ALPHABETS

ALPHABETS . This article concerns lore, mystical beliefs,

and magical practices involving the alphabet and its letters in
the civilizations and religious traditions that use them. The
term alphabet generally refers to those scripts derived from
the original Phoenician aleph-bet that have roughly one sign
and only one sign for every phoneme, or at least, as in
Phoenician, Hebrew, and Arabic, every consonant phoneme.
Logographic writing such as Chinese, and syllabaries such as
the Maya "glyphs" (largely deciphered in recent decades),
Japanese katakana and hiragana, Indian devanāgarī, and the
Ethiopian "geʾez" are therefore excluded from the following
discussions, even though the last two derive ultimately from
the Phoenician script. However, Near Eastern precursors of
the alphabet, such as cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics
and their offshoots, will be discussed.
Origin of Writing
The beginnings of writing can be traced back to the fourth
millennium bce and earlier in Mesopotamia and in Kurdistan,
the Zagros Mountains, and the Iranian plateau to the east and
north. Subsequently, the idea of writing (however different the
forms it took in each area) spread eastward to the Indus
Valley and China, and westward to Egypt, Anatolia, and
Minoan Crete. Though the earliest uses of writing appear to
have been economic—the recording of mundane trade
transactions—it quickly became so central to civilized life that
every aspect of human endeavor was written down, from the
deeds of kings and priestly rituals to the most sacred myths of
the people.

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Myths of Origin
Myths soon evolved in literate cultures, attributing to gods or
heroes the origin of writing and its transmission to human
beings. In Mesopotamia, the cradle of writing, Nabu (Nebo)—
son of Marduk, king of the Babylonian pantheon—was
credited with the invention of writing, which he used to record
the fates of men. This notion of the function of writing,
represented in the Book of Daniel 5:5–28 (cf. the English
expressions hand of fate and handwriting on the wall ), is still
alive today in the Middle East and the Balkans.
According to Egyptian mythology, the god ḏhwtj (Thoth)
discovered writing. This attribution is known to the West
through Plato (Phaidros 274c) and was accepted even by the
church, as proved by the floor mosaic in Siena Cathedral,
which depicts Hermes Trismegistos (Thoth) giving writing to
the Egyptians. Titles of this divinity include sš (scribe) and nb
sš.w (lord of writing); he was naturally patron of scribes.
Perhaps because the pictographic appearance of the
hieroglyphic script (actually a consonantal system with some
logograms) facilitated the belief that word and thing were
essentially identical, writing was closely linked to magic in
ancient Egypt, and Thoth was the god of sorcery as well. He
was reputedly the author of the Hermetic corpus (first to third
century ce), which influenced Christians, Jews, and Muslims
alike in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

The Bible (Ex. 31:18; 32:15–16) has God himself inscribe the
two stone Tablets of the Law that he gives to Moses with the
"writing of God." If this is a memory of the Sinaitic script,
possible ancestor of the Phoenician alphabet, Yahweh may
figure here as the inventor of writing. Later, the Paleo-Hebrew
script acquired sanctity; some scrolls from Qumran, though
written in Square Aramaic letters, write the tetragammaton
(YHWH ) in Paleo-Hebrew. Postbiblical Jewish tradition often
refers to Adam or Enoch as discoverer of the alphabet,
magic, alchemy, and astrology.

In the Qurʾān also, writing is provided a divine association.

God begins his revelation when Gabriel orders Muḥammad to
recite from writings the angel has brought down with him from
heaven (sūrah 96): "Recite thou! For thy Lord is the most
Beneficent, / who hath taught the use of the pen— / Hath
taught Man that which he knoweth not." Shanawānī (c. 1610
ce) specifically states that God created the alphabet and
revealed it to Adam.
The Greeks generally did not attribute their alphabet to
deities; most were aware of its foreign, and often of its
specifically Phoenician, origin. Herodotos, perhaps following
Hekataios, states that "the Phoenicians who came with
Kadmos … introduced the Greeks to many skills and, what is
more, to the alphabet, which I believe had not previously
existed among the Hellenes" (5.58). As for writing in general,
some sought the source in Egypt: Antikleides names the early
pharoah Menes (first dynasty) as heuretēs (discoverer), and
Plato assigns to Thoth the same role. (Plato, who rebels
against the materialism of the pre-Socratics, becomes,
significantly, the first Greek to make a daimōn invent writing,
though he tells his Egyptian tale to denigrate the invention
and probably does not believe it himself.) Under Near Eastern
or Egyptian influence, some Greeks attributed writing to the
three Fates (cf. Nabu) or to Hermes (cf. Thoth), but these
authors are Hellenistic or later.

