Grant's gematria in the Typhonian Trilogies

[Deleted]

May 15, 2014 14:29:21 GMT N0T 2 said:

it's worth keeping an open mind, in my view, as to whether the Chiefs (or at least the idea of them) was of value in itself as a technique of "space-holding" for genuine alien intelligences, whether or not they were the ones directly or indirectly behind the material.

That is an interesting idea which I hadn't thought of, and I think perhaps you may have a fresher recollection - or thought more deeply - around the G:.D:. literature than I have.

[Nalyd Khezr Bey]

May 15, 2014 9:13:22 GMT Michael Staley said:

...various permutations of the English alphabet.

Since you mentioned it, I've been casually watching this discussion and have been meaning to ask about this very subject. I'm curious about Kenneth Grant's seeming ignorance of New Aeon English Qabala (NAEQ). I say "seeming ignorance" because nowhere in any of his public writings did he utilize it or even mention it and it has been known in some circles at least since the 1970's. I find this a curious omission mainly because of his obvious interest in Frater Achad, the one responsible for providing the clue in Liber 31 to its eventual deciphering.

There is such a wealth of new correspondences that Grant himself may have missed out on with it. I've utilized NAEQ extensively in analyzing some of my own received writings (because they are in English of course) as well as in cross referencing a lot of what Grant himself wrote, especially in his exegeses in Outer Gateways and The Ninth Arch. Mick, to your knowledge, was Grant actually not aware of it? or was he aware of it but had reasons for not embracing it and/or working it into his own "creative gematria"?

[Deleted]

I think a lot people spend a few years sweating over Mathers' Kabbalah Unveiled*, learning the Hebrew calligraphy, and getting the whole thing off pat, the famously odd Nose of Microprosopus and all,  a bit like a School Leaving Certificate, and then don't often go back to revisit it in later years. The most recent book of QBL theory I could say that I'd actually studied was Frater Achad's Anatomy of the Body of God, 1923, I think. 

I'm glad I know it, and have it there as a foundation, like an art student who first has to study academic drawing, but there's not much call for it in my division of Mesoamerican sorcery.


* My copy was owned previously by Lady Frieda Harris, who painted Crowley's Book of Thoth, but she left no interesting marginalia or annotations beyond writing her name on the title page.

[N0T 2]

May 15, 2014 15:23:42 GMT Nalyd Khezr Bey said:

May 15, 2014 9:13:22 GMT Michael Staley said:

...various permutations of the English alphabet.

Since you mentioned it, I've been casually watching this discussion and have been meaning to ask about this very subject. I'm curious about Kenneth Grant's seeming ignorance of New Aeon English Qabala (NAEQ). I say "seeming ignorance" because nowhere in any of his public writings did he utilize it or even mention it and it has been known in some circles at least since the 1970's. I find this a curious omission mainly because of his obvious interest in Frater Achad, the one responsible for providing the clue in Liber 31 to its eventual deciphering.

There is such a wealth of new correspondences that Grant himself may have missed out on with it. I've utilized NAEQ extensively in analyzing some of my own received writings (because they are in English of course) as well as in cross referencing a lot of what Grant himself wrote, especially in his exegeses in Outer Gateways and The Ninth Arch. Mick, to your knowledge, was Grant actually not aware of it? or was he aware of it but had reasons for not embracing it and/or working it into his own "creative gematria"?

Not wishing to answer for Michael, but our Frater Aossic-Aiwass 718 does indeed refer indirectly to this version of EQ in his published work, in the chapter Creative Gematria in Outer Gateways:

Kenneth Grant said:

It is not stated in AL that the 'order & value' of the English Alphabet shall constitute a new qabalah, the verse merely states that the order and value shall be assumed to new symbols.

and moreover:

That a so-called English Qabalah is on the way to becoming de rigeur calls for strong protest, although I would not suggest that some form of it is not permissible and in certain cases useful.

- Outer Gateways, p.161

[Deleted]

That's quite prescriptive.

[Nalyd Khezr Bey]

Thanks NOT 2 for chiming in there. I'm aware of what KG said in Outer Gateways but it never seemed to imply the NAEQ that was the result of Frater Achad's clue. In fact if you read the whole of the page you took those lines from there seems to be further evidence of his ignorance of the Cipher 6 English Qabala* (A=1, L=2, W=3, etc.). Grant actually starts the subject with:

Here it may not be inappropriate to say a few words about an 'English Qabalah' suggested by verse 55 of the second chapter of AL...

