Tav: The Hebrew Letter of Mark or Cross

Tav is the twenty-second and last Hebrew letter and a double letter; its name means 'mark' or 'sign' and its value is 400, the highest of the single-letter values. In its ancient form Tav was written as a cross or X, the primal mark; Ezekiel 9:4 describes a tav set on the foreheads of the faithful. 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 double letter Tav is assigned to a planet and a pair of opposites.

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 attributes Tav to the planet Saturn and to The World / The Universe (trump XXI), the final trump completing the cycle, as Tav completes the alphabet.