A Structure of Qabalah
The Usefulness of Useless Ideas
This Way is most sure; most sacred; and the Enemies thereof most awful, most sublime. It is for the Great Souls to enter on this Rigour and Austerity. To them the Gods themselves do Homage; for it is the Way of Utmost Purity.”
— Liber Aleph, On The Art of the Qabalah, pg 2.
1. Introduction
This essay is an attempt to analyze the qabalistic system that has worked best for me and present it in a way that hopefully provides a useful map for others and demonstrates its benefit. Although these practices and connections seem tedious and nonsensical, effective applications of them will emerge to help disciplines such as art, science and language — living efficiently and fulfilled in the physical world. A large point of this essay attempts to remove “truth” from the techniques of Qabalah, and instead show its ability to function outside of that strict confine. This is what I believe to be the downfall of religious Qabalah, the end goal of which is some claimed “truth.” It is definitely more fun than it is truthful. One must be very careful when attributing “truth” to magical practices. This is akin to taking the Oath of the Abyss without a balanced, disciplined and majestic aspiration. Instead of focusing on the perceived “truth” that emerges from this work, let us focus just on the usefulness of the application. As Frater P. states in chapter 46 of Liber Aleph, “Every Thing has its right Use; and thou art great as thou hast Use of Things.”1
Qabalah, from its most traditional point of view, is supposed to be decoding the language of “God,” who spoke the universe into existence with the Hebrew language. For example, the hit quote, “And then God said, ‘Let there be light!’”(*) This is why early qabalists believed they had to be discreet about their findings, thinking God might punish them for revealing too much about His Nature, or more importantly — be misunderstood and therefore persecuted.(*) Because of the deeply religious nature that these theories were developed within, people only applied Qabalistic thinking to Holy texts, such as the Tenach, the New Testament, and the Quran. Although these are great go-to ‘inspired works,’ there are many other ‘inspired works’ that may not have spawned religions, such as mathematical equations, poems, and even fictional novels, &c... Genuine artistic expression in general may easily reach religious levels of inspiration. This means that strict Qabalists, who only use these techniques on a very limited number of art pieces, i.e. their Holy text, are missing out on a bigger picture, which is my goal to present. These types of connections can be made between any bits of information, creating an incredibly complex patch matrix of synapses providing many pathways to various ideas for ease of access and efficiency and fun.
I’ve found that many Thelemites are hesitant to use the word “religion” to describe something like this. But if we break the word down, it comes from “re-ligare”. The Latin “ligare” is the root of the word “ligature”, meaning “a thing used for tying or binding something tightly.”(*). This means that “religion” is the re-connecting of all the things in the world that appear to be broken, using the inspired love that we have under our will. It’s easy to see how many people have forsaken that Holy definition, flipped it upside down, and “sinned” against it — using it as a tool of oppression or confinement, for “The word of Sin is Restriction.” It must be noted that the Latin root “restringere”, which became the word “restrictio”, also has the definition of “binding”, but includes “confinement” or “oppression”. Restringere is also the root of Restrain.(*)
There is a paradox here. Nuit says in line 22 of Liber AL, “Bind nothing!” But in line 41 she states, “There is no bond that can unite the divided but love:...” So do we create bonds or not?(* Both “bond” and “bind” come from the PIE root “bandh”.) It may be clarified in line 46, “Nothing is a secret key of this law.” Is Nuit this “nothing” that we bind together with our love? The “priest of the princes”, Ankh-af-na-Khonsu, says in line 27, “O Nuit, continuous one of Heaven, let it be ever thus; that men speak not of Thee as One but as None;...”
