eBook - Aleister Crowley's Secret Temple - By Alrah Fraser

The Seven Palaces & the Work of the Chariot

Alrah Fraser

© 2014 A.’. A.’.

I call the Four Powers of the Name; Earth, wind and cloud, sea, smoke and flame To witness: by this triune Star I swear to break the twi-forked bar. But how to attain? Flexes and leans The strongest will that lacks the means.

Watch every thought that springs; enhance Hour after hour thy vigilance! Intense and keen, turned inward, miss No atom of analysis! Sixth, on one thought securely pinned Still every whisper of the wind! So like a flame straight and unstirred Burn up thy being in one word!

THERE are seven keys to the great gate, Being eight in one and one in eight.

Next, still that ecstasy, prolong Thy meditation steep and strong, Slaying even God, should He distract Thy attention from the chosen act!

First, let the body of thee be still, Bound by the cerements of will, Corpse-rigid; thus thou mayst abort The fidget-babes that tease the thought.

Last, all these things in one o'erpowered, Time that the midnight blossom flowered! The oneness is. Yet even in this, My son, thou shall not do amiss If thou restrain the expression, shoot Thy glance to rapture's darkling root, Discarding name, form, sight, and stress Even of this high consciousness; Pierce to the heart! I leave thee here: Thou art the Master. I revere Thy radiance that rolls afar, O Brother of the Silver Star! - Aleister Crowley  – ‘AHA!’

Next, let the breath-rhythm be low, Easy, regular, and slow; So that thy being be in tune With the great sea's Pacific swoon. Third, let thy life be pure and calm, Swayed softly as a windless palm. Fourth, let the will-to-live be bound To the one love of the profound. Fifth, let the thought, divinely free From sense, observe its entity.

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Contents Foreword by Steven Ashe 4 The Seven Palaces and the Key to Liber AL. 10  The Utility of the Merkabah Wheel to Ritual and and Magick. 20  Other ciphers, puzzles, anagrams and cryptograms of Liber Al vel Legis. 22 Liber Ararita and the paths of the Seven Palaces. 30  The Merkabah Keys to Liber Arcanorvm. 41 The Merkabah keys to Liber B vel Magi. 45 The Merkabah keys to Liber Tau. 49 Genesis and the Seven Palaces. 50  The Gates of the Merkabah. 56 Merkabah –  the  the mystery of the Chariot Wheel. 59  Aleister Crowley and the Merkabah. Merk abah. 65 The Seven Palaces in the Ancient Near East & the Indus Valley. 78   Appendix –  Merkabah  Merkabah Tarot keys. 89 Hebrew Phonetic & Hebrew Origin Kabbalah Values 90  Notes 92

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Foreword by Steven Ashe The Judaic works of the Hekhalot (Palaces) represent a traditional body of work dealing with visions of spiritual ascent through seven heavenly palaces. This body of work has historic resonances with themes extant within earlier Merkabah traditions detailing the spiritual ascent of Ezekiel and the Throne visions of Isaiah. Collectively, these works are often referred to as the "Books of the Palaces and the Chariot".

The literature of the Hekaloth achieve their zenith in two major works. First the Sepher Hekhalot , often referred to as Enoch 3, in which the ascent into heaven of the prophet Enoch is recorded. This is rewarded with a series of illuminating visions into the mysteries of Creation. Secondly, and not least of importance is the Ma'aseh Merkabah “Work of the Chariot” translated into English by Gershom Sholem which deals with knowledge of the secret names of God and their use in rising through the Seven Planes. Planes. The names of the Angels of the Seven Palaces Palaces are specifically referred to as are several cryptographic combinations of letters which are described as keys to spiritual admission a dmission into these Palaces.

The language employed by the Merkabah texts to describe the experiential element of interaction with the transcendent experience often implies a ‘ falling into’ rather than an ‘elevation’. The Merkabah paradigm might veritably be considered to echo elder shamanic models of experiencing the Underworld. The Canaanite ‘Descent of the Goddess ’ might be considered a survivor of one of these traditions, just as we might refer to the Seven Hathors of the cult of the Egyptian seven gated city of Thebes, where Ankh af na Khonsu Khonsu was significantly once a priest. priest. Each of the seven Hathors guarded a plane of existence visited by the Soul after death and who 4

demanded that the Soul be able to speak the name of each of the Goddesses in order to achieve Paradise. These latter mentioned seven manifestations of Hathor are referred to in EA Wallace Budge’s ‘Gods of the Egyptians’ and represent Hathor of Thebes, Heliopolis, Aphroditopolis, Sinai, Momemphis, Herakleopolis and Keset respectively. The cryptographic names of Hathor, their secret names, might be considered important to the emerging triumphant Horus of the New Aeon when one considers the description of the origin of the name Hathor to be a Greek corruption of the variants HetHert "the House Above" and Het-Heru "the House of Horus". The continuance of cross-cultural manifestations of the paradigm of the Seven Palaces exceeded that of its intrusion into pre Judaic Qabalistic lore, and it went on to to inform the secret practices practices of the Gnostics, Gnostics, the medieval Qabalah of the Rabad and Isaac the Blind and later thematics of the Zohar incorporated from these sources. Since then, the Seven Palaces model can be demonstrated to have successfully insinuated itself into the very fabric of most surviving Western Mystery traditions; informing both the Hermetics and Theosophy and from which Aleister Crowley and his Golden Dawn mentors, Bennett and Jones later arrived at their own understanding. During the medieval period, when the manuscripts of the Hekhalot literature began to achieve dissemination in the West, there were four main types of scriptural interpretation which had been established by the tradition of Biblical scholars. These were the literal, the typological, typological, the moral and the analogical levels of interpretation. Hekhalot and Merkabah texts are rife with validities on multivalent levels of manifestation consonant with the ‘four gates to one palace’ of the literal, typological, typological, moral and analogic mode. There are mysteries on each of the levels. 5

It would seem to be a given then that any genuine literal manifestation of spiritual inspiration, such as Aleister Crowley’s Book of the Law, would possess similar self-validation in referencing which stands up to historically verified norms of interpretation. The origins of the Book of the Law are steeped in the multidimensional motivations of Aeonic Intelligences communicating through an entity the text of the work names as Aiwass. Crowley had been studying Islamic Sufi mysticism during his time in Cairo. There are many Quranic flavours to the text of the Book of the Law: its admonition to “Be goodly therefore: dress ye all in fine apparel...”; its injunction not to change even the style of a letter of the manuscript; the work’s reference to a ‘Kiblah’ or devotional direction of worship and indeed the whole prose poetry of inspired revelation serve to illustrate these echoes of similarity. similarity. Not to mention the almost Jihadic language language of the martial God speaking in the third chapter. Interestingly, there is a challenge laid out in the Qur’an that states that no

one could write even one Surah of such poetically and prose perfect language. One is tempted tempted to wonder if this challenge inevitably inevitably underlies the willingness of Crowley to even attempt such a communication; given the poetic quest that had drawn him to his Magick. The thematics of The Book of the Law however are essentially EgyptianPagan and there there the similarity similarity between the the two works end. For there is much also that that provide motifs more suited to the Revelation of St John. On a deeper, Analogical level of interpretation however there is also much of the philosophy of Relativism Relativism about the text. Einstein was privately polishing his theory for publication at the time of The Book of the Law’s reception and his paper was not presented until until the following year. Liber AL, as the Book of the Law is known, contains not only references to Einsteinian relativism but even principles related to the paradigms of Quantum Theory of later decades.

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Whatever the metaphysics, on a literal level of interpretation Liber AL contains around fifteen minutes of evenly paced speech per chapter. Crowley observes the work as the product of three hourly rituals performed on consecutive days in April 1904. The written verses of each chapter seem seem hurriedly written. So much so so that Crowley missed missed dictation at one point and the manuscript is amended by Rose Crowley’s hand. So the measured speech of fifteen minutes was more likely received in around ten to twelve minutes, leaving fifty minutes of the duration of the ritual free for preparatory and banishing rites. Crowley was reticently forthcoming concerning the preparation for these rituals, only to comment in his confessions that more or less every normal rule of ritual preparation was ignored during these phenomena. That some unreported aspect of Rose Crowley ’ s natural mediumship, or else some Energized Enthusiasm employed without prior Pentagram banishing and enhanced by wine and strange drugs played their part cannot be known. But what can be referenced is the text of Liber Al. I continue to be impressed by the cryptographic work of Alrah Fraser, especially the the more so so I turn to to it for reference. Her identification of the the number 217 (by gematria equivalent to the number of Light = in Hebrew) and also the sum of AL in the seven palaces (31 X 7 - 217) as a key reference within the Cypher system within the Book of the Law is particularly insightful. Particularly so because it is obtained by a cryptographic method of reduction of the letters of the word of the Aeon revealed in the Book of the Law as “Abrahadabra” into BaraHdd and the resultant numerological value of 217. Other revealing clues provided by Fraser hinge upon her realisation that the same clues of Gemetria lie behind symbolic descriptions employed in Zoharic texts and exhibit the same numerological processes. Further work upon the cryptography of the cypher code contained in the second chapter of Liber AL demonstrates some fine logic providing numerological equivalence of letters in the cypher with their Hebrew value (K being Kaph = 20 for instance) into equations which yield equivalence 7

with her earlier BaraHdd gemetriaic findings. Her understanding understanding of the letter Y in the printed version of the cypher to be actually a Tzaddi in the handwritten manuscript shows a strict attention to detail. In summary, Alrah Fraser’s observations upon innate formulas of self validating gematria within both Liber AL and traditional texts of the Zohar should be celebrated as original insights backed by evidential mathematic

proofs which are of true value to the development of our understanding of the historic paradigms of Merkabah lore. As for the cypher? Ms Fraser’s arrival by gematria at the number 217 for the revealed Word concealed in Abrahadabra - BaraHdd - and her identification of that numerology as a motif of the Sacred Holy of Holies is particularly revealing. Just as she argues that the Merkabah Temple represents the ideal of a Temple as a harmonious unity which cannot be destroyed, the author of this paper contrasts the concept of the thrice rebuilt physical Temple Temple of Solomon. It should should be noted that the thrice thrice resurrected sacred Word (3 X 217) equals 651 the value of the word Temurah, or ‘permutation’. The author ’ s treatment of the symbolic representation of the Merkabah

system buried within the the texts of the Liber Ararita and the Holy Books of Thelema is truly revealing - giving a valuable depth-analysis formula of interpretation. The reader will be similarly impressed by the author’s eloquence in presenting a historical study of the shamanistic roots of the Seven Palaces tradition in the Near East and Indus Valley. Here, the mysteries of the House of Ba’al and the cults of the Descent of the Goddess into the Underworld are explored. These are demonstrated to be pivotal to an understanding of internal referencing concerning the Merkabah system within Aleister Crowley’s Book of the Law and it’s Golden Dawn uniform of imagery. Alrah Fraser’s Fraser’s work work should should make western western occultists occultists sit sit up. Here is an expert in cryptography ‘running rings’ around well -meaning but misguided 8

historical attempts to approach the codes in the Book of the Law. The implications for the discovery of the genuine mysteries buried and encoded within Crowley’s work are enormous when we open ourselves to this refreshing refreshing approach. An author who who can bring verifiable cryptographic technique to her art and yet also employs the written word to communicate directly and informatively.

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The Seven Palaces and the Key to Liber AL. Alrah Fraser 2014

Liber Al vel Legis is a fascinating work of art. Its message can inspire inspire a lifetime of study and learning, and compel the aspirant to the Great Work. It is the cornerstone of the A.’.A.’. mystical system, 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, 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 Liber Al’s hidden content. content. Most students students have have relied mainly on Gematria to suggest various solutions, but these ‘solutions’ don’t really tell us anything new that could be thought of as being a hidden hidden or secret doctrine of Thelema. Thelema . Also, the majority of solutions rely on the reader’s intuitive or associational ability, rather than being able to present any objective proof that it is the correct solution. People have told me that they regard a provable solution as 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 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 to this day almost 150 years later(4), but cryptographers take the attitude that it’s only a matter of time before someone solves it. That the riddle of Liber Al lasted 108 years is a testament to the cryptographic genius of Aleister Crowley. In April 2013 there was an upset in the Thelemic community due to the Frater Superior of the O.T.O. announcement that a single letter in Liber Al vel Legis Legis was was going to be changed in their future future published books. This continues to provoke intensive debate amongst Thelemites, as it has been 10

customary since Crowley’s death to regard all his Class A documents as

works that should be free from change or editing by subsequent generations. generations. As the book itself says: says: AL I, 54. “Change “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, cryptographe r, my immediate concern was a practical one; would the change disturb the cipher and render the riddle unsolvable unsolvable by future future generations? Would the change of one letter (an F to a K) 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 than (to quote Aleister Crowley): Crowley): “a complete complete Qabalistic system of greater depth and sublimity sublimity than any other.”(5) other.”(5) The argument against changing even the style of a letter in the Book of the Law is therefore therefore a purely practical one to to my mind. Changes to 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 Qabalistic system that is revealed by the book is a very old one, but one that Crowley did a great deal of work upon during his magical career to make it fit for the New Aeon. It extends back as far as the Merkabah Mystics or ‘Chariot Riders’ extant in 70 BCE, and ultimately it appears to originate in ancient Sumeria. The main feature of the Merkabah Merkab ah system is a Temple with with 7 palaces that was the abode of God. The associated associated literature about the the Temple provides an exegesis exegesis on Genesis. Genesis. It is said said that the Merkabah Mystics sought to mystically ascend to the 7 palaces of God and unite themselves with the deity by chanting the names of God and by meditation(6). By the middles ages and centuries of the the diaspora, this form of rather pure mysticism had been hidden and concealed. In the the Zohar, the 7 palaces of the Temple were concealed beneath the schemata of 10 sephiroth of the Tree of Life, and the correct arrangement of the text of the book were made dependent upon knowing the correct arrangement 11

of the Merkabah Temple and the Lost Lost name of God (the Lost Word). 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 work were not changed or edited, with paragraphs added or deleted and the numbering of the verses changed or omitted entirely. It turns deciphering the Zohar into something cipher may still be be uncovered. uncovered. of detective story … however, much of the cipher What is lost will require something of a professional archaeological undertaking undertaking to reconstitute. reconstitute. It is to be be hoped that Crowley’s Crowley’s Liber Al vel Legis will never require such services. Essentially, 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 ancient 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. We will will begin by revealing its its core core features; those that can be unlocked by cracking the Liber Al/Zohar cipher. Crowley tells in the Book of Thoth that the letters Aleph Lamed constitute the secret key of the Book of the Law. Law. The value of these letters is 31, and that the ‘Word of the the Aeon’ Aeon’ 31 x 7 = 217. Crowley also tells us that ‘Abrahadabra’ is a cipher(7). cipher(7). Indeed, Crowley Crowley claimed to have ‘restored’ ‘restored’ Abrahadabra in Mexico in 1900, at the same time he claimed to have found the ‘Lost Word’(8). The Merkabah Temple has the wor d BaraHdd  upon the palaces or sephiroth which = 217, and Abrahadabra is an anagram of BaraHdd  in  in that it has the same letters only they appear with a different 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 Temple for yourself, before you can solve the Liber Al cipher. The Zohar is one of the books included on the original A.’.A.’.’s reading list. The Zohar gives us some instructions about how to accomplish this. this. It tells us: us:

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1. 2. 3. 4.