In Norse tradition, Óðinn (Odin), King of the Gods—known as

Woden to Angles and Saxons and Wotan to the Germans—is
the discoverer, though not the inventor, of the runic alphabet.
The runes are endowed with supernatural power
and Óðinn/Woden, like Mercury, Hermes, Thoth, and Nabu,
is a god of magic. This is the reason Mercury's day (cf.,
French, mercredi, Spanish, miercoles ) in English
is Wednesday, from Woden's day.
Christian traditions attribute a number of national alphabets to
saints and missionaries. Wulfila (Ulfilas) devised a script for
Gothic and used it for his translation of the Bible into that
tongue. Saints Cyril and Methodios are usually credited with
the creation of Cyrillic, named for the former, which they used
for their rendering of the Scriptures into Slavonic, but some
scholars believe that the saints actually designed Glagolithic,
a rival early Slavonic script. Saint Mesrob Mašt'oç (Mesrop
Mashdotz) invented not one, but three scripts: one for his
native Armenian, still in use today; one for Georgian; and one
for the extinct Alwan (Albanian), a Caucasian language once
spoken in modern Azerbaijan.
Roots of Mystical Speculation
Mystical speculation on the alphabet and its letters stems
principally from two sources. The first is the Near East and
Egypt—for magic, mainly the latter. The second is the
Pythagorean tradition of Magna Graecia, where the western
Greeks tended to reject Ionian rationalism.
Pythagoras founded his religious-philosophical school at
Krotona in southern Italy around 531 bce. The complex
system he taught gave a central place to numbers (expressed
either by dots or by letters of the alphabet); these he believed
to underlie the phenomenal universe. Confirming him in this
conviction was his discovery that the principal intervals of the
musical scale could be expressed by arithmetic ratios. From
him or his school probably derives the seven-note scale that
is still used today and is still noted after the Greek fashion
with letters (A, B, C, D, E, F, G ). Later thinkers connected the
seven tones with the seven known "planets" (hence the
expression music of the spheres ), the seven days of the
week (named for the deified "planets"), and the seven vowels
of the Greek alphabet (Α,  Ε,  Η,  Ι,  Ο,  Υ,  Ω ); all these came to
play an important role in magic and mysticism.
Pythagoras strongly influenced Plato, who spent much time in
Syracuse with the Pythagorean Archytas of Tarentum
(Taranto). Plato popularized Pythagorean ideas such as
mind-body dualism and reincarnation and prepared the
intellectual ground for letter and number mysticism. A
generation later, the conquests of Alexander brought the
Pythagorean-Platonic strain in Greek thought face to face
with the philosophies and religions of the East, rife with
speculation concerning writing. The subsequent Hellenistic
and Roman periods are the formative eras for letter mysticism
of all kinds.
Letter Mysticism
Letter mysticism includes several kinds of speculations
associated with the alphabet. These conjectures are
associated with the shapes of the letters; the significance of
the various vowels, consonants, and syllables as well as the
enigmas connected to the alphabetic system as a whole.
These include the number of letters in the alphabet; the
nexus between the letters and the constellations; alphabetic
numerology; and symbolic characteristics of the letters.
Shapes of letters

Speculation about the shapes of the letters has existed since

very early times. In the Greek system Pythagoras himself is
said to have used the upsilon (Υ) to symbolize the initially
similar, but ultimately radically divergent, paths of virtuous
and wicked lives. Proklos in his scholia on
Plato's Timaios (3.225) therefore calls upsilon the gramma
philosophōn (philosopher's letter); in the Middle Ages, "ad
Pythagorae literae bivium pervenire" ("to come to the
crossroads of Pythagoras's letter") became proverbial for
"coming to a moral crux." Similarly, the psi (Ψ) on an Attic
relief may represent the golden mean followed by the
philosopher, who avoids extremes on either side.

