Meaning
Peh, the mouth, joins feeling and thought across the lowest horizontal of the Tree. With the Tower, trump XVI, and Mars, the Golden Dawn made it the path of sudden change. In our own words, it is the path where false structures break, so that something truer can be said and built. It is a picture of change.
The letter
Peh is the seventeenth letter, worth 80. Its traditional gloss is a mouth, and scholars read the name as a mouth or perhaps a corner. The Sefer Yetzirah makes it a double letter with a planet, but its versions disagree: the short, long and Saadia versions give Peh Venus, the Gra version Mercury, and Kircher Saturn. Mars is the Golden Dawn's choice, first printed in 777 in 1909, and we label it so.
Lévi put the Star on Peh; the Golden Dawn has the Tower. Our engine once added a word of its own to this path's title; it now quotes Westcott's English as printed.
On the Tree
On Kircher's tree this is the lowest of the three horizontal paths, joining Netzach on the viewer's right to Hod on the left. On the Gra and Ari trees of Jewish Kabbalah the horizontals carry the three mother letters, and Peh, a double letter, sits on a vertical; Kircher's alphabetical order is why the two drawings disagree. The Thirty-Two Paths of Wisdom calls it "the Exciting Intelligence", in Westcott's English.
A person whose personality or soul card is the Tower has this path marked. Since 1 + 6 = 7, the Tower's soul card is the Chariot, whose path, Cheth, runs down the Pillar of Severity. Putting the cards on the paths is our own combination; no tradition gives a person 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.
- The Golden Dawn's planet
- Mars, 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 Venus; the Gra version Mercury; Kircher Saturn disputed
- On the Jewish trees
- The Gra and Ari trees put the double letters on the vertical paths, so Peh need not be here sourced
- Birth card on this path
- Marked when a person's personality or soul card is the Tower (Greer's method on the Golden Dawn's table) our construction
- Our keywords
- Breakthrough, truth, sudden change 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 Venus.
- Lévi and the French school (1854 to 1856)
- XVII The Star on Peh.
- The Golden Dawn (1888; *777*, 1909)
- XVI The Tower, with the planet Mars. The planet's order is the order's own.
- EsoTerrier
- Breakthrough: false structures giving way, often suddenly, so that something truer can be said and built.
Claims about it
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Path 27 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 27 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 27'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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On this tree the mother letters lie on the horizontal paths.
falseWhat the record shows: True of the Gra and Ari trees of Jewish Kabbalah. On Kircher's tree the horizontals carry Daleth, Teth and Peh, and the mothers sit on paths 11, 23 and 31.
