Teth

Teth is the ninth letter, its pictograph a coiled serpent, and its number nine. Among the twelve simple letters it belongs to Leo, the sign of the lion's strength. As this site draws the Tree, following the GRA, Teth is the path from Chesed, Mercy, to Tiferet, the Beauty at the heart. The Golden Dawn draws it instead from Chesed to Gevurah, Severity — and the letter's classic tension, a coiling between expansion and restraint, reads most vividly across that second pairing. The traditions differ, and both deserve to stand.

The serpent winds between the two most opposite forces: the impulse to expand and give without measure, and the impulse to hold back and refuse. This is the letter's lesson in the taming of power. Mercy with no rigour dissipates into indulgence; rigour with no mercy turns to cruelty. The serpent's very shape — that endless winding line — is the two forces learning to embrace rather than cancel each other. Power is not tamed by killing one side but by teaching them to coil together.

When Teth is drawn, take it as contemplation, not a forecast of strength or its loss. Sit with the letter as a coiled serpent and let hitbonenut settle on a place where you swing between too much yielding and too much holding firm. Notice how rarely the answer is one side winning outright, and how often it is the slow winding of the two into a single supple motion. The serpent promises nothing about mastery. It only shows that a strength worth having is one that has learned to bend.