Edward’s Diary Entry 89: The "I": Does Blackletter have Asiatic influences?

The small or lower case letters are quite straightforward and follow in the footsteps of former scripts, as already mentioned. We can see them below, in an image because your browser on a PC will show them in script, but a mobile browser maybe will not. 

But what about the capitals? Why are they so complicated? Obviously in the first place because they were first used as initials at the beginnings of paragraphs, and therefore served as introductory decorations. The example here, the illuminated letter “P” for “Petrus” in the Malmesbury Bible, probably much later, around 1400, uses Blackletter, known as Gothic script. Many illuminated books were produced around this time, some of which were totally secular, describing the “fraudulent habits of the partridge which brings up the young of others as its own” or “Henry I confirming lands and privileges to the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury”, whereas others were reproductions of classical works or breviaries or psalters in Latin. Let’s take a look at the small letters first, shown here:

Then the capitals in Blackletter:

All these letters have at least double, sometimes triple strokes and interconnecting lines. They are special inventions, and don’t just “appear” or “evolve” without some conscious effort and reason. Counting from the “A” we see complicated contrivances throughout, with thin vertical lines and crossbars in all letters except at the sixth letter “F”, the ninth letter “I” and the 24th letter “X”. The final letter “Z” might qualify except for the two crossbars instead of the one thicker crossbar in the “X”. So 6-9-24 are the exceptions. See below:

The letters themselves number – as they do today – 26. Now that is the first curious thing about our letters. They coincide with the number of Sattwic virtues according to the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 16, that man must cultivate if he is to develop a strong mind and see the Truth. Why are there 26 virtues? They were listed millennia ago as the divine qualities that man needs to accept in order to possess a good and noble mind, rejecting the so-called demonical qualities, which are their opposites. And why are there 26 letters in the alphabet? Maybe it’s just chance, but there are some correlations to be found here. So let’s just take one letter and see what happens…

My introspection gave me the theory that a group of masters of spiritual wisdom working in their monasteries around the dawn of the 12th century decided to use these letters to convey a message. It is known that the development of Blackletter was influenced by Saracenic art, an Islamic influence from the Crusades. This is a possible bridge from the East to northern Europe... These erudite calligraphers took the simple Roman “I” and turned it into a true symbol of mankind. Seeing is believing, but no one seems to see it. But I thought I saw something and described it to myself as follows:

We are talking about the ninth letter of the alphabet, and the number 9 has always symbolised many things: it is the highest of the integers, the maximum expression of the units; Dante described the 9 circles of hell; the Hindus speak of the 9 gates of the human body (there are nine apertures to the body); 9 planets were used by ancient astrologers to draw up their horoscopes; the Mohammedans speak of the 99 names of God; 9 is the completion of the enneagram figure first brought to the west by Gurdjieff, developed by Irazo et al. for the enneagrammatic personality types, and so on. So 9 is an important number.

This 9th letter in English represents the subject of all spiritual quests in line with the injunction “Know Thyself”, or the practise of Vichara, or Self-Inquiry. So it tempted me to dare an interpretation. And I started seeing it. This rather complicated depiction of an “I” in Old English typeface told me quite a long story…