Epsilon (Ε), if turned on its back (Ш), resembles a scale, and

thus represents justice. This, too, may be ultimately
Pythagorean, especially since Ε=5 in the Milesian system; it
is midway between alpha (Α=1) and theta (Θ=9) and
therefore signifies balance. With this may be connected the
famous Delphic Ε about which Plutarch wrote an essay.

The early Christians, too, saw religious significance in the

shapes of the Greek letters. Alpha (Α) and delta (Δ), each
with three lines, represent the Trinity. Tau (Τ) is recognizable
as the cross, as that inveterate skeptic Lucian (c. 117–c. 180
ce) had already pointed out (Letters at Law 61). Theta (Θ) is
the world (round with an equator). Thus Isidore of Seville (c.
560–636) was combining Christian with Pythagorean
symbolism when he declared that five letters are
mystical: ΑΘΤΥΩ (for Ω, see below).

Such speculation is also found in Jewish tradition: in the

Zohar (part of the Qabbalah), the letter he' (‫ )ה‬is
called heikhal ("palace, temple") because its shape suggests
one.
Vowels and consonants

By the time of Alexander the Great (356–323 bce), the Ionian

alphabet, with its seven vowels, had spread throughout the
Greek world. Athens had adopted it in 403–402 bce. These
vowels were soon the center of much mystical speculation, in
good part because they numbered seven, which also
designated the seven known "planets." Vowels were thought
to possess enormous power and were used on Coptic and
Greek papyri from Egypt to invoke the gods. Certain
combinations of vowels were deemed so potent that they
could create gods. The first, middle, and last characters in the
vowel series—Α, Ι, Ω—were also the first three letters
of ΑΙΩΝ. Moving iota into first position, we have ΙΑΩ,
identified with Yahu, a short form of the all-powerful
name Yahweh. The magical Eighth Book of Moses says that
the name ΙΑΩ is so mighty that God came into existence from
its echo. Fuller forms are ΙΑΕΩ,  ΙΗΩΥΟ, and ΙΕΟΥΩΗΙ (this
last has all seven vowels). One repeated formula
is ΤΟΝ  ΙΑΩ  ΣΑΒΑΩΘ  ΤΟΝ  ΑΔΟΝΑΙ, where ΙΑΩ (Sabaoth,
"hosts"), and ΑΔΟΝΑΙ (Adonai, "my lord"), are well-known
epithets of Yahweh. ΣΑΒΑΩΘ was etymologized by vowel
mystics as šäba'  ʿōt (bad Hebrew for "seven letters," i.e., the
seven in the Greek alphabet). Probably Α and Ω (Rev. 1:8f.)
were meant as the first and last of all letters, though Clement
of Alexandria (c. 150–215) believed that the vowel series
were meant. Given the importance of the number seven in
the Book of Revelation, that most mystical of New
Testament books, he may have been right.
The seven vowels often were equated with the seven
planetary spheres; Clement added that the vowels are the
sounds of the planets, hence the Α and Ω of Revelation.
When Hyginus (Fabulae 277) attributed the invention of the
vowels to the Fates, he was thinking of the planets' role in
astrological determinations of individual fates.
The consonants play a much smaller role in magic and
mysticism than do vowels. If the seven vowels in the Greek
alphabet corresponded to seven planets, then perhaps the
seventeen consonants represented the twelve signs of the
zodiac plus the five elements. The names of the five
elements, ΑΗΡ (air), ΥΔΩΡ (water), ΠΥΡ (fire), ΑΙΘΗΡ (ether),
and ΓΗ (earth), were spelled with exactly five consonants
(ΓΔΘΠΡ ) and five vowels (ΑΗΙΥΩ ). The twenty-four letters of
the Greek alphabet were assigned in pairs to the twelve signs
of the zodiac (Aries: ΑΝ ; Taurus: ΒΞ ; Gemini: ΓΟ ; etc.);
these were then read as numerals and formed the basis for
complex arithmetic and geometrical calculations of
horoscopes.
Syllables

