THE GOD-LETTERS 
411 
Good! We'll call it D-Day and drop our paratroops . 0 is a 
sharp, sudden, forceful explosive sound, cut off smartly. Now 
then I can't tell whether 
you will connect this with 
ejaculation, with the idea of paternity. Whether or no, a vast 
number of people did so in the dawn of speech. Even to-day 
children seem instinctively to say "Dad" for "Father," 
though no allowance can be made for cases of mistaken 
identity. And the most ancient Father-Gods of the oldest and 
simplest civilizations are thus named. In Sumer, He was AD, 
or ADAD, whence the later Egyptian Hadit, and the Semitic 
Adonai. (There are also words like AVO, the creative 
Magick.) So also the Greeks in Syria knew Adonis, and the 
Latin Deus is itself the general word for God. Again, Valhalla 
houses Odin, Woden; and there are others. When the dental is 
complicated to a sibilant, as we shall see later, another idea is 
introduced ; while the lightening of the sound to T has yet 
another effect. 
Sanskrit also helps us with such roots as DETH to show, 
DAM to tame, DEVK to lead, DHEIGH, to knead, mOUld, 
DHER, to support, DO to give, DHE to put, and a whole 
group of words like Deva, a divine being. 
But that comes later : meanwhile, practise pronouncing 
these names, as also English words such as Do, Deed, Dare, 
Drive, Doubt, Dig, Dog, Dive, Duck, Dub while exploring the 
Abyss of your mind, and see whether ' you do not soon 
associate the D-sound with a swift, hard, definite, fertile and 
completed act. For a fair test, take only the oldest and 
simplest words, words which might naturally be wanted in 
the Stone Age. 
The next sound-group to be considered may conveniently 
be N. Here at once we have innumerable Gods and Goddesses 
flocking up: Nu, Nuit , Anu, Noah, John, Oannes, On, Jonah, 
et al. With the exception of On, a special case, all these divine 
or semi-divine Beings refer to the Night, the Starry Heavens, 
the Element of Water, the North, the Mother-Goddess, as 
appears when we consider their legends and rituals. N, Nun, 
means a fish and refers to the watery sign of Scorpio. To me