Wandering Stars

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The English Cabala - 111

1=A=0

The Order & Value of the English Alphabet

This article delves a little deeper into my involvement with Liber AL vel Legis - The Book of the Law, as described in my article Why Egypt? Part 2 - and the discovery I made as a result. For more information on Liber Legis, visit my article About Thelema.

About a year after my initial introduction to The Book of the Law in 1993, I encountered the original Llewellyn publication of the first volume of an “encyclopedic guide to the sacred alphabets and magickal systems of the world” by author David Allen Hulse, then entitled “The Key of It All, Book One - The Eastern Mysteries”. This thick book covered what he called six “Angelic” Keys: the alphabets of Cuneiform, Hebrew, Arabic, Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese, and is a most valuable reference with tables and clear organized explanations.

In this first volume was also promised a second volume not yet published, “The Key of It All, Book Two - The Western Mysteries” covering seven more alphabet Keys: Greek, Coptic, Runes, Enochian, Tarot and English - making English a sacred language or “magickal” or “angelic” alphabet, like the others. At the time I remembered thinking to myself “But aren’t the Egyptian hieroglyphs a sacred alphabet too?” only to later discover them in his Book Two, secreted in the Coptic Hieratic alphabet. In this Book One he wrote that Book Two would contain: “The serial order code for English; Aleister Crowley’s attempt at an English Qabalah; the symbolism behind the shapes of the English alphabet letters.”

Of course, the concept of an English Qabalah had already seized my imagination months before reading Hulse’s books, as it has for so many of us after first reading the following command in The Book of the Law II:55:

"Thou shalt obtain the order & value of the English Alphabet; thou shalt find new symbols to attribute them unto."

“The Key of It all - Book One” was a powerful resource for the expansion of my own magickal practice, and truly planted the subconscious seed of what was to follow.

Around the same time that the Book One arrived - a few months prior to my own Neophyte initiation ceremony in the Ordo Sanctus Gnosis, I had begun performing a Qabalistic path-work cycle, and was finally up to the very last path, the 11th, of the first Hebrew “Mother” letter Aleph, attributed to The Fool of the Tarot. Utilizing certain ceremonial, yoga and shamanic techniques on January 23rd of 1995, I suddenly had a clear vision of the answer to the passage, which came as a culmination of my path-work with the Fool - the “order & value” instantly flashing in my mind's eye as 1 & 0, along with the immediate understanding that 1 denoted the order, that is - first, beginning with the letter A, with 0 being the numerological value of the letter. Thus:

1=A=0

AHA!

I remember laughing out loud. It seemed almost too obvious.

The 11th Path on the Qabalistic Tree of Life is attributed the Hebrew letter Aleph, valued at 1, and The Fool card is numbered 0. With the the English letter ‘A’ in between it’s own “order & value”, the Gnostic god name IAO appeared in my mind’s eye, and it suddenly became pregnant with meaning in that “Aha!” moment…

It was then that a soft feminine voice began speaking as in a thought, triggered by that realization. I remember first thinking that it was my own internal dialogue - my monkey mind, or perhaps even one of Don Juan’s flyers - but it was persistent. And it was familiar. It wasn’t an audible hallucination, it was more like an internal dialogue that I realized didn’t come from my own mind. Hard to explain better, but I suddenly recognized it from my psychedelic trips from back in high school, often thinking of it as the feminine “personality” of LSD that I for some reason identified with the Egyptian goddess Isis.

That voice was often apparent while listening to music when tripping, and right then, crazy as it may sound, an episode I experienced with the Led Zeppelin III album while on acid, way back in 1970, immediately flashed in my mind out of the blue. When I had gone to turn the record over, the light glinted off the space at the end of the record revealing “Do what thou wilt” inscribed into the vinyl.

Now, I didn’t know then that it was from the famous quote in The Book of the Law mentioned earlier, although I had heard it was from Aleister Crowley later on, being told by a guitarist acquaintance that Jimmy Page was a follower and had scratched it into the master. That meant little to me… I knew about his Tarot and “The Book of Thoth”, but I had no inkling of Liber Legis then, and when this same acquaintance also told me that Crowley was generally regarded as a Satanist, that, like for so many, pretty much squelched any further serious interest I might have had right there. Not because of any Christian leanings or fear, of course, but because I thought it was cultish and creepy.

