The 9th sephirah
יסוד
Yesod
Foundation
The Ninth Path is called the Pure Intelligence because it purifies the Emanations. It proves and corrects the designing of their representations, and disposes their unity with which they are combined without diminution or division.
The 9th Path, the Pure Intelligence: The 32 Paths of Wisdom, trans. Westcott
Correspondences
- Number
- 9 of the ten
- Meaning
- Foundation
- Pillar
- Middle Pillar
- Triad
- Astral Triad (its lower point)
- World
- Yetzirah, the Formative World, the astral light
- Divine name (Atziluth)
- Shaddai El Chai שדי אל חי
the Almighty Living God - Archangel (Briah)
- Gabriel גבריאל
the Strength of God, the messenger of the Annunciation - Angelic choir (Yetzirah)
- Kerubim כרובים
the Strong Ones, the four-faced guardians of the Ark and of Eden - Mundane chakra (Assiah)
- Levanah לבנה
the Moon - Colours
- King: Indigo · Queen: Violet · Prince: Very dark purple · Princess: Citrine, flecked azure
- Magical image
- A beautiful naked man, very strong
- Spiritual experience
- The Vision of the Machinery of the Universe
- Virtue
- Independence
- Vice
- Idleness
- Titles
- The Treasure-house of Images; the Foundation of the World; the Righteous One (Tzaddik)
- Symbols
- Perfumes and sandals
- Tarot
- The four Nines
- In the body
- The reproductive organs
- Part of the soul
- Ruach (its lowest point); in some schemes the Nephesh is rooted here
- Grade
- Theoricus 2°=9□
- Qliphoth
- Gamaliel, the obscene ones, the polluted of God; arch-demon(s): Lilith
- Gods (777)
- Egyptian: Shu · Greek: Zeus (as air), Diana of Ephesus (as phallic) · Roman: Diana (as the Moon) · Hindu: Ganesha, Vishnu (Kurma-avatar)
- Precious stone
- Quartz
- Plant
- Banyan; mandrake; damiana
- Animal
- Elephant
- Perfume
- Jasmine; ginseng; all odoriferous roots
- Magical weapon
- Perfumes and sandals
In Jewish Kabbalah
Yesod gathers all the sephiroth above it and transmits them to Malkhut, the Shekhinah. It is the Tzaddik, the Righteous One, of Proverbs 10:25 (“the righteous one is the foundation of the world”), and is identified with Joseph, who resisted Potiphar’s wife. It is the sign of the covenant, the brit, and so the place of sexuality made holy: the union of the Holy One and the Shekhinah is consummated through Yesod.
In the Golden Dawn and Thelema
The Theoricus grade belongs to Yesod and the element Air; the candidate travels the 32nd path from Malkuth to reach it. Yesod is the sphere of the Moon and of the astral light, the “treasure-house of images” in which every form is first reflected before it appears in Malkuth. The Golden Dawn warned that it is also the realm of illusion, where the untrained seer mistakes reflections for realities. Crowley’s Nines (Strength, Happiness, Cruelty, Gain) show each element at its most concentrated and settled.
Dion Fortune
Fortune, who worked extensively with lunar magic (see Moon Magic and The Sea Priestess), describes Yesod as the etheric double, the subtle framework on which the physical world is built and the seat of the vital and sexual energies. Its spiritual experience, the Vision of the Machinery of the Universe, is a clear sight of how the subtle forces hold the visible world together; its vice, idleness, is the dreamy lunar passivity that never acts.
In the Tarot
Each sephirah rules the four small cards of its number. From two to ten, each card is also one of the 36 decans of the zodiac, ruled by a planet in a sign, following the Golden Dawn’s Book T.
| Card | Thoth title | Book T title | Decan |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9 of Wands | Strength | Lord of Great Strength | Moon in Sagittarius |
| 9 of Cups | Happiness | Lord of Material Happiness | Jupiter in Pisces |
| 9 of Swords | Cruelty | Lord of Despair and Cruelty | Mars in Gemini |
| 9 of Disks | Gain | Lord of Material Gain | Venus in Virgo |
Paths from Yesod
Read further
- Yesod on Wikipediaoverview of the Jewish and Hermetic sources
- 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).