Assiah Tarot: The World of Action, Earth and the Suit of Disks

Assiah tarot is the tarot read at the level of action, the fourth and last of the Kabbalistic worlds. After emanation in Atziluth, creation in Briah and formation in Yetzirah, Assiah is where a thing is finally made and done. It is the world of matter, of the body and of the deeds we can touch. In the Golden Dawn and the Thoth Tarot it belongs to Earth, to the suit of Disks and to the Princesses. This article explains why the lowest world holds one of the highest secrets of the deck.

It is the last of four articles on the Kabbalistic worlds, after Yetzirah Tarot: The World of Formation, Air and the Suit of Swords.

What Assiah means: the world of making

The name comes from the Hebrew verb asah, to make or to do. In Isaiah 43:7, the classic text of the four worlds, it is the last verb: "yea, I have made him". The glory is Atziluth, the creating is Briah, the forming is Yetzirah, and the making is Assiah.

Assiah is the world where forms become solid and actions have consequences. The Golden Dawn gave its sefirot the physical spheres of the old cosmos. Kether is the first motion of the heavens, Chokmah the zodiac, and the sefirot below run through the seven planets from Saturn to the Moon. Malkuth is the Earth and its elements. In Lurianic Kabbalah Assiah is also the world most mixed with the kelipot, the "shells" that hide the divine sparks, which is why action matters so much: a good deed frees a spark.

In the divine name YHVH, Assiah is the final He, the letter that repeats the first He of Briah one octave lower. On the Tree it is linked with Malkuth, the kingdom, also called the Bride and the Daughter, and with the Shekhinah, the indwelling presence of God in the world.

Earth, Disks and the Princesses

The Golden Dawn's correspondences complete the pattern.

• Element: Earth, the most stable and concrete.
• Suit: Disks, the coins and pentacles of other decks.
• Letter: the final He.
• Court card: the Princess, called the Daughter.
• Part of the soul: Nephesh, the vital soul bound to the body, which Kabbalah places in Assiah.

The Princess of Disks, the Earth of Earth, is the purest image of this world. In the Thoth deck she holds a great disk like a shield, and Crowley describes her as pregnant, on the point of giving birth. Matter is not dead here. It is about to bring something new into being.

The Ten of Disks — Wealth, "Wealth", is Malkuth in the suit of Earth, the most material card of the deck. It shows the end of the long descent, everything the higher worlds intended now made solid.

Why Crowley turned coins into spinning Disks

Older decks call this suit Coins or Pentacles: flat objects of value. Crowley renamed them Disks and insisted that they spin. In The Book of Thoth he explains that matter is not inert but a whirl of energy, and the spinning disk shows it.

It is a striking choice for a book written in the 1940s, when physics had already shown matter and energy to be two forms of one thing. In Kabbalistic terms it says that Assiah is not cut off from the higher worlds. The fire of Atziluth is still turning inside every stone. The Ace of Disks, the "Root of the Powers of Earth", shows a great whirling disk at the root of the suit.

The Princess on the throne: Kether is in Malkuth

Here is the secret of the lowest world. The Sefer Yetzirah says of the ten sefirot that "their end is embedded in their beginning, and their beginning in their end". The Golden Dawn put it in a famous phrase: Kether is in Malkuth, and Malkuth is in Kether.

The tarot makes it visible in the Princesses. In the Golden Dawn's Book T, the Princess is called the Throne of the Ace. Each Ace, the root of its element at the top of the Tree, rests on its Princess at the bottom. The other court cards rule parts of the zodiac. The Princesses instead rule whole quarters of the heavens around the North Pole, as if the lowest card held the sky.

A Golden Dawn formula speaks of raising the Daughter to the throne of the Mother: the final He lifted to the first. In Lurianic language this is tikkun, the repair of the world, when the Shekhinah returns from exile. For a reader it means that Assiah is not the bottom of a ladder. It is the place where the circle closes and the highest is found in the lowest. The trump of this return is The Universe, Tav, on the path from Yesod to Malkuth, where a dancer moves inside a single cosmic order.

Assiah tarot in practice: what is to be done

Each card lives in all four worlds. The Assiatic reading asks the most practical question: what is to be done, here and now?

1. Bring the card down to a deed. Ask what concrete action, habit or step it suggests. Tens, in Malkuth, show results and how to handle them.
2. Look at the body and the resources. Disks speak of money, work, health and time. Ask what is really available, not only what is hoped for.
3. Notice Earth in the spread. Disks, the Princesses and the earthy trumps, the Hierophant, the Hermit, the Devil and the Universe, show where the matter is solid.
4. Respect the Princesses. A Princess often marks the seed of a new beginning hidden inside a practical situation.

Take the Ace of Disks — Root of the Powers of Earth drawn about a creative project that never gets started. In the higher worlds it speaks of potential. In Assiah its message is plain: begin with one physical act today, however small. The root of Earth needs ground.

The end that is a beginning

The four worlds can be read as a descent from light to matter, but the Kabbalists never saw Assiah as a fall without return. Every deed done with intention lifts a spark. Every Princess carries the throne of an Ace.

That is perhaps the most useful lesson of the whole series. A reading is complete only when it reaches Assiah, when understanding becomes action. You can start from Atziluth Tarot: The World of Emanation, Fire and the Suit of Wands, the world of will, and follow the four worlds down to the table in front of you. If you want to practise, draw a reading on TAROTS chat and ask, for each card, what it means in each of the four worlds.