This page groups letters by how each one actually represents sound, whether as a consonant-only abjad character or a full vowel-marking letter. Wikipedia notes that "originally, the alphabet was an abjad consisting only of consonants, but is now considered an impure abjad," since scribes later added vowel points. Browsing by script-type lets a visitor tell a consonant-only letter from a vowel-marked one.
Facts
Overview
What Defines This GroupingThe twenty-two consonantal letters of the Hebrew alphabet, together with the five final forms written at the end of a word. Hebrew is a living script in daily religious and secular use, and these are its ordinary letters, not a magical alphabet. 2 Size of the Traditional Set Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern UseThe letters carry numerical values used in Jewish gematria, and the Sefer Yetzirah treats them as the elements from which the world was formed. Their attachment to tarot trumps and planets is a nineteenth-century Hermetic overlay and is not Jewish tradition. 4 Origins
Origin PeriodTwenty-two-letter consonantal alphabet from about 1000 BCE; written in the Aramaic-derived square script from about the third century BCE 2 Learn More
The Hebrew letters
This group gathers the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, the twenty-two-letter abjad in which the Hebrew Bible is written and which holds a central place in Jewish mysticism. In Kabbalah the letters are far more than signs: they are held to be the very instruments of creation, and each carries a numerical value, a name and a web of symbolic associations.
The browser will find the individual letters and their meanings. The entries describe each letter's sound, numerical value and the mystical significance attached to it, particularly in the Kabbalistic tradition, where the letters are mapped to the paths of the Tree of Life.
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. The World's Writing Systems
Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.), Oxford University Press, 1996pt. 4, on the Hebrew scriptView the Source 3. Sepher Yetzirah (Book of Formation)
4. A History of the Occult Tarot
Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett, Duckworth, 2002chs. 2 and 5View the Source Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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