Liber 777 und andere kabbalistische Schriften by Aleister Crowley

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Sorry about the German edition -- for some weird reason this site doesn't list the English-language edition of Crowley's Qaballistic reference work. I don't speak much German, and only have the English-language version, 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley Including Gematria and Sepher Sephiroth, edited and with an introduction by Israel Regardie, which is what I'm reviewing here.



At any rate, I have found this work to be one of the most useful resources on esoteric subjects I have ever run across. There are three books included in this work: Book 1, Gematria; Book 2: Liber 777; and Book 3: Sepher Sephiroth. Book 1 discusses Gematria, a powerful tool for analyzing language and harnessing it for Magickal ritual. Book 2 provides a basic Qaballistic lexicon, a set of alphanumeric symbols in a one-to-one/onto correspondence with the integers 0-32, along with a wide variety of phenomena and esoteric concepts associated with each of the symbols indexed by the set of 33 integers. Book 3 is a Qaballistic dictionary indexed by the numbers 1-3321 and various Hebrew words and phrases associated with each one in terms of the sum of the values of the Hebrew letters in each (not all the larger indexing numbers are listed, however, and of those that are given, many are without corresponding Hebrew associations), along with a display of the Hebrew alphabet and the numerical value or values of each of its letters (some Hebrew letters have more than one value, depending on where they fall in a word). In addition, Israel Regardie's introduction provides fascinating insights on Qaballah as well as a discussion of the history of this work and of Crowlety himself.



In Book 1 of this work, Crowley discusses the definition of Qaballah: a set of distinct numbers in bijective correspondence with a set of distinct alphanumeric symbols. He doesn't phrase it quite that way, but that's the meaning of what he says there. He also says that which numbers are used as the indexing set for those symbols can be whatever you wish them to be, as long as you are consistent. That made me realize that looking at Qaballah strictly in terms of information or computer science, any set of distinct numbers that can be placed in a one-to-one/onto correspondence with any given set of distinct alphanumeric symbols is a Qaballah. Depending on the numbers and symbols, it may not be traditional Qaballah, and would be regarded among Qaballistis as a theological abomination, but for purposes of mathematical analysis, those conditions fulfill the definition of Qaballah. The numbers pi, e, V-1 = i, and other strange mathematical entities (various types of sets could also be used for this, e.g., algebras, rings, fields, the Mandelbrot set, julia sets, etc.) would be fine for that purpose. The symbols could include, e.g., the ASCII character set (the original form of which included 93 visible symbols plus the blank, so that the blank could be associated with zero and the rest with the counting numbers 1-93), the Periodic Table of the Chemical Elements (the elements from helium to plutonium [hydrogen is not, strictly speaking, an element, as it has no neutron:] can be associated with the integers 1-93, and hydrogen with 0), etc. The first two of those sets of 93 elements and a building component (blank, hydrogen) reflect the 93 current of the New Aeon of Horus. To accommodate them on the Tree of Life, additional vertical planes of Left and Right Pillars each at right angles to the traditional, original plane and with one another can be added, each containing six new Sephiroth, in a process continuing indefinitely, producing Trees of Life of 3, 4, 5, . . . ., and so on up to one with transfinite dimensionality. Given that a Path, or Atu, on the Tree of Life is a bijective function associating any two Sephiroth, then, via the process of expansion described above, the n-dimensional Tree of Life will have as many Paths and Sephiroth as needed to accommodate any given set of distinct alphanumeric symbols, however large the latter may be. A Tree of Life for the Multiverse!



As for Books 2 and 3, I use them all the time for various purposes. Among other things, Book 2 provides a tremendous number of ideas for things that can be used to reinforce the efficacy of Magickl ritual: planets, colors, Hebrew letters and words, alchemical concepts, gemstones, perfumes, elixirs, incenses, Buddhist concepts, the Gods of various cultures, the names of God, angles, archangels, you name it, anything can be indexed precisely by Qaballah. Among other things, each element -- each Path and Sephirah -- on the Tree of Life is itself a complete Tree of Life, each of the elements of which is a complete Tree of Life, and so on to infinity. So there's room for anything you wish there. The Tree is a fractal structure, self-replicating and never growing any less complex no matter how many levels of magnification you go on it.



Both as a wonderful reference work for Qaballists, students of the Tarot, Magickians, alchemists, astrologers, and other students and practitioners of the esoteric Arts and Sciences, and cultural anthropologists, mathematicians (for the enjoyment of the intricate structure of the Tree of Life and its possible extentions), and Jungian psychologists, this book will be a great addition to any thinking person's personal library. It should be available in an English-language edition from Samuel Weiser's, or, if it is out of print, amazon.com or other online bookstores may have it.


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