Liber Al vel Legis(1) is a fascinating book. It’s message written in plain sight can inspire a lifetime of study and learning, and compel the aspirant to do the Great Work. But it is also a hidden and concealed book, and openly proclaims itself to be. Crowley tells us that there are ciphers, and cryptography, and gematria hidden within the book (2), and he says that the Lost Word is concealed in there under a cipher.(3) In the last 108 years there has been a concerted effort made by students of the book to uncover Liber Al’s hidden content. Most students have relied mainly on Gematria to suggest various solutions, solutions, but these ‘solutions’ don’t really tell us anything new that co uld be thought of as being a hidden or sec ret doctrine of Thelema. Also, the majority of solutions rely on the reader’s intuitive or associational ability, rather than being able to present present any objective proof that it is the correct solution. People have told me that they regard a provable solution as impossibility, impossibility, and some even claim the ‘Riddle of Liber Al’ is a deliberate piece on nonsense intended to illustrate an egotistical aspiration on the part of the solver. Be that as it may, Edgar Allan Poe once wrote: we say again deliberately that human ingenuity cannot “
concoct a cypher which human ingenuity cannot resolve." Poe set 2 cipher puzzles that remain
uncracked until October 2000, almost 150 years later (4), (4), but cryptographers take the attitude that it’s only a matter of time before someone solves it. That the riddle o f Liber Al lasted 108 years is a testament to the cryptographic genius of Aleister Crowley. Last week, there was an upset in the Thelemic community due to the Head of the O.T.O. announcing that a single letter in Liber Al was going to me changed in future published books. This continues to provoke intensive debate amongst Thelemites, as it has been c ustomary since Crowley’s death to regard
all his Class A documents as works that should be free from change or e diting by subsequent generations. As the book itself says: AL I, 54. “Change not as much as the style of a letter; for behold! thou, o prophet, shalt not behold all these mysteries hidden therein.” As a cryptographer, my immediate concern was a practical one; would the change disturb the cipher and render the riddle unsolvable by future generations? Would the change of one letter mean the loss of the secret doctrine concealed within the pages of the book? I have done a substantial amount of work to crack the ciphers, riddles and codes of Liber Al, but I would not presume to say that I have discovered everything that is hidden in the book. I would not change the book even in the style of a letter, because the hidden and concealed content of Liber Al reveals nothing less than (to quote Aleister Crowley): “a complete qabalistic system of greater depth and sublimity than any other.”(5) The argument against changing even the style of a letter in the Book of the Law is therefore a purely practical one to my mind. Changes to the book may unwittingly destroy more than they create - even when the intention was to provide extra clarity to the open text of the book. The kabalistic system that is revealed by the book is a very old one, but one that Crowley did a gre at deal of work upon during his magickal career to make it fit for the New Aeon. As far as I can tell, it extends back as far as the Merkabah Mystics or ‘Chariot Riders’ extant in c. 100 BCE. The main feature of this system is a Temple with 7 palaces that was the abode of God. The associated literature about the Temple provides an exegesis on Genesis. It is said that the Merkabah Mystics sought to mystically ascend to the 7 palaces of God and unite themselves with the deity by c hanting the names of God and by meditation.(6) By the middles ages and centuries of the diaspora, this form of rather pure mysticism had been hidden and concealed. In the Zohar, the 7 palaces of the Temple were concealed under the 10 sephirothed Tree of Life, and the correct arrangement of the text of the book were made dependent upon knowing the correct arrangement of the Merkabah Temple and the Lost name o f God (the Lost Word). A modern difficulty for cryptographers working with the Zohar however, is that in the middle ages there was no Jewish mystical contemporary of Crowley commanding that copies of the wo rk were not changed or edited, with paragraphs added o r deleted and the numbering of the verse s changed or omitted entirely. It turns deciphering the Zohar into something of detective story… however, much of the cipher may still be uncovered. What is lost