To get the ball rolling, I have copied over the existing conversation from this thread where it started as a long side conversation.

On Hebrew Terms:

Gypsy Lantern: It pains me to see Malkuth used as a pejorative equivalent to "mundane" or "everyday".

Evan: It pains me to see Malkot (mem-lamed-kaf-vav-tav) referred to as Malkuth. (Or Tiferet as Tiphereth, or Keter as Kether.) It's a really archaic spelling that's appropriate only if you're trying to pronounce Hebrew the way they did in Biblical times.

Gypsy Lantern: Hmm... I think I feel oddly more comfortable with the spelling/s "Malkuth/Tiphareth" over "Malkot/Tiferet", as it signifies that I'm talking about the Western magic appropriation of "Qabala", which I know a little about; rather than Hebrew Kaballah (is that the right spelling? Probably not...), which I know hardly anything about. I know how problematic that is, but the western magic version of this stuff does kind of exist as a thing in itself and you can have an immersive practice based on it, even if its foundations are shaky to say the least. It's a bit like how I prefer to use the spelling "Voodoo" rather than "Vodou", when I'm talking about my practice, to infer that it is more strongly derived from the New Orleans practice than the Haitian religion. It's probably just me being weird though.

Evan: Since it's an English transliteration of a Hebrew term, there's no right spelling. But for the Jewish version (whose practitioners likely would claim it's the ONLY version), I'd probably use "Kabbalah," since that's what Gershom Scholem uses.

As for "Malkuth/Tiphareth," personally I find the spelling a bit odd, since it presumes an ancient Hebrew pronunciation for the terms of a system that most likely was created no earlier than the Thirteenth Century. But there certainly is a long precedent for that spelling and pronunciation in Western occultism. (I presume it came from occult scholars who had studied Biblical Hebrew but not modern Sephardic or Ashkenazic dialects.)

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On Kemetic terms:

Evan: In a similar vein, I just learned that -- at least according to a Cairo Egyptologist -- the proper pronunciation of "Thoth" is "T'hut," so I've been pronouncing it incorrectly for decades. Go figure.

Xstacy: I just found out that Hathor is probably pronounced Het-Hert, so if you start it Evan I'll join in :)

Evan: From what I understand, "Hathor" is pronounced more like Hut-hor. One easy way to tell the fully human form of Hathor from Isis is to look for her cartouche, which consists of a hawk for Horus (hor) and a small square for enclosure (hwt).

(Can you tell I just returned from a trip to Egypt?)

EmberLeo: My understanding is that "Horus" is more properly "Heru", so for the reason you give, "Hathor" is more properly "Het-Heru" or "Het-Hert", and Thoth's more proper name is, of all things, Djehuti.

I dunno, it's what the Kemetic reconstructionist/revivalist folks tell me about the original and Helenized names. The glossary I'm familiar with is here, on the House of Netjer website.

Evan: In a quick review, it looks like written Egyptian didn't use vowels, and the spoken language evolved over the course of several thousand years, so it's unclear how some names and words were pronounced at any given time. (Amen might be Ammon, Amon, Amun, or even Imen.)

But according to this book, the Middle Kingdom pronunciation of Hathor appears to have been be "Hut-hor" or "Hut-heru," depending on whether the weak consonant w was included and transliterated. Thoth appears to have been "Ja-hoo-tee" or, as you said, "Djehuti."

Which makes me wonder if the Egyptologist I spoke to was using the modern Egyptian pronunciation of Thoth ("T'hut").

Truthfully, this is beyond me.

Mardol: T'hut makes sense because the deity is also referred to as Tahuti. Not a big jump. I always thought it was Thoth though. :) Now Tahuti makes a lot more sense.

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Okay! Everybody with me now? Ready! Set! PEDANT!

*runs for her glossaries*

--Ember--

Here's one I had an argument about recently:

I think meme rhymes with dream.

My friend says it pronounced mi-mi.

I realized that I think I've only read the word, never heard it being used...

It's supposed to rhyme with "gene", so you're right, freektemple.

I sometimes like telling people that words they're a bit unfamiliar with are pronounced in a silly sounding way, so I fully advocate you letting your friend continue to pronounce it like that.

I once convinced a young supermarket assistant that Demerera sugar was actually pronounced 'Dee-Mee-Ra-Ra' and got him to ask a manager where it was over the tannoy. I feel a bit bad about that one though. But only just a bit.

