Phoenician letter correspondences & Astrological considerations

Fulgour

Complementary Exaltations - without Descensions

Rosanne said:
...why do you put the elements Water and Earth
together at 13 Mem/Death...
I used to think that Water (Mem) was an elemental combination.
Fire and Air consume each other, and so are kept apart, but with
Water and Earth a viable substance is formed and will be lasting.

Now I see Mem-Water as a "stand alone" attribution, but it is
still linked to Earth: The Moon is exalted in Taurus, opposite
Scorpio ~ the very image of Temperance. Complementary by
nature, exaltations don't create a "fall" (descension) opposite,
but rather create a Harmonic balance. Much like with colours.

In other words, an exaltation ranges across the full spectrum
of the mutual signs. The Moon exalted in Taurus needs Scorpio
to be "complete" in every sense. There is tension in any unity.
 

venicebard

Ah, at last we ‘engage’ (I feel like a baroque-era general who has maneuvred for weeks and finally the day dawns when he sees the redoubts of the enemy drawn up in a body before him).

Rosanne said:
Here is a just a small snippet of why I agree with the base of the Phoenician Alphabet.
I’m confused: do you subscribe to the proto-Sinaitic ‘theory’ (forgive my sarcasm) or the 19th-century hieratic adaptation theory (properly so-called)?
In time 26 single consonant glyphs emerged but They never became an Alphabet.
(Actually, in Ptolemaic times they more-or-less did.) No, the way I see it they always were an alphabet... for the bardic model becomes very striking indeed when traced through Egyptian tradition, as well as Libyan (related to Tifinag): Samekh is the wick of twisted flax (judging from hieratic), fitting for the direction straight up (oxygen or flame). The Logos is spelled out in birds. And the four elemental layers of the (outer) Cauldron are in the order hand-tongs-basket-mouth (D-T-K-R), all horizontal signs (subject to man) till Phoenician decided to adopt the running duck for T: having changed the bird sign for the U of the Logos, a chick, into the mother “sh” or “s” to hush or threaten, ‘Sophia’ was divided into B and T, both drawn from bird signs (B became b’-bird-soul), accounting for the tradition of I believe it was Hyginus that the Fates invented the vowels plus B and T or some such.

Most striking to me is indication of a geodetic application of Egg-and-Cauldron (Egg centered on Asia Minor and libra at Giza) that puts D-oak on the north slope of the Alps (storm-god’s home, source of Rhine and Danube, oak being preeminent in Keltic realms) and B-birch south of the Urals (birch being world-tree to Eurasian shamans), the letters used to refer to Egypt in Egyptian all clustering about Giza: M (calendar-libra), R (primordial libra), and T-loaf (semi-circle on its base) whence came Hebrew tet (I surmise, the form of loaf having changed to flatbread for Semites?). This naturally, by the way, associates Egg’s T-loaf with Egypt’s bread-basket, the Delta, and Cauldron’s R-mouth with the consumers of the bread, Upper Egypt. K or C ends up right about at Cyrene, Q-hillside is the Libyan coast closer to Egypt, O-forearm the straits between Greece and Crete where one must 'pull oar' to survive, and T, tinne the holly or phalanx whence comes the rune tyr, is smack dab on the Tyrrhenian Sea, across which Sicily faces Carthage faces Rome faces Corsica – the source of most of the warfare of the past several millennia, if I only exaggerate slightly (Corsica was where Napoleon was spawned).

