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The Alphabet

and the Symbolic Structure of Europe


Joannes Richter

Abstract
In the 2nd century AD, the Greek astronomer Ptolemy described a theory for the solar system, which
had been prepared and developed in astronomical centers such as Ur of the Chaldees, Harran and
the megalithic Parc La Mutta.
From the Swiss city of Chur near the megalithic Parc La Mutta the personal pronouns of the 1st
person singular (in this text “ego-pronouns”) and the corresponding sky-Gods seem to have been
distributed over Europe in all directions: westwards (jeu → je, with a deity Diéu), southwards (jou
→ io, with a deity Dióu), eastwards (jau → ja, with a deity Deivos / Diáu) and northwards (“ih” or
“æ”, with a deity Tiw).
From the complexity of the location plan for the Menhirs at the Swiss planetary center of La Mutta
we may assume that the basic knowledge of astronomy must have been shared by Ur of the
Chaldees, Harran and the megalithic Parc La Mutta.
Astronomical authority seems to have allowed the megalithic astronomers and their royals to assign
planetary vowels to the personal pronouns and the corresponding deities of the megalithic
immigrants.
Originally each European section (west, east, north, south) may have been equipped with their own
“ego-pronouns” (jeu, jau, jou and ih) and the corresponding sky-Gods (Diéu, Deivos or Diáu, Dióu
respectively Tiw).
The solar system of the Greek astronomer Ptolemy
In the 2nd century AD, the Greek astronomer Ptolemy described a theory for the solar system that
was to survive for 14 centuries.
The theory however wasn't new, but had been prepared and developed in astronomical centers such
as Ur of the Chaldees, Harran and the megalithic Parc La Mutta.
Ptolemy's book, the "Almagest," contained accurate descriptions of the motions of
planets. It was the standard astronomical reference until the Renaissance.

The Ptolemaic model accounted for the apparent motions of the planets in a very direct
way, by assuming that each planet moved on a small sphere or circle, called an epicycle,
that moved on a larger sphere or circle, called a deferent. The stars, it was assumed,
moved on a celestial sphere around the outside of the planetary spheres. This theory,
although incorrect, could explain the apparent motions of the planets and also account
for changes in their brightness.1

Modern planetariums are built using gears and motors that essentially reproduce the
Ptolemaic model for the appearance of the sky as viewed from a stationary Earth2.

In the map “Atlas universalis et novus3” the orbits of the “planets” had been layered in ball-shaped
globes around the center of the universe, named “earth”. We know this is an error, but this symbolic
image has been burned into our brains and into our alphabet.
From Chur and La Mutta the European languages seemed to have been spread in four sectors
according to their planetary vowels: to the west (je, Diéu), to the south (io, Dióu), to the east (ja,
Diáu) and to the north (“ih” or “æ”, Tiw). In this paper I concentrate on the northern sector in which
the vowel has not been identified as clearly as in the other three directions.

1 Atlas universalis et novus (Amstelodami, 1708). The Library of Congress is providing access to these materials for
educational and research purposes and is not aware of any U.S. copyright protection

1 Ancient Times & The Greeks | National Air and Space Museum
2 The Ptolemaic Model - Polaris Project (Iowa State University)
3 Cellarius, Andreas, Peter Schenk (1660-1718 or 1719), G Valck (1651 or 1652-1726) , and J. Van Loon (1611-1686).
Harmonia macrocosmica, seu, Atlas universalis et novus, totius universi creati cosmographiam generalem, et novam exhibens: in quâ omnium
totius mundi orbium harmonica constructio, secundum diversas diversorum authorum opioniones, ut et uranometria seu totus orbis coelestis, ac
planetarum theoriae, et terrestris globus, tàm planis et scenographicis iconibus, quàm descriptionibus novis ab oculos ponuntur: opus novum,
antehac nunquam visum, cujuscunque conditionis hominibus utilissimum, jucundissimum, maximè necessarium, & adornatum.
(Amstelodami: Apud Gerardum Valk & Petrum Schenk, 1708. Map.; [Source] https://lccn.loc.gov/2011589506).
The planetary centers
Harran is, by virtually all scholars, associated with the biblical place Haran. Biblical Haran was
where Terah, his son Abram (Abraham), his nephew Lot, and Abram's wife Sarai settled en route to
Canaan, coming from Ur of the Chaldees (Genesis 11:26–32).
Therefore I wasn't surprised to discover a link between the names Jehovah and the seven planetary
vowels ιαεηουω (or alternatively IAΩΟΥΗΕ4), which are related to the seven visible “planets”.
According to the legend Abram could have experienced the astronomical knowledge, which had
been encoded in the (sacred ?) vowels.
The Swiss planetary center of La Mutta at the Rhine canyon was a rather sophisticated laboratory
for astronomical observations at the middle Bronze Age (1600-1200 BC), which may be estimated
by inspecting the map in an article “Falera – Graubünden – Bronzezeitliche und moderne
Sternstunden” by Robert Seeberger5.

