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Alphabet Letters

Mem מ

MEM
Also Known As Mem
Hebrew Letters

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מ
Origin Develops the Achaemenid Aramaic chancery hand, adopted after the exile

Mem is the thirteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, its name meaning water and its gematria value forty. It is one of the three Mother letters of the Sefer Yetzirah, which are attributed to the three elements, and Mem carries the element Water. In the Hermetic scheme it corresponds to the tarot trump The Hanged Man and to the twenty-third path of the Tree of Life, joining Geburah to Hod. As water, it symbolizes the deep, formless, and fluid: the primal sea, the maternal waters, reflection, and the fertile depths in which forms dissolve and are reborn; fittingly it belongs to the card of suspension and surrender, the reversal that immerses the soul so a new understanding can rise. Mem also takes a final form (Final Mem) when it ends a word.

Facts
Disputed
Origin Period
Scholem places Sefer Yetzirah between the second and sixth century CE 5Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters
Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1961) surveys the manuscript recensions of Sefer Yetzirah and finds no single stable text: the surviving copies diverge enough in wording and in the letter-to-planet and letter-to-sign correspondences that quoting "the text" requires naming which recension is meant. Comparing the linguistic style, the doctrinal content and the external references made to the work across centuries of citation, Scholem argues the book could have been composed anywhere from the second to the ninth century CE, a span of roughly a millennium, with later Kabbalistic and Hasidic writers each reading it through their own era's overlay. The atlas follows Scholem's range rather than a narrower guess, and does not print the per-letter planet and sign tables at all, because doing so would silently pick one contested recension over the others.
Origin Period
Survives in three recensions that do not agree in detail 5Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters
Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1961) surveys the manuscript recensions of Sefer Yetzirah and finds no single stable text: the surviving copies diverge enough in wording and in the letter-to-planet and letter-to-sign correspondences that quoting "the text" requires naming which recension is meant. Comparing the linguistic style, the doctrinal content and the external references made to the work across centuries of citation, Scholem argues the book could have been composed anywhere from the second to the ninth century CE, a span of roughly a millennium, with later Kabbalistic and Hasidic writers each reading it through their own era's overlay. The atlas follows Scholem's range rather than a narrower guess, and does not print the per-letter planet and sign tables at all, because doing so would silently pick one contested recension over the others.
Origins
Origin Period
Develops the Achaemenid Aramaic chancery hand, adopted after the exile 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script
Origin Period
Not the script of the earliest Hebrew inscriptions 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script
Origin Period
Standard by the Hasmonean period; palaeo-Hebrew survives only on coins 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script
Place of Origin
The Levant, by way of the Aramaic administrative script of the Persian empire. 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script
Origin of the Name
Names travelled into Greek unchanged and meaningless 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script
Origin of the Name
Northwest Semitic words inherited from the older linear script 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script
Origin of the Name
Pictographic meanings (ox head, house, water) are modern reconstructions 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script
Sense of the Name
water 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script
The pictographic sense is a modern reconstruction from the letter name rather than a meaning attested in the script's own period, and the atlas records that position elsewhere on this letter. The name itself is inherited; the picture behind it is inferred.
Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern Use
A criticism of the predictive method, not of the tradition itself 4
Contested or Appropriated Modern Use
So many possible sums exist that a match can always be found 4
Contested or Appropriated Modern Use
Used as proof: the beast of Revelation, verse prophecy, Bible codes 4
Identity
Alphabet
Hebrew 1
Script Type
An abjad: the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew square script record consonants, read right to left, with vowels supplied either by the reading tradition or, in pointed texts, by the Masoretic vowel-pointing system. 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script
Position
Thirteenth of twenty-two in the Hebrew alphabet 1
Attributions
Associated Sound
Bilabial nasal m, as in English man 1
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Hebrew letter mysticism is a continuous, living Jewish tradition 2Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters
Meaning in the Attesting Source
One of the three mother letters, assigned WATER 3Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Runs through medieval commentary, golem lore, Abulafia, hasidic teaching 2Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Still studied and practised today 2Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters
Meaning in the Attesting Source
The mute, closed sound, against Shin's hiss and Aleph's silence 3Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters
Meaning in the Attesting Source
The three mothers pattern the elements, seasons, body parts 3Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters
Learn More
Mem: The Hebrew Letter of Water

