A Structure of Qabalah
The Usefulness of Useless Ideas

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

“Do thou study most constantly, my Son, in the Art of the Holy Qabalah. Know that herein the Relations between Numbers, though they be mighty in Power and prodigal of Knowledge, are but lesser Things. For the Work is to reduce all other Conceptions to these of Number, because thus thou wilt lay bare the very Structure of thy Mind, whose rule is Necessity rather than Prejudice. Not until the Universe is thus laid naked before thee canst thou truly anatomize it. The Tendencies of thy Mind lie deeper far than any Thought, for they are the Conditions and the Laws of Thought; and it is these that thou must bring to Naught....”

— Liber Aleph, On The Art of the Qabalah, pg. 2

1. Introduction

Firstly, I recognize that this essay is long and ridiculous, but it is an attempt to analyze the Qabalistic system that has worked best for me. I hope to present it in a way that 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 dogmatic 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, songs, 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.

2. Religion

In my past, I’ve been hesitant to use the word “religion” to describe something like this. But in recent times, I’ve found myself analyzing that word more. If we break the word down, it comes from the Latin word “re-ligare”.(*) “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.”(*) 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 appears to be a paradox here. The voice of 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 connections or not? Is binding different from bonding? Both “bond” and “bind” come from the PIE root “bandh”. From this interpretation, restriction opposes religion. Religion is “Love under will”, while restriction is the opposite.(*) When one’s Will is under Love in the trigrams of our Holy Text, Liber Trigrammaton, it is described as “the Brothers of the Left-hand Path,” “the Enemy,” and “the Black Brothers.”(*) Here let’s make a distinction between Bind and Bond. Although they come from the same root, they imply separate formulas. When two atoms are bonded, the chemical they create becomes one. They are united. The Latin root of unite is unus, meaning “one”.(*) (It’s also worth noting that the Hebrew word for “One”, Achad, אחד, and the Hebrew word for Love, Ahavah, אהבה, both add to the number 13.) When two items are bound together, rather than bonded, they maintain their identities. They are simply attached. The main fault of the Black Brother, this Enemy, is their inability to truly bond with the diversity of infinity, their inability to let themselves go. They may attach themselves to things and appear to be connected, but they are simply bound to it, not bonded or united with it.

Will is the solid line, while Love is the broken line. In each of these, Love is over Will.

Nuit clarifies this in line 46, “Nothing is a secret key of this law.” Is Nuit this “nothing” that we re-bond 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;...”. 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 or to be restricted. It is our call as Thelemites to bond Her brokenness 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”.(*) Maybe it’s prudent to replace the word “religion” with “reunion”. When all is finally bonded, 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.

Fig. 1: Atu XXI, The Universe
Lon Milo Duquette

3. 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.

This image (below) demonstrates the development of a symbol into a letter. Taking the letter A as an example, it was originally pictorial, with the letter shape of an actual ox head, and its 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. Most core letters of the Semitic languages were developed this way.(*) Over time, this became abstracted to be one component of a composite word — the letter A.

These types of languages are most often consonantary, or “abjad,” meaning they are written down without vowels. When pictures are being used as language, and people begin making complex pictorial ‘sentences,’ meaning words, they start creating macro concepts that are informed by the individual characters within the word or sentence. This development seems to imply that words have a formulaic construction, depending on what symbols were used to make up the word. Each “word” is actually a collection of symbols or numbers, the formula of which provides insight into their meanings. Crowley calls this a “Magical Formula”, and discusses it at length in Magic in Theory and Practice. These pictorial symbols have morphed into the core letters of many languages of the world. Any language derived from a Semitic language has wonderful potential for Qabalistic work. Traditional Hebrew Qabalah, and its Greek counterpart, have maintained these core traditional attributions, and others may have as well.

The Universal History of Numbers, pg. 219

The Universal History of Numbers, pg. 213

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 from their alphabet as their numbers. Before the Hindu numerals we use today were adopted, the Greek, Hebrew, Arabic and Coptic alphabets were all used as numbers, as well as Latin/Roman Numerals although in a more limited way. 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.) Latin/Roman numerals decided to work in smaller chunks, using I as 1, V as 5, X as 10, 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, is a permutation of LVX, the Latin word for “light”, and the same number as אדני, Adonai, (meaning “Lord”), relating to the Holy Guardian Angel, and our Thelemic Holy Text, Liber LXV.(*) Another example is the Roman Numeral 9, IX, being the initials of Jesus Christ in Greek, 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. With these three descriptors bonded together, one can now draw connections between symbols (i.e. written text), spoken words, and numerical logic.

This triplicity is fundamental in traditional Hebrew Qabalah. The important Qabalistic text, Sepher Yetzirah, or The Book of Formation, written between 200 and 500 CE, 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, (or visual art), word, (or sound art), and number, (or science)? Traditions are built upon these foundations. Aryeh Kaplan presents this idea in his commentary on the Sepher Yetzirah:

“These three books are said to be “text, number, and communication.” The Hebrew word for “text” here is Sepher (ספר), which literally means “book.” “Number” is Sephar (ספר), from which the English word “cipher” is derived. “Communication” is Sippur (סיפור), which more literally is “telling.” (* pg. 19)

Lastly, it should be noted that the spheres on the Tree of Life, the main glyph used in Qabalistic thinking, are called Sephirah or the plural Sephiroth, meaning “Emanations”. This word also comes from the same ספר root.

