The 30th path · Hod to Yesod
ר
Resh · XIX The Sun
☉︎ Sun · Thoth: The Sun
The Thirtieth Path is the Collecting Intelligence, and is so called because Astrologers deduce from it the judgment of the Stars, and of the celestial signs, and the perfections of their science, according to the rules of the motions of the stars.
The Collecting Intelligence: The 32 Paths of Wisdom, trans. Westcott
The card
Trump XIX, The Sun.
Open The Sun in the Tarot section →
Meanings in a reading, upright and reversed.
Correspondences
- Letter
- ר Resh (ריש), “Head, face”
- Value
- 200
- Kind
- Double letter (one of the seven Doubles: Beth, Gimel, Daleth, Kaph, Peh, Resh, Tav)
- Attribution
- ☉︎ Sun
- Tarot trump
- XIX · Waite: The Sun · Thoth: The Sun · Marseille: Le Soleil
- Golden Dawn title (Book T)
- The Lord of the Fire of the World
- Lévi’s attribution (1855)
- XX Le Jugement
- Case’s key word
- Regeneration
- Colours
- King: Orange · Queen: Gold yellow
- Gods (777)
- Egyptian: Ra and many others · Greek: Helios, Apollo · Roman: Apollo · Hindu: Surya
- Animals
- Lion; sparrowhawk
- Plants
- Sunflower; laurel; heliotrope
- Precious stones
- Chrysoleth
- Perfumes
- Olibanum; cinnamon; all glorious odours
- Magical weapon
- The lamen; the bow and arrow
The letter
Resh, the head or face, is the principle of beginnings: rosh, head; reshit, beginning. Its value is 200. It is a Double letter; in Kaplan’s Sepher Yetzirah its opposites are Peace and War.
On the Tree
The 30th path joins Hod to Yesod: the light of the Sun shining into the mind and the astral world. The 32 Paths calls it the Collecting Intelligence, the path of astrologers. The Practicus grade includes it.
The Sun in the Waite deck
Smith’s Sun shows a naked child, crowned with flowers and a red feather, riding a white horse in front of a wall of sunflowers, carrying a great red banner, under a huge sun with a face. Waite calls it “the destiny of the Supernatural East and the great and holy light”; Case’s key word is regeneration: the new creature, freed from the old personality.
The Sun in the Thoth deck
Harris’s Sun is a great twelve-rayed disc over a green mound surrounded by a wall. Two winged children dance on the mound, the twins of the new aeon (Horus and Harpocrates), and the twelve signs of the zodiac ring the card. A rose is at the centre of the sun. Crowley calls it the Lord of the New Aeon, the Crowned and Conquering Child, and says that the wall around the mound shows that humanity’s liberation is still to be completed.
Where this path leads
Read further
- The Sun 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).