Institute the union of the Holy Name. Bind together the links of truth. Derive the supernals into the position required. Honour the Name of the Lord. “But what is to be understood by that passage_"And they that

despise Me shall be lightly esteemed?" Such an one is that man who can neither inst nstitu itute the the union nion of the Holy Holy Nam Name, nor bind togetherthelinksoftruth , nor derivethesupernalsintotheposition required , nor honourtheNameofhisLord. Better were it for that man had he never been created, and much more for that man who doth not attentively meditate when he saith. Amen!”

The cipher of the Tree of Life is transformed into the Temple by combining the 3 supernal ‘heads’ into one positioned positioned at ‘Da’ath’. This is the first palace from which God begins his creation and according to the Zohars commentary on Genesis, 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 the text depicts God calling to the letter Aleph twice(10). The R abi’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 ‘Daleths 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: 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 Temple made of bricks and mortar as it is said the Temple of Solomon was twice, but you cannot demolish the idea of one. The solar nature of Tiphareth can only be expressed 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. Malkuth. In this fashion the union of the Holy Name is established in the word ‘BaraHdd’ which = 217, and is 31 x 7. 13

word to find on the Merkabah Merkabah Temple. It’s not not BaraHdd is a fascina ting word controversial amongst many educated contemporary Jewish people to say that monotheistic Judaism arose from the Polytheistic culture of the Canaanites. It’s generally accepted amongst 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 find that the Mystics Mystics of c. 100 100 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   when using Hebrew phonetic Qabalah. 31 x 7 = 217 217 & BaraHdd = 217. 217. Also, the number of the ‘Inner Temple’ or holy of holies of the Temple is also   217 (B+G+Z+H+R = 217.) Finally, 217 is a centered hexagonal number representing 216 circles arranged around a 217th centered circle in a hexagon lattice, so the number itself figuratively describes the shape of the Merkabah. Merkaba h. When we apply Hebrew Origin Qabalah to the Word then the value of the H in BaraHdd changes from 5 to 8 making the value of the Word to equal 220 – the same value given to the sub figura title of the typescript of Liber Al vel Legis. 220 is is also the identical number of paragraphs included in the Book of the Law as well as being the exact number of ‘K’s that Crowley included in the typescript. 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:

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Most of the letters assigned to the Tree of Life are perfectly correct and do not change their attributions. Others letters are reassigned reassigned to 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’. Patriarchs’. When the letters 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 would yield 3 numbers: numbe rs: Mem 15

+ Aleph = 41. 41. Mem + Daleth = 44, and Aleph + Mem 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 down all Assembly. Do the same the 41’s in the chapters of the Book of the Greater Assembly. with the the Book of the Lesser Mysteries. The repeat the same 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 in the beginning. The mother in the middle and she is covered on this side and on that. 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 tenth is crowned by

the mother [Cap.3 - CM] 41. into forty thousand superior superior worlds. The brightness of the skull skull of His head is extended, and from the light of this brightness the just shall receive four hundred worlds in the world to come [Cap.3 - GA] 41. and He separateth Himself ever more 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 the Most Holy Ancient of all Ancients, the Concealed 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 chapters and books. To continue...] 44. Yod, remaineth one and alone. [Cap.1 [Ca p.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 16

the eagle, 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 of 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] GA] 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 stream down on every side [Cap.1 - LA] 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] 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 are 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 an encryp ted Thelemic exposition on the 14 paths of the Merkabah Temple, and that his works such as Liber 231, Liber B vel Magi & Liber Tau are keyed line by line to the palaces & paths of the Merkabah. Cracking the Riddle of Liber Al requires that you provide mathematical proof that you have knowledge of the Merkabah Temple. The paths of Samekh, Yod, Nun and Kaph (sink) are not included in the calculations for the proof. Neither is the Path of the Cave included. The verses which indicate their exclusion are: 17

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 the 4: there is a fifth who who is invisible,

& therein am I as a babe in an egg.) So when we exclude these 4 and the fifth ‘invisible’ path  of the Abyss then

there are 9 paths left to find mathematical proofs for with simple division, addition and multiplication. AL I, 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 these are: The Inner Temple = 217, Cheth & Teth = 11, Vau = 9, Mem = 45, Peh = 88, Resh = 209, Lamed = 231 & Ayin = 274. AL II, 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. down. Also the ‘X’ ‘X’ is actually actually a multiplication sign, 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: 76:

4, 6, 6, 3, 8, 1, 2, 20, 2, 4, 4, 1, 30, 3, 40, 70, 200, 3, 3, 900 900 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: 18

I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII.

900 x 0.24 + 1 = 217 - Heh 8 + 3 = 11 - Cheth C heth & 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

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The Utility of the Merkabah Wheel to Ritual and Magick. In ritual and magical work we construct personal temples as a way of externalizing the symbolic and archetypal content of the psyche in a sacred space. With Kabbalah each letter and its corresponding tarot card represent aspects of the psyche, and both the mystic (in meditation on the cards) and the magician (through ritual) work to bring all the aspects of the psyche into balanced and harmonious relation to one another. And since understanding is itself symbolic as well as semantic, each aspect of the psyche has both inner (esoteric) and outer (exoteric) meanings. In the Book of Solomon 6:7 this idea is itself symbolized "As a half pomegranate is thy temple within thy veil" and the practice of bringing all these aspects of the psyche into balance and developing our understanding of their relation to one another is illustrated in 6:11 " I went down into the garden of nuts to see the blossoms of the valley, and to see whether hagefen (the vine) flourished and the pomegranates bloomed." The structure of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life represents the exoteric understanding of the magicians universe while the structure of the Merkabah Wheel represents the esoteric understanding of it. When we compare the Tree of Life to the Merkabah Wheel (the ROTA) we see the three Supernals - Kether, Chokmah and Binah are combined into one Palace. The exoteric posits a linear view of creation where the second sephiroth is created from the first sephiroth and the third from the second, and so on, while the esoteric understanding is that the the first three functions of consciousness happen simultaneously. Likewise, Yesod and Malkuth combine to one Palace - this time symbolizing the exoteric understanding that is fooled by the qualia or material appearance of the world. The Tree of Life is only introduced into the biblical narrative after 'the fall'. You can appreciate the Kabbalistic Tree of Life as a conception of the fallen universe, while the Merkabah Wheel is the original perfect or 'redeemed' universe. Much of the Merkabah Wheel is identical to the Tree 20

of Life but the Palaces are all attributed letters (or attributed to 'God') and the rotating of the Wheel is the motion of the Shekhinah. In the Tarot deck you have 22 Cards of the Major Arcana associated with the Chariot Wheel and 40 small Cards associated with the 4 worlds and the Tree of Life. Together they form an inter-related system which can be employed to give a philosophical reading to the enquirer. So (for instance) if you defined a problem by choosing 1 card from each suit of the Minor Arcana's numbered cards - Wands, Cups, Swords, Disks then by adding them together, and employing theosophical reduction if the total is greater than 22, then counting the Fool as the first card of the Major Arcana you draw the ‘n'th’ card from the pack and meditate on the inner meanings of that card and it's relationship and balance to other aspects of the psyche when contemplated on the Merkabah Wheel. If you are working with Aleister Crowley's A.'.A.'. system, Liber Arcarnorum keys the Major Arcana to the Merkabah Wheel. In order to use part of the A.'.A.'. system you first have to know the correct attribution of the Major Arcana and the Hebrew letters to the Merkabah Wheel; Liber B vel Magi, Liber Tau and Liber Ararita are also keyed to the Merkabah wheel. Liber Ararita in particular is a type of meditation exercise along Raja Yoga lines directed towards the attainment of Samadhi, so knowing the correct attribution of the cards and letters to the Merkabah Wheel is a rather crucial bit of information needed when working with these books. Having a working Knowledge of the Merkabah Wheel also opens up avenues of understanding in other works by Crowley that are not accessible otherwise. Liber XCV - ‘The Wake World’ –  is a literary adventure across the Merkabah Palaces, their paths, and the houses of the Sephiroth that are within the Palaces  – and thus combines both Kabbalistic and Merkabah systems within the premise of a daydream. Crowley’s ‘The Vision and the Voice’ is also liberally speckled with references to ‘The Palace of Understanding’, ‘The Palace of the King’s Daughter’, & ‘a palace of which every stone is a separate jewel, and is set with millions of moons’. 21

Other ciphers, puzzles, anagrams and cryptograms of Liber Al vel Legis. Whilst the Merkabah Riddle is the chief cryptogram, there are many other puzzles written within the Book of the Law. La w.

This puzzle is partly connected with the Merkabah Riddle. One of the techniques developed by the Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia in the 13th Century was to count the instances of each letter as it appeared in each book of the Torah, and then check the significance of the letter with Gematria. When we do this with Liber AL  – which is the replacement book for the lost biblical ‘Book of the Law’ - then the letter ‘K’ appears 220 times; which is identical to the number of the Lost Word when enumerated with Hebrew Origin Qabalah. When we break down the count, then the letter appears 61 times in Chapter 1; 69 times in Chapter 2; and 90 times in Chapter 3. In AL I, 46 Nuit says: “Nothing is a secret key of this law. Sixty-one the Jews call it; I call it eight, eighty, four hundred & eighteen.” –  so the first part of

the puzzle is Zero. There is no number in gematria that that yields a satisfying addition to zero, but if we take the number 69 to be a graphic representation of the zodiac sign of Cancer, then 0 degree’s Cancer is the summer solstice  – the longest year of the year where the Sun’s influence is felt at its fullest fullest power upon the earth. This happens at two times every year – once each for the Northern and the Southern hemispheres. Further corroboration is had in AL I, 46 when it is realized that Cancer is attributed to the eighth card in the tarot deck, - the Chariot, and that to the Hebrew letter Cheth which carries the value of eight. Finally, 418 is attributed to the double wand of power due to these double solstices on 22

the Earth. When we half the number we we have 209 which is the value of Resh + the palaces of Daleth and Heh on either side of the path on the Merkabah, and in the Zohar HDR (hadar) is explicitly associated with the Solar Phallus of God as it impregnates the Earth, so then we must expect that on the Summer Solstice the generative power of God is most in alignment with the power of the Chariot connected to the Palace of Beth. As this cryptogram is connected with Solar Phallic mythology the 3rd part of the puzzle  – the 90 ‘K’s in Chapter 3, involves the moment of orgasm in which generative properties of the Sun God are ‘killed’ while at the height of his power, leading to his eventual death and rebirth at Winter Solstice. The English word ‘Kill’ has the value of 90 in Gematria, and it is the alternate word used in other version of the Song of the Stele outside of Liber AL. The change of ‘Fill me’ in AL III, 37 to ‘Kill me’ in other texts outside of Liber AL is an intentional hint or clue left to draw attention to the presence of this cryptogram - and is not an error or typo on the part of Aleister Crowley. Unfortunately, the presence of this cryptogram has been overlooked and misinterpreted by the current Frater Superior of the Ordo Templi Orientis (Frater Hymenaeus Beta) – who assumed that the ‘Fill me’ was an error on Crowley’s part. Frater H.B. H.B. has broken with the established established convention of not changing the wording of Class A encrypted texts, and this has led to the loss of this puzzle in the editions of the book currently published by the Order.

57. Invoke me under my stars! Love is the law, love under will. Nor let the fools mistake love; for there are love and love. There is the dove, and there is the serpent. Choose ye well! He, my prophet, hath chosen, knowing the law of the fortress, and the great mystery of the House of God. This puzzles concerns the Pole stars.

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'Dov' in hebrew means Bear or 'Ursa', so this is a play on words and a reference to either Ursa Minor or Ursa Major. Major. The two inner stars of Ursa Major - Phecda and Megrez, point to Thuban, which used to be important in ancient times because Thuban was the old Pole Star and the centre of the 'wheel of the heavens'. People in ancient times; both nomadic tribes and those in early cities and settlements needed to know where the pole star was in order to navigate, and also to find where North was so they could correctly align their cities (see Indus Valley - Harrappa) and monuments. The position position of the stars could also warn them of seasonal changes in climate and weather which was crucial for successful agricultural farming. farm ing. According to Professor Ivar Lissner, the pole star was also the dwelling place of 'divinity' 'divinity' to the shamanic and nomadic peoples peoples of pre-history. In his book 'Man, God and Magic' he describes the ritual slaughter of a bear by a tribe in Siberia with the intent of sending it's spirit to the pole star to talk to God and give a good report about the tribe so that the great spirit would look after the people. After the bear was ritually slaughtered slaughtered it was eaten. Lissner suggested this 'bear cult' cult' had been active in the Indus Valley area, China, Siberia, and in North and South America. In modern times, Polaris is the Pole Star, and that is found on the end of Ursa Minor (aka the Little Bear or the Seven Sisters). Polaris can also be found in the sky by following a line through the two stars that form the end of the "bowl" of Ursa Major. The Serpent is the constellation of Draco, which includes Thuban. Thuban means Serpent in Arabic. Thuban was the ultimate destination for the spirit of dead Pharaoh, and there are shafts cut into the great Pyramids which would have aligned with the Pole Star of Thuban with with the Queens Queens chamber in ancient times. This was where Crowley evoked the Sylphs for Rose on their honeymoon in 1904.

