Dave's Angel said:
For example in our alphabet, "M" is just the sound /mm/, . . .
just the sound "mm" meaning in and of itself
'sweetness'?
. . . but in Hebrew and Greek it was also the number 40, in lots of systems it denotes the sea, in Egyptian hieroglyphs it was represented by an owl, in the runes it's "Man", and so on.
Suppose, just suppose, that several alphabets of old, covering quite a wide geographical area (Near East to northwest Europe), sprang forth from a common underlying esoteric tradition adapted for use by this people and that. It then becomes immediately apparent what many of the letter-shapes in these alphabets signify. For instance: Irish calendar of tree-letters has (13) months, beginning at winter solstice, of B-L-N-F-S-H-D-T-K-M-G-P-R (or -Ng-R). Immediately it becomes apparent that the first and last letters in Libyan refer to this: B is a circle with a dot in the center (birth of sun), R a circle without said dot (returning for a recharge). Further, it becomes apparent why this differs from the earlier Scandinavian version of Tifinag, in which the solar symbol does not appear till F, the time of year the sun
appears in the far north. Third, the midpoint in both alphabets is a doorway (upside-down squared-off U), while the Hebrew letter-name dalet
means 'door' or 'page', things that swing about, and this in turn links up with the Phoenician D, which was a jib, although at this point one must admit that this triangular jib form arose from the simplified (hieratic) form of the Egyptian hieroglyph of a hand
extended (in friendship). This is jovial Jupiter's tree, the oak, from whose wood doors are made.
This hypothesis generates scrumptuous riddles, such as this one, which occupied me for nearly a decade: what have Hebrew ox alef and Egyptian eagle and ogham's A-ailm the silver fir all have in common? I would welcome you proffering an answer, then I will tell you what I finally figured out.
Rabbis fail to understand their own letters (even amidst many genuine traditions concerning them) because they see them in a vacuum more or less, shunning even the older form of Hebrew itself (tradition has it Torah was given in square Hebrew!). Yet
many mysteries of letter-shape are easily solved once reference is made to the possibility (probability, rather) of that greater tradition. Examples:
Q in old Hebrew -- the dropped koppa of Greek -- is in the shape of a circle on top of a stem. In tree-ogham it is apple and symbolizes fruit, and in square Hebrew, then, it is quite apparent that its shape is that of the womb in profile, along with the two openings relevant to it, namely the navel and birth canal.
Yod in square Hebrew is suspended above the line, just as its 'tree', mistleoe or loranthus, is rooted in another tree, not in soil. (Graves's
The White Goddess postulates an II-mistletoe and AA-palm to add to ogham's KK-apple and SS(St)-blackthorn, but he associates I-yew with yod, due to similarity of name).
Western Greek H (eastern eta) is cheyt and shows a section of fence or a roadblock: just so, H is hawthorn, a hedge that separates, and its number (Graves,
The White Goddess, page 295) is '
no number', meaning no-thing, space, that which separates, and its time of year is gemini, the shoulders, which are pictured in the square-Hebrew form.
Kaf corresponds to coll the hazel, compressed wisdom ('in a nutshell'), and its form in square Hebrew is the curved hand or hollow that contains it.
Lamedh in square Hebrew is obviously arms swinging while walking
seen from above, as when
teaching an infant to walk: just so, L-rowan is the second month and signifies 'learning, teaching' (1st month B-birch being birth), as indeed does also its name in Hebrew (by bardic numbering, XIIII Temperance, i.e. tempering). Indeed, it is also linked to 'ox-goad' and its Phoenician form looks like a riding-crop, whereas rowan was used to make whips to tame bewitched horses.
And shin's place in the calendar is atop aries the head in the zodiac of the
seated torso, its seated status linking it in Merkabah tradition (pre-Kabbalah) to the Throne, hence shin looking like a crown perhaps?
Indeed, digging deeper yields even greater clarity, that is, if we seek to find indication of preserved knowledge from before man was thrust (evidently by cataclysm circa the 11th millennium B.C.E.) into savagery and ignorance, before scientific knowledge
underlying the number-tradition of bardic letters faded. Three brief examples, for now:
Peh shows a mouth in speaking, the Phoenician an ear in hearing. Just so, its bardic number is 7, atomic number of nitrogen, or the bulk of the air emitted
in speach. Bardic SS or St, blackthorn, was numbered (I have surmised, though Graves does not give its number) 20, its trump (it means 'strife') XX Judgment (Armageddon): this means calcium, controlled by parathyroids in the throat, which is the sign (taurus) of S-willow, which SS doubles so that S itself can be pulled back (as it
is in ogham order) to aries the head to be shin, the crown. And dalet's signifying the sign straight ahead, towards the horizon without, conforms to its being numbered (by bards) 12, magnesium, which burns with highly actinic light and thus is used in signal lights and flares, just as D-oak is lightning's tree.
[One more: the number 8, oxygen, is associated with F-alder, whose sign is aries the head or straight up, being the only atom-type
without which there
is no up.
]
I am convinced of this tradition's existence because it explains every shape in old Hebrew and runic: how many authors have failed to see that the first rune, being Bran's (cognate with Scandinavian
Fro, Freyr) alder and thus standing for the Corn Spirit, shows a stalk of corn? And it explains
most shapes in Tifinag, Libyan, Meroitic, and square Hebrew. Moreover, the actual connexion to Egyptian 'bardic' tradition (that of the scribes, in other words) becomes quite perceptible when the hieratic forms generating the old Hebrew forms are carefully traced: in the original Egyptian system, for instance, I can authoritatively say that the first four signs of the Cauldron (months cancer through capricorn, the year's bottom half) are all horizontal signs and in the sequence hand, tongs, basket (of fruit or nuts), mouth. Hand grasps tongs with which to take fruit from basket to mouth.
If any of this is of interest to you, we can chat further (no one will shut us up, I think). If not, well, join the crowd (he says cynically).
Ciao,
Gary
PS. The letter M of "mm" or sweetness, by the way, is muin the vine, whose grape yields the juice used to sweeten that of other fruits. In Egyptian this would mean the sweetness of the owl's wisdom or knowledge (ability to see in the dark and move silently), while M's being water makes it the sweetness of Torah to the Habiru.