To actually contribute to the thread, one thing in witchcraft and wicca that gets mispronounced is 'Deosil'. Apparently it's not 'Day-o-sil', it's more like 'Diesel' or 'Dee-sil'. And then there's Samhain too. Brief anecdote - somone I know asked someone who knew Gerald Gardner how he'd pronounced it, hoping it would settle the argument between 'Sam-hain' and 'Sow-een' or 'Sow-ayn' only to have the old witch scratch her head and say 'I don't think I ever heard him say it, actually. He just said halloween.'

Here's some thoughts on Thoth pronunciation etc. I've written some hieroglyphic forms on the back of my old maths book. Excuse the scrappy writing. I'm rubbish at quail chicks... As Evan noted, no written vowels.



1. is from the Old Kingdom. The cobra is a dj or a j sound, as in James. The twisted rope or wick is called second H, or dotted H, and is heavier than an english H. Its a sharp out breath but not sharp from the back of the throat (as Loch), just a more pronounced breath out. The quail chick, w, is usually pronounced as 'oo' . Loaf of bread is a sharp t. So, Dja-hoo-t.

2. is Middle Kingdom and adds the reed leaf at the end (the two double strokes here) This only occasionally had a sound and when it did it was mostly a weak 'ee' or 'y' sound. Kind of like a soft out breath, in this case, or even just the sound of the teeth coming apart after the hard t.

3. is also from the Middle Kingdom and is interesting as it uses the biliteral sign di, the triangle, which could sometimes be pronounced as dji. This changes the pronounciation to Dee- hoo-t or Djee- hoo-t.

4. From late Middle Kingdom through the New Kingdom and later the cobra is often replaced by the hand. This is a hard d as opposed to the dj and i guess this can easily turn into a hard t in later periods and when it became hellanised. This makes sense as the T,hut you heard about Evan.

5. is interesting, popping up in the late period, as it uses the djed column. This is used as a biliteral sign, and may turn the pronounciation to djed-hoo-t. It's a symbol heavily associated with Osiris and the Duat and i suppose it was used here to convey Thoths role in the Duat.

6. All these more phonetic spelling are far less frequent than the ibis on the pearch though, sometimes with the t and y.

I have no idea when the common modern use of Thoth as Foff, came into usage though. Be really interesting to find out. I'll ask around some language types.

Hum, seems i've forgotten how to post images. Where did i go wrong there then?

You need to pop the "format comment as HTML" radio button, mate.

Aha! Of course. Cheers Mordant.

That is fascinating Clive.

I've just noticed a mistake in that though. 5. should end with tw not ti as i've jotted down there. Tut. It was late. I suspect the moving around of those two signs was just convenience and the pronounciation is still Djed - hoo - t. Egyptian hieroglyphic could be written right to left or left to right or up to down and they would very often move the signs around inside a word if it gave it a more pleasing aesthetic or meant that it would fit in better on a certain part of the ceiling etc.

clive:

I have no idea when the common modern use of Thoth as Foff, came into usage though. Be really interesting to find out. I'll ask around some language types.

It'll almost certainly be in the name's transmigration through Greek, where it gets written in a variety of ways - Thoth, Thooth, Tut and so on, but usually written with at least one 't' as the letter 'theta' - the voiced value of the letter changed from plosive (a 't' with the tongue right on the back of the front teeth) to a fricative (closer to our sound 'th') and so, in the transmission of texts, the name gradually changed with them. It's when that Greek spelling moves through renaissance Latin and gradually into English that people read 'Thoth' off a page phonetically. As a god of writing, I can't help but think he'd be pleased.

(FWIW, this is probably the source of those odd Thoth-sounding variants in the 3rd-4th century Hermetic texts, Tat/Tut son of Hermes etc.)

Thanks for posting that, shock. Very interesting.

Achad.

As in Frater Achad. How is that pronounced? Hard c?

Would this be the place for us to ask about acronyms, then? I think it makes sense, but I made the thread at the request of others, and if that's confusing, I don't have to do it that way...

--Ember--

mardol:Achad. . . . As in Frater Achad. How is that pronounced?

It's Hebrew for "one."

The "ch" is like "loch" or the German "ach."

I'd pronounce it "eh-chad." (As in the Shema: Shema Yisrael Adonai eloheinu, Adonai echad.")

No idea how Jonesy pronounced it.

And I see no problem addressing acronyms (which are "jarring jargon") here.

Ohh! Point! And here I was just going for annoying alliteration when I wrote it.

So in the Broomsticks thread I've collected these acronyms that are flying by, and their respective expansions:

ONA = Order of Nine Angels
CM = Chaos Magic
GD = Golden Dawn
RHP = Right Hand Path? as opposed to LHP = Left Hand Path?
MSS = Manuscript?

--Ember--

ONA is Order of Nine Angles, not angels.