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In ancient Egypt both Ursa Minor and Draco made up an asterism of stars associated with the Hippopotamus Goddess 'Taweret' (aka 'Tuat'). As the Goddess of Childbirth and fertility, she is stationed in the sky approximate to the crotch of the Goddess Nuit, where she plays 'catch the baby' in the place where the child is to be born. born . Taweret - 'Great One' and 'mistress of the horizon' - is sometimes shown with seven stars lined down her back, which are most likely the seven stars of Ursa Minor. She is depicted with pendulous breasts heavy with milk to suckle the child with. ...and the Lord Adonai is about it on all sides like a Thunderbolt, and a Pylon, and a Snake, and a Phallus, and in the midst thereof he is like the Woman that jetteth out the milk of the stars from her paps; yea, the milk of the stars from her paps.  – Liber Cordis Cincti Serpente. The House of God is the Merkabah Temple of which the Temple of Solomon was the earthly manifestation (see Chapter 9  –  The Merkabah and the Temple Temple of Solomon). The thesis advanced later in this this book is that the 7 Palaces of the Merkabah derived ultimately from an ancient form of ancestor worship associated with a 7 starred asterism around the Pole Star region of the sky.

It’s not not at all certain that this is a puzzle puzzle left by Crowley. Crowley. It may be that the

puzzle does not really exist except in the minds of the people wondering if there is any symbolic significance in the total count of the characters in Liber AL vel Legis. This puzzle involves higher mathematics. mathematics. A variation variation of it was originally proposed by John Griffith, who did a character count of Liber 220 (the typescript) and produced the count of 23112 characters (after removing all the verse numbers, commas and stops) which he gave as the area of a right 25

angled triangle using the length of two of the edges as 214 and 216. However, apart from 216, these numbers are not particularly symbolically significant. I felt the answer was more likely to involve numbers that held greater symbolic significance to Crowley  – such as the number 231, which is: “the sum of the first 22 numbers, 0 to 21; the sum of the Key Numbers of the Tarot cards; hence an extension of the idea of 22, q.v..” –   An essay on number. It was my hypothesis that the character count is supposed to be a straight 23100 characters, as 21700 / 231 = 93.9393 R, and also 23100 is the area of a right handed triangle when two of the edges measure 231 and 200 respectively. I do not know how John Griffith got a character count of 23112 characters though. When Liber AL is stripped of verse numbers and all forms of punctuation and after checking it multiple times I still get a count of 23,209 characters. 209 is half of 418 418 but still - this 'total count of numbers' seems to be a bit of a wet blanket. If there had been 23100 characters I would have said 'there's definitely something here" but with 23112 (Johns number) or 23209 (my number) - they don't seem particularly significant or symbolic. There are too many arbitrary decisions made in a character count of a book like Liber AL: AL: such as decisions over whether to count the word Tzaddi (6 characters) or whether to count the Hebrew letter as 1 character; whether to include the additions made to the text by Rose Crowley; whether to include the poetry; whether to count ampersands or ‘ands’; whether to include the verse numbers, exclude them, or just add verses from chapter 2 & 3 as is written in Liber 31; whether punctuation such as question marks and exclamation marks are integral characters to the text and should should be included? included? And because there are so so many arbitrary arbitrary decisions involved in the count of the letters - I can’t see any element of intelligent design to it. 26

The relationship between the numbers 217, 231 and 93, and all the business with the triangles ar e still of interest; they just don’t seem to be related to the count of characters in the Book of the Law.

Whether intention or accidental: I, 7: “Aiwass the Minister” = “I sin, I was the Master”. I, 55: “Bowels, he shall” = “Show Be’els hall”. Maybe shorthand for Be’elzebub, or when written in Hebrew would transliterate transliterate to “Show Ba’alls’ hall”.

III, 47: “Then this line” = “the nine hilts”. “The nine hilts drawn is a key” – in the Thoth tarot which was designed by Crowley and drawn by Frieda Harris, the hilts drawn on all the swords except the nine of swords are all dissimilar  – even if in so little respect as the pattern of the weave on the 4’s. The nine of swords in the Thoth tarot shows the the hilts are identical. The swords are red and are shown shown upon a background of rain or teardrops. The blades are worn and jagged, but the the hilts are ornate with hand-guards and look polished. The Hebrew letter Zain is named after a sword and has the value of 7. However we don’t want the full sword, only the hilt of this letter , which resembles a ‘Yod’ character: . Yod (10) (10) x 9 = 90, 90, which which is the value of Tzaddi (the fish-hook) and the value of the English word ‘Kill’ with gematria, and a good deal of other correspondences.

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“Then this line drawn is a key: then this circle squared in its failure is a key Abrahadabra.” There are 360 360 degrees also. And Abrahadabra.”

to a circle and 360 / 4 = 90, and is the 3rd instance of 90 occurring in Liber AL, when we count the 90 instances of the letter ‘K’ occurring in Chapter III  – marking 90 and 3 out as a key to Liber AL  – 90 + 3 = 93.

“Then this line drawn is a key: then this circle squared in its failure is a key also. And Abrahadabra.” – Which has the value of 418 by gematria.

418 is 209 x 2  – the solar phallic symbol invoked twice for the 2 summer Earth, due to to the Earths’ Earths’ axis to the the Sun. The solstices that occur upon the Earth, Wand of Ra-Hoor-Khuit, a symbol of phallic pha llic power is a double one. (Note: In modern colloquial colloquial Hebrew, zayin means ‘penis’.) ‘penis’.)

III, 61: “Ra’s seat” seat” = “Sea “Sea Star” – (a star fish of the species asteroids).

III, 73: Paste the sheets from right to left left and from top to bottom: then behold! The most practical method of working out the simple mathematics required for the riddle at II, 76 was to write each number (or function) down on a small separate sheet of paper and then shuffle these sheets up and down, left and right until all the sheets were in their proper place. In the Equinox of the Gods Crowley remarks of III,73 that “the ambiguity of the instruction warrants the supposition that the words must somehow contain a cryptographic formula for so arranging the sheets of the MS. that an Arcanum becomes manifest,” and it is quite easy to key the pages of the handwritten Liber 31 to the Major Arcana, as each chapter has 22, 22, & 21 pages respectively and the comment. 28

This raises an intriguing possibility - given the fact that Crowley has keyed other books to the Merkabah Wheel  – that he may have also keyed Liber AL vel Legis Legis to it. Like many other students of the book I have tried tried in vain vain to key the pages of the book to the Major Arcana but found no correlation across the three chapters which would suggest a cryptogram along the lines of the Zohar code or of Liber Ararita. However if ‘The Comment’ is counted as a separate page then the 66 pages of the Book correlate to the Gematria value for GLGL ‘Wheel’ (66).

I, 51: There are four gates to one palace. Τετράπυλον - The Greek word for a Tetrapylon means "four gates" and is a cubic monument with a gate on each of the the four sides. sides. It was often built on crossroads. In Greek Isopsephy the word has the value of 939. 939. Each palace has the value of 31. 939 + 31 = 970. 970.

The four four ‘gates’ of Yod, Yod, Lamed, Lamed, Nun & Ayin on the

Merkabah have the values va lues of 211, 231, 231, 254 & 274 and also total to 970.

Other gates are listed in chapter 8. 29

Liber Ararita and the paths of the Seven Palaces. In the A.’.A.’. system, the te xt of Liber Ararita was written for the use of the Philosophus (4=7) as they prepare for the Vision of the Holy Guardian Angel. This Vision corresponds with Tiphareth  –  or rather the Palace which contains Tiphareth on the Merkabah as well as the path which the mystics associate with the throne room of God (the Inner Temple or Holy of Holies). However many of the current magical teaching orders who work solely with the Tree of Life place the Vision at Malkuth as the correspondences indicate in table 14 of Liber 777. The explanation of why this Vision came to be associated with Malkuth instead of Tiphareth is that when the Kabbalists derived the Tree of Life from the Seven Palaces they intended the Tree to represent the state of God’s creation in its ‘fallen’ state, where the ultimate fountain of Godhood is concealed. There is no Throne room on the Tree of Life to be seen, yet to experience the Vision of the Holy Guardian Angel one must first stand in the Inner Temple and open the Gate to the axis of the Great Wheel - the centre Palace wherein is the house of Tiphareth. The letter Heh which is placed on the bottom palace containing the Sephiroth Yesod and Malkuth is also attributed to the path of the Throne or ‘Holy or Holies’, and as there is no place for this on the Tree of Life, the Vision of the HGA was attributed to the Palace of Heh containing Malkuth, emphasising that it is the appearance of the material world that obscures the Godhead from the sight of man. It is after the Vision of the Holy Guardian Angel that the Knowledge & Conversation of the HGA comes on strong for the new adept. The experience of the Vision is so completely overwhelming in its ecstasy and transcendental beauty to the mind of the adept that his (or her) complete subconscious psychic structure is remoulded around the experience and it becomes the central central core of their existence. This causes K&C HGA. HGA. 30

[Note – this in no way detracts from the systems that some magical orders have developed oriented solely around the Tree. The Vision of the the HGA as understood by these orders to be associated with Malkuth is not the same as the Vision of the HGA in the Crowley designed A.’.A.’. A.’.A.’. system - although they use the same label. However the attunement to Malkuth is nevertheless an important stage in the preparation of the student and at a more advanced level of the work these TOL based systems go on to ready the student for the experience of Tiphareth and the Vision of the HGA which they they call the the Knowledge & Conversation of the HGA. In practice  – the experiences of the adepts of both systems are identical; it’s just that these different systems use the same labels to refer to different experience and stages of the Great Work. This isn’t an error on their part, but is a natural consequence of the Merkabah being concealed behind Crowley’s cryptography for so long. When you consider consider that this concealment of the esoteric core of the Crowley designed A.’.A.’.  system has promoted the innovation, diversity and evolution of magical systems today then the concealment of the Merkabah has served an important purpose.] The Vision is not a vision per se, but an out of body experience that takes place within the deepest, formless, most energetic and expansive levels of consciousness, outside of the the Ruach. Therefore, the formula of Ararita Ararita is designed to dissolve all identity with Form and transcend the duality of Ruach based based consciousness during meditation. When the trance of the aspirant is deep enough with all the processes of the body slowed down to a minimal state, and all duality of Mind is resolved then the full rising of the Kundalini can occur. The Kundalini rising is essentially the same process the body undergoes during death in many respects, but it is also distinct from the usually reported Near Death Experiences. People dying on operating tables retain a dualistic consciousness outside of the body and so only experience the upper levels of space-time which are ordered into platonic Form due to the conservation of energy principle. However, at the deepest and most fundamental levels Form is dissolved and gives way to a state of pure 31

expanding energy that is the fundamental powerhouse of consciousness and the basis of the expanding Universe. In a sense, the deep meditations trick the body into believing it is dying. Based on the Orch OR model of Quantum Consciousness proposed by Professors Roger Penrose and Stuart Hammeroff, I suggest that the microtubules of the body and brain undergo a cascade reaction that ejects the consciousness from the body whilst simultaneously dumping all of the aromatic substances that are stored around the microtubules into the bloodstream. The evidence for this, this, is that after the attainment attainment to Tiphareth; the full Ekaggatā Dhyana or the Greater Samadhi – call it what you will  –  the body is soaked with a highly floral smelling sweat  – reminiscent of attar of Roses. There are many anecdotal reports from adepts that have undergone the experience and then developed health concerns and it’s likely that a depletion of the bodies aromatics are the root cause of health issues after a Kundalini rising. rising. With this in mind it would be wise for the Philosophus Philosophus to carefully plan a diet that is rich in aromatic substances and adopt it both before and especially after the Kundalini rising in order to get into good habits before it happens, and to replace any deficiency that the Kundalini rising may cause in the aftermath. The original text of Liber Ararita is laid out in 7 chapters of 14 verses, but it is designed to be rearranged into 14 chapters with 7 verses each, and when this is done, each verse is meditated upon and contrasted with the former until any concept of Form Form has disappeared. This is the first method of using the text, and you’ll find the reordered version at the end of this chapter. “ARARITA ( — a name of God, which is a Notariqon of the sentence: "One is

His beginning; One is his Individuality; His Permutation One.") The use of this Name and Formula is to equate and identify every idea with its opposite; thus being released from the obsession of thinking any one of them as "true" (and therefore binding); one can withdraw oneself from the whole sphere of the Ruach. See Liber 813, vel Ararita. Contrast each verse 32

of Cap. I with the corresponding verse of Cap. II for the first of these methods. Thus in Cap. III (stil verse by verse correspondence) the Quintessence of the ideas is extracted; and in Cap. IV they are withdrawn each one into the one beyond it. In Cap. V they have disappeared into the Method itself. In Cap. VI they reappear in the Form appointed by the Will of the Adept. Lastly, in Cap. VII they are dissolved, one into the next until all finally disappear in the Fire Qadosh, the Quintessence of Reality. ”  – Note from ‘The Cry of the 22nd Aethyr’ (The Vision and the Voice), by Aleister Crowley. The second method of using the text is to rearrange the verses just as you do in the first method and then to assign each of the 14 chapters to a path on the Merkabah Merkabah Temple. The first first method is a linear walk through of the process but the second method allows for the necessary synchronicity of the psyche psyche as it dissolves dissolves all duality. During the meditation, the focus of awareness should shift from Chakra to Chakra as each line is contemplated and resolved with the next line starting with the Mulhadara and working upwards. Therefore, there are 14 ‘cycles’ of the 7 chakra’s during t he meditation and this builds into a crescendo until the awareness comes to rest upon the Crown Chakra yet partakes of all chakra’s and all elements of the psyche at once in the dissolution and cessation of thought. If the aspirant has done their work properly during the Practicus stage then the interpretation of Liber Ararita’s symbolism should come relatively easily to them; however Crowley adds an obscure method of encryption to the text in this line that that needs some extra extra explanation: “1. Even for five hundred and eleven times nightly for one and forty days did I cry aloud unto the the Lord the affirmation affirmation of His Unity.” Unity.” This isn’t straight straight gematria; it’s a conversion from numbers in different number bases into decimal and they need to be converted back to understand the meaning and symbolism. 511 in decimal is 777 in base 8 and 41 in decimal is 56 in base 7.

