Major Arcana · IV
♈︎ Aries · ה Heh · Thoth: The Emperor (Crowley moves this card to Tzaddi; see below)
Build the structure. Set rules, take responsibility and lead; the situation needs a steady hand more than inspiration.
Heh, the window, is the letter of breath: an aspirated sound, and in the Talmud the letter with which this world was created (Menachot 29b: “this world was created with Heh”). It appears twice in the divine name YHVH, once for the Supernal Mother in Binah and once for the Daughter in Malkuth. It is one of the twelve Single letters, which the Sepher Yetzirah gives to the zodiac and to the human faculties; Case, following the Golden Dawn, gives Heh the faculty of sight. Its value is 5.
The 15th path joins Chokmah, the zodiacal sphere and first force, to Tiphareth, the Sun: it brings the creative fire of the Father down to the heart of the Tree. Its 32 Paths text, the Constituting Intelligence that “constitutes the substance of creation in pure darkness”, describes creation out of the thick darkness before light.
Waite’s Emperor sits on a stone throne carved with rams’ heads, in red robes over armour, holding an ankh-sceptre and an orb against a background of bare red mountains. He is order, law and authority. Case’s key word is reason: the window (Heh) through which we see, and the constitution of the world by the ordering mind.
In The Book of the Law (I:57) Crowley received the line “All these old letters of my Book are aright; but Tzaddi is not the Star.” He concluded that the Emperor and the Star had been wrongly attributed, and in the Thoth deck the Emperor (Aries) is given Tzaddi and the Star (Aquarius) Heh. To preserve the zodiac he describes a “double loop” in the sequence of trumps: Strength and Justice exchange places around Leo and Libra, and Emperor and Star exchange around Aries and Aquarius. On Crowley’s Tree, therefore, the 15th path carries the Star. The Golden Dawn and Waite keep the Emperor here.
Harris painted the Emperor in red and gold, seated with crossed legs that form the figure 4 and with his arms and head making a triangle: together the alchemical sign of Sulphur, the active fiery principle. Rams of Aries flank him; a lamb with a banner (the Agnus Dei) and a bee and fleur-de-lis appear at his feet. His shield bears a red double-headed eagle, the counterpart of the Empress’s white one.
Card image: Pamela Colman Smith, Rider-Waite tarot, 1909 (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons).