Hod is assigned the planet Mercury, and the pairing is apt: Mercury, the classical planet of the mind, communication, commerce and the messenger's swift intelligence, is the fitting counterpart of the sefirah of intellect, reason and language. In the Golden Dawn system of 1888 and in Liber 777, Hod's colour is orange, and it corresponds to the four Eights of the tarot suits; the Mercurial attribution underlies the strong Western-esoteric association of Hod with magic itself, understood as the art of manipulating symbol and word, the domain of the Mercurial trickster and scribe. As always the layers must be kept distinct.
Hod as the eighth sefirah, its name Elohim Tzabaoth, and its role as the rational faculty of the soul are Jewish Kabbalah, the fruit of centuries of mystical reflection, while the cross-referencing to Mercury, to a tarot rank and to a scale of magical colours is Hermetic Qabalah, the Western ceremonial adaptation formalised in 1888. The Tree is the same figure in both, but the uses to which its eighth sphere is put diverge sharply.