The 22 Paths of the Tree of Life and the 32 Paths of Wisdom

The Tree of Life of the Kabbalah consists of ten sephiroth and 22 paths that connect them. Each path corresponds to a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The sephiroth describe qualities or levels of consciousness, the paths the transitions between them: whoever walks a path connects two qualities within themselves, such as feeling and intellect or heart and foundation.

The Western Hermetic tradition also assigned the 22 major arcana of the tarot and astrological signs to the paths. This connection arose later and is not Jewish teaching, but it shapes how the tree is drawn and read today. For an overview of the whole tree, see the article on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

The 32 Paths of Wisdom

The count goes back to the Sefer Yetzirah, the “Book of Creation,” whose roots reach back to late antiquity. It opens with the sentence that God created the world with 32 wondrous paths of wisdom, and lists them right after: ten sephiroth and 22 letters. So the 32 paths of wisdom are not 32 lines in the diagram but the whole tree, the ten sephiroth together with the 22 connections.

That is where the numbering comes from: the sephiroth count as paths 1 to 10, from Keter to Malkuth, the letter paths as paths 11 to 32. In the Hermetic arrangement, the path between Keter and Chokmah is the 11th, the path between Yesod and Malkuth the 32nd. A short text written later gives each of the 32 paths the name of an “intelligence,” a form of consciousness; the Hermetic tradition adopted these names. The number 32 itself is written in Hebrew with Lamed and Beth: לב, lev, the heart. There is more on number mysticism in the article on gematria.

Three Mothers, Seven Doubles, Twelve Simples

The Sefer Yetzirah divides the 22 letters into three groups. The correspondences of the paths follow from them:

• Three mother letters: Aleph, Mem and Shin stand for the elements Air, Water and Fire.
• Seven double letters: Beth, Gimel, Daleth, Kaph, Pe, Resh and Tau stand for the seven classical planets. They are called “double” because they originally had two pronunciations.
• Twelve simple letters: the remaining twelve stand for the twelve signs of the zodiac.

Which double letter belongs to which planet differs between the versions of the Sefer Yetzirah; the Hermetic tradition follows its own assignment, which the table below also shows. The zodiac signs, by contrast, already follow the order of the alphabet in the Sefer Yetzirah: He is Aries, Vav Taurus and so on up to Qoph, Pisces. How the letters are distributed over the paths has not been handed down uniformly either; Jewish schools sometimes draw the tree differently.

All 22 Paths at a Glance

The table shows the paths in the arrangement of the Hermetic tradition, which the library also follows. The number of the tarot card is always the path number minus eleven.

Path	Letter	Connects	Tarot card	Correspondence
11	Aleph (א)	Keter – Chokmah	The Fool (0)	Air
12	Beth (ב)	Keter – Binah	The Magician (I)	Mercury
13	Gimel (ג)	Keter – Tiphereth	The High Priestess (II)	Moon
14	Daleth (ד)	Chokmah – Binah	The Empress (III)	Venus
15	He (ה)	Chokmah – Tiphereth	The Emperor (IV)	Aries
16	Vav (ו)	Chokmah – Chesed	The Hierophant (V)	Taurus
17	Zayin (ז)	Binah – Tiphereth	The Lovers (VI)	Gemini
18	Cheth (ח)	Binah – Gevurah	The Chariot (VII)	Cancer
19	Teth (ט)	Chesed – Gevurah	Strength (VIII)	Leo
20	Yod (י)	Chesed – Tiphereth	The Hermit (IX)	Virgo
21	Kaph (כ)	Chesed – Netzach	Wheel of Fortune (X)	Jupiter
22	Lamed (ל)	Gevurah – Tiphereth	Justice (XI)	Libra
23	Mem (מ)	Gevurah – Hod	The Hanged Man (XII)	Water
24	Nun (נ)	Tiphereth – Netzach	Death (XIII)	Scorpio
25	Samekh (ס)	Tiphereth – Yesod	Temperance (XIV)	Sagittarius
26	Ayin (ע)	Tiphereth – Hod	The Devil (XV)	Capricorn
27	Pe (פ)	Netzach – Hod	The Tower (XVI)	Mars
28	Tzaddi (צ)	Netzach – Yesod	The Star (XVII)	Aquarius
29	Qoph (ק)	Netzach – Malkuth	The Moon (XVIII)	Pisces
30	Resh (ר)	Hod – Yesod	The Sun (XIX)	Sun
31	Shin (ש)	Hod – Malkuth	Judgement (XX)	Fire
32	Tau (ת)	Yesod – Malkuth	The World (XXI)	Saturn