But for that memory to persist, hidden there in my subconscious, and then pop back like that, along with the familiar feminine “voice”, during this particular path-working, was a real jolt. I realized then that the voice didn’t just come from the LSD - I had not taken any. It was simply that the both the LSD and, in this case, the ritual pathworking, had shifted my perception so that I actually noticed it wasn’t actually my own thoughts. I realized it was the voice of my Daemon, who had appeared to me, glittering in the wind on that Big Sur beach a few years before.

I then suddenly realized that it was actually also the self-same voice that told me to get up and call 911 when I had attempted suicide during my depressed SAD syndrome days in Seattle! I was astonished at this realization. It was always there all along, like an internal dialogue, and I realized that my day-to-day awareness had been simply filtering it out, or thinking to myself. My psychotropic, near-death and rarefied ceremonial awareness, however, had not filtered it out at all, but rather rendered it crystal clear. It was then that the identification of the voice with Isis came again; but not as the Greek version of her name, but rather as Auset, in the original Egyptian language.

While the incredulous are welcome to their opinions on this matter, it was at this moment that the soft yet firm voice suggested that I write down what was about to be "given" to me. Not having a pen and paper handy (a huge error in magickal workings, I might add), and therefore not heeding the command, I instead went to the new computer I had been renting to produce a newsletter for an aquarium club (insert eye roll here) to record what I “heard”, a lamentable choice that leaves me without a handwritten manuscript. Even so, I saved the result, a Word file on Windows 95, in the form of a short document which I arbitrarily entitled Liber A vel Follis – The Book of the Holy Fool.

One might appreciate my shock and amazement when, some years after typing out Liber A and sharing it online, I was directed in an online forum to an obscure section of the Hebrew Haggadah pertaining to the creation of the Hebrew alphabet, only to find my revelation repeated back to me almost verbatim, albeit couched in Hebrew/Aramaic wording! One of my academic critics claimed outright that I had clearly plagiarized the passage - and all I could do was helplessly try to defend myself, countering that such was honestly not the case, that I had never seen or even known the Haggadah existed until they had referred me to it.

Now I am quite convinced that both documents come from the same praeter-human sources. Take or leave my explanation of the reception of Liber A as you will. While it does support the cipher 1=A=0, and reveals some incredibly arcane information, the cipher speaks for itself and does not depend on the document, and that’s just as well. The being who revealed it to me was apparently repeating the passage like a recording anyway, or else is in possession of a wry sense of humor - or both.

The Order & Value of the English Alphabet

After applying the process of esoteric Numerology (called Gematria) with this new cipher, extended serially to yield A=0 through Z=25 (with X and Y switched in accordance with Hadit’s riddle in Liber Legis, and the chance shape of the letters themselves), I was astonished by the numeric correlations with various Qabalistic numbers and words, especially from The Book of the Law. Here is the very first one I tried out:

In chapter I Nuit says, “I am Nuit and my word is six and fifty.”

And amazingly enough, the four letters of “w-o-r-d” add to 56 in the A=0 cipher! That did it for me, right then and there.

I later discovered that the letters of “The English Cabala” add to 111 in A=0,  and there are exactly 111 symbols in the Western Esoteric Qabalah. The spelling of Cabala with a C is actually quite appropriate for English too, with Cabala being the common English variant found in contemporary mainstream dictionaries, the use of the letters Q or K simply being English transliterations from the phonetic Hebrew anyway - there is no “set in stone” spelling. But our letter C corresponds symbolically to the crescent waning Moon, attributed to the Tarot card The Priestess, enthroned with the TORA on her lap and wearing the horned crown of the Egyptian goddess Hathor - and the Canaanite Asherah, the great wives of the gods; and that makes the use of the letter C more relevant than the other two.

