The Two Pillars

Jachin and Boaz, the pillars of the porch, the twin columns

Two columns, and the thing that matters is between them. Note what stands there, and whether the pillars are told apart.

Seven works here draw a pair of pillars, from three centuries and three traditions, and the pair is older than all of them. The verse is 3 Kings 7:21: “And he set up the two pillars in the porch of the temple: and when he had set up the pillar on the right hand, he called the name thereof Jachin: in like manner he set up the second pillar, and called the name thereof Booz.” The Challoner note glosses the names: “Jachin.... That is, firmly established. Booz.... That is, in its strength.”

Waite puts the letters on them. Of the High Priestess of 1909 he writes that she “is seated between the white and black pillars--J. and B.--of the mystic Temple, and the veil of the Temple is behind her: it is embroidered with palms and pomegranates.” The pomegranates are Solomon's too: the verse before the naming counts two hundred of them round the capitals. Pamela Colman Smith painted one pillar black and one white, which the verse does not say, and Waite does not explain.

Cross's chart gives the pillars globes instead of letters, the terrestrial on one and the celestial on the other, and his monitor is silent about them except to call them “those two famous brazen pillars” when the temple is sacked. Khunrath sets his whole title between two columns and writes Sol at the foot of one and Luna at the foot of the other, so that the entrance to his book is the entrance to a temple with the sun and the moon for its pillars. On his Oratory the pillars carry words instead: Experientia on the one the reader can see.

What the pillars mean, then, is a doorway, and every maker here decides what to put in it. Solomon puts the temple. Waite puts a priestess and a veil. Cross puts nothing, and lets the two globes say that the door is between earth and heaven. The one constant is that there are two, and that they are not quite the same.

Contested

The verse and its note are quoted from the Challoner revision, which the archive uses for scripture throughout. Waite's account is his own; Smith left no statement about the colours of her pillars. Cross's monitor does not explain plate 12, and the sentence quoted comes from a different part of the book. The reading of Khunrath's title pillars as a temple door is the archive's, made from the two words engraved at their feet.

Sources

3 Kings 7:21, Douay-Rheims, Challoner revision: The verse and Challoner's note to it, from the edition the archive uses for scripture; checked against the Project Gutenberg text of that edition.
Arthur Edward Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot: Waite commissioned the 1909 designs and wrote the key to them, so his account is the closest thing the deck has to an author's statement.
Jeremy L. Cross, The True Masonic Chart, or Hieroglyphic Monitor: The 1826 monitor, read on the page; it names the pillars once and does not explain the plate.
Heinrich Khunrath, Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae: The words engraved on the title and the Oratory plate, read off the 1609 pages.