On the walls of an archaic Etruscan tomb, an inscription (IG

XIV 2420) lists letters of the Greek alphabet and under them,
syllables consisting of a consonant plus a vowel: MA, MI, ME,
MY, NA, etc. (Etruscan lacks O ). Some have seen this as an
echo of Aegean syllabaries from the Bronze Age (e.g., Linear
A, B), which were similarly of consonant-plus-vowel type;
others consider the inscription to be a magical incantation.
Certainly magic papyri from Hellenistic and Roman Egypt
(e.g., Leiden Papyrus Y) such syllables as
incantations: Α,  ΒΑ,  ΓΑ, and so forth; Ε,  ΒΕ,  ΓΕ, and so on.
Marcellus Empiricus (10.70), a medical writer of the fourth
and fifth centuries, recommends such a set of syllables
(ΨΑ,  ΨΕ, etc.) to stop bleeding. The Etruscans may have
originated the magical use of syllables or inherited it from the
Aegean syllabaries; Etruscan refugees from Roman conquest
could have introduced them to Egypt. (Compare the Etruscan
book of rituals—and perhaps magic formulas—found on the
wrappings of the famous Zagreb Mummy.)
The whole alphabet

The number of letters in the alphabet was widely held to be

significant. Early Christian writers, following Jewish originals,
saw the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet as
representing the twenty-two creations of God, the twenty-two
books of the Old Testament, the twenty-two virtues of Christ,
and the twenty-two thousand cattle of Solomon (1 Kgs.
8:63; 2 Chr. 18.5). The twenty-four letters of the Greek
alphabet corresponded to the twenty-four hours of the day
and night, which in turn are double the number of months in
the year. Alexandrian scholars divided the Iliad and
the Odyssey into twenty-four books each, with each
represented by a Greek letter. It might seem far-fetched to
link this with solar symbolism, but some have compared the
350 cattle of Helios, the sun god (Odyssey 12.127–130) to
the 365 days of the solar year. Alexander of Aphrodisias,
commenting on Aristotle, suggests that the twenty-four letters
express the total of the twelve signs of the zodiac, the eight
spheres (seven planets plus Earth), and the four elements
(excluding ether).
The close link between the alphabet and the cosmos is well
illustrated by the semantic field of the Greek word stoicheion ;
it means "element, sound, letter of the alphabet; astrological
sign; proposition in geometry; number." The Latin
equivalent, elementum, may derive from the letter names L,
M, N plus the suffix -tum. Everything had a name and a
number, so the universe was built of letters as well as
physical elements. The alphabet contained all the letters
necessary to spell and utter all the names, known or
unknown, of all the deities in the universe, and thus to
possess power over them.
Since the alphabet was endowed with such enormous power,
its first and last letters could be thought of as containing and
encapsulating that power. The Hebrew word  ‫חוֹא‬ (ot ) means
both "sign, token, divine portent" and "letter of the alphabet";
significantly, it begins with alef, the first letter of the alphabet,
and ends with taw, the last. The alphabet came to represent
the whole universe, and ot came to signify "name of God" or
"God." One magical papyrus (Leiden Papyrus 5) refers
to ΑΩΘ, "before which every god falls down and
every daimōn cringes"; ΑΩΘ transcribes  ‫חוֹא‬, while also
comprising the first letter of both Hebrew and Greek
alphabets (Α/ ‫א‬ ) plus the last of each (Ω and Θ= ‫ח‬ ). The
statement "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and
the end" of Revelation 1:8, 21:6, and 22:13 should probably
be understood in this light.
Gematria, or numerology