Here is where the arbitrary and seemingly useless part gets introduced. With each word now able to correspond 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 dogmatic 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 straightforward. When presenting art, whether it be visual art, 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, (as I’m doing now). 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, where the individual river has access to the ocean of knowledge. To reverse this, there is technically no river that begins at the ocean, but in a Delta tides can cause the ocean to flood up the river creating rias or estuaries. This can metaphorically represent an individual absorbing this collective knowledge, syphoning it into something specific, new and unique. This is just one example to demonstrate how one would find any sort of connection between these disparate concepts. In the words of Robert Anton Wilson, “All that is, is metaphor.” It’s also an example that I haven’t seen written anywhere before, showing how this can be a living tradition with continual creativity, development and refinement.

The Nile River Delta (Δελτα)

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. The most famous of these is Liber D, Sepher Sephiroth, (which you should now know means “the Book of Emanations”), compiled by Crowley and his friend and teacher Allen Bennet. There is also Liber 1264, Crowley’s numerical dictionary of Greek words, which was unpublished during Crowley’s lifetime, but has been included as an appendix in Brother Kieran Barry’s book, The Greek Qabalah. With the development of computers, many programs can take texts and automatically calculate their numbers and organize all the words. I was able to adapt an Excel formula written by O.T.O. brother Wren Collier for people to calculate Hebrew, Greek and English words within a Google Sheet. The English words are calculated using Crowley’s own notes from Liber Trigrammaton. Many people have their dictionaries posted online, and as soon as mine is well stocked, it will be included in my main website, mysticsymbolism.com, 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.

4. Going Further

The Qabalistic attributions that have emerged naturally through the development of humanity and their language were only a basis for forward thinking Qabalists from the Medieval period through our Modern Period. Over time, mystical concepts were attributed to these letters, to provide a hidden framework that made up these ideas or words. Certain letters were related to the planetary objects, which back then were the Sun, Moon and the five planets visible without telescopes from 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 Qabalistic text, the Sepher Yetzirah, which Aryeh Kaplan argues could have been written as early as 200 CE.(*) The Sepher Yetzirah took the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and gave 12 to the zodiac, 7 to the planets, and 3 to the elements of Air, Water and Fire. These attributions then influenced many of the esoteric societies within the Western Mystery tradition, such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the A∴A∴. This 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 within this Western Mystery tradition. Many claim that these Qabalistic 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 that Mathers got the original attributions from Kenneth Mackenzie, (who knew Levi and may have helped forge the Golden Dawn’s Cipher Manuscripts.) Regardless, there was much synthesis within the Golden Dawn’s Qabalistic system that was not in either the traditional Hebrew sect nor Levi’s system. Levi may have been the first one to attribute the Hebrew letters to the Major Arcana of the Tarot. The modern Tarot decks from Pixie Smith and Arthur Waite, and Lady Frida Harris and Aleister Crowley, emerged as the pictorial representation of all these attributions, and should be used often to aid one’s Qabalistic journey.

5. 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:

1. General analogy. (i.e. Logic, A:B::C:D.) (This also includes etymology, the history and development of language.)
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, or logic, is probably the most common of all mental connections made by humans. It can be represented with the classic A:B as C:D model, i.e. sock is to foot as glove is to hand. Metonyms and synecdoches are also useful ways of using analogy. These types of connections occur naturally in the brain, without us even realizing it. I assert that “nostalgia” may be a byproduct of concept resonance — revisiting forgotten memories that were emotionally impactful. I would even consider the concept of “genre” to be in this “general analogy” category. For example: Horror, Drama, Action, Comedy, are just general conceptual sorting bins, and because most books and 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:

“...neglect not in any wise the study of the Writings of Antiquity, and that in the original Language. For by this thou shalt discover the History of the Structure of thy Mind... For thy Mind hath been built up of these Elements, so that in these Books thou mayst bring into the Light thine own subconscious Memories.”

— Liber Aleph, Sequitur (2), Classica, pg. 48.

It seems like authors with an ability to create lots of new 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 of less wealthy people. 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:

Frater P. took this even further with his Magus Motto, Το Μεγα Θηριον, which means “The Great Beast” and adds to 666.(*) And beyond that, Samual Aiwaz Jacobs’ realization that Therion transliterated into Hebrew also adds to 666: תריון.

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 an 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 unrelated.

An acronym is 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.”] As well as an important prophet of Thelema himself, V.V.V.V.V., which stands for “Vi veri universum vivus vici”, meaning “By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.”

