adam & eve the solar temptation chapter 1 the reading grid

CHAPTER 1: THE READING KEYS

Where the Reader may want to consider that only the Adam,

alone, is expelled from the Garden in Eden. This introduction

allows introducing the play in the writing, omnipresent in the

sacred texts, and the corresponding reading keys: the turning-

around of the letters, to read in the mirror, the symbolic value of

the letters, and the correspondence between the letters and the parts

of the human body.

Adam and Eve are expelled from paradise together; the whole

iconography of the Western world acknowledges that fact. And

Mans misery, the fact of being punished

from the Original Sin, is because of a

careless Eve, irresponsible, who has eaten

the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good

and Evil. This is our starting point: Woman

is irresponsible and temptress, the carefree

has been subdued by a serpent (she is usually

so horrified by serpents), and a God of

love has become red of anger, has blemished

on rage, and has expelled Adam and Eve

from the Garden in a moment of pure divine

wrath. And the world has never recovered

from it.

Good riddance!

Why is our civilisation founding myth built

on a divorce, on an expulsion, on a

punishment? On a tragedy? Why is the

Church so adamant about the original sin,

declaring every man and woman guilty at

Figure 1: The woman with the snake O church, 12th century (Photo PE. Augustine Museum; Toulouse). See chapter 18.

Adam & Eve: the solar temptation

2

birth? Why did Eve eat this forbidden fruit, at the origin of our

misfortune?

Lets have a look at what happens with the King James Version (Gen

3:23):

Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of

Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

The New American Bible1 proposes:

The LORD God therefore banished him from the garden of Eden,

to till the ground from which he had been taken.

Who sends forth? The LORD God

whom I shall translate as YHVH-

Adona Elohim in this essay, keeping

the Hebrew wording. I shall also

explain why the two nouns YHVH-

Adona (Jehovah) and Elohim (God)

are put together. But, if one looks

closer, only Adam as the singular

personal pronoun he is mentioned:

no mention of Eve. I was expecting

something like The LORD

1 In the following, we shall use KJ for King James and NAB for New

American Bible.

Figure 2: Adam et ve chasss du Jardin

dEden. Gustave Dor


God therefore banished them from the garden

In the following verse, the uniqueness of the Adam to be expelled

is reinforced and confirmed:

Gen 3:24 - So he drove out the man, and he placed at the east of

the garden of Eden Cherubims (KJ version)

Gen 3:24 - He expelled the man, stationing the cherubims and

the fiery revolving sword east of the garden of Eden (NAB)

So indeed the Adam alone is expelled after having been driven out or

expelled: Eve is not even mentioned. Why? Isnt she the true guilty

person in the story? Adam did eat the fruit, however Eve did eat it

too, and did propose it to Adam: she is fully responsible.

Here is the Hebrew text:

LaeBoD MiGaN-eDeN Elohim YHVH WaYeShaLHeHOu

to work from the garden-Eden YHVH Elohim And sent him forth

MiShaM LouQaH eSheR HaaDaMaH eT

from there [had been taken] from which the HaAdamaH (do)

And sent him forth, YHVH-Adona Elohim, to work the HaAdamaH

from which (he) had been taken: from there. Eve is not concerned with

the expulsion from the Garden.


I also want to underline this word HaAdamaH so poorly

translated as ground by both our bibles. It is written as Adam

taken in the pincers of the two He-breath letters , which represent the vivifying breath. The consonant He represents the lung, the breath of life. It is vocalised by a rapid expulsion of the air through

the bronchial tubes. The Adamah is the fertile soil that needs to be

worked to grow things; it is not the passive, anonymous and neutral

ground that we must refer to, but the alive material from which

living forms arise. In Hebrew, the article is Ha placed in front of

the noun, so the Adamah is written HaAdamaH, and I

transcribe this way, with two capital He letters, that magic noun of

Adam taken in the pincers of the vivifying breath.

In order to grasp the meaning of these words, and then to grasp the

meaning of the founding message of our civilisation, it is necessary

to dive into the mysteries of the Hebrew writing system. Sometimes,

I shall have to make a detour on the side of Sumer, and also on the

side of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. The next 50 pages of this essay are

then trying to present this ground work, following the

organisation below:

- The play on words;

- The letters, recipients of the world energies;

- The structure of the world with grammar as a base;

- The turning-around, basis of the spirituality.

Here is our interest in the myth of the fall of

Adam and Eve: the Adam alone is mentioned,

and the text uses twice the singular form.


These pages may not be easy to follow if one is a beginner in

Hebrew, but I have tried to render them as easy as possible. They

are necessary to understand the plays on words and the hidden

notions that are called by the use of certain words, from the way

they are spelled. These subtleties have of course disappeared from

our English, French of German translations, as they have

disappeared from the translations in Greek or Latin. Plays on words

are most of the time impossible to render in foreign languages. Lets

also remind the reader that the vowels have been added to the text

between the 1st and the 4th century A.D.: they are not part of the

original script.

Once I have finished this presentation of the notions inhabiting the

Hebrew letters, we shall be able to ride on a journey that is quite

eventful.

May I add, to end this preamble before developing the reading keys,

that I take the liberty to illustrate the described notions with

examples that do not respect any sort of chronological or

geographical scales. The notions that are developed in Genesis,

written between the 9th and the 6th century B.C., may very well be

illustrated with examples from the Middle-Age, Renaissance, or

from any other period or geographical area. What is important is the

message in its principle with the symbolic and timeless values it

contains, not the forms that such principles may take at this or that

period or country. These symbolic values remain understandable in

our modern time, with a bit of brain gymnastics: for instance, the

solar ram or the lunar bull as fertilizing forces of nature, or the Tree

as the principle of mutations during growth, to transform a seed into

a fruit thats a timeless image.


The Reading Keys

First Key: the Play in the Writing

The script in Genesis (as well as in the other biblical books) is based

on the play with analogies. The plays on words or on letters have a

Sumerian and Egyptian origin; and they have been lost during the

translations in Greek and Latin. The plays on words, the puns are

omnipresent in sacred texts, because they associate tangible signs

(the drawing of the letters in stone, wood, papyrus or metal) with

the energies that Man2 feels in populating his universe. The letters

are there to transcribe these energies. The relationship that Man

sustains with these energies form levels of organisation and structure

that are with drawers. It is the organisation of the letters in the

word or in the sentence that is the reflexion of these energies,

sometimes conflicting with one another, sometimes in harmony in

the human spirit as in the natural world. It is as such that the writing

is a gift from the gods in the Sumerian, Egyptian and Greek myths

not to mention others. The script is a tangible representation,

physical, graspable by the human thoughts, of consciousness,

emotions, hopes, interrogations, relationships, choices: everything

that crosses the human mind in its entirety and that remains non

material. The first mission of the script is to transmit a message: it

is a transmission tool, and as such a projection of the will, an

externalisation of an interior willingness towards an external

universe. The words, the letters that form the words are the vectors

or vehicles of this transmission willingness. The letters are the

projections of the sensitive world.

2 We write Man as human being both male and female to differentiate it from the man as the masculine or male-only human being.


The hieroglyphic script is first a sacred writing system, which senses

were kept hidden: the ones who knew how to decipher it were few,

and mostly religious people. Then an important source of

mythology comes from the plays on words or plays on writing. Many

cosmogony myths are based on pun. A consequence of this aptitude

to pun is obviously the possibility to establish essential equivalences

between objects that have, in reality, only their naming in common,

while there is a tendency to fuse the name and the thing, the image

and the thing, the image and the name.3

The reference to the image shows in the decoration of the Egyptian

temples such as Edfu or Denderah, where the decorative panels do

not seem to obey a reading order that makes any sense.

