Shin · XX Judgement

Correspondences

Letter

ש Shin (שין), “Tooth”

Value

300

Kind

Mother letter (one of the three Mothers: Aleph, Mem, Shin)

Attribution

Fire (and Spirit)

Joins

Hod (8) and Malkuth (10)

Tarot trump

XX · Waite: Judgement · Thoth: The Aeon · Marseille: Le Jugement

Golden Dawn title (Book T)

The Spirit of the Primal Fire

Lévi’s attribution (1855)

0 Le Mat (the Fool)

Case’s key word

Realization

Colours

King: Glowing orange-scarlet · Queen: Vermilion

Gods (777)

Egyptian: Thoum-aesh-neith, Kabeshunt, Horus, Nuit, Hadit · Greek: Hades · Roman: Vulcan, Pluto · Hindu: Agni, Yama

Animals

Lion (Kerub of Fire)

Plants

Red poppy; hibiscus; nettle

Precious stones

Fire opal

Perfumes

Olibanum; all fiery odours

Magical weapon

The wand, lamp or pyramid of fire

The letter

Shin, the tooth, is the third Mother letter: Fire, the hissing sound, the head of the human body and heat. Its three flames (ש) are often read as the three pillars or the three Mothers. Its value is 300, which is also the value of Ruach Elohim, the Spirit of God. The Renaissance Christian cabalists wrote Shin into the middle of YHVH to form YHShVH, Yeheshuah (Jesus), the Pentagrammaton: the four elements crowned by Spirit. For this reason the Golden Dawn gives this path both Fire and Spirit.

On the Tree

The 31st path rises from Malkuth to Hod: the fire of transformation lifting matter towards the mind. It is the first path of the Practicus grade and one of the three letters of Qesheth, the rainbow (Qoph, Shin, Tav: paths 29, 31, 32), that arches over the Outer Order paths below Tiphareth.

Judgement in the Waite deck

Smith painted the Last Judgement: the angel Gabriel blows a trumpet hung with a red-cross banner, and naked figures (a man, a woman and a child) rise from coffins floating on water, arms raised in wonder. Waite reads it as the resurrection of the whole person, the call that wakes the dead; Case’s key word is realization: the final awakening of the personality to the One Self.

The Aeon in the Thoth deck

Crowley replaced the Last Judgement with The Aeon, based on the Stele of Revealing (the Egyptian funerary stele of Ankh-af-na-Khonsu that inspired The Book of the Law). Nuit arches her star-body over the card; Hadit is the winged globe of fire beneath her; and Horus appears as Ra-Hoor-Khuit enthroned and as the transparent child Hoor-paar-kraat with his finger to his lips. A great Shin rises below, with a human figure in each flame. It is the end of the Aeon of Osiris and the beginning of the Aeon of Horus: Crowley calls it “the Last Judgement of the old aeon”.

Where this path leads

• הוד Hod (8)
• מלכות Malkuth (10)

Read further

• Judgement 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).