Concerning this number 111, Nuit says, “My prophet is a fool with his one - one - one; are not they the Ox, and none by the Book?” The numerological value of the Hebrew word Aleph is 111, it means ox, and is attributed to the Fool card numbered 0. Then, while crunching the “numbers & the words” I discovered that “Order & Value” adds to 111 in 1=A=0 - and that clinched the answer to the puzzle as being keyed to the Fool’s Tarot card attributes, as was flashed into my mind that January night…

And there are more like these, so many more in fact, that it becomes clear that something very important is secreted here, and that even the admitted know-it-all Crowley never saw them all; and in my mind, that’s a pretty darned good indication that he wasn’t the one who put them there.

Assuming that ”the order & value of the English alphabet” to be expounded in Hulse’s “The Key of It All: Book Two” must certainly be one and the same as 1=A=0, I found myself waiting anxiously for its publication. As soon as it arrived at Beers Books, I purchased my pre-ordered pre-signed copy, went next door to the old Capitol Garage for coffee, and immediately searched for the chapter on the English alphabet.

I was quite surprised to find that it contained a serial English value of A=1, the same one already used by Numerologists. Even so, Hulse had cited copious Qabalah and Book of the Law based correlations which were undeniably pertinent to Thelema and the other Mystery Traditions, the Masons in particular. It was really quite fascinating, leading me to hypothesize that the true value of the English Alphabet might in fact be a kind of binary code, A=1 and 0, and not just an order & value. The similarity between this binary code, and the digital language of computers, 1/0, seemed to me to be far more than coincidental.

And so, on April Fools Day of 1995 I decided to document my own revelation with a number dictionary, and sat down at the keyboard to put together a small self-published booklet somewhat ostentatiously (when in Rome…) entitled “Value of the English Alphabet - 222, Liber ABK” (the title adds to 222, with ABK, valued at 0, 1 and 10, being a Key in what Hulse refers to as “The Grand Puzzle” of Liber Legis). It was produced on that same rented computer I was so enthralled with in January.

The owner of the print shop that produced the booklets was a friend who humored me with an initial  “proof” run of 7, then three runs of 10 for a total of 37 copies - on the “Feast days of the writing of The Book of the Law” April 8th, 9th and 10th. I actually ended up publishing two editions, one later in May because of subsequent new discoveries surrounding the so-called “Three Keys”, just before I discovered that both “Order & Value” and “The English Cabala” each add to 111, linking the cipher indelibly with the whole of the symbolism of the Tree of Life, irrevocably changing the title of the project. This discovery, and subsequent events, sent me back to the drawing board as far as the 1=A=0 cipher was concerned.

It is important to note here that this is not the first time that a numeric value system for the English Alphabet has been posited – new age numerologists have been using a serial code (A = 1 through Z = 26) for decades, confusing the order with the value (after all, from my perspective, any good mathematician starts with 0, not 1). This is, as I mentioned earlier, the cipher used by Hulse in his encyclopedia and in his booklet The Truth About Numerology, both published by Llewellyn. Matthew Goodwin (in his book Numerology: The Complete Guide) is also a proponent of this system, as are a plethora of other writers (as a cursory search on the internet will reveal), all of which work quite well for any exoteric purposes; but our Cabala’s purpose is not exoteric, it is very esoteric… giving access to the hidden, rather than to reiterate the obvious.

Of course, I am not entirely original in naming this system The English Cabala. There is, for example, William Eisen's farsighted two-volume work, The English Cabala, published by DeVorss (Eisen’s system, like those above, is also based upon the A=1 serial cipher ). Then there is Linda Falorio's fascinating English Qabalah, a system dependent upon Kenneth Grant’s writings, loosely based upon Crowley's English/Hebrew/Egyptian transliterations and, more importantly, his work with the so-called “shadow side” or Qlippoth of the Qabalistic Tree of Life. Lastly, there is the popular code discovered by Jim Lees in the mid seventies that was later developed further by Jake Stratton-Kent and Carol Smith, a more elaborate cipher labeled either the English Qaballa or New Aeon English Qabalah (NAEQ), which has been embraced by several latter day Thelema groups.