Fig. 2 Plan of the Menhirs at the Swiss planetary center of La Mutta

I remember to have visited the Swiss planetary center La Mutta in 20116 on a travel to study the
etymological anomaly of the vowels in the personal pronouns iéu, iau, iou and ih in the
neighborhood of Chur.
I had been aware of the anomaly of the vowels but had not related these effects to the planetary
vowels of the astronomical centers at Harran.
In Æ for Æternity - A World made of Word(s) 7 I documented that in Western Europe two
etymological poles may be identified: the Æ-pole at the Scandinavian North pole and the IU-pole in
the Swiss city Chur8. Both poles seem to have generated a linguistic “field distribution” for the ego-
pronouns.

4 The Role of the Vowels in Personal Pronouns of the 1st Person Singular
5 Bronzezeitliche Astronomie (PDF, 770 KiB) in the magazine MegaLithos 2008 quoted as a weblink in Parc la Mutta
6 Source (in German): Tagebuchfragmente: Eine Reise in Die Schweiz (2011)
7 Æ for Æternity - A World made of Word(s) dated Feb 14, 2012
8 The Etymological Fieldlines (Published: 04 / 08 / 2012)
The Etymological Field Lines (2012)
The full pattern of the “Etymological Field-Lines” and the “poles” had not been understood. I may
have started by thinking the vowels for the pronouns had been varying by stochastic noise, which
accidentally happened to form a arbitrary distribution of vowels.

Fig. 3: Map of the etymological Æ- and I*U-poles


The Distribution of European ego-pronouns
The Distribution of European ego-pronouns seemed to be following a pattern from the central
episcopal center “Chur”:
• to the west (French, with an ego-pronoun: “je” [from Sursilvan: jeu]; God: Diéu),
• to the south (Italian & Spanish, with an ego-pronoun: “io” [from Sutsilvan: jou]; God:
Dióu, Dios),
• to the east (Slavic [?], with an ego-pronoun: “ja” [from Jauer: jau]; probably the PIE-God:
Diáus),
• and to the north (Germanic, with an ego-pronoun: “ih” or “æ”; God: Ziu or Tiw).
In the center Chur some of the ego-pronouns had been preserved slightly better in three-vowel
words: iéu, ióu, iáu, ih. Only the wide valley to the north, where the Germanic people concentrated,
seemed to have lost its precise formula. In the south the divine names Diéu and Dióu (Jupiter)
clearly correlated to the ego-pronouns iéu respectively ióu, but in the north the correlation had lost
some of its clarity.

Fig. 4: Distribution of European ego-pronouns


based on a Map of countries in Europe and the surrounding region
derivative work of Europe countries map.png by San Jose, published by San Jose (map)
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version
The ego-pronouns in the center of the Swiss Alps
In the center of the Swiss Alps the situation is complicated, but most ego-pronouns have been
designed as pure vowel combinations:

District group Language / Dialect Ego- ↔


pronoun
English I
Romansh Rhenish Romansh west Sursilvan jeu
Central central Sutsilvan jou
Romansh
Surmiran ja
east Putèr eau Bregaglia
Ladin - Engadinese
Vallader eu Jauer
Rumantsch Grischun jau
Val Müstair Jauer jau Vallader
Surselva Tujetsch (Thiuesch) west Tuatschin jeu (?)
Region Val Medel (scripture: Sursilvan)
South Tyrol Ladin Gardenese9 (Gherdëina) ie
Ladin Nones language-(Non Valley) mi
Val Bregaglia variety of Lombard Putèr
Latin ego
Italian io
Romanian eu
German ich
Table 1: “Ego”-Pronouns from Wikipedia's page Rätoromanisch (Romansh language)

