Kether

The Crown

The First Path is called the Admirable or Hidden Intelligence because it is the Light giving the power of comprehension of the First Principle, which hath no beginning. And it is the Primal Glory, because no created being can attain to its essence.
The 1st Path, the Admirable or Hidden Intelligence: The 32 Paths of Wisdom, trans. Westcott

Correspondences

Number: 1 of the ten
Meaning: The Crown
Pillar: Middle Pillar (Pillar of Equilibrium)
Triad: Supernal Triad
World: Atziluth, the Archetypal World (in the Golden Dawn's sevenfold division of the worlds, Kether alone is Atziluth)
Divine name (Atziluth): Eheieh אהיה
“I am” or “I will be”, the name given to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:14: Eheieh asher Eheieh)
Archangel (Briah): Metatron מטטרון
Prince of the Countenance, the angel who stands before the Face; in the Talmud and 3 Enoch he is the transfigured Enoch
Angelic choir (Yetzirah): Chayoth ha-Qadesh חיות הקדש
the Holy Living Creatures of Ezekiel’s vision: lion, bull, eagle and man
Mundane chakra (Assiah): Rashith ha-Gilgalim ראשית הגלגלים
the First Swirlings, the Primum Mobile; moderns sometimes add Pluto or Neptune
Colours: King: Brilliance · Queen: White brilliance · Prince: White brilliance · Princess: White, flecked gold
Magical image: An ancient bearded king, seen in profile
Spiritual experience: Union with God
Virtue: Attainment; completion of the Great Work
Vice: None
Titles: Existence of Existences; Concealed of the Concealed; the Ancient of Ancients; the Ancient of Days (Atik Yomin); the Smooth Point; the Primordial Point; the Most High; the Vast Countenance (Arikh Anpin, Macroprosopus); the White Head; the Head which is not
Symbols: The point; the point within a circle; the crown; the swastika or fylfot cross (as the whirling first motion)
Tarot: The four Aces, the Roots of the Powers of Fire, Water, Air and Earth
In the body: Above the crown of the head (777: the cranium)
Part of the soul: Yechidah, the indivisible divine spark
Grade: Ipsissimus 10°=1□ (Crowley’s A∴A∴; the Golden Dawn left the three supernal grades to the Secret Chiefs)
Qliphoth: Thaumiel, the twin contending heads, the duality that splits the One; arch-demon(s): Satan and Moloch
Gods (777): Egyptian: Ptah, Asar-un-Nefer, Hadit · Greek: Zeus, Iacchus · Roman: Jupiter · Hindu: Parabrahman · Norse: Wotan
Precious stone: Diamond
Plant: Almond in flower
Animal: God (777 gives no creature)
Perfume: Ambergris
Magical weapon: Swastika or fylfot cross; the crown

Before Kether

Behind Kether stand the three Veils of Negative Existence: Ain (nothing), Ain Soph (without limit) and Ain Soph Aur (limitless light). Mathers’ Kabbalah Unveiled translates the Zohar’s account of how the Limitless concentrates into a single point, and the Golden Dawn taught the veils as the background against which the whole Tree must be read. Kether is the first thing that is: the point where the Unmanifest becomes manifest, which is why it is called the Primordial Point and why the Sepher Yetzirah says of the ten sephiroth that their end is fixed in their beginning, “as a flame is bound to a coal.”

In Jewish Kabbalah

In the Zohar Kether is Atika Kadisha, the Holy Ancient One, and Arikh Anpin, the Long Face or Long-Suffering One, whose white head and beard of thirteen locks are described in the Idra Rabba. Gikatilla and Cordovero identify Keter with Ratzon, the divine will, and with Ayin, nothingness, since it is beyond all attribute. Some kabbalists considered Keter so hidden that it should not be counted among the sephiroth at all; in Luria’s system it is split into the inner Atik Yomin and the outer Arikh Anpin, and Da’at is counted in its place.

In the Golden Dawn and Thelema

For the Golden Dawn, Kether is the source of the Lightning Flash that zigzags down the Tree to Malkuth, and its divine name Eheieh is vibrated at the crown of the head in the Middle Pillar exercise. Crowley’s 777 gives it the cranium, the diamond and ambergris, and in his Thelemic cosmology Kether is where Nuit and Hadit, the infinite circumference and the infinitely small point, are united: “There is no difference.” He calls Kether a “confession of ignorance”, the point at which the human mind must stop.

Dion Fortune

In The Mystical Qabalah Fortune writes that we cannot know Kether except by becoming it, which is why its spiritual experience is Union and why it has no vice. Its magical image, the king seen in profile, shows only half a face: the other half is turned towards the Unmanifest. She describes Kether as “pure being, all-potential, but not actual”, the seed from which all the other sephiroth unfold.

The Qliphoth

The averse or shadow side of Kether is Thaumiel, the “twins of God”: two heads that endlessly contend, the One divided against itself. 777 names its arch-demons Satan and Moloch. Kenneth Grant, in Nightside of Eden, reads the Qliphoth not as simply evil but as the reverse face of each power, the forces left over from the “worlds of unbalanced force” that preceded our creation in Lurianic myth (the kings of Edom who reigned and died).

In the Tarot

The four Aces are the Roots of the Powers of the elements: the Root of the Powers of Fire (Ace of Wands), of Water (Ace of Cups), of Air (Ace of Swords) and of Earth (Ace of Pentacles, the Disks of the Thoth deck). The Golden Dawn placed them not in the zodiac but around the North Pole, as the seeds from which the four quarters unfold.

Paths from Kether

Read further

Kether 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).