Meaning
Resh, the head, brings the light of the thinking mind down into the Foundation. With the Sun card, trump XIX, and the Sun itself as its planet, the Golden Dawn made it the path of clarity and vitality. In our own words, it is clear understanding and warmth, confidence that brings what was hidden into view. It promises no good fortune; it is a picture of light.
The letter
Resh is the twentieth letter, worth 200, and its name means a head in the tradition and in scholarship. The Sefer Yetzirah makes it a double letter with a planet, and once again its versions disagree: the short, long and Saadia versions give Resh Mercury, the Gra version Saturn, and Kircher Jupiter. The Sun is the Golden Dawn's choice, first printed in 777 in 1909. It is a neat fit, the Sun card on the Sun's path, but it is the order's design, not the Sefer Yetzirah's.
Lévi put Judgement on Resh; the Golden Dawn has the Sun, the card before.
On the Tree
On Kircher's tree the path runs diagonally from Hod, at the foot of the Pillar of Severity on the viewer's left, to Yesod on the Middle Pillar; it mirrors path 28, Tzaddi, from Netzach on the right. On the Gra and Ari trees of Jewish Kabbalah the double letters lie on the verticals, so Resh is elsewhere, and there is no tarot. The Thirty-Two Paths of Wisdom calls it "the Collecting Intelligence", in Westcott's English.
A person whose personality or soul card is the Sun has this path marked. Card 19 is the case Greer singled out: its digits make 10 and then 1, so the soul card is the Magician and 10, the Wheel of Fortune, is what she called the hidden factor. Our Tarot chart shows it; this tree does not draw it. The placing of cards on paths is our own combination.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- The Golden Dawn's planet
- The Sun, in the order first printed in 777 (1909) sourced
- The Sefer Yetzirah's planet
- A planet, in other orders: the short, long and Saadia versions give Mercury; the Gra version Saturn; Kircher Jupiter disputed
- On the Jewish trees
- The Gra and Ari trees put the double letters on the vertical paths, so Resh need not be here sourced
- Birth card on this path
- Marked when a person's personality or soul card is the Sun (Greer's method on the Golden Dawn's table) our construction
- Our keywords
- Clarity, vitality, illumination our construction
How the schools read it
- Sefer Yetzirah (2nd to 9th century)
- One of the seven double letters, with a planet: in its short, long and Saadia versions Mercury.
- Lévi and the French school (1854 to 1856)
- XX Judgement on Resh.
- The Golden Dawn (1888; *777*, 1909)
- XIX The Sun, with the planet the Sun. The planet's order is the order's own.
- EsoTerrier
- Clear understanding and warmth: confidence that brings what was hidden into view.
Claims about it
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Path 30 and the attributions on this page are Kabbalah.
falseWhat the record shows: The Tree comes from Kabbalah, a Jewish mystical tradition, which has no tarot and its own ways of drawing and reading it. The tables here are the Hermetic Qabalah's, compiled by Agrippa, Mathers and the Golden Dawn.
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A birth card on Path 30 is the path a person is walking, or is tasked with, for life.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: No tradition gives anyone a path. Placing Greer's birth cards on the Golden Dawn's paths is our own combination, and the page reads the path, nothing more.
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The planet of Path 30's letter is the Sefer Yetzirah's own attribution.
falseWhat the record shows: The Sefer Yetzirah gives the double letters planets, but its versions run in other orders. This one is the Golden Dawn's, first printed in 777 in 1909.
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The letter of Path 30 is a vibrational frequency that sets a person's energy.
falseWhat the record shows: The Sefer Yetzirah says the letters were engraved, weighed and combined to make the world: a creation account, not physics. Nothing about a letter is measured, and nothing about a person follows from it.
