Kabbalah & the Tree of Life

The ten nodes are the sephirot; the twenty-two lines are the paths. Hover or tap any node or path to see its Hebrew letter, card attribution, and connections; tap again to open that card's detail page.

Ten sephirot are ten densities of manifestation — from pure will (Kether, the Aces) down to fully embodied earth (Malkuth, the Tens). The forty pips are exactly 10 × 4: the same sephirah expressed once per suit. The four suits are the four worlds: Wands — Atziluth, the world of emanation (fire); Cups — Briah, the world of creation (water); Swords — Yetzirah, the world of formation (air); Pentacles — Assiah, the world of action (earth). A Five in any suit is Geburah's severity in a different world; a Ten is Malkuth in a different world.

The 16 courts don't live on the sephirot — they rule inside the four worlds. Each world (suit) has its Page / Knight / Queen / King, mapping to Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh, the four letters of the Tetragrammaton. So a Knight of Wands is fire-of-fire; a Queen of Cups is water-of-water — four worlds nested four deep.

Twenty-two paths connect the sephirot. Each is attributed to one Major Arcana and one Hebrew letter. The Sefer Yetzirah classifies the Hebrew alphabet three ways: three mother letters (Aleph / Mem / Shin) govern the three elements (air / water / fire); seven doubles govern the seven classical planets; twelve simples govern the twelve zodiac signs. The Golden Dawn lifted that three-way split directly onto the Majors.