Alphabets with esoteric meanings

Rosanne

You mean this ~ ? Yes BrightEye! From space this would be considered a Water Planet- and we all flow on it and in it, and I consider ~ this is my connection to the past and the future. ~~~~Rosanne~~~~~ I am just one drop.
 

BrightEye

Rosanne said:
You mean this ~ ? Yes BrightEye! From space this would be considered a Water Planet- and we all flow on it and in it, and I consider ~ this is my connection to the past and the future. ~~~~Rosanne~~~~~ I am just one drop.
i like that idea. it's lovely. it's probably also your connction to others on this water planet living in the present.
 

venicebard

Rosanne said:
So far, man has not found the Mother language of them all-
Would not the 'Mother language' be the meanings of the individual sounds to the human psyche? This has been understood in the past, surely. For if I have been able to uncover what generates these meanings (no-one having shaken me of this belief so far), then those who created the tools I used -- whose manufacture is far beyond my skill -- must have grasped them better than I.
. . . but there are a few words that have been written down that is thought were there- a mem sounding word for water, a ma sounding word for mother are just two. They were a wavy line for water and breast shaped letter/word for Mother.
You do see the mother-gathering-us-to-her-bosom (read breasts) in old Semitic mem, do you not? I'll go along with you in spades on the 'ma sounding word for mom' bit: mem, called 'silence' in Sefer Yetzirah (mum's the word), is the mother of all mothers, as it centers or defines the 1st wheel (world of sefirotic origin), generated by rays (spokes, Batons) centered on the brow or crown of Adam Qadmon (did the Britons call him Taliesin, 'Radiant-brow'?), which contains in its belly all the other wheels (called 'wheels within wheels' in Ezekiel). This, the most all-encompassing 'mother', logically precedes division into the sexes, in case anyone thought it a male-chauvinist plot, and is probably not the same belly we see in the bottom half of the letter B.
 

venicebard

Ross G Caldwell said:
Gee, thanks ;) (ducks for cover)

I think you'll be repaid in one way or another. Your theoretical framework is very different from Hulse's, . . .
I was disappointed and frankly baffled by volume 2 of Hulse's book -- the 'Western' tradition -- not including Hebrew. It is my fault, I guess, for not checking it more closely before ordering. And I gather he takes Mather as the great figurer-outer of something, though what is not clear (beyond that it involves laying Hebrew and trumps side by side starting with LeMat then reversing VIII and XI). Meanwhile he appears entirely ignorant of modern epigraphy (the works of Barry Fell et al), as well as the Libyan and Tifinag alphabets (perhaps Meroitic and Egyptian would be in the 'Eastern' volume as well).

Interesting also that he does include the real key to it all (which he evidently rejects in favor of Mathers), on page 116: chart listing bardic numeration of letters -- which he evidently got from Graves, as did I (I wish someone could track down Graves's source for this, though he moved in circles where he might have gotten it first hand from some scholar in the field, such as his grandfather[?] Charles[?] Graves). And I suppose I can justify the expenditure by admitting I had not worked out the sequences that add to 32, as he did, which he (probably correctly) links to Kabbalah. There may be other keys embedded in this approach, which I will now be on the lookout for.

I don't hold a grudge of course (I hope not, since it was mostly my fault anyway), but I must remember from now on that you recommended a book by an author who evidently takes Crowley seriously, though he did do some research into the Golden Dawn's credibility it appears. But so much speculation, in what he documents, and so little GENUINE TRADITION.
 

Ross G Caldwell

venicebard said:
I was disappointed and frankly baffled by volume 2 of Hulse's book -- the 'Western' tradition -- not including Hebrew. *

Yes, Hebrew is in the "Eastern Mysteries" volume.

It is my fault, I guess, for not checking it more closely before ordering.

Caveat emptor (I tried to explain his value without a critique from my own perspective)

And I gather he takes Mather as the great figurer-outer of something, though what is not clear (beyond that it involves laying Hebrew and trumps side by side starting with LeMat then reversing VIII and XI).

I think he does - he's an occultist in the western tradition, in addition to being a Thelemite (at least he was when I knew him).

Meanwhile he appears entirely ignorant of modern epigraphy (the works of Barry Fell et al), as well as the Libyan and Tifinag alphabets (perhaps Meroitic and Egyptian would be in the 'Eastern' volume as well).

I was *very* clear when I said he wasn't a PhD in linguistics (or anything else) and that you are more advanced than he is. He is an amateur, and additionally gives an overview - whatever your perspective - on a number of number-alphabet systems that most people would never otherwise know about, and gives the bibliography he used. He's not dishonest at all. If his Thelemic perspective somehow corrupted the information, I would have pointed it out, but he kept it clean, and additionally his Llewellyn editors had him re-edit it so that the Thelemic background to his quest for the "Key of It All" was minimized or cut out entirely.

Interesting also that he does include the real key to it all (which he evidently rejects in favor of Mathers), on page 116: chart listing bardic numeration of letters -- which he evidently got from Graves, as did I (I wish someone could track down Graves's source for this, though he moved in circles where he might have gotten it first hand from some scholar in the field, such as his grandfather[?] Charles[?] Graves). And I suppose I can justify the expenditure by admitting I had not worked out the sequences that add to 32, as he did, which he (probably correctly) links to Kabbalah. There may be other keys embedded in this approach, which I will now be on the lookout for.

