A, first letter and first vowel of the English alphabet and most alphabets of the Indo-European languages. Holy alphabets of early civilizations suggested birth and commencement by the letter A. This letter symbolized the architect of the Universe (the Creatress), who formed alphabets and bestowed them upon mortals. All the same, the majority of legends said woman primarily had them first.
Babylonians called the Great Mother “A”, the Beginning; or Aya, the Mother of All Things.1
Tantric sages called her birth-letter Alpa Akshara, “the letter A, which is considered the
‘mother of all wisdom.’ And therefore of all men of genius; all Bodhisattvas and
Buddhas are said to have been produced by ‘A’.”2
The letter A is also modified from the Egyptian hieroglyph representing the Eagle. In
mythology, the eagle commonly represents the Sun.3
The Phoenecian (Hebrew) symbol was aleph(ox), from a fancied resemblance to the head and horns of that animal. In the earliest Greek alphabet, aleph became the letter alpha; in turn, this became the Roman A, the form and general value of which were passed on to the peoples who later adopted the Roman alphabet.
The Greeks held similar views about the letter Alpha, which denoted the river of birth or
creation. Its other name was Styx, the river of death, for in the cyclic system
of the ancients, birth and death merged in a circular continuum. The river Styx
circled seven times through the Earth’s womb and emerged again as Alpha.
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