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Tarot Correspondence Matrix
The twenty-two trumps laid on the twenty-two Hebrew letters and the paths of the Tree of Life. Switch between the Golden Dawn's attribution, Crowley's Thoth revision and Lévi's French scheme to see exactly where they part.
Trump 0
The Fool
Aleph, “ox”, value 1
In the Golden Dawn's attribution the Fool sits on Aleph, path 11 of the Tree, from Kether to Chokmah, and is given the element Air.
- Letter class
- Motherthe three elements of the Sefer Yetzirah: Air, Water, Fire
- Attribution
- Air
- Path 11
- Kether to Chokmah
The Order's attribution (Book T; Regardie, The Golden Dawn), followed by the Rider-Waite-Smith deck of 1909, which renumbered Strength VIII and Justice XI to match.
The twenty-two trumps · Golden Dawn
Trumps, letters and paths
Each trump on its Hebrew letter, its path on the Tree and the element, planet or sign of that letter. Marseille decks number Justice VIII and Strength XI; the Golden Dawn exchanged them so that Strength sits on Leo's letter.
All 22 trumps
Paths are counted on from the ten Sephiroth, eleven to thirty-two. 22 letters, 22 trumps: each system pairs them one to one. With the keyboard, the up and down arrows move along the rows.
The tradition
The tarot began as a fifteenth-century Italian card game with twenty-one numbered trumps and the Fool. Its esoteric reading is French and late: Court de Gébelin claimed it as Egyptian in 1781, in a volume where the Comte de Mellet already linked the trumps to the Hebrew letters, and Éliphas Lévi in the 1850s set out the scheme later occultists started from, with the Magician on Aleph.
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn moved the Fool to Aleph, so that every card shifted one letter on, and hung the trumps on the twenty-two paths of the Tree of Life. Aleister Crowley's Thoth deck later exchanged the Emperor and the Star. The three schemes are set side by side here because the differences are the history.
Reading the instrument
- Choose a system, then a trump: in the table, from the list above the card, with the arrows beside it, or by searching. Its letter, the letter's class and, in the Golden Dawn and Thoth systems, its path and attribution appear beside the card, with the path marked on a small Tree.
- Choose a path on the small Tree to open the trump that sits on it. Rows and paths marked in rose differ from the Golden Dawn's.
- In the Thoth deck each card keeps its sign when it changes letter, so the Emperor brings Aries to Tzaddi and the Star brings Aquarius to Heh. Lévi gave letters only, so his system has no paths or signs, and his rows run in the order of the alphabet.
Where it descends from
- Dogme et rituel de la haute magie
- Éliphas Lévi's two volumes of 1854–56, whose pairing of trumps and letters, the Magician on Aleph, the later occultists started from.
- The Golden Dawn
- Israel Regardie's publication of the Order's papers, including the attribution of the trumps to the letters and paths.
- The Book of Thoth
- Crowley's 1944 commentary on his deck, which explains the exchange of the Emperor and the Star and the renaming of several trumps.
What this does not claim
None of these attributions is older than the 1850s, and the cards themselves were not designed with Hebrew letters in mind. The matrix records what three schools decided, not a hidden original order, and it claims no divinatory effect.
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