We introduce the strongly uplifting cardinals, which are equivalently characterized, we prove, as the superstrongly unfoldable cardinals and also as the almost-hugely unfoldable cardinals, and we show that their existence is equiconsistent over ZFC with natural instances of the boldface resurrection axiom, such as the boldface resurrection axiom for proper forcing.

We introduce the resurrection axioms, a new class of forcing axioms, and the uplifting cardinals, a new large cardinal notion, and prove that various instances of the resurrection axioms are equiconsistent over ZFC with the existence of an uplifting cardinal.

Using the lottery preparation, we prove that any strongly unfoldable cardinal $\kappa$ can be made indestructible by all.

If κ is any strongly unfoldable cardinal, then this is preserved in a forcing extension in which κ fails. This result continues the progression of the corresponding results for weakly compact cardinals, due to Woodin, and for indescribable cardinals, due to Hauser.

We prove from suitable large cardinal hypotheses that the least weakly compact cardinal can be unfoldable, weakly measurable and even nearly θ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\theta}$$\end{document}-supercompact, for any desired θ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\theta}$$\end{document}. In addition, we prove several global results showing how the entire class of weakly compactcardinals, a proper class, can be made to coincide with the class of unfoldable cardinals, with the class of weakly measurable cardinals or (...) with the class of nearly θκ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\theta_\kappa}$$\end{document}-supercompact cardinals κ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\kappa}$$\end{document}, for nearly any desired function κ↦θκ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$${\kappa\mapsto\theta_\kappa}$$\end{document}. These results answer several questions that had been open in the literature and extend to these large cardinals the identity-crises phenomenon, first identified by Magidor with the strongly compact cardinals. (shrink)