A search of the world-wide-web will invariably turn up any number of other different systems as well, including this one. While most all of these are, like my cipher, equally based upon the “numbers and words” of Crowley's cryptic Book of the Law, and do provide fairly workable results, I believe that none can approach the crystalline clarity and simple reflectivity of the order & value expressed as 1=A=0. The incredulous are encouraged to compare these various systems with the results of our Cipher, which we have chosen henceforth to call The English Cabala -111, and judge for themselves. Wikipedia has a pretty thorough overview of them, including mine, worth checking out for those who are interested. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Qabalah

The first reference to an English Qabalah found in the literature was made by Willis F. Whitehead in 1899 in his book, The Mystic Thesaurus, in which he describes a system he called "English Cabala." I believe Crowley was likely aware of this, later coining the term English Qabalah in his work with it ten years later. Like Whitehead, I chose the Latin rendition of the word, Cabala, which is a universally accepted English spelling found in every English dictionary. My reason for choosing this spelling goes far beyond this, however - to reiterate: the values of the letters comprising THE ENGLISH CABALA add to 111, and, quite remarkably, there are precisely 111 basic symbolic components that comprise this new Cabala – the number 111 being a quite portentous and classic Qabalistic number indeed!

111 Symbols of The English Cabala:

10 - Sephiroth of Tree of Life – The Numbers 1 through 10

22 - Connective Paths of Tree of Life – Tarot Greater Arcana

56 - Permutations of the Four Elements – Tarot Lesser Arcana

12 – Signs of the Zodiac

11 – Discrete bodies of the Earth in relation to the Solar System – Sun, Moon and Planets

Meetings with David Allen Hulse

Inside the back covers of both of the “The Key of It All” books was a brief bio, saying that David lived in Sacramento too, so I entertained the notion that perhaps I should write to him at the publisher’s contact address given (quaint, huh?), and send him my booklet to see what this thoughts might be, and hoping to meet him.

Incredibly, as it turned out, I got my chance to show him the results of my work in person but a few short months after my first discoveries. I had only very recently met a new acquaintance, local artist Bill Caruthers, and after his first visit to my home he noted my all-too-apparent interest the occult, and suggested that I should meet a friend of his with a similar calling, David Hulse.

Needless to say, I was astounded by this synchronicity - another veritable “opening-of-the-way” -  what I have now come to recognize as the distinctive mark of Anubis. My friend soon arranged a meeting with David at his home (we also “coincidentally” lived within walking distance from each other in East Sacramento, California), and so I prepared my notes and a copy of my booklet and waited rather anxiously for the appointed time to arrive to meet this erudite author in the Western Mystery Traditions.

After our first meeting, when I told him about my experience with 1=A=0 and gave him a copy of my little booklet, I met with him again several times more. We were both excited about exchanging our ideas, showing each other our personal Tarot decks and such; and although he was understandably skeptical of my cipher, he finally conceded the radical validity of A=0, at least as my own private magickal system. He would often cite a meaningful numerological correlation in A=1, to which I would counter with a reciprocal association in A=0, much to our mutual amusement and amazement, knowing full well how few people there were who could even surmise what we were up to.

I recall David standing in his kitchen, getting us coffee, likening these two ciphers to the warp and weft of a fisherman's net, which we were using to capture shimmering pearls of knowledge like fish, suggesting that A=0 had effectively tightened the skein of this net to catch more of the “little ones that would have gotten away”.

I likened the A=0 cipher to a wild card, the Joker if you will, who is actually the Tarot card numbered 0, the Fool; the Joker being the only Major Arcana Tarot card that remains in our present 52 card deck. Just as the Joker does in card games, A=0 adds an air of unpredictability in Numerology, since A=0 names and words possess disproportionately smaller numeric values than the A=1 words, depending upon how many times the letter A appears in them.

David also once referred to A=0 as The Shadow to A=1 (though it might be seen esoterically as the other way around), which led me to label these two as the LVX and NOX Ciphers (Latin words meaning Light and Darkness). Telling me that this was likely the most Thelemic period in my life (I have always abhorred that word), he finally agreed that my own work with the NOX Cipher or A=0 code had just begun, and so it was that the responsibility for expounding it fell on my shoulders. I simply could not believe my good fortune in having these conversations with such an erudite scholar of the Western Mystery Traditions.