According to this interpretation of the Law of Thelema, restriction opposes religion. Religion is “Love under will”, while restriction is the opposite.(*) Our Goddess of “Infinite Space, and the Infinite Stars thereof...”,(*) who also claims, “I am Heaven...”,(*) says “I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union.”(*) She is too vast to be confined. It is our call as Thelemites to re-bind Her back together with our love, wrapping her in the green snake of our lust that gyrates the Universe, or as it’s written in Liber 65, “Linea viridis gyrat universa”.(*) When all is finally bound, and we have lost all in that hour, “The Perfect and the Perfect are one Perfect and not two; nay, are none!”(*) We become Nothing with her, and as she promises, “...the sign shall be my ecstasy, the consciousness of the continuity of existence, the omnipresence of my body.”(*) But in order to do that, we need some practical direction.
Lon Milo Duquette
2. Qabalistic Building Blocks
Qabalistic theory is essentially about connecting various ways people describe things into idea-packets. Most fundamentally, there are three ways in which something can be described: by its actual depiction (i.e. the drawing of its Symbol), by a name (i.e. its Word), and its quantity (i.e. Number). I would define a qabalistic language as one that has emerged to have these three qualities inherently intertwined - by any means, logical or illogical, truthful or not. The Semitic languages, which eventually morphed into many of the modern qabalistic ones are the clearest examples of languages constructed this way. They include paleo-Hebrew, classical Arabic, and proto-Greek. The image below demonstrates the development of a symbol into a letter. It was originally pictorial, with the letter name Aleph literally translating as “Ox.” This means that the image of an ox and the word for it were represented by the same written object. Many core letters of the Semitic languages were developed this way.(*) Over time, this became abstracted to mean one component of the composite word — the letter A.
When these older languages were being developed, many of them had not yet created a numerical system separate from their alphabet. This meant that cultures used the same symbols as their alphabet but attributed them to numbers. Before the Hindu-Arabic numerals we use today were adopted, and along with Roman Numerals, the Greek, Hebrew, Arabic and Coptic alphabets were all used as numbers. It was a simple distribution of the first nine letters being 1 - 9, with the next group of 9 being 10 - 90, and with Hebrew, there are only 22 letters, giving 100 - 400. Greek has 26 letters, making Omega the last number, 800. (I haven’t studied Coptic or Arabic numerals yet.) Roman numerals decided to work in smaller chunks, using I as 1, V as 5, X as 10, L as 50, C as 100 etc... Because Roman numerals don’t use all letters in the alphabet, it removes it from being a fully qabalistic language, although certain parts of its construction have been included in modern qabalistic thinking. For example, LXV, the Roman numeral for 65, being a permutation of LVX, the Latin word for “light”, and the same number as אדני, Adonai, (meaning “Lord”), relating to the Holy Guardian Angel.(*) Another example is the Roman Numeral 9, IX, being the initials of Jesus Christ, Ιήσους Χριστός. Because these cultures had no concept of separating the letters from their numerical values, it would be clever for an artist to be able to make poems which beyond their lyric beauty also had a mathematical structure. There are some impressive examples of this in O.T.O. Brother Kieren Barry’s book, The Greek Qabalah, (which also includes a reconstruction of Crowley’s elusive Greek numerical dictionary, Liber MCCLXIV (1264) as an appendix.) With these three descriptors all bound together, one can now draw connections between symbols (i.e. written text), spoken words, and numerical logic.
In traditional Hebrew Qabalah, this concept has been formulated fractally into itself. The important Qabalistic text, Sepher Yetzirah, or The Book of Formation, discusses this in the first chapter.
