Talk:Om

"Pronounced AUM" ??

There are various references throughout the article to the "sound" "AUM", apparently always written in block capitals. In particular we have this: "the three phonetic components of Om (pronounced AUM)". Well, what on earth is it supposed to mean? From the fact that "Aum" redirects to "Om", I gather that both of these forms have been used to represent the subject of the article. I expect that articles on religious topics will have some obfuscatory imponderables within them, but a statement as specific as a reference to "three phonetic components" should contain something which we can identify as phonetic, such as bits of IPA. "AUM" is only really three phonetic components if it is pronounced /ei:-ju:-em/ or similar. Other parts of the article suggest that "Om" is a syllable: this really could do with some explanation... Imaginatorium (talk) 15:42, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

@Imaginatorium: , I believe you hit the nail on the head when you said that "I expect that articles on religious topics will have some obfuscatory imponderables within them"; granted, even this ambiguity could be explained in the article. Although I don't have a source, maybe you'll find this useful. I have learned anecdotally from various different sources in my own life--that is, from speaking with a Vedantic scholar, a swami who is practiced in maintaining the Vedic oral tradition, as well as from some ordinary elder Hindus--that how many pronounce aum is actually more than 'three' discrete components, although 'AUM' does seem to do it some justice at least in representing three large arcs of this pronunciation while maintaining the poetic brevity of the symbol. Even now, I am not exactly sure how I could possibly write the pronunciation as I would have to really study my oral organs and how to express articulation, or perhaps it's not effectively communicated in terms of discrete representation. It's "meant" to be enjoyed, shared, communicated on a human level in the realm of sound. The way I understood it was that it starts with the 'A' (ah?) and through a wonderful and perhaps 'natural feeling' movement of the mouth and tongue, ends with 'M'--but the smooth transition flows from A to M in a sort of journey. Take that with a grain of salt as it's anecdotal and I could definitely be off. This is only how it was expressed to me--I'm sure there are spiritual and metaphysical connotations that I am yet to fully comprehend too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nsawhney92 (talk • contribs) 11:49, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Say om in a sage like form you will hear the om three times in your mouth it's simple as that 950CMR (talk) 23:55, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

Komutr? info re:Khmer/Thai

• The article reads:

  "In Khmer literature, the symbol is called Komutr (Khmer: គោមូត្រ)."

  "Komutr" is a loan from an Indian language, the original word being Gomutra which refers to cow urine. Sounds dodgy enough to be vandalism, except it's what the the reference actually states so maybe I'm missing some cultural context. Having searched the relevant Khmer terms, I've found no other sources that affirm this claim. The two refs given for the Khmer info in the article both come from the same site. I don't read Khmer, so I'm relying on automatic translation, but they look to be unsupported blog posts. Accordingly, I suspect this is misinformation. Does anyone happen to know otherwise? Scyrme (talk) 02:49, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

  The best leads I've found are the Unicode characters Khmer Sign Koomuut [៚] (U 17DA) and Thai Character Khomut [๛] (U 0E5B) which are representations of the Urna - although the Urna/Unalome is often conflated with Om in Southeast Asia. Plenty of informal webpages mention this punctuation under this name. Still no idea why they're apparently named after cow urine. The original refs don't seem to elaborate, but that could just be bad translation. Regardless, afaik, they're still blog posts and so probably need to be replaced by better sources. Does anyone know of any better/more informative sources? Scyrme (talk) 03:13, 25 August 2021 (UTC); edited 21:13, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Thelemic numerology

I restored the link to English Qabalah since that page explains the principle of numerology/gematria while Hermetic Qabalah literally doesn't even mention it, and Crowley uses English letters in Liber Samekh wherein he identifies MGN as having a value of 93 so this technically counts as an example (of what is described in the lead of English Qabalah, at least). Additionally, Hermetic and English Qabalah aren't mutually exclusive, since the latter is inspired by the former anyway afaik; I'm not convinced it's an important distinction in this context. Regardless, English Qabalah is a far more helpful target. -- Scyrme (talk) 19:57, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Written representations: South Asia

Isn't "the vowel diacritic े (u)" wrong? That े is o, not u. The diacritic for a short u is ु. O at the beginning of a word is written as ओ, rendering oṃ in simple form as ओँ, then as ॐ. But I am not a Sanskrit scholar. Wokepedian (talk) 13:03, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Are things different in South Asia to India? Wokepedian (talk) 13:12, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

I've amended the article; how is it now? (Also, India is part of South Asia.) – Scyrme (talk) 16:06, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Capitalization

Om is mostly (though not consistently) capitalized in this article. Is there a reason for that? It's not a proper name as far as I understand. ehn (talk) 06:36, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Ehn - I have seen it mostly written as capitalized - "Om". It is a sacred syllable and symbol, so I think it is treated/considered as a proper noun. Asteramellus (talk) 22:21, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Satchidananda, in his book The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (Integral Yoga Publications, 2012, 978-1-938477-07-2), consistently prints OM in block capitals, as the sacred syllable: he does this for no other element in the entire book. There are 22 instances on pages 40–43. By the way, those pages also explain the way the A-U-M sounds merge in the mouth to sound like OM: and readers can try it for themselves, or course, to see how it works. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:49, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap yes you are right. Reading further in few other books also seems when referring to the sacred sound, "OM" (or "AUM") is capitalized - not just the first letter, as I thought earlier. Asteramellus (talk) 21:02, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Many thanks. Chiswick Chap (talk) 02:29, 17 May 2024 (UTC)