b,l,o,o,d

“O” is the circle unbroken, concentric, eternal. The letter “O” does not enclose space, but contains and expands it. In other words, it does not demarcate a quantifiable area, it suggests the infinite. “O” is the wheel ever-turning and the well ever-deepening. It can demarcate a specific area of space only when brought to scale by other elements. The vertical components of letters are like graticules and scaffolding; they measure and build. We can, for example, place a lowercase “l” on either side of “O” to build the letters “b” and “d.” Put all the aforementioned letters together and we can produce “blood.”

The Sefer Yetzirah is the oldest extant Kabbalistic text and the primary source of information on one of Kabbalah’s most distinct and important features: language mysticism. Referring to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, the text explains that God engraved them, carved them, weighed them, permuted them, combined them, and formed with them everything that exists. Kabbalists read this as both a description of God’s linguistic process of creation and an instruction to copy this process in one’s own meditative practices. During such practices, Kabbalists abandon the normal semantic meaning of words and concentrate instead on the shapes, sounds, physical origins, and mental associations of letters, both individually and when combined with other letters. The practitioner must cultivate a state of receptivity in order to receive impressions that could not be acquired intellectually. Only then will he or she be able to discern the true essence underlying language. The 13th-century Rabbi Abraham Abulafia taught that this essence is present throughout all languages of the world.

Notice that “O” opens more when placed inside “blood.” Pronounced outside of this context, the sound of “O” comes from the back of the mouth, but some tension of the lips is necessary. When doubled in the word “blood,” however, the mouth relaxes and “O” flows freely from the inside out. Through the sound of “uh,” the open throat connects to the all without disruption. We give this sound a container when we place it between “b,” “l,” and “d.” We can describe this container as one with a soft, lip-like beginning and a definitive, locking finality.

By “linguistic process of creation,” Kabbalists mean that the world was created with letters. Language is then synonymous with God’s created world, and is the best and most direct way to connect to him. When, during the practices described above, we move from the stage of contemplation of individual letters to that of permutation and combination, we bring the presence of something into being. We must consider all aspects of this created presence, from its individual building blocks to the multi-layered relationships between them. Only then can we discern the essence of whatever we have depicted with the particular letters. Following the logic of a linguistic process of creation, what we are really doing here is discerning the essence of reality, which in its subtlety is normally hidden from us.

What presence have we created through the combination “blood”? A wide open and formless abyss, contained by lines of form – the eternal within time. A microcosmic map of the divine. God, the Kabbalistic Ein Sof, meaning endless, is nestled between “b,” “l,” and “d.” The infinite is nestled between birth, life, and death. According to “blood,” we cannot have only the Holy “O.”

Vowels are our initial impulse, our undifferentiated deep, but consonants and their hard clacking build the world. The traditional Torah is “unpointed,” meaning it was written without any vowels. It is the dry, arrhythmic rattling of consonants. For Kabbalists, this means it is the task of humans to breathe life into the Torah by adding vowels in various combinations, producing a multitude of meanings. Into “FTL” we can breathe “fetal,” into “FTL” we can breathe “fatal.” Vowels here are likened to the animating life force, and consonants to the body which houses it. The body provides physical and linear structure; it provides a beginning and an end. The three Hebrew letters which make up the name YHWH (yod, heh, and vav) are usually consonants, but in unpointed texts they are used to designate vowel sounds. Since these sounds have no beginning nor end, this holiest name of God technically cannot be pronounced.

“O” produces nothing, knows not of death, reaches no conclusions. The combination resulting in “blood” suggests that we need to be contained by form in order to connect with what is formless. We have to climb the scaffolding of consonantal space-time in order to peer into the well beyond it. This combination of letters suggests that we need a body, a body in which blood flows, to carry us towards that which is disembodied.

That YHWH is unpronounceable is no coincidence. Kabbalah has many names for God, but this one encompasses and transcends them all. Each of its letters has a complex meaning, and when combined, they bring all facets of creation together into one. The four letter name unifies past and future, masculine and feminine, human and divine, heaven and earth. YHWH comes from the Hebrew root haya, meaning “to be,” and is thus associated with “I AM,” the name God gives himself in the Book of Exodus when Moses asks what he should be called. “I AM” is the undifferentiated, timeless, and eternal existence of God throughout all creation and beyond it.

This is the subtle and true essence which Kabbalists seek contact with. The goal of the language practices is to recognize and return to the state of pre-Babel unity, where all languages were one. Kabbalistic practice overall can be summarized as a path of return to our original state of oneness with the divine. On this path, to work with language is to see beyond the oppositions we normally hold as indissoluble: between vowels and consonants, feeling and language, I and you, spirit and matter, this thing and that.

To quote the Sefer Yetzirah, “the production of all things from the twenty−two letters is the proof that they are all but parts of one living body” (2:6). All language rises up from the well of unity and thus contains within it the waters of paradise. Could it be, paradoxically, precisely in the diversity of creation, the separateness of bodies, the immense generative potential of words, that we are most able to recognize oneness? I think it could be, and so I believe in the letter “I.”

I believe in “I” because it projects forward into space-time. I believe in “I” because it is my vehicle of belief. I believe in “I” because it quadruples and opens its vertical barricades into deep valleys of “We,” then carries us from vale to vale, out of the womb and into the grave. I believe in “I” because it carries us to the It is and I am.

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Sources

Lancaster, Brian. The Essence of Kabbalah. Arcturus Publishing Limited, 2017.

Westcott, William Wynn, translator. Sepher Yetzirah. 3rd edition, 1887, sacred-texts.com/jud/sephir.htm.