The Path of Beth: Kether to Binah

This is the twelfth of the thirty-two paths of wisdom, the numbering that runs on from the ten sefirot so that the ten spheres and the twenty-two connecting paths together make thirty-two, exactly the count named at the opening of the Sefer Yetzirah. It joins Kether, the Crown, to Binah, Understanding, on the left side of the upper Tree, and it carries the Hebrew letter Beth, whose name means "house" and whose form began as a pictograph of a dwelling. In the Sefer Yetzirah Beth is one of the seven double letters, letters with two sounds, hard and soft, and these seven are assigned to the seven classical planets; Beth is given to Mercury, the planet of mind and communication. The letter-to-planet attribution is thus rooted in the Jewish source itself, part of the ancient scheme in which the alphabet is the instrument of creation, each letter a channel of a particular divine energy between two spheres.