Alphabet Letters
Vav ו
VAHV
Also Known As Vav
Hebrew Letters
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Origin Develops the Achaemenid Aramaic chancery hand, adopted after the exile
Vav is the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, its name meaning nail or hook and its gematria value six. It is one of the twelve Simple letters, attributed to the twelve zodiac signs, and is given to Taurus. In the Hermetic scheme it corresponds to the tarot trump The Hierophant and to the sixteenth path of the Tree of Life, joining Chokmah to Chesed. As the nail or hook, it symbolizes that which joins and fastens; grammatically Vav is the Hebrew conjunction 'and', the connective that binds words and clauses together, and in the divine name YHVH it stands for the Son, the link that unites the higher and lower worlds.
Facts
Disputed
Origin PeriodScholem places Sefer Yetzirah between the second and sixth century CE 5Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1961) surveys the manuscript recensions of Sefer Yetzirah and finds no single stable text: the surviving copies diverge enough in wording and in the letter-to-planet and letter-to-sign correspondences that quoting "the text" requires naming which recension is meant. Comparing the linguistic style, the doctrinal content and the external references made to the work across centuries of citation, Scholem argues the book could have been composed anywhere from the second to the ninth century CE, a span of roughly a millennium, with later Kabbalistic and Hasidic writers each reading it through their own era's overlay. The atlas follows Scholem's range rather than a narrower guess, and does not print the per-letter planet and sign tables at all, because doing so would silently pick one contested recension over the others. Origin PeriodSurvives in three recensions that do not agree in detail 5Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1961) surveys the manuscript recensions of Sefer Yetzirah and finds no single stable text: the surviving copies diverge enough in wording and in the letter-to-planet and letter-to-sign correspondences that quoting "the text" requires naming which recension is meant. Comparing the linguistic style, the doctrinal content and the external references made to the work across centuries of citation, Scholem argues the book could have been composed anywhere from the second to the ninth century CE, a span of roughly a millennium, with later Kabbalistic and Hasidic writers each reading it through their own era's overlay. The atlas follows Scholem's range rather than a narrower guess, and does not print the per-letter planet and sign tables at all, because doing so would silently pick one contested recension over the others. Origins
Origin PeriodDevelops the Achaemenid Aramaic chancery hand, adopted after the exile 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script Origin PeriodNot the script of the earliest Hebrew inscriptions 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script Origin PeriodStandard by the Hasmonean period; palaeo-Hebrew survives only on coins 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script Place of OriginThe Levant, by way of the Aramaic administrative script of the Persian empire. 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script Origin of the NameNames travelled into Greek unchanged and meaningless 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script Origin of the NameNorthwest Semitic words inherited from the older linear script 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script Origin of the NamePictographic meanings (ox head, house, water) are modern reconstructions 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script Sense of the Namenail or hook 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script The pictographic sense is a modern reconstruction from the letter name rather than a meaning attested in the script's own period, and the atlas records that position elsewhere on this letter. The name itself is inherited; the picture behind it is inferred. Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern UseA criticism of the predictive method, not of the tradition itself 4 Contested or Appropriated Modern UseSo many possible sums exist that a match can always be found 4 Contested or Appropriated Modern UseUsed as proof: the beast of Revelation, verse prophecy, Bible codes 4 Identity
Script TypeAn abjad: the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew square script record consonants, read right to left, with vowels supplied either by the reading tradition or, in pointed texts, by the Masoretic vowel-pointing system. 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script PositionSixth of twenty-two in the Hebrew alphabet 1 Attributions
Associated SoundLabio-velar approximant w in ancient pronunciation, shifted to voiced labiodental fricative v in later and modern Hebrew; also serves as a vowel letter for o or u 1 Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceHebrew letter mysticism is a continuous, living Jewish tradition 2Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters Meaning in the Attesting SourceOne of the twelve simple letters, with a single pronunciation 3Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters Meaning in the Attesting SourceRuns through medieval commentary, golem lore, Abulafia, hasidic teaching 2Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters Meaning in the Attesting SourceStill studied and practised today 2Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters Meaning in the Attesting SourceThe twelve assign to signs, months, cube-of-space edges, body faculties 3Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters Meaning in the Attesting SourceWhich sign goes with which letter is not recorded; order disputed 3Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters Learn More
Vav: The Hebrew Letter of Nail or Hook
Vav is the sixth Hebrew letter and a simple letter; its name means 'nail' or 'hook' and its value is 6. Grammatically Vav is the great connector, the prefixed 'and' that joins clauses, and Kabbalists read it as the hook that binds heaven to earth. The Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Formation), the foundational text of Jewish letter-mysticism compiled in late antiquity, divides the twenty-two Hebrew consonants into three groups: three 'mother' letters (Aleph, Mem, Shin) assigned to the elements Air, Water and Fire; seven 'double' letters, each with a hard and soft pronunciation, assigned to the seven classical planets and to seven pairs of opposites; and twelve 'simple' letters assigned to the twelve signs of the zodiac and the twelve months. As a simple letter Vav is assigned to the sign Taurus and the month of Iyar.
A separate and much later system, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (founded 1888), mapped the twenty-two letters onto the twenty-two trumps of the tarot along the paths of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. This tarot correspondence is a modern Western-esoteric overlay, not part of the ancient Hebrew or classical Kabbalistic tradition. The Golden Dawn assigns Vav to The Hierophant (trump V), the teacher and traditional channel of sacred knowledge.
