Meaning
Kaph, the palm of the hand, runs down the right-hand pillar from Mercy to Victory. With the Wheel of Fortune, trump X, and Jupiter, the Golden Dawn made it the path of cycles and chance. In our own words, it is the path of turning points: learning to read timing and to receive what changes. A wheel turns both ways.
The letter
Kaph is the eleventh letter, worth 20, and its name means the palm of a hand in the tradition and in scholarship. The Sefer Yetzirah makes it a double letter with a planet, but its versions disagree: the short, long and Saadia versions give Kaph the Sun, the Gra version Venus, and Kircher the Moon. Jupiter is the Golden Dawn's choice, first printed in 777 in 1909.
Lévi put Strength on Kaph, numbered XI in the Marseille order; the Golden Dawn has the Wheel. Crowley's Thoth deck keeps the card here and calls it Fortune.
On the Tree
On Kircher's tree the path runs vertically down the Pillar of Mercy, on the viewer's right, from Chesed to Netzach, the lower half of the pillar that path 16 begins. On the Gra and Ari trees of Jewish Kabbalah the double letters lie on the verticals as well, though the order differs, and there is no tarot. The Thirty-Two Paths of Wisdom calls it "the Intelligence of Conciliation", in Westcott's English.
A person whose personality or soul card is the Wheel of Fortune has this path marked. Card 10 is never a soul card by Greer's rule, since the soul card is a single digit; it appears as a personality card, and as the hidden factor on the way from 19 to 1, which this tree does not draw. The placing is our own combination of two published systems.
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
- Jupiter, 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 the Sun; the Gra version Venus; Kircher the Moon disputed
- Thoth variant (Crowley, 1944)
- In Crowley's Thoth deck: Fortune sourced
- Scholars' reading of the name
- Palm of a hand disputed
- On the Jewish trees
- The Gra and Ari trees put the double letters on the vertical paths, so Kaph need not be here sourced
- Birth card on this path
- Marked when a person's personality or soul card is Wheel of Fortune (Greer's method on the Golden Dawn's table) our construction
- Our keywords
- Cycles, chance, timing 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 the Sun.
- Lévi and the French school (1854 to 1856)
- XI Strength on Kaph.
- The Golden Dawn (1888; *777*, 1909)
- X Wheel of Fortune, with the planet Jupiter. The planet's order is the order's own.
- Crowley's Thoth deck (1944)
- Fortune, the same card renamed.
- EsoTerrier
- Cycles and turning points: learning to read timing, and to receive what changes.
Claims about it
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Path 21 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 21 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 21'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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The letter of Path 21 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.
