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The Quest i (am) on
The question is not one posed with interrogatives; but instead with our lives; will we become pregnant with our sources, or will we remain somewhat more seemingly ‘safe’, but distant from every good and wonderful experience of sacrifice and growth?
There is a question that unlocks all others, and yet, it cannot be asked
— as in the children’s game of tag, once ‘touched’ — ‘you’re it’.
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How • What • When • Where • Which • Who • Why
These are the terms we use in order to form our common inquiries in language. We could add a few other interrogatives: whence, whether, and wherefore — however these form older or more ornate figures for existing terms in our list. Whence is essentially where, whether is which, and wherefore is why. The central 5 relate to identity. The outer two, to agency and cause.
While we may suppose this selection of terms is entirely arbitrary (as many English speakers would), I reject that idea for a variety of reasons. In fact, a cursory examination reveals something rather amazing: all except one begin with W, the letter we call double-you1. The homonymic song of questioning requires, in nearly every case, a doubling of ourselves. Yet few will notice this, in part, because most of us are trained from childhood to ignore the intrinsic novelty of patterns that emerge within our own language, and more — to discard such noticings immediately as fantastical and without any dependable systematic basis. Wrong move.
All of the words other than How have H as their second letter. And all of those are followed by a vowel, with the exception of Why, which is followed by a consonant in a vowel’s role.
The term vowel itself is interesting, particularly in light of tri-consonantal languages which generally exclude them (thus requiring the reader to supply them from their own understanding of language and the context). This is a fascinating and useful tradition.
But in English, a vow is a promise, and the missing vowels in other languages form the visual equivalent of silence. In ancient languages El referred to a deity. Thus ‘vow el’ becomes a promise to the Divine, which, in Hebrew (and similar languages) is not written, bu instead must be supplied from the heart or the imagination of the reader.
This can be creatively interpreted as a kind of visual modesty which doubles as a requirement for the direct participation of the reader in the Author’s work — an idea that English has no corollary for. The idea of directly involving the reader in the ‘creation’ of the text is probably (vastly) older than Hebrew, but this example stands out as a startling accomplishment which encourages a degree of linguistic intelligence and participation practically unknown in the West — particularly in monolinguistic English speakers.
Cogent to this discussion we find that vowels tend to be instances of (momentary or sustained) tonal flow, whereas consonants tend to form beginnings and stops. Again we find a link to ‘spirit’ in that flow (breath, wind) is most commonly equated with the invisible inspiration for more static or solid expressions…
Now, what about this H letter? Two pillars, with a third joining them. The only Hebrew letter carrying the peculiar distinction of appearing twice in the common spellings of ‘the name’ of the Holy One. It can be said that ‘the breathing of the unityBeing’ is the whole wonder and purpose of all manifestation and existence, and the sound of this letter is the slightly emphasized sound of breath itself.
H is a sound akin to that one might make when attempting to fog a mirror with your breath. Silent, yet profoundly formative of a change in the ‘reflector’. What happens to the mirror when we fog it thus? Millions of perfectly unique yet perfectly reflectively complete ‘droplets’ emerge between us and the reflector. Each one will completely reflect ‘the one whose breath they were’, all of the others, the mirror itself, and all aspects of the surrounding context. Sound familiar?
For all the questions words with the exception of how, we double ourselves ‘into’ H. How stands alone: the source of agency. It is as if the others are actually cartoons of a process which begins with establishing a polarity: this side, or that? We then submit to the H which flows into vowels or the y (in the case of the word whose sound is the homonym of the letter it ends with).
Are you sure there’s nothing interesting here and that all of this is just fantasy?
The letter Y is certainly interesting in its own right; a triune letter whose sound is represented in Hebrew by Yud — the only letter that floats ‘on high’ above the baseline, and the ancient relative of the English letters j, i, and y. See those dots floating above the English miniscules? Those are the progeny of Yud each of which takes on sounds belonging to Yud in Hebrew or another semitic alphabet. Perhaps more astonishing, Yud is understood by its Hebrew spelling to refer to the following progression: point, line, surface.
Of course, each of these words is a small, tightly-packed catalyst for exploration; almost like a compression charge capable of launching consciousness into the joyful flight of exploration. Their sudden expansion within the question charges us with momentum and wonder, and lights the living fuse of our human imaginations, preparing us not so much for the reception of answers as for the peculiar kinds of travel that human minds are so perfectly prepared for by their nature, and too often denied by the cultures in which they must develop and the biases they champion.
Don’t allow your curiosity to cease with what I have so briefly provided; this is an invitation to surpass me, and directly experience the travel at which I hint. A way unlike any extant human tradition — but profoundly alike with your own capacity, desire, and ability.
Let these seven seeds germinate in the gentle flow of the waters of your consciousness. Let them take root, but not too firmly. Let them lift you out beyond the pale confines of the cages of common human thinking, and into the celestial currents for which your wings were made…
Is it not provocative that that Man begins with M and Woman with W?
I invite you to suppose that we have here the same letter, inverted — and more, that the W is the top of YY and the M is the bottom of the inversion of this pairing. In such a case, the ‘Man’ ‘descends from above’, and the woman ‘rises from below’. Notice that the man’s testicles hang down from below his genitalia, while the woman’s ovaries are above her womb?
In case you are prone to misinterpret this as sexist nonsense, consider that the first view of the mother is from below, and when the infant is set upon her breast she forms ‘a living below’. The father, however, is first seen from above, usually ‘looking down’ upon the infant.
If that’s insufficient, simply consider your own constant physical relationship to the Sun and the Earth.
