Hebrew Letters - Alef/Aleph

jmd

The first letter in the Hebrew alphabet (or, rather, alefbet), is Alef (also transliterated as Aleph). Its various meanings are:
  • (cardinals=) One, Thousand; (ordinals=) first;
  • Leader, master;
  • Teach, teaching;
  • Ox(en), bull, strength;
  • (at times, also said to be) Adonai.
There are two common representations of this letter, the one attached below, and the other, unfortunately, dispenses with the right-hand top yod-like 'cross' stroke.

There are three types of letters in the Hebrew alphabet, three of these being designated as Mother Letters. Alef, connected to the element of Air in the Sefer Yetzirah, is one of those three Mother letters, and is linked to both the lungs in the human being and to the Mind or thoughts of God in the Divine realm.

I should note that I am certainly no Hebrew scholar and, as mentioned in the thread Sanctum Sanctorum, know but little Hebrew. I trust others with various interests, reflections, questions and comments will post.

Attached is the letter, as given on the wonderful Kabbalistic Inner Org site. As with our Roman alphabet, Hebrew cursive script looks, of course, different (as does our lower-case cursive to its Roman capital) - the letters I'll attach are the equivalent to capitals.
 

Attachments

  • innerorg alef.jpg
    innerorg alef.jpg
    10.7 KB · Views: 294

jema

wow, what a great site!
i am in the process of learning the hebrew letters now as part of my curriculum and this site will surely help me a great deal.
i also find it a big help to associate the letters to the tarot-cards as i learn them.
in alef i can almost make out the shape of the fool with his backpack on the stick.

i am still very unsure just what a mother-letter is though and how they all work together in a system. i have a feeling this will take me quite some time to grasp.

but i got a long weekend, a brush and ink and paper and will promptly sit down and practise to write it. ah and what a blessing to be lefthanded - first time ever that is actually working on my behalf:)
 

felicityk

With a meaning of "Leader, master/Teach, teaching", it seems better assigned to The Magician (continental tradition) than The Fool (Waite/Golden Dawn). Thanks for the analysis, jmd! I hope you will continue with the rest of the Hebrew alphabet.

Felicity
 

kwaw

alef ALEF

Alef ALEPH

As I understand it:

There are 32 paths of wisdom. Ten Ciphers and twenty-two letters.

The 10 ciphers are enclosed, their ends embedded in their beginning, like circles.

The 10 ciphers are in five pairs, which together form a threefold continuum of space [3 pairs], time [1 pair] and soul [1 pair].

Each of the 22 letters [3 mothers, 7 doubles and 12 singles) have a threefold correspondence in the Universe [space], the Year [time] and the Soul.

The 22 letters are set in a circle and each letter paired with the others. This produces 231 gates, 10 ciphers enclosed within each other as concentric circles and 22 paths; so all may be seen as relating to harmonic ratios or frequencies.

Each of the letters also represents a number, alef ALEF is one and a thousand. Thus it encompasses the units, the tens and the hundreds, that is all the other letters [including the final forms]. Units, tens and hundreds correspond to the threefold space, time, soul continuum and to the three worlds of Beriah, Yetzira and Assiah. Aleph thus represents the first and the last, the singular and the myriad [Kether of Beriah and Malkuth of Assiah].

The letters are set in a circle which moves backawards and forwards, and thus it also represents the first letter [alef, beit, gimel…] and the last [alef, tau, shin….].

Alef corresponds to the first cipher Kether and to the Ain [nothingness]. It is from the mystical Nought symbolized by Alef that wisdom [Chokmah] the beginning of all essences is created or is emanated. Beit, the second letter, is attributed to Chokmah and the beginning. Beit 2 is thus first in creation, alef 1 is the mystical Nought, His Nothingness from which He created being, creatio ex nihilio.

It is connected with the concept of the 'Fool' through the mystical theology of Dionysius the Areopagite [circa. 5th century c.e.] which stressed the via negativa and that the soul's path to gnosis lay through divine ignorance. "The mystic must leave behind all things, both in the sensible and the intellible world till he enters into the darkness or 'knowing nothing' that is truly mystical…. Our highest knowledge of God consists in mystic ignorance."

