Letter symbolism concerns the symbolic meaning and value of letters (graphic signs representing a phoneme or group of phonemes in written language), whether read or written, in alphabetical script or elsewhere. While the meaning may not be immediately apparent, studying the symbols can reveal the significance of each letter.
Letter symbolism is the study of the alphabet as a symbol, exploring its ability to represent analogically, convey meaning, and carry values beyond its practical or material function. It involves examining letters as symbols (symbology) or systems (symbolic), as well as their capacity for designation, meaning, and potential influence (symbolism). Each letter typically holds its own symbolism, representing the essence of things or their fundamental nature, as evident in Greek etymology (e.g., A symbolizes the beginning).
On the other hand, for those who insist on the view that signs are arbitrary, letter symbolism may be considered as pure delirium. St. Augustine, in On Christian Doctrine (II, 24), expresses his desapproval of what he perceives as superstition: "The letter X, which is made in the shape of a cross, means one thing among the Greeks and another among the Latins, not by nature, but by agreement and prearrangement as to its signification; and so, anyone who knows both languages uses this letter in a different sense when writing to a Greek from that in which he uses it when writing to a Latin. And the same sound, beta, which is the name of a letter among the Greeks, is the name of a vegetable among the Latins."[ This quote needs a citation ]
Letters, pictograms (used by American Indians, Eskimos, African Bushmen, and Oceanians), conventional signs (such as totemic signs, taboos, and magic signs), ideograms (like those used by the Mayas, Ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Chinese), and syllabic scripts (such as Brahmi and Phoenician scripts) are all forms of written communication. "The general term 'letter' is used to designate each graphic element of which an alphabet is made up and which are used in alphabetic scripts." [1] Letters, therefore, only concern alphabetical writing (Greek and Roman alphabets, the Ogamic script used by the Irish and Welsh in the 5th century, the Runic script of the Germans, the Glagolitic alphabet of the Slavs in the 9th century, Hebrew in the 2nd century BC, and Arabic scripts from the 10th century BC, etc.).
Some letters are conventional, others are directly symbolic. For example, the "o" symbolizes the mouth.
| Conventional letter | Symbolic letter | |
|---|---|---|
| o = letter o, o-sound, oxygen, etc. | o = mouth, alum (a shiny sulfate), etc. | |
Symbol, symbolism and symbology. Symbolic and symbolism are interconnected concepts. 1) "The symbol is a concrete sign evoking by a natural relationship something absent or impossible to perceive" (André Lalande, Technical and Critical Vocabulary of Philosophy). 2) Letter symbolism encompasses the ability of letters to signify, influence, or activate, as well as their interpretive potential. 3) Symbolic concerns the signifying system of letters: on the one hand, they together form a system, a whole, a set, a complex; on the other, each one enters into a network (each one calls its opposite, its nearer, etc.).
Semiotics: syntax, semantics, pragmatics. The semiotic approach, since Charles W. Morris, [2] has examined three perspectives to analyze to letters: 1) syntax (the relationship between letters), 2) semantics (the meaning of letters, what they indirectly designate, by natural analogy) [either the signifier/signified relationship, or the sign/referent relationship], 3) pragmatics (the use of symbolic letters in communication).
Sound, figure, name: The philosopher Ramus (Gramere, 1562, p. 24), impressed by the inventions of printing, distinguishes three aspects in letters: sound, figure, and name. For example, the printing character V refers to a sound (pronounced "Vi"), a figure (written V, v), and a name (V is called "Vee", in Ramus's time: "Vau"). [3]
To understand the symbolism of letters, it may be beneficial to explore how humans have associated letters with other elements in similar domains (such as geometric figures, sounds, colors, etc.). Additionally, examining how certain synesthesias operate (connections between sensations like form and color, sound and color, etc.) can provide insight into the symbolic nature of letters.
