Children of the Voice; the Oracles of the Mighty Gods

Inspiration (passive, mediumistic), motive power, action.

No. 63 of Book T's 78 titles · The Lovers, Key 6 · letter ז Zain · Gemini

Read it on the 1912 page

Hebrew letter: ז (Zain, 'sword') — path 17 on the Tree of Life.

On the Tree: path 17 joins Binah and Tiphareth · see it on the map

Attribution: Gemini.

(Classical Golden Dawn / Book T attribution. Modern decks add an outer planet — Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto — to the three elemental trumps.)

A. E. Waite, a member of the Golden Dawn, in The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London, 1911) · public domain · he describes the Rider-Waite-Smith picture of this card, not Book T's

The sun shines in the zenith, and beneath is a great winged figure with arms extended, pouring down influences. In the foreground are two human figures, male and female, unveiled before each other, as if Adam and Eve when they first occupied the paradise of the earthly body. Behind the man is the Tree of Life, bearing twelve fruits, and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is behind the woman; the serpent is twining round it. The figures suggest youth, virginity, innocence and love before it is contaminated by gross material desire. This is in all simplicity the card of human love, here exhibited as part of the way, the truth and the life. It replaces, by recourse to first principles, the old card of marriage, which I have described previously, and the later follies which depicted man between vice and virtue. In a very high sense, the card is a mystery of the Covenant and Sabbath.

The suggestion in respect of the woman is that she signifies that attraction towards the sensitive life which carries within it the idea of the Fall of Man, but she is rather the working of a Secret Law of Providence than a willing and conscious temptress. It is through her imputed lapse that man shall arise ultimately, and only by her can he complete himself. The card is therefore in its way another intimation concerning the great mystery of womanhood. The old meanings fall to pieces of necessity with the old pictures, but even as interpretations of the latter, some of them were of the order of commonplace and others were false in symbolism.

Paul Foster Case, in An Introduction to the Study of the Tarot (New York, 1920), Chapter III, on the letter Zain · public domain in the US · the whole booklet

Sword: opposition; separation; sex.

East-above: combines East (Daleth) and Above (Beth); opposite of West-above (Samekh) ; complement of East-below (Cheth).

Gemini: diurnal house of Mercury (Beth); complement of Virgo (Yod), the nocturnal house. Smell: keen perception, sagacity, discrimination. A Qabalistic aphorism says, “Properties are discerned by the nose.”

Disposing Intelligence: joins Chokmah to Tiphareth; to dispose is to place apart, to separate, to classify.