The rose of twenty-two petals
YHVH
יהוה
Tap or press Enter on a petal to add its letter.
Trace
Letter 4 of 4
הHeh, simple letter of Aries
A straight stroke from Vav to Heh. This is the last letter: a short bar across the line closes the sigil.
Resources / Language and number
Rose Cross Sigil Wheel
At the heart of the Golden Dawn's Rose Cross Lamen is a rose of twenty-two petals, one for each Hebrew letter, set in the three rings of the Sefer Yetzirah. Adepts used it to draw the sigil of any name: spell the name in Hebrew and run a line from petal to petal. Type a name below, or tap the petals, and the rose draws it.
The rings, colours and drawing rules follow the Order's papers. Spelling English in Hebrew is a choice the papers leave to the practitioner, so the rule in use is shown beside every result. The same letters, read one at a time, are in the Hebrew Letter Explorer.
Step one
Spell the name
Hebrew is traced as written. English is spelled into Hebrew by the rule below; up to 36 letters are traced.
English into Hebrew
Hebrew was typed, so it is traced letter for letter and this rule is not used.
Or begin from a name the rituals use
The Tetragrammaton, the four-lettered name.
Step two
The sigil alone
Lifted off the rose, as it is drawn on a talisman or traced in the air.
4 letters · gematria 26
Letter by letter
The working method
How the rose makes a sigil
1
Choose the name
Traditionally a divine, angelic or spirit name, already written in Hebrew. A personal name, a magical motto or a short statement of intent can be used the same way once it is spelled in Hebrew letters.
2
Spell it in Hebrew
Each Hebrew letter has one petal. Final forms stand on their letter's petal. English has no single right spelling, so the instrument offers two rules and lets you correct the result by hand.
3
Find the first letter and set down the pen
A small open circle is drawn on the petal of the first letter. It marks where the sigil begins.
4
Draw from petal to petal
A straight line runs to the petal of each following letter in turn. Where the same letter comes twice in a row there is nowhere to go, so a small loop is made instead; some draw a wave or a crook in the line.
5
Close it
A short bar across the line at the last letter ends the sigil. Lifted off the rose, the line is the name's signature: it can be painted on a talisman or a telesmatic image, or traced in the air over the lamen when the name is vibrated.
Three mothers
א מ ש
The inner ring: Aleph, Mem and Shin, the elements Air, Water and Fire.
Seven doubles
ב ג ד כ פ ר ת
The middle ring: the seven planets, each letter with a hard and a soft sound.
Twelve simples
ה ו ז ח ט י ל נ ס ע צ ק
The outer ring: the twelve signs, from Heh for Aries at the crown.
Each petal is painted in the King scale colour of its letter's path on the Tree of Life, and the letter is written in the complementary colour, so that the two "flash" against each other. The "Gold" colouring sets the same rose in the site's own gold on black.
The tradition
The Rose Cross Lamen is the badge an Adept of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn made and painted on entering the Second Order. At its centre a cross bears a rose of twenty-two petals, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, laid out as the Sefer Yetzirah divides them: the three mothers of the elements in the innermost ring, the seven doubles of the planets in the middle ring, and the twelve simples of the signs outside them.
The Order's papers describe the rose as more than an emblem. Because every letter has its petal, the sigil of any name can be drawn on it by running a line from the petal of each letter to the next, beginning with a small circle and ending with a short bar. Sigils of divine and angelic names made this way were traced in ritual and painted on talismans and the Order's flashing tablets.
This is a different practice from the sigils of intent popularised after Austin Osman Spare, which reduce a written sentence by striking out repeated letters and combine the rest into a monogram. The instrument offers Spare's habit of dropping repeats as a named option, and leaves it off by default.
Reading the instrument
- Type a name, choose one of the names the rituals use, or tap the petals to spell in Hebrew directly. Hebrew is traced exactly as written; English is spelled into Hebrew first, by sound or by the Golden Dawn's letter key read backwards, and the rule in use is printed under the choice.
- The line runs between the centres of the petals. The open circle marks the first letter and the short bar the last. When a letter follows itself, as the two Lameds of a doubled ll would if spelled by letter key, there is no stroke to draw, so a loop marks the repeat; the papers allow a wave or a crook instead.
- Step through the sigil letter by letter with the slider or play it through. The table beneath gives each letter's ring, its element, planet or sign, its colour and its value; the total is standard gematria with final forms at their ordinary value.
- The sigil alone is cropped to its own extent and can be saved as SVG, with a clear ground, or as a PNG on black.
Where it descends from
- The Golden Dawn
- Israel Regardie's publication of the Order's papers, 1937–40, which describe the Rose Cross Lamen, its colours and the tracing of sigils from the rose.
- Sefer Yetzirah
- The source of the division of the letters into three mothers, seven doubles and twelve simples, and of their elements, planets and signs; its versions differ on the planets.
- 777
- Crowley's 1909 tables of the Golden Dawn's attributions, whose King scale (column XV) names the colours of the petals.
- The Book of Pleasure
- Austin Osman Spare's 1913 book, the source of the later method of sigils made from a written intent with its repeated letters removed.
What this does not claim
The rings, the order of the petals, the colours and the drawing marks follow the Golden Dawn's lamen as it is commonly reproduced; painted lamens differ in small details. The painted colours are this site's rendering of the colours the tables name. Spelling an English name in Hebrew has no single right answer, so the rule used is named and the spelling can be changed by hand. Nothing here claims that a sigil has any effect.
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