הוא וברא את עולמו בשלשה ספרים בספר וספר וספור
“And He created His universe with three books (Sepharim), with text (Sepher) with number (Sephar) and with communication (Sippur).” (* pg. 5)
An interesting thing to note about this passage is that these three concepts all use the same three letters in Hebrew, S (ס), P (פ), and R (ר). Text (which I equate to symbol, because it is pictorial) and Number are the same word, pronounced differently, (Sepher vs. Sephar), while communication is also the same but with an extra vav added in, ספור, Sippur. This demonstrates to the qabalist that those three letters together have something to do with perception and communication. Notice the wording in that phrase carefully, “He created His universe.” How do we create and remember our universes but with symbol (visual art), word (sound art), and number (science)? Traditions are built upon these foundations. Books do not forget, and neither do humans with access to that book. (*) Aryeh Kaplan presents this idea in his commentary on the Sepher Yetzirah:
Here is where the arbitrary and seemingly useless part gets introduced. With each word now corresponding to a numerical value, it is the duty of the Qabalist to start finding connections between words that add up to the same number. Again, traditional Qabalists would tell you that “God organized it this way for a reason.” I’m here to tell you that no matter how you organize it, it will work. Realizations will occur, and some people like to attribute that sort of thing to “God”. Creating connections in the brain will inherently strengthen memory, regardless of what the connections are. One of the most beautiful parts about removing this technology from its “religious confinement,” is stripping the idea that it is “holy” and therefore codified or fixed. Some of the best Qabalah stems from humor, and further personal examples will hopefully demonstrate the fun(*) in these seemingly useless mental exercises.
When ספר is added up, it is 340. Another word that has a numerical value of 340 is Δελτα, Delta, the name of the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet, and the word used to describe a river emptying into the sea. The shape of the letter is supposed to represent that shape, Δ. A Qabalist would now attempt to create connections between these concepts, which in this case is surprisingly easy. When presenting art, whether it be painting, music, writing, mathematics, or sculpture/construction, one is putting new information into the collective understanding. They are emptying their river into the sea of the populus — another representation of the individual presenting to the collective. This is a bold move, but as an artist it is inevitable. Because this S-P-R triplicity also relates to communication and interpretation, deltas are also where one “enters the public library” so to say. Not only do rivers empty into seas, but they also can begin at seas, a metaphor for an individual interpreting a mass amount of information — syphoning it into something specific and unique. This is just one example to try and demonstrate how one would find any sort of connection between disparate concepts. It’s also an example that I haven’t seen written anywhere before, showing how this can be a living tradition with continual development and refinement.
This brings up another practice done by many qabalists, which is creating a numerical dictionary. This is a long process of slowly adding up words and organizing them in numerical value, to collect all words of the same number. With the development of computers, many programs can take texts and automatically calculate their numbers and organize all the words, although I am not tech-savvy enough yet to write that code on my own. Many people have their dictionaries posted on the internet, and as soon as mine is well stocked, it will be included in this book as an appendix, as aid for anyone wanting to use this way of thinking. These dictionaries force the brain to stretch even further when many words (and therefore concepts) must be connected. Sometimes extremely conflicting information is presented, and it is very easy to brush certain connections under the rug. One should attempt to wane this neglect, but even so, certain experiences may present their connection in a whole new way - in a lucky lightning flash.
3. Going Further
Most of the attributions that have emerged naturally through the development of language were only a basis for forward thinking Qabalists from the pre-renaissance until now. Over time, mystical concepts were attributed to these letters, to provide a hidden framework of energy that made up the ideas or words. Certain letters were related to the planetary objects, which back then were the Sun, Moon and the first five planets (other than Earth), while others were related to the zodiac signs. This may have occurred even as early as Pythagorean times, but is most clearly codified in the Sepher Yetzirah, which Aryeh Kaplan argues could have been written before 100 BCE.(*) The Sepher Yetzirah took the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and gave 12 to the zodiac signs, 7 to the planetary objects, and 3 to the elements of Air, Water and Fire. These attributions then influenced many of the societies within Western Esotericism, such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which is where we get most of our traditional attributions. The work of MacGregor Mathers, along with expansions by Aleister Crowley, lead to the system of Qabalah most commonly used by “magicians” and occultists outside of the traditional Jewish Qabalistic sect. Many claim that the attributions were set before Mathers was even involved, and he just expanded on previously passed down knowledge. There is evidence that Eliphas Levi knew the same attributions that Mathers used,(*) and died when Mathers was only 21 years old. Regardless, there was much synthesis in the Golden Dawn’s qabalistic system that was not in either the traditional Hebrew sect nor Levi’s system. The Tarot emerged as the pictorial representation of all these attributions, and it will be commonly used in one’s qabalistic journey.