Meroitic in its adaptation of Egyptian hieroglyphs to a different phonetics makes the outer horizon D an eye on the lip of the arc extending out from libra to it, but T, for some odd reason (known only to poets such as myself) is a priest-shaman with animal costume seen from above with hands outstretched before him in the direction one is writing. (I guess you’d say my especial specialty is seeing the pictures intended in the original forms of letters, and while I am sure I have made a mistake here or there, I have many ‘coups’ under my belt.)
The Greeks were trading partners and by 1200bc had adopted the Phoenician Alphabet as well. They had a problem with its lack of vowels tho.
Graves and I believe the Pelasgians had an oral tradition of the bardic alphabet: the Greeks probably knew which Semitic ‘consonants’ (alef, waw, yod, and heh being vowel-like) derived originally from vowels (as means around a taboo against inscribing same), though by the time the Greek alphabet is much in our sights bardic I-yew has become zeta-dz (much as ours became J), whose closeness to zayin-z raises (it never begs) a slight question as to who influenced whom. And Graves’s Aa-palm was t even in Egyptian: I take bardic vowels U-O-A-Aa-E-I-Ii to be Egyptian f-horned-viper, ‘-forearm, ’-eagle, t-loaf, h-reed-hut, ’/y-reed, y-two-reeds, respectively. Over centuries the original pictures whence the hieratic originals hearkened were forgot and new meanings solidified the shapes, bardic being a living tradition (preserving a sacred core through all outer changes, judging by the result).

(End of part one)
 

venicebard

Part two

Rosanne said:
Thanks VeniceBard for posting this thread as it is a subject I love and read about (Lots) :D
I didn't start this one, though its subject is the blood that flows in my veins, if by astrological one mean 'zodiacal'.
Now I may have my thoughts totally askew here- but when talking about the Kabbalah- I think what are the influence and traditions? I believe Hinduism is there in the practice, Sufi writings, early Greek mysticism, and they all influenced the meanings of numbers and letters and words.
Hindu stuff is very ancient (to the point of decay) and thus probably related on many levels, the Sufi more-or-less the Gnosticism of the Muslim world and thus potentially relevant as well (though beyond my intimate ken). But most interesting is that you list early Greek mysticism, for I am convinced (more than ever after commencing the book Fragments of a Faith Forgotten) that Orphic tradition, submerged beneath the Homeric but resurfacing in the time of the philosophers, was the form the bardic took in that region (I must seek out more of its hymn-fragments to solidify the case), while the essentially poetic nature of Judaic tradition is fairly apparent from the SoS, psalms, the story of David, and the fact that Torah generally is in a sort of verse...
Sefer Yetzirah... had alot of other traditions within it. As I peel back the layers of the 22 images that are a major part of my Tarot pack and I step back in time I get back as far as the 22 letters of the Phoenician alphabet...
It was probably the Habiru (refugee Akhnatenists?) who gave Phoenicians the letters, not vice versa, though the latter had the temerity to bandy them about all over, thus letting the secret out to get profaned by those barbarians the Romans, necessitating it be restored, first in the runic futhark, and later by the confluence of British bardic and Judaic Merkabhah tradition that resulted in Qabbalah and tarot: SY is Merkabhah tradition, meaning not Qabbalah proper but its forerunner, Qabbalah being the restoring of this to an older, higher standard (the original trunk out of which both sprouted but then decayed).
Just sounds for words? Neh- they were a sacred rebus whose pictoral image evoked all the correspondances we draw out ourselves today. I look at The High Priestess/La Papesse I see the Number two in sequence- Bayt the house -our dwelling under the Moon- then the others just fall in place.~Rosanne
I forgot to add; That the reason for the order of the letters in the Phoenician Alphabet is based on three principles 1.the similarity of juxtaposed letter sounds 2.the meanings of their names and 3. and the forms/shapes of the letters/signs.
I agree with your first statement wholeheartedly and would add only that tradition makes the best arbiter in cases of symbolic ambiguity. And I will concede there is close relationship between trumps II and V, heh and bet, which interchange numbers in the two systems and are (in the futhark) the middle-two of mem's first-half of the 3rd aett just as Ii-G-I-P (iota-gamma-zeta-pi), or (B=bardic, G=Gr./Heb.) B19/G10 to B10/G3 to B3/G7 to B7/G80, are the middle-four of shin's whole of the 2nd (middle) aett, alef's first-half of the 1st aett lacking such content (because of A-the-doer's fallen state, no doubt). But the 'falling into place' you speak of I strongly doubt (spoilt as I am by gold do I shun silver). Surely the phonetic simplicity and clarity of bardic ordering-of-sounds makes Phoenician look like a hopeless hodgepodge! which is not upon closer examination entirely true since the order of the simples in the alef-bet embodies a code striking in its simplicity, clarity, and perceptive humor... to which in a moment.

