venicebard
I guess I should be carefull what I wish for. At the rate of two hours a day at the library, it should take me about two weeks to respond just to the first day's 'haul'.
[Edited to add:] Please see below before responding to this, as I acquiesce in the end to said 'oversimplification'. Thank you.
The argument in full is quite involved; but I can give enough pointers to inspire some confidence, I think. Wikipedia's version (of Phoenician letters) will do, though I would prefer to use the northwestern Semitic alphabet (early Hebrew and Moabite-stone alphabets) whence it derived (but 10 minutes' searching on the web produced nothing, so I shall not send 'good time after bad').
The Q (qof) is clearly fruit-with-stem in early Hebrew, fruit-sliced-through in Phoenician: Semitic roots starting with qof are quite rich in words meaning 'to cut' and include both words meaning 'fruit harvest', Irish Q or quert being the apple.
The only two things tzaddi could be a picture of (and my whole argument rests on them being pictures) are a battle ensign twisting in the breeze (attached to its staff) or a chair tilted backwards, and the former (the more likely) relates directly to the meaning of straif the blackthorn (Ss), whose name is interpreted by Graves to be the same as our word strife (based on how he viewed its significance, though Keltic derivation of words is often overlooked by modern scholarship, based on the Anglocentric bias of the OED): blackthorn is called 'mother of the wood' (la mere du bois [sp?]) in French because it is the vanguard of the forest in taking back land from tilling that has been left fallow.
Beyt is a conical headdress: this could be either the mitre of the high priest or a warrior's helmet. In the first instance, it relates directly to beth the birch in that this tree has a white bark, symbolizing purity or blessing. In the second, it relates to beth's bardic number, 5, which is the number of Mars and signifies (I finally figured out, but you certainly are free to disagree) that the Martial ideal is a mother defending her young: birch's month is the first in the calendar and signifies (by its diminutive size and white purity) the birth of the sun-hero, which is why (I surmise) in the Greek and (our) Latin B it has the shape of a pregnant torso in profile.
Dalet can be interpreted as the jib of a vessel, which relates it to the root meaning of the oak, its compass (or domain): a jib swings, as does the 'door' dalet, and indeed the oak reaches out horizontally more than all other trees in the alphabet.
Outta time this segment already, so:
to be continued.
Do you not realize, M. Robert, that if it were not, then the theory would be a rather shallow one, say, on a level with 'pick alef to be Fool or Magus, either one (it doesn't matter), then dive in'? I will be glad to take things point by point, but please don't expect me to oversimplify the problem just for 'PR'.le pendu said:But it is also based on evidence of its deep antiquity: an obvious relationship to Phoenician and other alphabets, and the epigraphic advances of the second half of the 20th century (pioneered by Barry Fell) showing that ogam consaine (the consonants-only 15-letter form of ogham) and an early version of an alphabet called Tifinag were used by Low-German speakers in the early 2nd millennium B.C.E.
- HUH? Okay... That is a LOT to take in.
[Edited to add:] Please see below before responding to this, as I acquiesce in the end to said 'oversimplification'. Thank you.
Well, I'm sure Robert Graves would, but frankly I do not know of anyone else on earth (though such may exist) that has engaged in the line of research and piecing-together of things that I have, and that over a rather long period (beginning in 1972). (Robert Graves has been utterly slandered by academia, evidently, but fortunately I do appreciate his contribution.)Obvious relationship to Phoenician and other alphabets
- Really? Says who besides you?
The argument in full is quite involved; but I can give enough pointers to inspire some confidence, I think. Wikipedia's version (of Phoenician letters) will do, though I would prefer to use the northwestern Semitic alphabet (early Hebrew and Moabite-stone alphabets) whence it derived (but 10 minutes' searching on the web produced nothing, so I shall not send 'good time after bad').
The Q (qof) is clearly fruit-with-stem in early Hebrew, fruit-sliced-through in Phoenician: Semitic roots starting with qof are quite rich in words meaning 'to cut' and include both words meaning 'fruit harvest', Irish Q or quert being the apple.
The only two things tzaddi could be a picture of (and my whole argument rests on them being pictures) are a battle ensign twisting in the breeze (attached to its staff) or a chair tilted backwards, and the former (the more likely) relates directly to the meaning of straif the blackthorn (Ss), whose name is interpreted by Graves to be the same as our word strife (based on how he viewed its significance, though Keltic derivation of words is often overlooked by modern scholarship, based on the Anglocentric bias of the OED): blackthorn is called 'mother of the wood' (la mere du bois [sp?]) in French because it is the vanguard of the forest in taking back land from tilling that has been left fallow.
Beyt is a conical headdress: this could be either the mitre of the high priest or a warrior's helmet. In the first instance, it relates directly to beth the birch in that this tree has a white bark, symbolizing purity or blessing. In the second, it relates to beth's bardic number, 5, which is the number of Mars and signifies (I finally figured out, but you certainly are free to disagree) that the Martial ideal is a mother defending her young: birch's month is the first in the calendar and signifies (by its diminutive size and white purity) the birth of the sun-hero, which is why (I surmise) in the Greek and (our) Latin B it has the shape of a pregnant torso in profile.
Dalet can be interpreted as the jib of a vessel, which relates it to the root meaning of the oak, its compass (or domain): a jib swings, as does the 'door' dalet, and indeed the oak reaches out horizontally more than all other trees in the alphabet.
Outta time this segment already, so:
to be continued.