4. The Patch Bay
Making connections between ideas can be done in various ways, which I call the “patch bay”. It is not all-inclusive because there is always room for more creativity, but the ones I use are as follows:
2. Gematria number. (Called “isopsephy” in Greek.)
3. Acronyms. Which is called “Notariqon” in traditional Qabalah.
4. Anagrams — the same letters arranged differently. (This would be obvious when looking at the gematria numbers. It also includes Temurah, which will be discussed later.)
5. Puns — Homophones & Homonyms — connection by sound. These are usually the funniest.
With these few tools, Qabalah is born. Connection through concept resonance is probably the most common of all mental connections made by humans. Most often it can be represented with the classic A:B as C:D model, i.e. sock is to foot as glove is to hand. These types of connections occur naturally in the brain, without us even realizing it. Some psychologists theorize that “nostalgia” is a byproduct of kind of thing — revisiting forgotten connections that once struck an emotional chord.(*?) I would even consider the concept of “genre” in general to be in this category.(*) The word ‘category’ might even be interchangeable with ‘concept’ and ‘genre’ depending on how it is used. For example: Horror, Drama, Action, Comedy, are just general conceptual sorting bins, and because most movies aren’t quite so easy to pigeon-hole, the most general descriptions are usually adopted. In your own personal Qabalistic system, you are able to decide how detailed the categories become. Sometimes detail is more useful, sometimes it isn’t. Organizing by concept is the backbone of Qabalah, but it is also mostly logical. This isn’t much of a stretch for the brain, which may be why it occurs so naturally and helps solidify memory. It is the other jacks in the patch bay that push beyond normal mental boundaries. Logical analogy can only take you so far.
Etymology is something I would also place under the “general analogy” category, because it mainly develops through unconscious analogies that our brains have made throughout the historical development of language. Learning the origins of words can quickly make strong webs of concepts. Having a root word, which is then used to create a whole variety of words, inherently creates a Qabalistic category.(*) As Frater P. writes in Liber Aleph:
— Liber Aleph, Sequitur (2), Classica, pg. 48.
It seems like authors with an ability to create lots of words, such as Shakespeare or Rabelais, had a great Qabalistic understanding of language and were able to make new pathways between previously unconnected ideas. The fact that so many of their words are still in use today means the pathways are now highways, and their avant-guard became our tradition.
Gematria calculation is the first step in trying to link together multiple concepts that may not appear to be connected.(*) This was used creatively in ancient times to hide information inside of numbers. Some of the earliest examples of this are from ancient graffiti.(*) The fact that it was used in graffiti shows that it originally emerged through humor and art, rather than from “God.” Wealthy elites often forget this after they’ve appropriated the folk magic techniques. These are mental tools for anyone. The most famous example of Gematria is the Beast 666, which most scholars believe to represent Nero Cesar, whose name adds to 666 when transliterated into Hebrew letters:
(Scan the universal history of numbers page on that)
Frater P. took this even further with his Magus Motto, Το Μεγα Θηριον, which means “The Great Beast” and adds to 666.(*)
An interesting side-effect of using numbers to represent words or ideas is that mathematical functions can be used between ideas to create even larger maps of interrelation. The use of addition, multiplication, division, subtraction, square roots, squaring, cubing, etc... can lead to interesting poetic ideas. As Nuit commands, “Divide, add, multiply, and understand.”(*) Many of these functions have words that can describe them. For example “with” for “addition”, or “without” for subtraction, so after the equation is figured out, one can re-translate it back into language. This creates a unique bridge between math and poetry — often considered to be immiscible.
