Samekh is the Hebrew letter associated with Temperance. Most sources say that its original meaning is tent peg, or support. But the letter itself is round, in fact the cursive figure for samekh is a circle. It looks nothing like a tent peg.The Wikipedia article on Samekh points out that the Phonecian pictograph for Samekh looks a bit more like a tent peg and is probably derived from the Egyptian djed, the pillar shaped hieroglyph that means stability. So how is a circle like a tent peg? They didn’t just make this stuff up. Well, yeah, they did, but what was the method in their divine madness? The mystic interpretation of the letter samekh given by most sources is “the endless cycle”, which does match the shape of the letter. The endless cycle is something my pagan brain can grab onto. Pagans and Hebrews both see the universe as moving in circles. Black Elk, Oglala Lakota, 1863-1950 said it best: Everything the power of the… Read More »