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Although I go on in this book to key the Merkabah to the texts of Liber 231, Liber B vel Magi and Tau, I’m withholding the publication of the Merkaba h keys from Liber Ararita so that the Philosophus can get the maximum benefit out of working it out for themselves, however a blank copy of the Merkabah is provided at the end of the Chapter for this purpose.

0. O my God! One is Thy Beginning! One is Thy Spirit, and Thy Permutation Permutation One! 0. Now then I saw these things averse and evil; and they were not, even as Thou art Not. 0. Say thou that He God is one; God is the Everlasting One; nor hath He any Equal, or any Son, or any Companion. Nothing shall stand stand before His face. 0. Also the little child, the lover of Adonai, even V.V.V.V.V., reflecting the glory of Adonai, lifted up his voice and said: 0. In the place of the cross the indivisible point which hath no points nor parts nor magnitude. Nor indeed hath it position, being beyond space. Nor hath it existence in time, for it is beyond Time. Nor hath it cause or effect, seeing that its Universe is infinite every way, and partaketh not of these our conceptions. 0. Deeper and deeper into the mire of things! Farther and farther into the neverending Expansion of the Abyss. 0. Then in the might of the Lion did I formulate unto myself that holy and formless fire, which darteth and flasheth flasheth through the depths of the Universe.

1. Let me extol Thy perfections before men. 1. I saw the twin heads that ever battle against one another, so that all their thought is a confusion. I saw Thee in these. 34

1. Even for five hundred and eleven times nightly for one and forty days did I cry aloud unto the Lord the affirmation of His Unity. 1. Glory to God, and Thanksgiving to God! There is One God alone, and God is exceeding great. He is about about us, and there is no strength save in Him the exalted, the great. 1. So wrote the Exempt Adept, and the laughter of the Masters of the Temple abashed him not. 1. The great goddess that bendeth over the Universe is my mistress; I am the winged globe at her heart. 1. At the touch of the Fire Qadosh the earth melted into a liquor clear as water. 2. In the Image of a Sixfold Star that flameth across the Vault inane, let me re-veil Thy perfections. 2. I saw the darkeners of wisdom, like black apes chattering vile nonsense. I saw Thee in these. 2. Also did I glorify His wisdom, whereby He made the worlds. 2. Thus did V.V.V.V.V. become mad, and wend about naked. 2. Nor was he ashamed, hearing the laughter of the little dogs of hell. 2. I contract ever as she ever expandeth; expandeth; 2. At the touch of the Fire Qadosh the water smoked into a lucid air. 3. Thou hast appeared unto me as an aged God, a venerable God, the Lord of Time, bearing a sharp sickle. 3. I saw the devouring mothers of Hell, that eat up their children - O ye that are without understanding! understanding! I saw Thee in i n these. 3. Yea, I praised Him for His intelligible essence, whereby the universe became light. 3. And all these things fled away, for he understood them all, that they were but as old rags upon the Divine Perfection. 3. For he abode in his place, and his falsehood was truth in his place. 35

3. At the end it is all one. 3. At the touch of the Fire Qadosh the air ignited, and became Fire. 4. Thou hast appeared unto me as a jocund and ruddy God,full of Majesty, a King, a Father in his prime. Thou didst bear the sceptre of the Universe, crowned with the Wheel of the Spirit. 4. I saw the merciless and the unmajestic like harpies tearing their foul food. I saw Thee in these. 4. I did thank Him for His manifold mercy; I did worship His magnificence and majesty. 4. Also he pitied them all, that they were but reflections distorted. 4. The little dogs cannot correct him, for they can do naught but bark. 4. Our loves have brought to birth the Father and Creator of all things. 4. At the touch of the Fire Qadosh, O Lord, the Fire dissipated into Space. Space. 5. Thou hast appeared unto me with sword and spear, a warrior God in flaming armour among Thine horsemen. 5. I saw the burning ones, giants like volcanoes belching out the black vomit of fire and smoke in their fury. I saw Thee in these. 5. I trembled before His might. 5. Also he smote them, lest they should bear rule over the just. 5. The masters cannot correct him, for they say: Come and see. 5. He hath established the elements; the aether, the air, the water, the earth, and the fire. 5. At the touch of the Fire Qadosh, O Lord, the Space resolved itself into a Profundity of Mind. 6. Thou hast appeared unto me as a young and brilliant God, a god of music and beauty, even as a young god in his strength, playing upon the lyre.

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6. I saw the petty, the quarrelsome, the selfish, - they were like men, O Lord, they were even like unto men. I saw Thee in these. 6. I delighted in the Harmony and Beauty of His Essence. 6. Also he harmonized them into one picture, beautiful to behold. 6. And I came and saw, even I, Perdurabo, the Philosophus of the Outer College. 6. He hath established the wandering stars in their courses. 6. At the touch of the Fire Qadosh the Mind of the Father was broken up into the brilliance of our Lord the Sun. 7. Thou hast appeared unto me as the white foam of Ocean gathered into limbs whiter than the foam, the limbs of a miracle of women, as a goddess of extreme love, bearing the girdle of gold. 7. I saw the ravens of death, that flew with hoarse cries upon the carrion earth. I saw Thee in these. 7. In His Victory I pursued His enemies; yea I drave them down the steep; I thundered after them into the utmost abyss; yea, therein I partook of the glory of my Lord. 7. And having thus conquered them, there was a certain glamour of holiness even in the hollow sphere of outward brilliance. 7. Yea, even I the man beheld this wonder. 7. He hath ploughed with the seven stars of his Plough, that the Seven might move indeed, yet ever point to the unchanging One. 7. At the touch of the Fire Qadosh the Brilliance of our Lord was absorbed in the Naught of our Lady Lady of the Body of the Milk of the Stars. 8. Thou hast appeared to me as a young boy mischievous and lovely, with Thy winged globe and its serpents set upon a staff. 8. I saw the lying spirits like frogs upon the earth, and upon the water, and upon the treacherous metal that corrodeth all things and abideth not. I saw Thee in these. 8. His Splendour shone upon me; I adored His adorable splendour. 37

8. So that all became splendid. 8. And I could not deliver it unto myself. 8. He hath established the Eight Belts, wherewith he hath girdled the globes. 8. Then only was the Fire Qadosh extinguished, when the Enterer was driven back from the threshold. 9. Thou hast appeared to me as an huntress among Thy dogs, as a goddess virginal chaste, chaste, as a moon among the faded oaks of the wood of years. 9. I saw the obscene ones, bull-men linked in the abyss of putrefaction, that gnawed each other's other's tongues for pain. I saw Thee in these. 9. I rested myself, admiring the Stability of Him, how the shaking of His Universe, the dissolution of all things, should move Him H im not. 9. And having firmly f irmly stablished stablished them in order and disposition, 9. That which established me is invisible and unknowable in its essence. 9. He hath established the Trinity of Triads in all things, forcing fire into fire, and ordering all things in the Stable Abode of the Kings of Æ. 9. And the Lord of Silence was established upon the Lotus flower. 10. But I was deceived by none of these. All these I cast aside, crying: Begone! So that all these faded from my vision. 10. I saw the Woman. O my God, I beheld the image thereof, even as a lovely shape that concealeth a black monkey, even as a figure that draweth with her hands small images of men down into hell. I saw her from the head to the navel a woman, from the the navel to the feet of her a man. I saw s aw Thee even in her. 10. Yea, verily, I the Lord Viceregent of His Kingdom, I, Adonai, who speak unto my servant V.V.V.V.V. did rule and govern in His place. 10. He proclaimed the perfection, perfection, the bride, the delight of God in His creation. creation. 10. Only they who know IT may be known. 10. He hath established His rule in His kingdom. 38

10. Then was accomplished all that which was to be accomplished. 11. Also I welded together the Flaming Star and the Sixfold Star in the forge of my soul, and behold! a new star 418 that is above all these. 11. For mine was the keyword to the Closed Palace 418 and mine the reins of the Chariot of the Sphinxes, black and white. But I was not deceived by anything of all these things. 11. Yet also did I formulate the word of double power in the Voice of the Master, even the word 418. 11. But though thus he worked, he tried ever his work by the Star 418. 11. For they have the genius of the mighty sword 418. 11. Yet the Father also boweth unto the Power of the Star 418 and thereby 11. And All and One and Naught were slain in the slaying of the Warrior 418. 12. Yet even so was I not n ot deceived; for the crown hath twelve rays. 12. For I expanded it by my subtlety into Twelve Rays of the Crown. 12. And all these things deceived me not, for I expanded them by my subtlety into the Twelve Rays of the Crown. 12. And it deceived him not; for by his subtlety he expanded it all into the Twelve Rays of the Crown. 12. And they are not deceived by any of these things; for by their subtlety do they expand them them all into the Twelve Rays of the Crown. Crow n. 12. In his subtlety He expandeth it all into twelve rays of the Crown. 12. In the slaying of the subtlety that expanded all these things into the Twelve Rays of the Crown. 13. And these twelve rays are one. 13. And these twelve rays were One. 13. And these twelve rays were One. 13. And these twelve rays were One. 39

13. And these twelve rays are One. 13. And these twelve rays are One. 13. That returned unto One, and beyond One, even unto the vision of the Fool in his folly that chanted the word ARARITA, and beyond the Word and the Fool; yea, beyond the the Word and the Fool.

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The Merkabah Keys to Liber Arcanorvm. Liber 231 is a well loved book amongst Magicians and Mystics alike due to the fact that that it corresponds corresponds to the the Tarot Cards. Cards. What wasn’t known until until the riddle of Liber AL was solved is that this work has also been keyed to the Merkabah, so when it comes to A.’.A.’. gradework - using the Tree of Life with this book is a complete and utter waste of time. A simple illustration illustration should should suffice. suffice. Line 3 of the text reads: “The Virgin of

God is enthroned upon an oyster-shell; she is like a pearl, and seeketh Seventy to her Four. In her heart is Hadit the invisible invisible glory.” This corresponds with the Empress Tarot Card which is given the letter Daleth in the Thoth Tarot deck which has the value of 4 with gematria. gematria. On the Merkabah Temple we see the Empress is placed on the Palace adjoining the path associated with the Devil card which is given the letter Ayin which has the the value of 70. 70. Why is the Empress Empress ‘like a pearl’? The Palace Palace she she is attributed to also adjoins the path attributed to Resh and the Tarot card of the The Sun. Together Daleth Daleth and Resh spell the Hebrew word dar [DR] which means ‘pearl’. So we see a perfect fit between the the Merkabah, Liber Liber Arcanorvm and the Thoth tarot here. Let’s try try that again with the Tree Tree of Life. On the tree of Life the Empress appears on the 14th path between Chokmah and Binah and is nowhere

near the path of Ayin (70) nor is there any explanation that would admit of any pearl like symbolism. Magicians now have a proper map to use if they are invoking or evoking any of the Genii from the associated work of Liber Carcerorvm.

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0. A, the heart of IAO, dwelleth in ecstasy in the secret place of the thunders. Between Asar and Asi he abideth in joy. 1. The lightnings increased and the Lord Tahuti stood forth. The Voice came from the Silence. Then the One ran and returned. 2. Now hath Nuit veiled herself, that she may open the gate of her sister. 42

3. The Virgin of God is enthroned upon an oyster-shell; she is like a pearl, and seeketh Seventy to her Four. In her heart is Hadit the invisible glory. 4. Now riseth Ra-Hoor-Khuit, and dominion is established in the Star of the Flame. 5. Also is the Star of the Flame exalted, bringing benediction to the universe. 6. Her then beneath the winged Eros is youth, delighting in the one and the other. He is Asar between Asi and Nepthi; he cometh forth from the veil. 7. He rideth upon the chariot of eternity; the white and the black are harnessed to his car. Therefore he reflecteth the Fool, and the sevenfold veil is reveiled. 8. Also cometh forth mother Earth with her lion, even Sekhet, the lady of Asi. 9. Also the Priest veiled himself, lest his glory be profaned, lest his word be lost in the multitude. 10. Now then the Father of all issued as a mighty whell; the Sphinx, and the dog-headed god, and Typhon, were bound on his circumference. 11. Also the lady Maat with her feather and her sword abode to judge the righteous. For Fate was already established. 12. Then the holy one appeared in the great water of the North; as a golden dawn did he appear. bringing benediction to the fallen universe. 13. Also Asar was hidden in Amennti; and the Lords of Time swept over him with the sickle of death. 14. And a mighty angel appeared as a woman, pouring vials of woe upon the flames, lighting the pure stream with her brand of cursing. And the iniquity was very great. 15. Then the Lord Khem arose, He who is holy among the highest, and set up his crowned staff for to redeem the universe. 16. He smote the towers of wailing; he brake them in pieces in the fire of his anger, so that he alone did d id escape from the ruin thereof. 43

17. Transformed, the holy virgin appeared as a fluidic fire, making her beauty into a thunderbolt. 18. By her spells she invoked the Scarab, the Lord Kheph-Ra, so that the waters were cloven and the illusion of the powers was destroyed. 19. Then the sun did appear unclouded, and the mouth of Asi was on the mouth of Asar. 20. Then also the Pyramid was builded so that the Initiation might be complete. 21. And in the heart of the Sphinx danced the Lord Adonai, in His garlands of roses and pearls making glad the concourse of things; yea, making glad the concourse of things.

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The Merkabah keys to Liber B vel Magi. The 3 supernal sephiroth found on the Tree of Life are all within the First Palace of the Merkabah and they are simultaneously created and destroyed by the formula of 0=2, rather than having a linear relationship to each other which is the conception put forward on the Tree of Life.

This Book is an account of the Grade of Magus; the highest grade which it is even possible to manifest in any way whatsoever upon this plane, and so any commentary upon it is difficult and the least said the better.

