← Qabalah overview

Qabalah · The Tree

The four colour scales

Every row of the Tree has four colours, not one. Table I of 777 prints four columns of them — one for each of the four worlds — so a sephirah or a path is a different colour in Atziluth from the colour it is in Assiah. The control above the diagram switches between them, and between a fifth choice that is not a column at all.

Four scales, four worlds

The four scales correspond to the four worlds of the Golden Dawn’s Tree, in descent: King to Atziluth, the Archetypal World; Queen to Briah, the Creative; Prince to Yetzirah, the Formative; and Princess to Assiah, the Material. Changing the scale changes the world represented by the diagram.

  1. King scale Atziluth

    777, Table I, col. XV, printed “The King Scale of Colour”.

    Atziluth, the Archetypal World. The flattest and least mixed of the four: Kether is simple Brilliance and Malkuth simple Yellow.

  2. Queen scale Briah

    777, Table I, col. XVI, printed “The Queen Scale of Colour”.

    Briah, the Creative World. These are the colours a reader has seen on the spheres of almost every Tree ever printed, which is why Malkuth's four quarters are familiar and its yellow is not.

  3. Prince scale Yetzirah

    777, Table I, col. XVII, printed “The Emperor Scale of Colour”.

    Yetzirah, the Formative World. Crowley says this scale is got from the two above it by simple admixture, as of colours on a palette, and it reads that way: muddier, warmer, and with no pure hue left in it.

  4. Princess scale Assiah

    777, Table I, col. XVIII, printed “The Empress Scale of Colour”.

    Assiah, the Material World. Almost every cell is two colours — one flecked or rayed with another — because this is the world where nothing arrives unmixed.

777 heads its last two colour columns the Emperor Scale and the Empress Scale. The Golden Dawn’s own papers, Regardie, and almost everything written since say Prince and Princess, and the court cards those names belong to are the same cards. This site uses Prince and Princess in its labels and records the printed headings beside them, rather than quietly normalising one to the other.

The Minutum Mundum

The familiar Tree combines the Queen scale for the spheres with the King scale for the paths. It is called the Minutum Mundum — the little world — because the pairing represents the whole rather than one world within it. This is the diagram’s default view; the control also offers each of the four scales separately.

Open the Tree and the colour control sits under the diagram, with all five in it.

Reading a colour

The King scale is the flattest: Kether is simple Brilliance, Malkuth simple Yellow. Below it the colours mix. Crowley says the Emperor scale is got from the two above it “by simple admixture, as of colours on a palette,” and it reads that way — muddier, warmer, with no pure hue left in it. The Princess scale is almost all compounds: a ground flecked or rayed with a second colour, because this is the world where nothing arrives unmixed.

The ten sephiroth

# Sephirah King Queen Prince Princess
1 Kether Brilliance White brilliance White brilliance White flecked gold
2 Chokmah Soft blue Grey Blue pearl grey, like mother-of pearl White, flecked red, blue, and yellow
3 Binah Crimson Black Dark brown Grey flecked pink
4 Chesed Deep violet Blue Deep purple Deep azure flecked yellow
5 Geburah Orange Scarlet red Bright scarlet Red flecked black
6 Tiphareth Clear pink rose Yellow (gold) Rich salmon Gold amber
7 Netzach Amber Emerald green Bright yellow green Olive flecked gold
8 Hod Violet purple Orange Red-russet Yellow-brown flecked white
9 Yesod Indigo Violet Very dark purple Citrine flecked azure
10 Malkuth Yellow Citrine, olive, russet and black As Queen scale, but flecked with gold Black rayed yellow

The twenty-two paths

# Letter King Queen Prince Princess
11 Aleph Bright pale yellow Sky blue Blue emerald green Emerald flecked gold
12 Beth Yellow Purple Grey Indigo rayed violet
13 Gimel Blue Silver Cold pale blue Silver rayed sky-blue
14 Daleth Emerald green Sky blue Early spring green Bright rose of cerise rayed pale yellow
15 Heh Scarlet Red Brilliant flame Glowing red
16 Vav Red orange Deep indigo Deep warm olive Rich brown
17 Zayin Orange Pale mauve New yellow leather Reddish grey inclined to mauve
18 Cheth Amber Maroon Rich bright russet Dark greenish brown
19 Teth Greenish yellow Deep purple Grey Reddish amber
20 Yod Yellowish green Slate grey Green grey Plum colour
21 Kaph Violet Blue Rich purple Bright blue rayed yellow
22 Lamed Emerald green Blue Deep blue-green Pale green
23 Mem Deep blue Sea green Deep olive-green White flecked purple
24 Nun Green blue Dull brown Very dark brown Livid indigo brown (like a black beetle)
25 Samekh Blue Yellow Green Dark vivid blue
26 Ayin Indigo Black Blue black Cold dark grey near black
27 Peh Scarlet Red Venetian red Bright red rayed azure or orange
28 Tzaddi Violet Sky blue Blueish mauve White tinged purple
29 Qoph Crimson Buff, flecked silver-white Light translucent pinkish brown Stone colour
30 Resh Orange Gold yellow Rich amber Amber rayed red
31 Shin Glowing orange scarlet Vermilion Scarlet, flecked gold Vermillion flecked crimson & emerald
32 Tav Indigo Black Blue black Black rayed blue

What is Crowley’s and what is ours

777 prints colour names rather than reproducible pigments. The names on this page were extracted from the printing and checked against it; the diagram’s hex values are this site’s interpretations and other values could also be reasonable. For compound names, the diagram shows the ground colour and retains the full printed description beside it. A sphere labelled White flecked gold and one labelled White, flecked red, blue, and yellow are therefore drawn alike but named differently.

The Jewish arrangements here carry none of the four. The colour scales are Golden Dawn material, and completing a Jewish tree from a Hermetic one would look finished and be fabricated — so those trees are drawn in a single neutral fill that this site states is chrome rather than doctrine. Da‘ath on the Hermetic tree is drawn hollow by a lens rather than filled, and the colours 777 gives it in a footnote are not seeded here.

Sources

  1. primary text Aleister Crowley, 777 (London, 1909), Table I, cols. XV–XVIII. The four columns themselves. Public domain; the four colour names on every row of this page are cut from it by script/extract_color_scales.rb and compared against the seeded rows on every run of the verification script.
  2. transcription Frater T.S.’s electronic edition of 777 Frater T.S.'s electronic edition, set from the 1955 Neptune Press facsimile of the 1909 tables. No scan of the 1909 printing itself is reachable by a script.
  3. context The Four Worlds lens Atziluth, Briah, Yetzirah and Assiah drawn on the Tree, which is the other half of this page: the worlds the four scales belong to.