Spirit of the Primal Fire

Final decision, judgment, sentence, determination of a matter without appeal, "on its plane."

No. 77 of Book T's 78 titles · The Judgment, Key 20 · letter ש Shin · Spirit and Fire

Read it on the 1912 page

Hebrew letter: ש (Shin, 'tooth') — path 31 on the Tree of Life.

On the Tree: path 31 joins Hod and Malkuth · see it on the map

Attribution: Fire / Spirit.

(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

I have said that this symbol is essentially invariable in all Tarot sets, or at least the variations do not alter its character. The great angel is here encompassed by clouds, but he blows his bannered trumpet, and the cross as usual is displayed on the banner. The dead are rising from their tombs— a woman on the right, a man on the left hand, and between them their child, whose back is turned. But in this card there are more than three who are restored, and it has been thought worth while to make this variation as illustrating the insufficiency of current explanations. It should be noted that all the figures are as one in the wonder, adoration and ecstacy expressed by their attitudes. It is the card which registers the accomplishment of the great work of transformation in answer to the summons of the Supernal— which summons is heard and answered from within.

Herein is the intimation of a significance which cannot well be carried further in the present place. What is that within us which does sound a trumpet and all that is lower in our nature rises in response— almost in a moment, almost in the twinkling of an eye? Let the card continue to depict, for those who can see no further, the Last Judgment and the resurrection in the natural body; but let those who have inward eyes look and discover therewith. They will understand that it has been called truly in the past a card of eternal life, and for this reason it may be compared with that which passes under the name of Temperance.

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

Tooth: probably serpent's fang; sharpness; acidity; active manifestation of the fire-principle. Fire: the Spirit of God is a “consuming fire”; in Hebrew that Spirit is Ruach Elohim (ohvkt jur) and the letters of these two words represent the numbers 200, 6, 8, 1, 30, 5, 10 and 40, giving a total of 300. This is the value of Shin, the sound of which suggests the hissing of fire.

Perpetual Intelligence: joins Hod to Malkuth.