I have a peculiar mystical inkling about language, or rather about languages in the same language group or family, which is that there are no coincidences. Translingual synapses form, often in farflung and aleatory-seeming ways, but they often make sense if understood in a religious context. When it comes to the European languages, the religion that has gotten in their genetics is the obvious one. The same sequence of four letters, p, a, i, n, means “hurt” or “suffering” in English, and “bread” in French: A “coincidence” until one places it in the context of the Catholic sacrament. The English word fool is related to folly, which is of Latinate derivation; but another English word, of Old German or Old Norse derivation, is a homophone with the first syllable of that word. The language tells us the Fall of man was the result of folly. Similarly Eve is the name of the human being who fell before Adam, and likewise an eve is the night that “falls” before, say, Christmas. The Spanish word for “faith” is fe, which happen to be same two letters that indicate, on the Periodic Table, the element Iron (Latin, ferrum, the most abundant element by mass on earth). An idealized notion of faith being iron—unbending, figuratively; an armor; and ubiquitous worldwide—has been coded by the language. The widespread notion of one’s faith being located “deep within” links up with the physical depth of iron ore: Which is located, in turn, in the mind—excuse me, the mine. The near-homophonic nature of mind and mine, as in possession (this is mine), points out, likewise, where we most locate our sense of self, our personality, our desire. The soul is alone, Latin, solus, sole. It must atone, become at one, with God, which is in German, Gott, which back in English links up with got, something received in the past and the archaic sense of “got” as in “only begotten”, not to mention goad, something that pricks us to action. The iconographic unity of Christ and Apollo, the Son and the Sun, in the Last Judgement, or how in Byzantine iconography the Son’s halo resembles a small, physical sun, is so well-discussed as to need no further elaboration. But I might as well point out that halo has a phonetic assocation, from the Greek all the way to Old English, with good health and welcoming or greeting—as manifested by the words “hail” and “hale.” These find their endpoint in English, this great linguistic crossroads. (Though I concede I can’t quite make hail, as in “frozen ice balls falling from the sky,” link up, unless there’s a figurative reference there to Lucifer, star of the morning, and all his rebel angels falling from heaven.)
To a certain mind, I understand, these instances—by no means the only ones to be found (or imagined), will seem like word games and cross-etymological coincidences. I do not protest. The mind—particularly the religious mind—seeks and finds patterns where no patterns are: The poet will naturally do this with language, in fact, poetry grows stronger the more wildly this is undertaken. The act of gratuitious pattern-finding in random data has its own neurological term, apophenia. Sounds like a goddess or nymph from Greek myth: Apophenia. Mnemosyne, Memory, was the mother of the Muses: I suspect we’ve just hit on the name of the midwife.