Strength and Justice carry the numbers VIII and XI here, as in the Rider-Waite tarot. The Golden Dawn swapped the two so that Leo (Teth) comes before Libra (Lamed); in the Marseille tarot, Justice is VIII and Strength XI. Individual schools also differ in other places.

The Paths and the Three Pillars

The sephiroth are arranged in three pillars: on the right the pillar of mercy with Chokmah, Chesed and Netzach, on the left the pillar of severity with Binah, Gevurah and Hod, and between them the middle pillar with Keter, Tiphereth, Yesod and Malkuth. More on this in the article on the three pillars of the Tree of Life.

Three paths run horizontally and connect the side pillars directly: Daleth between Chokmah and Binah, Teth between Chesed and Gevurah, Pe between Netzach and Hod. Three more lead up the middle pillar, from Malkuth via Yesod and Tiphereth to Keter: the 32nd, the 25th and the 13th path. The rest run along a pillar or connect a side pillar with the middle. A horizontal path thus connects expansion and limitation; a path on the middle pillar leads up and down between spirit and matter.

Tarot and Pathworking

In the sense of the Hermetic tradition, each tarot card describes the experience of its path. A few examples:

• 11th path, The Fool: the leap into the unknown, pure potential between Keter and Chokmah.
• 13th path, The High Priestess: the long way from Keter across the abyss to Tiphereth, intuition and hidden knowledge.
• 27th path, The Tower: the breakthrough between Netzach and Hod, when rigid concepts fall so that feeling and intellect can connect anew.
• 32nd path, The World: the transition from Yesod to Malkuth, from the inner image into visible reality.

This gave rise to pathworking: you imagine the way between two sephiroth as an inner journey, hold the images of the corresponding card in your awareness and observe what comes up. Traditionally this work begins at the bottom, with the 32nd path, because the way up begins in Malkuth, the world we know.

UmbraLux assigns you a personal sephirah and one of the four worlds from your date of birth and your name, plus the path the Hermetic tradition assigns to your Sun sign: if you are an Aries, it is the 15th path; if you are a Pisces, the 29th. That is a symbolic assignment, not a traditional method of the Kabbalah. Ask Verus, your AI companion in the app, about your path in the Kabbalah: he knows it, along with your sephirah and your world, and talks through with you what it means for you; in the library you'll find all 22 paths.

Frequently Asked Questions about the Paths of the Tree of Life

Why are there exactly 22 paths?

Because the Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters. According to the Sefer Yetzirah, the world was created from the ten sephiroth and these 22 letters; each letter forms a path.

What are the 32 paths of wisdom?

The ten sephiroth and the 22 letter paths together. The term comes from the first sentence of the Sefer Yetzirah; that is why the letter paths carry the numbers 11 to 32.

What is the difference between sephiroth and paths?

The sephiroth are the stations, qualities or levels of consciousness, the paths the transitions between them. The sephiroth describe a state of being, the paths a becoming.

Which path leads from Malkuth to Yesod?

The 32nd path. It corresponds to the letter Tau and, in the Hermetic tradition, also to Saturn and the tarot card The World (XXI).

Does the tarot originally belong to the Kabbalah?

No. The assignment of the major arcana to the paths comes from 19th-century Western esotericism. Jewish Kabbalah knows the letters, not the cards.