He is not referring to any known Qabalah but only to one that is suggested. He goes on to elaborate the problems with developing one and says that the verse more suggests re-forming the letters as new symbols ("the order and value shall be assumed to new symbols" - OG) along the lines of Spare's "alphabet of desire" as stated in a footnote. He also implies that the more traditional Qabalahs of Hebrew, Chaldean and Greek result in "genuine insights". 

* I noticed you spelled "Qabalah" without the "H" in the quote above which at first made me wonder how I missed it because NAEQ is usually spelled without the "H" and this would have been evidence of knowledge of NAEQ but when checking the book I noticed that Grant actually used the "Qabalah" spelling.

EDIT: Just as a side and for fun since you mentioned KG's magical name. AOSSIC in NAEQ is 54 and AIWASS is 38, together 92. 54 is the number of BUDDHA and SNAKE. 38 is the number for NIA, AIN and SHELL. 92 is SEKHET, HERMES and WANDERED. Just a few words that might be significant pulled from Liber AL.

[N0T 2]

May 15, 2014 23:59:05 GMT Nalyd Khezr Bey said:

Thanks NOT 2 for chiming in there. I'm aware of what KG said in Outer Gateways but it never seemed to imply the NAEQ that was the result of Frater Achad's clue. In fact if you read the whole of the page you took those lines from there seems to be further evidence of his ignorance of the Cipher 6 English Qabala* (A=1, L=2, W=3, etc.). Grant actually starts the subject with:

Here it may not be inappropriate to say a few words about an 'English Qabalah' suggested by verse 55 of the second chapter of AL...

He is not referring to any known Qabalah but only to one that is suggested.

Yes, he begins the page setting this general context and then, later on the page, in the quotes I gave above, he speaks about a specific, known English Qabalah which is becoming de rigeur, which he protests against.

He is clearly referring to several - many - things on this page - one is what you mention above: the general context set by the verse in AL (which does not describe a new qabalah but instead talks about attributing new symbols to the order and value of the English alphabet), the other is what I quoted, a separate subject, that refers to a specific, popular EQ then becoming fashionable. 

I'm not sure how many popular EQ's there were when he was writing Outer Gateways, but it seems clear to me he was referring to the one you are talking about as that was the most well-known one, and that he wasn't ignorant of it as you suggest. It seems to me he knew about it and didn't find much value in it, calling for protest on its widespread adoption in as many words, and therefore never used it in his works.  Happy to be corrected though (if there's another popular EQ that he meant at the time of writing the book, which is unlikely).

[Nalyd Khezr Bey]

I see your point NOT 2 but I still don't think what Grant says in Outer Gateways points to any specific English Qabalah; it just doesn't quite read that way to me. I'm not saying it's not possible though. I don't know when he wrote Outer Gateways but it was published in 1994 and the NAEQ was definitely more known by then. The Thelemic Order of the Golden Dawn may have also had their version of English Qabalah (one that is not as convincing to me personally) circulating at that time as well but I'm not sure about that. Again though, if Grant knew of the Cipher 6 NAEQ specifically (which does seem quite probable to me) I would think he would have had more interest in its development than what he expressed in Outer Gateways. Perhaps NAEQ is just a clever cipher but, as I already mentioned, it was inadvertently "cracked" by Frater Achad which one may interpret as fulfilling the verse "There cometh one to follow thee: he shall expound it" (AL II:76). I would think that in itself merits a little more attention.

[N0T 2]

May 16, 2014 15:39:34 GMT Nalyd Khezr Bey said:

I see your point NOT 2 but I still don't think what Grant says in Outer Gateways points to any specific English Qabalah;

De Nile is the longest river on Earth - but at least one has good company on its shores

"A so-called English Qabalah ...on its way to becoming de rigeur" points very clearly at what is now called NAEQ, I'm afraid, until someone can suggest a likely contender on the Thelemic charts in the nineties.

He speaks of a specific thing a) that exists and b) that he is aware of, that is "on its way to becoming de rigeur" i.e., widely adopted (as only NAEQ is). Known to the point of relative popularity. He may not have studied it intensively, because he didn't use it, because he didn't interpret AL II: 55 the way the inventors of NAEQ did, or at least, he considered other interpretations of that passage and stated a contrary view as quoted in my posts above. But he was aware of it - I can't imagine something so well-known not being on the radar somewhere (perhaps not all its permutations, including the bits you mention) to someone whose primary interest in occultism for most of a century has been in its most creative developments.

