To anyone reasonably well versed in traditional metaphysics, the meaning of some of the basic kanji is immediately and transparently obvious.

The traditional explanation of the kanji for “monarch”[right], for example, is that of the joining of the three worlds of Heaven, Earth and Maidenkind. But really anyone conversant with the traditional concept of monarchy would hardly need to be told this any more than she would need to be told that a circle with two dots for eyes and a line for a mouth meant “face”.

The picture shows the World Axis, common to all traditions, joining the three worlds (Heavenly, or solar/spirtual, Human, or lunar/psychic, Earthly, or substantial/material) and thus reconnecting all things with their archetypal Principles and establishing the Law of Heaven on Earth through the mediation of the Axial (in this world, human) being, headed, of course, by its principal and representative individual being, or Empress. This is so elementary as to be the metaphysical equivalent of ABC.

Suppose some scholar were to tell you that the “kanji” to our left – which means face – was actually not originally a depiction of a face, but of a shirt button. It came to mean “face” because shirts button right up to the neck, near where the face is, but the supposed resemblance to a human face is pure coincidence, though possibly useful as a mnemonic.

The correct scholarly answer to that is pish-tosh. Because even if it were true that the “face” kanji were originally a depiction of a shirt-button, it is absolutely evident that in simplifying and regularizing it the scholars who did the work were, at the very least, utilizing a “visual pun” that clearly depicts a human face. Anyone who has an elementary-school knowledge of art can see that. Unfortunately, many modern scholars, raised (or de-educated) in a tradition of pure materialism, do not have a knowledge  even that elementary of how human beings have actually thought for most of their history.

That the current kanji for “monarch” may have had, as one of its ancestors, a depiction of an ax, we do not dispute at all. The ax itself is a metaphysical symbol, and one that is actually not unconnected with the symbolism of the current “monarch” kanji – that is, its haft is a depiction of the World Axis that connects heaven and earth as well as uniting the dualities of manifest existence (and the Western hermeneutic connexion between “axis” and “ax” is by no means accidental).

In reducing the kanji to its current form, the ancient daisensei were simplifying, clarifying, and, in a sense, universalizing the metaphysical symbol to one that anyone (except a modern-educated Westerner) can read. In many cases, it would seem that local and particular meanings – certainly metaphysical in their primary reference , as that is the way traditional people think all over the world – were reduced to a simple and beautiful geometric metaphor (and all “abstract” thought is essentially metaphor) that reduces the metaphysical narrative to its essentials. The fundamental error of the “scholarly” approach is to assume that the earliest local and particular form is the “real historical origin” and that therefore the later simplification is somehow “inauthentic”.

This in turn is based on the idea that ancient thought was actually trying to do what modern western thought is doing (ie dealing exclusively with the accidents of the material realm) only doing it badly. Thus the only “root” a kanji (or any other word-form) can have is merely a matter of historical accident and not of the essential metaphysical nature of the word/concept. The lack of respect for the intellectuality of the daisensei who created the current forms of the kanji is at once breathtaking in its cultural arrogance and amusingly typical of the naive provincialism of Western (and Westernized) materialistic “scholarism”.

To take one more example, we are asked to believe that the kanji number ten (juu) is unrelated to the essential symbolism of the cross and is merely an “accidental” simplification of an earlier form, influenced by the kanji for a sewing needle.

It would seem pointless to ask if it is mere coincidence that the Roman symbol for ten is also a cross. The grasp of why the cross would represent ten in the minds of the modern scholar is so tenuous that coincidence would seem almost possible if one had no more data than they have. You may wish to read this article to understand a little of the intimate connexion between four and ten, and also why ten thousand (万 man) is a numerical unit in both Chinese and Japanese.

Once we learn to discount the cultural arrogance of Western profane scholarism and gain some respect for the traditionally established forms of the kanji, they may begin to seem a little less mysterious. Ironically it is precisely the de-mythologization and “accidentalization” of modern Western thought that makes them seem random. In order to understand, we need to re-mythologize – or rather to treat the existing mythic/iconic structure with the respect it deserves.

