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by Mike Nichols
'...I have been a word among letters.'
--the Book of Taliesyn, VIII
What's in a word? Or a name? What special power resides in a
word, connecting it so intimately to the very thing it symbolizes?
Does each word or name have its own 'vibration', as is generally
believed by those of us who follow the Western occult tradition? And
if so, how do we begin to unravel its meaning? Just what,
exactly, is in a word? Well, LETTERS are in a word. In fact, letters
COMPRISE the word. Which is why Taliesyn's remark had always puzzled
me. Why didn't he say he had been a 'letter among words'? That, at
least, would seem to make more logical sense than saying he had been a
'word among letters', which seems backwards. Unless...
Unless he was trying to tell us that the word is NOT the important
thing -- the critical thing is the LETTERS that make up a word! The
Welsh bard Taliesyn was, after all, a pretty gifted fellow. He
certainly put all the other bards at Maelgwyn's court to shame. And
over the years, I've learned never to take his statements lightly --
even his most enigmatic statements. Perhaps he was really suggesting
that, in order to understand the true meaning of a word or name, one
must first analyze the letters that comprise it. Of course, this is
certainly not a new theory. Any student of arcane lore would at
once recognize this concept as belonging in the opening remarks of
any standard text on numerology. But to read the same meaning behind
a line of poetry penned by a 6th century Welsh bard may be a bit
surprising. Is it possible that the Celts had their own system of
numerology?
Let us begin the quest by asking ourselves what we know about
numerology in general. Most of our modern knowledge of numerology has
been gleaned from ancient Hebrew tradition, which states that the true
essence of anything is enshrined in its name. But there are so many
names and words in any given language that it becomes necessary to
reduce each word to one of a small number of 'types' -- in this case,
numerological types from 1 to 9 (plus any master numbers of 11, 22,
etc.). This is easily accomplished by assigning a numerical value to
each letter of the alphabet, i.e. A=1, B=2, C=3, and so on. Thus, to
obtain the numerical value of any word, one simply has to add up the
numerical values of all the letters which comprise the word. If the
sum is a two digit number, the two digits are then added to each other
(except in the case of 11, 22, etc.) to obtain the single digit
numerical value of the entire word, which may then be analyzed by
traditional Pythagorean standards.
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The problemhas always been howto be sure ofthe numerical value
of each letter. Why SHOULD A equal 1, or B equal 2, or Q equal 8?
Where did these values come from? Who assigned them? Fortunately,
the answer to this is quite simple in most cases. Many ancient
languages used letters of the alphabet to stand for numbers (Roman
numerals being the most familiar example). Ancient Hebrew, for
instance, had no purely numerical symbols -- like our 1, 2, 3, etc. --
so their letters of the alphabet had to do double duty as numbers as
well. One had to discern from the context whether the symbol was
meant as letter or number. This was true of classical Latin, as well.
Thus, in languages such as these, it is easy to see how a number
became associated with a letter: the letter WAS the number.
It is a bit more difficult to see how the associations in 'modern'
numerology came into being. The modern numerological table consists
of the numbers 1 through 9, under which the alphabet from A through Z
is written in standard order:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
---------------------------------
A B C D E F G H I
J K L M N O P Q R
S T U V W X Y Z
This arrangement seems somewhat arbitrary, at best. At the very
least, it is difficult to sense any 'intrinsically meaningful'
relationship between a letter and its numerical value. After all, our
modern alphabetical symbols and our modern numerical symbols (Arabic)
come from two completely different sources and cultures.
For this reason, many contemporary numerologists prefer the
ancient Hebrew system because, at least here, there is a known
connection between letter and number. However, when we attempt to
adapt this system to the English language, a whole new set of problems
crops up. For one, the entire alphabet is arranged in a different
order and some of our modern letters have NO Hebrew equivalents.
Thus, based on the Hebrew alphabet, the only letters for which we have
numerical values are the following:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
------------------------------------
A B G D H V Z P
Y K L M N W
Q R S T
Obviously, a modernnumerologist wouldn't get veryfar with this
table. In order to compensate for the missing letters in the Hebrew
system, most modern textbooks on numerology 'fill in' the missing
letters by 'borrowing' numerical values from the Greek alphabet, thus
mixing cultural symbols in an eclectic approach that is not entirely
convincing.
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Another problem is the exclusion of the number 9 from the table --
which modern textbooks often 'explain' by saying that the Hebrews did
not use the number 9, since it was a 'sacred' and 'mystical' number.
The real truth, however, is far less esoteric. The fact is, the
Hebrew alphabet DID have letters with the numerical value of 9 -- the
letters Teth and Sade. But, since Teth and Sade do not have
equivalents in our modern English alphabet, the 9 value must be left
out.
And finally, it is once again difficult to see any INTRINSIC
relationship between a Hebrew letter and the number it represents.
Why should one symbol stand for 1, or another for 2, or yet another
for 3, and so on? The whole superstructure seems somewhat shaky.
