Breath forms the basis of all language. There is no sound without it. It is represented in the alphabet by the letter h, but on its own it doesn’t make a word. Unsurprisingly it contains the word aer – the Greek and Latin spelling of air – in reverse, as do many words that have to do with creation: the word create, for example, or water (what happens when we add voice to our breath), or father.

Breath and father are linked. Five of the letters are the same; f-v is a phonetic pair, and b and v are related in languages like Spanish and Modern Greek. Breath, if we allow fluidity to the vowels, is also connected with birth, because it is the start of all things. The first thing we do as a baby is take a breath and then emit speech (normally a bawl, a vowel sound). If we turn the b in breath back to front (in the history of the alphabet, many letters were reversed in this way, it is not unusual), we get thread, and if we read thread in reverse, omitting the r, we get death. This is because our breath acts as a thread between the two seminal moments in our earthly life, birth and death. This can best be pictured as an equation:

birth – breath / thread – death

Breath also contains earth and heart. It is closely linked with our life on earth. It is what keeps our heart going. It is a source of nourishment – from it we receive the oxygen our body needs – like bread, the food we eat, or breast, our mother’s milk. All three sources of nourishment on which we depend share the same first four letters (brea).

Breath is not only the beginning of a person’s visible life. It is the beginning of the universe we inhabit, as God prepares to speak. We read in Genesis, “In the beginning […] the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light” (Gen 1:1-3).

I believe the wind referred to here is God’s breath, and what the creation account in Genesis amounts to is a description of speech. God is the Speaker; his Son, Jesus Christ, is the Word in his mouth; and the Holy Spirit is his breath, which proceeds from his lungs (it forms part of the Word, but it does not come from the Word). The waters are his saliva (you cannot speak with a dry mouth). And the light is him opening his mouth, bringing all things into existence, giving rise to form, which is a manifestation of him.

Jonathan Dunne

I will be giving an eight-week course on the spiritual meaning of language in February-March 2027. If you are interested, please email me at jonathancourses @ gmail.com (without the spaces) and I will send you further information nearer the time.

Next: Water (to be published on 28.11.2026).