8 § The Science of Letters ('Ilm al-hurūf)
I N the preliminaries to a study on La Théodicée de la Kabbale, [1] Francis Warrain, after having said that 'the hypothesis of the Kabbalah is that the Hebrew language is the perfect language taught by God to the first man', feels obliged to express reservations as to the 'illusory pretension of possessing the pure elements of natural language, while in fact only fragments and deformations have come down to us'. He none the less admits that 'it remains probable that the ancient languages flowed from a hieratic language composed by inspired men', and that 'these languages must therefore have words expressing the essence of things and their numerical relationships'; and further, that 'one can say as much for the divinatory arts'. It will no doubt be as well to throw some light on this question; but to begin with we wish to make it clear that Warrain adopts an essentially philosophical point of view, while for our part we intend to keep strictly to initiatic and traditional ground.
A first point that is important to note is this: the affirmation according to which the Hebrew tongue was the very language of the first revelation seems not even to have come from Kabbalistic doctrine, but to be purely exoteric in itself, while serving in reality as a veil over something else much more profound. The proof thereof is that the same is also claimed for other languages, and that this affirmation of 'primordiality', taken literally, cannot be justified in each case as the claims obviously would be contradictory. The same assertion is made for Arabic, and the opinion according to which Arabic had been the original language of humanity is commonly held in countries where this language is used; but what is remarkable and what has made us think that the same applies to Hebrew, is that this popular opinion is so ill-founded and so lacking in authority that it formally contradicts the genuine traditional teaching of Islam according to which the 'language of Adam' was Syrian, lughah suryāniyyah, which moreover has nothing in common with the country now designated by the name Syria, nor with any of the more or less ancient languages of which men retain any present memory. Strictly speaking, this lughah suryāniyyah, according to the interpretation given to the name, is the language of 'solar illumination', shams ishrāqiyyah. In fact, Sūryā is the Sanskrit name for the Sun and this would seem to indicate that its root, sur, one of those which designate light, itself pertains to that original language. It is a question, therefore, of that primeval Syria of which Homer speaks as an island 'beyond Ortygia' (which identifies it with the Hyperborean Tula), an island 'where are
the revolutions of the sun'. [2] According to Josephus, the capital of this country was called Heliopolis, 'city of the Sun', [3] the name subsequently given to the city in Egyptthat was also called On. The successive transfers of these names (and many more as well) would be a particularly interesting study insofar as they concern the establishment of secondary spiritual centres of diverse periods, an establishment closely related to that of the languages destined to serve as 'vehicles' for the corresponding traditional forms. These tongues are those which can rightly be called 'sacred languages'; and it is precisely on the distinction that must be made between these sacred languages and the vulgar or profane tongues that the justification of the Kabbalistic methods essentially rests, as well as similar procedures that are to be found in other traditions.
We can say this: just as every secondary spiritual centre is like an image of the primordial and Supreme Centre, as we have explained in our study The Lord of the World, every sacred or 'hieratic' language can be regarded as an image or reflection of the original language, which is the sacred language par excellence. This original sacred language is the 'lost word', or rather the 'hidden word' for men of the dark age, just as the Supreme Centre has become invisible and inaccessible for them. But there is no question of 'fragments and deformations' in all this; on the contrary, it concerns regular adaptations necessitated by circumstances of time and place, that is, by the fact that-according to the teaching of Muhyi d-Dīn ibn al-'Arabī in the beginning of the second part of his al-Futūhāt al-Makkiyyah (Meccan Revelations)-each prophet or revealer has to use a language susceptible of being understood by those whom he addresses, a language that is thus more especially appropriate to the mentality of such a people and of such a time. This is also the reason for the very diversity of traditional forms, and it is this diversity which entails, as an immediate consequence, the diversity of languages which must serve the different traditions as respective means of expression. All the sacred languages, therefore, must be considered as the work of truly inspired men, apart from which they would not be apt for the function for which they are essentially destined. As regards the primordial language, its origin must be 'nonhuman', like that of the Primordial Tradition itself; and every sacred language still participates in this transcendence in that it is, in its structure (al-mabānii) and in its signification (al-má'ānii) a reflection of the primordial language. Moreover, the reflection can take different forms, which do not
have the same importance in every case, for the question of adaptation also intervenes. Such, for example, is the symbolic form of the signs used in writing. [4] Such as is the correspondence of numbers with letters and consequently with words in virtue of the letters they are composed of, as is the case with Hebrew and Arabic particularly.
