Resh · ר

Turn the head, and the same morning that was behind you is in front of you. That turn has a name: return.

Correspondences

Essence

Resh is the head — not qof's hidden hindbrain but the face, the front of the head, the countenance turned toward the light. Its name opens into rosh, head and beginning, as in Rosh Hashanah, the head of the year: resh is the letter of fresh starts made in full daylight. But the tradition also hears rash, the pauper, and rasha, the wicked — the head bowed in poverty or turned deliberately away — and reads the letter as the very hinge of teshuvah, return: the wicked need not become someone else, only turn the head around. The glyph itself is a profile in mid-turn, a bent figure that has not yet straightened.

It is a double letter under the Sun, bearing the pair of peace and war — the two conditions the face announces before a word is spoken. Its number is two hundred, resh's poverty raised to abundance.

On the Tree it is the thirtieth path, joining Hod to Yesod — splendour descending into foundation, intellect warmed into life. Its trump is The Sun, the card of the child on the white horse under the full unclouded disc: consciousness restored to innocence, clarity after the Moon's long night-road. Resh is the morning after qof — the head lifted, the face lit, the simple immense difference made by which way one is looking.

Related

• Qof — the previous letter, the back of this same head
• Shin — the next letter, the fire above the lifted face
• The Sun
• Kabbalah
• Tree of Life