The 28th path · Netzach to Yesod
צ
Tzaddi · XVII The Star
♒︎ Aquarius · Thoth: The Star (Crowley moves this card to Heh; see below)
The Twenty-eighth Path is called the Natural Intelligence; by it is completed and perfected the nature of all that exists beneath the Sun.
The Natural Intelligence: The 32 Paths of Wisdom, trans. Westcott
The card
Trump XVII, The Star (Thoth: The Star (Crowley moves this card to Heh; see below)).
Open The Star in the Tarot section →
Meanings in a reading, upright and reversed.
Correspondences
- Letter
- צ Tzaddi (צדי), “Fish-hook”
- Value
- 90
- Kind
- Single letter (one of the twelve Singles, given to the signs of the zodiac)
- Attribution
- ♒︎ Aquarius
- Tarot trump
- XVII · Waite: The Star · Thoth: The Star (Crowley moves this card to Heh; see below) · Marseille: L’Étoile
- Golden Dawn title (Book T)
- The Daughter of the Firmament; the Dweller between the Waters
- Lévi’s attribution (1855)
- XVIII La Lune
- Case’s key word
- Revelation (meditation)
- Colours
- King: Violet · Queen: Sky blue
- Gods (777)
- Egyptian: Ahephi, Aroueris · Greek: Athena, Ganymede · Roman: Juno · Hindu: the Maruts
- Animals
- Man or eagle (Kerub of Air); peacock
- Plants
- Olive; coconut
- Precious stones
- Artificial glass; chalcedony
- Perfumes
- Galbanum
- Magical weapon
- The censer or aspergillus
The letter
Tzaddi, the fish-hook, draws up what is hidden in the waters. The word tzaddik, the righteous one, comes from the same root, and the Tzaddik is also the name of Yesod. Its ordinary value is 90 and its final form (ץ) 900. Case gives it the faculty of meditation (imagination in some lists): the hook that catches the fish of insight in the deep.
On the Tree
The 28th path joins Netzach to Yesod: the feelings of Venus brought into the astral images of the Moon. In the Philosophus grade the candidate passes along it.
The Star in the Waite deck
Smith’s Star is a naked woman kneeling by a pool, one foot on the water and one on land, pouring water from two jugs, one into the pool and one onto the land, where it runs off in five streams. Above her shine a great eight-pointed star and seven smaller ones; an ibis sits in a tree behind. Case’s key word is revelation (or meditation): the quiet hope that follows the Tower’s destruction.
Crowley’s exchange
Because “Tzaddi is not the Star” (The Book of the Law I:57), Crowley gave the Star to Heh and the Emperor to Tzaddi. On his Tree the 28th path carries the Emperor, and the 15th the Star. The Golden Dawn, Waite and Case keep the Star here.
The Star in the Thoth deck
Harris’s Star is Nuit, the night sky of The Book of the Law, pouring the waters of immortality from a golden and a silver cup onto her own head and onto the earth. Behind her shines the seven-pointed star of Babalon; a great celestial globe spirals; crystals and roses fill the lower part of the card. Crowley’s Star is the promise of the new aeon: “every man and every woman is a star.”
Where this path leads
Read further
- The Star 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).