The First Letter, A, and the Middle Letters, M and N

From The Esoteric Structure of the Alphabet by Alvin Boyd Kuhn

The information regarding M-N words from one of my favorite books, The Esoteric Structure of the Alphabet, by Alvin Boyd Kuhn, has always stuck with me since I read it in 2019. It’s another example of the spirit/matter polarity that we must understand with regard to our lives.

If you would like to listen to me narrate this article, here is the video version. But keep in mind, I constantly update my articles with new material.

Here are pertinent passages I’ve selected from the book. I’ve included images to illustrate certain points as well as some commentary in brackets and a discussion after the passages:

…even the alphabet embodied the central structure of all ancient literature,—the incarnation, the baptism of fire-soul in and under body-water. …The top or beginning letters are A and B, and should, the A alone or combined with B, represent fire; the middle letters coming at the base of the arc are M and N, and, mirabile dictu, they represent water! From A to M, then, the descending arc traces the downward or involutionary plunge of fire into water, reaching its lowest depth with M; from N back to the final letter, whatever it be in different languages, the upward return arc represents the arising out of water and the return through evolution of the heavenly fire to its true home, completing the cycle.

A is the first letter, M is the 13th.

…The celestial fire emanated from primal source as one ray, but soon radiated out in triadic division, and finally reached the deepest heart of matter in a sevenfold segmentation. But in its first stage of emanation it was always pictured as triform. The YOD candle-flame being its type-form, the Hebrews constructed their letter which was to represent the fire-principle with three YODS at the top level, with lines extending downward to a base, on which all three met and were conjoined in one essence. This gives us the great fire-letter SH [shin]…

Yod/iod, the10th letter in Hebrew, iota in Greek, i in English. Note the movement of the flame caused implicitly by the Spirit’s breath/air.

Kether, Chokmah, and Binah form the Atziluth trinity- being, wisdom, and understanding. From there emanate the 7 angels/angles. Da’at is the hidden sephiroth.

But the triform fire symbol was only possible as the result of the one first ray bifurcating into the two fires of spirit and matter and uniting to generate their product, which became the third two-flame aspect as preceding the three-fire aspect. And what letter is it that depicts the two-flame stage, the first real creative stage? Precisely what the thesis calls for—the first letter aleph, composed of two YODS, one above, the other below, the central axis, a slightly variant form of our mathematical sign of division, a horizontal line with a dot above and one below it. All life is an interplay between the upper fire of spirit and the lower fires of sense and the flesh, of "pure" fire in air and "impure" fire in water. Even the English A carries the same depiction, as it presents the one vertical line of spirit raying downward, the I, as being split apart into duality, with the two separated lines still connected by the horizontal bar of mutual inter-relation…

aleph

The resulting Hebrew word, then, for fire is just what the specifications of symbolic representation demand. The word should be composed of symbolic letters carrying the idea of the one-fire, the dual fire and the triple fire signs, and this is precisely what the Hebrew word for fire is. It is ESH, really AeSH, composed of aleph, subvowelled by e, and shin. Aleph is the dual letter, shin the triple, and the middle bar between the two YODS is the aleph in the single-bar fire. Then significantly man, who embodies this single, double and triple fire is ISH! [Isha is an Arabic unisex name meaning “alive” or “living”. It also has roots in Hebrew, where it is spelled Yishah and means “gift” or “desire.”]

One would ask at once whether the English word ash would carry the same connotations, being the visible end result of fire. It is extremely likely that it does. Not only is it at once evident in its relation to fire as its residue,--ashes,--but the Norse mythology, depicting the radiating streams of the living fire under the imagery of a branching tree, chose the ash as the tree-type of the fiery emanation: Ygdrasil, the ash-tree of life… [you see the ‘as’ or ash tree is in this word] To be the father of spiritual life in an evolutionary cycle, this ray had to be the first aspect of the emanation. Therefore it would be found to be composed of the first two letters of the alphabet. This is precisely what is found in the Hebrew word for father: AB. Linking it with the Egyptian RA, the radiant solar deity, we have AB-RA-M, receiving later in its evolution the developed powers of godhood represented by the fifth Hebrew letter, he, and so becoming AB-RA-H-AM. And as Abram came out of the primordial empyreal fire, UR, it is hardly coincidental that even UR begins with that letter, U, which (with V) represents the downward line of descent, the turning upward and the return to the heights.