I am rather embarrassed to report today that I am still working on it, in a yet unfinished compendium entitled “The English Cabala - 111”. Meanwhile, David's occupation with the A=1 cipher had already resulted not only with “The Key Of It All: Books One and Two”, but with his original first edition, simply entitled “The Key of It All”, or “Liber ABRAHADABRA”, self-published in 1988, a typed manuscript copy in a three-ring binder, which he gifted to me in a gesture of unrestrained trust. I still have it in my magickal library after all these years. I should note here for those who don’t already know that the term “the Key of it all” is a direct quote from The Book of the Law III: 47:

“This book shall be translated into all tongues: but always with the original in the writing of the Beast; for in the chance shape of the letters and their position to one another: in these are mysteries that no Beast shall divine. Let him not seek to try: but one cometh after him, whence I say not, who shall discover the Key of it all.“

Thus, the original published title of his books, The Key of It All, that originally prefaced and was later tellingly removed from his two-volume set now entitled simply “The Eastern Mysteries” and “The Western Mysteries”, suggests that, at that time, David very likely considered himself to be the “one” who would “cometh after” the Beast - Aleister Crowley.

It is important for me to say here that I am totally uninterested is such a role. If the system works, it is what it is. Experience has shown that great falls can come from such massaging of the ego and the power trips that are often attendant, as with any such “lust of result”. Crowley himself serves as a prime cautionary tale. And this is not to say that David was any more guilty of it than I. But mostly, I am just too lazy and misanthropic to try and capitalize on it in any way. It feels like a burden really, to have to even write this memoir.

Now comes the gritty human interest part of the story, which on the one hand I am loathe to share, and on the other I think is critical to this story, and should be told, with the understanding that it is subjective for the most part, from my perspective.

David and I soon became estranged. I think it began when I had mentioned some practices from Castaneda’s books over the phone, and he retorted, perhaps offhandedly, that I would have to give up Castaneda if I were to become his student. Now, that didn’t surprise me that much really, since Castaneda’s writings, and use of psychedelics, had been, mostly unfairly, discredited by predominant mainstream academia for at least a decade - although the publisher Simon and Schuster wisely still refers to his books as nonfiction. But no talk of me becoming David’s “student” had ever transpired, and since Castaneda’s books played such a pivotal role in my own spiritual journey up that point, I bluntly responded that I had no intention whatsoever of “giving up” Castaneda, even if I could.

At first, I thought that he had become distant because of this response, or perhaps that he believed my discovery and work was flawed and that I was just another time-waster tyro, or conversely that 1=A=0 posed some kind of a threat, undermining his own work. Or even that I was trying to get in on his coattails. Either way, we pretty much stopped meeting after that.

This saddened me because I really enjoyed our discussions and truly believed that the two systems dovetailed rather well, forming a powerful two-pronged system for self-examination through Numerology. Honestly, his broad knowledge of the Western Esoteric Traditions was like a gold mine to me. I always tried to make it clear that I had absolutely no design on being included in his publications - or of anything at all that smacked of me trying toexploit his many years of hard work. The 1=A=0 cipher simply stood on its own anyway, no props needed.

In one of our few meetings after that, it seemed that he had become disillusioned with Thelema. I thought maybe something had been going on at the local O.T.O. that set him off (that being the Ordo Templi Orientis, one of Crowley’s two surviving initiatic orders, the other being the A:.A:.), thinking perhaps it was probably due to their favoring another “order & value” that they call the NAEQ or New Aeon English Qabalah, rather than his A=1 cipher. I am quite sure that he told me he had presented his cipher work to them. I remember him giving me a copy machine facsimile of the English Qabalah produced by Sacramento’s enfant terrible poet and O.T.O member, Barry Kennedy, and then wryly telling me “there are a lot of us out there who think they are Crowley’s heir”. Ain’t that the truth! That in itself is worthy of contemplation.