I don't suggest that your own interest in NAEQ is invalid because of what someone else, in this case Kenneth Grant, said in a book - and neither does he (see the second half of his statement - that "some form of it" can be useful).

I am curious as to your appreciation of this artefact and would like to know if it's helped illumine aspects of the Typhonian tradition previously unexpressed? Perhaps it could warrant a separate thread for Typhonian material employing this novel system of gematria.

Non-mobilely becoming,
N0T 2

[Deleted]

"on its way to becoming de rigueur"

The phrase 'de rigueur' most usually applies to the requirements of fashion, of etiquette, of manners, of the  predominant amongst the à la mode. The 'requirement' in 'de rigueur' is the 'must have' of fashion journalism.

Whilst there's always a risk of over-interpreting the data, of pinning too much exegesis on too few words, if we say that English Qabala is on its way to becoming the must have, we are also adverting to its intrinsic impermanence, to the view that it may be a requirement of fashion now, but that it will not always be so, since fashion by its nature can not stand still.

Whilst I am ofttimes attracted to a nihilist abrogation of almost everything, there is good sense in KG's conservatism here.  The rate of change of any language, the evolutionary velocity of any means of communication, explication, exegesis, must always be held in check to some extent - self-limited - so that it does not become like the virus so quickly fatal that it kills its host before it can be passed on.

Where revolutionary change of a language (in which I include QBL) exceeds the rate of evolutionary change, a diminishing number of observers will be able to understand it, the faster does that rate of change become. Our ability to transmit information to others in qabalistic form would be damaged.

[Nalyd Khezr Bey]

May 18, 2014 1:40:06 GMT N0T 2 said:

I am curious as to your appreciation of this artefact and would like to know if it's helped illumine aspects of the Typhonian tradition previously unexpressed? Perhaps it could warrant a separate thread for Typhonian material employing this novel system of gematria.

I don't know that I have anything to share in this regard because I have not attempted to illumine the Typhonian tradition with NAEQ. I've used it more to illumine and, at times, inform the exegeses of my own received writings. I deviate from what I think the intention of NAEQ is supposed to be by not utilizing the text of Liber AL exclusively. I use a wider range of texts written in English but the focus is usually on Crowley's Class A writings in general as well as Grant's S'lba and OKBISh. I began slowly writing commentaries to my own writings in a similar fashion that KG does in The Ninth Arch except I use NAEQ almost exclusively to analyze the gematria of the words. I've also created several magical operations based on the correspondences of NAEQ. I think you're probably right about this angle of it being a separate discussion though. I was only curious here about what I initially asked above.

[N0T 2]

May 21, 2014 6:56:47 GMT Nalyd Khezr Bey said:

May 18, 2014 1:40:06 GMT N0T 2 said:

I am curious as to your appreciation of this artefact and would like to know if it's helped illumine aspects of the Typhonian tradition previously unexpressed? Perhaps it could warrant a separate thread for Typhonian material employing this novel system of gematria.

I don't know that I have anything to share in this regard because I have not attempted to illumine the Typhonian tradition with NAEQ. I've used it more to illumine and, at times, inform the exegeses of my own received writings. I deviate from what I think the intention of NAEQ is supposed to be by not utilizing the text of Liber AL exclusively. I use a wider range of texts written in English but the focus is usually on Crowley's Class A writings in general as well as Grant's S'lba and OKBISh.

You don't include include Crowley and Grant in the "Typhonian Tradition"? I'd consider all of that as Typhonian, including your own stuff if it's informed by theirs.

[Nalyd Khezr Bey]

I did not say that. I only meant what I said in terms of my personal focus not being "Typhonian Tradition" and not necessarily trying to illuminate the works of Crowley or Grant but my own. And no, I don't consider most of the work I do to be a part of what most of the membership here might understand as the Typhonian Tradition unless one simply considers everything as being part of that tradition.

I see the last sentence in my last post may have been misleading with the use of the word "focus". What I actually meant there was that I use those particular works (among others) as cross references.* If I come to the number 135 from the word BRILLIANCE in one of my texts I may look at Grant's S'lba just as an example and find the term GLORIOUS ONES adding to the same.