Miss Geneviève Falconer once said: “Most English-speaking people would benefit immensely from learning a first language”. The witticism is apt and much appreciated, but in my case it is more literal than it was ever intended to be.

As a space alien (as one of my fellow exiles so amusingly puts it) – that is to say, as a Novaryan – I am very aware that English is not really my first language, although currently it is my only language (I have a smattering of a few other languages, but am not yet fluent in any). I write books in English, so I suppose, up to a point, I have gotten into the cage with the chair and whip and made the language do some of the tricks I want it to do. But it is really not my language.

There are many things I want to express, and I kind-of know the words for them but those words don’t exist in English. It is an interesting challenge to try to force and twist the language into expressing what I need to say, and I don’t claim not to enjoy it, at least upon occasion. I am in the unusual position of having a native speaker’s facility with the language, but not a native speaker’s culture and sensibility, and to be actuated by thoughts and feelings that do not seem to belong in English at all. It really feels like speaking a second language while not knowing more than snatches of my first language.

Language does not exist in a vacuum. All languages ultimately derive from “the first, the mother language”. Just as “numbers were before there were things to be numbered” (a saying from my homeland), so words were before there were incarnate beings to speak them. Just as music derives from the Primordial Note and descends via the unheard Music of the Spheres to the realm of things palpable (or. in this case, audible), so language derives from the Primordial Word and descends via the unheard Language of the Angels to the worlds of incarnate souls.

The languages that beings speak are formed by centuries of thinking and feeling. Languages, like all things have a warp and a weft – a vertical and a horizontal dimension. The vertical dimension of the fabric of language is the Primordial Language, without which no being could speak a word. The horizontal dimension is what happens to language through its exposure to the world of flux and change. This, of course, includes the special character of each dialect, or “language” into which the Primordial Tongue is broken, which is shaped by the particular character of the collectivity that speaks and forms that dialect. So English has its own particular character, as do French and German, Japanese and Chinese and all the other languages of Telluria and of all other worlds. Each one corresponds to a particular “genius”, with all its strengths and weaknesses.

No serious philologist doubts that the “progress” of language is a degeneration. The earliest known languages are the most complex, subtle and sophisticated (compare Sanskrit to Hindi, or ancient Greek to modern Greek – or any other like comparison you care to make). That the implication of this is “down from the Angels” rather than “up from the apes” they naturally avoid, for this would conflict with the ideology of their world, but the fact that the history of language is a history of decline is indisputable.

This is not to denigrate modern languages, since the decline is a part of the process of manifestation, and to a degree what languages lose in depth they gain in breadth – a poor exchange but one that is metaphysically necessary. My own is no exception, of course. Modern West Tellurian languages, though, and English in particular, have been shaped by centuries of de facto materialism and individualism. As such it is about as far from the sensibility of my people as a language can get. It makes me wonder why I – like several others – was deployed in the Anglosphere, though doubtless there are good reasons. It certainly makes the expression of the thoughts and sensibility that I have to convey a little more challenging.

On a personal level, it also very much increases my sense of isolation – which I suppose is not necessarily a bad thing (except from the standpoint of my own humble emotions) since I am not supposed to “go native” – and going native is near-to-inevitable in a life-deployment unless one is provided with unusual circumstances and a teflon soul. Which seems to have been the case with me.

I have had an opportunity to observe the effect of language as a “filter” for the manifestation of a soul in a dear friend who is an American English-speaker but fluent in Japanese. Her English-self is beautiful in a way that is rare in these times, but her Japanese-self is something else – something more beautiful and more true (I believe) to who she really is.

Japan has long been cited as something of a Tellurian analogue to my nation of Novarya (by no means an exact analogue, of course, even when discounting the inevitable intemorph/schizomorph differences – since the all-possibility is limitless and the exact same Form does not manifest twice). I had always accepted that, and have always been somewhat fascinated by the Japanese language, but  for the first time I became aware that there might actually be a language that allows my soul to be filtered into manifestation in a way closer to its true nature than is made possible by its current linguistic medium.

Time for the Great Experiment.