Daleth: Path 14, The Empress and Venus

Detail of path 14, Daleth, joining Chokmah and Binah on Kircher’s 1653 Tree of Life — Detail cropped from Kircher’s public-domain 1653 plate. The crop preserves nearby labels so the node or path remains visible in context.

The letter name is commonly glossed “door.” Kircher places it between Chokmah and Binah; the Golden Dawn later aligns it with Venus and The Empress. Each statement belongs to a different historical layer.

Path: 14
Letter and value: ד · 4
Letter class: Double letter
Connection: Chokmah → Binah
Golden Dawn: Venus · The Empress
Crowley: The Empress

SEFER YETZIRAH LAYER

Daleth among the double letters

Daleth is one of the seven double letters in Sefer Yetzirah, associated with paired pronunciations and sevenfold sets such as planets. Recensions disagree about the detailed planetary order; the later Golden Dawn table assigns Venus and The Empress to Daleth.

Daleth is a double letter. Its name is conventionally glossed “door,” while the Venus assignment belongs to the later Hermetic ordering of the seven doubles.

PRINTED DIAGRAM · 1653

From Chokmah to Binah

Kircher prints Daleth across the upper horizontal between Chokmah and Binah. The connection itself behaves like a threshold between the two supernal poles, giving the door gloss a spatial application.

Chokmah contributes wisdom, while Binah contributes understanding.

GOLDEN DAWN ATTRIBUTION

Venus and The Empress

The Golden Dawn correspondence gives path 14 the attribution Venus and the tarot trump The Empress. This row is later than Kircher’s plate and much later than the letter classification.

CROWLEY AND 777

The Empress in the later table

Crowley retains Empress and Venus on this row. The stability across Golden Dawn and Crowley can hide the fact that tarot was added much later than the Hebrew letter class.

MODERN SYNTHESIS

What later readers make of the path

Modern accounts read attraction, fertility, or reciprocal passage between force and form. That interpretation combines Venus and Empress with a line already balancing Wisdom and Understanding.

WORKED READING

Read path 14 in sequence

Start with the endpoints as a polarity, then introduce the “door,” and only then Venus/Empress. The result is a passage between Chokmah and Binah, not a claim that Sefer Yetzirah described an Empress on this line.