…When we come to M, we find it is named mem and means— water! N is called nun and means that which is the animal life in water,- fish! This is in the Hebrew. But amazingly, when we turn to the old Egyptian, we find that N has the name of nun likewise, but means and is the hieroglyph of—water! Its character letter is simply a short line indented to indicate seven waves, as our English script m is a succession of three waves. M therefore in the Hebrew, and in the English as well, marks the nadir [sounds like nature or neter/netjer, which is the material realm we experience, not the spiritual zenith we must transcend into] of soul's decent into water, and N, at the same level and therefore also signifying water (or as fish the organic life in water), marks the turning-point for return, the Mount Sinai of evolution. Its reference is undoubtedly to this earth, which true symbolic insight discovers is itself—and not any hill on its surface—the "mount" or "hill of the Lord," on which God meets man in a cloud of fire, and on which all sermons are preached by his inner deity to man, and all temptations, crucifixions, spiritual initiations and final transfigurations take place.

Kemetic/Medu Neter hieroglyphs for M and N. See the M on the owl’s head? Owls, like the moon, are nocturnal, in the dark. Sin is an absence, an ignorance (sans, Mt. Sinai). This absence/ignorance/sin is the opposite of the shin flame, since the 3 flames of the M are pointing downward.

From A, the point of emanation of the spiritual fire, the creative stream of living energy, the river of vivification, as the Greeks call it, proceeded and swept downward until at M it had immersed its fiery potencies in the water of the human body, therein to begin to do its evolutionary work of kindling its own bright flame of spiritual consciousness in the red sea of the human blood. And now it is known that this red blood was originally sea water. As fire causes water to evaporate, the ancient allegorism represented the divine fire as drying up the water of the bodily sea, permitting souls to pass over the watery terrain dryshod…

…In descending from the height of fire essence to the depth of water substance, the energization would have had to pass through the intermediate stage or form of air. Fire symbolizes pure energy of spirit; air typifies mind; water stands for emotion, as earth for sensation in the scale of conscious states. If any of the letters between A and M are intended to mark the air stage, it has not come to knowledge as yet, unless it be that the bent form of the tenth letter YOD, indicating the candle flame bent by a puff of air to denote the original impulse of God's mind on the flame, is to be taken in this significance.

M and N, separate or conjoined, form the framework of hundreds of words relating to the condition of spirit-energy when immersed in matter. As the primal mind-fire is the father, AB, so the primal matter-essence is the eternal mother, which in Hebrew is AM. M will be found to begin virtually all words denoting motherhood. M represents three, or five, or seven waves of water, and it should not be a matter of surprise, therefore, that we find all life on the planet having its generation in and from the sea water… Our colloquial "Ma" for mother is essentially the Hebrew AM. [I wonder if Amazon means mother and son? Regardless, Amazon has both the top AZ and bottom MN letters, and of course, the phallic Amazon logo would be the father/masculine principle.]