9 The form of the Ladin language spoken in this valley is called Gardenese in Italian, Grödnerisch in German and
Gherdëina in Ladin.
The planetary overview
Unfortunately we do not really know how the seven Greek vowels had been related to the seven
planets.
I prefer a ranking which follows the sequence of the locations in the Greek alphabet A,E,H,I,O,Y,Ω
and the orbits in Ptolemy's description: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. This
results in: Moon = A, Mercury E, Venus H, Sun I, Mars O, Jupiter U and Saturn Ω.
This mapping scheme also follows the simplified allocations Moon = A, Sun I, Saturn Ω for the
archaic vowels I, A, U, which later may have been extended by additional vowels for Mercury E,
Venus H, and Mars O, Jupiter U.
According to the distribution of European ego-pronouns we may now attribute some planets to the
regions for the planetary vowels: to the west (je, Diéu), to the south (io, Dióu), to the east (ja, Diáu)
and to the north (“ih” or “æ”, Tiw).
• In the west the associated planet is Mercury (related to E), which according to the
Interpretatio graeca is also associated to a principal Germanic deity named Woden.
• In the east the associated planet is the Moon, (related to A), which had been the dominant
deity (named “Sin10”) in Harran.
• in the south theoretically the associated planet is Mars (related to O), which in the Names of
the days of the week is associated to the Germanic deities Tiw and Ziu. Originally Northern
Italy had been occupied by Italic, Etruscan and Germanic people. As a newcomer the Roman
Empire had been devoted to Iou-piter, which in its “i*u”-core “Iou” carries an “o”-vowel,
but according to the associated (unproven) relation should be associated with a “u”. The
vowel-combination OU in IOU however may also be interpreted as a long “ou”- or “oo”-
vowel (in Greek the vowel Ω). This “ou”-combination would allow us to interpret “iou”-
piter as IΩ-piter or even “iωu”-piter.
The I (the Sun) and U (Jupiter) had been reserved for the special initial I and trailing U letters in the
pronoun's vowel-pattern “i*u”. In symbolism they should not be used as central “*”-letters in the
pronoun's vowel-pattern “i*u”, which reduces the available vowels to A,E,H,O,Ω.
Apart from the associated vowels E, A, O or Ω for these three relations the Greek alphabet
A,E,H,I,O,Y,Ω only leaves the H-, the O- or the Ω-vowel for the northern sector.
• In the north the associated planet is Venus (related to “H”), which in Germanic
environments is associated to Freya. Depending on our assumptions for the southern sector
this association however also may vary between Mars (O) or Saturn (Ω).

10 The city became a bastion for the worship of the moon god Sin during the rule of Nabonidus in 556–539 BCE
Rod (Saturn)
We know the Slavs have changed their principal deity from Deivos to Rod (“Saturn”), who with the
Saxons may have shared a sanctuary site at the Harzburg in Lower Saxony.
In the first millennium CE, modern-day northern and eastern German lands were
inhabited by Saxon and Wendish—and generally West Slavic—tribes. It is unclear to
what extent Saxons and Slavs were distinguished. In the Saxon Chronicle (Middle
Saxon: Cronecken der Sassen)—an incunable dated 1492, written by the goldsmith
Conrad Bothe (c. 1475–1501) from Brunswick and printed in the studio of Peter
Schöffer in Mainz—, it is attested that the Saxons knew and worshipped "Krodo".[6]
Nineteenth-century German studies clearly identified Krodo as "the God of the Slavs,
the great God".[29] 11

This sanctuary at the Harzburg may have existed until 780AD:


Local Saxons worshipped prominently Krodo, identified by the Romans as Saturn,
whose statue stood on the site which later became Harzburg, in Bad Harzburg, modern-
day Lower Saxony. When in 780, during the Saxon Wars, the Frankish king
Charlemagne occupied the region, he destroyed the statue in the effort to Christianise
and submit the Saxon people, and as a new spiritual center he founded a Christian
cathedral in modern-day Osterwieck, in Saxony-Anhalt.

