Shin: The Hebrew Letter of Tooth

Shin is the twenty-first Hebrew letter and one of the three mother letters; its name means 'tooth' and its value is 300. Its upward flames give it its character; it stands for one of the names of God, Shaddai, and is the letter traditionally inscribed on the mezuzah and formed by the hands in the priestly blessing. 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 mother letter Shin governs the element Fire; its hissing sound is the fiery counterpart to the silent water of Mem, and it is associated with the head and the hot season.

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 assigns Shin to Judgement (trump XX), the card of fire, awakening and the last trumpet.