Still, it seemed out of character. After all, David was totally immersed in Thelema and Crowleyana when we first met a year or so prior, showing off his collection of first-edition books in his impressive library. But in this meeting, he spoke of Crowley and Blavatsky’s writings skeptically, knowing full well that I consider them both to be my “magickal parents”, suggesting that Liber Legis and her Dzyan Stanzas from “The Secret Doctrine” had simply been “made-up”, just like the unprovable anti-Castaneda contentions. At the time I really couldn’t fathom why he would have made such a statement. So what if it was all “made up”, anyway? What utter geniuses that would make of them all! And isn’t that one of the primary concerns of the Great Work - that is, the Knowledge and Conversation of one’s Holy Guardian Angel, or inner Genius - to Know Thyself truly?

The BOTA, The Cube of Space and The English Rose

Hulse invited me to visit him in his home one last time in 1997, when he showed me a proof copy of his brand new book, “New Dimensions For The Cube Of Space”, and handed me some printed copies of a folding origami-like cube to be included in it. I was quite surprised when I noticed that the Builders Of The Adytum Tarot card images formed its girders and faces. This then-yet-unpublished book contained the same Tarot card images both on the front cover and inside as well, their design copyright belonging exclusively to the BOTA. It was an exciting development, and I was honored to have been invited to his home once more, and to have him share this with me.

Typical of the synchronicities during this period, I was also working on the Cube of Space at the time, having just read and began working with Kevin Townley’s “The Cube of Space: Container of Creation”, a month or so before - a strong indication that our minds were still operating parallel, and I thought, on the same magickal current of Thelema. We had a lengthy discussion about the Cube, and of the proper sequencing of the English Alphabet in place of the Hebrew letters upon the petals of the Rosicrucian Rose Cross. After that I had shared with him my recent revelation that the center three petals of the Rose, reserved for the three Hebrew Mother Letters, revealed the glyph of the Cube of Space and the transcendental mantra AUM, all in accordance with Liber A vel Follis.

The English Rose

During this meeting he also showed me an interesting letter from BOTA authorities granting him the rights to use their Tarot images in his new book, contingent upon his adherence to certain conditions.

Apparently, their leadership had decided early on that Crowley was the black sheep of the family of the Western Esoteric Traditions, completely disavowing him and his work. In this regard I should mention here that one of David’s rare first edition books I was privy to viewing was a copy of BOTA founder Paul Foster Case’s first book on the Tarot, “Introduction to the Tarot”, published in 1920. David had pointed it out: in it Case clearly gives as one of his sources “Book 777, London 1909” in a small footnote, never mentioning the name of its infamous author, starkly revealing a rather hypocritical anti-Crowley stance that began at least as early as 1920, if not sooner.

This supports my contention that Case’s issue with Crowley was likely due to the demise of the Golden Dawn, the blame being unfairly placed upon him by G.D. members to this day. Additionally, Crowley’s publication of Liber 777 was considered at the time to be a breech of his secrecy oath with the Golden Dawn, even though that order had long since ceased to exist. Case was an initiate in one of the offshoot groups of the GD formed by previous members, so this makes complete sense. After all, a reconstituted Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn still vilifies Crowley on their public website today for the exactly the same thing.

It was at this meeting that David informed me that the title “The Key of It All” would be dropped from all subsequent editions of his encyclopedia of sacred alphabets. I didn’t contact him after that, and didn’t hear from him again for several years. I didn’t know what to say. I eventually began internalizing it, thinking that it was all because of me and my work, and that didn’t feel very good at all. Now I am pretty sure it wasn’t, but either way, it was profoundly disappointing to me, and had me questioning the validity of my own path and work.

At the time, I hadn’t really processed that David, whom I viewed back then as a Thelemite’s Thelemite as it were, had decided to distance himself from Thelema. I recall thinking at first that he was merely following the guidelines set by the BOTA in order to use their fabulous Pamela Coleman Smith Tarot images in his new book. I honestly had no idea that he was actually a member of the BOTA, as I discovered later on. The reader is reminded that their beautiful deck is also my own personal ceremonial Tarot to this day, painstakingly colored by hand, the address in its accompanying booklet leading me to become involved with them myself in 1992, as mentioned earlier in Why Egypt? Part 2.

