Meaning
Yod, the hand and the smallest letter, runs from Mercy to the centre of the Tree. With the Hermit, trump IX, and Virgo, the Golden Dawn made it the path of solitude and guidance. In our own words, it is patient inner work: stepping back for a while to find a light worth carrying back to others. The card's lantern is a picture of that, not a recommendation to withdraw from anything.
The letter
Yod is the tenth letter, worth 10, the first of the letters that count in tens. Its traditional gloss is a hand, and scholars read the name as an arm or a hand. It is also the smallest letter of the alphabet. The Sefer Yetzirah counts Yod among the twelve simple letters and gives it Virgo in every version we read; the Golden Dawn kept the sign. Yod is also the first letter of the four-letter name, which the Golden Dawn's tables tie to Chokmah and the suit of Wands; that is a different use of the same letter, not this path.
Lévi put the Wheel of Fortune here, numbered X; the Golden Dawn has the Hermit, IX.
On the Tree
On Kircher's tree the path runs diagonally from Chesed, on the viewer's right, to Tiphareth at the centre; it mirrors path 22, Lamed, which comes in from Geburah on the left. On the Gra and Ari trees of Jewish Kabbalah the simple letters lie on the diagonals too, though not in this order, and there is no tarot. The Thirty-Two Paths of Wisdom calls it "the Intelligence of Will", in Westcott's English.
A person whose personality or soul card is the Hermit has this path marked, by our own joining of Greer's birth cards to the Golden Dawn's table. No tradition places a person on a path for life.
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
- Virgo: the same in every version of the Sefer Yetzirah we read, kept by the Golden Dawn sourced
- On the Jewish trees
- The Gra and Ari trees put the simple letters on the diagonal paths, so Yod need not be here sourced
- Birth card on this path
- Marked when a person's personality or soul card is the Hermit (Greer's method on the Golden Dawn's table) our construction
- Our keywords
- Solitude, guidance, the small flame our construction
How the schools read it
- Sefer Yetzirah (2nd to 9th century)
- One of the twelve simple letters, with the sign Virgo.
- Lévi and the French school (1854 to 1856)
- X Wheel of Fortune on Yod.
- The Golden Dawn (1888; *777*, 1909)
- IX The Hermit, with the sign Virgo.
- EsoTerrier
- Patient inner work: stepping back for a while to find a light worth carrying back.
Claims about it
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Path 20 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 20 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 letter of Path 20 is a vibrational frequency that sets a person's energy.
falseWhat the record shows: The Sefer Yetzirah says the letters were engraved, weighed and combined to make the world: a creation account, not physics. Nothing about a letter is measured, and nothing about a person follows from it.
