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English Qabalah
Encyclopedia
English Qabalah refers to several different systems of mysticism
related to Hermetic Qabalah
that interpret the letters of the English
alphabet
via their supposed numerological significance.
. He believes a qabalah is specifically related to three factors: a language, a 'holy' text or texts, and mathematical laws at work in these two. Gematria
, on the other hand, is a system in which letters are equated to number values. The letters comprising the word or name of person or object are then summed together. The number of this sum is termed the key of that particular word. Words sharing the same key are said to share properties. The letters are often tabulated along with their numerical equivalents.
, who also proposed a system called the trigonal alphabet, using successive triangular number
s. Another early system of English gematria was used by poet John Skelton
. An analogue of the Greek system of isopsephy
using the Latin alphabet appeared in 1583. Other variations appeared in 1683 (simply referred to as the 1683 alphabet, this system was used by Leo Tolstoy
in War and Peace
to identify Napoleon
with the number of the Beast
) and 1707 (Alphabetum Cabbalisticum Vulgare). These and other variations are detailed in Underwood Dudley's Numerology, Or, What Pythagoras Wrought.
More recently, Michael Bertiaux
described a system called Angelic Gematria in his The Voudon Gnostic Workbook (1989), and David Rankine described a system of English gematria using prime number
s which he calls Prime Qabalah in his book Becoming Magick (2004).. Samuel K. Vincent proposes a new system of Gematria and Qabalah based on an extension of previous systems and a concordance on Thelemic texts.
Agasha Temple of Wisdom
was described by William Eisen in his two volume The English Cabala (1980-82).
Three years prior to the writing of Liber XXVII, in 1904, Aleister Crowley wrote out the text of the foundational document of his world-view, known as Liber AL vel legis, or The Book of the Law
. In this text was the injunction found at verse 2:55; "Thou shalt obtain the order & value of the English Alphabet, thou shalt find new symbols to attribute them unto". By attributing letters to the trigrams of his later work, Crowley was attempting to fulfill this injunction, and felt he had succeeded, as noted in his Old Comment to the Book of the Law.
The order & value of the letters in the ALW Cipher are derived from the grid superimposed on one of the pages of manuscript of Liber AL on which this verse appears (sheet 16 of Chapter III). Also appearing on this page are a diagonal line and a circled cross. Thelemites believe the book of the law should ideally only be printed in Crowley's hand-written version, because the books says there are messages in the chance shapes Crowley's handwriting made, or any shapes he adds to the pages. Believers in New Aeon English Qabalah, following the ideas explained by Carol Smith, feel that reading any diagonal across the square one gets the order of the English alphabet to be used in the English Qabala. Whichever diagonal is read the order of the letters is obtained.
As there are ten squares per column, this method is equivalent to taking every eleventh letter of the alphabet as the order and then assigning them sequential values:
In the original handwritten text, the string of letters and numbers is divided into two lines, the first ending with "Y" and the second beginning with "X". Stratton-Kent thought that in the manuscript the 'X' at the beginning of line two looked like a multiplication symbol, so he added each line's values together and multiplied them; 17x11=187, the numerical value of the phrase "English alphabet", which he felt confirmed the correctness of the system.
Members of the Hermetic Alchemical Order of the QBLH began to work with the basic cipher. Other Thelemic groups have also adopted it.
in his 1984 book Concepts of Qabalah, more recently republished as Qabalistic Concepts. This system has been summarized by Joan Schraith Cole and includes correspondence attributions of the English letters to the positions on the Tree of Life
.
Linda Falorio also wrote a system of English Qabalah in Liber CXV: The English Qabalah. (1978),
written by Aleister Crowley
in 1907, called Liber Trigrammaton, sub figura XXVII -- Being the Book of the Mutations of the Tao with the Yin and the Yang.
In Liber Trigrammaton are 27 three-line diagrams known as 'trigrams', which are composed of a solid line representing the Yang, a broken line representing the Yin, and a point representing the Tao. Crowley later attributed the 26 letters of the English alphabet to these trigrams, in an attempt to fulfill an injunction found in his earlier work The Book of the Law
, or Liber AL vel Legis. In Liber AL, verse 2:55 states: "Thou shalt obtain the order & value of the English Alphabet, thou shalt find new symbols to attribute them unto". By attributing the English alphabet to the trigrams of his later work, Crowley considered this verse to be fulfilled, as noted in his Old Comment to The Book of the Law
.