Even in the sanctuary where the decoration illustrates directly the rites from

which the Naos statue was the object, the reading order is not indicated. It is

through reasoning the modern archaeologists have found it, by establishing that

one had to jump constantly from one wall to another one in front. Somewhere

else, plays are even more subtle, and it is through a strange word in the context

that the necessity to jump to the other wall will be indicated, as in the Edfu

courtyard, where the order of the panels on one wall is directly dependent of the

one in facing it. In Denderah, correspondences were known only from the one

who reads the plan of the place, but do escape from the visitors. Indeed, one of

the most striking tricks in the decoration did consist in placing, on the back

of the big sistrum statue that lies in an inaccessible hole in the southern wall, an

equivalent statue (invisible from the courtyard) with inscriptions that indicate an

identity with the external (visible) one. Nobody, except the skilful priest-architect

who invented the play, and the Egyptologist who also has the plan of the temple,

was able to know this fact. He only would get the message. All this was

functioning in the name of the cosmogony, all of this was used to maintain the

3 The Egyptian Religion, Philippe Derchain, in History of Religions,

Volume 1, La Pleiades, 1070, p.76.


stability of the world order, not without reason it seems, since as long as the social

Egyptian order did last, temples were built.4

The presentation of ritual scenes in a face-to-face situation also

exists in the rite that consists in maintaining the good order of the

solar and moon courses, between other things through the

presentation of two mirrors to the Hathor goddess (an avatar of

Isis). She would contemplate herself in the mirrors and provoke the

double light of day and night. The offering of two eyes would give

the same result. This offering could take a special value when the

recipient was the god of Letopolis (just north of Gizeh), who is

alternatively blind and sighted.

The position of the priest (or the reader) facing the statue (or the

text), as the one of the knight with respect to his emblazoned shield

he holds, implies a shift, or a turning-around from left to right or

right to left, in a similar way that the human microcosm is the

upside-down image of the cosmic and divine macrocosm. The two

correspond to each other, however it is necessary to establish, from

time to time, the proper directions of the divine or human energies:

right-left, above-below. Sometimes, a letter-energy that is essentially

spiritual will correspond to its equivalent essentially material: for

instance, the Aleph sign-of-Elohim as eternity and total spirituality

will correspond in the mirror to the Ayin sign of temporality and total materiality:

Aleph

Ayin

4 The Egyptian Religion, Philippe Derchain, op. cite; p.95.

Eternity and total spirituality

Temporality and total materiality


In his book on alchemy5, Bernard Roger cites the works of Gracet

dOrcet, and above all of Fulcanelli, who highlighted the plays on

words that are abundantly used in Kabbalah: The phonetic kabbalah

is textually the horse of the speech, and its principle lies on the listening of the

sounds of words or sentences beyond their literal sense, outside of the grammatical

logics and the spelling rules. This language, that adapts itself to all languages in

the world, uses the quite about the same as, almost equal to, similar as,

not too far from as plays on words, pun, sometimes an anagram, often a rebus,

which have been used a lot for commercial signboards on the street and for the

design of coats of arms. [] It is on similar but spiritual plays on words that

the student in Science must exert himself, who has the true desire to penetrate the

meaning of old books. That he looks into anatomizing the words, breach their

barks and free their spirit, the divine light their hide under the letter, according

to Fulcanellis expression6, who gives the precious advice to get involved in Old

Greek: what is usually overseen is that the idiom that the [Middle Age]

authors were using in their terms was rooted in archaic Greek, mother tongue

according to the plurality of the Hermes disciples.

I conclude that it is impossible to grasp the complexity of the text,

and its symbolic and ontological depth7, without getting involved

in playing with words: the image of the shadow, that I shall study in

detail, the turning-over in the frame of the text, invite us to shift

around the direction of the reading, to shift energy-letters, and the

systematic deciphering of proper names, numbers and figures that

are built in the text for a reason. This is what renders the translation

so difficult, at the same time it is imprisoned in names, dates, ages

5 A la dcouverte de lalchimie, Bernard Roger, Dangles editions, 1984,

pp 50-53.

6 Le Mystre des Cathdrales, Fulcanelli, Omium Littraire, Paris, 1957

(cited by Bernard Roger).

7 What is ontological is what is related to the deep nature of Man.


that arouse a historical and factual reading. Lets give a few examples

of such plays with letters:

First example: the HaAdamaH (the cultivable land) already

mentioned, and written He-Adam-He: that is to say Adam taken in

the pincers of the He breath (the He letter symbolizes the vivifying

breath).

HaAdamaH

H m d a H

The word adamah means cultivable land and is written

HaaDaMaH with the article He. That letter He represents the lung

that gives life to the things it animates and orientates. The culture,

related to the fertility of the land, is an essential quality of this land.

Fertility implies, for it to be accomplished, that the land must be

worked, tilled. And as Adam finds himself in the pincers of that

vivifying breath, it is a reference of the spiritual work that I am

talking about: we are always, in Genesis, dealing with the spiritual

working on the self on the Adam as each of us. This notion could

be seen in the garden in Eden: a garden is, by definition, a place

of work, and even of the work of love. It is opposed to the fallow

(the wasteland of T.S. Eliot), the plain, the pasture, the nature.

The tilled land that has not produced yet is the field with grass: rich

of all its potentialities of growth. It is here, in the field, that Cain

takes his avatar Abel and kills him8. The essential point is that a

8 Chapter 4 of Genesis: Abel is traditionally mentioned as the

brother, but the same Hebrew word designates the brother, the

alike, the ally, the avatar. It takes the meaning that La Fontaine


garden is not a natural place; it is a place where nature has been

worked. Love is not a natural thing in this sense, as it needs to be

worked with efforts (and maintained). The land is natural; the garden

is cultural because it necessitates a work of transformation, of

mutation to be differentiated from that land. If the work of the

HaAdamaH is mentioned as the unique reason when the Adam is

expelled from the Garden of Eden, then we may think that the

reason of the expulsion is the absence of work I shall get back to

it.

Let us try another example: the word cursed, that first applies to

the serpent, and then to the HaAdamaH (with Cain). Cursed is

aROuR in Hebrew:

Cursed : (aROuR)

Aleph Resh Wav Resh

The Resh consonant is the head and represents the rationality, the intelligences that computes and deduces and also the

principle, and as a hieroglyphic sign, the straight line without

gives it in the Wolf and the Lamb fable: if not you, then your

brother. The word Cain comes from QaYiN centralising decision-

making power, as well as to forge a weapon, and plays with the

other meaning of jealousy. In our reading, Cain-the-spouse kills

Abel his avatar cloud, breath with no consistency. See Chapter

17.

Reading direction


alteration. If I drop this rational head (to the left of the Aleph in

Hebrew above), I get the word OuR, which means light:

Light: Aleph Wav Resh (OuR)

This light is a spiritual light; we know it because in Genesis it appears

on Day ONE, before the creation of the two big luminaries that

will lighten the heavens and the earth on day four. This light OuR

is made of:

The Aleph letter : the infinite creative power of spirituality, the sign of Elohim as the Unity Principle materialised by

the apostrophe in our writing. The Aleph letter is

not pronounced in itself: it needs a vowel to be

heard.

The Wav letter : that letter has a function to rising things in a vertical position, it elevates in a straight-up direction,

and it also turns around, shifts around and

hooks two things. It is the equivalent of the

English word and that hooks two things

together in a sentence. It is written as capital O

in our script above;

The Resh letter : the principle (capital R), represented by the straight line as a hieroglyphic value, which means

that it has not been curbed by anything. It is in its

original state and it has not been subject to any

curvature.

The OuR light is the one that enlightens the thinking or meditating

head (Resh) in the axis of Elohim: total spirituality. It corresponds

to the enlightenment of the Buddha: a light that transcends the

rational intelligence. In French, the ravi qualifies the raving lunatic,


whose soul has been taken away by the Devil. But the word

corresponds also to the adjective delighted: de-lighted; without

light. That is the meaning of the Fool tarot card, whose head is

separated from the body by a stick on his shoulder. I shall study the

fool in detail in Chapter 14. The capacity of being the subject of a

ravishment is a principle: it is true everywhere and all the time (at all

epochs), in all civilisations and it is the principle that underlines

the human psyche. It is most probably at the origin of the desire for

the caveman to represent animal energies on the walls of his caves.

It is the origin of the alive. It is this very light that allows the

vision.

This notion of spiritual light that does not go through the head is

also illustrated by a moving

Virgin with child from the 14th

century in the Museum of the

Augustans in Toulouse (see

Figure 3): the child Jesus holds

a globe, symbolising the Earth

and the sensible world, while

his right hand holds a bird on

Marys heart9. That is the

duality between the sensible

world and the spiritual world,

which integration, for the

Christian, is made through

Jesus. The spirituality,

symbolised by the bird with a

9 I have highlighted the contours of the bird on Marys heart on the

picture. The heart, as the organ of spirituality and divine love, is the

symbol of interiority. The bird, which head is turned around, is the

symbol of spirituality.

Figure 3: Mary with Child, Museum of the Augustans, Toulouse, 14th century (Photo PE)


shifted head, is an affair of heart, and not of head (mental realm).