The theology of the 'via negativa' was popular throughout the middle ages especially after the translation of John Scotus in the 9th century which had an impact on both Christian mysticism and the early development of the QBLH, and upon the Renaissance humanists [for example, 'On learned ignorance' and other works of Nicholas of Cusa].

Though the 'Fool' is numbered '0' in a 15th century sermon, for the most part it is in early decks without number, but there again zero '0' meant 'without number', so numbered '0' or without any number amounts to the same thing. The issue of whether it should be first or last makes I think for an interesting correspondence with alef which is both first and last. The only deck I am aware of that does this is Etteillas, wherein the 'Fool' is numbered 78 and 0.


"God is not seen except by blindness, nor known except by ignorance, nor understood except by fools." Meister Eckart (1260-1327), Sermons and Collations.
 

Attachments

  • alefbeitserpent.jpg
    alefbeitserpent.jpg
    4.5 KB · Views: 282

kwaw

Re: alef ALEF

kwaw said:
Alef ALEPH

Each of the letters also represents a number, alef ALEF is one and a thousand. Thus it encompasses the units, the tens and the hundreds, that is all the other letters [including the final forms]. Units, tens and hundreds correspond to the threefold space, time, soul continuum and to the three worlds of Beriah, Yetzira and Assiah. Aleph thus represents the first and the last, the singular and the myriad [Kether of Beriah and Malkuth of Assiah].

]


Similar analogies based upon the relationship of one/thousand and the unit, ten and hundreds is also to be found in christian philosophers/theologians, for example from 'On Learned Ignorance' by Nicholas of Cusa:

quote
Absolute Oneness is first and the oneness of the universe is derived from it, the oneness of the universe will be a second oneness, consisting of a plurality. And since (as I will show in Conjectures) the second oneness is tenfold and unites the ten categories, the one universe will, by a tenfold contraction, be
the unfolding of the first, absolute, and simple Oneness. Now, all
things are enfolded in the number ten, since there is not a number above it. Therefore, the tenfold oneness of the universe enfolds the plurality of all contracted things. As ten is the square root of one hundred and the cube root of one thousand, so—because the oneness of the universe is in all things as the contracted beginning of all—the oneness of the universe is the root of all things. From this root there first arises the “square number,” so to speak, as a third oneness; and the cubic number [arises thereafter] as a fourth and final oneness. The first unfolding of the oneness of the universe is the third oneness, viz.,
one hundred; and the last unfolding is the fourth oneness, viz., one thousand.

And so, we find three universal onenesses descending by degrees
to what is particular, in which they are contracted, so that they are actually the particular. The first and absolute Oneness enfolds all things absolutely; the first contracted [oneness enfolds] all things contractedly. But order requires [the following]: that Absolute Oneness be seen to enfold, as it were, the first contracted [oneness], so that by means of it [it enfolds] all other things; that the first contracted [oneness] be seen to enfold the second contracted [oneness] and, by means of it, the third contracted [oneness]; and that the second contracted [oneness be seen to enfold] the third contracted oneness, which is the last universal oneness, fourth from the first, so that by means of the third contracted oneness the second oneness arrives at what is particular.

And so, we see that the universe is contracted in each particular through three grades. Therefore, the universe is, as it were, all of the ten categories [generalissima], then the genera, and then the species.
end quote
De Docta Ignorantia II, 6 Trans. Jasper Hopkins

In De Coniecturis I, 4 Nicholas names the four onenesses God, intelligence, soul, and body.

Kwaw

"God is not seen except by blindness, nor known except by ignorance, nor understood except by fools." Meister Eckart (1260-1327), Sermons and Collations.
 

Fulgour

kwaw said:
And so, we find three universal onenesses descending by degrees to what is particular, in which they are contracted, so that they are actually the particular.
I would say that there is one universal threeness.