The Book of the Law Study Group 2.55

Αρσιησισ

Grigori said:
Ah thanks, that was the obvious bit I was missing :|

I-Ching trigrams are sets of 3 made up with 2 variables, so we get 8 possibilities.
Liber Trigrammaton are sets of 3 made up with 3 variables, so we get 27 possibilities.

exactly!

Grigori said:
Is there some precedence for the trigrams composed of Tao, Yin and Yang, or are these Crowley's invention?

AFAIK that convention began with Liber Trigrammaton.

As an additional bit of information, it may help to know that in 777 as well as his translation of the I Ching Crowley drew connections between the 8 trigrams & 8 sub-abyssmal Sephiroth of the Tree of Life, & between Tao, Yin, & Yang & the Sephiroth of the Supernal Triad, aligning Tao with Kether, Yang with Chokmah, & Yin with Binah.

729
 

RLG

Dwtw

The implications of utilizing Liber XXVII as a means of creating a new English gematria and qabalah are very thoroughly explored in The Book of Mutations, aka the Trigrammaton Qabalah, which purports to definitively fulfill this particular verse, and decode the entirety of Liber CCXX. This information has been available on the Web for the last 12 years or so.

The core idea is that the trigrams that appear in Liber XXVII are simply numerals expressed in Base 3, or ternary. Once these ternary numerals are converted to typical decimal numeration, there is a one-to-one correspondence between the 26 English letters and the silence, which Crowley attributed to the trigrams, (as shown above), with the 27 trigrams. The Base 3 trigrams represent all of the decimal numbers from 0-26.

The decimal value of the ternary trigrams and their associated letters,
in the order they appear in Liber Trigrammaton:

00 = I
01 = L
02 = C
03 = H
06 = X
09 = T
18 = Y
04 = P
05 = A
07 = J
08 = W
10 = O
11 = G
19 = Z
20 = B
12 = F
15 = S
21 = M
24 = N
13 = E
14 = R
16 = Q
22 = V
17 = K
23 = D
25 = U
26 = &


Litlluw
 

Aeon418

It's an interesting idea, but just like every other English Qabalah I've seen, it doesn't deliver the goods. A fact that Crowley himself had to admit in his own commentary on this verse.
Aleister Crowley said:
The attribution in Liber Trigrammation is good theoretically; but no Qabalah of merit has arisen therefrom.
 

Aeon418

I like this article by Jerry Cornelius. It's a long read, but worth the effort.
http://cornelius93.com/EpistleEnglishQabalah.html
In particular I like Jerry's closing comments on the phrase, "Thou shalt" in II:55.

Over the years I've tried various EQ systems, and the funny thing is they all work in their own. They all produce results of one kind or another. Sometimes the results were meaningful to me, but not always. Go figure...

Try a few and see for your self. (Both pages have word calculators at the bottom.)

http://www.bluestwave.com/cipher_naeq.php
(check the additional information for the supposed "proofs" of this system)

http://davidcherubim.net/englishqabalah.htm
 

RLG

Aeon418 said:
It's an interesting idea, but just like every other English Qabalah I've seen, it doesn't deliver the goods. A fact that Crowley himself had to admit in his own commentary on this verse.


Dwtw

That all depends on what you mean by 'the goods'. Without quantifying exactly what it is that you think a qabalah & gematria are supposed to achieve, this statement is meaningless.

Any gematria might prove fruitless if one does not know how to apply it, and all gematrias of the 1-26 value variety will have certain aspects in common. Thus, one has to have a list of qualifications to evaluate them. Without some 'targets' to reach, there is no point in preferring one over another except personal taste.

As for Crowley's own attitude, his initial response to this verse, in the 'Old Comment', was simply "Done. See Liber Trigrammaton." Which statement are we to believe, the older Comment or the newer one that said "no qabalah of merit has arisen therefrom"? The fact that neither he nor Norman Mudd nor C.F. Russell had any idea that the trigrams can be considered base 3 numbers is not too surprising, since counting in different number bases was not a common idea at the time. But even the BOTL itself says that he will not understand all its mysteries, so he may well have 'built better than he knew' when he attributed the English alphabet to the trigrams.

I suspect that initially, Crowley knew he had a great idea on his hands with Liber XXVII - one Holy Book providing the key to another Holy Book - but that when he didn't know how to implement it, he decided it was without 'merit'. Not much different than Einstein using the Cosmological Constant as a 'fudge', then lamenting that it was his biggest error, and decades later it being used again in physics to explain certain aspects of the Universe. So which of Einstein's attitudes toward the Cosmological Constant are we to believe? Was it a clever way to make his equations work out, or was it an ad hoc blunder? Success is your proof.