The rationality is opposed to the spirituality, and the rational

intelligence is not the path of the intelligence of the heart. The

rationality is essentially a normative concept [], which governs our

interpretation of a system of beliefs: the way with which we attribute beliefs and

rational behaviours to individuals10. We find here an axis that will be

developed in this essay: to access spirituality (the heart is the Beit

letter with a numerical value of 2), one must transcend the rationality (the head corresponding to the Resh letter with a numerical value of 200). This path goes through the mastering of

the analogy, represented in the Hebrew alphabet by the Kaf letter , with a numerical value of 20. The Kaf letter comes from the hieroglyph of the palm of the hand: to grasp (the meaning of

something), and is represented in this statue by the two palms of

Jesus-child that grasp the sensible world with one hand and the

spiritual world with the other hand. The analogy is another principle:

it is also true all the time, throughout the civilisations, and all over

the world: the aspiration to grasp the meaning of things and to

establish links between elements that, a priori, have no links between

them when they are considered by the rational intelligence.

I could also play by replacing the Aleph (total spirituality) of OuR

(spiritual light) by the other silent letter Ayin (total materiality): I get

OuR that means skin. The skin tunics that cover the Adam and

his spouse iShaH precede immediately the expulsion from the

Garden of Eden. We shall see what this tunics of skin represent; but

it is interesting to realise that they were used in funeral rites in the

10 Normes logiques et volution; Pascal Engel, Universit de Caen et

CREA, Ecole Polytechnique, Revue Internationale de Philosophie

2, 1997, pp 201-219.


Kingdom of Meroe (todays Sudan), in which the kings were buried

only covered with such tunics of skin.

Another example: the serpent is spelled NaHaSh Nun-Heit-Shin. The guttural Heit letter derives from the hieroglyph that

represents the barrier of the field that limits and protects, and by

extension everything that requires a work, an effort, a fatigue. It is a

barrier that is needed to progress, as it has to be passed or jumped-

over, in the same way one progresses on a ladder by stepping on its

bars. So this barrier is also a support point at the same time it is an

obstacle. As a vocal sound, it expresses the elementary life,

everything that renders this existence manifest and patent. The Heit-

Shin root expresses in Hebrew as in Arabic the chaos (HoSheKh:

tenebrous, darkness): the deepest sign of the manifestation of this

existence. The Aleph-Heit root is used by no word, except in

onomatopoeia for the violence of an effort, an exclamation scream

or a hit on something. It is the Heit-Wav root that carries the energy of the symbol of the Heit, which we find in the name HaWaH

Eve.

The Heit of the serpent is here framed by Nun-Shin, which is the

spelled Shin letter reversed in the mirror (that is: the Shin letter is normally spelled Shin-Nun). The Shin letter is associated with the

desire for progressing on ones spiritual journey: it is the curb, the

pressure on the straight line Resh that has been made oblique, that

has changed its original (natural) course. The Shin letter is rendered

by the fire eSh Aleph-Shin. The Nun letter symbolises the mutating

individual on his spiritual journey, progressing along his path. We

may then consider the serpent as the obstacle to be crossed or

transgressed in order to progress in our initiation quest for

spirituality. The obstacle in the middle of the fully-spelled Shin

prevents the full realisation of the desire for the desire of

transcendence Shin. But the Shin letter is reversed in the mirror (Nun-

Shin rather than Shin-Nun), so the serpent could actually be seen as


the obstacle to the spiritual reversal leading to the desire for

spirituality and transcendence. Remember the reversed head of the

bird in Jesus hand? The serpent prevents that reversal. This reversal

could be seen as analogous to the

shifting-around of the foetus

before birth.

So we shall find on our path words

that are reversed left to right that

are illustrations of the reversal

before being (re-)born at a higher

spiritual level higher than the

previous level we were on.

We shall see later that the property

of the biblical serpent is also to

crawl at the surface of the land-

humus: the serpent is also the

obstacle to the penetration of the

depth of the Waters-from-below

and it will have to be transgressed

in order to get down on ones self.

The story of the little David who

fights the giant Goliath wearing a

bronze helmet and armour uses

this symbol, as bronze is written

NeHoSheT in Hebrew, and is built

with the same root as the serpent

NaHaSh. Bronze and serpent share

the same qualities.

I may want to stress a common

point to all of these examples: they

only make sense once the

resonances they express, the chiming of their bells have been heard

Figure 4: Masaccio : Adam and Eve expelled from paradise. Santa Maria des Carmine, Brancacci chapell, Florence, 1425.


and identified. In the case of the serpent, it will have to be identified

with its behavioural properties, on which I shall get back, but that

are essentially based on its forked tongue and its ability to renew its

skin and get reborn from itself: truth and lie, life and death.

The example of Eve who is not expelled from the Garden is a

magnificent illustration of the global darkening phenomenon of the

popular belief. Nobody needs to read Hebrew, or Greek, or Latin

to realise that Eve is not even mentioned during the expulsion of

the Garden; all translations agree on this point. And yet, the image

of Adam together with Eve both expelled from the Garden is at the

root of our occidental mythology, our civilisation values, and still

owes the women a vast oppression due to the guilt of being

responsible for the misfortune of Man on the surface of the Earth.

Where does this come from? That nobody actually reads what is

written? It is true that for centuries, only the Church was entitled to

read the Bible (in Latin only), and the first translations in vernacular

languages were seen as a major threat to its power.

The answer is in the text: we have to read this text in identifying

what is told, what is not told, and how things connect with one

another. From time to time, we are helped in our reading with

similar mythic stories: Isis and Osiris in Egypt, Enki in

Mesopotamia, the Greek and Roman mythology that comes to

reinforce a particular aspect; such as the Achilles warrior who dies

by a wound in the heel, for instance, and helps us to inform us about

Jacob YaaQoB meaning heel in Hebrew, but also cunning.

Hercules will help us a lot in Chapter 18.

I shall also use a mosaic from Carthage representing Neptune on his

chariot in order to illustrate a number of notions that are developed

in these pages; I shall explore Neptune in Chapter 10.

Kabbalah (term meaning transmission) is essentially based on the

use of the play on words in these texts; and I believe that the


approach is totally justified. I remain more sceptical on the extensive

use of the numerical values of the letters within words, in an exercise

called Gematria. It consists in adding the values of the letters that

form key words, and that call for other words that share the same

total value. The plays on words that are studied in the Sumer or

Babylon times, as show Jean Botro and Samuel Noah Kramer11, are

also present in the Egyptian texts, as well as in our biblical texts; but

these are not (or very rarely) rooted in the numerical values of the

letters. The basis for these plays on words is made of the letters

themselves, when building names or key-words. This is the second

reading key that I shall develop now.

Second Key: the Letters-Energy

Hebrew letters are for the most of them derived from Egyptian

hieroglyphs; it means they are close to ideograms: they carry

complex notions a lot more elaborated than the mere sounds that

they materialise as vocalised as consonants or vowels. They are also

numbers that are themselves the syntax of the energies of the world.

Energy has a peculiar characteristic: when it is in the presence of

Man, a relationship immediately builds with Man, and he either

dominates that energy, or he is dominated by it. There is no half-

way. To say that the letters are the materialisation, the images or the

vectors of the world energies means that, through the letters,

energies can first be identified, then acknowledged, and then

mastered. To learn how to read is to learn how to decipher the signs

that will form the energetic relationships between the self and the

surrounding world. It is also the possibility to receive the message

of the other who wants to communicate through space and time that

representation, in a precise manner, with a precise quality.

11 Lorsque les dieux faisaient lhomme, NRF, Gallimard, 1989, reprint in

1993.


In the modern

languages, we have

lost this relational

system between the

letter and the energy it

carries12. However it

does exist in the

colours that a painter

uses in order to render

the atmosphere of his

painting. In

manipulating the

colours, and

associating them, the painters paints an atmosphere, which is a kind

of energy qualifying the relationship between the painter and the

painting, and then between the painting and the observer who

contemplates that painting. The reader is in this way in a submissive

position with respect to the writer: he receives a message, which

form is qualified in a certain way, according to a structure that has

been wanted and thought through. To learn how to write, then, is

to learn how to communicate the qualities of the relationship

between the self and the outside world with wanted and thought-

through criteria and qualities that implies the necessity to master

these relationships in order to transcribe them into an original

structure.

The writer is in a dominant position vis--vis the reader. Lets

remind that there is no question about the reliability of the message:

in a world where the spoken word is dominant, men and women

have the memory of the message. The storytellers do not invent:

12 Except in the words that directly come from archaic Greek, which

are the vehicles of mystic meanings.