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Aleph: 00. One is the Magus; twain His forces; four His weapons. These are the Seven Spirits of Unrighteousness; seven vultures of evil. Thus is the art and craft of the Magus but glamour. glamo ur. How shall He destroy Himself?

Aleph: 0. Yet the the Magus hath power upon the Mother both directly and through Love. And the Magus is Love, and bindeth together That and This in his conjuration.

Beth: 1. In the the beginning doth the Magus speak Truth, and send forth Illusion and Falsehood to enslave the soul. Yet therein is the Mystery of Redemption. Gimel: 2. By His Wisdom Wisdom made He the Worlds; the Word that that is God is none other than He. Daleth: 3. How then shall shall He end His speech with Silence? For He is Speech. Tzaddi: 4. He is the first and the last. How shall He cease cease to number Himself? Vau: 5. By a Magus Magus is this this writing writing made known through the mind of a Magister. The one uttereth clearly, and the other understandeth; yet the Word is falsehood, and the Understanding darkness. And this saying is Of All Truth. Zain: 6. Nevertheless it is written; for there be times of darkness, and this as a lamp therein. Cheth: 7. With the Wand createth He. Lamed: 8. With the Cup preserveth He. Yod: 9. With the Dagger destroyeth He.

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Kaph: 10. With With the Coin redeemeth He. Teth: 11. His weapons fulfil the the wheel; and on What Axle that turneth is not known unto Him. Mem: 12. From all these actions must He cease before the curse of His Grade is uplifted from Him. Before He attain to That which existeth without Form. Nun: 13. And And if at this time He be manifested upon earth as a Man, and therefore is this present writing, let this be His method, that the curse of His grade, and the burden of His attainment, be uplifted from Him. Samekh: 14. Let Him beware beware of abstinence from action. For the curse curse of His grade is that He must speak Truth, that the Falsehood thereof may enslave the souls of men. Let him then utter that without Fear, that the Law may be fulfilled. And according to His Original Nature will that law be shapen, so that one may declare gentleness and quietness, being an Hindu; and another fierceness and servility, being a Jew; and yet another ardour and manliness, being an Arab. Yet this matter toucheth the mystery of Incarnation, and is not here to be declared. Ayin: 15. Now the grade of a Magister teacheth teacheth the Mystery of Sorrow, and the grade of a Magus the Mystery of Change, and the grade of Ipsissimus the Mystery of Selflessness, which is called also the Mystery of Pan.

Peh: 16. Let the Magus Magus then contemplate each in turn, turn, raising it to the ultimate power of Infinity. Wherein Sorrow is Joy, and Change is Stability, and Selflessness is Self. For the interplay of the parts hath no action upon the whole. And this contemplation shall be performed not by simple meditation—  how much less then by reason? but by the method which shall have been given unto Him in His Initiation to the Grade. Heh 17. Following Following which method, it shall be easy for Him Him to combine that trinity from its elements, and further to combine Sat-ChitAnanda, and 47

Light, Love, Life, three by three into nine that are one, in which meditation success shall be That which was first adumbrated to Him in the grade of Practicus (which reflecteth Mercury into the lowest world) in Liber XXVII, “Here is Nothing under its three Forms.” =

Moon: 18. And this this is the the Opening of the Grade of Ipsissimus, Ipsissimus, and by the Buddhists it is called the trance Nerodha-Samapatti. Resh: 19. And woe, woe, woe, yea woe, and again woe, woe, woe unto unto seven times be His that preacheth not His law to men! Shin: 20. And woe also be unto Him that refuseth the curse curse of the grade of a Magus, and the burden of the Attainment thereof. Tau: 21. And in the word CHAOS let the Book be sealed; yea, let the Book be sealed.

~

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The Merkabah keys to Liber Tau. Liber Tau vel Kabbalae Trium Literarum Litera rum is a graphic interpretation of the Tarot on the plane of Initiation, and is here keyed to the Seven Palaces so the aspirant can cross reference the  the mysteries of initiation below and above the abyss.

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Genesis Genesis and the Seven Palaces. The Zohar provides an exegesis on the biblical book of Genesis which can be best understood by reference to the Merkabah Temple. It says that Man emerged from the site of the Temple, and this was way before any mention of the Tree of Life or the Tree of Good and Evil which were at that time 'unwatered saplings'. As the story progresses we see the development of the Merkabah keeps step with the creation of Man and Woman.

R. Simeon arose and spoke thus: 'My meditation disclosed to me that when God came to create man, all creatures trembled above and below. The sixth day was proceeding on its course when at length the divine decision was formed. Then the source of all lights shone forth and opened the gate of the East, for thence light li ght issues. The South displayed in full  power the light light which which it had inherited from the commencement,, and joined hands with the East. commencement

Making the South-East quarter. Netzach.

The East took hold of the North,

Making the North East quarter. Chesed.

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and the North awoke and spread forth and called aloud to the West to come and join jo in him. Then the West went up into the North and united with it,

Making the North West quarter. Geburah.

and afterwards the South took hold of the West,

Making the South West quarter. Hod.

and the South and the North, which are the fences of o f the Garden, surrounded it. Then the East approached the West, and the West was rejoiced and said to the others, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness", embracing like us the four quarters and the higher and the lower. Then the East united with the West and produced him.

Which is to say that he was produced from the centre at Tiphareth.

Hence our Sages have said that man emerged from the site of the Temple. Further, the words "let us make man" may be taken to signify that God imparted to the lower beings who came from the side

(from the left side)

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of the upper world the secret of forming the divine name "Adam", which embraces the upper and the lower in virtue of its three letters, aleph, daleth, and mim final.

The two palaces of Aleph and Daleth either side of the path of Mem on the left of the Merkabah yields the word Adam, [ADM] as well as the word for ‘Fool’ [AMD], which is why the Fool in the Tarot is associated with Adam Kadmon – the ‘original man’.

When these three letters descended below, together in their complete form, the name Adam was found to comprise male and female. The female was attached to the side of the male until God cast him into a deep slumber, during which he lay on the site of the Temple.

But the Temple is not yet complete. It extends only down so far to the South East and South West quarters and not into Heh (which has not been created as yet) and only the path Mem on the east side has been created. Kaph does not exist on the west side.

God then sawed her off from him and adorned her like a bride and brought her to him, as it is written, "And he took one of his sides and closed up the place with flesh." fl esh." (Gen. II, 21). I have found it stated in an old book that the word "one" here means "one woman", to wit, the original Lilith, who was with him and who conceive conceived d from him. Up to that time, however, she was not a help to him, as it is written, "but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him." Observe that that  Adam came last last of all, it being fitting that he should should find find the world complete on his appeara appearance. nce. '

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In this verse there is the creation of the path of Kaph on the right hand side of the Temple - that of the Woman. And this is also why Kaph (20) is half the value of Mem (40). But still, the material world of the Heh is not yet created. 'The flesh' that Adam is clothed with is that of light without material substance. Both Adam and his bride Lilith are Daemons, and they conceive by the path of Peh (the Tower (or porch) of the Temple). Lilith is conceiving the world from the right hand side for which Adam will eventually descend on the left as we will see. And it is for this reason that 'the World' tarot card with it's attributed letter Shin is given to the right hand path descending to Heh.

 AND NO PLANT PLANT OF THE FIELD WAS YET IN THE THE EARTH ETC. ETC. R. Simeon said further: 'These are [35a] the great trees which were planted out later, but as yet were tiny. We have stated that Adam and Eve were created side by side. Why were they not created face to face? Because "the Lord God had not yet caused it to rain upon the earth" (Gen. II, II , 5), and the union of heaven and earth was not yet firmly established. When the lower union was perfected and Adam and Eve were turned  face to face, then then the upper union was consummated consummated..

It is only when Adam descends on the left hand path of Resh is Heh perfected and Adam and Eve are turned 'face to face', that the upper union in Tiphareth can take place, which occurs through the creation of the path Samekh (Art) which joins the lower world and the upper world in union.

We know this from the case of the Tabernac Tabernacle, le, of which we have learnt that another tabernacle was erected within it, and that the upper one was not raised till the lower one was raised; and similarly here. Further, since all was not yet in order above, Adam and Eve were not created face to face. 53

The order of verses v erses in the Scripture proves this: for first we read, "For the Lord God had not no t caused it to rain upon the earth", and then "there was not a man to till the ground", the meaning being that man was still defective, and only when Eve was perfected was he also perfected. This is i s further indicated by the fact that in the word vayisgor (and he closed) the letter samekh, which means "support", "support", occurs for fo r the first time in this section, as if to say that they now supported one another, as male and female. Similarl Similarly y the lower l ower and the upper world mutually support support one another. For until the lower world was completed, that other world of which we have spoken was not completed. When this lower world was turned face to face to the upper, it became a support to the upper, for previously the work had been defective, because "the Lord God had not caused rain to fall upon the earth".

We should recall here that in Egyptian Mythology the Egyptians called themselves 'the Tears of Ra' which again indicates that this is talking about the creation of the path of Resh which travels from the left hand Daleth of Adam down to the lower Heh (or Ha). And that the path of Saemkh supports the Inner Temple above it - which is symbolised by the holy of holies within the tabernacle. When the final Heh is properly established then the Inner and Outer Temple is perfectly mirrored and the number of the Inner Temple is the same as a s that of the number of the Outer Temple.

Next, A MIST WENT UP FROM THE GROUND, to repair repai r the deficiency below, by "watering the whole face of the ground". The rising of the mist signifies the yearning yearning of the female for the male. According to another explanation, we supply the word "not" from the previous clause after "mist", the meaning being that God did not send rain because a mist had not gone up, etc., it being necessary for the impulse from below to set in motion the power above. So vapour first ascends from the earth to form the cloud. Similarly, Similarly, the 54

smoke of the sacrifice rises and creates harmony above, above, so that all unite, and in this way there is completion in the supernal realm. The impulse commences from below, and  from this all all is perfected. If the Community Community of Israel did not give the first impulse, the One above would not move to meet her, for by the yearning from below completion is effected above.'

Now, the rain had not fell and the left hand path of Resh was not established until a mist had went up. So where did the Mist arise from? We know that the Daemons Adam and Lilith had conceived and that Lilith had created the world from the right hand side but the world, their daughter, was imperfect until the rain (or the tears of Ra) fell that would fertilize her. So we see the final Heh here of the World in her adolescence sending up a mist that allows her to be fertilized from above with the establishment of the path Samekh - which is the entering in of consciousness into matter, and thus allowing for the establishment of the left hand path of Resh - the rain upon the world that is Adam and Eve as the 'Tears of Ra'.

Thus the Temple is established and it is only at this point that the tale of the trees appear.

THE TREE OF LIFE ALSO IN THE MIDST OF THE GARDEN, AND THE TREE OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. The Tree of Life, according to a tradition, extends over five hundred years' journey, and all the waters of Creation issue from its  foot.

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The Gates of the Merkabah.

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Merkabah – the mystery m ystery of the Chariot Wheel. When the Hebrew letters are placed upon the paths and palaces of the Merkabah, then it becomes possible to produce a value for letter combinations  –  such as ADM (Adam) = 1+4+40 = 45, or HDR (Hadar) = 5+4+200 5+4+200 = 209. But letter combinations can be also made from the letter of the path with either of the palaces  – for instance, MA = 40+1=41 or DM (blood) 4+40 = 44. These are the 49 Gates of the Merkabah. 31 of the gates have singular values. 18 of the gates are of multiples mul tiples of a values, such as 4 gates with the value of 10, or 3 gates with the value of 11. When the wheel of the Chariot turns one half a rotation and the values from each side are calculated, then we find that the numbers of the gates are not arbitrarily designated but have been specially designed to come into balance with one another when the wheels is in motion. It’s possible that at one time the wheel of the Merkabah was used to

calculate the motion of Sun, Moon, Stars or Planets, rather as the Antikythera mechanism did. It may have been created purely to reflect the balance of all things in the House of God, but on the other hand it may have had a more practical and astronomical function related to the calendar. A device of Archimedes that is similar to the antikythera mechanism ended up in the temple temple of Virtus. The first century philosopher Marcus Marcus Tullius Tullius Cicero wrote of it in the 1st C. Archimedes died in 212 BC, and Cicero wrote of it 161 years later in in 51 BC. Thales of Miletus lived between 624 BC & 546 BC  – three hundred years earlier. Evidently the the implication implication is that Archimedes was not the first to design a mechanism of this type but that his was a superior design: 59

“I had often heard this celestial globe or sphere mentioned on account of

the great fame of Archimedes. Its appearance, however, did not seem to me particularly striking. There is another, more elegant in form, and more generally known, moulded by the same Archimedes, and deposited by the same Marcellus, in the Temple of Virtue at Rome. But as soon as Gallus had begun to explain, by his sublime science, the composition of this machine, I felt that the Sicilian geometrician must have possessed a genius superior to any thing we usually conceive to belong to our nature. Gallus assured us that the solid and compact globe, was a very ancient invention, and that the first model of it had been presented by Thales of Miletus. That afterwards Eudoxus of Cnidus, a disciple of Plato, had traced on its surface the stars that appear in the sky, and that many years subsequent, borrowing from Eudoxus this beautiful design and representation, Aratus had illustrated them in his verses, not by any science of astronomy, but the ornament of poetic description. He added, that the figure of the sphere, which displayed the motions of the Sun and Moon, and the five planets, or wandering stars, could not be represented by the primitive solid globe. And that in this, the invention of Archimedes was admirable, because he had calculated how a single revolution should maintain unequal and diversified progressions in dissimilar motions. When Gallus moved this globe it showed the relationship of the Moon with the Sun, and there were exactly the same number of turns on the bronze device as the number of days in the real globe of the sky. Thus it showed the same eclipse of the Sun as in the globe [of the sky], as well as showing the Moon entering the area of the Earth's shadow when the Sun is in line ... [missing text…]”

It would not be too surprising if similar mechanisms of calculation were used by the the ancient temple religions of the ancient near east also. If the Merkabah wheel was used for such a purpose then the numbers on the chariot would be expected to describe orbits of days, weeks, months or years.