…the creative powers symbolized by the letters at the head of the alphabet are gods; while the being who embodies god-power in matter is— MaN. The divine powers at the summit are unmanifest; in matter they become MaNifest. At the summit there is but one power, undifferentiated; below in matter it has multiplied itself and become the MaNy. At the god height the power is purely spiritual; at the lower level it comes out as MeNtal; spirit above, MiNd below. At the top there is the maximum of power, even though purely potential; at the lower range its is MiNus, or at a MiNimum, though actual in its limited expression. A man is the cosmos in MiNiature. That which is expressed down here is, in comparison with the superior potential above, MeaN. Also as here the two poles of being are locked in a more or less stable equilibrium, things here are at a MeaN or MediaN counterbalance. To hold this steady is to MaiNtain life in its right poise. The father-power, AB is the conscious cognitive element in creation; the power it wields in matter, the M N energy of the atom, is the MaNipulative hand of God (the meaning of YOD); and so it is that the word for hand in many languages is not only compounded of M and N (Latin manus, Spanish mano, French main), but is in all languages feminine in gender, intimating the motherhood. In contrast to heaven above, the earth below is, in Latin, MuNdus, from which is our adjective MuNdane. Also from this comes MouNt, MouNtain, MouNd, already explained as referring to no hill on earth, but to the earth itself. Hebrew name for this lower vale of tribulation was HiNNoM, or GehiNNoM. In the upper realms souls are not sufficiently individualized to deserve specific differentiated names; here soul gets its proper NaMe…

The food the soul eats on earth is that divine MaNNa that was rained down from heaven, but had to be scraped up off the earth, the perfect analogue of how mortals acquire their heavenly nutriment. The universal ancient tribal name for the divinity manifesting in the life of nature was MaNa, MaiNu, MaNitou. Then we have the word for the thinking principle, which in the Hindu system is MaNas. One caught under the demoniac possession of this power was a MaNiac. …Things here are the MiNutiae of what is whole and integral above. They are MiNute in magnitude and last but a MiNute of time, poetically speaking. Another most important line of derivatives branches off into sidereal regions. The great cosmic symbol, if not the embodiment of divine energy, is the sun. In contrast with its mighty generative power, its opposite character in the earthly region of the heavens, dead, inert, purely passive and reflective, the symbol of matter, is the MooN. Hence the composition of its name in English from M and N, giving also MoNth, MoNday and MeNses. If in Latin L stands for the divine Light, their Luna (the moon ) might have taken form from the idea that on the lunar orb the divine Light (L) was weakened and dimmed by the reflection from the surface of the negative lifeless moon, giving them LuNa, L for the light and N for the darkness; or it might have been originally L reflected in M-N, suggesting LuMNa, later wearing down into Luna. Oddly enough the Latin for light in its pure solar glory is lux; but for light in its earthly refracted dimmed form the word was LuMen. At any rate L and N are set directly at opposite nodes to each other in lux, light; and nox (Greek nux) night…

…That which flowed forth from the head of being was the eMaNation of creative force. The divinity implanted in living nature, most evolved in man, was iMMaNent, our EMaNuel [the child Jesus].

…the accusative (objective) case of all Latin nouns masculine and feminine in the singular number ends in the letter— M, and those corresponding in Greek end in—N, as also in Sanskrit and doubtless other languages. It is obvious that the M and N endings here denote objectivity, as the accusative is the objective case…

…The actor works subjectively, in the purely noumenal or subjective realm of conscious being. But its work is to bring its purposes thus subjectively conceived out into objective actuality. Hence the creative subject force that emanates out of the A B condition of primal being ends by generating its product here below at the M-N station of physical objectivity... To illustrate the point, the nominative case of "trumpet" in Latin is tuba, but the objective case is tubam. So all nouns. Only in the case of neuter nouns is there no distinction between the nominative and accusative cases, obviously because a noun of neuter gender can not manifest any difference between subjective and objective status. It is not living, therefore can neither initiate action or be acted upon by its own volition, hence can be neither subject nor object in the living sense…