The way I see it, groups like the BOTA and the current Golden Dawn orders, in demonizing Crowley and Thelema while still utilizing the fruits of the great man’s work without crediting him - as do many other contemporary Western Traditions - are simply being narrow minded and mean-spirited, despite what they believe to be true - real or imagined. It seems to me they at least owe him credit, along with the caveat of their disapproval. I judge the Tree by its Fruit. Nobody’s perfect, one might suppose.

I learned early on that Thelema was frowned upon by other Mystery Traditions; not only because of what they think Crowley’s role was in the dissolution of the Golden Dawn and his spilling of much of their “secret” Qabalistic teachings in his 777, but mostly due to his bad reputation, some contentions being real, most being tabloid fabrications - leading to the ridiculous accusations of satanism and human sacrifice from people who haven’t a clue of his actual Great Work.

And so it is all quite understandably too much for most folks to deal with, especially public initiatic groups. Quite honestly, I have no problem at all with that - the man had his downsides no doubt, although I do believe that he has been overly and unfairly demonized by them, and that they have played a rather dubious role in publicly promoting the crapulous and suppressing the truth. My own practice of Thelema was never really about most of Crowley’s practices or organizations anyway, it was always about the Book of the Law and the words of the Egyptian Neteru, first and foremost.

There is absolutely no denying, however, the sheer genius of the man, and his integral role in the the reception of The Book of the Law, and his indelible influence on the Western Esoteric Traditions and the so-called counter culture. I still regard him, far more for good than for ill, as my spiritual father.

David and I did communicate briefly again via e-mail around 2004 when he kindly offered to sell me a first edition copy of “The Equinox of the Gods”, which I found tempting but respectfully declined. Like Tau Malachi of the OSG, David informed me then that Thelema and The Book of the Law were simply passing elements in his spiritual journey. He also kindly emailed me a copy of his new book “The Genesis of AL” in which he claims Crowley’s account in “Equinox of the the Gods” was a fabrication, based upon the watermarks of the typing paper Crowley wrote Liber Legis on. He also claims that internal evidence reveals Liber Legis to be demonic, being brought on by Rose’s unborn child, with whom she was pregnant at the time of the reception. In this book, the history and documentation is impressive, but his conclusions are simply beyond the pale in my view. Another 12 years would pass before I would hear from him again.

We later reconnected via Facebook a few years back, and he appears to be doing well, visiting old coffee house haunts with a few local Sacramento O.T.O. folks. Also, just recently, I saw that his Liber ABRAHADBRA, with his A=1 cipher, was going to be published after all these years, and we talked about that briefly. He let me know that he goes into some detail about the various English Qabalahs in the book, documenting all of them he could find out there, including mine, which is an honor, no doubt. He feels it is only fair so that interested readers can look into them and choose the one which resonates most with them.

He still distances himself from both Thelema and Crowley, but feels that showing the root inspiration of his Eastern and Western Mysteries volumes needed documenting by publishing the “new” book, now over 40 years after his first revelations. I am so pleased that he and I still have an open line of communication after all these years, and look forward to future discussions about the Mysteries.

Meanwhile, the so called New Aeon English Qabala NAEQ is now the official English cipher of the O.T.O, for good of for ill… and nobody else has touched the 1=A=0 Order & Value with a ten foot pole since. Not to my knowledge anyway. I’ll continue to peck away at the book, and until such time as it is published, thus far shall I go…

Until then, let me offer the following overview of what the English Cabala - 111 actually is, and some bitmap images I created in 1997 - what I used to call “New Symbols”. Those who know their Qabalah and the Major Arcana of the Tarot, will surely understand…

The English Cabala - 111

The following is cut and paste from the Wikipedia article about The English Qabalah and its various versions and their proponents, including mine, as succinct an overview of my system as I have seen. For reasons I have yet to ascertain, my entry was removed only recently…