will require something of a professional archeological undertaking to reconstitute. It is to be hoped that Crowley’s Liber Al vel Legis will never require such services. Essentially, Crowley’s ‘Liber Al vel Legis’ uses the same cipher as that of the Zohar, and is based on the same Merkabah Temple. What Crowley did was to take the basis of that school of mysticism and create Thelema upon it – adapting, renewing or updating the known gnosis until it was fit for the new Aeon he envisioned. I am content that others are fully capable of expounding the details of this system, and I restrict myself in this text to a simple revealing of its core features; those that can be unlocked by cracking the Liber Al/Zohar cipher. Crowley tells in the Book of Thoth (pg. 86) that the letters Aleph Lamed constitute the secret key of the Book of the Law. The value of these letters is 31, and 31 x 7 = 217. Crowley also tells us that the ‘Word of the Aeon’ ‘Abrahadabra’ is a cipher (7). Indeed, Crowley claimed to have ‘restored’ Abrahadabra in
Mexico in 1900, at the same time he claimed to have found the ‘Lost Word’(8). The Merkabah Temple has the word BaraHdd upon the palaces or sephiroth which = 217, and Abrahadabra is an anagram of BaraHdd in that it has the same letters only they appear with a differe nt frequency in the arrangement. A curious feature about the Riddle of Liber Al is that fact that you really have to have already cracked the Zohar and uncovered the Merkabah Tem ple for yourself, before you can solve the Liber Al cipher. The Zohar gives us some instructions about how to accomplish this. It tells us to: 1) institute the union of the Holy Name. 2) bind together the links of truth. 3) derive the supernals into the position required(9). The cipher of the Tree of Life is transformed into the Temple by combining the 3 supernal ‘heads’ into one positioned at ‘Da’ath’. This is the first palace from which God begins his creation and according to the Zohars commentary on Genesis, it is given the letter Beth. The commentary on the mysteries of the letters continues to say that Beth will only be expressed through Aleph and t he text depicts God calling to the letter Aleph twice(10). The rabbi’s say ‘Aleph is never less than Beth’, and they have a dual use of Aleph at either side of the top sephiroth of the Beth. The dual ‘Daleth’s’ or doors on the Temple are discussed both in the Zohar and the Torah as being features of the Temple of Solomon.(11) Essentially, this is what the Merkabah Temple is: it is as much the idea of the Temple and is sacred space, as it is an actual building made from the stone of the ancient near east. You can knock down a Temple made of bricks and mortar as it is said the Temple of Solomon was 3 times, but you cannot demolish the idea of one. The solar nature of Tiphareth can only be e xpressed with the Resh, and the material aspect of God sits the mother and daughter ‘Heh’ on the throne of the combined sephiroth of Yesod and Malkuth. In this fashion the union of the Holy Name is established in the word ‘BaraHdd’ which = 217, and is 31 x 7. BaraHdd is a fascinating word to find on the Merkabah Temple. It’s not controversial amongst many educated contemporary Jewish people to say that the monotheistic Judaism arose from the Polytheistic culture of the Canaanites. It’s generally accepted amongst scholars that Yahweh was the God Hadad, who appears to have undergone a name change by the writers of the ‘J’ source. What’s startling to my mind is to find that the Mystics of c. 100 BCE were fully aware of and cognoscenti of this fact. The God Hadad was the son of El. BaraHdd means ‘created Hadad’. The 7 sephiroth of the Father El (or AL) amounts to the same number as BaraHdd. 31 x 7 = 217 & BaraHdd = 217. Also, the number of the ‘Inner Temple’ or holy of holies of the Temple is also 217 (B+G+Z+H+R = 217.) When the union of the holy name is instituted then the next task is to bind together the ‘links of truth’ – i.e the paths must be bound together and the letters properly assigned to each path like so:
