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D and T–The colour of these letters is red. The involution of the higher forces into the lower forms alluded to before now begins. D represents this infusion of life into matter; it is descent and involution, death or forgetfulness, perhaps, for a time to the incarnating power. T is evolution, the upward movement generating life; the imprisoned energies surge outwards and vegetation begins.

Ith and Ish–These correspond respectively to growth or expansion and vegetation; the earth, as Genesis puts it, “puts forth grass and herbs and trees yielding fruit.” The colour of these letters is green.

B and P–After the flora the fauna. B is Life or Being, animal and human. Humanity appears; B is masculine, P feminine. P has also a meaning of division, differentiation or production, which may refer to maternity. The colour here is blue.

F and V–The colour is violet. Evolution moves still upwards, entering the ethereal planes once more. Lightness and vastness are the characteristics of this stage: we begin to permeate with part of our nature the higher spheres of being and reach the consummation in the last stage, represented by

M–which has many meanings; it is thought, it is the end or death to the personality, it is the Receiver into which all flows, it is also the Symbol of maternity in a universal sense, it has this meaning when the life impulse (which is always represented by a vowel) follows it, as in “ma.” It is the Pralaya of the worlds; the lips close as it is uttered. Its colour is indigo.

O–The last vowel sound symbolizes abstract space, the spirit assumes once more the garment of primordial matter; it is the Nirvana of eastern philosophy.

I will now try to show how the abstract significance of these sound reveals a deeper meaning in the roots of Aryan language than philologists generally allow. Prof. Max Muller says in the introduction to Biographies of Words. “Of ultimates in the sense of primary elements of language, we can never hope to know anything,” and he also asserts that the roots are incapable of further analysis. I will endeavour now to show that this further analysis can be made.

I should not be understood to say that all the so-called roots can be made to yield a secret meaning when analysed. Philologists are not all agreed as to what constitutes a root, or what words are roots, and in this general uncertainty it should not be expected that these correspondences, which as I have said are not complete, will apply in every instance. There are many other things which add to the difficulty; a root is often found to have very many different meanings; some of these may have arisen in the manner I suggest, and many more are derived from the primary meanings and are therefore not intuitive at all. The intuition will have to be exercised to discover what sensations would likely be awakened by the perception of an action or object; or if the root has an abstract significance, the thought must be analysed in order to discover its essential elements. I described previously the manner in which I thought a single sensation, the perception of the colour Red, would suggest its correspondence in sound, the letter R. Where the idea is more complex, a combination of two, tree or four sounds are necessary to express it, but they all originate in the same way. The reader who desires to prove the truth of the theory here put forward can adopt either of two methods; he can apply the correspondences to the roots, or he may try for himself to create words expressing simple, elemental ideas by combining the necessary letters; and then, if he turns to the roots, he will probably find that many of the words he has created in this way were actually used long ago, and this pratice will enable him more easily to understand in what sense, or on what plane, any particular letter should be taken. I think it probably that in the Sacred Language before mentioned, this could at once have been recognized by a difference in the intonation of the voice. This may have been a survival to some extent of the chanting which was the distinguishing characteristic of the speech of the Second Race. (Secret Doctrine, vol. II, p. 198) In the written language it is not easily possible to discover this without much thought, unless endeavour has previously been made to re-awaken the faculty of intuitive speech, which we formerly possessed and which became atrophied.