“Frater Perseverando's Liber A vel Follis and the English Cabala - 111

On January 23, 1995, Frater Perseverando, also known as Nox Cipher, wrote Liber A vel Follis: The Book of the Holy Fool, which he describes as having been from Auset.[24][25] He refers to the system in this short document as either "The English Cabala - 111" or "the 1=A=0 cipher", shorthand for expressing both the order and the value of the letters of the alphabet; that is, A is number 1, and has the value of 0 - extended serially to number 26 - Z, having a value of 25. The letters X and Y are switched in his order, but not their values, to accommodate a section of the puzzle of AL II:76 as well as reflect the symbolic elemental shapes of the letters.

In this system, the letters of the phrase "the English cabala" sums to 111, as does "order & value"; and in accordance with Liber Legis I:24 ("I am Nuit and my word is six and fifty"), the letters of "word" add to 56. The letters of the English alphabet A through V are then assigned to the Tarot Major Arcana in order as paths 11 through 32, and W, Y, X and Z to the four Tarot Aces and four additional paths, 33 through 36, with all of the associated classic Western Esoteric Qabalah attributes of elements, planets, signs, magical weapons.

Frater Perseverando points out that in this system, the letters of the name "Hadit" sums to 37, which is also the Hebrew gematria value of Yechidah ('unity'). Also the letters of the phrase "Paste the sheets from right to left" from AL III:73 add to 333. He demonstrates how these two correspondences align with the Hebrew Qabalah of the Nine Chambers or AIQ BKR and its gematria value of 333, with each column or chamber of three "rooms" adding to one of the nine triple numbers that share the root 37: 111 through 999 (i.e. 1+1+1=3, 3x37=111; 2+2+2=6, 6x37=222; and so on). As with Hebrew writing, the letters are arranged to be read from “right to left”. The first two of the Nine Chambers with their three "rooms" are: 1 - AIQ - Aleph/1, Yod/10, Qoph/100 = 111; 2 - BKR - Beth/2, Kaph/20, Resh/200 = 222; thus AIQ/111 plus BKR/222 = 333. One can extrapolate the other seven chambers from there. In this way, the 27th "room", Tzaddi final, becomes the final 37th path, the significant number value of Hadit in 1=A=0. This image is assigned to the Rose Cross tarotee' on the back of Crowley's Thoth Tarot deck, symbolized by a cross in a circle as if it were actually a new 27th letter, an allusion to AL I:57 "[Tzaddi] is not the Star" and AL III:47 "this circle squared ⊕ is a key".

Perseverando also added four additional petals to the traditional Rose Cross to accommodate the English alphabet in what he calls "the English rose" with the three central letters being AUM, and posits that in so doing, the "order & value of the English Alphabet" of AL II:55 provides a true working cabala and magical alphabet.[26]”

New Symbols

The AIQ BKR - Qabalah of Nine Chambers

The Qabalah of Nine Chambers is called AIQ BKR after the English transliterations of the Hebrew letters of the first two “chambers”, and like Hebrew writing, is read from right to left. In Hebrew Gematria, the values of these letters add to 333. The “rooms” of the 5th through 9th chambers are the five Hebrew “final” letters. The triple numbers are all multiples of the number 37, the Hebrew word Yechidah “Unity” and the name Hadit both sum to the number 37 in their respective Cabalas. There are 27 “rooms” in the AIQ BKR, which, when added to the Ten Sephiroth of the Tree of Life, equals 37 “Paths”.

In the last chapter of the Book of the Law, III:73, Ra Hoor Khuit commands “Paste the sheets from right to left and from top to bottom: and Behold!”

In 1=A=0, the letters comprising “Paste the sheets from right to left” sums to 333.

Aum, Ha!

In Ma’at,

Shane

About The English Cabala - 111 and images © 2020-2022 Shane Clayton - Wandering Stars Publishing

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Wandering Stars is dedicated to expounding the Sacred Science of Ancient Egypt

In memory and in honor of John Anthony West

Born July 9, 1932 - Wested February 6, 2018

AUM