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It’s extremely interesting therefore to find that when the values for the 14

main gates of the paths are considered as hours and minutes (for instance Resh + Samekh + Heh = 2:65 2:65 = 3 hours and 5 minutes) then the grand total from adding these times together is exactly 24 hours! 9m + 11m + 11m + 25m + 45m + 88m + 1h 90m + 2h 9m + 2 h 11m + 2h 31m + 2h 54m + 2 h 65m +2 h 74m = 24 Hours. Hour s. But what sort of time did the Merkabah keep? That's the mystery. It's a pretty strange clock that can divide the day and the night into portions as variable as 9 minutes to 3 hours and a nd 14 minutes. Might the Merkabah wheel measure out the length of time each constellation takes takes to come over the horizon? Could it record 'The Times' (zmanim) - i.e. the Jewish prayers and ritual observances to be performed at certain times of the day or night? Is it something concerning the movement of the the planets? If 1 day in heaven is metaphorically a year on the earth then could it be something to do with the 28 ‘et’ (times) of Ecclesiastes 3:1? More research is needed if we are to discover the answer to these question.

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The number of days per year is 365 + 1/4 − 1/100 + 1/400 = 365.2425.

ALRND or AYROD (which together comprise 4 diagonal paths that intersect Tiphareth) each have a value of 485, which is the gate value of 6 of the gates of the Merkabah when the wheel whee l is rotated 180 degrees. 485 is also the total of the value of paths and palaces on the rim of the wheel – i.e. H+R+D+M+A+Ch+B+V+A+K+D H+R+D+M+A+Ch+B+V+A+K+D+The +The Abyss (198) (198) = 485. 485 /2 = 242.5 - which takes care of the fractions of o f the solar year. 485 is also the number of leap years there will be in a duration of two millennia. 485 is a significant number in geometry as it is an integer used in the generation of a perfectly square right right angled triangle. Two edges square to one another and with the integer length of 485 produces a triangle with two 45 degree angles (the hypotenuse = 686 and the t he area = 118 000). There are 9 repetitions of the number 485 on the wheel in total  – 6 ‘gates’ from the revolution of the wheel, but also 3 when the wheel is at rest  – both around the rim and drawing a crossroads through the axis. Tzaddi (90) is a useful value to find assigned to the Merkabah if it were used for calendar calculations. calculations. 90 is one fourth fourth of 360 degree’s degree’s - the perimeter of a circle or orbit. In the Northern Hemisphere the spring and summer seasons have 92 (a total of 184 days) to them and the autumn and winter seasons have 88 days each (a total of 176 days). The Hebrew words Qabala & Ophan (Wheel) both = 137. 137 seconds is 2.17 minutes and 217 is the number of the Holy Name (via

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Hebrew phonetic Kabbalah) and the path between Resh and Beth on the Merkabah (where the 'Throne Room' is). When each of the 14 main gates are treat as measurements of hours & minutes then they give a total time of exactly 24 hours.

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Aleister Crowley and the Merkabah. With notes on Origins. When sifting through the literature about the Seven Palaces from the 1st century onwards we have to weigh the evidence and question how much of what was written at that time is purely Merkabah mysticism and how much was imported from Gnosticism or influenced by the school of Pythagoras. The notable scholar Professor Gershom Scholem was of the opinion that the anonymous author of the Sepher Yetzirah, which is a famous work from the period and foundational to Kabbalah was ‘clearly influenced by Greek sources’, and was trying to  marry Greek concepts with Talmudic thinking. The Sepher Yetzirah Yetzirah stands out from other texts with with its solemn solemn and somber style of presentation, and it warrants particular attention as this is the text that ordinary Kabbalists of the medieval period use to justify the assertion that the 10 sephirot of the Tree of Life diagram extended back into the ancient near east. The other chief supporting text of the 10 sephiroth and 4 worlds concept of ordinary Kabbalah is the "Treatise on Emanation" (Massekheth 'Asiluth), which was finally adopted by the Safed Kabbalists, but which in Scholem’s opinion was composed at the beginning of the fourteenth century, after the development of the Spanish Kabbalah had already reached its peak. Based on these primarily gnostic texts (mostly unacknowledged as such) the concept proposed by today’s Kabbalists to explain how the earlier seven palace arrangement with 3 worlds of the merkabah mystics becomes a 10 sephirothed tree is a simple one: they say that that the palaces existed without paths as the seven emanations of God in the world of Bri’ah, and acquired their interlinking paths in the more actualized worlds of Yetzirah and Assiah.

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However Scholem points out the Gnostic origins of the 32 paths of the Sophia in the Sepher Yetzirah: “The symbolism symbolism of the number thirty -two reappears also in some Christian

gnostic documents, but it is in this text that it seems to be established for the first time and in the most natural manner. Mention should, however, be made of Agrippa von Nettesheim, who informs us (De occulta philosophia 2:15) that thirtytwo was considered by the Pythagoreans as the number of righteousness because of its well-nigh unlimited divisibility.” divisibility.” This was largely accepted by the academic community for many years until Aryeh Kaplan challenged this view and proposed that the 32 paths were rooted in Genesis, and that it was not Judaism that had absorbed Gnostic idea’s, but Gnosticism that had absorbed absorbed Jewish ones. While it is unquestionably true that there was an exchange of concepts between the two cultures, the argument made by Kaplan for a link between the Tree of Life diagram and Genesis Genesis is a flawed one. Kaplan states that the word for God ‘Alhim’ appears in Genesis 32 times, when infact it appears precisely 31 times. Kaplan counts counts an ‘implied instance’ of the name name of God that isn’t actually there in Genesis Genesis 1:1. The 31 instances of the the name of God God in Genesis are perfectly understandable in Judaism when you consider that the ancient near east God ‘El’ (or rather ‘AL’) has the value of 31 in Gematria, but it is unreasonable to suggest that the writers of the Torah could not count, or expected readers to include an implied but entirely absent name in their Theosophical calculations. calculations. However, there there may still still be a connection between the count of 10 and the 7 palaces written into Genesis, but like the Tree of Life itself it appears to be more of a biblical cipher than part of the the authentic tradition and it is this: the value 31 in decimal has the value of 22 in base 7 and according to tradition, God made the world using all the 22 letters of the Hebrew Alephbet. Al ephbet. This last fact has often confounded students of Qabalah when they encounter the Tree of Life for the the first time. time. A quick google google search will inform them that there are 32 paths on the Tree of Life and that the sephiroth also count as paths, however there are only 22 letters on these 66

paths. The sephiroth themselves are blank and lacking letter letter attributions... or in other words, words, ‘lacking ‘lacking God’. This is a deliberate clue clue left for for the seekers of the secret doctrine, but it’s often overlooked or dismissed once the student gets heavily into the study of the Tree with all its complex, seductive and inviting Gnostic correspondences. The Tree of Life represents the fallen 4 worlds and the 4 elements of Greek philosophy are pinned to its branches, but in the opinion o pinion of Aleister Crowley: “The original three elements, Fire, Air, Water, sufficed for primitive

thought; Earth and Spirit represent a later accretion. Neither is to be found in the the original original twenty two Paths of the Sepher Yetzirah. The world world of Assiah, the material world, does not appear except as a pendant to the Tree of Life.” Note the wording wording here: here: ‘the original original 22’ not 32! 32! He is quite quite satisfied that that

the original document referred to in the bible rather than the rewritten Gnostic version we have today had only 22 paths to begin with, corresponding with the 22 Hebrew letters. Crowley also confidently makes the assertion that there is another sort of secret Qabalah Qabalah to be had that is connected to Aleph and Lamed. Speaking on the topic of the Thoth Tarot Card ‘Adjustment’ he says: “In the greatest symbolism of all, however, the symbolism beyond all planetary and Zodiacal considerations, this card is the feminine

complement of the Fool, for the letters Aleph Lamed constitute the secret key of the Book of the Law, and this is the basis of a complete Qabalistic system of greater depth and sublimity than any other. The details of this system have not yet been revealed. It has been thought right, nevertheless, to hint at its existence by equating the designs of these two cards. “ It is probable that Crowley first encountered the 7 palaces as part of his studies with the Golden Dawn as early as 1898  –  two years before discovering discovering the ‘Lost Word’ in Mexico. Mexico. In t he curriculum of the GD the 5th knowledge lecture contains a diagram of the seven palaces without their 67

paths, and the names of the palaces must be memorized and recited during the rituals of the 4=7 grade of Philosophus. Aleister Crowley appears to have hit upon the Lost Word via his study of the word ‘Abracadabra’ which he corrected to Abrahadabra during his Mexico period. This 11 letter word contains the same letters letters as the Lost Word but they appear in different frequencies. As a cipher of the the Lost Word it appeared (albeit in a corrupted form) in the third century AD in a book called Liber Medicinalis by Quintus Serenus Sammonicus. In the 19th C. this Word was given to Neophytes of the Order of the Golden Dawn, but its virtue was understood to rest solely as a symbolic representation of a formula that unites the Microcosm with the Macrocosm. Macro cosm.

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The finding of the ‘Lost Word, and by exte nsion the Merkabah keys, was

evidently a highly memorable occasion in the life of Aleister Crowley. When visiting Mexico in 1900 shortly after completing the 3rd degree of the Freemasons, Aleister Crowley claimed to have found the true 7 lettered ‘Lost Word’. Crowley wrote of finding the word in his ‘Confessions’:

"As I lay one night sleepless, in meditation, bitter and eager, upon this mystery I was suddenly stabbed to the soul by a suggestion so simple, yet so stupendous, that I was struck into shuddering silence for I know not how long before I could bring myself to switch on the electric light and snatch my notebook. At the first trial the solution sprang like sunlight in my spirit. I remained all that night in an ecstasy of awe and adoration. I had discovered the lost Word!" He referred frequently to the lost word throughout throughout his life’s work, and said it was encrypted within his most famous 1904 work ‘The Book of the Law’

with which he founded the philosophy philosophy of Thelema. He urged his students to earnestly seek this Lost Word, and said its pronunciation is synonymous with the the accomplishment accomplishment of the the Great Work.” Work.” Although Crowley was at times very critical of the Masonic organizations of his day, but he also said in connection with the Lost Word that “m y association with Freemasonry was therefore destined to be more fertile than any other study, and that in a way despite itself.”

Although Freemasonry is a set of synthetic mysteries predicated upon the search for the Lost Word, the Word the masons use in their mysteries is believed to be a substitute word. It would not be fair to pass on by without crediting Albert Pike for recognizing how some biblical writers that were strongly opposed to the idolatry of their ancestors had reinterpreted the worship of Hadad (Ba’al) in the story of the Golden Calf.

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Crowley’s story of how he came to write the Book of the Law has

traditionally had a mixed reception. Even during during his lifetime, questions were asked about the truthfulness of Crowley’s account. In the Equinox of the Gods (Chapter 7), Aleister Crowley begins his essay on the Technical difficulties of the Book of the Law and the manner of its reception by saying: "No forger could have prepared so complex a set of numerical and literal puzzles as to leave himself (a) devoted to the solution for years after..." Although Crowley stated he was telling a truthful account of how the Book came to be written, there is little doubt left in my mind that Crowley created the books cryptograms with full cognisance of what he was doing. The cryptography of the book is not an off the cuff product but demonstrates a considerable amount of craftsmanship and preparation. For instance, the removal of the paths Samekh, Yod, Nun and Kaph (sink) from the riddle proofs in II, 76 by cross referencing 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?“. Yet if we allow that Crowley knew his own cryptographs how can he be telling the truth when he says he was devoted to the solution for years after? When Crowley encrypted the Merkabah Wheel he was placing a puzzle within a puzzle. While he obviously knew his own cryptograms the origins and purpose of the Merkabah Wheel must have seemed a mysterious puzzle to him. Archaeology was still in its infancy infancy and there was no way for him to thoroughly investigate the puzzle of the Merkabah Wheel during his lifetime in any objective fashion. And yet - the Wheel is such a perfectly balanced matrix of numerical and literary puzzles that it defies all accusations of arbitrariness that are levelled at it. Crowley refers to the encryption of the Book of the Law in several works (see notes), even while he insisted that the Book was being dictated to him by a ‘Prater-human being he called ‘Aiwass’. Israel Regardie regarded Aiwass as an unconscious expression of Crowley's personality saying “If 70

Aiwass was his own Higher Self, then the inference is none other than that Aleister Crowley was the author of the Book, and that he was the external hierarchical personalities”. personalities”. mask for a variety of different hierarchical Crowley wrote of how he would adopt the magical personality of Frater Perdurabo during ritual work, and he captures the spirit of interplay between his ordinary persona of ‘the Imp Crowley’ and the persona of the ‘Adept Perdurabo’ in Chapter 56 of the Book of Lies. In many ways the divide between the Scribe of Ankh-af-na-Khonsu and Aiwass the Minister of Hoor-paar-kraat is a deepening of this twin identification of the conscious and the unconscious aspects of Psyche; the humble scribe of the Ruach taking dictation from the Neshemah. In Crowley’s account of the writing of the Book of the Law   the entire

emphasis of the story is told from the scribes perception of his unconscious after invoking the God God Thoth. The narrative therefore pays attention to the interiority of the experience rather than to the external reality. The external reality reality of it was a man sitting sitting at his desk and writing but the scribe’s internal reality was an extended visual & theosophical encounter with the genius of the unconscious which culminated in the writing of the Book of the Law - after a great great deal of preparation. What the anagram of “Aiwass the Minister” suggests is that the Scribe is not ultimately deceiving himself about this encounter  – “I Sin, I was the Master”, it says –  secretly abolishing the duality of identity in the act of introducing it in the narrative. Certain details of the scribes story seem designed to conform to descriptions of the Book of the Law as the Zohar speaks of it, and Crowley was no doubt aware of these passages from his own studies of Kabbalah Denudata: 425. Rabi Eleazar, his son, arose, and commenced, and said: "All things depend from the influx, even the Book of the Law in the Temple. This have we understood from the 'Book of Concealed Mystery,' and it speaketh thus. 71

426. "Therefore do not then all things depend from the influx? Also we have learned that the Book of the Law must be holy, and its covering holy, and the Temple holy. 427. "Also it is written, Isa. vi. 4: 'And they called one unto another and said: Holy, holy, holy!' Behold these three (repetitions of the word 'holy') unto which the Book of the Law correspondeth, for its covering is holy, and the Temple is holy, and the book itself is holy. 428. "And thus the law hath been constructed in triple holiness, in three degrees, in three days, (but) the Schechinah (is) in the three (following) which are the Table, the Ark, and the Temple; and in the same manner it dependeth from the Book of the Law, and that dependeth from the Influx. The threefold Book of Law with its three Grades, three ordeals given in three ways and written over three days fits perfectly with the Zohar narrative on the biblical Book of the Law  –  making a prophecy out of a historical and theosophical commentary, which arguably is what usually happens in religions. Crowley’s personal identification with the Pri ncePriest  –the Beast 666 is

usually understood to be influenced from the biblical Book of Revelations but it is also interwoven with the Merkabah imagery present in prophecies of Ezekiel. Ezekiel. The term ‘living creatures’ CHYVTH = 424 [ ] is a single vau added to the Hebrew word for Beast - ‘Chayos’ (ChYTH) = 418 [ ]. 5. Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance: they had the likeness of a man. 6 And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings. 7 And their feet were straight feet, and the soles of their feet were like the sole of a calf’s foot; and a nd they sparkled like the color of burnished burnished brass.

