Samekh: The Hebrew Letter of Prop or Support

Samekh is the fifteenth Hebrew letter and a simple letter; its name means 'prop' or 'support' and its value is 60. Its closed circular form is read as an image of the encircling, sustaining presence of God. The Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Formation), the foundational text of Jewish letter-mysticism compiled in late antiquity, divides the twenty-two Hebrew consonants into three groups: three 'mother' letters (Aleph, Mem, Shin) assigned to the elements Air, Water and Fire; seven 'double' letters, each with a hard and soft pronunciation, assigned to the seven classical planets and to seven pairs of opposites; and twelve 'simple' letters assigned to the twelve signs of the zodiac and the twelve months. As a simple letter Samekh is assigned to the sign Sagittarius and the month of Kislev.

A separate and much later system, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (founded 1888), mapped the twenty-two letters onto the twenty-two trumps of the tarot along the paths of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. This tarot correspondence is a modern Western-esoteric overlay, not part of the ancient Hebrew or classical Kabbalistic tradition. The Golden Dawn assigns Samekh to Temperance (trump XIV), whose arrow-like tempering of opposites suits the archer of Sagittarius.