Mem is the thirteenth Hebrew letter and one of the three mother letters; its name means 'water' and its value is 40. Mem has two forms, an open medial mem and a closed final mem, a duality the Talmud and later Kabbalah read as the open and hidden aspects of divine wisdom. The Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Formation), the foundational text of Jewish letter-mysticism compiled in late antiquity, divides the twenty-two Hebrew consonants into three groups: three 'mother' letters (Aleph, Mem, Shin) assigned to the elements Air, Water and Fire; seven 'double' letters, each with a hard and soft pronunciation, assigned to the seven classical planets and to seven pairs of opposites; and twelve 'simple' letters assigned to the twelve signs of the zodiac and the twelve months. As a mother letter Mem governs the element Water; its sound is the silent, murmuring counterpart to the hiss of Shin, and it is associated with the belly and the cold season.

A separate and much later system, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (founded 1888), mapped the twenty-two letters onto the twenty-two trumps of the tarot along the paths of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. This tarot correspondence is a modern Western-esoteric overlay, not part of the ancient Hebrew or classical Kabbalistic tradition. The Golden Dawn assigns Mem to The Hanged Man (trump XII), the figure suspended in the waters of reversal and surrender.

Mem: Scribal Tradition

Ordinary Mem is written as an open-topped shape, distinct from the fully closed square of Final Mem used at the end of a word, discussed elsewhere in this atlas; one verse preserves a famous exception to that rule. The Masoretic text of Isaiah 9:6, in a passage about an unnamed ruler's expanding dominion, spells the word lemarbeh, of the increase, with a closed final-style Mem in the middle of the word, where an open Mem is grammatically expected, an anomaly noted in the Talmud at Sanhedrin 94a.

The Talmudic passage records a tradition that the verse originally named King Hezekiah as a messianic figure, and that an angel sealed the letter shut, or the ink was miraculously fixed, to close off that reading once Hezekiah failed to fulfil it, leaving the closed Mem as a permanent trace of a redemption tradition holds was withheld.

However the anomaly arose, later scribal law simply requires it to be copied exactly as transmitted, a closed Mem standing where a plain reading of the word would call for an open one, on the strength of the received Masoretic text rather than any grammatical rule. Mem is also one of the Sefer Yetzirah's three mother letters, discussed elsewhere in this atlas, and its ordinary meaning, water, sits comfortably beside its open, flowing written form, a contrast the Isaiah anomaly makes only more noticeable by momentarily sealing a letter otherwise associated with movement and speech shut.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

The Hanged Man, Tarot

In the Golden Dawn Kabbalistic attribution, The Hanged Man corresponds to the Hebrew letter Mem by way of its Tree of Life path.

Source The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 6th editionIsrael Regardie

Derived from This

Mem M, Alphabet Letters

Malachim Mem stands for the Hebrew letter Mem, and carries its value of 40. Agrippa prints the three scripts in Book III of De occulta philosophia as tables of Hebrew equivalents. The sign shapes vary between the manuscript and printed traditions; the letter for letter correspondence does not.

Source Three Books of Occult PhilosophyHeinrich Cornelius Agrippa
Mem M, Alphabet Letters

Celestial Mem stands for the Hebrew letter Mem, and carries its value of 40. Agrippa prints the three scripts in Book III of De occulta philosophia as tables of Hebrew equivalents. The sign shapes vary between the manuscript and printed traditions; the letter for letter correspondence does not.

Source Three Books of Occult PhilosophyHeinrich Cornelius Agrippa
Mem M, Alphabet Letters

Passing the River Mem stands for the Hebrew letter Mem, and carries its value of 40. Agrippa prints the three scripts in Book III of De occulta philosophia as tables of Hebrew equivalents. The sign shapes vary between the manuscript and printed traditions; the letter for letter correspondence does not.

Source Three Books of Occult PhilosophyHeinrich Cornelius Agrippa

Related To

Am ࡌ, Alphabet Letters

Mandaic Am and Hebrew Mem occupy the same place in the twenty-two letter Aramaic sequence. Hebrew keeps the inherited noun as the letter name and the numeral value 40; Mandaic keeps neither. Where the Mandaic shapes came from is disputed, a cursive Aramaic hand or the Parthian chancery script.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)
Final Mem ם, Alphabet Letters

The word-final form of Mem rather than a separate letter. Hebrew writes five of its consonants differently at the end of a word, and the two shapes stand for one and the same letter. The value 600 recorded here is the extended mispar gadol reckoning; in standard gematria the final form counts 40, exactly as Mem does.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)
May (Ma) መ, Alphabet Letters

May and the Hebrew mem continue the Semitic m, one of the consonants no branch of the family has disturbed. The two letter names are the same inherited word.