The word gematria, used to allude to the numerical

significance of letters, comes from the Hebrew gemaṭriyyah,
or gimaṭriyyah, derived from the Greek geōmetria (geometry),
mirroring the origins of this occult discipline. Though there are
cuneiform parallels, the use of alphabetic signs as numerals
is a Greek invention. The archaic epichoric alphabet of
Miletos had twenty-seven letters: the familiar twenty-four
plus digamma, or wau (ς, representing /w/ ); qoppa (O̩,
representing /q/ ); and sampi (Ϡ, or Ϯ, representing /ts/ ). It
lent itself to serving as a numerical syatem, with Α–
Θ standing for numerals 1–9, Ι–O̩ for 10–90, and Ρ–Ϡ for 100–
900. Other numbers were expressed by the additive
principle ΙΑ =11, ΙΒ =12, ΡΝΖ =100+50+7=157; 1000=,Α,
2000=,Β, and so on (the strokes are later additions). This
Milesian system became dominant in the Hellenistic period
and was applied to the Hebrew, Coptic, and Arabic alphabets,
even though it fit them less well because they did not have
exactly twenty-seven letters.
With this additive principle, names and words could be read
as numbers. The Pythagoreans argued that every man,
animal, plant, and city had its mystical number
(psēphos; pl. psēphoi ), which determined the course of its
existence. It was a small step to identify this psēphos with the
sum of the letter-numerals in that name or word. This system
of arithmomancy spread rapidly in the Hellenistic period and
plays a vital part in Egyptian and Jewish religious practice
and later in Christianity and Islam.

The psēphoi played an important role in both religious and

secular life. The Sibylline Oracles (8.148) predicted that
Rome would last 948 years; this is the psēphos of ΡΩΜΗ.
The great Gnostic aiōn Abraxas may owe the exact form of
his name to its psēphos : 365. In the second and third
centuries ce, Romans identified Mithra, the Persian god of
light, with their Sol Invictus (Invincible Sun), patron deity of
the army. Contributing to this syncretism is
the psēphos of ΜΕΙΘΡΑΣ =365.

Even fragments of words were added up and considered to

be significant. Apion of Alexandria (first century ce) thought
that the first two letters of the Iliad,  ΜΗ (ΝΙΝ) =48,
represented the forty-eight total books of
the Iliad and Odyssey together. The Gnostic Valentinus saw
in the first two letters of Jesus' name, ΙΗ(ΣΟΥΣ)= 18, a
reflection of the eighteen aiōnes, the emanations of Divinity
central to Gnosticism. The Epistle to Barnabas (9.8) explains
the 318 servants of Abraham (Gn. 14:14) as the ΙΗ =18 of
the ΙΗΣΟΥΣ plus Τ (the Cross)=300.

The formulation of isopsēphoi (two or more words with the

same numerological value) became a central numerological
practice. It was believed that, should the psēphoi of two
words be equal, the words themselves must have a similar
significance. A favorite
Byzantine isopsēphos was ΘΕΟΣ (God)=ΑΓΑΘΟΣ (good)=ΑΓ
ΙΟΣ (holy)=284. Suetonius (69–after 122 ce), author of The
Lives of the Twelve Caesars, records a Roman
political isopsēphos, ΝΕΡΩΝ=1005=ΙΔΙΑΝ ΜΗΤΕΡΑ ΑΠΕΚΤΕ
ΙΝΕ (killed his own mother), directed against the matricide
emperor Nero. A sexual isopsēphos was offered by the poet
Straton (second century
ce): ΠΡΩΚΤΟΣ (rectum)=1570=ΧΡΥΣΟΣ (gold).

