h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Apparently, the name Yod Heh Vau Heh was so holy that if a scribe saw it, he would leave his workr, take a long and thorough bath, return to work, write the name, take another very long bath, and continue on.

The Pentagrammaton, or five-letter word, is a name chosen to refer to Jesus. It is made by adding the letter Shin to the Tetragrammaton to get Yod Heh Shin Vau Heh, or YHSVH - quite similar to the name Jesus. Shin has the Qabalic association of body or physical matter, so the pentagrammaton refers to God made flesh.

The euphemism Adonai is Hebrew for Lord, and Elohim is composed of the words 'elohe,' meaning creatrix, and 'im,' the masculine plural ending. This implies that God is both male and female, and possibly comprises all things, or is multiple things...or something.

The Qabala contains ten names of God, one of which is the Tetragrammaton and nine of which are the Tetragrammaton with a suffix. I can't recall them off the top of my head, but they do include Tetragrammaton Adonai and Tetragrammaton Elohim.

Finally, Exodus 19, 20, and 21 each contain precisely 72 letters when written in Hebrew. It is said that if they are written out with the letters lining up in perfect columns and line 20 written backwards, the True name of God can be revealed by reading vertically. This name, known as the Shemhamphorash (Hebrew for 'divided name') is said to be so powerful that uttering it aloud can destroy the Universe.

>>Apparently, the name Yod Heh Vau Heh was so holy that if a scribe saw it, he would leave his workr, take a long and thorough bath, return to work, write the name, take another very long bath, and continue on.

This I doubt. Since the name appears nearly 7,000 times in the Bible, those guys would have been the cleanest in the universe.

>>pentagrammaton refers to God made flesh

No. The name Yeheshwah was quite a common one in Judaea, the most famous one before Jesus being Joshua, the destroyer of Jericho. It is likely that Jesus was called after Joshua.

>>so powerful that uttering it aloud can destroy the Universe

Has anybody tried this, for experimental purposes?

While I don’t claim to be an expert on these maters, the occult has been a subject of casual study for me over the last five years. The legend of the tetragrammaton and similar myths can be traced back to almost every major religion in the history of the world. Egyptian mythology makes reference to the goddess Isis demanding the true name of Ra as payment for her rehabilitate services when he fell ill. In certain cabalistic text I am familiar with the four letter name of god is actually an abbreviation for the unknowable 42 letter name of god. (what is six times seven? Probably a coincidence.) The use of secret names of god seems to be two fold: to allow only the initiated to invoke the true names of god, and to keep anyone from bringing god under their control (which is why Isis demanded the name of Ra).

yes and well... we are still here...damn foiled again

By the way has anyone besides me noticed the similarities between that little sphere thingy at the edge of the page and the top of the tree of life

hmm...
I first thought (3 odd years ago) that it was two fallacies arranged in a ying-yang simple...

"The use of secret names of god ... ."

There is no evidence that God's name was regarded as being in any way secret at the time the Bible was written. It is used, as Gnomon said, almost 7000 times therein, and the Jews were a literate culture. The Tetragrammaton also occurs (twice, if I remember correctly) in the Lacish letters, implying that it was used in common speach and corespondance. (There is nothing religious about the Lacish letters: they were business correspondance.) It also occurs on the records of foreign nations referring to Israel: it's on the Moabite stone in the Louvre, for example.

It was only later that a superstition of secrecy arose around the Name.

TRiG.

yes I have.