The letter aleph can be
thought of as composed of a vav and two yuds. While the aleph has a numerical
value of 1, the numerical value of vav and two yuds is 6+10+10 = 26, the
same as the most sacred name of God (yud-hey-vav-hey). This equation has
always been taken as a gematria proof of the
oneness of God. The other day, though, it occurred to me that the letter
aleph also contains a hint of the shevirat hakelim
the shattering of the vessels. To explain, recall that in physics the shattering
of the vessels is described as the Big Bang, and that it resulted from a
breaking of symmetry in the fabric of space and time. A careful examination
of the glyph for aleph alludes to this breaking of symmetry. For example,
at first glance, this letter seems to have rotational symmetry about a point
in the middle. However, if we rotate our aleph around this center point,
the resulting image is not completely identical to the original.
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Hence, the imperfect symmetry of the aleph is itself suggestive of the breaking of symmetry that led to the creation of the universe.
Another interesting mutation that may be done with the letter aleph is described below. Start with an aleph, and replace it by a curved line for the vav and two dots for the yuds.
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Now draw a circle around the diagram, and to break the symmetry, put a little "black fire" on "white fire".
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The result is the familiar yin-yang symbol of Taoism, and while this may be stretching credulity a bit, it's kind of nice to think of this symbol as nothing more than a stylized aleph!