To make more isopsēphoi, Jewish arithmomancers

introduced elaborate variations. One gives each letter the
sum of the Milesian values of the letters in its name
(e.g., 111=80+30+1= ‫)פלא‬. Another reckons = ‫י–ע‬ ,9–1= ‫א–ט‬
9–1, and 4–1= ‫ ;ק–ת‬therefore  ‫הוהי‬ (Yahweh)= ‫בוט‬ (ṭob,
"good")=17.
No numerological mystery has held more fascination than the
"number of the beast" of the Christian
apocalypse. Revelation 13:18 exhorts the wise to "calculate
[psēphisatō ] the number of the beast, for it is the number of
a man [arithmos  … anthrōpou ]." This can only mean that the
number 666 (616 and 646 are manuscript variants) is
the psēphos of a man's name. Revelation 17:9 shows that the
beast is Rome (7 heads = 7 hills), so the man must be an
emperor. ΓΑΙΟΣ  ΚΑΙΣΑΡ (Gaius Caesar "Caligula," r. 37–41
ce) fits 616 perfectly; and for 666 there are several
candidates. Nero's name in Greek (ΝΕΡΩΝ  ΚΑΙΣΑΡ =Nero
Caesar, r. 54–68) [mis]spelled in Hebrew  ‫ ןורנ‬ ‫רסק‬, totals 666
("Caesar" should be  ‫רסיק‬ ). Titus (ΤΕΙΤΟΣ ) took Jerusalem
in 70 ce, destroying the Temple; identify him as a Titan, and
we have ΤΕΙΤΑΝ =666. Marcus Cocceius Nerva (r. 96–98),
first of the Five Good Emperors, seems an unlikely candidate
for "the beast"—unless he was considered Nero redivivus —
but Μ.  ΝΕΡΟΥΑ and Κ(ΑΙΣΑΡ)  Κ(ΟΚΚΕΙΟΣ)  ΝΕΡΟΥΑ both
=666. The equation ουλπιος (for Emperor Marcus Ulpius
Traianus, r. 98–117)=666 must be rejected; it depends on
final small sigma (ς )=6, but neither –ς nor ς =6 are attested
before the high Middle Ages. The true solution to this riddle
has not been established, though Μ.  ΝΕΡΟΥΑ as Nero
revived fits best with the traditional date for the composition
of Revelations.

It is noteworthy that the psēphos of ΙΗΣΟΥΣ is 888=4 × 222;

666=3 × 222. While 222=2 × 111 (cf. alef=111 above),
3+4=7; three, four, and especially seven pervade Revelation.
Thus the sum of the psēphoi of Christ and antichrist, divided
by 222, equals seven.
Later Numerological Speculation
Numerological speculation has continued to this day. The
Gnostic Marcus's complex system of numerology and other
occult uses of the alphabet had wide influence in the Middle
Ages, especially
among Jews and Muslims. In medieval Judaism numerology
flourished, and the Ḥasidim cultivate it in present times as
well. Numerology also played a prominent role in medieval
Islam, as for example in the Haft Paykar of the Persian poet
Niẓāmī. When used as numbers, the Arabic letters were
arranged in the traditional order (Arabic ʾabjad ) familiar from
Hebrew and Greek, and their values followed the Milesian
system. The usual order of the Arabic alphabet is based on
sound and letter shape. In the West, a different system was
used (A =1, B =2 … Y =25, Z =26), but psephological
speculation thrived there, too. One whose destiny was
influenced by it was Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821); long
before he attained power, he discovered
that BONAPART(E) =82=BOURBON and therefore believed
that he would one day rule France.
Temurah, Acronyms, and Acrostics
The significance given to letters led to the devising of
alphabetic ciphers; examples are temurah (simple
substitution ciphers), acronyms, and acrostics.
A largely Jewish practice, temurah (exchange) is found in the
Bible but was most highly developed by the Qabbalists.
Letters of the alphabet are represented by other letters
according to a definite scheme. The ʾatbaš ( ‫שׁבּתא‬ )
exchanges the first letter  ‫א‬ for the last  ‫ח‬, the second  ‫בּ‬ for
the penultimate  ‫ש‬, and so on. The results are significant:  ‫ךשׁ‬
‫=שׁ‬ŠŠK, "oppressed," for  ‫=לבבּ‬BBL (Babel) (Jer. 25:26),
and  ‫ בּל‬ ‫=ימק‬LB QMY, "heart of my enemy," for ‫םידשׂ‬
‫=כ‬KSDYM, "Chaldaeans" (Jer. 51:1) are early and well-
known examples. The variant ˒albam switches the first letter (
‫ )א‬with the twelfth ( ‫ל‬ ), the second ( ‫)בּ‬ with the thirteenth ( ‫מ‬ ),
and so on. Ziruf, or gilgul, involves anagrams of single words;
there were, for example, twelve possible
permutations (haviyyot) of  ‫הוהי‬, the tetragrammaton YHWH.

