Why letters?

When I am asked why I draw letters, which happens more than you may intuitively assume, the most honest answer I can give is simply “because that is what I started doing when I was five. And I’m not yet tired of doing it.“

But there’s another, maybe slightly vague, answer. It is to be found in Sefer Yetzirah. 

The circle of Sefer Yetzirah

Sefer Yetzirah is widely recognized as the oldest and one of the most significant works of Jewish mysticism. It was written at some point in the 2nd or 3rd century CE. It begins by painting a vivid picture of the creation of the world. It introduces the concept that everything in the universe, from the smallest grain of sand to the brightest star, is formed through combinations of the Hebrew letters. These letters, considered sacred and imbued with divine energy, act as the building blocks of creation. Each letter represents a unique creative force or energy, and their combinations give rise to the diverse elements that make up our reality.

Sefer Yetzirah unveils the idea that language is not merely a means of communication but a force that can shape and transform our existence. According to the text, the Hebrew letters hold within them the power to manifest reality, as they are intimately connected to the divine source. Through the proper arrangement and understanding of these letters, one can access the underlying structure of the universe and perceive its unfolding.

The book also posits a profound correspondence between the macrocosm (the universe) and the microcosm (the individual). It suggests that just as the Hebrew letters form the building blocks of creation, they also exist within each human being. The text presents a framework in which understanding the structure and energies of the Hebrew letters can lead to self-discovery and personal transformation, enabling us to align ourselves with the divine blueprint of creation.

Despite being busy with Hebrew letters since I was five, I hadn’t read Sefer Yetzirah until a few years ago. When I finally did, though, none of it was new to me. Both the idea of letters being the “atoms of creation”, so to speak, and the notion of them existing inside us. I feel this concept, this idea, expresses a profound truth about the world, both specifically Jewish and universal. 

And so it may come at no surprise that we find reflections of this concept in other explanations of reality, in the 20th century. 

Heidegger, most definitely not a Jewish mystic, claims that language is not just a means of communication but the medium through which our understanding of the world emerges. Without language, our access to reality would be severely limited or even impossible. 

And linguistic relativity is a 20th century theory, according to which language not only influences, but rather determines cognitive processes. In other words: we can think what we can describe, but not what we don’t have words for. And any multilingual person knows from their own experience how much difference a language makes: I am not the same person in the different languages I speak well. I feel things differently, I say different things, even my opinions and decisions change from language to language. In other words: my reality is formed by what symbolizes it. And so the idea that reality is in fact nothing more than the reflection of what symbolizes it, namely language and in our case: letters, is just one step away. 

While those two thought structures differ, they have something in common. Both reverse the role of the symbolized and the symbolizing. While we intuitively assume that reality exists before it is expressed, both Sefer Yetzirah and Heidegger and Strong Linguistic Relativity suggest a primary role to what traditionally would be considered a passive and transparent symbolizer. 

So a slightly more profound answer to the initial question may be: when drawing letters, I connect to myself in ways I can’t achieve by any other means. And at times, in moments of true flow, I get a glimpse at whatever is behind the veil. With language functioning as the abstraction of reality, and letters as fragmented language, I find transparency and cracks in our existence when meditating on single letters, letting them develop a life of their own, without being bound to the grammatical structure they normally are embedded in.