The TQ is an extension of Crowley's work with Liber Trigrammaton. By considering the numerical value of the 27 trigrams as expressions in Base 3, (or ternary), and then transferring those values to the letters attributed by Crowley to the trigrams, a system of English gematria is created. Further use is made of the trigrams to create a true qabalah in the sense of the definition provided by Jake Stratton-Kent above. A primary feature of this qabalah is a new understanding of the Cube of Space and its 26 components.
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...
related to Hermetic Qabalah
Hermetic Qabalah
Hermetic Qabalah is a Western esoteric and mystical tradition...
that interpret the letters of the English
English alphabet
The modern English alphabet is a Latin alphabet consisting of 26 letters and 2 ligatures – the same letters that are found in the Basic modern Latin alphabet:...
alphabet
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
via their supposed numerological significance.
Qabalah vs. gematria
According to Jake Stratton-Kent, the English Qabala is a qabalah and not a system of numerology or solely gematriaGematria
Gematria or gimatria is a system of assigning numerical value to a word or phrase, in the belief that words or phrases with identical numerical values bear some relation to each other, or bear some relation to the number itself as it may apply to a person's age, the calendar year, or the like...
. He believes a qabalah is specifically related to three factors: a language, a 'holy' text or texts, and mathematical laws at work in these two. Gematria
Gematria
Gematria or gimatria is a system of assigning numerical value to a word or phrase, in the belief that words or phrases with identical numerical values bear some relation to each other, or bear some relation to the number itself as it may apply to a person's age, the calendar year, or the like...
, on the other hand, is a system in which letters are equated to number values. The letters comprising the word or name of person or object are then summed together. The number of this sum is termed the key of that particular word. Words sharing the same key are said to share properties. The letters are often tabulated along with their numerical equivalents.
Systems of English gematria
The first appearance of a system of gematria using the natural order of the English alphabet was developed in 1532 by Michael StifelMichael Stifel
Michael Stifel or Styfel was a German monk and mathematician. He was an Augustinian who became an early supporter of Martin Luther. Stifel was later appointed professor of mathematics at Jena University...
, who also proposed a system called the trigonal alphabet, using successive triangular number
Triangular number
A triangular number or triangle number numbers the objects that can form an equilateral triangle, as in the diagram on the right. The nth triangle number is the number of dots in a triangle with n dots on a side; it is the sum of the n natural numbers from 1 to n...
s. Another early system of English gematria was used by poet John Skelton
John Skelton
John Skelton, also known as John Shelton , possibly born in Diss, Norfolk, was an English poet.-Education:...
. An analogue of the Greek system of isopsephy
Isopsephy
Isopsephy is the Greek word for the practice of adding up the number values of the letters in a word to form a single number. The early Greeks used pebbles arranged in patterns to learn arithmetic and geometry....
using the Latin alphabet appeared in 1583. Other variations appeared in 1683 (simply referred to as the 1683 alphabet, this system was used by Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
in War and Peace
War and Peace
War and Peace is a novel by the Russian author Leo Tolstoy, first published in 1869. The work is epic in scale and is regarded as one of the most important works of world literature...
to identify Napoleon
Napoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
with the number of the Beast
Number of the Beast
The Number of the Beast is a term in the Book of Revelation, of the New Testament, that is associated with the first Beast of Revelation chapter 13, the Beast of the sea. In most manuscripts of the New Testament and in English translations of the Bible, the number of the Beast is...
) and 1707 (Alphabetum Cabbalisticum Vulgare). These and other variations are detailed in Underwood Dudley's Numerology, Or, What Pythagoras Wrought.
