Resh ר is a radiant sigil of awakening. It is the twentieth letter of the Hebrew alphabet and the one that corresponds to The Sun in the Tarot; the same card where a child stands beneath the living orb, naked and free, facing the brilliance without fear. Resh contains the same message in sight and sound: the head that turns eastward, the intellect that remembers its origin, the consciousness that becomes Light once it faces its source. In its curve lies reverence; in its vertical stroke the ascent. The solar mind, the awareness of the Cosmic Christ that reorients the whole being toward God.
Resh belongs to the family of the Seven Double letters, those that carry two possible breaths. The Double letters are gates of choice; they teach that illumination is born through polarity. In Resh, this dual breath becomes the tension between pride and reverence, blindness and radiance. When the head bows, the Light descends. When it stiffens, the Light withdraws. Thus the solar force within Resh holds the paradox of the incarnate: unity shining through division, the Divine reflected through the fragile mirror of the intellect.
I. The Rising Head
Thus Resh marks the point where the mind no longer revolves around itself and turns instead toward the Divine source. It contains the sign of dawn. After the darkness of Qoph, which belongs to the night and the unconscious, Resh brings the return of light. The Sun rises and the human face rises with it. The gesture is simple, immense; the head inclines before the Light and, in doing so, recognises that all thought is secondary to the radiance that sustains it.
In the geometry of the Temple, Resh is the eastern gate, the place of the first ray, the Rising point. The north is the realm of judgement and shadow; the south is warmth and mercy; the west is the veil of the Holy of Holies, where the Light withdraws; the east is the mouth of the dawn. There the priest stands, facing the Sun, beginning the rite of renewal. To face east is to remember the origin of the soul. In that orientation the mind ceases to claim dominion and becomes a vessel, a cup for the intelligence that transcends it. Resh embodies the return of the intellect to its rightful order; it does not destroy reason but places it beneath the flame of Spirit.
Resh is found in the path joining Hod to Yesod, the bridge between the splendour of the mind and the foundation of the soul. It corresponds to the Sun, the living heart of the cosmos. Its simple shape – an upright line with a curved head – depicts the mind bending to the source of Light. The moment it bows, it becomes radiant.
II. The Inner Sun
The Tarot mirrors this mystery in the nineteenth card The Sun. A child stands naked beneath a blazing disc, the wall of separation behind him. It is the restored Adam, the mind reborn through clarity. The wall is the veil that once divided the inner from the outer. When the letter Resh awakens, that wall dissolves. Consciousness becomes transparent, no longer a mirror that reflects only itself but a clear surface through which the Divine Light passes freely.
The Sun in the Tarot is the Christic state, the condition in which human awareness turns entirely toward the Divine. The Gospel image of the transfigured Christ expresses the same event: the intellect and the heart aligned with the solar will. The Christ is the eternal Sun shining through the purified mind. To “see the Father” is to let the head turn fully to the Light that was always there.
The value of Resh is two hundred: resurrection after completion. It is the aurora that follows the long night of the alphabet. Every illumination of thought after a period of obscurity echoes Resh. When the Sun returns, knowledge itself is reborn.
III. The Turning of the Head
The movement of Resh is rotation. The Greeks called it metanoia, a change of mind so complete that it feels like a revolution of the axis. It is not a moral correction but a reorientation of sight. The head turns to the east and, in that, instant the mind becomes the mirror of the Divine countenance. The Christic consciousness is precisely this act: the human intellect, once the false Sun of its own system, realises that it must reflect a greater Light. The gesture is humility, yet also power, since, through it, the Divine Light enters the world.
The intellect alone cannot generate light; it can only turn toward it. When that turn occurs, the head becomes a lamp, the words become warmth, and the face becomes the altar of dawn.
To live Resh it is to keep facing the east of the heart, where the Divine Sun never sets. There the mind and the Spirit meet, and the world is seen anew in the clarity of its source. The light of the Christ, the Sun of the world, shines through the mind that remembers to turn. In that turning, the Temple is rebuilt. In that dawn, consciousness becomes prayer.
Κύριε ελέησον