But letus now turn our attention to a Celtic alphabetic system
called the 'Ogham'. This alphabet is written by making a number of
short strokes (from 1 to 5) below, above, or through a 'base line'
(which in practice tended to be the edge of a standing stone). Thus,
A, O, U, E, and I would be written, respectively:
---/----//----///----////----/////---
Of course, in this system it is easy to see how a letter becomes
associated with a number, since the numerical value of each letter is
implicit. Thus, A=1, O=2, U=3, E=4, and I=5. (It is true there is
much disagreement and confusion among modern scholars as to how the
Ogham alphabet should be rendered. Further, a number of different
Oghams seem to have been employed at various times by different
Celtic cultures. But this confusion usually centers on whether the
strokes should be above, below, or through the base line -- NOT on the
number of strokes used. On that point, there is general agreement.
And though orientation to the base line is important, it is not
essential to our discussion of numerology, since we need only concern
ourselves with the NUMBER of strokes used.)
Thus, based on the work of such scholars as P.C. Power, S.
Ferguson, D. Diringer, I. Williams, L. Spence, and D. Conway, I have
synthesized the following table of Celtic numerology:
1 2 3 4 5
---------------------------------
A D T C I
B G U E N
H L V F P
M O W J Q
X K R
S Y
Z
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Using this table, the student of Celtic numerology would then proceed
to analyze any word in the generally accepted manner. One should not
be concerned that the numbers 6, 7, 8, and 9 do not appear in this
system, as the Ogham alphabet had NO letters with these values (as
opposed to the Hebrew alphabet which DID have letters with the missing
9 value, as mentioned earlier). Another consideration is that the
Ogham alphabet is just that -- an alphabet. It never represented
any particular language, and historically it has been employed by
many different languages. Again by contrast, the Hebrew alphabet was
structured for a particular language -- Hebrew -- and many problems
arise when we attempt to adapt it to a language for which it is not
suited.
Althoughthe Ogham alphabet onlyhas letter valuesfrom 1 through
5, all of the numbers from 1 through 9 (plus any master numbers of 11,
22, etc.) will be used in the final analysis (just as in the Hebrew
system). To understand how this works, let us try an example. We
will use the name of the Welsh goddess Rhiannon:
R + H + I + A + N + N + O + N
5 + 1 + 5 + 1 + 5 + 5 + 2 + 5 = 29
2 + 9 = 11
Most numerologists will agree that
11 is a 'master number' or 'power number' and therefore it is not
further reduced by adding the two digits (although, if one does this,
1 + 1 = 2, and 2 is considered the first even and feminine number in
the numerical sequence, certainly appropriate for a Welsh Mother
Goddess). Viewed as an 11, the analysis is usually that of someone
who is on a 'higher plane of existence' (certainly appropriate for
a goddess), someone who brings 'mystical revelation'. Often this is
someone who feels slightly distant from the people surrounding him or
her, and who has trouble feeling any real empathy for them (which
seems to fit a faery queen who has come to live in the land of
mortals). Also, this is sometimes the number of the martyr,
or of someone unjustly accused (which is certainly true of Rhiannon's
story as told in the 'Mabinogi', in which she is falsely accused of
destroying her own son).
By way of contrast,the 'modern' system would haveRhiannon be a
3, a somewhat inappropriate masculine number (not that all feminine
names should always yield a feminine number -- but one would at least
expect it to do so in the case of an archetypal mother goddess). The
Hebrew system would yield an even more inappropriate 4, that being the
number of the material world and all things physical (and since
Rhiannon hails from faery, she is definitely not of this material
plane.)
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By now, some of my more thoughtful readers may think they see some
inconsistency in my approach. Why have I gone to so much trouble to
point up the flaws in traditional systems of numerology (even going so
far as to suggest an entirely new system), only to fall back on
interpretations of the numbers that are strictly traditional? The
reason is this: all of my objections thus far have been limited to
METHODOLOGY. When it comes to interpreting the meaning of the
numbers, I have no quarrel with the traditional approach, since here
we enter the field of universal symbolism. All systems of
numerology, be they Hebrew, modern, Oriental, or whatever, tend to
attach the same interpretive meaning to the numbers. When Three Dog
Night sings, 'One is the loneliest number that you'll ever know...',
it is a statement which is immediately understood and agreed upon by
people from widely diverse cultures. And the same holds true for all
other numbers, for we are here dealing with archetypal symbols.
It is worth repeating that, although I believe this system to have
a firm theoretical basis, it is still in an embryonic state -- highly
tentative, highly speculative. To the best of my knowledge, it is
also an original contribution to the field of numerology. While some
writers (notably Robert Graves in 'The White Goddess') have dealt with
the numerical values of Ogham letters, I believe this article is the
first instance of employing it specifically as a system of numerology.
I have spent many long hours working with Celtic numerology -- putting
abstract theory to use in practical application -- but much work
remains to be done. For this reason, I would be happy to hear from
readers who are interested in the subject and who would like to
share their own experiences and thoughts.
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