Most of the letters assigned to the Tree of Life are perfectly correct and do not change their attributions. Others letters are reassigned to represent the name of God on the palaces, or combined with each other as is the case of the path of Inner Temple, or the path I have named the ‘Cave of the Patriarchs’. When the letters have been correctly assigned then the Zohar’s text can be deciphered as follows: To hear the Zohar expound upon one of the Temples paths then simply add the value of the letter of the path to the value of the letters on either (and both) sephiroth. So (for instance) Mem would yield 3 numbers: Mem + Aleph = 41. Mem + Daleth = 44, and Aleph + Mem + Daleth = 45. The way to use these numbers is to write down the first verse numbering 41 in the Book of Concealed Mysteries across its chapters. Then write down all the 41’s in the chapters of the Book of the Greater Assembly. Do the same with the Book of the Lesser Mysteries. The repeat the same procedure for 44 & 45. When read, the correct text for the Path of Mem on the Merkabah Temple is revealed and reads: 41. The Father resideth in the beginning. The mother in the middle and she is covered on this side and on that. Woe, woe unto him who revealeth their nakedness [Cap.1 - CM]
41. [of] the supernal Vau, the inferior Vau, the supernal He, the inferior He. But Yod, is above all, and with him is none other associated; he is Yod, as at first; neither ascendeth he in himself except as a symbolic glyph, [Cap.2 - CM] 41. for it is written, Josh. vi. 5: “And it shall be when the horn of jubilee is sounded.” This is the splendour of the jubilee, and the t enth is crowned by the mother [Cap.3 - CM] 41. into forty thousand superior worlds. The brightness of the skull of His head is extended, and from the light of this brightness the j ust shall receive four hundred worlds in the world to come [Cap.3 - GA] 41. and He separateth Himself ever mor e and more; He is separated from all things, neither yet doth He altogether separate Himself, seeing that unto Himself all things adhere, and that He Himself adhereth unto all; HVA, Hoa, He Himself is all; He t he Most Holy Ancient of all Ancients, the Conceal ed with all Concealments. [Cap.1 - LA] [Ed - Both the subject matter and the flow of the text streams perfectly from one line to the next across the chapters and books. To continue...]
44. Yod, remaineth one and alone. [Cap.1 - CM] 44. Ezek. i. 14: “And the living creatures rush forth and return.” Also Num. xxiv. iii: “Flee unto thy place.” Also Obad. i. 4: “Though thou exalt thyself as the e agle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I cast thee down.” *Cap.2 - CM] 44. Hereunto is the hidden and involved Mystery of the King, that is “The Book o f Concealed Mystery,” Blessed is he who entereth into and departeth therefrom, and knoweth its paths and ways [Cap.5 - CM] 44. and from that skull distilleth a dew upon Him which is external, and filleth His head daily [Cap.4 GA] 44. and from Himself those Lights shine forth, and they emit flames, and they rush forth and are extended on every side, like as from an elevated lantern the rays of light stream down on every side [Cap.1 - LA] 45. And then the woman is again hidden. [Cap.1 - CM] 45. Gen. i. 12: “And the earth brought forth germination.” When? When the name is planted therein [Cap.2 - CM] 45. and from that dew which floweth down from His head, that which is external, the dead are raised up in the world to come [Cap.4 - GA] 45. and those rays of light, which ar e extended, when anyone draweth near unto them, so that they may be examined, are not found, and there is only the lantern alone. [Cap.1 - LA] However, as wonderful as it is to uncover these extracts for the historian and cryptographer, Thelemites will be more interested to learn that Crowley’s Class A work ‘Ararita’ is also a Thelemic exposition on the 14 paths of the Merkabah Temple. (More details about that can be found here: http://www.paganspace.net/profiles/blogs/ararita-and-the-temple-of-solomon) Cracking the Riddle of Liber Al requires that you provide mathematical proof that you have k nowledge of the Merkabah Temple. The paths of Samekh, Yod, Nun and Kaph are not included in the calculations. Neither is the Path of the Cave included. AL I, 51 [...] Let him enter in turn or at once the four gates; let him stand on the floor of the palace. Will he not sink? Amn. Ho! warrior, if thy servant sink ? AL II, 49 *…+ (This is of the 4: there is a fifth who is invisible, & therein am I as a babe in an egg.)
So when we exclude these 4 and the fifth ‘invisible’ path then there are 9 paths left to find mathematical proofs for with simple division, addition and multiplication. 25. Divide, add, multiply, and understand. When we cast an eye over the values of the paths when the number of their assigned letter is added to the number of the sephiroth either side, then both Cheth and Teth = the number 11. So although there are nine paths we must only recover 8 values from the riddle to show a mathematical proof. And these are: The Inner Temple = 217, Cheth & Teth = 11, Vau = 9, Mem = 45, Peh = 88, Resh = 209, Lamed = 231 & Ayin = 274. AL II, 76: 4 6 3 8 A B K 2 4 A L G M O R 3 Y X 24 89 R P S T O V A L.