The principle of explanation thus established is seen with startling definiteness in three of our common English personal pronouns. Of the first personal pronoun the nominative case is I, but the objective introduces the M: me. [Italian mi] The third personal pronoun masculine singular is in the nominative he; but in the objective it is him. The third person plural nominative is they; but the objective is them. [Also, who and whom.] It is in passing to be noticed that the I is the only one of the pronouns capitalized, in respect to divinity, since the I-ego is the only part of us that is divine! Likewise the survival of the dot above the I (and the J) is the remnant of the YOD, the Hebrew divine flame. All this induces us to think that the I element (another word incidentally showing the L-M-N sequence) of a person is the subjective divine self within, initiating all action; while the outer personal physical bodily self is what this I has produced as the me…

[End of passages from The Esoteric Structure of the Alphabet]

Discussion and commentary:

Here are some other M-N words I thought of: mines and minerals are of this Earth, money is materialism, mint, amines/amino acids, vitamins (vital amines), diminish, domain, dominion, minion, monkey, monk, Muni means sage, as in Sakya-muni Buddha, munitions, Mennonite. The Latin ‘mons’ means mountain, as in Olympus Mons. Then one way to think of demon is ‘from the mountain’, from the Earth, from materiality, not spirituality, like angels. The angels/angles of radiation emanating from light flow outward from the source, but the heavier, demonic, selfish energy gravitates inward. ‘Cinnamon’ could mean moon mound? Almond could mean god of the mound/Earth? And minor, which is distinct from major. Here is Christopher Lord’s take from his site, http://truthiracy.blogspot.com/2012/01/bull-god-el-of-bible-elohim-yahweh.html?m=1:

the 'Minor' is the MIN or the MOON as in the Minotaur BULL. A 'minor' is a son of the father, or smaller than, younger than or the new young calf of the Bull. or the New Bull (to be) that came from her cave. A Miner ascends to the underworld like the labyrinth of the cave (of the goddess) where you find the Minotaur.

Now consider all of the lawgiver/educator figures with the ‘m-n’ root, such as Manu of Hindu tradition, King Minos of Greek mythology, King Menes of Kemet, Nommo of the Dogon (the Monitors, i.e., the Watchers), Mannus of Germanic tradition, Minerva, Menu/Nuh/Noah, etc. I suppose one of the hallmarks of being human in this base material realm is our hands, as in manual labor, but it is interesting how laws or guides can be manuscripted in manuals.

Here are some more M-N words from one of my favorite channels, Aquarius Rising. Jimmy Johnson equates these words with the Moon, which of course is fitting:

from Passing Over by Aquarius Rising

And consider that words like ‘liminal’, ‘lemniscate’, and ‘subliminal’ indicate a transition to a different state. I noticed that for the sequence LMNOPQR, if we consider O is the fulcrum/zeropoint/balance, LMN is the liminal left and PQR is the poker/peaker right. However, the L is usually associated with hardness while R is usually associated with roundness.

The letter M in the old Irish language is ‘muin’ or ‘uin’, which sounds like winter, so if we correspond this minimum of the Sun in winter, then summer would be the summit, and the letter A, alpha, ailim, etc., would need to correspond somehow with summer, but I don’t know how. The glyph for the winter sign Aquarius looks like the hieroglyph for the ‘n’ sound, and a water pitcher is associated with Aquarius:

So then the opposite sign, Leo, would be at the height of the summer heat, and its fire element is fitting. However, Aquarius is an air sign. If we try to find some correspondence with either of the M-like glyphs of Virgo or Scorpio, the opposite of these signs are Pisces and Taurus, respectively. But in terms of the elements that we are trying to match up, fire and water, they don’t quite line up. We could say that the first sign, Aries fire, corresponds with the first letter, A, but its opposite sign, Libra is an air sign. However, Libra’s sigil includes the symbol for the last Greek letter, omega, which connotes some kind of antithesis to the first letter. These are examples of how sometimes we cannot perfectly align correspondences among different esoteric subjects. Another example, in my mind, is the Monad, or any ‘mono’ words, which connotes a singularity, like the Source, which definitely is not material. One more example, which comes from a Godfrey Higgins quote which I cite in my Anacalypsis Part 3 article:

Cedrenus says that the Chaldeans adored the light : that they called it intellectual light, and that they described it, or symbolized it, by the two letters [alpha] and [omega]… by which he meant the extreme terms of the diffusion of matter in the seven planetary bodies, of which the first or the moon, answered to the vowel [alpha], and the last, or Saturn, to the vowel [omega] ; and that the letter [Iota] described the Sun ; and this altogether formed the word [Iao]--the Panaugria of the Gnostics, otherwise the universal light distributed in the planets .

