Child of the Great Transformers: the Lord of the Gates of Death

Time, age, transformation, change involuntary (as opposed to 18, Pisces). Or death, destruction (only latter with special cards). [Specially, a sudden and quite unexpected change.]

No. 70 of Book T's 78 titles · Death, Key 13 · letter נ Nun · Scorpio

Read it on the 1912 page

Hebrew letter: נ (Nun, 'fish') — path 24 on the Tree of Life.

On the Tree: path 24 joins Tiphareth and Netzach · see it on the map

Attribution: Scorpio.

(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 veil or mask of life is perpetuated in change, transformation and passage from lower to higher, and this is more fitly represented in the rectified Tarot by one of the apocalyptic visions than by the crude notion of the reaping skeleton. Behind it lies the whole world of ascent in the spirit. The mysterious horseman moves slowly, bearing a black banner emblazoned with the Mystic Rose, which signifies life. Between two pillars on the verge of the horizon there shines the sun of immortality. The horseman carries no visible weapon, but king and child and maiden fall before him, while a prelate with clasped hands awaits his end.

There should be no need to point out that the suggestion of death which I have made in connection with the previous card is, of course, to be understood mystically, but this is not the case in the present instance. The natural transit of man to the next stage of his being either is or may be one form of his progress, but the exotic and almost unknown entrance, while still in this life, into the state of mystical death is a change in the form of consciousness and the passage into a state to which ordinary death is neither the path nor gate. The existing occult explanations of the 13th card are, on the whole, better than usual, rebirth, creation, destination, renewal, and the rest.

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

Fish: compare Joshua, son of Nun, with Jesus (Joshua), whose sign was that of the prophet Jonah. Early Christians called Jesus Ichthys. This also was the name of a son of Aphrodite. South-west 5 : combines South (Resh) and West (Kaph); opposite of North-east (Vau) ; complement of North-west (Lamed).

Scorpio: nocturnal house of Mars (Peh) ; complement of Aries (Heh), the diurnal house. Motion: all motion is change.

Imaginative Intelligence: joins Tiphareth to Netzach.

(A later editor changed the direction Case gave this letter in 1920; see the booklet's note before quoting it.)