An acronym is a word each of whose letters is the first letter

of another word; the words represented by the acronym
usually form a title or phrase. Hellenistic Alexandrines thought
the designations of the five districts of their
city Α,  Β,  Γ,  Δ,  Ε (i.e., A, B, C, D, E, or 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
represented Α̱  ΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΣ  Β̱  ΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ  Γ̱  ΕΝΟΣ  Δ̱  ΙΟΣ  Ε̱  Κ
ΤΙΣΕΝ ("Alexander, king, [of the] race of Zeus, founded [it]").
Jews saw in the sobriquet of the great liberator Yehudah ha-
Makkabi (Maccabee, from Aramaic makkabā, "hammer,")—
spelled MKBY —an acronym of the phrase in Exodus 15: 11
"M̱i Ḵamokah Ḇa-elim, Y̱ahweh?" ("Who among the gods is
like thee, Yahweh?"). The most famous acronym is the Greek
word ΙΧΘΥ Σ (fish), standing
for Ι̱  ΗΣΟΥΣ  Χ̱  ΡΙΣΥΟΣ  Θ̱  ΕΟΥ  Υ̱  ΙΟΣ  Σ̱  ΩΤΗΡ (Jesus Christ,
Son of God, Savior). This meaning is probably secondary; the
original idea is a reference to Matthew 4:19: "I shall make you
fishers of men."
Acrostics begin each line or verse of a poem with the
successive letters of the alphabet. The oldest examples are
in Jeremiah 1–4, but acrostic poems occur elsewhere in the
Bible and are frequent in Jewish and Christian writings
throughout late antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Islamic Speculation Involving Letters

Qurʾanic verses are often preceded by unexplained letters

(e.g., ʾalif, lām, mīm, before sūrah 2), a phenomenon about
which there has naturally been much speculation and to
which mystical meaning has often been attached. The seven
letters absent from sūrah 1 have special sanctity and are
connected with the seven major names of God, seven angels,
seven kings of the jinn, seven days of the week, and the
seven planets. Shanawānī noted that both the Bible and the
Qurʾān begin with the letter B. A mystical thirteenth-
century Ṣūfī text holds that all God's secrets are hidden in the
Qurʾān, the entire meaning of which is contained in that
letter, ‫ب‬ (bā=B), and specifically in the dot underneath it.