Greek magical texts sometimes say that the seven vowels symbolize the seven planetary gods. According to Plutarch, A is linked to the Moon, to the note B, to Monday; E: Mercury, C; H: Venus, D; I: Sun, E; O: Mars, F; Y: Jupiter, G; omega: Saturn, A. [4]
In Dogme et Rituel de Haute Magie (1854, English: "Dogma and Ritual of High Magic"), Éliphas Lévi was the first to establish correspondences between the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, the 22 paths to wisdom according to the Kabbalists' Sefer Yezira, and the 22 Tarot cards.
A grapheme → color synesthete testifies: "I often associate letters and numbers with colors. Every number and letter is associated with a color in my head. Sometimes, when letters are written on a piece of paper, they will appear briefly in color if I am not concentrating on them. For example, "S" is red, "H" is orange, "C" is yellow, "J" is yellow-green, "G" is green; "E" is blue, "X" is purple, "I" is pale yellow, "2" is brown, "1" is white. If I write SHCJGEX or ABCPDEF, these letters will form a rainbow as I read them."
There are two levels to the art of deciphering (identifying and interpreting) symbols and their code: deciphering requires knowledge of the code, while deciphering does not. More decoding techniques are available.
The first technique is shape symbolism. Geofroy Tory (Champ fleuri de la vraie proportion des lettres antiques, 1500) believed that letters, created through divine inspiration, were constructed using straight lines and circles. [5] "Look at the shapes of letters. They are made up of straight lines and curves. In traditional symbolism, the straight line is linked to masculine polarity and the curve to feminine polarity. This ‘sexual’ particularity of letters and numbers is not accidental for those who know that everything couples according to laws and codes that make chance a decoy. Complementary polarities enable productive ‘self-fertilization.’
The second technique is the repertoire. First, identify the objects bearing a given letter and beginning with a given letter; and second, find out what they have in common.
The third technique is the system. Examine the relationships with other letters. To which letter is the A in a given word opposed, coupled, or similar?
The fourth technique is the science. What do traditions (proverbs, myths, tales, etc) and scholars (philosophers, theologians, iconographers, historians, etc.) have to say?
The fifth technique involves esoteric procedures, that are part of the Kabbalah and constitute the "science of letters," or the "combination of letters" (hôkhmat ha-zeruf), [6] which was particularly developed by Abraham Aboulafia at the end of the 13th century. In this system, "every letter is a name in itself" (Eleazar of Worms). [7] Reuchlin defines Kabbalah as "a symbolic theology in which letters and names are not only the signs of things but also the reality of things.” [8] The Kabbalistic combination of letters involves three processes:
In Jewish mysticism history, the Sefer Yezira (Sepher Yetsirah, Book of Creation) is a highly enigmatic text, perhaps dating from the 2nd century, written in Babylon. According to this brief and enigmatic text, the world is made up of ten principles, called sefirot (numerations), which correspond to the ten numbers of the decimal system, from 1 to 10. These 10 sefirot are linked by 32 paths, namely the first 10 whole numbers and the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, divided into 3 mother letters (alef, mem, shin), 7 double letters (consonants that produce a hard or soft sound depending on whether or not they include a dagesh: bet, gimel, dalet, kaf, pe, on the one hand; kaf, pe, resh, tav, on the other), and 12 single letters.
The most famous text challenging letter symbology is the Quran, in its second surah: "Alif, Lam, Meem. This is the Book in which there is no doubt, a guide for the righteous. Those who believe in the unseen…" [14] Alif, Lam and Meem are three letters.
Swedenborg declared: "The language of celestial angels sounds very much in vowels U and O; and the language of spiritual angels in vowels E and I."
