Path 22

The twenty-second path joins Geburah, Severity, to Tiphareth, Beauty, descending the left side of the Tree from the sphere of judgement to the harmonising centre. It carries the letter Lamed, the tallest of the Hebrew letters, rising above the line, whose name means "ox-goad", the pointed staff used to drive and direct the ox, an image of teaching, correction and the guidance of force toward its proper end; the same root gives the Hebrew words for teaching and learning.

In the Sefer Yetzirah Lamed is one of the twelve simple letters assigned to the twelve zodiac signs, and it is given to Libra, the scales, the cardinal air sign of balance, justice and equilibrium. The attribution of the letter to Libra belongs to the ancient Jewish scheme in which the twelve single letters correspond to the signs and months; the scales of Libra and the correcting goad of Lamed together make this the path of justice and the righting of the balance on the pillar of severity.

This path is assigned the tarot trump Justice, and the pairing is transparent: Justice, the card of the scales, of balance, law and just measure, answers directly to its zodiacal sign Libra, the scales, and to the letter Lamed, the ox-goad of correction and teaching. In the Golden Dawn ordering, Justice and Strength were exchanged from their older tarot positions precisely so that Justice would fall on the path of Libra and Strength on that of Leo, an editorial change made from 1888 and recorded in Liber 777.

The mapping of letters to trumps descends from Eliphas Levi and the Golden Dawn. The layers must be separated. The path from Geburah to Tiphareth, the letter Lamed, and its attribution to Libra are Jewish in origin, from the Sefer Yetzirah, whereas the identification with Justice, and the renumbering that placed it here, is Hermetic Qabalah, the Victorian Western magical system, distinct from the Jewish Kabbalah that supplied the underlying path and letter.