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Gematria and Numerological Divination

To: alt.magick,alt.magick.tyagi,alt.pagan.magick,alt.occult
From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nagasiva)
Subject: (O) Gematria and Numerological Divination
Date: 14 Dec 1998 14:12:23 -0500

49981214 IIIom (please keep the subject-headers current to topic at hand)

in the Occult Elist (see end of post for info), Kneph@aol.com:
# I am working on a monograph called *Mauve Magik*.... In gematria, 
# as you know, one plays with the numerical value of letters, 

usually playing the spelling of words or investigating the various
values of word combinations after a specific formula has driven
one to seize upon it as an indicator of subjective value.  many
Hermetics seem fond of the following (from Crowley's "Sepher
Sephiroth", who got this system from the Golden Dawn, who got 
it from some jewish kabbalists, as far as I know):

	1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8  9
	A B G D H V Z Ch T (these are crude ascifications of Hebrew ;>)

	10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
	Y  K  L  M  N  S  Aa P  Tz 

	100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
	Q   R   Sh  Th  K-f M-f N-f P-f Tz-f ("-f" means 'final'/last)

This can be Romanized so as to use the English letters as I
and many others have done (see the following URL for my example:

	http://www.hollyfeld.org/Esoteric/Avidyana/Plebe/l.gematria.fn

which is not the first time that such a Romanization has been devised
based on this common pattern of numerolinguistic -- in fact the idea
is pretty old, though logically-reproducable).

Crowley's 'Gematria' essay in _777 and Other Qabalistic Writings
of Aleister Crowley_, edited by Regardie, published by Samuel
Weiser (various printings, I have the 1973 edition) is a decent
introduction to the subject, including introductions to gematria, 
notariqon, temura, aiq bekr, and theoretics on these numerological 
systems.

don't expect much citation or historical analysis from Crowley,
however, as he tends to let the reader presume that he either
originates or 'reveals' the subject matter without reference to
specific sourcing.  this is an old occultist tendency toward
self-aggrandizement and protection of source, and has fallen
out of favor as the aeonic gate was trespassed.


# and when I started writing my monograph, I thought that magick 
# should be spelled *that* way (after all, Crowley introduced this 
# spelling in his works, and it worked for him).  

my understanding is that Crowley merely RE-introduced it, and that
it has been spelled in a variety of ways through the course of
history.  I like to spell it 'majik', myself, especially when
speaking oif the kaotik style which has become my spontaneity.


# But I thought, hey, my Muse is telling me to spell it "magik," 
# so I did.  Then I thought, why not try English gematria on it.  
# (That is the now-prominent system used by Chaos Magicians and 
# the followers of A. O. Spare, who was Crowley's equal in
# many ways, not to mention he had been initiated by a Witch!)  

Nigel Pennick does a good job of identifying the first usage of
Romanized gematria.  Crowley and others have played with the
idea many times (see his _Liber Trigrammaton_ for an interesting
trinary yin-yang gematric poem), and chaos magicians (some of
whom like Spare) enjoy it on account of its substitution of the
commonplace or ordinary for the arcane and supposedly powerful.

how does one assess whether Spare or anyone was Crowley's equal?
equal in what?  doesn't this presuppose the notion of that old
Hermetic spirituality-ladder, combined with pyramid schemes to
fleece the marks?  I'd think that chaos magicians would be done
with this sort of thing by now.


# Anyway, by English Qabalah/gematria, "magik" comes to 11, 

well, by one system it may, yes.  it seems to me that you may
wish to make known exactly *which* of the various Romanization
schemes you are using.  there are some mighty peculiar ones.
those I find valuable have a kind of internal logic to them,
such as the one I described above for Hebrew which is easily
adapted into any alphabetic system (Crowley used it for Greek,
for example, possibly Arabic also; see the following file for
more on the Greek bit:

    http://www.hollyfeld.org/heaven/Text/Magick/Crowley/000grkqbl.txt

as well as the rest of that directory for many other Crowley texts.

here is the easiest Roman letter gematric system that I enjoy 
(columns by singles, tens, hundreds):

   	1s     10s     100s
     01 A	J	S
     02 B	K	T
     03 C	L	U
     04 D	M	V
     05 E	N	W
     06 F	O	X
     07 G	P	Y
     08 H	Q	Z
     09 I	R	-
	
thus the following spellings of magic could be evaluated:

		magic	- 60
		majic	- 63
		magik	- 77
		majik	- 80
		magick	- 80
		majick	- 83


# which [11] Crowley says is the Number of Magick.  

if I remember, there is at least one gematric system which sets itself
UP based on this commentary by Crowley (which means that if one sets
out to find the value of magick one will obtain '11' automagically,
though I doubt it would have been 'magik' for Crowleyites. :>).  the
idea that 'the number of magick is 11' has less to do with gematria
and more to do with general numerology (the significance of numbers 
and their usage, as well as religiomystical assignments to them).


# (Well, actually, by English gematria, magik comes to 65, but we 
# reduce to 11 by "compression."  It will be seen, further, that it
# reduces to 2, a dangerous proposition, 

this reductionism/compression is one of the tricks of the gematric
numerologist.  combining numbers of a multi-digit to form a lesser
value is an old manipulation, as is adding one or two either way
in order to obtain the value one desires.

I find it more interesting to omit these combinatory effects, as
they inevitably lead to silly assertions (typically disclosing the
religious and/or cosmological bias of the speaker).


# You can find more info about English Qabalah on Linda 
# Falorio's web site.  

it is considered polite to provide the URL if you are going to
mention the web site.  when I went to Avatarsearch (I have very
little experience with their search engine and it wasn't easy
to find Falorio with my lynx-connect) I didn't get it.


# ...Also the Order of QBLH -- an excellent site.  

for this I went to the GOO:

	http://www.hollyfeld.org/~tyagi/Magi/gehennom.html

and searched on 'QBLH', coming up with the following URL:

	http://www.mindspring.com/~dwede/qblh/contents.html

if this is the same organization of which I have been aware
for some years, their politics sucks, but they have some
quite dedicated individuals who are members.  I cannot attest
to the substance in their web information.

blessed beast!
=========================================================================
nagasiva -- tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com; http://www.hollyfeld.org/~tyagi/
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