Figure 5: Nicolas de Stal: Seaside Railway (1955)


they tell known stories with invariant frameworks. It is the structure

of the story that varies, the qualities associated with the written

message than can, from their construction, imply relationships

(energies) with notions that would be absent from the oral message.

This effect is reinforced by the fact that the vowels are absent from

the original written message in the Bible. These vowels were added

in the script much after the original writing, around the 5th and 6th

century A.D. The word Adam really is spelled > (Aleph

not pronounced except when a vowel is present but precisely,

there is no vowel in the written text; and then Dalet for d and Mem

for m: up to the reader to pronounce Adam or Edim Odem or

whatever else makes sense). As a consequence, the roots that form

the words carry an essential message in the way it is spelled out. But

then the original Hebrew text has no punctuation either: it is a

sentence without point to separate sentences, without coma,

without accents: up to the reader to separate the sentences, and then

the words from one another, in a way that makes sense (to him).

Here we are

The NAME

The biblical name of an individual traces, from the way it is written,

the energies that he has at his disposal when he receives his name

from his parents, or from God in the Bible13; and his mandate will

be to identify, acknowledge, integrate and master these energies. In

the way it is written, the substantive NAME indicates this notion:

SheM in Hebrew, written Shin-Mem: the space located between the sign of the curbed movement Shin I have already touched upon, and that I would call culture by opposition to nature (I

define here culture as any natural process that has been curbed by

13 For instance, Abram becomes Abraham, Sarai becomes Sarah,

Jacob becomes Israel, etc.


Mans will in a dynamics of mastering that said process), and the

collective origin Mem of the down-under world: the matrix waters, the primordial collective and undifferentiated substance of

everything that has been created. The NAME SheM represents a

scheme that characterizes the relationships between the energies

that the individual will activate during his spiritual growth. It is the

static representation of a dynamics between the self and the

environment.

Example: Moses

The name of Moses, MoSheH in Hebrew, is formed by the

consonants Mem Shin He: , and may be read Ha-SheM as reversed in the mirror: The NAME (remember the proximal He

consonant is the article the). That word HaSheM The NAME is

a way to designate the LORD YHVH-Adona. Moses saved (or

rather: kneaded) from the waters represents then the capacity to

identify and acknowledge the energies of the NAME in a dynamics

of turning-over (turning MoSheH into HaSheM YHVH-Adona).

Moses Saved-kneaded from the Waters draws from the depth of

the Waters MaYiM the central Yod that symbolises the

manifestation of consciousness in the temporality, in order to

start his spiritual growth. The following part of the story will see the

entire Hebrew People under the lead of Moses cross the spiritual

boundary, as a collective baptism, and find itself on the dry-land: the

world of the tangible, of the physical and material reality I shall get

back to it later. The NAME is then an initiation journey in itself: the

path between the origin in materiality and what will be described as

the manifestation of Elohim on Earth: the divine presence that

carries his NAME, YHVH-Adona, symbolised by the Yod letter.

Each and every letter of the Hebrew alphabet is an emanation of the

Yod letter ; a letter-point that in itself is the manifestation of everything in the time. At this stage, I ask my reader to remember


that the Yod letter is the letter of the manifestation of the human

consciousness in the temporal realm.

The Yod Letter

The Waters MaYiM written Mem-Yod-Mem is a term that would

be better translated as matter fecundated by spirit. They conceal

the central Yod, the germ of the human consciousness that will

become, and that symbolises its manifestation. The Yod y is a letter

in the form of a point, the graph of the spark of consciousness that

is present as a potential in the new-borns body. It is a dimensionless

point represented by the intersection of two straight lines that form

the human being: the line representing his natural and physical

dimension in the world of the material reality, and the line

representing his human consciousness, his faculty to project himself,

his manifested spiritual dimension. It materialises the manifestation

in the duration of the (divine) origin of his spiritual individual

dimension, which links in an indefectible manner the human being

to his cosmic and transcendent origin. The Yod comes from the

hieroglyph of the hand of the manifestation (the word YaD means

hand in Hebrew), which represents the conscious power of Man

on the world: the power to do things, to build tools, thoughts,

models and templates; the power to transform that essentially

differentiates Man from the animal. The Yod is then to be

understood as the germ of the to do, of the accomplishment, of

the work. By construction, the name YHVH-Adona represents the

manifestation of this spiritual work that Man can implement or

accomplish on himself when he searches his true nature, his NAME,

when he orientates himself. There is the spiritual life, by

opposition to life in its principle, independent from any orientation.

The Yod is then the energy-letter from YHVH-Adona, emanation of a manifested Elohim and that can be grasped by the human

thinking process: one goes from the world of the Creation to the


world of the doing, and to its manifestation in the realm of

temporality, and to its accomplishment. The Yod is the

dimensionless point, the original drop that instils and inseminates

the collective and undifferentiated body of the human being (the

People), reflection or projection in the human spirit in becoming

of the cosmic and transcendent Aleph-Elohim.

The Letters Shin and Sin

The Shin letter shows three Yod associated as a crown. It is, in a

way, a cubed-Yod. The Shin letter comes from the hieroglyphic sign

representing the curbed movement, and in the alphabet, it

immediately follows the Resh letter straight line, proper

movement. The Shin is an alteration of the proper movement that

has changed direction, that has been modified, transformed,

mutated by the will to modify, transform, mutate. In Hebrew, the word

SheN means the tooth, that is the tooth of the jaw as much as the

stone of the mortar that can crush, grind, dilacerate and kill, or let

go and swallow without destroying. In this sense, it is an alteration

of the original natural element that is chewed, transformed, curbed

in order to be swallowed and digested. To say in in another way, the

alteration is cultural, as coming from a desire to mutate the

originally proper movement of a natural state. That tooth is the

one that bites into the metal to test its quality, in the same way a

jeweller will use his touchstone to validate the quality of a metal.

Metal here should not be understood with its modern sense: it

means raw matter, and the stone is the first of such raw matters. It

is in this sense that the alchemists will talk about the philosophers

stone, about the mercury, the sulphur, the mercury of the

philosophers, etc. The Shin fire-stone, stone of desire, the flaming

meteorite determines a test, an ordeal: the ordeal of the divine fire

that tests the desire to mutate, to be transformed, to peel off the

skin OuR in order to see that light OuR.


This mutation may take one of two directions: towards the Point-

above aYiN written with an Aleph and representing the Principle of

Unity in eternity and universality; or towards the Point-below aYiN

written with an Ayin and representing the Principle of total

materiality (raw stone) in temporality.

When the desire to mutate is oriented towards the Aleph, the letter

is pronounced Shin and is written with a diacritic point on the right

of the letter, on the accomplished side: . When the desire to mutate is oriented towards the Ayin, the letter is pronounced Sin and is

written with a diacritic point on the left o the letter, on the

unaccomplished side: . The Shin and the Sin are two aspects of the same letter, and these forms count usually as one in dictionaries

among the 22 letters of the alphabet. The origin of the

differentiation between the Shin and the Sin is controversial, and

seems to be much later than the Hebrew alphabet itself. I cant help

thinking about the Mesopotamian couple Shemesh-Sin with respect

to this Shin duality: the Sun god Shemesh, son of the Moon god Sin.

When the Shin letter is associated with the Alpeh pure spiritual

power, it forms the word eSh fire (Aleph-Shin). The fire transforms as it cooks, and particularly it mutates the liquid water

into vapour, and it renders the food edible. If the eSh-fire is too

powerful, it destroys, it reduces to ashes and renders the food

inedible. Man is the only living creature that has mastered the fire:

Aleph: Point-above

Ayin: Point-below

Shin: tooth of mutation:

curbed line, desire to mutate.


the double letter Shin-Sin in its relationship to the Aleph, to the Mem

and to the Resh, expresses the curvature of the proper movement (it

being Resh) in a dynamics of transformation, to render a natural

element digestible (on the way to integrate its power, its energies).

In this sense, the Shin-desire corresponds to culture that, when

this fire is chewing and cooking something in its jaws (SheN is the

tooth), corresponds to the action of Man on nature. The subtlety

that I ask my reader to consider is that the fire only transforms what

it cooks: it has to be fed: without food, the fire will run in neutral.

