Sefer Yetzirah and the Tree of Life

In brief

A brief, ancient Hebrew text explaining how God created the world through 'thirty-two wondrous paths of wisdom': the ten sefirot (numbers or dimensions) and the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, divided into three mothers, seven doubles and twelve simples. Later Kabbalah, especially the Zohar (c. 1280), developed the sefirot into the diagram called the Tree of Life, which Christian and Hermetic Kabbalists and the Golden Dawn mapped onto the tarot and astrology.

Key ideas

• ✦Creation through number and letter
• ✦The ten sefirot and twenty-two letters as 32 paths
• ✦Mothers (elements), doubles (planets), simples (signs)
• ✦The Tree of Life as a map of divine emanation and of the soul

Why it matters

Sefer Yetzirah is the source of the letter correspondences behind the Golden Dawn tarot and the Tree of Life. It reminds us that Kabbalah is first a Jewish tradition, later adapted by Christian and Hermetic thinkers.

“In thirty-two wonderful paths of wisdom did Jah, Jehovah Tzabaoth... engrave His name.”