Out of somewhere
Among other things the Sepher Yetzirah groups the Hebrew letters by a simple but effective phonetic system based on how and where in the mouth the sounds are formed: in the throat, against the palate, tongue on the of the mouth, tongue against the teeth and with the lips. The first letters of each group–Aleph, Gimel, Daleth, Zain, Beth [ אגדזב ]–are pronounced ah-ga-dah-zah-bah. If you say it as a word, even silently, you can feel the progression from within your throat out to and through your lips. It works like a subtle mouth yoga if you say it repeatedly.
ah-ga-dah-zah-bah
ah-ga-dah-zah-bah
ah-ga-dah-zah-bah
ah-ga-dah-zah-bah
ah-ga-dah-zah-bah
It works best at a moderate pace, but you can play around with it, varying the speed. It gets more interesting if you ponder the symbolic meanings and association with the letters. Doing it backwards is an out-to-innish sort of thing. It doesn’t work that well with bah-zah-dah-ga-ah, but other combinations do.
If I figured right, given that there are four throat letters, four palate letters, five tongue to roof, five tongue to teeth and four lip letters, there are sixteen-hundred combinations. Quite enough to build a Golem if one goes in for that sort of thing. At any rate it is an interesting exercise in neurophysiology from the inside out.
I’m off Gian Mind in the morning… but it is mostly just to do yard work around my camp site for Drum ‘n Splash next week. I love summer.