It wont be enough for the Adam to desire, to wish in a wildly

enthusiastic way, he will still have to imprint a direction on his desire

for it to turn to good account in a dynamics of accomplishment. In

this text, I refer many times, talking about the Shin, to the desire of

spirituality: it is then this Shin-desire-and-tooth developed by the power

of the Aleph that forms the fire eSh and that elevates culture to

the level of a desire for spiritual growth. The first creation of

Elohim is ShaMaYiM: Heavens (a dual plural form) that form the

marriage of the fire (eSh) together with the Waters MaYiM.

The Shin or the Sin tooth, and by extension the fire-stone, is the

image of the meteorite that comes from Heaven onto Earth: the

tangible illustration of a cosmic fire, a light in the nocturnal sky and

a link that unifies the cosmos with the Earth. It represents in the

mirror, that is when this meteorite is thrown back up to the sky, the

image of the last part of the initiation journey when Man faces

Aleph-Elohim. It can grind and destroy, or let go. In the

eschatological representation of the world, it expresses the desire of

Man for eternity, the desire of transcendence, the desire to go

beyond the sensible world, to inflect the proper movement of nature

in a curved cultural dynamics. The numerical value of Shin is 300: it

is the posterior step of the transcendence of dualities, represented

by the Resh letter of a value of 200. The 300-Shin plays the same

vibration (but two octaves above) as the Gimel letter (value 3), as a


vibrating stage towards the Aleph. Champollion writes14: The sound

of the Shin in Hebrew is represented in the hieroglyphic alphabet by a character

that represents a sort of a garden, which hieratic sign corresponds to the Coptic

, and that may be exchanged, although rarely in the hieroglyphic texts, with

the goose, more common sign of the S consonant.

The Shin letter is sometimes the Sh

sound as represented by the

Mesopotamian Sun-god Shamash

(SheMeSh is sun in Hebrew,

represented with the flames that

surround his head on Figure 6, who

has the foot laid on the waters);

sometimes the S sound represented by

, image of the lunar Babylonian god Sin, Shamashs father. This name of the

lunar god of darkness evokes SaTaN

Sin Tet Nun , formed on the Tet shield, which will have to be pierced in

order to penetrate (identify) and

master the power of the night SiN . Why there seems to be this play between Shin and Sin remains to be explained; why these two

letters mean tooth, and why they are considered as the same but

still different... Maybe it is linked to the hissing sound that a

toothless mouth would do? Maybe a missing tooth either on the top

or on the bottom jaws? Or the sound of the flying arrow, which lisps

(verb aSaPh) when it leaves the bow? The truth of the matter is that

these letters are earmarked by the top and the bottom, and that they

14 Prcis du Systme Hiroglyphique des Anciens Egyptiens, Champollion, 2nde dition avec volume de planches, 1828 ; on line at : http://books.google.fr/books?id=604GAAAAQAAJ

Figure 6: Mesopotamian Sun-god Shemesh, god of justice (=straightness)


act together in opposition: the top tooth (Shin) is only powerful as

long as it is opposed to the bottom tooth (Sin), and vice-versa.

In this essay, I shall use a lot the Shin letter as the desire to mutate, to transform, or to alter what has been untouched by Man

(what has been untouched by Man is natural). The subtlety of the

use of this notion comes from the fact that desire, which is

undergone, must be transformed into a will to become the engine

of conscious acts by Man on his own transformation. Desire is

attractive and is undergone; the will is a power that is exercised15.

I wish to express clearly the double image of the solar Shin and the

lunar Sin. The image could be as follows: the top tooth Shin is

immobile; the lower tooth Sin is mobile and has a dynamics; as the

moon shows a dynamics when compared to the sun, which

constantly keeps the same shape.

The duality Shin-Sin is one of the most mysterious, if not the big

mystery of the Hebrew alphabet. It is also one of the keys of hidden

dualities, which is not officially acknowledged, since these two

letters only count as one in the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

With the double letter Shin-Sin, we enter into the heart of the

mystery.

The Resh Letter

The Resh letter is the thinking head and it represents the rational

intelligence, the mental world that constitutes an obstacle to the

sensitivity of the heart and to spirituality. Fabre dOlivet describes it

as the proper movement: the movement that is insensitive to the

actions coming from the outside. It is also the state of nature

which precedes and faces (without being opposed to) the state of

culture. It is what applies to the general case; it is the letter used

15 Edmond Goblot.


in the French grammar to characterise the infinitive form (-er, -ir, -

oir, etc.), before any conjugation applies, and outside of any context.

This mental head is set to be destroyed, or rather transformed,

worked, cultivated. When the divine fire desire to mutate is taken

in its spiritual meaning in Mans head (the Resh letter is the hieroglyph of the human head), it becomes ReSh : the principle written Resh, Aleph, Shin.

It is with this word that Genesis opens; In a principle, in a head;

In principio in Latin, BeReShYT in Hebrew, unfortunately translated by In the beginning in English, in

French or in German. Chouraqui translates it as Heading.

This beginning is not a historical beginning: it is a preamble to the

Creation and to the organisation of the world. A principle is a mental

representation of a rational causality: In a mental rational representation

of the primary cause, Elohim creates the Heavens and the Earth And

this mental

representation ReSh

is the one of the

divine fire of the

desire in the head: the

Fire of the Alliance.

The divine alliance

that Elohim strikes

with Abraham, and

the one that YHVH-

Adona strikes with

Noah is spelled

BeRiYT: Beit-Resh-Yod-

Tav. The fire eSh

(Aleph-Shin) gets into the head Resh through the power of Yod (Yod

is the letter-symbol of YHVH-Adona) in order to form that

BeReShiYT principle. The essential difference with In the

Figure 7: Michel-Angelo: The Creation. When God creates the Adam, He is already surrounded by his coat in the shape of a sagittal plane of the human brain. Photo PE.


beginning is that In a principle immediately implies the presence

of an intelligent human brain to grasp that principle. In the

beginning is independent from mankind: the human being may be

or may not be there. It is a historical beginning.

In a principle, as the intellectual and mental representation of the rational

primary cause, implies Man in order to think this primary cause as a

principle. The human consciousness is involved in this

representation; it is implied from the beginning. This what Michel-

Angelo has painted in his representation of the Creation on the

ceilings of the Sixteen Chapel (Figure 7), where the Creator is

enveloped in a coat that is in the shape of a human brain.

The head ReSh spelled Resh Aleph Shin is built as the unity Aleph

(the Aleph letter represents the unity ONE) framed by (or, should I

say: separating) the Resh proper movement, straight line, natural

and mental on one side (proximal), and the Shin relative movement,

curbed line, cultural and fire on the other side (distal).

Lets come back to our energy-letters. They write the world, or more

exactly, the relationships that Man entertains with the world: the

qualities associated to the mental representations that Man

entertains with his environment. These energetic qualities engraved

in stone are the reflections of the human psyche, since the psyche is

the preamble to any mental representation of all things. In running

through the alphabet, these qualities are the ones of the matrix origin

(Mem letter), the aperture through the production or the

fructification (Pe letter), the infinite and universal power (Aleph

letter), of the direction of the will (Lamed letter), of the obstacle to

overcome while using it as a support [fulcrum?] (Heit letter), of the

augmentation through division (Dalet letter), of the mental

mastering of the coming to consciousness (Kaf letter), of the finality

of a dynamics (Tsade letter), of the vivifying and intuitive breath (He

letter), of the sign of the forms (Tav letter), of the verticalisation,

mutation and spiritual maturation (Wav letter), of the protection (Tet


letter), of the transformation of the individuality and of the

personality (Nun letter), of the desire to become through the

alteration of the proper movement into a curbed and relative

movement (Shin letter), of the total materiality and temporality

(Ayin letter), of the manifestation (Yod letter), etc.

The proper movement Resh is destined to become relative through

the action of Man, and from a straight line, it becomes a curbed line.

It does not mean that this dynamics has become stupid or

delinquent, it means it

has become sensitive to

the immaterial, to the

ineffable, to the spiritual

ether that transcends, or

should I say turns around

nature. The Resh letter has

a numerical value of 200:

it plays on the

transcendence of the

dualities, and is placed

immediately before the

Shin (value 300) turning

nature around coming

from a desire to grow.

May I remind my reader

that, at the level of the Shin, this desire is not oriented. It is a fire

without substance: it will all depends on what Man wants to cook

When the Resh letter is spelled out, it is written : Resh Yod Shin. The legend of Saint Denys (Dionysus, god of arborescence, of all

vital fluids, of vineyards, of the wine that turns the head around and

leads to inebriation and mystical trance) shows him beheaded in

front of Hermes Temple in Paris, and then carrying his head until

the north of the town, to the place that is today Saint Denis (see

Figure 8: Saint Denis carrying his head. Saint Denis Basilica, Paris.


