Meaning
Qoph, the back of the head, links feeling to the physical world. With the Moon, trump XVIII, and Pisces, the Golden Dawn made it the path of dreams and instinct. In our own words, it is walking on when the way is not fully visible, and learning which fears to trust; the card's road runs between two towers under a moon that gives little light.
The letter
Qoph is the nineteenth letter, worth 100, the first of the hundreds. Its traditional gloss is the back of the head; scholars of the early alphabet are unsure of the name, and the eye of a needle and a monkey have both been proposed. The Sefer Yetzirah counts Qoph among the twelve simple letters and gives it Pisces, the last sign, in every version we read; the Golden Dawn kept the sign. Lévi put the Sun on Qoph; the Golden Dawn has the Moon, the card before.
On the Tree
On Kircher's tree the path runs diagonally from Netzach, at the foot of the Pillar of Mercy on the viewer's right, down to Malkuth at the foot of the Tree; it mirrors path 31, Shin, which comes down from Hod on the left. With Tav, path 32, these are the three paths that reach the Kingdom. 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 Corporeal Intelligence", in Westcott's English, a title that fits a path ending in the world of the body.
A person whose personality or soul card is the Moon has this path marked. Card 18 reduces to 9, so the Moon's soul card is the Hermit, whose path, Yod, runs higher up the same side of the Tree. The joining of the cards to the paths 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.
- Sign
- Pisces: the same in every version of the Sefer Yetzirah we read, kept by the Golden Dawn sourced
- Scholars' reading of the name
- Uncertain (an eye of a needle, or a monkey, are proposed) disputed
- On the Jewish trees
- The Gra and Ari trees put the simple letters on the diagonal paths, so Qoph need not be here sourced
- Birth card on this path
- Marked when a person's personality or soul card is the Moon (Greer's method on the Golden Dawn's table) our construction
- Our keywords
- Dreams, instinct, the unclear road our construction
How the schools read it
- Sefer Yetzirah (2nd to 9th century)
- One of the twelve simple letters, with the sign Pisces.
- Lévi and the French school (1854 to 1856)
- XIX The Sun on Qoph.
- The Golden Dawn (1888; *777*, 1909)
- XVIII The Moon, with the sign Pisces.
- EsoTerrier
- Instinct and dream: walking on when the way is not fully visible, and learning which fears to trust.
Claims about it
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Path 29 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 29 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 29'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 29 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.