One important use of letter symbolism concerns magic. According to the pseudo-Paracelsus of the Archidoxis magica : "Signs, characters [occult writings and symbols], and letters have their force and efficacy. If the nature and proper essence of metals, the influence and power of the heavens and planets, and the meaning and disposition of characters, signs, and letters, harmonize and concur simultaneously with the observation of days, times, and hours, who then, in the name of heaven, would prevent a sign or seal [astrological image] made in this way from possessing its force and faculty of operation?" [15]
In the 10th century, Ibn Wahshiya wrote a work widely read by magicians on eighty-seven magical alphabets: Connaissance longuement désirée des alphabets occultes enfin dévoilée. [16]
From the thirteenth century onwards, magic books were filled with magical alphabets. Christian magicians relied on quotations from the Gospels to justify their beliefs, and to write their texts: "I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God" (Revelation, 1, 8), "Before heaven and earth pass away, not an i [iota, in Greek], not a dot on the i will pass from the Law, until all is fulfilled" (Matthew, 5, 18), "I am the way and the truth and the life" (John, 14, 6): Via, Veritas, Vita, "In my name [Jesus] they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues" (Mark, 16, 17), "God raised him from the dead... This very Name [Yahweh, the sacred Tetragrammaton] has given strength" (Acts, 3, 16-16).
The secret alphabets of Abbot Trithemius (1462–1516), in Steganographia, are used as much for cryptography as for angelic magic.
John Dee, famous English mathematician, magician, and author of Monas Hieroglyphica (1564), stated: [17]
This alphabetical literature contains great mysteries... The first mystical letters of the Hebrews, Greeks and Romans, formed by a single God, have been transmitted to mortals (...) in such a way that all the signs representing them are produced by points, straight lines, and perimeters of circumferences, arranged according to a marvelous and very skillful art.
Johann Michael Moscherosch (1601–1669) had one of his characters say: "When I wake up in the morning (...), I recite a whole alphabet; all the prayers of the world are included" (Wunderliche und Warhafftige Geschichte Philanders von Sittewald, 1642, p. 701).
Grimoires feature letters of the alphabet. To prevent hemorrhaging, the magician proposed this rite: [18]
Write these characters on a blank parchment and tie them around the neck of the person losing blood: S.q.r.tz.Os. T.q.e.t.o.a.c.ge.E.h.x sancta. Sernenisa." (Le sachet accoucheur).
An abjad, also abgad, is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving the vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels. The term was introduced in 1990 by Peter T. Daniels. Other terms for the same concept include partial phonemic script, segmentally linear defective phonographic script, consonantary, consonant writing, and consonantal alphabet.
The Arabic alphabet, or Arabic abjad, is the Arabic script as specifically codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written from right-to-left in a cursive style, and includes 28 letters, of which most have contextual letterforms. The Arabic alphabet is considered an abjad, with only consonants required to be written; due to its optional use of diacritics to notate vowels, it is considered an impure abjad.
The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered excepting several letters splitting—i.e. ⟨J⟩ from ⟨I⟩, and ⟨U⟩ from ⟨V⟩—additions such as ⟨W⟩, and extensions such as letters with diacritics, it forms the Latin script that is used to write most languages of modern Europe, Africa, America and Oceania. Its basic modern inventory is standardised as the ISO basic Latin alphabet.
U, or u, is the twenty-first letter and the fifth vowel letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet and the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is u, plural ues.
A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different concepts and experiences. All communication is achieved through the use of symbols. Symbols take the form of words, sounds, gestures, ideas, or visual images and are used to convey other ideas and beliefs. For example, a red octagon is a common symbol for "STOP"; on maps, blue lines often represent rivers; and a red rose often symbolizes love and compassion. Numerals are symbols for numbers; letters of an alphabet may be symbols for certain phonemes; and personal names are symbols representing individuals.
The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad used across the Mediterranean civilization of Phoenicia for most of the 1st millennium BC. It was one of the first alphabets, and attested in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region. In the history of writing systems, the Phoenician script also marked the first to have a fixed writing direction—while previous systems were multi-directional, Phoenician was written horizontally, from right to left. It developed directly from the Proto-Sinaitic script used during the Late Bronze Age, which was derived in turn from Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Sefer Yetzirah is a book on Jewish mysticism. Early commentaries, such as the Kuzari, treated it as a treatise on mathematical and linguistic theory as opposed to Kabbalah. The word Yetzirah is more literally translated as "Formation"; the word Briah is used for "Creation". The book is traditionally ascribed to the patriarch Abraham, although others attribute its writing to Rabbi Akiva. Modern scholars have not reached consensus on the question of its origins. According to Rabbi Saadia Gaon, the objective of the book's author was to convey in writing how the things of our universe came into existence. Conversely, Judah Halevi asserts that the main objective of the book, with its various examples, is to give to man the means by which he is able to understand the unity and omnipotence of God, which appear multiform on one side and, yet, are uniform.