First, the varied (different-sourced) letter-orderings given in Barddas chiefly revolve around phonetic principles, bardic numeration itself showing coherence therein, numeric order being (H)-A-E-I-O (U/V-5 displaced to 17, 5th-to-last), then labial B-M-P-F, then Kuh-Guh, then Tuh-Duh, then continuous sounds N-L-R-S (north-left-right-south), liquids (left-right) contained within...

Now: unfortunately, I am at a 'disadvantage of ground' here, in that I have not completely solved the problem of Hebrew-Phoenician ordering. I have, though, solved the ordering alef-bet-gimel-dalet and that of the twelve simples, these two solutions without doubt forming one of the cornerstones of my (multi-cornered) theory. Alef remains 1 in all traditions (1 being unity and thus united), except Paul Foster Case's and I guess GD's, I can never keep track (the modern ones all look alike to me after a while): bardic, Greco-Hebraic, and even ogham, A's aett in the futhark also being first. Next, B-G-D are, on the Cauldron, the same signs yod-heh-vav are on the Egg, respectively, and in Lurianic Kabbalah it says yod extends down from 1 to 2, heh occupies 3, and vav encompasses 4-9 (10 being the final heh of the Name): indeed beth=2, gimel=3, and dalet=4 in Hebrew.

Now, the simples: what their ordering shows is how the four elements allot to the four cardinal signs or directions for each of the three parts of the self. The three methods of allotting elements are the primordial arrangement, based on their inner nature, the astrological, based on a sort of ‘gauge field’ compensating for man’s fall, and the diurnal, based on the doer’s being completely focused on the present (‘today’).

The first (knower’s) scheme is given in the Zohar, that is, taking up or aries for north (since man on average ‘points’ north of the equator), down or libra for south, cancer or forward (out) for west (since the round descends there), and capricorn or back (in) for east (since the round ascends there): fire and water apply themselves where most needed, to cold north and arid south, respectively (just as flame, the burnt offering, goes up from below and water, the Torah, down from on high), while air and earth reside to east and west respectively (where the celestial bodies proceed towards them). Just so, earthly body faces forward, and back blows the wind in one's face (when moving).

The second (thinker’s) scheme is commonly known: fire is the only element in its original place.

The third (doer’s) scheme is based on the cardinal directions in the diurnal cycle: the sun’s light and heat issue from south of us, so south is like fire, north, being cold, like earth, east or morning the air-which-leads-to-fire, west or evening the water-which-leads-to-earth.

Take Egg’s upper-right quadrant as the knower’s realm and upper left as the thinker’s, just as on the Cauldron knower’s B-P gather within (to the right) and thinker’s D-T without (to the left): these two realms share aries, since astrology leaves fire at its original station. The remaining five signs, Egg’s underbelly, represent the poor suffering doer.

Since the knower knows the original distribution of elements to stations, yod-lamedh-nun-samekh are each moved back one on the same triad. Since the thinker weaves the doer-spun strands of destiny into nature’s ‘fabric’, samekh-tzaddi-chet-vav are each moved to a sign on the triad its element occupies in astrology: tzaddi takes air over to aquarius, chet takes water one sign on from itself to cancer, and vav, thus displaced, leaps back two taking earth to taurus. And finally, with the remaining five signs is perpetrated a joke at the expense of the ‘uninitiated’, those who believe man has five senses: earth, here, is represented twice, once for touch and once for smell. And the means here is ingenious: taking those forward-of or even-with the central vertical axis as the manifested elements they are as signs (each triad manifests in nature as the element following), and those within or behind that axis as the elements on whose triads they reside, yields ayin-qof-tet as air-water-earth and heh-zayin as earth-fire, with tet/libra representing contact as touch (being one’s contact with earth) and heh/scorpio representing contact as smell, earth’s triad being the archetype from which the nose arose, since it points forward and its two manifested signs determine there to be two nostrils just as water’s one (libra) determines there to be only one mouth (water flows or points down). So ayin/leo takes air to capricorn/east, qof/virgo takes water to pisces/west, tet/libra and heh/scorpio take earth to leo and aries respectively, both north, and zayin/sagittary takes fire to gemini/south.

