Meaning
Daleth, the door, joins Wisdom and Understanding, the two spheres the Hermetic writers picture as the father and mother of the Tree, across its highest horizontal. With the Empress, trump III, and Venus, the Golden Dawn made it the path of fertility and creative union. In our own words, it is the meeting of force and form that lets anything grow, from a family to a body of work.
The letter
Daleth is the fourth letter, worth 4, and its name means a door. The Sefer Yetzirah makes it a double letter, but its versions give it Mars (the short, long and Saadia versions), the Sun (the Gra version) or Mercury (Kircher). Venus is the Golden Dawn's planet, first printed in 777 in 1909, and we label it so. Westcott, a founder of the order, printed the other two in 1887 and 1893 and wrote that neither was right.
Lévi put the Emperor on Daleth; the Golden Dawn's tables have the Empress, one letter earlier in the trump sequence. Crowley's Thoth deck keeps both name and place.
On the Tree
On Kircher's tree this is the highest of the three horizontal paths, joining Chokmah on the viewer's right to Binah on the left. That is one of the plainest differences between the tree we draw and the Jewish ones. On the Gra and Ari trees the three horizontals carry the three mother letters; on Kircher's they carry Daleth, Teth and Peh, two doubles and a simple letter, because the letters simply run in alphabetical order down the tree. The Thirty-Two Paths of Wisdom calls this path "the Illuminating Intelligence", the same title it gives Chokmah.
A person whose personality or soul card is the Empress has this path marked. The card sits here by the Golden Dawn's table, and the birth card by Greer's rule; the joining of the two is EsoTerrier's own.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- The Golden Dawn's planet
- Venus, in the order first printed in 777 (1909) sourced
- The Sefer Yetzirah's planet
- A planet, in other orders: the short, long and Saadia versions give Mars; the Gra version the Sun; Kircher Mercury disputed
- On the Jewish trees
- The Gra and Ari trees put the double letters on the vertical paths, so Daleth need not be here sourced
- Birth card on this path
- Marked when a person's personality or soul card is the Empress (Greer's method on the Golden Dawn's table) our construction
- Our keywords
- Fertility, love, creative union our construction
How the schools read it
- Sefer Yetzirah (2nd to 9th century)
- One of the seven double letters, with a planet: in its short, long and Saadia versions Mars.
- Lévi and the French school (1854 to 1856)
- IV The Emperor on Daleth.
- The Golden Dawn (1888; *777*, 1909)
- III The Empress, with the planet Venus. The planet's order is the order's own.
- EsoTerrier
- Force meeting form so that something can grow, from a family to a body of work.
Claims about it
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Path 14 and the attributions on this page are Kabbalah.
falseWhat the record shows: The Tree comes from Kabbalah, a Jewish mystical tradition, which has no tarot and its own ways of drawing and reading it. The tables here are the Hermetic Qabalah's, compiled by Agrippa, Mathers and the Golden Dawn.
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A birth card on Path 14 is the path a person is walking, or is tasked with, for life.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: No tradition gives anyone a path. Placing Greer's birth cards on the Golden Dawn's paths is our own combination, and the page reads the path, nothing more.
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The planet of Path 14's letter is the Sefer Yetzirah's own attribution.
falseWhat the record shows: The Sefer Yetzirah gives the double letters planets, but its versions run in other orders. This one is the Golden Dawn's, first printed in 777 in 1909.
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On this tree the mother letters lie on the horizontal paths.
falseWhat the record shows: True of the Gra and Ari trees of Jewish Kabbalah. On Kircher's tree the horizontals carry Daleth, Teth and Peh, and the mothers sit on paths 11, 23 and 31.
