Path: newscene.newscene.com!novia!howland.erols.net!news-feed1.tiac.net!posterchild2!hollyfeld.org!occult-owner From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nagasiva) Newsgroups: alt.magick,alt.magick.tyagi,alt.pagan.magick,alt.occult Subject: (O) Gematria and Numerological Divination Date: 14 Dec 1998 14:12:23 -0500 Organization: Hollyfeld Information Systems Lines: 172 Sender: mail@www.hollyfeld.org Approved: alt-magick,alt-magick-tyagi,alt-pagan-magick,alt-occult@hollyfeld.org Message-ID: <199812141858.KAA20055@shell.accesscom.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: www.hollyfeld.org Xref: newscene.newscene.com alt.magick:196673 alt.magick.tyagi:19568 alt.pagan.magick:17532 alt.occult:211 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/ cc replies to me if this was read in Usenet. replies may be posted. ____________...oooOOO---occult@hollyfeld.org---OOOooo..._____________ To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe" to occult-request@hollyfeld.org To unsubscribe your@email.com send "unsubscribe your@email.com" http://www.hollyfeld.org/heaven/elists/occult.phtml