I do not rest my case here, though, for consider physical resemblance to the parts of the body their original zodiac stations represent on the part of most simples in square-Hebrew:

Samekh is obviously a head (not the box-containing-the-Ark the other closed character, mem-sofit, portrays).

Tzaddi and tzaddi-sofit seems to represent the throat in breathing and swallowing, respectively. (The only other simple with a distinct final form is its inner counterpart nun/pisces, back-of-the-neck.)

Chet is obviously the shoulders, represented by the first heh of the Name, heh being close to chet in form.

Vav in the Name is associated with the trunk or breast linking first-heh’s shoulders-slash-arms and second-heh’s pelvis-slash-legs, while its older form IS a breast pouring forth milk, for kreiss sake.

Ayin’s shape requires deeper explanation, but its older form, a circle, certainly conveys the idea of the heart of something.

Qof shows the womb and the two openings connected with it (navel and birth-canal).

Tet conveys the serpentine nature of the digestive course ending at the bottom of the torso, its older form (crossed circle) the heliport marking where we are to sit (just joking, sort of).

Heh’s allusion to the male organ is (naturally) partly disguised (but discernible reaching across from the male on the right to the female with her opening on the left), yet heh’s connexion to the Covenant of Circumcision (being added to Abram’s name to indicate it) leaves no doubt it was the eighth sign (a gardener’s planting zodiac from the early 20th century in my possession gives scorpio’s human physiological attribute as “secrets”), circumcision being on the 8th day. (The second heh of the Name – where heh ends up in other words, that is, after the first heh transforms into chet to stand for the shoulders? – is said to represent the legs, which would put it where the male organ, and its female counterpart the clitoris, both are, these signifying desire, or that which leads on from the straight-down, from what physically IS.)

Zayin shows the terminal filament of the spine but could also pass for ‘thigh’.

Yod shows the midpoint of the spine but could also pass for ‘knee’ (being a joint, though zayin appears to descend from yod, implying capricorn’s originally higher station). Its allocation to the head in the Name is in part because it completes the horizontal whose midpoint is aries-the-head on the 4th wheel (child in womb, man in physical world) and in part because of a reciprocal nature whereby 1st and 10th make the outermost layer of the Tree, 2nd and 9th the next layer in, and so on (the 1st sign being aries).

Lamedh is one of the most striking, being the arms swinging while walking seen from above: that is, it represents the complementary nature of the two arms. Geometry makes us how we are in this regard: consider how relations between 8-cornered cube-of-space and 4-cornered tetrahedron yield two tetrahedrons (to use up all eight corners), one forward-right-above to forward-left-below, one forward-left-above to forward-right-below, between which we oscillate when walking.

And nun as back-of-neck connects two bulges, while if you stand on square-Hebrew nun facing the direction the writing goes (to the left), you will find it fairly represents the feet (just as kaf, when so stood upon, fairly represents its station, the kidneys). One apparent fact that is quite interesting is: if we take the SY simples-functions laughter and anger and give them to taurus and pisces we notice the curve of the throat circles round the axis across our path, as does the motion of nodding the head, while the curve of the back of the neck circles round the vertical axis, as does the motion of shaking the head. And XIII makes an excellent picture of anger-or-negation, N, a sound also associated with newness (replacing what is negated). Not completely sure yet whether I buy XX Judgement as laughter-or-assent, but it sorta works, especially when one considers the jovial spirit with which the true warrior must enter battle (20-straif-blackthorn being strife, la mere du bois).

