Malkuth

The Kingdom

The Tenth Path is called the Resplendent Intelligence, because it is exalted above every head, and sits on the throne of Binah. It illuminates the splendour of all the lights, and causes a supply of influence to emanate from the Prince of countenances, the angel of Kether.
The 10th Path, the Resplendent Intelligence: The 32 Paths of Wisdom, trans. Westcott

Correspondences

Number: 10 of the ten
Meaning: The Kingdom
Pillar: Middle Pillar (at its base)
Triad: None: Malkuth hangs below the three triads, receiving them all
World: Assiah, the material world
Divine name (Atziluth): Adonai ha-Aretz אדני הארץ
Lord of the Earth; also Adonai Melekh, the Lord and King
Archangel (Briah): Sandalphon סנדלפון
the ‘co-brother’, said to be the transfigured prophet Elijah, who weaves prayers into garlands
Angelic choir (Yetzirah): Ashim אשים
the Souls of Fire, the Flames
Mundane chakra (Assiah): Cholem Yesodoth חלם יסודות
the Breaker of the Foundations, the sphere of the four elements; also the Earth
Colours: King: Yellow · Queen: Citrine, olive, russet and black · Prince: Citrine, olive, russet and black, flecked gold · Princess: Black, rayed with yellow
Magical image: A young woman, crowned and throned
Spiritual experience: The Vision of the Holy Guardian Angel
Virtue: Discrimination
Vice: Avarice; inertia
Titles: The Gate; the Gate of Death; the Gate of the Shadow of Death; the Gate of Tears; the Gate of Justice; the Gate of Prayer; the Gate of the Daughter of the Mighty Ones; the Gate of the Garden of Eden; the Inferior Mother; Malkah, the Queen; Kallah, the Bride; the Virgin; the Shekhinah
Symbols: The altar of the double cube; the equal-armed cross; the magic circle; the triangle of art
Tarot: The four Tens, and the four Princesses (Pages in the Waite deck)
In the body: The feet and the anus (777)
Part of the soul: Nephesh, the animal soul
Grade: Zelator 1°=10□
Qliphoth: Lilith, the woman of night, the outer shell of matter; arch-demon(s): Lilith and Naamah (Nahemoth)
Gods (777): Egyptian: Seb (Geb), Isis and Nephthys (as virgins) · Greek: Persephone, Psyche, Adonis · Roman: Ceres · Hindu: Lakshmi
Precious stone: Rock crystal
Plant: Willow; lily; ivy
Animal: Sphinx
Perfume: Dittany of Crete
Magical weapon: The magic circle and triangle

In Jewish Kabbalah

Malkhut is the Shekhinah, the indwelling presence of God in the world, the Bride and Queen, the Community of Israel (Kenesset Yisrael), the Moon that has no light of her own but receives it from the Sun of Tiferet. She is identified with King David, and also with Rachel weeping for her children. In Lurianic Kabbalah the Shekhinah is in exile, scattered as sparks among the Qliphoth, and every good deed raises a spark and helps reunite her with the Holy One: this is tikkun, repair.

In the Golden Dawn and Thelema

Malkuth is the first station of the Golden Dawn: the Zelator grade belongs to it and the element Earth. Its Queen-scale colours, citrine, olive, russet and black, are the four elements mixed into matter (air, water, fire and earth in that order of quarters). The Golden Dawn axiom, from the Sepher Yetzirah, is that “Kether is in Malkuth and Malkuth is in Kether, but after another manner”: matter is not the opposite of spirit but its densest form. The Tens of the Thoth deck (Oppression, Satiety, Ruin, Wealth) show each element completely materialised and so at its end, ready to turn back to its source.

Dion Fortune

Fortune’s chapter on Malkuth is a defence of the body and the earth against the world-denying mystic. Its spiritual experience is the Vision of the Holy Guardian Angel, because it is in the physical world, not by fleeing it, that the soul first meets its guide. Its virtue, discrimination, is the ability to tell the real from the illusory; its vices, avarice and inertia, are the heaviness of matter that will not move.

The Fallen Tree

In the Golden Dawn’s diagram of the Fall, Malkuth is cut off from the rest of the Tree and Eve, who had supported the pillars, falls towards the Qliphoth. The work of the Outer Order is to lift Malkuth back up, starting with the 32nd path, the path of Saturn and the Universe card, which leads from the Kingdom to the Foundation.

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
10 of Wands	Oppression	Lord of Oppression	Saturn in Sagittarius
10 of Cups	Satiety	Lord of Perfected Success	Mars in Pisces
10 of Swords	Ruin	Lord of Ruin	Sun in Gemini
10 of Disks	Wealth	Lord of Wealth	Mercury in Virgo

The four Princesses also belong here: the earthy part, the element made solid (Pages in the Waite deck). In the Waite deck: Page of Wands, Page of Cups, Page of Swords, Page of Pentacles.

Paths from Malkuth

Read further

Malkuth 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).