So whereas Kuhn equates aleph/A to spiritual fire, Cedrenus says the Chaldeans thought alpha represented the Moon and Iota represented the Sun. Iao could be interpreted as ‘I am the alpha and the omega’. Aum/Om could be interpreted as analogous to IAO because the first syllable, ‘ah’ is the the alpha and the ‘um’ syllable is the omega. This corresponds to Kuhn’s passage regarding the objective case, where words end with ‘m’ in Latin or ‘n’ in Greek. The breath when forming the open ‘ah’ sound begins deep inside of you, travels upwards, and ends with the closing of your lips to create the more tactile ‘m’ sound. I’m surprised that Kuhn did not mention aum in his discussion. Other words that start with A and end with M that could relate to this cycle of fire and water, spirit and matter, are: atom, Adam, aurum (gold), alum/aluminum, and aim (spirit sets the intention and the material body performs the work to hit the physical target).

Here is another depiction of shin/fire flowing down from the crown chakra/kether crown to the mem/water sacral chakra and back up again, if you are in spiritual alignment. Shamayim means heavens, and is discussed in my Anacalypsis articles. Notice that in Hebrew, a ‘mem’ at the end of a word is a closed square, like the image below. The ‘m’-sounding character in Korean is also a rectangle. Cubes and carbon lattices connote the hard, tangible material realm, as does the closing of your lips to make the ‘m’ sound, as opposed to the more ethereal vowel sounds.

From The Zodiac and the Salts of Salvation by Inez Perry:

Early Christians symbolized the Holy Ghost (Water of Life from the pituitary gland or Isis), as a shape of fire (cloven tongues like as fire) constituting the breath of the Father-Sun. In the physiological process, the fire descends into the Water or the sea ( Mare or Mary). Thus it is that Jesus (the little son) is born

Regarding father and mother concepts, ab means father in Hebrew and many languages, and amma means mother in many languages. So pa and ma, such as the Sanskrit Parabrahma, the male supreme being, and Mahadevi, the female supreme being. Pater and mater. Here is what I wrote in my Anacalypsis Part 1 article regarding patterns and matter:

We also see some connections regarding Jupiter/Jove/Jehovah and his daughter, Minerva, representing wisdom. And if wisdom is the son and principle, the son of God is the ‘Prince of Peace’. And what about Zeus/Iesous, Rhea’s son, i.e., reason? Doesn’t reason lead to wisdom? The planet Jupiter in Jyotish is Guru, which translates to banish darkness, and rules Sagittarius, the sage. The Roman equivalent to Zeus is Iu Pater, and this father’s son, or pattern’s consequence, is Logos- or rationality and golden ratios, and from patterns we get matter (for example, Erwin Schrodinger’s theme in What is Life that the stochastic Brownian motion of particles creates the phenomena we detect with our senses), so pater and mater, father and mother. Remember, the New Testament begins with talk of ‘the word’, but really logos, this underlying structure of rea-lity that cannot occur any other way, the way the Fibonacci sequence snowballs onto itself can only accumulate that one way, regardless of what numeric system we use, hexadecimal, binary, etc., forever fine-tuning to the golden ratio proportion- 3/2, 5/3, 8/5, 13/8, etc. We need to connect the dots, connect more points, delineate, triangulate (extra-pole-ate), see these patterns, see the reality, see our domain, visualize our domain, vis-dom, wisdom.

The Titan Rhea had seven children with the Titan Kronos, including Zeus. Rhea/Area/space and time/Kronos.

