The Alphabet Doorway

"I am glad that it was through me that you discovered your Red Fire", a friend of mine once told me.
Why this person (who has had no interest in the worlds of symbolism beyond what I brought to the table) would choose the term Red Fire, I am yet to figure out. Many people in my country seem to know things intuitively, and hold on to ancestral idioms even if this is not a conscious choice. She was referring to having indirectly caused one of my initiations. The way these work for me is they cause a psychological uproar which keeps me glued to my path of finding out about spiritual truths. Another word for it is obsession, which is a negative energy I have nevertheless learned how to use for receiving large quantities of information within a short period of time. This in turn balances me out to the point where the obsession fades out, and I have my spiritual truths.  

But back then I had not yet seen the ancient symbol for "Red Fire", and I did not look it up for a long while. That changed, however, with my purchase in 2006 of a New Zealand locally-made, paua inlay pendant which attracted me. I interpreted the circular opening within the solid triangle as a female energy within a male-dominated perspective. I then began to look further into it, and the results were quite amazing.

Here we can see how the symbol, if we take just the triangle and circle, represents the alchemical Fire and Water, respectively. The union of these is called the Secret Fire, which is also known by other names that try to suggest its ambiguous nature: Watery Fire, Fiery Water, etc.
But also notice how the two shapes are actually the Greek letters Delta and Omicron (I will also explore a connection of the latter with Theta).

What we know today as the Greek Alphabet was derived from the Phoenician one, replacing three previous writing systems for versions of the "Greek" language: Linear A, Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary. The Phoenician letters are ideograms, having evolved into both hieroglyphs and the modern phonetic-only alphabet. Here it is, as found on phoenician.org:

My letters therefore stand for "Door" and "Eye". (As a point of amusement, the "Camel" following right after "Door" reminds me of Jesus' quip, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the Eye of the Needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven").

In his book The Spell of the Sensuous - Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, David Abram highlights a process whereby humans lost touch with nature and thus began feeling "exiled" by becoming overly involved with abstract thinking, to the detriment of direct sensory experience. This was brought about through the powerful magic of writing, which works by displacing attention - from the world around us to a world of ideas. However, he says, while the letters were still largely pictures of animals, elements, etc, writing still reminded people of interconnectedness, rather than creating an illusion of separation within a linear and ever more fragmented (specialized) perception.

In Tarot, the two letters stand for the Empress (Daleth) and the Devil (Ayin), respectively - though it is worth remembering that these Roles are never what they appear to be.
Note: this decoding seems to reverse the male & female forces I had perceived in the beginning, embodied in the symbol. Or, more precisely, the perception of the truly dominant and the truly submissive aspect is turned on its head. Here we find that the male "genius" (also known as a demon or devil), while perceived as a freak occurrence with no connection to anything else in existence, has his true source in the subtle creative "muse" whose reign is supreme (also known as Nature). The role of the devil is to challenge all preconceptions which cause stagnation.

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