Offshoots of Islam carried such speculations further,

particularly in Persia and Turkey. Faḍl Allāh of Astarābād
(late fourteenth century), founder of the Ḥurūfī sect
(from ḥurūf, pl. of ḥarf, "letter of the alphabet"), taught that
God reveals himself to the world through the thirty-two letters
of the Persian alphabet; the totality of these letters—and their
numerical sum—is God himself manifest. The Bektāshiyyah,
a dervish order prominent in Ottoman Turkey,
adopted Ḥurūfī letter mysticism as a basic tenet. In the
nineteenth century, the founders of the Bahā˒ī faith gave an
important place to alphabet mysticism and numerology.
The importance of the alphabet to mysticism and occult
science may have weakened in modern times, but alphabets
remain closely associated with religion. Roman Catholic
bishops still trace the alphabet on church floors during
consecration rites, and Jews and Muslims adorn their temples
with writings from their scriptures. Until recently, non-Arab
Muslim peoples all used the Arabic alphabet for their
languages, no matter how badly it suited them phonetically.
Similarly, Yiddish, originating in a Middle High German
dialect, and Ladino Spanish are written in Hebrew letters
because their speakers are Jewish. Slavic peoples use Latin
letters where Roman Catholic Christianity took root, but
Cyrillic, a development of Byzantine Greek script, in areas
where Orthodoxy triumphed. In nations of the former
Yugoslavia, the language formerly known as Serbo-Croatian
is written in the Latin alphabet by Catholic Croats and called
Croatian; in Cyrillic by Orthodox Serbs and called Serbian;
and formerly in Arabic script, but today in Latin, by Bosnian
Muslims and called Bosnian. Since the breakup of the Soviet
Union in 1991, although most Central Asian republics are
replacing the Cyrillic script with the Latin, Tajikistan, the most
strongly Muslim republic, announced plans to go back to the
Arabo-Persian alphabet. Even in a secular age, the religious
associations of writing are still apparent.
See Also
Astrology; Hermes Trismegistos; Names and
Naming; Numbers, overview article.
Bibliography
Franz Dornseiff's Das Alphabet in Mystik und Magie (1922;
Leipzig, 1975) remains the definitive work on the alphabet in
mysticism and magic. Every aspect of the question is
discussed in thorough and rational fashion. In addition to a
corpus of abecedaria ("Corpus der ABC–Denkmäler"),
Dornseiff provides a section of "Additions and Corrections"
that is rich in fascinating information. Dornseiff's book serves
as the basis of most works on the topic. Alfred Bertholet's Die
Macht der Schrift in Glauben und Aberglauben (Berlin, 1949)
should also be consulted for its general treatment of the
subject.
The origin of writing in the ancient Near East is treated by
Denise Schmandt-Besserat in "The Earliest Precursor of
Writing," Scientific American 238 (1978): 50–59, and in
"Reckoning before Writing," Archaeology 32 (May–June
1979): 22–31.

A lucid account of the Milesian system of alphabetic numerals

is given in Herbert Weir Smyth's incomparable Greek
Grammar (1916; rev. ed., Cambridge, Mass., 1956); pages
102–104 and 347–348 are especially helpful. Peter
Friesenhahn's Hellenistische Wortzahlenmystik im Neuen
Testament (1935; Amsterdam, 1979) is a thorough, although
overenthusiastic, attempt to find psēphoi and
isopsēphoi everywhere in the Greek text of the New
Testament, using the system Α=1, Β=2, … Ω=24, instead of
the Milesian. Vincent Foster Hopper offers a competent
exploration of numerical symbolism of the period, including
gematria, in Medieval Number Symbolism (New York, 1938).
For an example of current popular literature on numerology,
look at Martin Gardner's The Incredible Dr. Matrix (New York,
1976), which is interesting but, unlike many works on the
topic that repeat wild speculations with passionate conviction,
does not take itself too seriously.
Concerning aspects of the alphabet in Judaism and Islam,
articles in the Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1971) and
the Encyclopedia of Islam, new ed. (Leiden, 1960–) are very
informative, especially Gershom Scholem's "Gematria" and
Samuel Abba Horodezky's "Alphabet, Hebrew, in Midrash,
Talmud, and Kabbalah" in the former and, to a lesser extent,
G. Weil's "Abḏjad" in the latter. These encyclopedias are
especially valuable to the English-speaking reader, for
serious literature on religious and occult uses of the alphabet
in that language is scarce. Georg Krotkoff illustrates the uses
of letter and number mysticism in the Islamic Middle Ages in
his analysis of the Haft Paykar by the Persian poet Niẓāmī in
"Colour and Number in the Haft Paykar " in Logos Islamikos:
Studia Islamica in honorem Georgii Michaelis
Wickens (Toronto, 1984).
For Norse beliefs about the runes, see Lee M. Hollander, The
Poetic Edda (Austin, Tex., 1999), especially the Sigrdrífumál,
verses 6–22. Regarding the translator saints and their
alphabets, consult the relevant sections of Hans
Jensen, Sign, Symbol, and Script (New York, 1969). On the
current status of alphabets—and other writing systems—in
the world, a helpful guide is Kenneth Katzner, The
Languages of the World (London and New York, 2002).
Jon-Christian Billigmeier (1987 and 2005)
Pamela J. Burnham (2005)