That and the use of the archaic term "Hebdomadry" lets us know that October is referring to British Satanists.

Oooh, sorry, I mis-read that.

--Ember--

British Satanists? Damn, I was imagining a seven humped camel. Or would that be hepdromedary?

mardol:Achad. . . . As in Frater Achad. How is that pronounced?

I've been thinking about this some more. If the Hebrew word for "one" is pronounced "eh-chad," why did Charles Stansfield Jones spell it "Achad"?

I'd guess lousy Hebrew.

Echad (aleph-chet-dalet) starts with an Aleph, the first letter of Hebrew, so I'd guess there's a strong tendency to equate it with the English letter "A." But Aleph doesn't always have an "A" sound -- it's a silent letter that takes on the sound of its vowel.

In the word "echad," the vowel is a segol, a short e, as in "red."

But since written Hebrew doesn't usually print its vowels, I wouldn't be surprised if Jones didn't know that.

So the problem then is transliteration, not translation.

If the first letter in aleph-chet-dalet is an aleph then it could justifiably be written in english as an A because thats the first letter of the english alphabet, although phonetically it should be written as eh because that's how aleph is actually pronounced.

Is that right?

If that's the case, then his spelling just stresses that the word begins with the first letter of the alphabet and all the accumulated mystical symbolism that goes with that. It's not necesarily wrong because he didn't choose a phonetic rendering. Or is it?

I had a related observation poking at the back of my head on one of the starting observations, actually:

As for "Malkuth/Tiphareth," personally I find the spelling a bit odd, since it presumes an ancient Hebrew pronunciation for the terms of a system that most likely was created no earlier than the Thirteenth Century.

So... do we know that the folks in the Thirteenth Century were not using Biblical Hebrew for their mystical terms? It's a common enough practice over the centuries that I wouldn't think it's a safe assumption that because something was written down in the Thirteenth Century, it was necessarily written in Thirteenth Century language when they had just as much reason to put it in Biblical Hebrew themselves.

It's the equivalent of somebody today using the "Thou Shalt" phrasing on a new rule, and then having folks come by later and say "But in the early third millenium, "Thou Shalt" was not common usage, so clearly you have mistranslated what they said."

--Ember--

mardol:If the first letter in aleph-chet-dalet is an aleph then it could justifiably be written in english as an A because thats the first letter of the english alphabet, although phonetically it should be written as eh because that's how aleph is actually pronounced.

Is that right?

Aleph doesn't have a set pronunciation -- it's dependent on its vowel.

I suppose Jones might have chosen to spell it Achad because of the mystical associations of the letter Aleph, but it seems more likely (at least to me) that he simply looked at Aleph-Chet-Dalet, translated the letters individually as A-CH-D, and turned that into "Achad."

As for whether that's "wrong" -- well, who's to say?

EmberLeo:So... do we know that the folks in the Thirteenth Century were not using Biblical Hebrew for their mystical terms?

. . . . It's the equivalent of somebody today using the "Thou Shalt" phrasing on a new rule, and then having folks come by later and say "But in the early third millenium, "Thou Shalt" was not common usage, so clearly you have mistranslated what they said."

It seems to me that whether Thirteenth Century Spanish Jews used Biblical Hebrew for their mystical terms is a separate issue from whether they pronounced their Hebrew in the same way as people did in Biblical times.

Did Thirteenth Century Spanish Jews use Biblical Hebrew for their mystical (kabbalistic) terms? Sure -- many of them seem to have been taken straight from 1 Chronicles 29:11: "Thine, O LORD, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is Thine; Thine is the kingdom, O LORD, and Thou art exalted as head above all." (Lecha Adonai ha-gidula v'ha-gibura v'ha-tiferet v'ha-netzach v'ha-hod; ki chol ba-shameyim u-va-aretz lecha Adonai ha-mamelecha v'ha-mitnasey lechol l'resh.)

But did they pronounce those terms like Jews did back in Biblical times? I don't think so. Rather, I think they used medieval Sephardic pronunciation, so "Malkuth" would have been "Malkot."

Of course, I'm not fluent in Hebrew, and I'm not a linguist, so I could be wrong.

Urbanomancy: Is there a better word for "the magic of cities"? Apparently, in the 70s, there was an urban fantasy book written around the idea of "Megapolisomancy", called "Our Lady of Darkness" but I've never read it, and Megapolisomancy just seems like a terribly cumbersome name.

Though urbanomancy sounds kind of like "drain-o-matic" so that's not so great either.

Thoughts?

Metromantics? More to do with divination than magic perhaps.

aphilotus:Urbanomancy: Is there a better word for "the magic of cities"?

