The Aeon
The Spirit of the Primal Fire
Rider-Waite: Judgement
- שShin tooth, 300, mother
- Path 31
- Hod
- Malkuth
- Fire element, Mother letter
- ♇︎Pluto modern overlay
- Number 20 see 10 and 2
- Glowing orange scarlet King scale
- The Self archetype
- The Divine Child archetype
In a reading
The end of one era and the beginning of another; a final decision, a judgement that cannot be reversed; renewal on a new principle. Badly placed: the refusal of the new, fanaticism, the past clung to.
On the card
Nuit arches across the top of the card, her body a sky of stars; at her feet burns Hadit, the winged globe. Ra-Hoor-Khuit, the hawk-headed lord, sits enthroned in the centre, and before him stands the transparent child Hoor-paar-kraat with finger to lips. At the bottom the letter Shin holds three flame-figures.
Kabbalah
Shin, the tooth, one of the three Mothers, on path 31 from Hod to Malkuth: the fire that devours and purifies, the path by which spirit enters the world. Shin is also the letter that, added to the Tetragrammaton, makes the Pentagrammaton YHShVH.
Astrology
Elemental Fire and Spirit. Modern practitioners overlay Pluto (death and rebirth of collective forms); this is not among Crowley's primary attributions.
Number
Twenty, and Shin's value 300. Shin's three flames are the three Aeons of Isis, Osiris and Horus; 300 is also the value of Ruach Elohim, the spirit of God that moved on the waters.
Depth psychology
The archetype of rebirth and of apocalypse: the collective psyche changing its governing image. Jungian readers see the death of the old dominant and the emergence of a new symbol of the Self.
Thoth and Rider-Waite
Waite's Judgement shows an angel with a trumpet and the dead rising from their graves; Crowley replaces the Christian Last Judgement with the Thelemic proclamation of the Aeon of Horus and the gods of the Stele of Revealing.
Related cards
Pairs with
Fire in the small cards and courts
- יAce of Wands Root of Fire
- ♏︎Knight of Wands Fire of Fire
- ♒︎Knight of Cups Fire of Water
- ♉︎Knight of Swords Fire of Air
- ♌︎Knight of Disks Fire of Earth
All Fire cards are listed on the Fire page.
Other paths touching Hod
Other paths touching Malkuth
Correspondences follow the Golden Dawn system as used in Crowley's Book of Thoth and Liber 777. Card images are described, not reproduced. Where sources differ.