Sephiroth

Severity

geh-BOO-rah

Origin 1270 to 1300

Geburah means Severity (also translated Strength or Power), the fifth Sephirah, on the Pillar of Severity below Binah. Its divine name is Elohim Gibor, its archangel is Kamael, and its angelic order is the Seraphim, the Fiery Serpents; its planet is Mars, the warrior and disciplinarian. It is the sphere of judgment, restraint, and the necessary destruction that clears away what is corrupt or outworn.

As a sphere of experience Geburah is power, courage, discipline, and severity: the surgeon's knife and the just enforcement of law. It is the counterweight to the boundless mercy of Chesed, and the two together keep the Tree in balance, for mercy without severity dissolves into indulgence and severity without mercy hardens into cruelty. It is symbolized by the number five, the pentagon, the sword, and the mighty warrior, and it governs the will to cut away, to defend, and to correct.

Facts

Origins

Origin Period

1270 to 1300 1Zoharic Kabbalah

Origin Periodthe subject's own account

1888 to 1900 2Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Origin Period

200 to 600 CE 1Sefer Yetzirah, where the ten sefirot are first enumerated

Origin Period

Geburah appears among the Sefer Yetzirah's original ten Sephiroth of Nothingness, a text Scholem places between the second and sixth century CE and which survives in recensions that do not agree in every particular. 1

Origin Period

Geburah's place in the now-standard system of ten Sephiroth, with the specific divine name, archangel and planetary associations recorded on this page, crystallizes in the Zoharic literature that Scholem locates in Castile between 1270 and 1300. 1

Origin Periodthe subject's own account

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in 1888, fixed Geburah's place within its own ceremonial correspondence system by 1900, the scheme this atlas follows for Geburah's Golden Dawn associations. 2Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Place of Origin

Sefer Yetzirah tradition, late-antique Near East 1

Place of Origin

Sefirotic system developed in Provence and Castile 1

Place of Origin

Western correspondences added in London 1

Language

Biblical Hebrew 1

Language

Aramaic 1

Attributions

Ruling Planetthe subject's own account

Mars 2Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Divine Namethe subject's own account

Elohim Gibor 2Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Incensethe subject's own account

Tobacco 3Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Gemstonethe subject's own account

Ruby 3Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Plantthe subject's own account

Oak 3Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Queen Scale Colourthe subject's own account

Scarlet Red 2Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

Tree of Life Pillarthe subject's own account

Pillar of Severity 2

Identity

Position

5 of 10 1

Also Known As

Geburah 1

Also Known As

Gevurah 1

Learn More

Geburah, Severity

Geburah, Severity or strength, is the fifth sefirah, the counterweight to Chesed and the necessary discipline of the Tree. It heads the left-hand Pillar of Severity beneath Binah and expresses judgement, restraint, power and the setting of limits, the divine severity that prunes, restricts and destroys what must not continue, so that mercy's boundless outflow is given form and justice. It is also called Din, judgement, or Pachad, fear.

In the Kabbalistic understanding Geburah is not evil but essential: without the cutting-back of severity the generosity of Chesed would run to formlessness, and the Kabbalists located the origin of evil precisely in severity unbalanced, judgement divorced from mercy. Its divine name is Elohim Gibor, the God of might or of battles. The sefirah takes its place in the doctrine named in the Sefer Yetzirah and developed across the medieval and early-modern Kabbalah; Geburah is the martial, disciplinary power of the divine, the strong hand and the sword, held in tension with the open hand of Chesed across the central axis of the Tree.

Sources The ZoharTraditionally attributed to Moses de Leon with Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation in Theory and PracticeAryeh Kaplan

Geburah and the Western Correspondences

Geburah is assigned the planet Mars, and no attribution in the system is more transparent: Mars, the classical planet of war, force, aggression and cutting energy, is the exact planetary counterpart of the sefirah of severity, judgement and the sword. In the Golden Dawn scheme of 1888 and in Liber 777, Geburah's colour is red, and it corresponds to the four Fives of the tarot suits, the fives being, across the deck, the cards of conflict, loss and struggle, in keeping with the martial character of the sphere. The Mars pairing makes Geburah the seat of strength, courage and the destructive power that clears the way for renewal.

As everywhere on the Tree, the distinction of provenance holds: Geburah as the fifth sefirah, its name Elohim Gibor, and its theological role as divine severity are Jewish Kabbalah, whereas the assignment to Mars, to a tarot rank and to a colour scale is Hermetic Qabalah, the 1888 Western magical systematisation. The severity of Geburah is a doctrine of the divine nature in the one tradition and a category of ceremonial correspondence in the other.

Connections