In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are joined to form a single glyph. Examples are the characters ⟨æ⟩ and ⟨œ⟩ used in English and French, in which the letters ⟨a⟩ and ⟨e⟩ are joined for the first ligature and the letters ⟨o⟩ and ⟨e⟩ are joined for the second ligature. For stylistic and legibility reasons, ⟨f⟩ and ⟨i⟩ are often merged to create ⟨fi⟩ ; the same is true of ⟨s⟩ and ⟨t⟩ to create ⟨st⟩. The common ampersand, ⟨&⟩, developed from a ligature in which the handwritten Latin letters ⟨e⟩ and ⟨t⟩ were combined.
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as well as consonants. In Archaic and early Classical times, the Greek alphabet existed in many local variants, but, by the end of the 4th century BC, the Euclidean alphabet, with 24 letters, ordered from alpha to omega, had become standard and it is this version that is still used for Greek writing today.
The Persian alphabet, also known as the Perso-Arabic script, is the right-to-left alphabet used for the Persian language. It is a variation of the Arabic script with five additional letters: پ چ ژ گ, in addition to the obsolete ڤ that was used for the sound. This letter is no longer used in Persian, as the -sound changed to, e.g. archaic زڤان > زبان 'language'.
Scribal abbreviations, or sigla, are abbreviations used by ancient and medieval scribes writing in various languages, including Latin, Greek, Old English and Old Norse.
Alpha and omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, and a title of Christ and God in the Book of Revelation. This pair of letters is used as a Christian symbol, and is often combined with the Cross, Chi Rho or other Christian symbols. A (a) and Z (z) share the similarity with alpha and omega. The Hebrew equivalent is alef and tau.
Dalet is the fourth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician dālt 𐤃, Hebrew dāletד, Aramaic dālaṯ 𐡃, Syriac dālaṯ ܕ, and Arabic dālد. Its sound value is the voiced alveolar plosive.
Resh is the twentieth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician rēš 𐤓, Hebrew rēšר, Aramaic rēš 𐡓, Syriac rēš ܪ, and Arabic rāʾر. Its sound value is one of a number of rhotic consonants: usually or, but also or in Hebrew and North Mesopotamian Arabic.
Ayin is the sixteenth letter of the Semitic scripts, including Phoenician ʿayin 𐤏, Hebrew ʿayinע, Aramaic ʿē 𐡏, Syriac ʿē ܥ, and Arabic ʿaynع.
Bet, Beth, Beh, or Vet is the second letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician bēt 𐤁, Hebrew bētב, Aramaic bēṯ 𐡁, Syriac bēṯ ܒ, and Arabic bāʾب. Its sound value is the voiced bilabial stop ⟨b⟩ or the voiced labiodental fricative ⟨v⟩.
Unicode has a certain amount of duplication of characters. These are pairs of single Unicode code points that are canonically equivalent. The reason for this are compatibility issues with legacy systems.
Cursive Hebrew is a collective designation for several styles of handwriting the Hebrew alphabet. Modern Hebrew, especially in informal use in Israel, is handwritten with the Ashkenazi cursive script that had developed in Central Europe by the 13th century. This is also a mainstay of handwritten Yiddish. It was preceded by a Sephardi cursive script, known as Solitreo, that is still used for Ladino.
The Berber Latin alphabet is the version of the Latin alphabet used to write the Berber languages. It was adopted in the 19th century, using varieties of letters.
About the Mystery of the Letters is an anonymous Christian treatise containing a mystical doctrine about the names and forms of the Greek and Hebrew letters. It was probably written in the 6th century in Byzantine Palaestina Prima.
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