Ah, good! So it was worth it. You might try writing to him. I'm sure he'd share a lot if you ask the right questions.

I don't hold a grudge of course

Thanks.

(I hope not, since it was mostly my fault anyway), but I must remember from now on that you recommended a book by an author who evidently takes Crowley seriously, though he did do some research into the Golden Dawn's credibility it appears.

But... if you're not going to hold a grudge, why *must* you remember that I recommended a book by a Thelemite? I wouldn't recommend a Thelemic book, that's for sure, but this book is only written by a Thelemite (like a good book can be written by a Catholic), it's not a book about Thelema, or Crowley. The information is sound, enough for a beginning student to begin with, and I will not accept that it tarnishes my reputation to have recommended it for that purpose.

I still stand by the recommendation, and occasionally refer to the book myself.

Neither Crowley nor Hulse are real scholars, if you mean with academic credentials.

But so much speculation, in what he documents, and so little GENUINE TRADITION.

I likened it to a preliminary archeological ground survey for a reason - because that is where Hulse's text is at. It's a superficial, introductory text, not a profound investigation. The genuine tradition he is *personally* interested in is the English Alphabet and the Thelemic current (and its roots in the GD), but outside of that chapter (with its discussion of the Waite/Colman-Smith Tarot) you won't find that in the rest of the book.

It's a good book for the level I've said, and I'll still recommend it. Naturally I knew you would (like I do) argue with many points, but that's not what Dave's Angel asked for.

Ross
 

Debra

Rosanne said:
They described the sounds that our mouths make by relating that sound to a shape, we now call a letter. They were for conveying information, that could not be heard orally. It does not appear that these marks originally were used to explain anything esoteric. After all pictograms(first writing) seem to be about the convenience of counting stores and stock; abjads about directions, Gods, stars and the like.To make a mark understandable- it had to relate to the sound of the word- so Ox was the word that sounded like an outbreath AAAA- so you drew a head with horns -that was an ox.

By the way, Hangeul (the written Korean alphabet) was designed specifically so that some of the letters "look" like the shape of your mouth or tongue when you make that sound--a very handy feature. There are statutes honoring the scholar who standardized/invented it in Seoul and other cities.

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/korean.htm
 

kwaw

venicebard said:
- which he evidently got from Graves, as did I (I wish someone could track down Graves's source for this, though he moved in circles where he might have gotten it first hand from some scholar in the field, such as his grandfather[?] Charles[?] Graves).

... there is so much speculation in what Graves documents, and so little GENUINE TRADITION.

He does not document, he speculates. He was a poet, his source a muse, not a document; an inspiration, not a limitation. In as much one accepts that, he was brilliant, beyond that, one perverts everything he was and achieved [which, according to some, was to pervert everything scholars in the field such as his grandfather achieved].

(But of course this is all irrelevant, as I am sure your arguments even if inspired by, surely do not rest on, the fantasies of a 20th century poet.)

Kwaw
 

Rosanne

Kwaw said:
"How wise thou art," the High Priestess took up the challenge, "and how foolish we, to think we could conceal from thee our greatest mystery."
Wonderful post- there back a page or two Kwaw. There will be neverending wonderings about esoteric thought overlaying the written words of ancient times- and even of today.
William Mason wrote "there is a whole volume of human history behind each letter". We, looking back, see it as spiritual in the main- but it was domestic most likely. Most peoples/nations have said it (writing) was given to them by Gods- not speech- writing. I think that was because the elite became in a great part elite, because writing was honoured and revered. It was powerful. So the Gods must have given it. In the same way we today- see it as some great scientific blueprint to explain Man these letters - we think it elite and spiritual and not domestic. Well in the hands of a poet we can fly off and dream- but I am thinking writing helped Mum and Dad send their little Sumerian off to the grocer rather than to the temple. He already knew prayers by heart as there were thousands of years of oral history for that.
I appreciate Dave's Angel for starting this thread- but please excuse the few of us that hi- jacked it, it is a wonderful subject when kept down to earth. ~Rosanne
 

venicebard

kwaw said:
... there is so much speculation in what Graves documents, and so little GENUINE TRADITION.

He does not document, he speculates.
Yes, one problem with Graves is his failure at times to stipulate when he was speculating, but he wrote like that partly because it appeared to him obvious -- at least to anyone involved in serious study -- when he was waxing poetic and when he was relaying information. He was, after all, an extremely well-read scholar, and to say all he does is speculate misses the point: he was trying to peer past the veil of modern scholarship (as opposed to around it) into actual antiquity, by building on what is known.
He was a poet, his source a muse, not a document; an inspiration, not a limitation.
He was a rather good poet (I have belatedly discovered), but I think it more accurate to say in this context (that of his non-fiction) that he realized, as do I, that poetic themes properly understood are not speculation but psychological truth, and as such present in all ages. The particularizations of it in such times as that of the Troubadours or of the bards themselves, even, can best be understood in terms of the fundamental poetic theme, which he calls "life in death and death in life" and parses as heroic top half versus satiric underside of the wheel of the year. I have not in the main found it difficult to distinguish between what he presents as evidence and the flights of fancy taking off therefrom, one example of the latter being the number system he himself seems to subscribe to, based on order of letters in the calendar-alphabet (meaning quasi-ogham order but with vowels interspersed at equinoxes and solstices), which probably did influence alef-bet order, as he suggests, but certainly did not supercede bardic numeration, at the deepest level of understanding anyway.