Vav: The Hebrew Letter of Nail or Hook

Vav is the sixth Hebrew letter and a simple letter; its name means 'nail' or 'hook' and its value is 6. Grammatically Vav is the great connector, the prefixed 'and' that joins clauses, and Kabbalists read it as the hook that binds heaven to earth. 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 Vav is assigned to the sign Taurus and the month of Iyar.

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 Vav to The Hierophant (trump V), the teacher and traditional channel of sacred knowledge.