Here's just a quick example of how I put it to use. It may not mean much to anyone else but me. This is just the beginning of one section of a larger work. The bold is the original text and the rest is commentary with NAEQ gematria.

E'dhey = 75 = reveal, conceal

Poth = 61 = lucid, waking

Tefnos = 93 = illusion, time

Crid = 54 = yellow, among

Nor'cett = 119 = splendours, ancients



1. Love is a derangement of form and the freedom to circulate within a realm of utter fascination.

Love marks the intrusion of the virus of irrationality which provides the necessary key to thwart the psychic-censor and open the gate of Gnosis. The Gnosis here is referred to as “a realm of utter fascination”. UTTER FASCINATION = 245 = INFECTIOUS TANTRA and INPENETRABLE GRAAL .With these considerations it becomes apparent that this particular form of Gnosis is an infection from the Plasmate.

* I could just use a large dictionary but I do try to put a border on how far I allow connections to be made. 

[Deleted]

IPA_chart_(C)2005.pdf (58.11 KB)

Use of the international phonetic alphabet resolves all the language conversion problems of gematria, since it derives number values from human and other vocalizations irrespective of the semantic content that those vocalizations may represent. Number values can be derived even from the sound of barbarous words and the vocalizations of beasts. 

Any given number, or sequence of numbers, can now be transfigured into  sounds  that can be uttered by the human voice no matter what the native language of the bruja or hechicero.

[Deleted]

May 21, 2014 9:45:02 GMT Nalyd Khezr Bey said:

I did not say that. I only meant what I said in terms of my personal focus not being "Typhonian Tradition" and not necessarily trying to illuminate the works of Crowley or Grant but my own. And no, I don't consider most of the work I do to be a part of what most of the membership here might understand as the Typhonian Tradition unless one simply considers everything as being part of that tradition.

The Typhonian project, as I understand it, is to discover and mark out paths and build bridges to transmundane intelligences in the Great Elsewhere; to learn and to replenish.   That is what I am doing, and why I am here.

The life and work of Crowley is good in parts, while Grant has left a legacy of useful signposts and possible points of departure for incomers, but I don't consider myself beholden to the methods and metaphysics of either man.

Nonetheless, there is a small scatter of active sorcerers around the Typhonian project, some more involved with Grant's legacy than others, but all I would call members of the Typhonian caucas.

[dorkthrone]

At times Grant's use of Gematria strikes me as an equivalent technique to Rimbaud's "derangement of the senses" or Dali's "paranoiac critical method" i.e. using a kind of hysterical excess of calculation he bypasses the conscious mind (by keeping it occupied with endless operations) to allow the subconscious insights to manifest. If this is the case the "correctness" of the Gematria becomes less important than the frenzy of creativity it helps to unleash.

[Gregory Peters]

Apr 20, 2016 21:53:20 GMT dorkthrone said:

At times Grant's use of Gematria strikes me as an equivalent technique to Rimbaud's "derangement of the senses" or Dali's "paranoiac critical method" i.e. using a kind of hysterical excess of calculation he bypasses the conscious mind (by keeping it occupied with endless operations) to allow the subconscious insights to manifest. If this is the case the "correctness" of the Gematria becomes less important than the frenzy of creativity it helps to unleash.

I think that is spot on to one of its strongest qualities. Also makes me think of the "jump rhthms" Grant would discuss in relation to some of Count Basie's music. As with One O'Clock Jump, as the rational mind is occupying itself and getting entranced with working out the details of the gematria, the "skips" in the calculations allow the mind to leap across the Abyss. Or, if one is not quite ready for leaping, they are a sure means of keeping the very rational qabalist locked into a mental maelstrom of sheer madness trying to figure out the numbers and meaning. Again, in a way Grant's gematria is like a Zen koan...

[william]

If everyone invents their own "creative gematria" - which is what the earlier posts in this thread imply - this is in essence very little different from chaos (or arguably thelemic) techniques, in that the individual is the sole arbiter of correspondences in their own subjective magical universe and perhaps this is all as it should be.  It does beg the question though, why the wider "classical" systems of gematria, including the Hebrew, Chaldean and Greek - in which we must also include KG's own, from all appearances - resonate among its readers and practitioners?  And if so, what relevance is this in terms of a wider application beyond the purely subjective, and whatever "rules" this may presuppose, if any.

