shadowless 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 and Chokmah, 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 anteway.
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 7th 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, that 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
Marseille Tarot 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 and
Geburah; 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 have 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 with Tiphareth.* God the Father is assigned to Kether, but God the Son
is assigned to Tiphareth.31

*Sol has His nocturnal esoteric rulership 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 between Binah and Chesed which separates the lower Sephiroth from the higher ones, and by
bringing the diverse forces of the sixfold 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 mentation 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. Dionysos 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, individualised consciousness.35
Tiphareth is the functional apex of the Second Triad of the Tree of Life, the two points defining the
base of which are Geburah and Chesed. This second Triad, emanating from the First Triad of the three
Supernal Sephiroth, 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 individual dissolves 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 Tiphareth is 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. Tiphareth represents 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
the Sephirah 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 Superconscious 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 are 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 of Tiphareth 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, “overscrupulosity” – 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
effect 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, that 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
of Tiphareth. Among others, these include Sol, Apollo, Helios, Baldur, the Christ, Odin (for the self-
sacrifice of his eye in exchange for wisdom), Osiris, Bacchus, Dionysos, 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
unhealing 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 Taoistic 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 who 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 Tarot shows six pears at the center of which grouping is 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 – who 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 sceptre. 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 sceptre.
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,
cloaca. 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 who holds a Sword in his right hand. The
Marseille Tarot shows a seated king with a Sword upraised in his right hand, holding a sceptre
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 who 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. Judgement. 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 who holds a Disc, Pentacle, or Coin. The
Marseille Tarot 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 sceptre 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 sceptre 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. Thriftlessness.
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 Sephiroth are 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) for Tiphareth. (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 Chesed and 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 comes Malkuth, 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 Sephiroth from 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!).