8 And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides; and all four had their faces and their wings.

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In the schematic of the Chariot Wheel that we can extract from the Zohar, then the Gods of El and Hadad are explicitly associated to the Chariot Wheel by the attribution of the Hebrew letters to the Palaces and their Paths. This opens the way to a comparative analysis of the wheel as it was employed by ancient Judaism and the Canaanite Cult of Hadad, including the construction and functions of these Temples cults. In the Ba’al cycle (from Ugarit) we discover another type of l iterary description of the Seven Palaces  –  one that is far more rooted in the pantheon of El and Hadad than early Judaism appears to be. However, the

majority of the words produced by the 49 gates of the Merkabah are associated with the Hebrew oral traditions of Genesis, Exodus, parts of Joshua and Ezekiel and it’s not suggested that it is older than Classical Hebrew. The Merkabah and the Torah are intertwined on the timeline, timeline, as complementary halves of a mystical system of exegesis. To the narrow Christian interpretation of Crowley’s late 19th Century milieu  –  Hadad was not understood to the forerunner to the God YHVH, and he was more likely to be equated with Satan, or the demon ‘Be’elzeub. Early archaeological figurines showed the God adorned with a pair of Antlers on his head and horns of any kind have long been viewed as devilish characteristics by Christians. Crowley quips in his confessions that he devoted himself to black magick in order to get into personal communication with the devil but was disappointed by the lack of any good manual of technical instruction. Another organisation that Crowley involved himself with for a time was the Theosophists. It was the view of Dion Fortune that the seven palaces enabled the tenfold scale of the Qabalah to be equated with the sevenfold scale of theosophy, but whether she meant the sevenfold theosophy of the Merkabah Mystics or that of the theosophical society founded by Helena Blavatsky in 1875 is unclear.

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Crowley thought it was significant that he was born on the same year the society was founded, and after the death of Blavatsky he engaged in a long campaign to take over the leadership of the society himself. His motivations for seeking to do so have often puzzled his biographers, but as Crowley knew the seven lettered ‘lost word’ and the proper Hebrew letter attributions to the seven palaces and paths of the Merkabah Temple, and as he was convinced that he alone knew the ‘lost word’ or Holy Name of God, then he probably considered himself the pre-eminent Theosophist living at that time, with with a right right to the leadership. leadership. However, he could not openly disclose this knowledge to the Theosophical society without giving away the very keys that secured the concealed content in Liber Al vel Legis and other works. Instead he was was reduced to declaring he knew the secret wisdom upon which the society was founded whilst saying nothing about it. In his confessions Crowley declares “My purpose was to bring back Theosophists to the true principles of their founder; principles which have been shamefully abandoned by her successors --- to the utter ruin of the

society, either as a nursery for adepts or as a civilizing influence in barbaric Christiandom.”

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In ‘Notes for an Astral Atlas’ (http://hermetic.com/crowley/book-4/app3.html ) he writes in reference to Liber AL and Aiwass of: “(b) His power 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.”

And further in that work comments: "…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 in any human mind, and depending on the control of the arm of the scribe, though He thought He was writing consciously from dictation; and to weave into a single pattern so many threads of proof of different orders that every type of mind, so it be but open and just, may be sure of the existence of AIWAZ as a being independent of body, conscious and individual, with a mind mightier than man's, and a power beyond man's set in motion by will." wi ll."

And in chapter 7 of the Equinox of the Gods he also explicitly discussed cryptography cryptography in connection with Liber AL vel Legis: "I may admit a Qabalistic or cryptographic secondary meaning when such confirms, amplifies, deepens, intensifies, or clarifies the obvious common-sense significance… significance… A problem is explicitly declared to exist; in all such cases I shall seek for a meaning hidden by means of Qabalistic correspondences, cryptography cryptography,, or literary subtleties. III, 73. The ambiguity of the instruction warrants the supposition that the words must somehow contain a cryptographic formula […] For example, 75

the first proposition is proved by the cryptography cryptography   connected with 31, 93, 418,666,[pi], etc. (b) of an harmony of letters and numbers subtle, delicate and exact, and (c) of Keys to all life's mysteries, both pertinent to occult science and otherwise, and to all the Locks of Thought; the concealment of these three galaxies of glory, I say, in a cipher simple and luminous , luminous  , but yet illegible for over Fourteen years, and translated even then not by me, but by my mysterious Child according to the Foreknowledge written in the Book itself, in terms so complex that the exact fulfilment of the conditions conditions of His birth, which occurred with incredible precision, seemed beyond all possibility, a cipher involving higher mathematics, 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 the casual silkstuff of ordinary English words, nay, even in the apparently accidental circumstance circumstance of the characters of the haste-harried scrawl of My pen. Many such cases of double entendre, paranomasia in one language or another, sometimes two at once, numerical-literal puzzles, and even (on one occasion) an illuminating connexion of letters in various lines by a slashing scratch, will be found in the Qabalistic section of the Commentary. I, a master of English, was made to take down in three hours, from dictation, sixty-five 8" x I0" pages of words not only strange, but often displeasing to me in themselves; concealing in cipher propositions unknown to me, majestic and profound; foretelling events public and private beyond my control, control, or that of any man. I should not have tolerated the discords, jarred and jagged, of manner, as when a sublime panegyric of Death is followed first by a cipher and then by a prophecy, before, without taking breath, the author leaps to the utmost magnificence of thought both mystical and practical, in language so concise, simple, and lyrical as to bemuse our very amazement. I should not have spelt "Ay" "Aye," or acquiesced in the horror "abstruction." And finally, in the Book of Thoth, (pg.87) Crowley writes that:

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… the letters Aleph Lamed constitute the secret key of the Book of the Law, and this is the basis of a complete qabalistic system of greater depth and sublimity than any other. The details of this system have not yet been revealed. It has been thought right, nevertheless, to hint at its existence by equating the designs of these two cards."

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The Seven Palaces in the Ancient Near East & the Indus Valley. In the Massoretic text of the Hebrew Bible the word Hekhal is used exactly 70 times to refer to the House of the Lord, which is synonymous with the 2 ancient Temples of Jerusalem. For the origin of the Jewish 7 palaces we can look to Sumerian literature. Indeed - the technical term used in these texts for the heavenly palaces, Hekhalot, is a loan word from Akkadian ekallu, "palace." In Sumerian texts there is the story of the Goddess Inana descending (and in Merkabah to descend is to ascend) into the underworld through 7 gates, and there is also the story of the 7 heavens and heavenly palaces through which Etana passes through. Lions, eagles, serpents and the like all feature as symbolic representations of rites of passage from one state of consciousness to another on these heavenly travels and travails. Going back even further than Mesopotamia and into the Indus Valley we find examples of the hexagram as the ‘wheel’ associated with images of the female shaman presiding over life and death in the proto-goddess stage of ancestor worship. There are also 7 hemispherical mounds found in Dholavira. Two of these have been excavated, and one is cut into the rock in the shape of a wheel with mud bricks built to the shape of the wheel spokes, while the other is devoid of wheel spokes but appears to retain a central axis.These huge circular places may have 78

been representative of seven distinct sacred spaces of meeting or contemplation where a person could go to honour their ancestors, pay them homage, or ask for advice or guidance from a shaman or shawoman. The reflection of these seven special places to seven heavenly domains is a sympathetic magic phenomenon. In this stone relief (above) we see a person sitting in the meditative pose of a shaman, and wearing the typical horned headdress common to the early worship of Hadad. Also, one particularly particularly high status male  –  potentially a shaman, was found buried in Dholavira with 70 clay pots. It’s unlikely that the administration of the city was separate from the shamanic class of citizens, so we might expect each of the seven ‘proto -palaces’ to be responsible for a distinct aspect of the the cities welfare. Water management and fishing would be one such domain, most likely represented by the fish symbol. Agriculture and harvesting would be another; also animal husbandary; metallurgy and crafts; masons and builders; herb lore, midwifery, medicine, dentistry and the preparation of bread, beer and intoxicants. The seventh being the central figure which was possibly possibly an overseer of commercial ventures and projects involving the other 6  – a shamanic proto ‘king’ or ‘Queen’ figure, a representative of the po le star axis of the heavens. Further excavations are needed to determine whether the circular stone structures were also constructed as astronomical observatories, but they appear to point due North and Harappan cities are are also aligned at a small angle from the north in keeping with the shift of Thuban away from the pole. Ursa Major is named the Saptarshi in Hinduism, and each of the stars represents one of the Saptarshis or ‘Seven Sages’, called; Bhrigu, Atri, Angirasa, Vasishta, Pulastya, Pulalaha and Kratu. Thuban was the pole star in antiquity and appears in the constellation of Draco. Thuban is an Arabic word for snake thuʿbān, but in Dravidian, Thuban is called ‘vaTamiin’ which means ‘rope -star’ and ‘banyan-star.’ The two inner inner stars of of Ursa Major Major (the great great bear) point point to 79

Thuban and may have formed part of a seven stared asterism before the Late Harappan Phase began. Around 1800 BCE, signs of a gradual decline began to emerge, and by around 1700 BCE, most of the cities of the Indus Valley were abandoned. This is interesting because in 1793 BC, Thuban was superseded as the Pole Star by the slightly brighter star of Kappa Draconis, which may have been taken as an omen of celestial displeasure by the people of the region. The sign we see here on this piece of Indus Valley pottery is called the the ‘spoked wheel sign’ (Number 391 of the Mahadevan Concordance) and it is often an initial sign sign in texts of the the region. It is placed in the heavens representing the heavenly wheel, but not necessarily that of the Chariot. Some type of bloody sacrifice is happening with the central unclothed female figure appearing to throttle the two animals at either side of her. Below her feet there is an elephant. One of the very oldest types of shamanic ritual practice that we have evidence for in pre-history virtually around the globe is that of the Bear Cult, which practiced the ritual torture of a bear which had been adopted and raised as part of the family since it was a cub. This bear would would be pampered until the day of its sacrifice (usually before a wedding), whereupon it was asked to speak well of the tribe to the Sky Deity before it was ritually tortured to make it easier for the bears spirit to leave its body upon the killing blow. It was believed that the sky sky itself was a giant tent with small tears in it which allowed in the light (the stars), and that a pole holding up the centre of the sky tent ended at the unmoving pole star, whether the main deity lived. Upon death, the bear (being the brother of man) would climb the pole to the Sky Deity. It may be that the ritual sacrifice 80

depicted in the Indus Valley pottery under the seven stars of the Sky Wheel is a variation of this ancient ritual. There was trade and the emigration of peoples between the Indus Valley civilization and Ancient Sumer, and an intriguing glimpse into one of the seven palaces is recorded in the myths and stories of the underworld. In the epic of Gilgameš, Enkidu and the nether world, Enkidu enters the underworld to fetch the ball and square of the warrior Gilgames (the square possibly being the 4 stars making up the head of the constellation of Ursa Major). When Enkidu returns he is asked about the fate of various deceased personages (possibly deceased shaman) delineated by how many sons they had, but this probably refers to progressive asterisms of the pole Star, i.e.  –  one son is one star; two sons are two stars stars etc. Each of the seven deceased are portrayed to be still concerned with a specific domain they were responsible for during their life. The first with Masonry, the second with baking or food production, the third with water management, the fourth with animal husbandry, and the fifth enters into his ‘palace’ easily  – as a reward for for his industry industry which which is ‘like a scribe’. scribe’. In this story story it might also be that we are seeing an early embryonic form of the later caste system that was adopted in India. "Did you see him who had one son?" "I saw him." "How does he fare?" "He weeps bitterly at the wooden peg which was driven into his wall." "Did you see him who had two sons?" "I saw him." him ." "How does he fare?" "He sits on a couple of bricks, eating bread." "Did you see him who had three sons?" "I saw him." "How does he fare?" "He drinks water from a saddle waterskin." "Did you see him who had four sons?" "I saw him." "How does he fare?" "His heart rejoices like a man who has four asses to yoke." "Did you see him who had five sons?" "I saw him." "How does he fare?" "Like a good scribe he is indefatigable, he enters the palace easily." "Did you see him who had six sons?" "I saw him." "How does he fare?" "He is a cheerful as a ploughman." "Did you see him who had seven sons?" "I saw him." "How does he fare?" "As a companion of the gods, he sits on a throne and listens to judgments." 81

