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INTRODUCTION#1
When one reads the book it can be read sequentially or by subject. It is unwise to think that when one begins a sentence that the subject will remain the same all the way through. On a superficial level it will seem to make sense albeit outrageous sense at times, but the reality is in it’s Qaballa. Take for example 1:5 ‘‘Help ME o warrior Lord of Thebes in MY unveiling before the children of Men.’’ ME=46=WOMAN MY=36=SUN=MAN. So a simple way of understanding this sentence is ‘Help woman in the unveiling of the Sun or Man before the children of men.’ A deeper interpretation would be ‘Help woman to understand the mystery of MAN/SUN at the time of Sun conjunct Venus (BEFORE=107=SUN+VENUS). The warrior Lord =97=PISCES=RA HOOR KHUT. It is Ra Hoor Khut who must help woman because being also Pisces it contains all the variations of the Zodiac. All the ME’s in Al refer to woman and all the MY’s refer to the Sun or Man. Similarly all the THEE’s refer to Nuit and so on.
Although it may seem that the ideas in Al are sequential they are more often than not fragmented. As an example the word ‘Vice’ comes up in several places. ‘‘Compassion is the vice of Kings’’ would suggest that compassion is a negative quality until we read later that ‘‘these vices are my service’’. The value of vice is 71=VENUS Venus governs the emotions. Therefore the first phrase could be read ‘‘compassion is the emotional response of kings’’ and ‘‘compassionate emotional responses are in the service of MAN/SUN’’=MY=36. If it is read straight then it is an ugly trap for the uninitiated. It will give the ignorant an excuse for their ignorance and the cruel justification for their cruelty, in the end it will destroy both types or if they are intrinsically ‘‘good’’ their essential goodness will save them.
The road to Thelema is littered with the corpses of greedy ignorant opportunists with ego’s as big as houses but with souls you could fit on a pinhead. Do not blame the book if you fail, all the book did was to highlight an aspect of you that you can’t cope with, if you follow the instructions with wisdom and discrimination you will survive, if you don’t it will teach you these qualities or be the instrument of your destruction, but it is yourself that wields that instrument. It will take as long as the history of mankind to write a commentary to Al because the history of mankind is the commentary. What we are seeking to achieve is to explain some of the ways in which the Qaballa is being used, but first we will discuss the parallels and divergences between the English Qaballa and previously accepted methods of analysis.
Aleister Crowley gave us Liber AL; he solved the first half of the equation, but he could not resist trying to solve the second. This resulted in attempts to translate English words into Hebrew, Greek, Egyptian, Chaldean, and other languages in order to make some sense of Liber Al. In a previous incarnation he had interfered as a desperate magician and wrested the Enochian system, stillborn, from the bosom of the Goddess. In this Aeon the gods wreaked their vengeance on him in an all too obvious manner for his opportunism. Liber AL, if it is a hieratic text, must have a qaballa in the language in which it was written or it simply cannot be counted as a hieratic work. We are presenting to Thelemites the Qaballa of AL in English - we can do no more. It will then be up to them whether they ‘‘go down the tubes’’ of Set or go forward into the New Aeon armed with a magic citadel, the power of which the world has not known for many aeons.
Magick is a complete, coherent, and logical system requiring no faith but work, its Qaballa requires the same attribute. In our last article we gave the English Qaballa and a rudimentary explanation of a few of its numbers, and it was our original intention to leave it at that. However, we realised that it could take years for the reader to work out the Keys, so we decided to speed up the process by giving some of the English Qaballistic magical system of AL within the Law of Thelema. (The information in this article is up to the Neophyte grade of our order).
Magick is based on AL and AL is based on number, the number 11 to be precise, which gives, as explained in our previous article, the following English Qaballistic values: A=1; L=2; W=3; H=4; S=5; D=6; O=7; Z=8; K=9; V=10; G=11; R=12; C=13; N=14; Y=15; J=16; U=17; F=18; Q=19; B=20; M=21; X=22; I=23; T=24; E=25; P=26. We repeat - no qaballa can be used to interpret a hieratic book unless it is in the language of that book! We will begin by comparing some of the conclusions of other Thelemites with those given by this Qaballa. In the Book of the Law themes are followed throughout all three chapters in linked verses. The links may be a key number like 93 or a word like ‘‘Thee’’ or even the device of studying the same number verse in all three chapters. To explain AL using words like XAIPE, AXPICTA, CTHAH, and CTAYPOS etc., is as silly as converting Hebrew words into Chinese to illuminate the Qaballa of Genesis.