Acronyms are also another way to create far out connections between concepts, but is not dependent on number. Many acronyms are taught to young children as a means of remembering phrases. For example, PEMDAS, for the mathematical order of operations, or Every Good Boy Does Fine for the lines of the treble clef. Acronyms seem to be the most common connection in early education, perhaps because of their simplicity. This technique is also used in traditional Jewish Qabalah under the name Notariqon. The word Notariqon was derived from the Latin “notarius,” which means “shorthand writer.”(*) Many magical phrases used in the western mystery tradition use this technique, including words like אגלא, AGLA, a notariqon of אתה גבור לעולם אדני, Ateh Gibor Le’olam Adonai, which means “Thou art powerful and eternal, Lord.” ***(make this a note?)*** There are numerous examples that will continue to be presented throughout this essay. (Are there?)
Anagrams are similar to acronyms, in that it is about discovering other hidden connections within words, but anagrams are made by rearranging the letters of a word to make new ones. An excellent example of this is the title of Douglas Hofstadter’s book, Metamagical Themas, which is an anagram of the older Scientific American column, Mathematical Games. There are certain scholars who use anagrams as a means to explain the etymology of certain words.(*) For example, the Greek goddess Rhea, Ρεα, is presumed to come from a rearranging of the letters of the Greek word for “ground,” ερα.(*) A fancier name for this kind of operation is ‘metathesis,’ which comes from the Greek word μετατιθημι, metatithemi, meaning “I put in a different order.”(*) This effect is much less common in English but is still present in words, mostly through mistakes. Some examples include Option and Potion, or Santa and Satan. In Hebrew, these sorts of operations are much more fruitful, due to the abjab (or consonantary) quality of the language. This means that each letter is a consonant, with vowels assumed through pronunciation.(*) This turns the language into a sort of code, with less strict rules as to how the consonants can be arranged. In English, this effect is less pronounced because certain letters will never be next to others, as in the case of Q and almost any other letter besides U. Because this is so effective in Hebrew and other early abjabs, traditional qabalists came up with even more ways to permute the text. Exchanging the first letters for the lasts (called atbash*), shifting the word down the alphabet (called avgad*), and replacing the letters with the letters half way through the alphabet (called albam*), are all different translations one can use in traditional Qabalistic Temurah.(*) That stuff gets tedious, and is the origin of the so-called “Bible Code”.
Puns, or more specifically (stretched) homophones/homographs, and metonyms, are the last and least traditional form of creating Qabalistic connections in the brain. They create connections purely based on the similarity of the spoken sound or the spellings of the words, which can connect two different words that contain no common concepts. One reason why I believe puns to be so important in Qabalistic thinking is that they are typically spontaneous. Certain puns will only work within certain contexts. If a pun is presented outside of its appropriate time and place, it’s not funny or meaningful. This means that their humorous application is intuitively connected to the unfolding situation, forcing the Qabalist to connect several things spontaneously for a successful pun to land. Qabalistic thinking is very much dependent on the theory of the “Lightning Flash,” — the Lucky 777 — a burst of inspiration that provides insight to a particular idea. Puns are a great practice for introducing oneself to the effects of the Lightning Flash, although on a micro level. I would say that practicing puns as a kid was my first real discipline in generating an irrational but useful(*) set of random connections between concepts in my brain, and I may have my parent’s corny jokes to thank for that.(*)
One magician who makes great use of puns within his Qabalistic system is Crowley’s last secretary Kenneth Grant. However, he sometimes presents these puns as actual etymologies, which are technically false. Although I do believe some symbols have puns built into their etymologies, such as the Grim Reaper being a pun on the Greek Gods Χρόνος, and Κρόνος, it is rarely a traditional development. One example from Grant includes linking the Egyptian word Khaibit, meaning “Shadow” to the English word “Habit”. He states, “The Egyptian determinative of the human double was the sunshade, which combined these two ideas into one image. It was called the khaibit, and it survives in the English word habit, as something repeated or doubled, something put on or off as occasion demands.”(*) The word Habit does not have any direct link to the word Khaibit beyond the way it sounds.(*) If Grant were to have presented this connection as a pun rather than an etymology, I would be much more inclined to be inspired by it, rather than considering it as incorrect. That being said, once I realized Grant was using puns in this way, I have started giving him much more grace when it comes to these kinds of assertions. His connections like this are still absolutely worth considering.
