Tree of Life Paths
Path 21
Planet Paths
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Origin 1850 to 1859
The twenty-first path joins Chesed, Mercy, to Netzach, Victory, descending the Pillar of Mercy on the right of the Tree. It bears the Hebrew letter Kaph (the palm of the hand, a Double letter), the planet Jupiter, and the tarot trump The Wheel of Fortune. The open palm is the hand of giving and of fate, and Jupiter is the great benefic of fortune and expansion. In the Great Work it is the stage of cycles and providence, the turning wheel of circumstance through which grace and abundance flow down from mercy into the sphere of desire and feeling.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period1850 to 1859 1Tradition: Continental occultism (Éliphas Lévi) Origin PeriodSourced to the subject's own account1888 to 1896 2Tradition: Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn: the arrangement this atlas records Origin Period200 to 600 CE 3Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters Origin PeriodPath 21, joining Chesed to Netzach under the letter Kaph, belongs to the Sefer Yetzirah's original thirty-two Paths of Wisdom, a text Scholem places between the second and sixth century CE and which survives in recensions that do not agree in every particular. 3Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah, the thirty-two Paths of Wisdom Origin PeriodSourced to the subject's own accountThe Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, founded in 1888, established its own ceremonial correspondence scheme by the mid-1890s, and it is the Golden Dawn's own trump attribution for the letter Kaph that this atlas records as the path's tarot-attribution. 2Tradition: Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn Origin PeriodThe pairing of a tarot trump with this path's letter, Kaph, first entered Kabbalistic use in Eliphas Levi's 1850s synthesis of Kabbalah and the tarot, the founding gesture of the French occult revival's Hermetic Qabalah. 1Tradition: Continental occultism (Eliphas Levi) Place of OriginSefer Yetzirah tradition, late-antique Near East 4 Place of OriginTarot overlay added in 19th-century France, then England 4 Occult Attributions
Tarot Trump AttributedStrength 5Tradition: Continental occultism (Éliphas Lévi) Tarot Trump AttributedSourced to the subject's own accountWheel of Fortune 2Tradition: Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn Learn More
The Path of Kaph: Chesed to Netzach
The twenty-first path joins Chesed, Mercy, to Netzach, Victory, descending the right-hand Pillar of Mercy from the sphere of loving-kindness to the sphere of the emotions and desire. It carries the letter Kaph, whose name means "palm of the hand", the open hand that grasps, gives and receives, and by extension the turning grip of fortune.
In the Sefer Yetzirah Kaph is one of the seven double letters assigned to the seven planets, and it is given to Jupiter, the greater benefic, the planet of expansion, abundance and good fortune, an attribution that suits both the path descending from merciful Chesed and the letter's image of the hand that bestows. The seven doubles in the Sefer Yetzirah also govern seven pairs of opposites, among them wealth and poverty, the alternation of fortune, so the association of Kaph with the turning of the wheel is present already in the ancient Jewish source.
Kaph and the Wheel of Fortune: The Tarot Overlay
This path is assigned the tarot trump The Wheel of Fortune, and the pairing could hardly be more exact: the Wheel, the card of fate, cycles and the turning of fortune's hand, answers directly to the letter Kaph's meaning of "palm of the hand" and to its planet Jupiter, the giver of fortune, as well as to the Sefer Yetzirah's pairing of the letter with wealth and poverty.
The Golden Dawn read the Wheel as the law of cyclic change governing all things below the supernals. The mapping of letters to tarot trumps descends from Eliphas Levi and was codified by the Golden Dawn from 1888, in the form given in Liber 777. The provenance must be kept clear. The path from Chesed to Netzach, the letter Kaph, and its attribution to Jupiter are Jewish, from the Sefer Yetzirah, whereas the correspondence to the Wheel of Fortune is Hermetic Qabalah, the modern Western adaptation of 1888, distinct from Jewish Kabbalah.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
In the Golden Dawn Kabbalistic attribution, Wheel of Fortune is assigned to Path 21 on the Tree of Life.
Originates in Language
Sources
1. Eliphas Levi and the French Occult Revival
Christopher McIntosh, State University of New York Press, 2011on Levi's tarot-Kabbalah synthesis and its publication in the 1850s
2. The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 6th edition
Israel Regardie, Llewellyn, 1989Book T and the tables of correspondenceView the Source 3. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism
Gershom Scholem, Schocken Books, 1961ch. 2: the Sefer Yetzirah, the thirty-two paths and the classification of the lettersView the Source 4. A History of the Occult Tarot
Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett, Duckworth, 2002on the French and English phases of the occult tarotView the Source 5. A Wicked Pack of Cards: The Origins of the Occult Tarot
Ronald Decker, Thierry Depaulis and Michael Dummett, St Martin's Press, 1996On Eliphas Levi and the Hebrew letter correspondencesView the Source The Golden Dawn
Israel Regardie, Aries Press, 1937Kaph, Jupiter, The Wheel of FortuneView the Source Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation in Theory and Practice
Liber 777
Aleister Crowley, Walter Scott, 1909the attribution of Jupiter and The Wheel of FortuneView the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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