Meaning
Heh, the window, brings the raw drive of Wisdom down to the centre of the Tree. With the Emperor, trump IV, and the sign Aries, the Golden Dawn made it the path of authority and the first structure. In our own words, it is initiative given structure: the will to lead, to found and to set things in order, and the stiffness that can come with it.
The letter
Heh is the fifth letter, worth 5, glossed as a window. The Sefer Yetzirah makes it the first of the twelve simple letters, each with a sign of the zodiac, and every version we read gives it Aries; the Golden Dawn kept that. Lévi put the Hierophant here, one card later than the Golden Dawn.
The Thoth variant
In Crowley's Thoth deck, painted by Lady Frieda Harris from 1938 to 1943, the Star takes Heh and this path, and the Emperor moves to Tzaddi, path 28. Crowley based the swap on a verse of the Book of the Law, "Tzaddi is not the Star", written down in Cairo in 1904. He kept the signs with the cards, so on his tree the Emperor still carries Aries. Some calculators mix the two schemes and give the Star to path 15 under a "Golden Dawn" label; that is not the Golden Dawn's table. We keep the Golden Dawn's, which our Tarot numbering and Greer's method assume, and give Crowley's as a variant.
On the Tree
On Kircher's tree the path runs diagonally from Chokmah, at the head of the Pillar of Mercy, down to Tiphareth at the centre. On the Gra and Ari trees of Jewish Kabbalah the simple letters lie on the diagonals as well, though not in this order, and there is no tarot. The Thirty-Two Paths of Wisdom calls it "the Constituting Intelligence".
A person whose personality or soul card is the Emperor has this path marked, our own combination of Greer's cards and the Golden Dawn's paths.
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.
- Sign
- Aries: the same in every version of the Sefer Yetzirah we read, kept by the Golden Dawn sourced
- Thoth variant (Crowley, 1944)
- In Crowley's Thoth deck the Star takes this letter and path, and the Emperor moves to Tzaddi, path 28, keeping Aries disputed
- On the Jewish trees
- The Gra and Ari trees put the simple letters on the diagonal paths, so Heh need not be here sourced
- Birth card on this path
- Marked when a person's personality or soul card is the Emperor (Greer's method on the Golden Dawn's table) our construction
- Our keywords
- Vision, authority, the first structure our construction
How the schools read it
- Sefer Yetzirah (2nd to 9th century)
- One of the twelve simple letters, with the sign Aries.
- Lévi and the French school (1854 to 1856)
- V The Hierophant on Heh.
- The Golden Dawn (1888; *777*, 1909)
- IV The Emperor, with the sign Aries.
- Crowley's Thoth deck (1944)
- The Star, by his reading of the Book of the Law; the Emperor goes to path 28.
- EsoTerrier
- Initiative given structure: the will to lead, to found and to set things in order, and the stiffness that can come with it.
Claims about it
-
Path 15 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.
-
A birth card on Path 15 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.
-
By the Golden Dawn's attributions the Emperor sits on path 28 and the Star on path 15.
falseWhat the record shows: That is Crowley's Thoth placement. The Golden Dawn gives Heh and path 15 to the Emperor and Tzaddi and path 28 to the Star, and so do we.
-
Crowley's swap of the Emperor and the Star is the correct attribution.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: A claim of revelation, after a verse of the Book of the Law. We keep the Golden Dawn's table and give the swap as a variant.
