Geburah

Strength, Severity (also Din, Judgment, and Pachad, Fear)

The Fifth Path is called the Radical Intelligence, because it is itself the Essence equal to the Unity, uniting itself to the Binah, Intelligence which emanates from the primordial depths of Wisdom or Chokmah.
The 5th Path, the Radical Intelligence: The 32 Paths of Wisdom, trans. Westcott

Correspondences

Number: 5 of the ten
Meaning: Strength, Severity (also Din, Judgment, and Pachad, Fear)
Pillar: Pillar of Severity
Triad: Ethical Triad
World: Yetzirah
Divine name (Atziluth): Elohim Gibor אלהים גבור
the Mighty God, God of Battles
Archangel (Briah): Khamael כמאל
the Severity or the Burner of God
Angelic choir (Yetzirah): Seraphim שרפים
the Fiery Serpents, the burning ones of Isaiah 6
Mundane chakra (Assiah): Madim מאדים
Mars, the red one
Colours: King: Orange · Queen: Scarlet red · Prince: Bright scarlet · Princess: Red, flecked black
Magical image: A mighty warrior in his chariot
Spiritual experience: The Vision of Power
Virtue: Energy; courage
Vice: Cruelty; destruction
Titles: Din (Justice, Judgment); Pachad (Fear); the Radical Intelligence
Symbols: The pentagon; the five-petalled Tudor rose; the sword; the spear; the scourge; the chain
Tarot: The four Fives
In the body: The right arm (777; the Zohar gives the left arm)
Part of the soul: Ruach
Grade: Adeptus Major 6°=5□
Qliphoth: Golachab, the burners or arsonists, flaming destruction; arch-demon(s): Asmodeus
Gods (777): Egyptian: Horus, Nephthys · Greek: Ares, Hades · Roman: Mars · Hindu: Vishnu (as Varuna-avatar)
Precious stone: Ruby
Plant: Oak; nux vomica; nettle
Animal: Basilisk
Perfume: Tobacco
Magical weapon: The sword, spear, scourge or chain

In Jewish Kabbalah

Gevurah, also called Din (judgment) and Pachad (fear), is the left arm of the divine body and is identified with Isaac, bound on the altar at Mount Moriah: the patriarch of awe, “the Fear of Isaac” (Genesis 31:42). It sets limits on Chesed’s outpouring, so that the creation can survive. In Lurianic thought the Qliphoth, the husks of evil, take their nourishment from an excess of Din cut off from mercy.

In the Golden Dawn and Thelema

Geburah is the sphere of Mars and of the Adeptus Major. Its weapon is the sword, which is also the Golden Dawn magician’s weapon of banishing and of the element Air in its aspect of judgement. The Fives of the Thoth deck (Strife, Disappointment, Defeat, Worry) show the disruption that comes when established order is shaken; Crowley says that the five always introduces motion, upsetting the stability of the four.

Dion Fortune

Fortune devotes some of her most pointed writing to Geburah, warning her readers against the sentimental view that only mercy is holy. The surgeon’s knife, the purge and the destroying of what is outworn are all works of Geburah, “the Kindly Severity”. Its virtue is courage; its vice is cruelty, which is severity cut off from its purpose. The Vision of Power is the seeing of force as it truly works.

In the Tarot

Each sephirah rules the four small cards of its number. From two to ten, each card is also one of the 36 decans of the zodiac, ruled by a planet in a sign, following the Golden Dawn’s Book T.

Card	Thoth title	Book T title	Decan
5 of Wands	Strife	Lord of Strife	Saturn in Leo
5 of Cups	Disappointment	Lord of Loss in Pleasure	Mars in Scorpio
5 of Swords	Defeat	Lord of Defeat	Venus in Aquarius
5 of Disks	Worry	Lord of Material Trouble	Mercury in Taurus

Paths from Geburah

Read further

Geburah on Wikipediaoverview of the Jewish and Hermetic sources
Sepher Yetzirah and the 32 Paths of WisdomW. Wynn Westcott, trans., 1887
The Kabbalah UnveiledS. L. MacGregor Mathers, from Knorr von Rosenroth’s Kabbala Denudata, 1887
Liber 777 RevisedAleister Crowley, 1909/1955
The Book of ThothAleister Crowley, 1944
The Golden DawnIsrael Regardie, ed., 1937–40
A Garden of PomegranatesIsrael Regardie, 1932
The Mystical QabalahDion Fortune, 1935
The Pictorial Key to the TarotA. E. Waite, 1910
The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the AgesPaul Foster Case, 1947
A Practical Guide to Qabalistic SymbolismGareth Knight, 1965

Also in the background throughout: Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (1974) and Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941), for the Jewish tradition as historians understand it; Aryeh Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah (1990); Kenneth Grant, Nightside of Eden (1977), for the Qliphoth; Robert Wang, The Qabalistic Tarot (1983).