Something occurred to me recently that is surely not a thought completely original to me, and I'm curious about your perspective on it.
I was looking at a pair of Komainu, the animal guardian statues that watch from either side in front of Shinto shrines. Generally speaking, one is male, and one is female; one has its mouth open (in a pose called "a-gyou", which literally means "ah" form) and the other with its mouth closed (called "un-gyou", which means "un" form). The symbolism attributed to this is usually something along the lines of expressing the beginnings and endings of all things; in any case it's pretty clearly a yin-yang type of pairing. The vowel pair makes "a-un" and derives from the Hindu mystic sound "Aum", which in modern times usually comes in the form of "Om". As this is the natural combination of sounds one gets by opening their mouth its widest, and closing their mouth but still vocalising until the sound disappears, it's a logical aural expression of the concept of beginning and end.
Interestingly, Aum is not just the two parts of "Ah-um" as expressed by the two Komainu (or for that matter one of my favorite albums, the seminal Charles Mingus album, "Mingus Ah Um"); rather it is considered to be three syllables, with the "u" sound representing a midpoint between "a" and "m", where the mouth is neither fully closed nor fully open. Here is one of a few examples of a trisyllable explication given on the "Om" Wikipedia page: "The Aitareya Brahmana of Rig Veda, in section 5.32, for example suggests that the three phonetic components of Om (pronounced AUM) correspond to the three stages of cosmic creation, and when it is read or said, it celebrates the creative powers of the universe."
This all sounds rather similar to another mystic syllable which you are intimately familiar with via the Druid Revival traditions. AUM, when broken discretely into its three syllables, is pronounced as "Ah-oo-m". Notated in Japanese, this is written with the three characters 「あうん」. AWEN, when broken discretely into its three equal parts, is pronounced as "Ah-oo-en". Notated in Japanese, this would be written with... exactly the same three characters, 「あうん」. Not similar-- exactly the same. Now, this is due to a phonetic peculiarity of Japanese where all words with an ending sound of "n", "ng", "m" have been ironed out into the same character 「ん」, and which is generally pronounced like "m" with the mouth closed.
Certainly neither AUM nor AWEN come from Japanese, but I think it's pretty extraordinary that if you ever translated Druid Revival texts into Japanese, you would need to at least include a footnote explaining to Japanese people that despite it being spelled exactly the same way, it is in fact a *different* mystical power word from the one they already know, which *also* happens to express the creative forces of the cosmos in three parts...
And it makes me wonder if long ago, AWEN might not have been pronounced with a closed-mouth "m" sound at the end, and through phonetic drift in a reverse fashion to Japanese, came to be pronounced with an "n". This is all completely unscholarly speculation, of course.
What do you know of the history of the word AWEN? It predates Iolo Morganwg, does it not? Is it a case of convergent evolution? Cultural exchange lost in the mists of time? Simultaneous expression of a universal truth, at least as it is filtered through human vocal anatomy? Do you have any opinions on the matter, and is this a topic that to your knowledge has ever been explored in any meaningful way?
Awen and Aum
I was looking at a pair of Komainu, the animal guardian statues that watch from either side in front of Shinto shrines. Generally speaking, one is male, and one is female; one has its mouth open (in a pose called "a-gyou", which literally means "ah" form) and the other with its mouth closed (called "un-gyou", which means "un" form). The symbolism attributed to this is usually something along the lines of expressing the beginnings and endings of all things; in any case it's pretty clearly a yin-yang type of pairing. The vowel pair makes "a-un" and derives from the Hindu mystic sound "Aum", which in modern times usually comes in the form of "Om". As this is the natural combination of sounds one gets by opening their mouth its widest, and closing their mouth but still vocalising until the sound disappears, it's a logical aural expression of the concept of beginning and end.
Interestingly, Aum is not just the two parts of "Ah-um" as expressed by the two Komainu (or for that matter one of my favorite albums, the seminal Charles Mingus album, "Mingus Ah Um"); rather it is considered to be three syllables, with the "u" sound representing a midpoint between "a" and "m", where the mouth is neither fully closed nor fully open. Here is one of a few examples of a trisyllable explication given on the "Om" Wikipedia page: "The Aitareya Brahmana of Rig Veda, in section 5.32, for example suggests that the three phonetic components of Om (pronounced AUM) correspond to the three stages of cosmic creation, and when it is read or said, it celebrates the creative powers of the universe."
This all sounds rather similar to another mystic syllable which you are intimately familiar with via the Druid Revival traditions. AUM, when broken discretely into its three syllables, is pronounced as "Ah-oo-m". Notated in Japanese, this is written with the three characters 「あうん」. AWEN, when broken discretely into its three equal parts, is pronounced as "Ah-oo-en". Notated in Japanese, this would be written with... exactly the same three characters, 「あうん」. Not similar-- exactly the same. Now, this is due to a phonetic peculiarity of Japanese where all words with an ending sound of "n", "ng", "m" have been ironed out into the same character 「ん」, and which is generally pronounced like "m" with the mouth closed.
Certainly neither AUM nor AWEN come from Japanese, but I think it's pretty extraordinary that if you ever translated Druid Revival texts into Japanese, you would need to at least include a footnote explaining to Japanese people that despite it being spelled exactly the same way, it is in fact a *different* mystical power word from the one they already know, which *also* happens to express the creative forces of the cosmos in three parts...
And it makes me wonder if long ago, AWEN might not have been pronounced with a closed-mouth "m" sound at the end, and through phonetic drift in a reverse fashion to Japanese, came to be pronounced with an "n". This is all completely unscholarly speculation, of course.
What do you know of the history of the word AWEN? It predates Iolo Morganwg, does it not? Is it a case of convergent evolution? Cultural exchange lost in the mists of time? Simultaneous expression of a universal truth, at least as it is filtered through human vocal anatomy? Do you have any opinions on the matter, and is this a topic that to your knowledge has ever been explored in any meaningful way?