Gematria and Qabalah
Hermetic Qabalah is a derivative of a school of Jewish mysticism called Kabbalah that was developed by modern Western esotericists as a way to explore the divine and the nature of the universe. One aspect of Qabalah is Gematria, a mystical interpretation of a holy text using specific mathematical laws. A Gematria is a system used to assign a numeric value for each letter of a word, which is then summed. This sum can be referred to as the “key” of that word, or phrase. Words and phrases that have the same numeric value are thought to have similar properties and can be used to meditate on hidden meanings or relationships contained within those similarities.
The Book of the Law
The Book of the Law — or Liber AL vel Legis — is the central holy text of Thelema, a spiritual and social philosophy derived from Western esotericism and founded by magician Aleister Crowley. Liber AL vel Legis was dictated to Crowley over the course of three days in 1904 by a discarnate entity called Aiwass.
Alphanumeric Qabbala
Since Hebrew Gematria uses the Hebrew script to derive values, it does not neccessarily apply as well to English or Roman scripts and thus efforts have been made over the years to develop an “English Qabalah” that could be utilized with texts in those languages.
In Chapter II verse 55 of Liber AL vel Legis, Crowley writes: “Thou shalt obtain the order & value of the English Alphabet, thou shalt find new symbols to attribute them unto”. When analyzing this information later, Crowley realized that this implied there was a cipher contained within Liber AL that had yet to be discovered or developed.
A major clue to this cipher seems to be hinted at in Chapter II verses 75 and 76, where we can read the following:
Aye! listen to the numbers & the words:
4 6 3 8 A B K 2 4 A L G M O R 3 Y X 24 89 R P S T O V A L. What meaneth this, o prophet? Thou knowest not; nor shalt thou know ever. There cometh one to follow thee: he shall expound it.
This passage invites us to "listen to the numbers & the words", and a noticeable pattern in this riddle is that letters always come after numbers. With this in mind, on February 6ᵗʰ 2023, I shared an original solution to this enduring riddle in my blog “Gematria Research”. In this post, I explained that even though I was unsure that this could be an actual solution to the riddles of AL, in my opinion a true solution should be extremely simple. And so it was precisely the order of "the numbers & the words" (i.e. the digits & letters) and "their position to one another" (as stated in AL III:47) that described the cipher that should be used to unlock the secrets of AL:
0=0 1=1 2=2 3=3 4=4 5=5 6=6 7=7 8=8 9=9 A=10 B=11 C=12 D=13 E=14 F=15 G=16 H=17 I=18 J=19 K=20 L=21 M=22 N=23 O=24 P=25 Q=26 R=27 S=28 T=29 U=30 V=31 W=32 X=33 Y=34 Z=35
Technically speaking, Alphanumeric Qabbala is basically an adaptation of Base-36 notation to Gematria, with only one fundamental difference: while in Base-36 notation the numbers & letters are used as numerical digits (similarly to Hexadecimal notation), in Alphanumeric Qabbala it is the value of the digits and letters that is added in order to find the total sum of a word or phrase.
A very intriguing synchronicity is that 666 is the 36ᵗʰ triangular number (meaning that it equals 1+2+3+...+36). Since Alphanumeric Qabbala is associated with Base-36 notation, and Aleister Crowley called himself "The Great Beast 666", it is, in my opinion, only natural to use a Gematria cipher in Thelema that is numerically relevant in a Thelemic context.
There is yet another hint at this specific arrangement of digits and letters in Chapter II verse 55, where it is said:
Thou shalt obtain the order & value of the English Alphabet; thou shalt find new symbols to attribute them unto.
A careful examination of this verse will inevitably lead us to ask:
1. What is being meant by "the order & value of the English Alphabet"?
2. Is that order any different from the natural order of the English Alphabet?
3. Which "new symbols" are being referred to?
According to my own investigations, the answers to these questions would be the following:
1. The "order & value of the English Alphabet" refers to the order of the English Alphabet coming after the ten Arabic numerals from 0 to 9, thus A=10, B=11, etc, until Z=35. Thus can the "value" be obtained from the "order" of the English Alphabet in the alphanumeric sequence from 0 to Z.
2. Not at all! The order is exactly the same as the one of the English Alphabet, otherwise it wouldn't be called the "English Alphabet".
