René Guénon

…the actual form of the Arabic letter nun … is made up of the lower half of a circumference and a point representing the center of this circumference. Now the lower half of a circumference is also a figure of the Ark floating on the waters, and the point at its center represents the seed enclosed within the Ark; the central position of this point shows in addition that this seed is the “seed of immortality”, the indestructible “core” which escapes all exterior dissolutions.

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Originally published in Études Traditionelles, Aug.-Sep. 1938, and posthumously in Symboles fondamentaux de la Science sacrée. English translation originally published in Studies in Comparative Religion, Vol. 14, No. 1 & 2. (Winter-Spring, 1980). Republished here with thanks to World Wisdom Books.