5. The Hole in the Law
Something that Qabalah has built into its system to allow such wide reaching and seemingly infinite connections is using polar opposite ideas as means of correlation. At a certain level, (i.e., “above the abyss”), every idea holds its opposite idea within it. Open implies closed, bright implies dark, strong implies weak. This means that analogies can be made by virtue of their opposition as well as by their alignment. Some may consider this to be a cheat, but this is to misunderstand the point. Remember, we’re removing truth here. For one, it provides a distillation of categories one must use, meaning that one’s idea-drawers can be dedicated for truly unique ideas, rather than getting giant dressers and having a separate drawer for each opposite idea. This makes the whole system more compact, because now it can encode another level of information into the same sized dresser. For two, this ensures the infinite expanse of connections within Qabalah, and only an infinite system can come close to representing the infinite universe.
6. Cutting Your Own Way Through The Forest
So far, it has mostly been historical or traditional qabalistic systems that have been discussed. This is for no other reason but to provide some historical context, hoping to ground this lofty system in something everybody can understand. This is by no means a standard. My favorite analogy for describing the interplay between tradition and invention is the trail metaphor. Many feel that traditions must be followed exactly, and if not they are diluted by the Magician's own creativity. I don't believe any one's artistic expression dilutes anything, and the same thing goes for a trail. The trail doesn't exist to prevent you from exploring the forest, it is just a convenient tool for reference. And just because one has ventured off the trail slightly to take a look at a different view doesn't mean they'll never find their way back to the trail or find it useful. This being said, there are certain kinds of terrain that call for very acute passing. In the case of a desert, the trail is mostly pointless. The only use it has is a clear section of "no-cactus- zone." If one is careful about cacti and other spikey bushes, then b-lined paths are no problem, because there are no significant obstacles to overcome. The difficulty in deserts are the wide expanses, with no valuable resources. In the case of treacherous mountains, there may be only a limited number of paths that actually allow one to reach the top. Without following those carefully planned trails, one can easily fall or slip, etc... leading to serious pain or death. These are the situations in which cutting your own path may not be the best idea.
In the development of the Golden Dawn, it was found out that Mathers had claimed to be in communication with the secret chiefs, when he had really forged no connection. This means that the system of the Golden Dawn, no matter how far they claimed to initiate up the tree of life, never passed beyond Adeptus Exemptus, the grade corresponding to the sphere of Chesed. It wasn’t until Aleister Crowley actually forged a connection with the secret chiefs originally in 1904, and repeatedly in 1909, that a path was even found across the Abyss of the Tree of Life. This path is represented by a desert, with a camel as one’s guide. As one passes thru the Abyss, one’s blood is said to be poured out into the cup of Babalon’s Fornication. As more people travel across the Abyss and spill their blood, the Cup of Babalon will overflow and spill, fertilizing the desert. Over time, this will change the character of the path, making it easier and easier for people to cross.
This type of system is quite useful, having the ability to be followed. Many who rebel against tradition, thinking it is restricting, or limited, in turn create their own systems that are completely incomprehensible. This is fine if you want to completely alienate yourself and your own art work, but to make a change, others will have to be inspired by your work, which means there must be some sort of accessible trail head.
7. Qabalah Analyzed Qabalistically
One of the most “convincing” connections for a qabalist is one that works on multiple different levels. The more levels, the better. The word Qabalah itself can be a good demonstration of this. In Hebrew it is spelled קבלה, QBLH, and as we try to find the “formula” for this word - and therefore concept - we take each letter individually. ק, Q, Qoph, means Back of the Head, and its Tarot attribution is The Moon, the magickal mirror in which we see illusions and grow insanities. It is the world of dreams, potentially nightmares, or dreams too good to be true. This is an essential part of qabalah, insanity, stretching the mind to see illusions. The only thing is that these illusions are wholly willed. They are tools for mental strength, and hold no power within their details. It is only within their forms that the power resides, meaning each individuals realization is another’s conspiracy theory. Not everyone sees these things in the same way, so it will necessarily seem ridiculous until someone understands the qabalistic path taken to arrive at that conclusion - even then it might remain dubious. These parts of qabalah are the parts we keep to ourselves, and potentially write about in long, erratic books. But these “trivial” parts are the glue for the entire personal structure. None of the wisdom would be able to emerge without this initial sanity-stretching aspect.
