Tiphareth, Beauty: the centre where the Tree meets

Meaning

Tiphareth sits at the heart of the Tree, joined to more spheres than any other, and the Hermetic writers read it as the place where Mercy and Severity are held in balance. With the Sun as its sphere, it is their picture of an integrated centre, where the higher and lower parts of the Tree meet. Twentieth-century writers went further and read it as a stage of the psyche; that is their interpretation, not a fact about the Tree. In our own words, Tiphareth is balance at the centre: the place from which every other part can be seen and weighed.

On the Tree

Eight paths meet here, more than at any other sphere: Gimel from Kether, the High Priestess's path; Heh from Chokmah, the Emperor's; Zayin from Binah, the Lovers'; Yod from Chesed, the Hermit's; Lamed from Geburah, the path of Justice; Nun to Netzach, Death's; Samekh to Yesod, Temperance's; and Ayin to Hod, the Devil's. So a great many birth cards, about a third of the trumps, have a path that touches Tiphareth; that says something about the drawing, not about the people. No card belongs to the sphere itself; the Golden Dawn gives it the four Sixes and, through the four-letter name, the Princes and the suit of Swords.

The Thirty-Two Paths of Wisdom calls it "the Intelligence of the Mediating Influence" in Westcott's English.

The archangel the tables disagree on

Agrippa, 777, the Golden Dawn and Dion Fortune give Tiphareth the archangel Raphael and Hod the archangel Michael. Mathers' table of 1887 gives them the other way round, and writers who copy his table follow him. We follow the Golden Dawn and give the variant here and on Hod's page. The other names are the divine name YHVH Eloah va-Daath, "God made manifest in knowledge", and the choir of the Malachim, the Kings, in Latin letters only. Mathers spelt the sphere Tiphereth; we use Tiphareth, as the Golden Dawn's later tables do, and the modern spelling Tiferet.

In Jewish Kabbalah, where the Tree comes from, Tiferet is beauty and compassion, the harmony of the sefirot on either side; the angels, the Sun and the cards are the Hermetic Qabalah's.

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.

Archangel

Raphael; variants: Michael (Mathers 1887 and writers who copy his table) disputed

Divine name (Latin letters only)

YHVH Eloah va-Daath, “God made manifest in knowledge” sourced

Angelic choir

Malachim, Kings (Virtues) sourced

Tarot trumps

None of its own: the trumps belong to the paths. The trumps of the paths that meet here are the High Priestess, the Emperor, the Lovers, the Hermit, Justice, Death, Temperance, the Devil. sourced

Our keywords

Balance, the heart, the centre our construction

How the schools read it

Jewish Kabbalah

Tiferet, beauty, also Rachamim, compassion: the harmony of Chesed and Gevurah at the centre of the lower sefirot; linked with Jacob.

Agrippa (1533; English 1651)

The divine name, the archangel Raphael, the Malachim and the sphere of the Sun.

The Golden Dawn (1888; *777*, 1909)

The Sun (Shemesh), the archangel Raphael and the Malachim, the Kings; the four Sixes, with the Princes and the suit of Swords.

Mathers (1887)

His table gives the archangel Michael here and Raphael to Hod: the reverse of Agrippa and the Golden Dawn.

Fortune (1935)

Follows the Golden Dawn, with Raphael for Tiphareth.

EsoTerrier

Balance at the centre: the place where the higher and lower parts of the Tree meet and each part can be weighed.

Claims about it

• Tiphareth and the attributions on this page are Kabbalah.

  false

  What 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.

• A birth card belongs to the sephirah of its number, so card 6 belongs to Tiphareth.

  false

  What the record shows: A category error in the Golden Dawn's scheme: the numbers 1 to 10 reach the sephiroth through the Minor Arcana, while the trumps belong to the 22 paths.

• Tiphareth has a tarot suit, an element, a demon and an "intelligence" of its own.

  false

  What the record shows: So our old tables said, compiled from a modern web table. In the Golden Dawn every sephirah takes the four cards of its number in all four suits; the other columns had no source and were deleted on 11 October 2026.

• The archangel of Tiphareth is Michael and the archangel of Hod is Raphael.

  disputed

  What the record shows: A real variant: Mathers' table of 1887 gives it. Agrippa, 777, the Golden Dawn and Fortune give Raphael to Tiphareth and Michael to Hod, as we do.

• Tiphareth is a Jungian archetype or a fixed level of the psyche.

  unverified

  What the record shows: A twentieth-century Hermetic reading, not a fact about the Tree. Jewish Kabbalah treats the sefirot as divine attributes; we label every reading with whose it is.

• Tiphareth's Intelligence title is part of the Sefer Yetzirah.

  disputed

  What the record shows: The titles come from a separate short text, the Thirty-Two Paths of Wisdom, first printed with the Sefer Yetzirah in 1642; its date and author are uncertain.

Elsewhere on EsoTerrier

• Path 13, Gimel: The High Priestess from Kether to Tiphareth
• Path 15, Heh: The Emperor from Chokmah to Tiphareth
• Path 17, Zayin: The Lovers from Binah to Tiphareth
• Path 20, Yod: The Hermit from Chesed to Tiphareth
• Path 22, Lamed: Justice from Geburah to Tiphareth
• Path 24, Nun: Death from Tiphareth to Netzach
• Path 25, Samekh: Temperance from Tiphareth to Yesod
• Path 26, Ayin: The Devil from Tiphareth to Hod
• Natal Chart where the Sun, the sphere of Tiphareth, is placed