Certainly, it is difficult for Westerners to grasp what sacred languages really are, for in present conditions at least they have no direct contact with any of them; and in this connection, we recall what we have said more generally on other occasions about the difficulty of assimilating the 'traditional sciences', difficulties much greater than those that concern purely metaphysical teachings. The reason for this is the specialised nature of these sciences which attaches them inextricably to a particular traditional form and which prevents their being transposed, just as they are, from one civilisation to another, on pain of becoming unintelligible or of having only quite an illusory effect if not a completely false one. Thus, in order to master the full range of the symbolism of letters and numbers, it is necessary in some measure to live them in their application, even down to the circumstances of everyday life, as is possible in certain Oriental countries. But it would be absolutely chimerical to claim to introduce considerations and applications of this kind into European languages, for which they are not made and in which the numerical value of letters, for example, does not exist. The attempts that some have made in this order of ideas, apart from any traditional data, are therefore erroneous from the outset; and if nevertheless, accurate results sometimes have been obtained, for example from the onomantic point of view, this does not prove the value or the legitimacy of the method, but only the existence of a sort of 'intuitive' faculty (which, of course, has nothing in common with genuine intellectual intuition) on the part of those who have put these practices into use, as frequently happens in the 'divinatory arts'. [5]
In order to explain the metaphysical principles of the 'science of letters', Muhyi d-Din ibn al-'Arabī, in his al-Futūhāt al-Makkiyyah, envisaged the universe as symbolized by a book; this is the well known symbol of the Liber Mundi of the Rosicrucians and also the Liber Vitae of the Apocalypse. [6] The
letters of the book are, in principle, all written simultaneously and indivisibly by the 'divine pen' (al-qalam al-ilāhī). These 'transcendent letters' are the eternal essences or the divine ideas; and since every letter is at the same time a number, the agreement of this teaching with Pythagorean doctrine is evident. These same 'transcendent letters', which are all the creatures, after having been principially condensed in the divine omniscience have, by the divine breath, been transferred down to the lower planes and have formed and composed the manifested Universe. A comparison becomes necessary here with the part the letters also play in the cosmo-gonic doctrine of the Sepher Ietsirah; the 'science of letters', moreover, has an almost equal importance both in the Hebrew Kabbala and in Islamic esoterism. [7]
Starting from this principle, it will be easily understood that a correspondence may be established between the letters and the different parts of the manifested Universe, and more especially with our world. The existence of planetary and zodiacal correspondences is, in this respect, too well known for there to be any need to insist upon it, and it is enough to note that this places the 'science of letters' in close relationship with astrology considered as a cosmological science. [8] On the other hand, in virtue of the constitutive analogy of the 'microcosm' (al-kawn as-saghīr) with the 'macrocosm' (al-kawn al-kabīr), these same letters correspond also to the different parts of the human organism; and in this connection we will mention in passing that there is a therapeutic application of the 'science of letters', each letter being used in a certain way to heal the ailments that affect particularly the corresponding organ.
It follows from what we have said that the 'science of letters' must be considered at different levels, which can be identified with the 'three worlds'. In its highest sense, it is the knowledge of all things in the Principle itself, as eternal essences beyond all manifestation; in what may be called an intermediate sense, it is cosmogony, the knowledge of the production or formation of the manifested world; and finally, in its lowest sense, it is the knowledge of the virtues of names and numbers insofar as these express the nature of each being, a knowledge that by way of application makes it possible to exercise by these means and by reason of this correspondence a magical action on the beings themselves and on the events that concern them. In fact, according to the explanation of Ibn Khaldūn, written formulas that are composed of the same elements that constitute the totality of a being have thereby the faculty of acting upon that being; and this is also why the knowledge of
the name of a being, the expression of its own particular nature, can give one power over it. It is this application of the 'science of letters' which is habitually designated by the name sīmīa. [9] It should be noted that this goes much further than a mere 'divinatory' procedure: first of all, one can by means of a calculation (hisāb) involving the numbers that correspond to the letters and names, forecast certain events; [10] but this is only a first step, as it were, the most elementary of all; and it is possible on the basis of this calculation to effect mutations which will have the effect of a corresponding modification in the events themselves.
Here, too, a distinction has to be made between widely differing degrees, as in the knowledge itself of which this is only an application. When this action is limited to the sensible world, that is only the lowest degree and it is in this case that one can rightly speak of magic; but it can easily be appreciated that something of a quite different order takes place when there is any question of an action that has a repercussion in the higher worlds. In such a case, one is obviously in the 'initiatic' domain in the fullest sense of that epithet; and only he can actively operate in all the worlds who has reached the degree of 'red sulphur' (al-kibrit al-aḥmar), a designation which indicates, no doubt surprisingly for some, an assimilation of the 'science of letters' with alchemy. [11] In fact, these two sciences, understood in depth, are in reality one and the same; and that which both of them express under very different appearances is nothing other than the very process of initiation itself which, moreover, rigorously reproduces the cosmogonic process, inasmuch as the total realisation of the possibilities of a being is necessarily brought about by passing through the same phases as that of universal Existence. [12]