The next letter is exactly the “Wisdom” which balances out this insanity. ב, Beth, the name of the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet, means House. This is a good pairing with the ‘back of the head,’ or more scientifically, the unconscious. Most unconscious minds wander with no control. Qabalah has a wonderful side effect of providing a structure for the unconscious mind (which is the main part making qabalistic connections.) It houses all the unconfined elements to a useful and accessible partition, allowing dreams to make more sense, as well as magickal or psychedelic visions. These visions are most often caused by the unconscious presenting symbols, and if one has taught a symbol library to one’s brain, it will most likely use the same symbols in its communication. The Tarot attribution for Beth is The Magus, the quintessential Mercury, who invented language, mathematics, symbolism, and the arts. This is the other essential element, true intellectualism.
These two conflicting aspects, insanity and wisdom, must be balanced perfectly for qabalah to work just right. This is the third letter in the word: ל, L, Lamed. Lamed means Ox-Goad, or the chariot-like farming tool pulled by any large animal. This goad steers the whole rest of the word. It directs it with justice and liberty. It must make a well tilled land, but the land is vast, and its organization mutable. Its Tarot attribution is Adjustment, related to Libra, the scales. These attributions are very clear in how it is supposed to inform the theory.
Finally, we have the letter ה, Heh. Since the reception of Liber AL vel Legis in 1904, this letter has been linked to the Tarot card The Star....(flesh this out).
קבלה is typically translated as “reception,” and is generally interpreted as “tradition.”(*) This whole system, of insanity balanced with wisdom, establishes its identity by its ability to be taught or derived from ‘holy people’ or directly from the holy texts themselves. This brings it all back into a strange loop. Qabalah means “to receive”, and depends on tradition to maintain an identity, but it is also essentially personal and abysmal. This paradoxical concept is fractally at the heart of the words theoretical construction. All poetry can supposedly be analyzed this way, assuming it is written in a qabalistic language. (English is still in a grey-zone.) One last important reiteration: it doesn’t matter how one attributes things as long as it works. These are only useful because I’ve made them useful, not because they are correct.
With this basis, the entirety of this system is constructed. This introduction is here for those who felt that their prerequisite knowledge wouldn’t be sufficient for the topics at hand, and I hope it provided some insight to the logic and illogic of the system. In the appendix are more direct aids for reference, including tables of traditional qabalistic correspondences, as well as gematria and anagram dictionaries.
8. Coming Full Circle
To demonstrate how these types of things are more palpable then we realize, even our words for them are informed by these theories. Both ‘Name’ and ‘Number’ come from the same Proto-Indo-European root “Nem,” or “Nam,” which means “to divide, allot, count out, share, take, portion out.”24 This is exactly what the SPR connection does: it divides, counts out, shares, takes and allots, so that people can communicate. Nem- is also the root of the word Nemesis, an opposite. This justifies “the hole in the law” by virtue of the definition, if one needed any validation. Another word that shares this same root is “Nomad,” a greek word which means ‘wandering’ or poetically ‘roaming in search of an allotted abode.’ A nomad is one who divides from their town, but shares in a way different from all others living in the town. It brings to mind the line from Liber AL, “Every number is infinite, there is no difference.” If number and nomad are so closely related via “nam,” this line can be etymologically interpreted as “Every nomad is unbound, they have no discernment.” This directly reinforces the break down of QBLH, where Q involves the nomad stretching out and connecting many new ideas in progressive ways (in short, insanity), while B is the ability to share and create a tradition that has distilled the most important of all the ideologies presented by the nomads throughout history. The balance between these two things is what creates qabalah. It is a tradition created by the fringe.