Meaning
Samekh, the prop or support, rises straight up the Middle Pillar from the Foundation to the heart of the Tree. With Temperance, trump XIV, and Sagittarius, the archer, the Golden Dawn made it the path of integration and testing. In our own words, it is the path of blending opposites through patient trial, aiming higher while keeping one's balance, as the card's figure pours water between two cups.
The letter
Samekh is the fifteenth letter, worth 60. Its traditional gloss is a prop or support; scholars of the early alphabet are not sure of the name and suggest a pillar or support. The Sefer Yetzirah counts it among the twelve simple letters and gives it Sagittarius in every version we read; the Golden Dawn kept the sign. Lévi put the Devil on Samekh; the Golden Dawn has Temperance, the card before. Crowley's Thoth deck keeps the card on this path and calls it Art.
On the Tree
On Kircher's tree this is a vertical path on the Middle Pillar, between Tiphareth and Yesod, and with path 13 above and path 32 below it makes the line straight down the centre of the Tree. On the Gra and Ari trees of Jewish Kabbalah the simple letters lie on the diagonals, so Samekh is elsewhere, and there is no tarot. The Thirty-Two Paths of Wisdom calls it "the Intelligence of Probation, or Tentative", in Westcott's English. Until 14 October 2026 our engine added a few words of its own to that title; it now quotes Westcott exactly.
A person whose personality or soul card is Temperance has this path marked, by 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.
- Sign
- Sagittarius: 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: Art sourced
- Scholars' reading of the name
- Uncertain, perhaps a pillar or support disputed
- On the Jewish trees
- The Gra and Ari trees put the simple letters on the diagonal paths, so Samekh need not be here sourced
- Birth card on this path
- Marked when a person's personality or soul card is Temperance (Greer's method on the Golden Dawn's table) our construction
- Our keywords
- Integration, testing, the middle way our construction
How the schools read it
- Sefer Yetzirah (2nd to 9th century)
- One of the twelve simple letters, with the sign Sagittarius.
- Lévi and the French school (1854 to 1856)
- XV The Devil on Samekh.
- The Golden Dawn (1888; *777*, 1909)
- XIV Temperance, with the sign Sagittarius.
- Crowley's Thoth deck (1944)
- Art, the same card renamed.
- EsoTerrier
- Blending opposites through patient trial: aiming higher while keeping one's balance.
Claims about it
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Path 25 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 25 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 traditional gloss of Path 25'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.
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The letter of Path 25 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.