More recently, Michael Bertiaux
Michael Bertiaux
Michael Bertiaux is an American occultist and Old Catholic Bishop, perhaps best known to the general public via the publication of his massive Voudon Gnostic Workbook , a 615-page compendium of various occult lessons and research papers spanning the sub-fields of Voodoo, Neo-Pythagoreanism,...
described a system called Angelic Gematria in his The Voudon Gnostic Workbook (1989), and David Rankine described a system of English gematria using prime number
Prime number
A prime number is a natural number greater than 1 that has no positive divisors other than 1 and itself. A natural number greater than 1 that is not a prime number is called a composite number. For example 5 is prime, as only 1 and 5 divide it, whereas 6 is composite, since it has the divisors 2...
s which he calls Prime Qabalah in his book Becoming Magick (2004).. Samuel K. Vincent proposes a new system of Gematria and Qabalah based on an extension of previous systems and a concordance on Thelemic texts.
Systems of English Qabalah
In 1899 by Willis F. Whitehead described a system which he called English Cabala. More recently, a system related to the SpiritualistSpiritualism
Spiritualism is a belief system or religion, postulating the belief that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living...
Agasha Temple of Wisdom
Agasha Temple of Wisdom
The Agasha Temple of Wisdom is a spiritualist group founded in 1943 by Richard Zenor. After the publication of James Crenshaw's book Telephone Between Two Worlds in 1950, in which both Zenor and the temple were prominently featured, the temple became more popular...
was described by William Eisen in his two volume The English Cabala (1980-82).
Aleister Crowley
In one of the Holy Books of Thelema written by Aleister Crowley in 1907, called Liber Trigrammaton, sub figura XXVII -- Being the Book of the Mutations of the Tao with the Yin and the Yang are 27 three-line diagrams known as 'trigrams', which are composed of a solid line for the Yang, a broken line for the Yin, and a point for the Tao. Crowley later attributed these trigrams to the 26 letters of the English alphabet.Three years prior to the writing of Liber XXVII, in 1904, Aleister Crowley wrote out the text of the foundational document of his world-view, known as Liber AL vel legis, or The Book of the Law
The Book of the Law
Liber AL vel Legis is the central sacred text of Thelema, written by Aleister Crowley in Cairo, Egypt in the year 1904. Its full title is Liber AL vel Legis, sub figura CCXX, as delivered by XCIII=418 to DCLXVI, and it is commonly referred to as The Book of the Law.Liber AL vel Legis contains three...
. In this text was the injunction found at verse 2:55; "Thou shalt obtain the order & value of the English Alphabet, thou shalt find new symbols to attribute them unto". By attributing letters to the trigrams of his later work, Crowley was attempting to fulfill this injunction, and felt he had succeeded, as noted in his Old Comment to the Book of the Law.
ALW Cipher
According to Allen Greenfield, Carol Smith discovered the ALW Cipher, which she later called "English Qaballa", in 1974. Thelemite James Lees says he discovered it independently on November 26, 1976. Carol Smith published the cipher and the reasoning behind it before anyone else, in The New Equinox / British Journal of Magick. Her presentation was later summarized by Jake Stratton-Kent in The Equinox: British Journal of Thelema. Since then other self-published authors have discussed the system, referring to it as New Aeon English Qabala.The order & value of the letters in the ALW Cipher are derived from the grid superimposed on one of the pages of manuscript of Liber AL on which this verse appears (sheet 16 of Chapter III). Also appearing on this page are a diagonal line and a circled cross. Thelemites believe the book of the law should ideally only be printed in Crowley's hand-written version, because the books says there are messages in the chance shapes Crowley's handwriting made, or any shapes he adds to the pages. Believers in New Aeon English Qabalah, following the ideas explained by Carol Smith, feel that reading any diagonal across the square one gets the order of the English alphabet to be used in the English Qabala. Whichever diagonal is read the order of the letters is obtained.
As there are ten squares per column, this method is equivalent to taking every eleventh letter of the alphabet as the order and then assigning them sequential values:
A=1 L=2 W=3 H=4 S=5 D=6 O=7 Z=8 K=9 V=10 G=11 R=12 C=13 |
In the original handwritten text, the string of letters and numbers is divided into two lines, the first ending with "Y" and the second beginning with "X". Stratton-Kent thought that in the manuscript the 'X' at the beginning of line two looked like a multiplication symbol, so he added each line's values together and multiplied them; 17x11=187, the numerical value of the phrase "English alphabet", which he felt confirmed the correctness of the system.
