The Alphabet That Changed the World

Book excerpt: Rabbinic tradition asserts that every letter of every word of the Torah is a word in itself. Author Stan Tenen demonstrates that each letter is also a hand gesture, and it is at this level that Hebrew forms a natural universal language. All people, including children before they speak and people without sight, make natural use of these gestures. In The Alphabet That Changed the World, Tenen examines the Hebrew text of Genesis and its relationship to the alphabet. He shows how each letter is both concept and gesture, with the form of the gesture matching the function of the concept. There is thus an implicit relationship between the physical world of function and the conscious world of concept. Using over 200 color illustrations, Tenen demonstrates geometric metaphor as the best framework for understanding the deepest meaning of the text. Such geometry models embryonic growth and self-organization and the core of many healing and meditative practices. Many subjects in contemporary science were derived from the methods and means available to the ancients; The Alphabet That Changed the World makes this authoritative recovery of the “science of consciousness” in Genesis accessible for the first time to the contemporary reading public.