But to stay on topic, we are talking about a particular verse here, that prima facie says to the scribe and prophet, Crowley, that in regard to the letters of the English alphabet, he shall obtain the Order & Value, and find New Symbols. It doesn't say anyone else will do that. We can assume someone else might, and that's a separate issue of interpretation (general vs. specific referent of this verse). But the issue of whether Crowley himself fulfilled this verse (as the specific referent) can only be examined in the light of Trigrammaton, because that is the book wherein he claimed to do so.

He obtained a new order: I,L,C,H,X,T...
He (unknowingly) obtained a new value: 0,1,2,3,6,9...
He found new symbols: the trigrams.

The trick is, he "solved the first half of the equation and left the second unattacked". He solved the Order part, but didn't understand the Value part. He didn't realize that the 'new symbols' were really numbers. He put the letters in a new order, but did not realize that the value they gained thereby was not simply 1,2,3,4,5,6..., rather it was predicated on the ternary values of the trigrams. And by not knowing that he had found the true Value, he concluded that 'no qabalah of merit' had arisen from Trigrammaton. But he was doing exactly what he was supposed to do; solve one half of the 'order = value' equation, and leave the second half unattacked.

One fact is beyond dispute - Liber Trigrammaton is the only English gematria that Crowley handed down to us, (other than transliterated Hebrew, which is a different can of worms entirely). And in Crowley's own words, the book itself, (Liber XXVII), is the "foundation of the highest theoretical qabalah".


Litlluw
 

Aeon418

RLG said:
The trick is, he "solved the first half of the equation and left the second unattacked". He solved the Order part, but didn't understand the Value part.
And you claim to have solved the second half? Which must make you the Child, yes?
 

Grigori

RLG said:
The implications of utilizing Liber XXVII as a means of creating a new English gematria and qabalah are very thoroughly explored in The Book of Mutations, aka the Trigrammaton Qabalah, which purports to definitively fulfill this particular verse, and decode the entirety of Liber CCXX. This information has been available on the Web for the last 12 years or so.

I didn't realize this was your own work RLG, could you share some more details with us? Is it still online, can we purchase the book etc? :)
 

RLG

Dwtw

My purpose in mentioning Trigrammaton is simply to point out that a strict interpretation of this verse, with Crowley as the referent, would indicate that we explore the possibilities of the attempts he made at fulfilling this verse.
The broader interpretation of the verse, that the referent is any reader, would still include Crowley as one of those readers, and thus it would still behoove us to explore his constructions.

If one takes the approach that we are all to obtain the 'order & value', well there are certainly more than enough possible gematrias to go around - 27 septillion different gematrias valued at 1-26 alone, to say nothing of decimal variants, prime numbers, etc. There is in effect an infinite number of possible gematrias.

I will not bore the list with long strings of words and their values, but will note a few salient points:

Liber Trigrammaton contains 390 words and 28 trigrams, (one is repeated). This is a total of 418 glyphs in the book.

The 27 trigrams contain four groups based on structure: a Zero with three Tao-lines; 6 trigrams with 2 Tao-lines, 12 trigrams with 1 Tao-line, and 8 trigrams with no Tao-lines, (the 'I Ching' trigrams).

These groups correspond exactly with the components of a cube: 1 center, 6 faces, 12 edges, and 8 corners.
The center is Spirit (Tao); the 6 faces are the four Elements and Positive (Yang) and Negative (Yin) poles; the 12 edges are the Zodiac, and the 8 corners are the seven planets, plus the Earth.

The geometric basis of this qabalah is then the isomorphism between the trigrams and the cube of space. Simple rules of addition determine which trigram corresponds to which part of the cube, with no repeats and no omissions. Furthermore, the correspondence can be expanded to all five Platonic solids.

A vast number of interesting results can be derived from replacing the numbers of a magic square with trigrams and hexagrams, including properties impossible to display with decimal numbers. The great pantacle of all these is the 27 x 27 magic square of Baphomet, which includes every possible hexagram created by the combination of the 27 trigrams with each other; 729 cells in all.

Regarding the gematria of the TQ, suffice it to say that one of the benchmarks it reaches is providing a cabalistically significant number for the sum total of Liber CCXX, which is 267,696 = 11 x 156 x 156 exactly.