3. New symbols can be found for this alphanumeric sequence once we consider how it can be used in a variety of many different ways. In my post called "The wonders & magic of Alphanumeric Qabbala" I highlighted some of these alternative uses of the 0-Z alphanumeric sequence, including a sigilization technique based on the Magic Square of the Sun, whose magical constant is... 666!!!
Also worthy of note is the fact in the verse mentioned above, the words "English Alphabet" are capitalized, and in Alphanumeric Qabbala, "ENGLISH" = 137 = "ALPHABET".
Further proof of the validity of this cipher can be found, for example, in the particle "AL", which gives its name to the Book of the Law ("Liber AL vel Legis"), and about which Crowley wrote the following:
"AL" is the true name of the Book, for these letters, and their number 31, form the Master Key to its Mysteries.
It must be noted that, in this instance, Crowley was referring to the value of "AL" in both Greek Isopsephy and Hebrew Gematria. However, the fact that the same value is obtained with Alphanumeric Qabbala only lends strength to this correspondence, as in this way the three main systems of Gematria are united in the Grand Key of "AL": Greek Isopsephy, Hebrew Gematria and English Qabbala (AQ).
A final piece of the "puzzle" was also highlighted in my article:
Even not trying to "justify" this finding with Gematria, let my Readers consider the following:
— The Law of Thelema, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" sums 777 in Alphanumeric Qabbala.
— Then, consider that in Crowley's book of numbers and letters, Liber 777, Crowley listed the ten sephiroth numbering them from 1 to 10, and then the twenty-two Hebrew letters (the "paths"), numbering them from 11 (Aleph) to 32 (Tav).
— If we were to adapt that system to the English Alphabet, listing first the ten Arabic numerals from 0 to 9, and then the twenty-six English letters from A to Z, we would end up precisely with Alphanumeric Qabbala: a continuous, logical and non-redundant alphanumeric sequence from 0 to Z=35.
How to Use This Tool
Type a word or phrase into the search bar. The AQ cipher value will automatically be calculated and a list of letters, words and phrases (of up to 16 words) from Liber AL of equal value will be shown.
How you interpret this data is up to you. We have found insight stringing together multiple phrases or words with the same value that fit grammatically into something resembling cut-up method poetry, as well as picking out phrases that resonated with the name or phrase we were analyzing. Results are open to interpretation and a bit of psychic intuition plays part. Use your imagination.
Do not read deeply into the order of the results displayed. Individual matches are not neccessarily meant to be interpreted as one string of text; indeed, results will often make little grammatical sense, though occasional happy accidents occur.
Notes on Changes to the Text
In order to generate the substrings from Liber AL for the database, several changes needed to be made to the source text to facilitate analysis.
The full text of Liber AL vel Legis along with scans of the original handwritten pages can be found at the OTO USA Library.
The following alterations were made to process the text for analysis:
- Removed verse numbers and chapter titles.
- Replaced all punctuation and symbols, save ampersands and apostrophes. Since Crowley deliberately uses both “and” as well as ampersands, we took this to mean that ampersands are meant to be interpreted as a symbol with 0 value. However, we have left them in the results for aesthetic reasons.
- Preserved any hyphenated words so that they are summed as one word.
- Preserved any numbers that are listed as numerals and not spelled out. Because of the encrypted proof discussed above, it would seem their value should be calculated as the numerals themselves. For example, 418 should be seen as that number and added to the total of a phrase, rather than analyzed as “four hundred eighteen”.
- Removed “The Comment” from analysis consideration. The text is as follows:
The Comment
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
The study of this Book is forbidden. It is wise to destroy this copy after the first reading.
Whosoever disregards this does so at his own risk and peril. These are most dire.
Those who discuss the contents of this Book are to be shunned by all, as centres of pestilence.
All questions of the Law are to be decided only by appeal to my writings, each for himself.
There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.
Love is the law, love under will.
The priest of the princes, Ankh-f-n-khonsu
Who is Responsible
This tool was built by Wren Collier and Alynne Keith and is made available for review on GitHub.
This calculator that you're using was slightly changed by Luís Gonçalves, and adapted to AQ ("Alphanumeric Qabbala") instead of the ALW cipher / English Qaballa / NAEQ.
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