The marks around the 24 and 89 in the handwritten M.S. of the Book of the Law are meant to indicate that these numbers should be rounded up or down. Also the ‘X’ is actually a multiplication sign, and the ‘Y’ is a Hebrew character – and is a final Tzaddi (900). We thus convert all the letters of the riddle into numbers until it looks like this: AL II, 76: 4, 6, 3, 8, 1, 2, 20, 2, 4, 1, 30, 3, 40, 70, 200, 3, 900 x 0.24, 890, 200, 80, 60, 9, 70, 6, 1, 30.
And produce the required mathematical proofs by using these numbers to produce 8 final values that equal the values of the Merkabah Temple paths as so:
900 x 0.24 + 1 = 217 - Heh 8 + 3 = 11 - Cheth & Teth 9 - Vau 890 + 4 + 6 / 20 = 45 - Mem 80 + 6 + 2 = 88 - Peh 200 + 3 + 4 + 2 = 209 - Resh 200 + 30 + 1 = 231 - Lamed 70 + 70 + 40 + 60 + 30 + 1 + 3 = 274 - Ayin There is much more that may be said of how Crowley employed the Me rkabah Temple in his life’s work – and special emphasis must be given to his ‘Class A’ text s outside of Liber Al, including Ararita and the Vision and the Voice – but that is outside the scope of this brief article which I hope shows that the hidden and concealed content of Liber Al is a legacy from Aleister Crowley that is worth preserving by following his simple instructions and not changing his work by even ‘the style of a letter’. Alrah .’. 93 93/93.
1) http://www.sacred-texts.com/oto/engccxx.htm 2) http://hermetic.com/crowley/book-4/app3.html Magick in Theory and Practice, Appendix III „Notes on an Astral Atlas‟: “…to conceal a coherent system of numbers and letters in the text of a rapidly-written document, containing riddles and ciphers opening to a Master-Key unknown to the
scribe, yet linked with his own system; this Key and its subordinates being moreover a comment on the text.” & “…to bind the whole into a compact cryptograph displaying mastery of English, of mathematical and philosophical conceptions, of poetic splendour and intense passion, while concealing in the letters and words a complex cipher involving the knowledge of facts never till than existing i n any human mind… “ &
3) http://hermetic.com/crowley/equinox-of-the-gods/remarks-on-the-method-of-receiving-liberlegis.html The Equinox of the Gods, Chapter 7, II: “a cipher involving higher mathematics, and a knowledge of the Hebrew, Greek and Arabic Qabalahs as well as the True Lost Word of the Freemason, is yet veiled within t he casual silk-stuff of ordinary English words, nay, even in the apparently accidental circumstance of the characters of the haste-harried scrawl of My pen.”
4) http://www.ciphermysteries.com/2008/05/13/the-e-a-poe-cryptographic-challenge 5) http://www.rahoorkhuit.net/library/crowley/equinox/volume3/vol_3_no_05.pdf The Book of Thoth, pg 86. 6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkabah_mysticism 7) http://www.rahoorkhuit.net/library/crowley/equinox/volume3/vol_3_no_05.pdf The Book of Thoth, pg. 84. 8) http://niontron.com/aleister-crowly.pdf The confessions of Aleister Crowley: an autohagiography, pg. 705. 9) http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/tku/tku06.htm The Book of Concealed Mysteries. 10) http://www.naderlibrary.com/cult.zoharsoncino.1.pro.htm “The Lord said to her: Aleph, Aleph, although I will begin the creation of t he world with the beth, thou wilt remain the first of the letters. My unity shall not be expressed except through thee, on thee shall be based all calculations and operations of the world, and unity shall not be expressed save by the letter Aleph.” 11) Hurowitz, Victor Professor http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=5568 Heaven on Earth: A Tour of Solomon's Temple through Near Eastern Eyes.
