Tag: Greek alphabet

Posted on in Heart of Language

7. AM

A refers to creation. I refers to the Fall (or time). O is the symbol of recognition, repentance. This is the progression of human life, contained in the Greek alphabet: AIO. That is, the Greek alphabet counts down from the Fall (from I to O). The Latin alphabet used in English counts up (from I to Z).

The Greek alphabet makes the progression from A (which represents creation, “In the beginning…”) to I (which represents the Fall, or time) to O (a long o, called omega, the last letter). AIO. We tend to associate Greek culture with drama, philosophy and theology.

We tend to associate Latin culture with making laws and building roads. It’s the Latin alphabet that we use in English, 26 letters. But the Latin alphabet, which might be taken to convey rationalism, thinking, doesn’t make the same progression as the Greek one. It goes from A to I to Z. That is, it counts up: from 1 to 2.

It does exactly what we teach our children to do in school. To amass. To count up from the line that represents the ego, I, without taking into account the source, O (the eternal symbol that represents God). A fatal mistake. This contrast in styles, between a more humble East and a more hegemonic West, with its colonies and empires, is very telling.

Let us start by looking more closely at the A of creation. We have seen that the name of God revealed to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3:14, perhaps the most important verse in the Old Testament, is AM. This name actually contains the letter A and also the Greek letter omega, w, turned upside down. In God is both the beginning and the end. He is the empty space on which we draw the timeline (there can be no time without eternity).

If we apply the phonetic pair m-n to AM, we get an. This is the indefinite article, the article we use to refer to countable nouns, nouns that can be counted. You can only count if you separate off, if you draw a line around, so God did this – but he didn’t create man in order to trade in him, which is the reason we draw lines around things (barrels, bottles, containers, any kind of packaging, for the purpose of trade). He drew a line around man in order to grant him free will, to make him separate (while, obviously, man’s life is contained in God, without whom he cannot breathe). This is the difference in intention between God and man: one gives freedom, the other thinks about profit.

If we combine the name of God, AM, and the indefinite article, an, we get a man:

AM + an = a man

And the name of that man was Adam. Again, the letter A. But because he is God’s creation, made in his image, he also has the divine spark in him, which is why the letter omega, written o or w, is in his name when written with capital letters: ADAM. His name is a duplicate of God’s in Exodus, AM, using the two ways of writing a long o or omega.

If we read the name Adam in reverse, we find made (I have allowed the second vowel to shift slightly towards the front of the mouth). That is because we are made, not begotten. Only Christ is the Son of God, only he is begotten of the Father before all ages (outside the timeline).

In chapter 2 of Genesis, after the creation of man, God then creates the animals and birds, and asks Adam to name them. Do you see how name is man in reverse, with the addition of final e?

If we shuffle the letters of name, we find mean and amen. By naming the creatures, Adam gave them meaning, and he said amen to God’s will. So, man: name-mean-amen.

God asked Adam what he wanted to call them. What is the primordial question. What is this creature? What will you call it? But, in the Fall, we make the progression from A to I, and instead of what, we ask why. Why should I do this? Why should I believe you? Why signifies distrust (y is the semi-vowel that corresponds to i).

Now that we find ourselves in the time of the Fall (as soon as Adam and Eve are ejected from paradise, the clock starts ticking, this is why the Fall and the ego are represented by a line), we really only have one choice: to go forward. So, we do not attempt a return to paradise, to the world of childish ignorance. We have our knowledge and must use it.

We make the progression of the Greek alphabet, and turn why into who (or how, it’s the same answer). The biggest shift in someone’s thinking is when they make this change from why to who. Pilate, when he asked Christ, “What is truth?” (Jn 18:38), had not made this progression. He had to ask the one by whom all things were made (because he is the Word, and the world was spoken into being) not “What is truth?”, but “Who is truth?” And then Christ might have answered, “I am,” in which is contained the progression of human life: AIO (AIW).

AIO, or AIW (depending on which letter we use for omega, o or w), restores us to ourself. The crucial difference – and the reason we should not want to return to Eden (Garden of Eden spells danger of need) – is that now we have knowledge, knowledge we must put to good use.

Jonathan Dunne

Heart of Language 7/15

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0. Law

A text about law, and the proximity of this word to the name of God in Exodus 3:14, I AM.

The word law in reverse reads wall. This is because the law acts as a wall around private property; divine law acts as a wall to protect us from our enemies.

Consonants, the flesh of language, are divided into pairs. One such pair is l-r. If we apply this pair to law, we get war (again, in reverse). Law is a way of avoiding war, if at all possible. Sometimes, however, it doesn’t work and someone crosses the line between us with hostile intent.

But the most beautiful – and the most important – word connection with law is I AM (capital I and lower-case l look alike; w is m upside down). This is the name of God in Exodus 3:14, the name God reveals to Moses at the burning bush. The law is very important in the Old Testament (the law and the prophets, profits). God’s law is about truth, it reflects who he is. I think behind the human laws that we make stands God’s law, reflected in his name I AM. That is, everything is contained in him; we may think we possess things, but we only possess them as gifts from the Creator.

And this connection law-I AM is found in the New Testament, which is about Christ become man and the message he brings. He became man so that we could become gods by grace (not by nature), a process known as theosis. He shows us the way. This word is also in law if we remember that the semi-vowel y corresponds to i.

I AM-law-way is the message contained in the Bible. We can see that all three words contain the progression of the Greek alphabet: from A (the first letter, creation) to I (the Fall, the ego in English) to O (omega, written w in Greek).

If we delete the ego – that is, submit our will to God’s – we get a cross (†), which is also a plus-sign (+). This is the meaning of Christ’s injunction to lose our life in order to find it, a seeming paradox.

One way of writing this plus is ’n’ (as in rock ’n’ roll). If we take the progression of the Greek alphabet, AIW, and substitute the deleted ego, ’n’, we get ANW, which gives us man. This is the purpose of human life – to make this progression away from the ego and become fully man, a word that is linked to law. We achieve it by observing his commandments to love him and to love our neighbour.

This is the inner meaning of language, the one we do not see. We think of language as an external tool that we hold in our hands, but it is like nature, it has its own meaning.

Jonathan Dunne

Heart of Language 0/15

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