The 22nd path · Geburah to Tiphareth
ל
Lamed · XI Justice
♎︎ Libra · Thoth: Adjustment (VIII)
The Twenty-second Path is the Faithful Intelligence, and is so called because by it spiritual virtues are increased, and all dwellers on earth are nearly under its shadow.
The Faithful Intelligence: The 32 Paths of Wisdom, trans. Westcott
The card
Trump XI, Justice (Thoth: Adjustment (VIII)).
Open Justice in the Tarot section →
Meanings in a reading, upright and reversed.
Correspondences
- Letter
- ל Lamed (למד), “Ox-goad”
- Value
- 30
- Kind
- Single letter (one of the twelve Singles, given to the signs of the zodiac)
- Attribution
- ♎︎ Libra
- Tarot trump
- XI · Waite: Justice · Thoth: Adjustment (VIII) · Marseille: La Justice (VIII)
- Golden Dawn title (Book T)
- The Daughter of the Lords of Truth; the Ruler of the Balance
- Lévi’s attribution (1855)
- XII Le Pendu
- Case’s key word
- Equilibrium (action)
- Colours
- King: Emerald green · Queen: Blue
- Gods (777)
- Egyptian: Ma’at · Greek: Themis, Minos, Aeacus and Rhadamanthus · Roman: Vulcan · Hindu: Yama
- Animals
- Elephant
- Plants
- Aloe
- Precious stones
- Emerald
- Perfumes
- Galbanum
- Magical weapon
- The cross of equilibrium
The letter
Lamed, the ox-goad, is the tallest letter, rising above the line; the word also means “to learn” and “to teach”, since the goad drives the ox as instruction drives the student. Its value is 30. Spelled in full, למד has the value 74. Lamed and Aleph together (the ox and the goad) make the word al and El; Crowley built a whole book on the formula LA, “not”, and AL, “God” (Liber AL vel Legis).
On the Tree
The 22nd path joins Geburah to Tiphareth: severity brought into balance in the heart. Libra, the scales, is the sign of equilibrium; the Faithful Intelligence increases the spiritual virtues.
Justice in the Waite deck
Smith’s Justice sits crowned between two pillars with a purple veil behind her, holding an upright sword in her right hand and scales in her left. She is not blindfolded, since spiritual justice sees. Case’s key word is equilibrium (and action): the balance that comes from the right use of the sword.
Adjustment in the Thoth deck
Crowley calls the card Adjustment, “the Woman Justified”, because nature is not just but exact: every action is balanced by its reaction. A slender masked woman, Harlequin-like, balances on tiptoe holding a great sword, with the scales of Alpha and Omega hanging from her crown of ostrich feathers (the feather of Ma’at, against which the hearts of the dead are weighed). Crowley stresses that she is the complement of the Fool, as Libra is the balance of Air: she adjusts every disturbance.
Where this path leads
Read further
- Justice on Wikipediahistory and iconography of the card
- 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).