If the quote from Outer Gateways does refer to the commonly recognized NAEQ it could be considered slightly rich that somebody involved in such a - poetic interpretation of magical phenomena as KG is/was, should therefore feel so animated as to "strongly protest" about the equally valid interpretation of another.

[stephen]

Kenneth Grant placed the emphasis on the use of the traditional qabbalahs in terms of Gematria, predominantly the Hebrew and Chaldean=Aramaic, but also the Greek. He regarded these as having an authentic hieratic basis, unlike the so-called New Aeon English Qabala which he considered was more on a par with numerology.

The creative element of the gematria comes in the individual's use of it and the personal resonances which he/she discerns in the patterns of the words and numbers, both their rhythms and their dissonances, perhaps, if we are to go along with the interpretations that both dorkthrone and Gregory are suggesting. Such a body of correspondences can become the infrastructure of a personal magical universe. In my opinion, the use of gematria still requires a basis of intellectual integrity and consistency, of course, to serve these purposes and I am usually well aware of when I am stretching the limits, or not getting the right connections when striving to establish certain magical formulations along gematriacal lines.

[Gregory Peters]

May 13, 2016 14:58:38 GMT stephen said:

The creative element of the gematria comes in the individual's use of it and the personal resonances which he/she discerns in the patterns of the words and numbers, both their rhythms and their dissonances, perhaps, if we are to go along with the interpretations that both dorkthrone and Gregory are suggesting. Such a body of correspondences can become the infrastructure of a personal magical universe. In my opinion, the use of gematria still requires a basis of intellectual integrity and consistency, of course, to serve these purposes and I am usually well aware of when I am stretching the limits, or not getting the right connections when striving to establish certain magical formulations along gematriacal lines.

I think that is an excellent summary stephen, and I agree. Did not mean to imply that no intellectual rigor is necessary, and consistency is essential. The rational mind is a tool, and should be used as such. The inspiration from beyond, the intuition, will come through and find home in a well fortified intellect.

[william]

May 13, 2016 14:58:38 GMT stephen said:

The creative element of the gematria comes in the individual's use of it and the personal resonances which he/she discerns in the patterns of the words and numbers, both their rhythms and their dissonances, perhaps, if we are to go along with the interpretations that both dorkthrone and Gregory are suggesting. Such a body of correspondences can become the infrastructure of a personal magical universe. In my opinion, the use of gematria still requires a basis of intellectual integrity and consistency, of course, to serve these purposes and I am usually well aware of when I am stretching the limits, or not getting the right connections when striving to establish certain magical formulations along gematriacal lines.

I am in agreement with this; the supplemental point I had been making was why certain phenomena should "personally resonate" and become the "infrastructure of a personal magical universe" in terms of any shared perception in which "limits" are not allowed to become stretched - in other words, "rules" of application.  Going just from the comments made on this thread, KG's "poetic" and unscientific personal gematria nonethless seems to adhere to these certain rules.

If one invents one's own magical system - of creative gematria, in this case - one wouldn't be starting from nothing, but looking at what had gone before and selecting from it such correspondences that resonate as relevant and right. Unfortunately, as with an uncertainty experiment in simultaneously analysing the position and movement of an electron, the closer one approaches this matter the "foggier" it beomes and harder to pin down in terms of an exact point of delineation as to just why certain rules and limits apply. lf we could detect what makes one thing resonate as fitting from all the other candidates on offer (and why this should also be true of other practitioners' perceptions apart from oneself) we would be a lot clearer and closer in language terms of resolving the apparent subjective/objective dichotomy and which hard "rules" then operate in consensual reality other than "do what thou wilt".


"Kenneth Grant placed the emphasis on the use of the traditional qabbalahs in terms of Gematria, predominantly the Hebrew and Chaldean=Aramaic, but also the Greek. He regarded these as having an authentic hieratic basis, unlike the so-called New Aeon English Qabala which he considered was more on a par with numerology."

Surely the traditional forms of gematria would also be equally concerned with numerology - by their very nature, it all comes down to number.  As for an "authentic hieratic" basis I am not sure of your precise meaning in this context so cannot comment further on it. Could you please expand a little more, and also upon the apparently different approach re the NAEQ and why it should maybe be discounted.