Source Comparative Dictionary of Ge'ez (Classical Ethiopic)Wolf Leslau
Mem, Alphabet Letters

Both signs continue the same Northwest Semitic consonant inherited from a shared abjad ancestor; this is a cognate correspondence, not a borrowing in either direction. Ugaritic and Hebrew share the same twenty-two-consonant core, with Ugaritic adding six further signs Hebrew never developed separately.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)
Mem M, Alphabet Letters

Celestial Mem is a cipher glyph standing for the Hebrew letter Mem; Agrippa's Book III prints Celestial, Malachim and Passing the River as tables of Hebrew equivalents, letter for letter.

Source Three Books of Occult PhilosophyHeinrich Cornelius Agrippa
Mem M, Alphabet Letters

Malachim Mem is a cipher glyph standing for the Hebrew letter Mem; Agrippa's Book III prints Celestial, Malachim and Passing the River as tables of Hebrew equivalents, letter for letter.

Source Three Books of Occult PhilosophyHeinrich Cornelius Agrippa
Mem M, Alphabet Letters

Passing the River Mem is a cipher glyph standing for the Hebrew letter Mem; Agrippa's Book III prints Celestial, Malachim and Passing the River as tables of Hebrew equivalents, letter for letter.

Source Three Books of Occult PhilosophyHeinrich Cornelius Agrippa
Mim ܡ, Alphabet Letters

Syriac Mim and Hebrew Mem stand at the same place in the twenty-two letter Aramaic sequence and carry the same letter-numeral value, 40. The Syriac script grew out of the local Aramaic cursive of Edessa and the Hebrew square script out of the same Aramaic alphabet, so the two letters are inherited from one ancestor rather than borrowed from each other.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)
Mim ࠌ, Alphabet Letters

Samaritan Mim and Hebrew Mem are cognates at the value 40, both continuing the same Paleo-Hebrew sign. Hebrew writes a separate final form at the end of a word; Samaritan writes one shape in every position, because the finals belong to the Aramaic square script rather than to the Paleo-Hebrew line.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)
Mim م, Alphabet Letters

Cognate letters. Arabic mim and Hebrew mem both continue the twenty-two letter Northwest Semitic alphabet, and they hold the same place in the inherited order and the same numeral value, 40. Neither is derived from the other.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)
Mu μ, Alphabet Letters

Greek Mu and Hebrew Mem are cognates. Both continue the same Phoenician sign, which is why both carry the numeral value 40 in their letter-number systems. A shared ancestor, not a borrowing in either direction. The Greek alphabet was adapted from the Phoenician abjad in the early first millennium BC, and the Hebrew square script descends from the same abjad through Aramaic.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)
Mu μ, Alphabet Letters

Hebrew Mem and Greek Mu continue the same Phoenician mem; both carry the numeral value 40 in their letter-number systems.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)
Sources
1. The World's Writing Systems
Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.), Oxford University Press, 1996the chapter on the Aramaic scriptView the Source
2. Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid
Moshe Idel, State University of New York Press, 1990the chapters on the letter-combination traditions and their reception
3. Sepher Yetzirah (Book of Formation)
Anonymous (traditionally attributed to Abraham)On Mem as a mother letter and the element WaterView the Source
4. Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras Wrought
Underwood Dudley, Mathematical Association of America (Spectrum series), 1997the chapters on the beast, on the law of small numbers and on biblical sevensView the Source
5. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism
Gershom Scholem, Schocken Books, 1961the chapter on early Jewish mysticism, on Sefer YetzirahView the Source
Sefer Yetzirah: The Book of Creation in Theory and Practice
Aryeh Kaplan, Samuel Weiser, 1997On the three mother letters and the elementsView the Source
The Encyclopedia of Tarot, Volume I
Stuart R. Kaplan, U.S. Games Systems, 1978For the Golden Dawn attribution (The Hanged Man)View the Source
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