PETER LEVENDA on the Rites of Mummy, the Solution of AL....

[The Double-wanded One]

www.amazon.com/Rites-Mummy-Krla-Secret-Liber/dp/0892541989

For the upcoming book by Peter Levenda (in collaboration with Jeffrey D. Evans), which covers more elements of Typhonianism and the infamous II:76 from Liber Legis.  

I'm quite excited to read the book when it comes out, having just discovered it.

[sandow]

Wow, just listened to this, with some difficulties (English is not my first language, i can read it quite easily, but hearing it... more difficult !). Seems really fascinating. I confess that i am among the "liber AL code skeptics" (thinking that if it is deciphered someday it would be something like "hey, April's fool"); but my curiosity is definitively awaken. Unfortunately, the book is not out before November...

Does anybody here has an opinion on Jeffrey Evans ? Perhaps is he even a member of this forum ;-) ?

[stephen]

For Jeffrey D. Evans see Beyond the Mauve Zone Chapter 6: "The Rite of the K'rla Cell" and photograph 6, where he is shown with Kenneth Grant in 1989.

I have had some confusing and tetchy correspondence with Jeffrey concerning the book, which came to a close with my telling him that I was certainly looking forward to reading the book and would give it my serious attention. 

[merlin]

There's a preview on Amazon now.

[The Double-wanded One]

Surprisingly it's already on Libgen now

[oek]

I was quite intrigued about this when it was announced, and read it quickly a few weeks ago. I have to say a lot of the qabbalah and main points of the book went over my head; most likely I'm not good enough in mathematics.

What I found interesting were the ritual methods used by K'rla Cell during all those years and Jeffrey Evans' personal story in general. I'll have to give it another slower read at a better time. I would be very curious to hear about what other members thought about the book, and if you understood the implications of Evans' received mathematical codes.

[stephen]

According to Amazon the book is not available for publication in the UK until 25 January, so I have a while to wait yet. They have reduced the pre-order price but I think that I will wait a little longer also.

Had to do a quick search online to find out what Libgen is.

The received code to Liber AL is more related to geometry and mathematics apparently, rather than Qabbalah/gematria which is more in my line, so I will see what I have to make of it too.

[stephen]

Eventually acquired my copy of RITES OF THE MUMMY from Blackwells on 28 February and I've been reading it and letting it sink in. It is a substantial book and interesting on a number of levels. Moreover, its a presentation of Jeffrey Evans's life work really, and warrants serious consideration on that basis alone. We get to learn a fair deal about the history of Kenneth Grant's O.T.O. as well: both its ups and its downs.

There is a fascinating illustration on the back dust cover (featured, not so well, as a monochrome frontispiece in the book), a painting of "The Cell" by Bettina Jeanne Guilbert: a highly suggestive impression of the modus operandi of the K'rla Cell. In his chapter on "The Rite of the K'rla Cell" in BTMZ, Grant includes a quotation from Evans that seems to have a lot of relevance to what we see in the painting:

"I have had the distinct impression that in order to truly function as the K'rla Cell, the Old Ones need to transform her [i.e., the Cell] from anthropomorphousness to a mere mass of quivering protoplasm trapped within a human-like shell. Thus the casing of insulation of the K'rla Cell suggests the cocoon of the insect; the House of Transformation. "(p.118, BTMZ, 1999 edn.)

I do not think that Evans states anything precisely like this in the book. As the workings of the Cell were being performed in the Tunnel of Niantiel, you would expect a certain degree of sinister ambience. The aim was to establish communication with the Great Old Ones and Jeffrey and his magical partner Ruth did not seem to be making much progress until Jeffrey "became entranced and began to gaze at verse I.25 of The Book of the Law." (p.170 ROTM).

I shall leave the post there. If anyone wants to join in the thread, please do, but in the next 'episode' I intend to talk numbers.

[stephen]

Liber AL, Chapter One, verses 24 and 25 read: I am Nuit and my word is six and fifty. Divide, add, multiply and understand. This is how they appear in the holograph manuscript, in which none of the verses are numbered. When Crowley came to number the verses for publication of the book, these were the perfectly logical numbers with which they were assigned. If you take these verses in the context of Liber AL as a whole, they become I.24 and I.25 and Jeffrey Evans had the sudden inspiration that I.25 Divide, add, multiply, and understand applied not to the preceding verse but to the number of the verse itself taken as a decimal number. Peter Levenda gives his calculations on page 39:

Briefly, 1.25 divided by its square root = 1.1180339, add the square root of .25 which is 0.5 = 1.6180339

to which he declares: "1.6180339 is, seemingly impossibly but nevertheless inevitably, the Golden Mean. The Golden Mean is buried within the very verse that exhorts "Divide, add, multiply and understand."

(Then this is multiplied by itself to give 2.6180339.) But is this not using the verse number in two different ways in the same calculation? Should not 1.1180339 have been added to 1.25 = 2.3680339 and = nothing in particular. However, once Evans realised that he had obtained the value of the Golden Mean he decided that this might be the secret key to Liber AL.

Levenda even goes so far as to suggest that verse 24 is a misdirection!

In his Old Comment to Liber AL Crowley gives some interesting interpretations of I.24, i.e. NU = 56, in terms of the instructions of 1.25. I added some of my own in my piece on "The Manifestations of Nu" in STARFIRE Vol.I, 5 (an interpretation which was much enhanced by Robert Taylor's graphics and illustrations).

And in contrast to all of this emphasis on square roots, I speculated on what 56² might equal: it equals 3136. This is 49 x 64 which looks potentially interesting. Resorting to isopsephy, alas I have no correspondences for 3136. My nearest number is 3139 = typhonoeidos - two of the 'o's are omegas - "like a whirlwind" (Strabo), not a valid correspondence, but worth a mention I thought.

So what is more important to the meaning of Liber AL, text or verse numbers?

[Michael Staley]

Mar 22, 2022 16:27:00 GMT stephen said:

So what is more important to the meaning of Liber AL, text or verse numbers?

Very interesting post, Stephen. I still think that the text is the more important, but the verse numbers seem to contain nuggets too.