In the Sumerian schema there are three worlds  – the heavens, the earth, and the underworld which may be represented by the elemental mother letters of Aramaic. Upon death in the earthly abode, the deceased enters first into the underworld until they eventually enter into the palace of Ganzer, going through the door. In Aramaic this door is symbolized symbolized by the letter Daleth on the right side of the Seven Sev en Palaces. In the Sumerian legend of the Descent of Inanna into the underworld she descends from the Sky and so enters the Palace of Ganzer first, and what is also interesting about this tale is that before descending from the Sky into the underworld there are 14 locations she abandons, no longer fulfilling the office of divinity and priestess for them (the en & lagar), and this is significant as there are 14 paths between the seven palaces. pa laces. She abandoned the office of en, abandoned the office of lagar, and descended to the underworld. She abandoned the E-ana in Unug, and descended to the underworld. She abandoned the E-muc-kalama in Bad-tibira, and descended to the underworld. She abandoned the Giguna in Zabalam, and descended to the underworld. She abandoned the E-cara in Adab, Adab , and descended to the underworld. She abandoned the Barag-dur-jara in Nibru, and descended to the underworld. She abandoned the Hursaj-kalama in Kic, and descended to the underworld. She abandoned the E-Ulmac in Agade, and descended to the underworld. She abandoned the Ibgal in Umma, Umma , and descended to the underworld. She abandoned the E-Dilmuna in Urim, and descended to the underworld. She abandoned the Amac-e-kug in Kisiga, and descended to the underworld. 82

She abandoned the E-ecdam-kug in Jirsu, and descended to the underworld. She abandoned the E-sig-mece-du in Isin, and descended to the underworld. She abandoned the Anzagar in Akcak, and descended to the underworld. She abandoned the Nijin-jar-kug in Curuppag, and descended to the underworld. She abandoned the E-cag-hula in Kazallu, and descended to the underworld. After abandoning the 14 paths she collects the seven divine powers and travels towards the underworld. This shows that the seven pa palace lace arrangement with their paths existed prior to the merkabah mystics, as well as signifying that the cult of Inanna was a highly complex and sophisticated one; and it’s possible there were 14 temples dedicated to each of the 14 paths  –  each fulfilling different religious and practical functions. Prior to settling in the Indus Valley, the people of that area were most probably tribal nomads that were led by shaman who possessed a high degree of knowledge about the stars which informed their annual migratory patterns. The valley may have originally been a place where where they stopped yearly to hunt or pasture animals during which time astronomical observatories where built which furthered their understanding of the the skies. skies. Eventually, houses and water systems systems were fashioned, and agriculture became sustainable allowing for a more settled way of life although it’s probably that some people still wandered to and from the cities according to their traditional migratory patterns; these trading goods goods and services (seasonal work) with settlers. Within the cities cities themselves the Shamanic system of tribal administration may have retained its position and relevance to the population by managing the affairs of the city according to a seven tiered system which reflected a heavenly seven tiered asterism centering on the pole star, which was the 83

traditional dwelling place of the central divinity amongst shamanic tribal civilizations. What we see in the Mesopotamia Cult of Inanna is an extension of the Indus Valley system due to the increased populace which required an intensification of the simple seven tiered administration into one that embraced multidisciplinary multidisciplinary skills and technological advances. With the rise of a more complex form of administration to manage the increased population in the form of fourteen multidisciplinary ‘paths’ between the seven core shamanic administrative skills and duties, we see an elevation in stature of the shaman into that of the priest, as well as an explosion in polytheism from its humble beginnings as ancestor worship. The development of writing meant that instructions could be given in a nonimmediate fashion which reflected a divine mandate upon the everyday affairs of human life and reinforced the administrative authority of the new priestly class as well as the stature of the original bloodlines of the seven shamanic administrators into that of sovereign rulers. According to Ugaritic texts the Palace of Ba’al’ was built with silver, gold, lapis lazuli and fragrant cedar wood, and in verse I.51 of the Book of the Law it is written “There are four gates to one palace; the floor of that

palace is of silver and gold; lapis lazuli & jasper are there; and all the rare scents; scents; jasmine & rose, and the emblems of death.” These are also almost identical features found in biblical descriptions of the Temple of Solomon. References to sevens crop up on a regular basis in Ugaritic Ugaritic texts. In the Baal texts we are told that the Voice of El, the Bull, lifted up his voice from the seven chambers; Baal seized seventy seven towns and called up the seventy sons sons of the Goddess Athirat to a feast; Mot  –  the God of Death and Baal’s brother had seven portions cut up for Ba’al; he took with him seven servitors when he went into the earth; and Anat slew animals in their seventies as offerings when she found Ba’al dead. Plagues and famines occur in seven year cycles, and yet the true significance of the plethora of sevens in Ugaritic texts does not seem to have been recognized. Scholars will say say that that when when invoking seven years, or (for 84

instance) baking a kid seven times in milk, the texts are simply referring to a non specific ‘long time’, or a maximum; a quality rather than a quantity; and that seven is a particularly holy number for the cult of Hadad, without knowing why. That these these texts texts are earlier forms of Hekhalot literature does not appear to have occurred to anyone yet, even though it is now commonly accepted that the Judaic Yahweh is a monotheistic reinterpretation of Hadad worship. The seven chambers of the Ugaritic cult of El & Hadad are quite clearly identical with the seven palaces of the merkabah mystics, which were cleverly concealed within the Zohar. The seven palaces of the merkabah mystics are the heavenly representations of the Temple of Solomon  –  all except the lowest palace which is located on the earth. Biblical references to the Chariot Wheel are not exclusive to Ezekiel and the Book of Revelations although they are the most well known. In 2012 Annette Evens announced in the Journal of Semitic studies that there may be more than one meaning to the word word than simply "wheel". is used to describe the "wheels". In every instance the LXX translates this word as variations of τροχός, but when MT Ezekiel 10 returns to the subject of the merkebah theme, two different words for "wheel" are used: the usual word , but also the Aramaic word , sometimes both in the same sentence. The inconsistency with which these words are used in Ezekiel 10, and translated in the Old Greek, suggests that may be carrying an “Throughout MT Ezekiel 1, the word

additional meaning.“

The two words for wheel as they appear ap pear in Ezekiel – in English - are ‘GLGL’ ( 66 ) & ‘AVPN’ ‘AVPN’ ( 137 137 ). The reference to to AVPN may denote a reference reference to the time function of the Wheel, as 137 seconds converts to 2:17 minutes. 217 is also the value of the Holy Holy Name via Hebrew Phonetic Kabbalah. The compliment to the word GLGL when tuned upon the Wheel 180 degrees is the word word ‘SNSN’ ( 220 220 ). 220 is also the the value of the Holy Name via Hebrew 85

Origin Kabbalah, suggesting the mathematics of the wheel served a dual function. There is an intriguing lead into the character of the GLGL Wheel in Joshua 4:9: “Abode Wheel (GLGL) is a sacred structure built with the entrance to th e

Land of Israel and the rise of the Jordan River (the Book of Joshua, Chapter IV , verse Tet ), around 1272 BCE. The building was used for 14 years, then after dividing the land among the tribes they dismantled the wheel, and replaced it by the Tabernacle at Shiloh . During the life of the structure there was allowed the sacrifice in Death [the ‘Death‘ here refers to an actual place]. Some say that this was permitted because at that time the Ark was not in the Tabernacle, but with a cam p fighters.” – Jewish Wiki. Joshua 4:9  – “And Yehoshua set up Shteym Esreh Avanim (12 gemstones) in the middle of the Yarden, in the place where the feet of the Kohanim (Priests) bearing the Aron HaBrit (Ark of the Testimony) stood; and they are there unto this day.”

And a further explanation of the nature of these gemstones in Jordon at the foot of the Ark for 14 years is described in Exodus 28:21  – “And the avanim (gemstones) shall be for the Shemot Bnei Yisroel (of the twelve sons of Israel), Shteym Esreh (Twelve), according to their Shemot (names), like the engravings of a chotam (signet ring); every one with shmo shall they be according to the Shnei Asar Shevet (Twelve Tribes).” As an example of s acred architecture, the design of Solomon’s Temple has antecedents. The word and name of the God that that appears on the Temple schematic predates his worship worship by Israel and was not exclusive to her. The God was worshipped far and wide in the Middle and Near East, often becoming a local God with specific regional characteristic amongst the Semitic population. He was was worshipped under the names of Adad, Adad, Baal Hadad, Baal Baal Hadar, Jupiter Baal, Baalshamin. Baalshamin. The story story of Solomon’s Solomon’s Temple parallels that of Ba’als Pal ace as told in the Cuneiform clay tablets found in the Tell of Ugarit in the 1920’s and in all these places dedicated to 86

the God we find hexagonal structures, such as the Temple of Ba'al in Palmyra that has hexagonal designs in the roof, or the great hexagonal court of Jupiter Ba'al (dated to earlier Hadad worship) in the Heliopolis temple complex, etc. etc. The main Gematria Gematria number of Word of the Temple of Solomon - 217 is also the number of BIRH (Fortress, Temple, Palace) and DBVRH (Bee) which builds hexagonal honey combs. As a Temple religion, Judaism conformed to the local cultural norms of the region. However, unlike India where the seven palaces have been foundational for the caste system, or ancient Sumeria where the seven palaces were foundational to the structure of the administration systems of the city, there is no evidence of a corresponding use of the seven palaces and their paths to determine rank or social structure amongst Jewish society society or within the society of their their Canaanite an ancestors. cestors. Instead, we see preserved some of the original features of the tribal nomadic society and the role of the priest is closer in its function to that of the shaman who conveys the wishes of the spirit world directly or is brought in to interpret dreams or who is consulted before combat regarding the wishes of God and must therefore make a heavenly ascent to ascertain the future direction direction of the people. In the early period period this involved the shaman making migratory choices, but it is only after the Temple of Jerusalem has been established for quite some time that the shaman becomes more like a recognized priest and adopts a more complex morality based function when a plethora of rites and ritual observances surrounding moral purity are required by the priesthood to be undertaken by the people. It is after the 2nd Temple period has ended and the Jewish peoples are living in exile in Babylonia do we see a partial return to the fundamental basis of Jewish mystical observance observance as a shamanic practice. practice. But the Merkabah mystics were not simply a revivalist movement of individuals engaged in shamanic work. Having no temple, temple, the priests no longer longer functioned as a priesthood, but by reviving shamanic practices within the social construct of a fully-fledged religion they began to practice an advanced form of magic that would be eagerly copied and embellished in the middle ages. 87

In general, the main difference between the function of the priest and the shaman is that, as Joseph Campbell puts it: “The priest is the socially initiated, ceremonially inducted member of a

recognized religious organization, where he holds a certain rank and functions as the tenant of an office that was held by others before him, while the shaman is one who, as a consequence of personal psychological crisis, has gained a certain power of his own. The spiritual visitants who came to him in vision had never been seen before by any other; they were his particular particular familiars and protectors. The The masked gods of the Pueblos, Pueblos, on the other hand, the corn-gods and cloudgods, served by societies of strictly organized and very orderly priests, are well known patrons of the entire village and have been prayed to and represented in the ceremonial dances since time out of mind."

The magician is a solitary figure, even when functioning within a group context. The development of consciousness is an individual matter and seeking to come face to face with ones God is a matter that is both unique to each individual and personal in the manner that interaction takes place. The trappings of exoteric religious observance are replaced with an esoteric understanding of the role of the self as the seeker that is projected out onto the universe.

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Appendix – Merkabah Tarot keys. The Merkabah keyed to the Thoth Tarot deck.

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Hebrew Phonetic & Hebrew Origin Kabbalah Values Hebrew Phonetic Kabbalah transliterates transliterates words as if they were in Hebrew and substitutes substitutes the phonetic values thus preserving the sounds of the letters. Hebrew Origin Kabbalah uses the Hebrew letters from which the English l etters evolved through Phoenician, Phoenician, Greek and and Latin. Aleister Crowley employed employed both kinds.

English Letter A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z CH

Hebrew Origin

Hebrew Phonetic

1 2 3 4 5 6 (or as P = Ph) 3 8 10 10 20 (or 500 as final letter) 30 40 (or 600 as final letter) 50 (or 700 as final letter) 70 80 (or 800 as final letter) 100 200 60 or 300 9 or 400 6 6 6 60 6 7 11

1 2 as K or S 4 no value 80 (or 800 as final letter) 3 5 10 10 or 3 20 (or 500 as final letter) 30 40 (or 600 as final letter) 50 (or 700 as final letter) 6 80 (or 800 as final) 100 200 60 or 300 9 or 400 6 6 6 7, 80 or 320 10 7 8, 300, 309, or 700

90

SH TH TS

300 or 305 400 or 405 90 (or 900 as final letter) Or 69, 309, 460, or 700.

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300 400 90 (or 900 as final letter)

Notes http://www.sacred-texts.com/oto/engccxx.htm http://hermetic.com/crowley/book-4/app3.html http://hermetic.com/crowle y/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 subordin ates being moreover moreove r a comment on the text.” & “…to bind the whole into a co mpact 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 in any human mind… “ http://hermetic.com/crowley/equinox-of-the-gods/r http://hermetic.com/crowle y/equinox-of-the-gods/remarks-on-the-meth.. emarks-on-the-meth.... The Equinox of the Gods, Gods, Chapter 7, II: “a cipher in volving 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 the casual silk-stuff of ordinary English words, nay, even in the apparently accidental circumstance of the characters of the hasteharried scrawl of My pen.” http://www.ciphermyst http://www .ciphermysteries.com/2008/05 eries.com/2008/05/13/the-e-a-poe-crypto /13/the-e-a-poe-cryptographic... graphic... http://www.rahoorkhuit.net/libr http://www.rahoorkh uit.net/library/crowley/equino ary/crowley/equinox/volume3/vol_3_ x/volume3/vol_3_no... no... The Book of Thoth, pg 86. http://en.wikipedia.org/wi http://en.w ikipedia.org/wiki/Merkabah_mysticism ki/Merkabah_mysticism http://www.rahoorkhuit.net/libr http://www.rahoorkh uit.net/library/crowley/equino ary/crowley/equinox/volume3/vol_3_no... x/volume3/vol_3_no... The Book of Thoth, pg. 84. http://niontron.com/aleister-crowly.pdf http://niontron.com/al eister-crowly.pdf The confessions of Aleister Crowley: an autohagiography, pg. 705. http://www.sacred-texts.c http://www .sacred-texts.com/jud/tku/t om/jud/tku/tku06.htm ku06.htm The Book of Concealed Mysteries. http://www.naderlibrary.com/cult.zohar http://www.naderlibr ary.com/cult.zoharsoncino.1.pro.h soncino.1.pro.htm tm “The Lord said to her: Aleph, Aleph, although I will begin the creation of the 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.”

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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.

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