How about "City Magic"? Short, simple, and to the point.

After all, there's no need to coin a word that starts with some Greek or Latin term and ends in "-mancy." Is there?

Evan:
After all, there's no need to coin a word that starts with some Greek or Latin term and ends in "-mancy." Is there?

Oh I totally didn't coin it, and yeah, it's linguistically suspect.

More acronyms:*

HOGD = Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
NROOGD = New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn (which is none of these things).

MCTB = Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha (a book by Daniel Ingram)

And of course:
RAW = Robert Anton Wilson
LBRP = Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram

--Ember--

* I'm trying to catch them all, no matter how common they are, because I never know when my brain will just flatly refuse to parse another TLA after all these years in Silicon Valley...

Another one for your collection: the MMK = Mulamadhyamakakarika (early Buddhist philosophical text). Most necessary acronym ever.

Also HGA = Holy Guardian Angel. Less necessary.

I've been reading some old threads in a sort of end-of-year review if you will, and I had to google a handful of terms. Weirdly, most started with A:

Apatheia (???????) in Stoic philosophy refers to a state of mind where one is free from emotional disturbance.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apatheia

Apophatic - of or relating to the belief that God can be known to humans only in terms of what He is not (such as `God is unknowable').

Apotropaic - preventing or intended to prevent evil [from Greek apotropaios turning away (evil), from apotrepein; see apo-, trope].

Ataraxia (???????? "tranquillity") is a Greek term used by Pyrrho and Epicurus for a lucid state, characterized by freedom from worry or any other preoccupation.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataraxia

# Also: Ataraxia is an Italian neo-classical band who combine modern technology with archaic instrumentation over various media. They describe their music as a cross "between sacred and profane, ethereal and neo-classical, contemporary and early music". ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataraxia_(band)

Soteriology - the branch of Christian theology that deals with salvation as the effect of a divine agency
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

But it's not just for the Christians, Soteriology is the study of religious doctrines of salvation, which are a feature of various religions. Soteriology (Greek ??????? s?t?ria "salvation" from ????? s?t?r "savior, preserver" + ????? logos "study" or "word").
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soteriology

I have a perverse attraction to the different numerological-conversion values for different transliterations of terms. Which explains why I spend too much time playing with David Cherubim's English Qabalah engine. I find the associations stir good ruminations.

Whoops, those question marks in the above post were originally Greek letters that were obviously lost in the formatting. I copied and pasted that on a flying visit then didn't check in again and notice them until now. Sorry about that.

What would be a way of combining mortem and locution to mean "talking with the dead"? In context, it will be used for mock-important comic effect.

Morilocution? Necrophasis?

1. There *must* be a word for that already. It's not what psychopomps do, but Spiritualists and spirit mediums... Psychomancy? Sciomancy? Those are kinds of divination by speaking to spirits. 

Necrotelicomnication: The use of the book of the names and telephone numbers of the dead.

No?

I thought of "necrolocution," but "necro" is Greek, and I didn't want to combine it with Latin. "Necrophasis" as a Greek derived word would mean something like "dead appearance," no?

On a similar note, how would "sapiolection" work for "mind-reading"?

In Merriam-Webster, the etymology of necrology says "necro" is "New Latin"... I guess that means the stuff we make up in English. Etymology Online makes a distinction between "necro-" and "morti-" that I hadn't thought of, the first being a violent death (and Greek) and the second being a natural one.

Anyway, "necrology" is a word that means "obituary," especially if it's a list of death notices, and is a synonym for "necrologue." Which otherwise would be a fun word.

I have no proper Latin at all. I have a little Spanish, which sometimes misguides me, and a little Catholicism, which... well.... 

Wouldn't "psychelection" be "mind-reading"? "Sapient" means "thinking," doesn't it?  Although reading thoughts is what you're really doing. Ooo - Etymology Online again says "sapiens" is weirder than I thought - it comes from Latin sapere, which means "to taste, have taste, be wise." Wisdom-reading.

Nekrolog is what we say in Norwegian for obituary.

Dusto, I thought of necrophasis by way of apophasis/cataphasis. Altho in hindsight -phasis might something like say or tell instead of "talk with".

Cool, thanks everyone.

Necromancy is divination by talking with the dead, outside of role playing games where it involves raising them.

-E-

I'm not "with it," but all it took was a mention of the Burned Over District to once again get me obsessed with carny lingo -- earning your nut by burning the lot with a fireball show, gaffing a joint so the rubes can't win hard flash, turning the tip into a museum show full of bouncers.

This stuff really needs to make a comeback.

You should start telling a story in carny.