What God “spoke” was sound, and that sound was Hebrew.
Early and medieval mystics created alternate alphabets based upon the Hebrew AlefBeit. They did this to conceal the secrets they had gleaned. An example of an alternate alphabet is the Celestial Alphabet, which is a mapping of the Hebrew letters to the constellations in the night sky.
Breath from Breath.
With it One engraved and carved
22 Foundation Letters
Three Mothers
Seven Doubles
and Twelve Elementals
And one Breath is from them. [1]
Spiritual Representation: Air, Breath, Spirit (as in wind, Ruach)
Mundane Representation: Ox
Classification: One of the three mother letters
Association: The element of air
Alef is the first letter of the AlefBeit, yet it is silent. Its behavior as a letter alludes to its meeting. The Torah begins with a Beit….BeReishit. That is because before beginning, the earth was astonishingly empty. [2] The soundless alef alludes to this. It is the first letter of the word echad (singularity, unity) and also the first letter of many of God’s names.
Substance out of chaos
Nonexistence into existence
Great pillars carved from air
that cannot be grasped.
This is a sign
[Alef with them all and all of them with Alef]
all that is formed and all that is spoken:
one Name. [3]
Alef is a very holy letter because it not only represents one, but its form may be dissected into a Vav and two Yuds, which has the same numerical value as God’s sacred name.
The form of the letter is described as a Yud above and a Yud below with a Vav separating and uniting them simultaneously. Thus, the alef is symbolic of the division of the higher and lower waters with the firmament (also translated as sky.) God said, 'There shall be a firmament in the middle of the water and it shall divide between. [4]
Alef represents the element of air and signifies the Divine Breath (Spirit) of God that hovered above the waters of the deep before beginning while also representing the division of these waters.
On a more mundane level, Alef is thought to represent an ox (gross physical reality) as the lower animal soul.
Alef symbolizes a ladder that links the mundane to the spiritual and reaches heavenward.
Where is the
The Hebrew letter Aleph connects the path from Gevurah (courage) to Chesed (mercy) on the Tree of Life.
1 comment:
"Alef is a very holy letter because it not only represents one, but its form may be dissected into a 'Vav and two Yuds'" - I think I saw that on NetFlix!
But seriously, I do enjoy your posts. They make me think with parts of my brain that don't get much use nowadays.
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