Meaning
Tav, the mark or seal and the last letter, joins the Foundation to the Kingdom at the foot of the Tree. With the World, trump XXI, and Saturn, the Golden Dawn made it the path of completion. In our own words, it is completion and grounding: the work finished and set in the world, and, read the other way, the first step back in. The card closes the sequence of the trumps; the path closes the Tree.
The letter
Tav is the twenty-second and last letter, worth 400. The traditional gloss is a cross, a mark or a seal; scholars read the name as a mark. The Sefer Yetzirah makes it a double letter with a planet, but its short, long and Saadia versions give Tav the Moon, the Gra version Jupiter, and Kircher Mars. Saturn is the Golden Dawn's choice, first printed in 777 in 1909. The order also gave Tav to Earth, as it gave Shin to Spirit, so that those two elements had letters as well.
Lévi too put the World on Tav, the one place where his scheme and the Golden Dawn's agree on the same card and letter. Crowley's Thoth deck calls it the Universe.
On the Tree
On Kircher's tree this is the vertical at the foot of the Middle Pillar, from Yesod to Malkuth, the last path in the alphabetical order that runs down the Tree from Aleph at the top. On the Gra and Ari trees of Jewish Kabbalah the double letters lie on the verticals too, though not in this order, and there is no tarot. The Thirty-Two Paths of Wisdom calls it "the Administrative Intelligence", in Westcott's English.
In the Golden Dawn's grades a student began in Malkuth and climbed, so Tav was the first path worked on the way up: a teaching order, not a ranking of people. A person whose personality or soul card is the World has this path marked, by our own combination of Greer's birth cards with the Golden Dawn's table; no tradition sets anyone on it 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
- Saturn, 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 Moon; the Gra version Jupiter; Kircher Mars disputed
- Also given by the Golden Dawn
- Tav to Earth sourced
- Thoth variant (Crowley, 1944)
- In Crowley's Thoth deck: The Universe sourced
- On the Jewish trees
- The Gra and Ari trees put the double letters on the vertical paths, so Tav need not be here sourced
- Birth card on this path
- Marked when a person's personality or soul card is the World (Greer's method on the Golden Dawn's table) our construction
- Our keywords
- Completion, embodiment, the first step inward 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 Moon.
- Lévi and the French school (1854 to 1856)
- XXI The World on Tav.
- The Golden Dawn (1888; *777*, 1909)
- XXI The World, with the planet Saturn. The planet's order is the order's own.
- Crowley's Thoth deck (1944)
- The Universe, the same card renamed.
- EsoTerrier
- Completion and grounding: the work finished and set in the world, and the first step back in.
Claims about it
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Path 32 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 32 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 32'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 32 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.
