🕉 | Auṃ

Auṃ, or Oṃ (🔊), ॐ, is the sacred syllable and mantra in Hinduism and Buddhism. According to Wikipedia, Oṃ refers to

Atman (soul, self within) and Brahman (ultimate reality, entirety of the universe, truth, divine, supreme spirit, cosmic principles, knowledge)

as well as to “cosmic sound”, “affirmation to something divine”, “the whole Veda”, “the universe beyond the sun”, or that which is “mysterious and inexhaustible”, or “the infinite language, the infinite knowledge”, or that “with which one is liberated”, or “essence of breath, life, everything that exists”. Although the symbol ॐ looks a bit like number 30, I am pretty sure that its true numerical value is 42.

Given this amazing breadth of meaning, the term appears to be of limited usefulness. In the West, the symbol ॐ is mostly associated with Hindu temples, Yoga centres and New Agey tattoos.

The symbol ॐ is a ligature in Devanagari, combining characters ओ (au) and ँ (ṃ). Its expanded version is ओम्. Auṃ is represented as ওঁ in Bengali, ಓಂ in Kannada, ഓം in Malayalam, ଓଁ or ଓ‍ଁ in Odia, ௐ in Tamil, and ఓం in Telugu. In traditional Chinese, it is written as 唵 (Pinyin: ǎn).

More photos related to symbols and sea glass @ Shutterstock.