The Twenty-Two Letters
An ancient Hebrew book that built the world from letters and numbers, and gave them to the planets and the signs.
The lecture, painted and spoken
Watch The Twenty-Two Letters
The first three ideas play for anyone. Members watch all twelve, and every idea is written out below.
Your plan plays the whole lecture, all twelve ideas.
The twelve ideas
Each idea is one chapter of the film: its headline is the caption on the painting, and its words are what the Oracle says. The tag says what kind of claim it is: a fact from history, what a tradition teaches, what a symbol stands for, or a question for you.
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Fact
A world formed from letters.
The Sefer Yetzirah, the Book of Formation, is one of the oldest texts of Jewish mysticism. It teaches that the world was formed through letters and numbers.
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Tradition
Thirty-two wondrous paths of wisdom.
It opens with thirty-two wondrous paths of wisdom: the ten sefirot, the numbers, and the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, by which creation was engraved.
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Fact
Its age is still argued.
No one knows when it was written. Scholars' guesses run from the second century after Christ to the ninth. Its tradition gives it to Abraham.
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Tradition
Three mothers: air, water, fire.
It sorts the letters into three families. Three mother letters, Aleph, Mem and Shin, stand for air, water and fire, the roots of all things.
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Tradition
Seven doubles for seven planets.
Seven double letters, each of which once had two sounds, are given to the seven planets, the seven days of the week, and the seven gates of the face.
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Tradition
Twelve simples for twelve signs.
Twelve simple letters are given to the twelve signs of the zodiac, the twelve months of the year, and twelve human faculties, from sight and speech to sleep.
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Symbol
Three, seven and twelve make twenty-two.
Three and seven and twelve make twenty-two. In this small book, the elements, the planets and the zodiac are all spelled from one alphabet.
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Fact
Every letter is also a number.
In Hebrew each letter is also a number: Aleph one, Bet two, on to Tav, four hundred. So every word has a value, and gematria compares them.
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Tradition
Carved from breath, set in the mouth.
The book says the letters were engraved with the voice, carved with the breath, and set in the mouth. To speak, in this teaching, is to share in creation.
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Tradition
A calf, and later the golem.
The Talmud tells of two rabbis who studied the laws of formation every Sabbath eve, and a calf was created for them, which they ate. Legends of the golem grew around this book.
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Fact
Tarot's trumps borrowed the letters.
From 1781 on, French and then English occultists paired the twenty-two letters with the twenty-two trump cards of the tarot. The pairing is modern, not ancient.
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Reflection
What are you spelling with your days?
If a world can be formed from letters, so can a life, one word at a time. What are you forming with the words you speak each day?
Sources
- Sefer Yetzirah, with Aryeh Kaplan's translation and commentary (1990)
- Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 65b
- The Comte de Mellet, in Court de Gébelin's Le Monde primitif, volume 8 (1781)
- Éliphas Lévi, Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1854 to 1856)
- Joseph Dan, Kabbalah: A Very Short Introduction (2006)
What this lecture does not claim. The book's date is disputed and its tradition gives it to Abraham. The pairing of the letters with the tarot began in 1781.
The Tree and the Letters
Jewish mysticism's map of the divine, the alphabet it was spelled in, and the cards that borrowed it.
In the dictionary
Common questions
Can I watch this lecture for free?
The first three ideas play for anyone. Members watch all twelve, and every idea is written out below. Every plan opens the whole lecture, and every other lecture in the hall, and a plan begins with seven free days.
Who made this lecture?
The Great Almanac wrote it from the sources listed on this page and tagged every idea, so history is never passed off as teaching. The paintings were made with an image model and the voice is the Oracle’s synthesized voice, as how we use AI explains.
Does watching send anything about me anywhere?
No. The only request the film makes is each idea’s spoken line, by its fixed number, and only after you press Play. Nothing about you goes with it.