I could argue, then, for the bardic trump-correlations preempting the straight-across method (to which you evidently subscribe, placing LeMat, where, last?) from the point of view of the above considerations or (with less efficacy) from that of simply the history of letter-shapes and the symbolic lore naturally attaching to them (through their trees, the rune-names, and the Semitic letter-names), so I shall wait until I hear whether you think the above considerations valid before embarking on one or the other approach. (Sorry for the length of this post, but if the subject were much simpler, we would all surely agree on it, wouldn’t we... and please forgive if I have been too repeating of things previously laid out.)
 

venicebard

venicebard said:
Meroitic in its adaptation of Egyptian hieroglyphs to a different phonetics makes the outer horizon D an eye on the lip of the arc extending out from libra to it, but T, for some odd reason (known only to poets such as myself) is a priest-shaman with animal costume seen from above with hands outstretched before him in the direction one is writing.
Sorry, I meant a priest-shaman with a bird costume, as the beak appears to pointy to be a jackal, considering it's seen from above, not from the side.
 

prudence

Just wanted to say, thanks for the link to Ancient Scripts, Fulgour, I am finding it really fascinating and most helpful. (only problem is I lose all track of time when I am in there reading:D)

...been bitten by the Phoenician Alphabet (Alephbet) bug ever since this topic has come up on the boards lately, so thanks to all for contributing...all of the contributions are hugely educational for me at least, and I'd like to say THANKS, to you all. :D
 

Rosanne

Hi VeniceBard- I am protected from your generalship by Maori Protocol. As a woman I am not allowed to do a Haka (war challenge) and must retreat to behind the lines to position of last resort :D .
I have also decided that you must be an Etruscan; I can read your words but not understand them. But I am trying.
Egyptian hieroglyphs were sometimes written in ink which looked like a cursive script- we later called it hieratic (2600bc) Do you mean do I proscribe to that as the first Alphabet? No I do not. Did the Phoenicians borrow from it? Yes they did. Earlier than that the Sumerians used logograms (3100bc) and they and they devised phonics to help identify their logograms. Did they have a Alphabet? No they did not. The earliest evidence we apparently have of the oldest alphabetic script is the sixteenth century BC. This is called the proto-alphabet and was found in what is now Israel. So to answer yours question- I belong to The Egyptian-semetic branch of Afro- Asiatic writing school :D I agree with you that the habiru gave the letters to the Phoenicians-that makes sense.When you get to the Futhark -you become Etruscan again ;) and I do not as yet understand 'Bardic numbering' Can you say in a timeline what you think occurred? Like the mystics left here in.....? and went there in ..... and used this and it spread to ... ??? It would greatly assist me. I see you take the Human body and relate that etc etc and you think the qabbalah then spread west? with the three worlds etcetc and became Tarot or was Tarot? Thats where you lose me. I can follow along as long as I can see your footsteps- but you keep jumping into areas I do not understand. Make it plain for a simple woman jumping up and down to see you from behind the Warriors and thanks for posting ~Rosanne
 

Rosanne

In an earlier post to this thread someone said that the Phoenicians could not attribute to the Zodiac as it was not originated as yet. The Zodiac was a device for measuring time. The first known 'personal Horoscope' was drawn up in 410BC (NB: first known by us/or found) But this 'Circle of animals' was known as a device for time for sure from our records 500BC. The 12 cycles for the sun to return to its first place was known to ancient Egyptians and adopted by Babylonians about maybe 2000BC. It is my contention probally much earlier if we could find the evidence. So I am a Fulgarite in my belief about the 12 cycles and the Phoenician Alphabet, but not learned enough to work them out for myself hence I defer to him and feel very comfortable with his conclusions. The rest I see from the shape of the Phoenician script even when it is turned on its side like the A for uh(sounds like the uh ha that Elvis sings with sweet delight :D /ox Turn the A upside down for yourself and see the Horns and yoke of an Ox. ~Rosanne
 

prudence

~ something I was really struck by, while visiting AncientScripts, was a mention about the letter M, resembling waves of water, and Mem, meaning water, it just seems to all make a lot of sense to me, and I second Rosanne's statement about not being learned enough to get it all, but what I am "getting" makes so much sense.

