Meaning
Teth, the serpent, joins Mercy and Severity across the middle of the Tree. With Strength, trump VIII, and Leo, the lion, the Golden Dawn made it the path of mastered force. In our own words, it is power held gently: courage that works through steadiness rather than force, as the woman on Smith's card closes the lion's jaws without a struggle.
The letter
Teth is the ninth letter, worth 9. The traditional gloss is a serpent; scholars of the early alphabet are unsure of the name, and some read it as a wheel. The Sefer Yetzirah counts Teth among the twelve simple letters and gives it Leo in every version we read. Lévi put the Hermit here.
Strength VIII, Strength XI, and Lust
In the Marseille decks Strength is XI and Justice VIII. The Golden Dawn put Strength on Teth, with Leo, and Justice on Lamed, with Libra, and since Leo comes before Libra in the zodiac it switched their numbers to follow the letters. Nothing else required the switch; it was suggested in the Cipher Manuscripts and printed as VIII and XI on Pamela Colman Smith's deck of 1909, while 777, the same year, still printed XI on this path. Crowley's Thoth deck keeps the card on this path, renames it Lust and numbers it XI, the Marseille number. Our chart matches cards by their trump, never by the number alone, so a Marseille or Thoth reader's 11 still lands here.
On the Tree
On Kircher's tree this is the middle of the three horizontal paths, joining Chesed on the viewer's right to Geburah on the left. On the Jewish trees the horizontals carry the mother letters, and none of them is Teth. The Thirty-Two Paths of Wisdom calls it "the Intelligence of all the Activities of the Spiritual Beings", in Westcott's English.
A person whose personality or soul card is Strength has this path marked: our own combination, which no tradition makes.
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
- Leo: 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: Lust, numbered XI, on this same path (the Marseille decks number Strength XI too) sourced
- Scholars' reading of the name
- Uncertain, perhaps a wheel disputed
- On the Jewish trees
- The Gra and Ari trees put the simple letters on the diagonal paths, so Teth need not be here sourced
- Birth card on this path
- Marked when a person's personality or soul card is Strength (Greer's method on the Golden Dawn's table) our construction
- Our keywords
- Courage, patience, mastered force our construction
How the schools read it
- Sefer Yetzirah (2nd to 9th century)
- One of the twelve simple letters, with the sign Leo.
- Lévi and the French school (1854 to 1856)
- IX The Hermit on Teth.
- The Golden Dawn (1888; *777*, 1909)
- VIII Strength, with the sign Leo.
- Crowley's Thoth deck (1944)
- Lust, numbered XI.
- EsoTerrier
- Power held gently: courage that works through steadiness rather than force.
Claims about it
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Path 19 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 19 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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Strength VIII and Justice XI were a geometric necessity.
falseWhat the record shows: The reason was the zodiac: with Strength on Leo and Justice on Libra, the card numbers were switched to follow the signs' order. 777 still prints XI and VIII on the same paths.
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In Crowley's Thoth deck this card keeps its number and only changes its name.
falseWhat the record shows: The Thoth deck numbers Lust XI and Adjustment VIII, the Marseille numbers, on the same paths as ours.
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The traditional gloss of Path 19's letter is what its name originally meant.
disputedWhat the record shows: The glosses are the ones the Hermetic tradition works with, and we show them. Scholars of the early alphabet read several names differently.