Another similar technique to acronyms are anagrams. 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 Scientific American column, Mathematical Games. There are some scholars who use anagrams 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.’ This effect is much less common in English but is still present in some words, mostly through mistakes. Some examples include Option and Potion, or Santa and Satan. Or the name of my own YouTube video series Horus Hours. 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 fruitful because certain letter combinations are common, such as Th and Qu. 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 basis for the so-called “Bible Code”. I’m less interested in those techniques and have never really needed to use them.

Puns, or more specifically (stretched) homophones/homographs, 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 of the most important Puns in Thelemic doctrine is the name of our Goddess Nuit. It is both the Egyptian Goddess of the stars and sky, Nwt, as well as the French word for Night, nuit. (There’s a chance these words share an etymology, but I’m not sure yet.)

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 parents’ 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, (the God of Time and Death), and Κρόνος, (the Titan whose weapon is a sickle), 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 technically 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. I also think that from this viewpoint, even stupid dad-jokes that use these techniques can help us understand the miracle of re-bonding Nuit.

6. Connection by Opposition

Something that Qabalah has built into its system to allow for 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 that one needs to 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 this Qabalistic technique, and only an infinite system can come close to representing the infinite universe.

7. 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, but 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 traditions, 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. That 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 vast expanses, with no valuable resources. But 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, leading to serious struggle or death. These are the situations in which cutting your own path may not be the best idea.

As an aside: in the development of the Golden Dawn, it was found out that Mathers had lied about being 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 Exempt Adept, the grade corresponding to the sphere of Chesed. It wasn’t until Aleister Crowley claimed to forge a connection with the Secret Chiefs originally in 1904, and repeatedly in 1909, that a path was 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. As more people travel across the Abyss and spill their blood, the Cup of Babalon will overflow and spill, fertilizing the desert with the blood of the Adepts. Over time, this will change the character of the path, making it easier and easier for people to follow and 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 often create their own systems that are completely incomprehensible. This is fine if you want to alienate yourself and your art work, but to make a change, others will have to be inspired by your work. This means there must be some sort of accessible trailhead to find and path to follow.

8. 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 root of the word Qabalah, קבל, QBL, can be a good demonstration of this. To analyze, let’s take each letter individually and analyze them using Qabalistic techniques. 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 where the word “lunatic” comes from. This insanity is an essential part of Qabalah — stretching the mind to see illusions. The only thing is that our Qabalistic illusions are willed. We are not controlled by them like in normal insanity. We don’t want to actually become insane, but we do want to entertain ideas that are drastically outside of our normal thought. This makes Qabalah very personal, where each individual’s realization could be 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, or potentially write about in long, erratic essays. 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 that exact “Wisdom” which balances out the 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 psychologically, the unconscious. Most unconscious minds wander with very little control. Qabalah has a wonderful side effect of providing a structure for the unconscious mind. Your personal Qabalah can become a shared language that your unconscious mind can use and your conscious mind can understand. 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 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. Mercury/Hermes will guide you through the Underworld. The Tarot attribution for Beth is The Magus, this god of Mercury and Hermes, the god of language, commerce, travel, and liminality. This is the other essential element, esoteric wisdom and intelligence.

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 tool used to guide animals pulling the chariot-like farming tool. This goad helps steer 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.

The full word, Qabalah, קבלה, also includes the letter ה, Heh. Since the reception of Liber AL in 1904, this letter has been linked to the Tarot card The Star. The most important imagery related to this card is a woman with a water jug, pouring out the water. As it’s poetically described in Liber VII, Chapter 5, “it is a woman kneeling by the bank of the stream. It is she that pours the bright dew over herself, and into the sand so that the river gushes forth.” If we look at the symbolism attached to the Egyptian Goddess Nwt, she has the same water jug symbolism. The main hieroglyph of Nwt is 𓏌, a water pot. The pronunciation of that symbol is Nw, and as it’s written in Liber AL, “I am Nuit, and my word is six and fifty.” This is her word, נו, Nu, and it directly relates to the symbolism of the Star card. One further detail that demonstrates the exaltation of this card in the new Aeon is through the Heh/Tzaddi switch, noted in Nuit’s chapter of Liber AL. With this switch, The Star card now connects Tiphareth to Chokmah, crossing the abyss and linking to the Supernal Triad. Lastly, The Star card’s attribution is to Aquarius, and that word in Latin literally means “Water-bearer”. To have this letter finish the formula of QBLH shows that the entirety of this Qabalistic process is in service to Her and Her reunion.

The word Qabalah means “to receive”, and it 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 word’s construction. One last important reiteration: it doesn’t matter how one attributes things as long as it works for you. These are only useful to me because I’ve made them useful, not because they are correct. With this basis, the entirety of this Qablistic system is constructed.

As a final point, 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.” This is exactly what the Sepher/Sephar/Sippur 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, which justifies connection by opposition. The stretching of our sanity, the wisdom to prevent it from breaking, and the balance between these two things is what creates Qabalah. It is what helps reunite and rebond the dividedness of Nuit. It is a tradition created by the fringe, devoted to love under will.

Love is the law, love under will.