Samekh · XIV Temperance

Correspondences

Letter

ס Samekh (סמך), “Prop, support”

Value

60

Kind

Single letter (one of the twelve Singles, given to the signs of the zodiac)

Attribution

♐︎ Sagittarius

Joins

Tiphareth (6) and Yesod (9)

Tarot trump

XIV · Waite: Temperance · Thoth: Art · Marseille: Tempérance

Golden Dawn title (Book T)

The Daughter of the Reconcilers; the Bringer-forth of Life

Lévi’s attribution (1855)

XV Le Diable

Case’s key word

Verification

Colours

King: Blue · Queen: Yellow

Gods (777)

Egyptian: Nephthys · Greek: Apollo, Artemis (hunters) · Roman: Diana (as archer) · Hindu: Vishnu (as horse-avatar)

Animals

Centaur; horse; hippogriff; dog

Plants

Rush

Precious stones

Jacinth

Perfumes

Lign-aloes

Magical weapon

The arrow

The letter

Samekh, the prop or tent-peg, supports: “The Lord upholds (somekh) all who fall” (Psalm 145:14). Its shape is a closed circle, and the Talmud says the Samekh of the tablets of the Law hung miraculously in the air. Its value is 60; Case gives it the faculty of wrath, which Temperance tempers.

On the Tree

The 25th path rises from Yesod straight up the Middle Pillar to Tiphareth. It is the path of the arrow shot upward (Sagittarius) through the rainbow of Qesheth (the bow, a word made of the letters of paths 29, 31 and 32), the mystic’s path of aspiration. The Golden Dawn’s Portal grade centres on it, and Crowley calls it the path on which the Holy Guardian Angel is first glimpsed.

Temperance in the Waite deck

Smith’s Temperance is a winged angel with a solar disc on the brow and a triangle in a square on the breast, standing with one foot in a pool and one on land, pouring water between two cups. A path leads from the pool to a crown of light between two peaks; irises grow by the water. Case’s key word is verification: testing and trying, as the 32 Paths text says, until the tempering is complete.

Art in the Thoth deck

Crowley calls the card Art and makes it the completion of the Lovers: the black king and white queen of the 17th path have become one androgynous figure, white-faced and black-faced, pouring fire from one hand and water from the other into a cauldron, where a lion and an eagle exchange colours (red becomes white, white becomes red). A raven sits on a skull in the cauldron. On the rainbow arch is the alchemical motto Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem, “visit the interior of the earth; by rectifying you shall find the hidden stone” (V.I.T.R.I.O.L.).

Where this path leads

• תפארת Tiphareth (6)
• יסוד Yesod (9)

Read further

• Temperance 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).