Kaph: The Hebrew Letter of Palm of the Hand

Kaph is the eleventh Hebrew letter and a double letter, sounding as a hard 'k' or a soft aspirated 'kh'. Its name means the palm or cupped hollow of the hand and its value is 20. The Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Formation), the foundational text of Jewish letter-mysticism compiled in late antiquity, divides the twenty-two Hebrew consonants into three groups: three 'mother' letters (Aleph, Mem, Shin) assigned to the elements Air, Water and Fire; seven 'double' letters, each with a hard and soft pronunciation, assigned to the seven classical planets and to seven pairs of opposites; and twelve 'simple' letters assigned to the twelve signs of the zodiac and the twelve months. As a double letter Kaph is assigned to a planet and a pair of opposites.

A separate and much later system, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (founded 1888), mapped the twenty-two letters onto the twenty-two trumps of the tarot along the paths of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. This tarot correspondence is a modern Western-esoteric overlay, not part of the ancient Hebrew or classical Kabbalistic tradition. The Golden Dawn attributes Kaph to the planet Jupiter and to The Wheel of Fortune (trump X), the turning of fate and expansive fortune.