Figure 8). It is the loss of the rational head that allows one to depart

on the journey (the reference to Hermes) to darkness, to the north,

where the renaissance to light is.

It is necessary to remember the symbols associated to these energy-

letters to decipher Genesis. In order to facilitate the reading of this

essay, these notions are briefly summarized on the flaps of the book

cover. The creation of the alphabet is a mental operation that aims

at rendering the world organisation to answer communication

needs. As the invention of writing is dated from the 3rd millennium

B.C., in Mesopotamia, the first alphabet is dated at around -2000,

and is Phoenician, that is to say Semite. It comes from a

transformation of Egyptian hieroglyphs, probably from Phoenician

mercenaries enrolled in the Egyptian army, and which traces have

been found with two important discoveries in 1905 in the Sinai

Mountain16, and in 1994 in the centre of Egypt17. These discoveries

are related by David Sacks18.

Each letter-symbol becomes then the owner of the concept it aims

at rendering, and the association of the letters create the mental

representation of the organisation of the world. Each letter also

carries a numerical value related to its rank in the alphabet, and

materialise the units, the tens and the hundreds. These numerical

values are traditionally used to paginate and number the chapters

and the verses, as well as for the calendar.

16 By the English archaeologist William Flenders Petrie. See Bibliography at the end of the volume. 17 By the American archaeologist John Coleman Darnell and his wife Debora. 18 A History of Alphabet, David Sacks, Les Editions de LHomme, 2003.


The Mem Letter

Mem (or for the terminal form) represents the collective origin, the primordial substance, the matrix. It carries the value 40 (600 for

its terminal form). It is, in all languages all over the world, the letter

that renders the notion of mother. In Hebrew, the word mother

is simply the root of Mem expressing all the potentialities of the sign:

Aleph-Mem aM . As a primordial mother, it is the constituent of the water (see the corresponding hieroglyph ), which is written

MaYiM Mem-Yod-Mem. The Mem is the letter of the world-from-below, which when associated to the Yod forms YaM : the ocean, the sea as the manifestation (Yod letter) of the primordial

substance. The sea is the Mem matrix that covers (hides) the Yod,

symbol-letter of YHVH-Adona. This primordial sea is found in

many cosmogonies: the Chinese Sea of Light, the Hindu Sea of

Milk

The Aleph Letter

Aleph is the energy-letter of Elohim, the Unity Principle, cosmic creator expressing the infinite potential and power, and

transcending all human thoughts. It corresponds to the Hindu

Atman: the Inner Self that is eternal and not subjected to a body or

to any form. Its symbol is the lion: wild energy, ardent, primary, and

even more ungoverned than the radiant sun light. The Aleph is the

sign of the total power and total potentiality. Its numerical value is

1 (or 1000 when it is at the end of a word). The Tradition opposes

the nothing aYiN written with an Aleph Point from Above of

total spirituality and eternity (Aleph Yod Nun) to the nothing

aYiN written with an Ayin Point from Below, the nothing of

the total materiality and temporality (Ayin Yod Nun). Man registers

himself in the tension between these two letters, between these two

nothings. These two letters Aleph and Ayin are the only letters


that are not pronounced, they correspond to a glottal stop19. They

are written with an apostrophe . Aleph is associated to almost all

of the other letters to express their initial root (for instance aB

Aleph-Beit for the initial root of the Beit, Aleph-Shin eSh for the initial root of the Shin, etc.). With this in mind, it is expressing

all the potentialities of the energies of the letters it is connected to.

The He Letter

The He is the lung, divine breath of a feminine essence, with an ascending dynamics. It is the energy that is constitutive of the

growth. It carries a numerical value of 5, half of the Yod. It is

forming the to be verb: HaYaH (He-Yod-He). It corresponds to

the hieroglyph of the praying man, with raised hands, and is at the

origin of our E letter.

The Wav Letter

The Wav letter is the hook that allows the turning-over, the mutation, and the passage from the unaccomplished to the

accomplished, and vice-versa. It carries a numerical value of 6: it

enters into action once the breath is working, and it corresponds to

the state of the 6th day of the Creation, that is to say the created Adam

but still unconscious of his divine destiny. It is a symbol of

verticalisation: it hooks Mans shadow in order to bring it upright

in full light.

The Heit Letter

The Heit is the effort, the work necessary to jump over the barrier; an obstacle to be considered as a supporting point to progress. The

19 A glottal stop can be felt when whispering Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! in the manner of a chimp (think of the Tarzan movies).


obstacle is there to be passed, the Heit is then an effort applied to a

dynamics of progression, such as the bar of a ladder that one steps

on in order to climb up (see the corresponding hieroglyph on page

40). It is materialised in the body by the diaphragm: a muscle that

acts on the lungs to produce the expiration and the inspiration (by

contracting or relaxing itself). Without the diaphragm, there is no

breath. It is personified by Eve, HaWaH, whose name transmutes

(central Wav letter) the obstacle (Heit) into the vivifying breath (He).

The notion of effort that the Heit conveys renders it as the unit of

the life-existence, spelled HY (Heit-Yod). The Heit letter can then

be heard as the elementary sign of the existence. The verb HaWaH

actually means to exist.

The Tet Letter

The Tet is the armoured shell, the shield: it is a protection, and is materialised in the human body by the sternum, which receives

the insertion point of the ribs (which materialise the Samekh letter)

and close the rib cage. The Tet protects the lungs-breath, and above

all it protects the heart. The Tet-Lamed root forms the root to the

verb to shelter (TLL), to cover (TL with a terminal Aleph), to

join (TYL), to mend or repair (TLH). Its protection force is

also illustrated by the lamb TaLeH Tet-Lamed-He: protection for the breath, which can also be written Tet-Lamed-Aleph: protection for eL-God. The Hebrew graph Tet-Lamed-Aleph

represents the expression the lamb of God as junction towards

Elohim. The French for lamb is agneau and is linked to Agni,

the fire (of God) (think of igniting a fire), which is also the name

of the Hindu god who carries the same notion (the eternally burning

fire in the Self). This is why the lamb is related to Easter, the

Paschal Lamb as the new appearing fire at the gate (Paschal

comes from PeSSaH: to pass through the gate), at the moment of

the spring equinox. The word LamB in English would carry the same


notion through Lamed-Beit meaning towards the heart (Beit is the

heart-foyer). The lamb is often associated with the wolf ZaaB written Zain-Aleph-Beit in the Bible (and showing in Aesops fables,

also in La Fontaines fables which are derived from Aesops ones);

and the ZaaB is letter-to-word: the weapon Zain of (or against

the) Father aB. So there is a play on symbols between the Tet that

protects the heart, and the Zain male wolf-weapon that pierces

through this protective shield (cf. Isaiah 11:6 and 65:25).

The Table 1 on page 40 summarises the symbolic notions that are

attached to the letters. The Table 2 page 41, taken from Les Lettres

Hbraques from Frank Lalou, presents the evolution of these letters

from the Egyptian hieroglyphs through the Proto-Sinitic[?the French

is Proto-Sinatique?], the Greek and to Latin.

The Nun Letter

The Nun letter ( in its terminal form) is the fish of the Abyss, which represents the mutation of the individuality, of the ego that is

hung on the realities of the sensible world (the Point-from-Below

mentioned above). This individuality is chewed by the Shin-tooth

(desire to mutate, Shin is spelled Shin-Nun) and then swallowed

without being destroyed in order to be reborn in a spiritually

ascending form in the direction of the Point-from-Above. It deals

with continuity in the existence, but with a new production by a new

generation: it is an important threshold. There are two terms that

represent the fish in Hebrew: the Nun from an Aramaic origin,

and then DaG. The Nun is the masculine fish: with a masculine

essence; the one that penetrates the depth of the abyss and

inseminates the (feminine) waters in the deep. The Dag is the

feminine fish: the one that is close to light, near the surface, and that

is materialised by the innumerable small fried fish. It is the fish of

the Waters from Above. In Arabic, the word Nun makes

reference to the whale, meaning the large big fish that comes to take


air at the surface, and dives to fantastic depths, covering and

inseminating the integral part of the marine depth, the Waters from

Below. In Arabic, the Nun letter has a position at the end of the

first half of the alphabet (of 28 letters), and terminates the

descending path before switching upwards and ascend the second

half. In Hebrew, the Nun carries the numerical value 50, and

represents half of the value of perfection, which is 100 purity.