Members of the Hermetic Alchemical Order of the QBLH began to work with the basic cipher. Other Thelemic groups have also adopted it.
William Gray's system
Another system was proposed by William G. GrayWilliam G. Gray
William G. Gray was a British occultist, the founder of the magical order the Sangreal Sodality and author of many books. He wrote extensively on the topics of ritual magic, Hermetic Qabalah, the nature of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. His focus was on the mystical unification of humanity...
in his 1984 book Concepts of Qabalah, more recently republished as Qabalistic Concepts. This system has been summarized by Joan Schraith Cole and includes correspondence attributions of the English letters to the positions on the Tree of Life
Tree of Life
The tree of life in the Book of Genesis is a tree planted by God in midst of the Garden of Eden , whose fruit gives everlasting life, i.e. immortality. Together with the tree of life, God planted the tree of the knowledge of good and evil . According to some scholars, however, these are in fact...
.
Linda Falorio also wrote a system of English Qabalah in Liber CXV: The English Qabalah. (1978),
Trigrammaton Qabalah (TQ)
One system of English Qabalah with a strong English gematria component was proposed by R. L. Gillis in 1996, and published on his website since 1998. Known as Trigrammaton Qabalah, or TQ, this system is based on one of the Holy Books of ThelemaHoly Books of Thelema
Aleister Crowley, the founder of the religion of Thelema, designated his works as belonging to one of several classes. Not all of his work was placed in a class by him.The remaining texts were written between the years 1907 and 1911...
written by Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
in 1907, called Liber Trigrammaton, sub figura XXVII -- Being the Book of the Mutations of the Tao with the Yin and the Yang.
In Liber Trigrammaton are 27 three-line diagrams known as 'trigrams', which are composed of a solid line representing the Yang, a broken line representing the Yin, and a point representing the Tao. Crowley later attributed the 26 letters of the English alphabet to these trigrams, in an attempt to fulfill an injunction found in his earlier work The Book of the Law
The Book of the Law
Liber AL vel Legis is the central sacred text of Thelema, written by Aleister Crowley in Cairo, Egypt in the year 1904. Its full title is Liber AL vel Legis, sub figura CCXX, as delivered by XCIII=418 to DCLXVI, and it is commonly referred to as The Book of the Law.Liber AL vel Legis contains three...
, or Liber AL vel Legis. In Liber AL, verse 2:55 states: "Thou shalt obtain the order & value of the English Alphabet, thou shalt find new symbols to attribute them unto". By attributing the English alphabet to the trigrams of his later work, Crowley considered this verse to be fulfilled, as noted in his Old Comment to The Book of the Law
The Book of the Law
Liber AL vel Legis is the central sacred text of Thelema, written by Aleister Crowley in Cairo, Egypt in the year 1904. Its full title is Liber AL vel Legis, sub figura CCXX, as delivered by XCIII=418 to DCLXVI, and it is commonly referred to as The Book of the Law.Liber AL vel Legis contains three...
.
The TQ is an extension of Crowley's work with Liber Trigrammaton. By considering the numerical value of the 27 trigrams as expressions in Base 3, (or ternary), and then transferring those values to the letters attributed by Crowley to the trigrams, a system of English gematria is created. Further use is made of the trigrams to create a true qabalah in the sense of the definition provided by Jake Stratton-Kent above. A primary feature of this qabalah is a new understanding of the Cube of Space and its 26 components.
L=1 C=2 H=3 P=4 A=5 X=6 J=7 W=8 T=9 O=10 G=11 F=12 E=13 |
Other systems
- Linda Falorio's Liber CXV: The English Qabalah (1978),
- Michael Bertiaux's Angelic Gematria (1989),
- David Cherubim's The Key of it All (1996),
- The English Qabalah of AREXZ 1496 (2001),
- David Rankine's system of English gematria using prime numbers called Prime Qabalah (2004),
- Simple English Gematria, Suggestive Gematria by J. P. Hughes (Holmes, 2008)
- Steve Wilson's English Rose Cabala (c 1985)
- "Frater Infek"'s four systems of the Gematria of Nothing (c 1995?)
External links
- The 11TH Continuum: English Qaballa Site - many pages on Lees' system - lists several sites related to English Qabalah