It *feels* right and good, like when you find the right key to a very difficult to unlock door, and you feel it slide in just right,(it slides in all the way, just as it should) and you hear and feel the tumblers falling into place....it all clicks, then opens. ...To me, that is how learning this feels, especially that bit today about Mem. :)
 

jmd

venicebard, with your statement that the 'Orphic tradition, submerged beneath the Homeric but resurfacing in the time of the philosophers, was the form the bardic took in that region' (Greco-Roman), I can agree, with the general sense of the word 'bardic'.

This is no more than to suggest that the Orphic tradition in Homeric (or even pre-Homeric) times does not arise in a vacuum, but rather emerges in a milieu already having rich and diverse spiritual social underpinnings.

This does not mean, however, that Futhark, or indeed Ogham, or any of those different alphabets, preceed proto-Hebrew or the other alphabets (and cuneiforms) around early times.

Rather, the evidence points the other way.
 

venicebard

jmd said:
venicebard, with your statement that the 'Orphic tradition, submerged beneath the Homeric but resurfacing in the time of the philosophers, was the form the bardic took in that region' (Greco-Roman), I can agree, with the general sense of the word 'bardic'.
I of course mean bardic as a technical term referring to the tradition of sounds (of speech) and their power over man and nature, which I think can be reconstructed in basic outline, which is what am trying to convey to those interested in the very tool that is most useful in that process, (early) tarot. The relationship between ancient alphabets, their tendency to become clearer as picture-symbols when analyzed according to the phonetically structured bardic calendar-sequence with attendant vowels (poetry’s most primitive form is alliterative, so the idea of individual sounds is certainly not dependent on ‘literacy’), makes it seem (as does common sense) that alphabetical characters arose from poetical knowledge, not vice versa: poetry precedes literacy in the development of cultures. Conformation of letter-iconography generally to the bardic calendar-myth leads me to confidence the Orphics knew this stuff: hell, Aesop did, as can be easily demonstrated.
This does not mean, however, that Futhark, or indeed Ogham, or any of those different alphabets, preceed proto-Hebrew or the other alphabets (and cuneiforms) around early times.

Rather, the evidence points the other way.
Ogam consaine appears to be at least contemporary with Phoenician: in Bronze Age America, Barry Fell discusses at length an inscription in ogam consaine and tifinag, in Low German, on the Ste. Lawrence Seaway, dating roughly from 1700 B.C.E. Other very old ogam consaine inscriptions are found more or less world-wide, and tifinag is as old or older – it is even found in association with neolithic art – and even in tifinag, D is ‘door’ (both picture and name, if we accept Fell’s very plausible theory of the origin of its shapes based on alliterating Germanic terms), and it passes as such into Libyan.

The runic futhark could have arisen anywhere from 3rd century minus to 3rd century plus, according to scholars, which can be narrowed down to the earlier part of that span since it shows northern Italic influence strongly in its shapes (western Greek forms that evolved into Latin): very likely originated with the Kelts of Cisalpine Gaul, as I see it, originally inscribed only on wood (since decayed), Germanic (perhaps Belgic) borrowers later cutting it into stone as well. What I said was that it was an earlier ‘reconstruction’ of the ancient trunk, predating 12th-century Qabbalah: runes would be roughly contemporary with Sefer Yetzirah, though the Merkabhah lore outlined in it is surely much older and may actually BE the ‘letters of our father Abraham’ its subtitle makes it out to be, since heh surely meant scorpio when it was inserted into his name.

As for cuneiform, it has always struck me as the scratchings of pigeons and merchants, hence I am reasonably certain its arrangements of scratches is derivative, not original (in other words, the crude copying of pictographic characters such as Semitic, or pre-Semitic syllable-writing... but it is just too ugly for my eyes to focus on long enough to find out, so I am always open to summarized information concerning cuneiform (as long as I don’t have to visit a website and actually look at it... only half-joking here).