Every letter placed in the column of heat is hot, and whatever is placed in the column of cold is cold; the same applies to dryness and moisture. We have not found this arrangement to succeed in every operation. Rather, it works by coincidence, like the numbers of the magic square.
(The Special Properties of the Forms of Letters and Their Spirits)
Know that these letters do not possess this special property insofar as they are letters, but insofar as they are forms. Since they possess forms, the special property belongs to the form. For this reason their action differs with different scripts, because their forms differ.
The forms of written letters are perceptible to sight. When their entities exist and their spirits and intrinsic life accompany them, the special property belongs to that letter because of its form and its combination with its spirit. Likewise, if a form is composed of two letters, three, or more, that form has another spirit, different from the spirit the letter possessed on its own.
That spirit departs, while the letter’s life remains with it, for only one spirit governs a form. The spirit of that single letter moves to the intermediate realm among the spirits, since a form’s death is its disappearance through erasure. This other form, composed of two letters, three, or however many, is not the same as the first letter, which was not composite—just as Amr is not the same as Zayd, even though he is like him.
(The Forms of Spoken Letters and Their Abiding)
