https://celestehorner.wixsite.com/words-in-bloom/c-cup

C is a CUP

C ... cup.... curl... coil...

Do you notice how the letter C looks like a cup? Geometric forms such as the curve, coil, crescent, and crater have names whose concept emerges from the arc shape of the letter C. Clothing which cradles the body, such as caps, capes, collars and cuffs (and even chain link bracelets and torcs), have names which feature the letter C.

In the following pages, we will explore how the pictographic symbolism of the alphabet forms a bridge of understanding between the languages of the world.

A Bridge to Understanding. Oregon coast. Celeste C. Horner 2020

Each letter is the central key to a constellation of meanings. The set of interpretations usually includes a paradox: For instance, O can be an OPEN hole, or a CLOSED loop.

O has other identities. O can be the sun, SOL, center of the great hoop of Earth's orbit, or the glowing full MOON. O could be oggling eyes of an OWL, the shocked reader of a BOOK, an observant LOOK-out, or an over-hearing SNOOP. O could be a mouth -- open to voice a story, oration, or opera song. O could be a an orb, a glittering single drop of water; or the concentric rings and ripples in the waters of a POOL.

Many words can be interpreted using the key of "O is the sun." The SOLAR O shines from the heart of English words like HOT, NOON, ORANGE, YELLOW, and GLOW. HOPE is metaphorically the glorious re-appearance of the sun on the horizon after a long, anxious night.

The "O is the Sun" key yields insight into many international words. It is the glowing core of SOL, the Spanish word for sun; YOM, the Hebrew word for day; JOUR, French for day; and HOY, Spanish for today.

The solar O is key to concepts of time and direction, such as 東 DōNG, meaning east in Chinese. Here is the metalinguistic symbolism: D is the half disk of the DAWN sun as it begins to peek over the horizon. O the daytime sun fully raised, and shining overhead. The letter n, is the tip of a finger indicating a direction; something that extends out, like a fingernail; the undulating rise and set of the sun; or the arcing canopy of heaven, and né, nativity, birth. G is a glow, from the sun, or the iGnited wick of a candle-flame.

In Maori, a word for dawn is "𝘢O." This word actually forms an animation of the sun rising from the horizon, Ω O! The Maori dawn word AO, is similar to 早 ZăO, which means early in Chinese.

So as you can see, the key of alphabet symbolism grants instant power to interpret a broad variety of languages. When written language was first practiced, on cave walls, baked cuneiform tablets, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Chinese oracle bones, symbols resembled physical objects, but over time, that correspondence was lost as letters were rotated and got more abstract.

Evolution of the letter A. Celeste Claire Horner

The imporant discovery presented here is that anyone can systematically deduce, recover, or reverse-engineer these lost correspondences for themselves! The technique is comparison written and phonetic transcriptions of words with the same letter to see what concept links the examples. With lots of collaboration, this needs to be done for all languages, for each tongue has unique things to teach us. We can reinvent the dictionary with vivid, new, international, meta-linguistic definitions which concretely demonstrate how meaning emerges from each letter of a word.

Kalika Shanti on Lake Atitlan