Vav: Scribal Tradition
Vav is one of the plainest Hebrew letters to write, a single vertical stroke, which makes one particular scribal tradition stand out by contrast: in Numbers 25:12, where God grants Pinchas a brit shalom, a covenant of peace, some manuscript lineages and printed Torah texts render the vav in shalom with a visible break partway down its stroke, a form generally called a vav ketuah, a severed vav. The custom is not reproduced in every Torah scroll or codex, and Jewish legal authorities have disagreed over the centuries about whether it is required, a variance the tradition itself openly acknowledges rather than resolving; where it does appear, commentators including the medieval Baal HaTurim have read the break as a sign that peace won through violence, even when granted by God, remains an incomplete or fragile peace.
Vav's ordinary shape, by contrast, is one of the more graphically stable letters in the alphabet across the palaeo-Hebrew-to-square-script transition that Jewish tradition attributes to the return from Babylonian exile, discussed elsewhere in this atlas, since a plain single stroke offers little room for a script reform to alter. The disagreement over the vav ketuah is a useful reminder that not every scribal tradition attached to the Hebrew letters carries equal authority: some, like the seven crowned letters discussed elsewhere in this atlas, are fixed by explicit Talmudic ruling, while others, like this one, remain optional local custom that varies from scroll to scroll and community to community.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
In the Golden Dawn Kabbalistic attribution, The Hierophant corresponds to the Hebrew letter Vav by way of its Tree of Life path.
Derived from This
Passing the River Vav stands for the Hebrew letter Vav, and carries its value of 6. Agrippa prints the three scripts in Book III of De occulta philosophia as tables of Hebrew equivalents. The sign shapes vary between the manuscript and printed traditions; the letter for letter correspondence does not.
Malachim Vav stands for the Hebrew letter Vav, and carries its value of 6. Agrippa prints the three scripts in Book III of De occulta philosophia as tables of Hebrew equivalents. The sign shapes vary between the manuscript and printed traditions; the letter for letter correspondence does not.
Celestial Vav stands for the Hebrew letter Vav, and carries its value of 6. Agrippa prints the three scripts in Book III of De occulta philosophia as tables of Hebrew equivalents. The sign shapes vary between the manuscript and printed traditions; the letter for letter correspondence does not.
Related To
Samaritan Baa and Hebrew Vav are cognates, both continuing the same Paleo-Hebrew sign at the value 6. The Samaritan name records a sound change rather than a different letter: this letter is read as b in the Samaritan tradition, which is why the standard character name for it is Baa.
Greek Upsilon and Hebrew Vav are cognates. Both continue the same Phoenician sign, which is why both carry the numeral value 6 in their letter-number systems. A shared ancestor, not a borrowing in either direction. The Greek alphabet was adapted from the Phoenician abjad in the early first millennium BC, and the Hebrew square script descends from the same abjad through Aramaic.
Hebrew Vav and Greek Upsilon continue the same Phoenician waw. The Hebrew square script descends from the Phoenician abjad through Aramaic; Greek adapted the same sign directly.
Mandaic Ushenna and Hebrew Vav occupy the same place in the twenty-two letter Aramaic sequence. Hebrew keeps the inherited noun as the letter name and the numeral value 6; Mandaic keeps neither. Where the Mandaic shapes came from is disputed, a cursive Aramaic hand or the Parthian chancery script.
Celestial Vav is a cipher glyph standing for the Hebrew letter Vav; Agrippa's Book III prints Celestial, Malachim and Passing the River as tables of Hebrew equivalents, letter for letter.
Malachim Vav is a cipher glyph standing for the Hebrew letter Vav; Agrippa's Book III prints Celestial, Malachim and Passing the River as tables of Hebrew equivalents, letter for letter.
Passing the River Vav is a cipher glyph standing for the Hebrew letter Vav; Agrippa's Book III prints Celestial, Malachim and Passing the River as tables of Hebrew equivalents, letter for letter.
Syriac Waw and Hebrew Vav stand at the same place in the twenty-two letter Aramaic sequence and carry the same letter-numeral value, 6. The Syriac script grew out of the local Aramaic cursive of Edessa and the Hebrew square script out of the same Aramaic alphabet, so the two letters are inherited from one ancestor rather than borrowed from each other.
Both signs continue the same Northwest Semitic consonant inherited from a shared abjad ancestor; this is a cognate correspondence, not a borrowing in either direction. Ugaritic and Hebrew share the same twenty-two-consonant core, with Ugaritic adding six further signs Hebrew never developed separately.
Cognate letters. Arabic waw and Hebrew vav both continue the twenty-two letter Northwest Semitic alphabet, and they hold the same place in the inherited order and the same numeral value, 6. Neither is derived from the other.
Wawe and the Hebrew vav continue the Semitic w. Ge'ez keeps the w. Most Hebrew reading traditions have moved the letter to a v, which is a change in the language rather than in the script.
Sources
1. The World's Writing Systems
Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.), Oxford University Press, 1996the chapter on the Aramaic scriptView the Source 2. Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid
Moshe Idel, State University of New York Press, 1990the chapters on the letter-combination traditions and their reception
3. Sepher Yetzirah (Book of Formation)
Anonymous (traditionally attributed to Abraham)On Vav as a simple letter and the sign TaurusView the Source 4. Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras Wrought
Underwood Dudley, Mathematical Association of America (Spectrum series), 1997the chapters on the beast, on the law of small numbers and on biblical sevensView the Source 5. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism
Gershom Scholem, Schocken Books, 1961the chapter on early Jewish mysticism, on Sefer YetzirahView the Source Sepher Yetzirah, the Book of Formation, and the Thirty-Two Paths of Wisdom
William Wynn Westcott, Theosophical Publishing Society / Internet Sacred Text Archive, 1887On the twelve simple letters and the zodiacView the Source The Encyclopedia of Tarot, Volume I
Stuart R. Kaplan, U.S. Games Systems, 1978For the Golden Dawn attribution (Taurus, The Hierophant)View the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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