The word No (Nun-Aleph) means half-cooked; the totally cooked being understood as one becoming eSh-fire him- or herself,

which means to have reached the integral part of the all the

potentialities of the Shin letter.

The Nun letter materialises the threshold of the individuality that

passes from the world of materiality to the world of spirituality, half-

way of the route.

The word I (or myself) in Hebrew is written aNY Aleph-Nun-Yod: the travelling Nun taken in the tension between the Aleph-

Elohim and the Yod-YHVH-Adona. It is also the vessel, the ship

that carries Jonas on the sea; and it is then a feminine substantive.

AYiN: Point-from-Above (Aleph-Yod-Nun: total spirituality)

ANY: I, myself (Aleph-Nun-Yod as a mutating individual)

AYiN: Point-from-Below (Ayin-Nun-Yod: total materiality)

Another word on the Nun, taken as the mutating individuality, when

it gets divided through the mutation between one state and the next:

the division is materialised by the Dalet letter, which represents the


notion of threshold, of a gate. The division of the Nun is Dalet-Nun: DeN the judgement.

A judgement decides the shares or the splitting of the parties: what

belongs to whom. The notion of splitting of territories is used by

the Indo-European root DN that forms the names of the large

Central-European rivers: the Don, Danube, Dnieper, Dniester, and

of course the name of the river central to our story: the River Jordan,

YaRDeN in Hebrew. In Turkish, the sea is DeNizi.

The Tsade-Flower Letter

The Tsade letter (and in its terminal form) is a letter that is traditionally associated with the

fishhook, to the javelin, but that derives from the

Sumerian Ti character (Figure 9). The Sumerian

Ti is related to life, it is present in the word fish

(ti, it is then under the sign of the water); in the

word bird (ti), the word woman (mu-ti-in), the

words side and rib (ti), at the origin of the

play on words at the birth of iShaH (iShaH

precedes Eve, she is born from the side as much

as from the rib of the Adam).

This Ti-life is the image of the reed-lotus flower that crosses the

surface of the water: the emerging life, the link between the aquatic

side (the matter-matrix-mother) and the aerial side. The

Mesopotamian marshes were the domain of the god Enki, god of

the earth, also associated to the tree, to the fish and to the birds20.

The Enki Reeds make a reference to a funerary rite in which the

20 Peter Espak Ancient Near Eastern Gods Enki and Ea; Tartu 2006, Master Thesis on line at: http://dspace.utlib.ee/dspace/bitstream/10062/958/5/espakpeeter.pdf , p109.

Figure 9: Sumerian Ti


deceased is laid on a bed of reeds before being cremated, on a

reserved terrain in the middle of the marshes21. In Hebrew, this letter

belongs, according to Fabre dOlivet, in the quality of consonant to the

whistling touch, and depicts all the objects that have a relationship with the air

and the wind. As a symbolic image, it represents Mans asylum, and the term

where it leads. It is the final and terminative sign connected to the ideas of scission,

of term, of solution, of goal. When placed at the beginning of a word, it indicates

the movement that leads toward the term of which it is the sign. Placed at the

end of a word, it marks the very term where it has led.

The Tsade forms the word flower TsiYTs (Tsade-Yod-Tsade), tree or wood eTs Ayin-Tsade, which represent any vegetal matter as an evolutionary process. It is on this wood eTs that

Abraham will lay his son Isaac (YTsHaQ in Hebrew) in order to

sacrifice him, similar to the funerary rite of the decease on the Enki

Reeds. The Ayin letter Point-from-Below representing materiality and temporality, the tree eTs represents the end, the

term of materiality and temporality, that is to say the whole set of

steps that correspond to the progressive

mutation of total materiality into total

spirituality, and to the mutation of total

temporality into eternity: matter at work.

The tree is the symbol of the suite of the

spiritual mutations in Man, in the double

descending (Tree of Knowledge) and

ascending (Tree of Lives) directions. The

reed-flower is the key symbol of the early

part of Genesis. Christ has a reed in his right hand after his trial with

21 Tablettes sumriennes archaques, matriaux pour servir lhistoire de la socit sumrienne H. Genouillag, 1909, on line at :

http://www.archive.org/stream/tablettessumri00genouoft/tablettessumri00genouoft_djvu.txt. Jesus has a reed in his right hand when he is crucified (Matthew 27:29).

Figure 10: Tree in Chinese (mu)


Ponce Pilate. The reed-lotus is an everlasting figure of spirituality

that connects the two worlds of the Waters-from-Below and the

Waters-from-Above. The Chinese hieroglyph of the tree also adopts

the drawing of getting from one world to the other. It is what the

Tsade letter represents: the dynamics of this evolution. In the word

tree eTs, the Ayin letter is matter and the Tsade is the mutating

dynamics applied to matter.

The Tsade-Qof: Larynx and Pharynx

Tsade is found in words that relate to vomiting (TseaH with a central Aleph), to blow (TsBH), to bloom (TsOTs), to get down

(TsNH). The Tsade may represent the passage towards the Qof , which is the next letter in the alphabet and that materialises a duct

canal of a process leading to somewhere. The Tsade together with

the Qof represent in our essay the couple larynx-pharynx, the throat,

the strategic crossing area of air and matter, leading towards the lung

or towards the belly, according to the end (QeTs: Qof-Tsade) of

what is swallowed by the mouth Pe . QaPaTs means to shut (the mouth); QaTsaPh is to get angry.

When the larynx and the pharynx are subjected to the action of the

diaphragm Heit , one gets the laugh TsaHaQ. QOTs is the disgust, the word could also mean to demolish, to tear; and

QYTs is to awake; QaYiTs is the summer, the summer fruits,

and QaTsiYR is the action to harvest what has ripen. To vomit

or regurgitate is QiYa (with Aleph) and we shall meet that word

with Jonas, who gets vomited by the big fish, together with the word

QiYQaYON usually translated as the castor oil plant that provokes

vomiting.


Table 1: Hebrew letters and attached symbolic values

Lettre Notion porte par la lettre Lettre Notion porte par la lettre

Aleph not pronounced: symbol of

Elohim, cosmic energy, total

spirituality. Numbers 1 and 1000. Lamed L: link to the far away,

cartilaginous ribs, teaching, guide

through the humid; preposition

toward and for. Number 30.

Beit B: the foyer, the house, the

heart. Preposition in . Duality 2. Mem and final Mem M: Waters, sea,

origin, matrix, totality. Number 40

and 600.

Gimel G: the camel going around

the enclosure of the dry. Slow

dynamics of growth, of what

spread and envelops. Number 3.

Nun and final Nun N: Fish of the

Abyss, new mutating individuality, the

son, the generation. Number 50 and

700.

Dalet D: the gate. Growth through

division, emanation, structure,

threshold. Number 4. Samekh S: the supporting pillar, the

cycle, the circle, the circumference,

the round. The ribs structuring the

thoracic cage. Number 60.

He H: the breath, the lung,

feminine intuition, inspiration.

Number 5. Ayin not pronounced: the source of

knowledge, the eye. Symbol of total

materiality and temporality. Number

70.

Wav V: the hook. Sign of

verticalisation, also the word

and . Number 6.

Phe and Pe P: the mouth, the word,

the opening, the fructification.

Number 80 & 800

Zain Z: the male weapon that will

pierce the Tet shield. Masculine sex

organ. Number 7. Tsade and final Tsade Ts: the larynx

splitting air and matter; symbol of the

dynamics of the mutating matter

towards a term, an end. Number 90

and 900.

Heit H guttural: diaphragm.

Barrier used as a support point to

grow. Elementary life. Number 8.

Qof Q: the pharynx leading down and

through the eye of its needle (Adams

apple). Number 100

Tet T: Shield protecting the heart

and the Nun. Sternum. Sign of

resistance. Number 9.

Resh R: the head, the principle, the

straight line. Symbol of the rational

intelligence. Number 200

Yod Y: Symbol-letter for YHVH-

Adona, point with no dimension.

Yod is at the origin of all letters.

Symbol of accomplishment and

manifestation. Number 10.

Shin et Sin Sh et S: the tooth, the

rock. Carries the force of Shaddai the

Almighty (3 Yod). Desire to mutate,

trident. Number 300

Kaf and terminal Kaf K: open

palm of the hand: to grab the

dimension of something. Number

20 and 500.

Tav T: the form, the sign, the mark.

