Sefer Yetzirah Tarot: Traces of the Trumps in the Book of Formation

The Sefer Yetzirah tarot connection is usually summed up in one line: twenty-two Hebrew letters, twenty-two trumps. But the Sefer Yetzirah, the "Book of Formation", is a short text full of precise details, and many of them reappear in the tarot in surprising ways. This article looks for those traces line by line: the twelve human faculties, the seven pairs of opposites, the 231 gates, the letters read backwards, and the cube of space. Some are famous; others are rarely noticed.

One point first, for honesty. The Sefer Yetzirah is centuries older than the tarot, which began as an Italian card game in the fifteenth century. The book does not mention cards. The "traces" run the other way: from the eighteenth century onwards, occultists built the esoteric tarot on this text, and the Golden Dawn and the Thoth deck followed it closely. Our Tarot and Kabbalah: How the 22 Trumps Became the Hebrew Letters guide tells that history.

Ten and not nine: the numbered cards

The book opens with "thirty-two wonderful paths of wisdom": ten sefirot and twenty-two letters. It insists on the number of the sefirot with a famous formula: "ten and not nine, ten and not eleven".

That is the first trace in the deck. Each suit of the tarot runs from Ace to Ten, never nine, never eleven, and the Golden Dawn set each number on its sefirah. The text also says that the end of the sefirot is fixed in their beginning, "like a flame bound to a coal". In the tarot the Tens, the last cards of each suit, lead back to the Aces of a new cycle.

The three mothers: why the Fool stands between fire and water

The Sefer Yetzirah calls Aleph, Mem and Shin the "mothers" and gives them the three elements: Air, Water and Fire. It describes them as a pair of scales. Shin and Mem are the two pans, merit and guilt, fire and water. Aleph is "the tongue of decree" that balances between them, as breath moves between a hiss and a hum.

In the tarot the three mothers are three trumps. Shin is the Aeon, Fire. Mem is The Hanged Man, Water. Aleph is The Fool, Air. The text gives the Fool a role that card books rarely mention: he is the pointer of the scales, the free breath that holds fire and water in balance. This explains why the zero card stands outside the numbered sequence. It is not a step on the path; it is the balance of the whole.

The seven doubles: trumps with two faces

The seven double letters, Beth, Gimel, Daleth, Kaph, Peh, Resh and Tav, are called double because each once had two pronunciations, one hard and one soft. The book gives each letter a pair of opposites:

• Beth: wisdom and folly, the The Magus, Mercury's genius and trickery.
• Gimel: wealth and poverty, The Priestess, inner riches or emptiness.
• Daleth: seed and desolation, The Empress, fertility or barrenness.
• Kaph: life and death, Fortune, the wheel that raises and lowers.
• Peh: dominance and subjugation, The Tower, power and its collapse.
• Resh: peace and war, The Sun, warmth that ripens or burns.
• Tav: grace and ugliness, The Universe, harmony completed or left unfinished.

Here is the trace. The seven planetary trumps are the cards that tarot readers most often read in two ways, well dignified or ill dignified. The Sefer Yetzirah had already written their double face into the letters, a thousand years before anyone painted them.

The twelve simples: the senses of the zodiac trumps

The twelve simple letters belong to the twelve signs of the zodiac. Less known is that the book gives each one a human faculty. In the version the Golden Dawn used, they are: sight, hearing, smell, speech, taste, sexual union, action, movement, anger, laughter, thought and sleep. Versions of the text differ in the order, but the list is the same.

Set them beside the Thoth trumps and several fit with startling precision.

• Teth, taste: Lust. The woman riding the beast raises a cup and drinks.
• Yod, sexual union: The Hermit. Crowley painted a spermatozoon and the Orphic egg on this card, and called the Hermit the secret seed of life.
• Samekh, anger: Art, the old Temperance. The card that mixes fire and water is the one that tempers anger.
• Ayin, laughter: The Devil. Crowley's goat of Pan grins at the viewer; the god's laughter is the joy of matter.
• Qoph, sleep: The Moon, the card of dreams and of the night journey.
• Nun, movement: Death, the dancing skeleton whose scythe keeps everything in motion.
• Lamed, action: Adjustment, justice as right action, the balance of deeds.
• Vav, hearing: The Hierophant, the teacher whose wisdom is heard.

Crowley's famous swap adds a twist. In the Golden Dawn order, He, sight, is the Emperor and Tzaddi, thought, is the Star. In the Thoth deck the letters are exchanged: The Star receives sight, the gaze into infinite space, and the Emperor receives thought, the ordering mind.

The 231 gates and the letters read backwards

The Sefer Yetzirah describes how the twenty-two letters are joined in pairs, set "on a wheel like a wall with 231 gates". There are exactly 231 ways to choose two letters from twenty-two. In the tarot that is also the exact number of possible pairs of trumps. Every two-card reading of the Major Arcana opens one of the 231 gates.

The book adds that the wheel turns forwards and backwards, and gives an example. The same three letters, Ayin, Nun and Gimel, spell oneg, delight, in one order, and nega, plague, in the reverse order. Nothing in good is higher than delight; nothing in evil is lower than plague.

This is perhaps the most striking trace of all. The same elements, read in reverse, give the opposite meaning: that is the logic of reversed cards. In trumps, these letters are the Devil, Death and the Priestess. Read one way, the three cards describe pleasure; read the other way, harm.

The cube of space: the trumps as a cosmos

One more passage describes the twelve simple letters as "twelve diagonal boundaries" of the world, and the six directions of space as sealed with the letters of the divine name. At the centre stands a "holy palace" that holds them all, which the text links with Tav.

In 1947 the American occultist Paul Foster Case used these verses to build the Cube of Space in The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages. The three mothers become the three axes of a cube, six double letters become its faces, Tav its centre, and the twelve simples its twelve edges. Each trump has a place in a three-dimensional cosmos, with the Universe card at its heart. Case followed a different tradition from the Thoth deck, but his cube shows how much structure the old book still offers.

Sefer Yetzirah tarot in practice

You can use these traces at the table:

1. When a planetary trump appears, name both of its poles. Ask which side of wisdom and folly, or life and death, the question leans towards.
2. When a zodiac trump appears, ask about its faculty. The Moon may point to sleep and dreams, Lust to appetite, Art to anger that needs tempering.
3. Read two trumps as a gate. Ask what passes between them, and how the meaning would change if the order were reversed.

If you want to try it, draw two cards on TAROTS chat and read them as one of the 231 gates. To see how the letters shape the world of images, continue with Yetzirah Tarot: The World of Formation, Air and the Suit of Swords.