267,696 = 9 x 208 x 143

9 = Hail!
208 = Nuit, Hadit, Ra-hoor-Khuit
143 = The Book of the Law

This value for the whole text can be derived from the first verse, the last verse, the cipher verse of II:76, the cryptic verse I:46, as well as by multiplying the total value of chapter two times Pi (3.141592...) and then adding 418 (a reference to verse III:47). Thus the global sum of the book is hidden in five different significant places in the text, each of which on its own will generate this same number.

There are a large number of other areas that the trigrams are applicable to, and a very elaborate system is created from their properties, a system that is mathematically no more complex than arithmetic in base 3, but symbolically and qabalistically quite profound in its explanatory power. In short, the use of base 3 is a new paradigm that evolves out of the old aeon paradigm of the decimal system.

I really don't have time to elaborate any further on it, as my schedule is quite full, and it would not be proper to do so in this forum anyway. Some of the basics are still available at trigrammaton.net, and a 500-plus page book with an equally large appendix can be found on lulu.

In reference to the Child, one must decide if they interpret the verses of Liber AL as referring to specific persons, (such as Crowley being the one who 'shalt obtain the order & value...') or to Thelemites in general. In the former sense, a Child of the prophet would be one specific individual who continues the Prophet's work; in the latter sense, each of us is a Child of the Prophet, furthering the work begun by the Prophet.

One of the works of the Prophet was Liber Trigrammaton, which I feel was designed to be a qabalistic key to the other Holy Books of Thelema, particularly Liber CCXX. Insofar as I have done anything to further the work that Crowley began with this 'Book of Mutations', then I am a child of the prophet.

But any role I have played is secondary to the more important question; what can you do with this system? It's not 'my' system; it was bequeathed to us by the Prophet. Crowley (and Harris) also bequeathed to us the Thoth Tarot--we know who created it and we thank them deeply for it--but what can you DO with it?

Again, my point in this thread is simply to argue for recognition of Crowley's attempts at fulfilling this verse. Practitioners will use whatever suits their Will, but this aspect of the Prophet's work should at least be recognized, even if it is not utilized. We are all aware of Enochian and Goetic work, whether we choose to employ them or not. Trigrammaton is yet another tool in the arsenal of the magician, but one that provides the theoretical underpinnings for a host of applications.


Litlluw
RLG
 

Aeon418

RLG said:
My purpose in mentioning Trigrammaton is simply to point out that a strict interpretation of this verse, with Crowley as the referent, would indicate that we explore the possibilities of the attempts he made at fulfilling this verse.
That's not the way I read your initial post. You presented your work on Trigrammaton as the solution to Liber AL. Your exact words were that it "purports to definitively fulfill this particular verse, and decode the entirety of Liber CCXX. Decode the entirety of Liber CCXX? That's a very charged statement, with a whole host of implications. Anyone who "purports" to have the entire solution to Liber AL is in essence saying they are the one that cometh after with the key of it all. This is a reference to a specific individual, not a mere continuation of the work. Unless I have misunderstood what you mean by "entirety". Have I? Are you using the word in a non-standard way?

What does your cipher say about the "chance shape of the letters and their position to one another"?

Can we see your solution to II:76. This is the ultimate test, yes?
Aleister Crowley said:
Be ye well assured all that the solution, when it is found, will be unquestionable. It will be marked by the most sublime simplicity, and carry immediate conviction.
Sublime simplicity and immediate conviction. Does your solution meet these criteria? Nearly all the the solutions I have seen have involved tortuous mathematics and were anything but immediately convincing. I would love to be proved wrong this time, if you're not too busy of course.

An essay for Heirs Apparent. It's good reading. :)
http://cornelius93.com/EpistleCodeLiberAl.html
 

Aeon418

Thou shalt obtain the order & value of the English Alphabet; thou shalt find new symbols to attribute them unto.
Here's a different angle that may or may not go anywhere. But it might show how there can be more than one possible interpretation here.

There's something strange about the structure of this verse. At first glance it looks like a clear referrence to an EQ system. But notice how it says order and value (singular) of the English Alphabet. It doesn't say order and values of the letters of the English Alphabet.

What is the order & value of the Hebrew alphabet? The order is the obvious Aleph to Tav. But the value of the Hebrew alphabet is something else. Are we talking the value of individual letters? The sum total value of all the letters combined? The value in the sense of usefulness and worth?

The second half of the verse refers to "them". What is this "them" that is to have new symbols attributed to it? Is "them" the individual letters of the alphabet. Or is "them" the order & value. Or maybe it's the four extra letters (compared to the 22 Hebrew) of the English Alphabet?

Food for thought...