Lower end of the sternum (xiphoid

bone). Number 400


In the Celtic Gaul tongue, the Qof letter has become a hard G and

gave a number of words that relate to the throat: gosier, gorge

(throat), gosiller (to shout, but originally to vomit), and at the

pronominal form crier: to cry, to scream, to shout; QeRa in

Hebrew, from where the Arabic Koran word is derived (Koran

means the call, the shout).

An important term that we shall cross very often in our story is

MiTsRaYiM: Egypt, with a Tsade letter in second position. What is

Egypt? It is the most powerful kingdom on Earth at the time; its

authority is omnipresent, it administers all the territories from the

current Sudan in the south to the borders of Mesopotamia and

Assyria in the north. In Genesis, it is depicted as a territory of

servitude, of enslavement: Hebrew people are said to be slaves in

Egypt. Its wealth allows them to avoid scarcity: it is a kind of

territory that is held in contempt, but at the same time it supplies

food and safety. The face-to-face between Moses and Pharaoh (cf.

page XXX) will allow the Hebrew People to free themselves from

slavery by crossing the Waters (water is MaYiM in Hebrew), after

the terrible sequence of the plagues of Egypt. But then MiTsRaYiM

may be read MaYiM (water) with the root TsR Tsade-Resh in the

middle of the waters; and this root TsR means to cut through, to

split open, to crack. TsoR is the scissors or chisel, and the verb

YaTsoR used when YHVH-Adona Elohim makes Adam in

Genesis 2 means to cut through, to sharpen, to prune, to sculpt. So

Egypt is the country where waters are cut through, not only in the

story of the Exodus, but in its very name. This dynamics of cutting

through the Waters is to be compared to what I have said on the

Tsade letter itself, which goes from the hidden dark matrix in the

depth of the Abyss to cut through the surface of the Waters and

bloom in the open light, in the air. In other words, it is a passage

from the work of darkness into the world of light. It is a baptism. It

is a birth. The Hebrew People crosses the Waters to find itself in the

dry of the desert, and gives birth to the Yod (symbol-letter of


YHVH-Adona) that is in the centre of the word MaYiM. It is then

nourished by the manna of YHVH-Adona.

Once turned around, the Ts-R root becomes R-Ts that forms the

verb RaTsaH: to will, to want.

I would like to remark, as a conclusion to this paragraph on letters,

that a number of Hebrew letters form roots in Latin or Saxon words

that look consistent with the Hebrew notions they carry; either

through their symbolic values, either more simply as ancestors of

letters that constitute words in English, in French (and other Latin

tongues) or German:

Table 1: Hebrew letters and analogous values in English, French or German

Hebrew Letter

Symbolic Value

Transformation in English,

French

Illustrations in English, French or German words

Resh

Principle, what is true in general

r final dans les verbes

Rule, regular. In French, the infinitive forms of the verbs ending with -er, -ir, -oir.

P

Fructification, liberation, aperture

ph ou f (via the

Greek Phi )

Fruit (English and French), Frschte (allemand) Product, production Port Aperture, open (English)

Qof

Crossing of air and matter q

hard g hard c

Gosier, gorge, goret, gosiller (French) Garrot (English, French) Col, collet, cou, collar Cry, scream, to cosset o.s.

Dalet

Augmentation by division

d

Division, differentiation, prefix de- in words indicating a division (depart, destroy, do, individual)

Tav

Mark, sign, form of the forms

-ty

Suffix -ty in the feminine words indicating the sign of a quality (novelty, honesty, femininity, etc.)

Lamed

Link, long : what is far united in being far away

l

Ligament, link, long. eL (Elohim) is at the origin of the French articles le la les via Arabic (Allah)


Mem

Sign of the undifferentia-ted collective origin : the matrix (terminal Mem)

m

Marine, maritime, matrix. Maman (French) Mutter (German) Mother (English)

Ayin

Eye Source of knowledge from matter and time

et O dans ou ou om

In French : il, uvre, ouvrage, uf (notion of source). O in ombre (eBeR en hbreu) qui est ct, ce qui passe devant en marchant vers loccident.

Gimel

Organic enveloping enclosure

C G hard or soft

GN in gyne-, gown, vagina, engender, guard / guardian, gaine (French), Prefix gam- (marriage), Gahanna), recognize, suffix -gee (Gaia, hypogea, apogee, etc.), gestation, gesture, garden, Garten (German), jardin (French), gnosis.


Third Key: the Grammar

After the letters, the grammar is a reading key in the sense that the

conjugation of the verbs excludes the present tense. Verbs are

conjugated according to two major tenses: the accomplished TOB

(as a past) and the unaccomplished Ra (as a future). Verbs

depict an action or a change of state: they belong to the domain of

mutations (German has kept the final Nun letter in most of its verbs

at the infinitive form: sein, leben, sehen, hren, essen), and verbs are

conjugated as a function of a dynamical evolution. What we call

present is very rarely rendered in the text, and when it is, it is

rendered through an active or passive participle: he is eating: he

eats. When it is rendered this way, there is no evolution; it is a static

state.

The Tetragrammaton is sometimes translated in English as I am the one who is, but in Hebrew this grammatical form does not

exist, and this Tetragrammaton, with which I can see a link with the

verb to be : the Yod of YHVH-Adona framed by the breath He, cannot be translated and is not pronounced. The best

translation would be I am the one who will make become. When

it appears in the text, one says Adona for Lord22. I write it in

this essay YHVH-Adona.

Another element to check is the turning-over, the reversal of the

unaccomplished into the accomplished, through adding the

consonant Wav as a prefix (so to the right of the verb) as illustrated Figure 11). The unaccomplished tense is also indicated by adding a

Yod at the beginning of a verb, immediately after a Wav in the right-to-left reading direction). The Yod is the sign of what remains to be

accomplished

22 Actually, My Lord.


Lets read what Jesus tells about it in Matthew 5:17-18, here the King

James Version:

17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I

am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

18 For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or

one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

This jot that Jesus mentions is the iota: the smallest sign, the Yod

brick-sign that makes all the other letters. The Yod being the

smallest of all letters, to change one iota (the Greek Yod) means

that all the edifice of the alphabet, then the world is upside down

and overturned.

The Yod is the sign of the manifestation: the word YaD in Hebrew

means the hand (one sees the mani- word for hand in Latin in

manifestation: that can be grabbed in the hand). In front of a verb, it

indicates the unaccomplished mode (future) at the same time it is

the personal pronoun of the third person, singular form. This means

that all the verses that start with He will say YoMeR are usually

The elusive present Unaccomplished

Ra

Accomplished

TOB

Wav letter

Wav letter

Time arrow

Figure 11: The grammatical dynamics between accomplished and unaccomplished


preceded by an reversal Wav in order to transform the

unaccomplished into an accomplished mode:

WaYoMeR : And he said at the accomplished mode, past tense;

YoMeR : He will say at the unaccomplished mode, future tense.

From a grammatical point, the present tense is then out of time,

it is an image of eternity. Eternity is in the present, in the elusive and

uncatchable moment of the reversal between the unaccomplished

and the accomplished.

Verbs have intensity variations, meaning an energetic differential in

the action or the state that they represent. One describes the modes

Qal (to appreciate or to eat, for instance), a passive Niphal (to be

appreciated, to be eaten), an active intensive Piel (to love, to devour),

a passive intensive Pual (to be loved, to be devoured), a reflexive

intensive Hitpael (to love itself, to devour itself), an active causal

mode Hiphil (to have made liked, to have made devoured), a passive

causative Hofal (to have been made loved, to have been made

devoured). The personal pronouns are included in the conjugated

forms; they do not appear as such (there are exceptions). The first

persons of singular and plural forms are common, while the 2nd and

3rd persons have specific masculine and feminine forms. There are

strong and weak verbs, which conjugations vary with the way the

consonants are structuring the verb.

The root eT Aleph-Tav is used in Hebrew to introduce an object

complement: the object of the verbal action. This root indicates the

potentiality and the power (Aleph letter) of the sign, the form (Tav

letter), and means the proper essence of the word to which it is

attached. As a word, it is almost never translated. In English and in

French, it could be seen as related to the suffix -ty illustrating the


quality of feminine substantives or adjectives: sensitive

sensitivity; feminine femininity; etc. I shall mention during the

study

adam & eve the solar temptation chapter 1 the reading grid

Documents

gardeneden yhvh elohim

gustave dor adam eve

elohim god

lord god

careless eve

mention of eve

adam et ve chasss

god of love