Minerva is another M-N word.

We could branch off into many other corrrespondences, like silver and gold, milk and honey, yin and yang, the sinister, left-handed path or the correct, right-handed path, etc., but we all need to do the work ourselves to see what is right in front of our noses, including me. Amen… or actually, ameen.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to comment below.

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Bonus material from Kuhn:

Since aleph is associated with the ox, here is what Kuhn writes about these and related symbols. This is mind-blowing:

It was observed earlier that when the X symbol of the developing movement of creation was lifted out of the matter-symbol O and placed after it, we strangely found that it spelled the word OX. This singular circumstance at once bred the conviction that this word, this theriograph, or animal hieroglyph, should play some prominent part in the scheme of ancient figurative representation of values and relations. It was of course known to be a figure in a number of Biblical stereotypes as well as in Greek and other mythic scores. But its full symbolic import was not realized until the significance of its connection with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet came to view with startling impact. Aleph, A, has for its name coefficient this very word OX. Along with this, there is also the Hebrew letter L, lamed, with the meaning of oxgoad. But why is A denominated by the ox-symbol? What is the significance of this animal that connects it with the first letter? Revelation of this profound and recondite symbolism should indeed open the eyes of all Scriptural exegetists to the almost impenetrable crypticism of ancient esoteric writing, which they have with such obdurate intransigence continued to deny, ignore and scorn. To put it in the most compact form of statement, it appears that A was denominated the ox because, as the animal is unproductive, incapable of begetting life--as the result of desexing--so the primal state or stage of creation, represented by the letter A, is unproductive, incapable of begetting life. The alphabet's first character fittingly represents the no-not-nought-nothing stage of the cyclical creation. It is the pre-zoic stage, the lingering darkness before the first rays of dawn. As yet there is nothing, neither matter nor movement. It is the absolute zero on life's or the cycle's thermometer. It is the state which the Egyptians described by their name NU (NUN, NUT), night, and the Hebrews by their AIN. It is the stage when naught was. In it nothing could be produced, nothing could have birth. It was the great darkness, the great deep, into whose bosom had not yet fallen the seminal seed of new creation. It was sheer potential of life, standing, like the ox, unfertilized, unimpregnated by the fructifying ray of cosmic mind, impotent to mother life until so enriched. 32 If this seems like an arbitrary fancy, it also appears to be indubitably substantiated by the positive fact that in the main languages, from Sanskrit down to English, this letter A is the universal prefix which gives to all words with which it is conjoined the negative meaning. It can be translated invariably by the word "not." In Greek it is called "alpha privative," the letter that deprives a word of its positive meaning, making it negative. A-theist, agnostic, a-symmetrical, a-moral, a-mnesia, apathetic, a-tom (not cuttable), even the Greek word for "truth," a-letheia, (that which is not forgotten), and a host of others attest the negative force of A.

Note the ox symbol for aleph.

The fourth stage indicates the opposition or crossing of the cross within the circle, the vertical line standing for the spirit force and the horizontal for the physical. Lifting the cross out of the circle, we have it in its simplest form, and since life can add increase unto itself only by this crossing of spirit and matter, the cross becomes the sign of addition, the plus sign…

The fifth stage has the same configuration, but as it were, turned one-eighth on its axis, giving the X within the circle. This is to show that motion has been introduced, that creation has begun,--. This, similarly to the bent candle flame of the YOD, indicates that God's impulse has begun to move. Then, as the initial motion imparted to the creation not only adds to its working potential, but vastly multiplies it, the X becomes the sign of multiplication. In this final form the design eventuates in giving us the great symbol of the number 10,--X. And then if we take the X out of its eternal encirclement in the absolute existence--and by the beginning of the movement this emergence is indicated,--and place the two great symbols side by side, we have astonishingly that mystic word and symbol that enters so mysteriously into Scriptural allegory,--the word OX.