The Slavic deity Rod


Rod (Polish, Slovenian, Croatian: Rod, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian Cyrillic:
Род, Ukrainian Cyrillic: Рід) is a conception of supreme God of the universe and of all
its gods in Slavic Native Faith (Rodnovery). The same concept is also known as Sud
(Суд, "Judge") and Prabóg ("Pre-God", "First God") among South Slavs.[1]

As attested by Helmold (c. 1120–1177) in his Chronica Slavorum, the Slavs believed in
a single God begetting all the lesser spirits governing nature, and worshipped it by their
means.[2] According to Helmold, "obeying the duties assigned to them, [the deities]
have sprung from his [the supreme God's] blood and enjoy distinction in proportion to
their nearness to the god of the gods".[3]

In the earliest Slavic religion the supreme God of Heaven was called Deivos,[2] but this
name was soon abandoned[4] to be replaced by the concept of Rod. 12 At an early stage
of Slavic history "Rod" replaced "Deivos" as the conception of the supreme God.
Deivos, "Heaven", was the name of the God of Heaven in the earliest Slavic religion,
cognate with the Proto-Indo-European *Dyeus (cf. Sanskrit Deva, Latin Deus, Old High
German Ziu and Lithuanian Dievas).[9] The name "Deivos" was abandoned when the
Slavs, in line with the parallel developments in Proto-Indo-Iranian religion, shifted the
meaning of the Indo-European descriptor of heavenly deities (Avestan daeva, Old
Church Slavonic div, both going back to Proto-Indo-European *deiwos, "celestial") to
the designation of evil entities, and began to describe gods by the term for both "wealth"
and its "givers" (Avestan baga, Old Church Slavonic bog). At first the term "Deivos"
was replaced with the term for "clouds", cf. Slavic Nebo.[10] 13

11 Saxon tradition
12 Source: Rod
13 Etymology: Rod and Deivos
The Scandinavian and English “Æ”-pole
In Denmark the vowel-combination AE had been found in a rather limited area, described as
follows:
“In many western, northern, and southwestern Norwegian dialects, and in the western
Danish dialects of Thy14 and South Jutland, the phoneme Æ [ɛ] has a significant meaning:
the first person singular pronoun I, and it is thus a normally spoken word; usually, it is
written as Æ when these dialects are rendered in writing. In Faroese, it is pronounced the
same way, but it is written as eg”.
The spelling “eg” in Faroese for a word pronounced “Æ” suggested that the Scandinavian personal
pronoun “jeg” (“I”) had been equivalent to “Ih”. I remembered the letter “H” had been interpreted
as an equivalent for “Æ”.
In fact the ego-pronoun “Ih” and “Æ” seemed to be equivalents. This may have had an impact on
the mapping of the vowels in the alphabets.
The Germanic peoples used some special characters instead of the the Greek vowels ιαεηουω /
IAΩΟΥΗΕ. Especially the long E (H) and the long O (Ω) respectively transitions between A and E,
O and E caused problems, leading to the special characters in Nordic languages.

14 Thy is originally the same word as Old Norse þjóð ("thioth"), meaning people. The Danish Census Book of King
Valdemar II of 1231 mentions Thiuthæsysæl, i.e. the syssel of Thy. Thy is by some scholars thought to be the origin
of the Teutons;
The Scandinavian dialect pronoun Æ
In Scandinavian philosophy the long transition between A and E had been encoded by the ligature
“Æ” and has been used as an ego-pronoun and also as a symbol for eternity15.
In many western, northern and southwestern Norwegian dialects and in the western Danish dialects
of Thy and Southern Jutland, æ has a significant meaning: the first person singular pronoun I. It is
thus a normal spoken word and is usually written æ when such dialects are rendered in writing16.
In Old English the word æ is defined as; law, scripture ceremony, custom, marriage17.
In the Elder Futhark the runic symbol ᛇ (for *ī(h)waz/*ei(h)waz) symbolizes ï and æ.
In Younger Futhark the runes may have spelled the ego-pronoun “jak” (“I”) word as ᛁᛅᚴ, in which ᛁ
(Isaz) symbolizes J and ᛅ (Jēran) symbolizes the phoneme Æ/æ.

Alphabet Key ᚠᚢᚦ A Left wing I Right wing Ω


Number of symbols 3 1 9 1 9 1 1
Elder Futhark ᚠ ᚢ ᚦ ᚨ ᚱ ᚲ ᚷ ᚹ ᚺ ᚾ ᛁ ᛃ ᛇ ᛈ ᛉ ᛊ ᛏ ᛒ ᛖ ᛗ ᛚ ᛜ ᛟ ᛞ
ᚩ ᚳ ᚷ ᛇ ᛉ ᛟ
Old English Futhorc ᚠ ᚢ ᚦ ᚱ ᚹ ᚻ ᚾ ᛁ ᛄ ᛈ ᛋ ᛏ ᛒ ᛖ ᛗ ᛚ ᛝ ᛞ
o c ȝ eo x œ
Younger Futhark ᚠ ᚢ ᚦ ᚬą ᚱ ᚴ ᚼ ᚾ ᛁ ᛅa ᛋ ᛏ ᛒ ᛘ ᛚ
Transliteratie f u Þ a r k g w h n i j ï p z s t b e m l ŋ o d
Φ G S Ω
Gothic alphabet Ϝ ᚢ Α R Κ Γ Υ Η Ν Ι Ι Π Ζ Τ Β Ε Μ Λ Δ
Ψ ᛃ Σ ᛟ
Letters of Chilperic I Ζ Δ Ψ Θ

Table 2 Derivation of the Gothic alphabet from the Futhark alphabets


The vowels “ja” and “æ” for the ego-pronouns have been located in the center of the Futhark
alphabet, which designate these elements as the pillar to support the universe.
Each of the I-runes, “ae”- or “ja”-combinations ᛁ (i), ᛇ (ï), ᛁᛅ (“ja”) and ᛅ (“æ”) may have been
symbolizing the gigantic trees Yggdrasil, Irminsul, Thor's Oak, Sacred tree at Uppsala as the pillars
to support the universe.
The symbol ᛅ (“æ”) even belonged to the 4 additional letters Chilperic I (c. 539 – 584) had proposed for
the Latin alphabet18.

15 The ligature Æ is seen on gravestones of the 19th century, short for ætate ("at the age of"). (Source: Æ)
16 Source Æ
17 Derived from Proto-Germanic *aiwō, *aiwaz (“law”) - (Etymology 1 )
18 King Chilperic's 4 Letters: uui (as Δ or ᚹ), ω (as Θ or ʘ), the (as Z) and æ (as Ψ)
The distribution of ego-pronouns over Europe according to the vowels
From Chur the distribution of the personal pronouns and divine names may have been organized.
Originally the Slavic God may have been Deivos, although the name “Diaus” would be the
expected formula.
The Germanic starts with the ego-pronoun “ih”, which is a dialect form in southern Germany.
Northwards the ego-pronoun is transforming to “ich” and finally at the German/Danish border turns
into “æ”, which is documented in:
• æ - Pronoun : (dialectal, Fjolde19) I (first-person singular pronoun) 20
.

The vowel “Æ” for the dialectical Danish personal pronoun æ may have been derived from the
“H”-equivalent in the German ego-pronoun “ich”.

Fig. 5: Theoretical distribution of ego-pronouns over Europe according to the planetary vowels
based on a Map of countries in Europe and the surrounding region
derivative work of Europe countries map.png by San Jose, published by San Jose (map)
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version

19 Viöl (Danish: Fjolde, North Frisian: Fjåål) is a municipality in the district of Nordfriesland, in Schleswig-Holstein,
Germany. It is situated approximately 12 km northeast of Husum, and 30 km southwest of Flensburg.
20 “æ” in Anders Bjerrum and Marie Bjerrum (1974), Ordbog over Fjoldemålet, Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag.
Contents
Abstract............................................................................................................................................1
The solar system of the Greek astronomer Ptolemy........................................................................2
The planetary centers.......................................................................................................................3
The Etymological Field Lines (2012)..............................................................................................4
The Distribution of European ego-pronouns...................................................................................5
The ego-pronouns in the center of the Swiss Alps...........................................................................6
The planetary overview...................................................................................................................7
Rod (Saturn).....................................................................................................................................8
The Slavic deity Rod...................................................................................................................8
The Scandinavian and English “Æ”-pole........................................................................................9
The Scandinavian dialect pronoun Æ.......................................................................................10
The distribution of ego-pronouns over Europe according to the vowels.......................................11

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