Now that we have examined the relationship of numbers it should be a lot easier to look at letter assignments and how they are to be applied in this immediate context. It should be apparent that once we have resolved a way of connecting 11 number values into 10 numerical slots, we can also assign an eleven letter word just as easily, following the same exact pattern as with the numbers. We needn't be restricted to Hebrew letters at all and, in point of fact, we needn't be restricted to Abrahadabra either. Pythagoras speaks of the "eleven gradations of the tetractys" and there are eleven point formulas all over the place that are worthy of consideration, including 11-word phrases which should not be overlooked. Thelemites (or else those for whom this particular phrase happens to resonate) might be interested in working with the phrase:

(1) Do (2)What (3)Thou (–)Wilt (4)Shall (5)Be (6)The (7)Whole (8)Of (9)The (10)Law for instance, and instead of running A-V-M-N to the circle, run (A)Love (V)Is (M)The (N)Law, instead of A-H-V-H -- A-TH-H run (A-H)Love (H-V)Un (V-A)der (TH-H)Will...just by way of a quick (and reasonably powerful) example. The reality is that the numbers afford us tremendous freedom of expansion with respect to letter and word assignments so that we are restricted by nothing that conforms to the numbers. Anything is possible and such variations are not only permissible but advisable experimental variants.

It is unfortunate in some ways that Abrahadabra comes down to us wrapped in a fairly "pushy" Hebrew packaging, creating a false impression of either its history or its technical significance in the moment. To understand why this has occurred, we need to scrutinize the process of magickal "transmission" itself, since Crowley insists that this is the means by which he came by his own knowledge of this magickal formula. It is never really possible to separate out the transmission from the transmitee in such cases, since the language and mental habits of the latter will always impact the exact shape and content of the former. It happens that Aleister Crowley was obsessive about Hebrew Qaballah throughout his entire career and hardly any of his written works fail to emphasize it in some pronounced way or another. This obsession made its mark on the whole discussion of Abrahadabra in general, which in fact, has almost no significant relationship to Hebrew Qaballah at all, other than a handful of makeshift transliterations, proving nothing in the end. Anyone who has studied the Hebrew language at all will recognize at once that there is hardly a word of any kind in any language that cannot be traced to some austere Hebrew phrasing or another. Abrahadabra never once appears in any classical Qaballistic texts that we know of but rather comes down to us via an obscure Latin reference to its talismatic applications among the 3rd Century Gnostics, probably referencing Abraxas (also Aeon) by all appearances. Referring to it as the "Word of the Aeon" is thus an impish a play on words, since it is more properly the "Word of Aeon" in point of historical fact. This is something I will address more completely further on since it impacts people's relationship to the actual work of Abrahadabra, for better or for worse. For the moment I want to simply look at the word as it stands and clarify how it is to be applied within the structural guidelines we have at our disposals. At this point, the lettering arrangement should be reasonably apparent.

To begin with, let us simply examine the letter assignments in English.

Starting from the top we get:
 

...which we already know will be run in two directions as needed.

The Hebrew equivalent of these letters follows:

...and again, these letter values are to be applied equally in two directions following the numbers. To make this as plain as possible, the following animation demonstrates how the letters will be applied, omitting closing actions between sweeps and at the end. It is very important to include these, so bear this in mind when practicing against the illustration itself. I have left a little extra time at the ends for this reason:

There really is not a whole lot more about the letter assignments that needs to be said so far as their sequential application is concerned. Once the number method has been properly assimilated, swapping out letters or words is really a very simple matter. The Core (or TwinStar) Meditation is at once an extremely simple and an extremely powerful visualization discipline. Like the Lo Shu itself, it contains all of the essential elements of the greater extended trigrammal fields system that will be examined elsewhere on this site in a fair amount of detail. I will not attempt at this point to spell out at length what a profound tool this really is...you will simply have to put it through its paces and determine that for yourself. I can only effectively report that in nearly 30 years of working with it and studying it extensively, I still feel as though I have only just barely scratched the surface of everything it represents and everything it is capable of achieving. If one should be so naive as to question why it has not succeeded in producing some sort of magickal "Ipsissimus" of my own person over all this time, I can only return that the ultimate validity of any hypothetical model of reality lies in its ability to survive and mature of its own accord, not necessarily to produce on demand those things we might imagine it capable of. In a word, the final tally is simply not in yet as to its ability to produce that which it would seem to be predicting. I should also point out that my whole purpose in revealing this information at this time is to encourage investigative action, not to unveil some sort of finished product like the latest model of car or something. It is important to recognize that there is a lot going on here...too much for us to expect that any one person could ever realistically capture all of it alone.

There is a persistent fallacy relating to Hebrew Qaballah (as well as its European offshoot, Hermetic Qaballah) that needs to be addressed at this point. A peculiar mythos has sprung up around the study of Qaballah that has convinced many people that it necessarily lies at the core of modern magickal practice on an almost universal scale. This is actually only true within a very narrow vein of magickal tradition, most prominently that coming on the heels of Eliphas Levi (who first assigned Hebrew Letters to the Book of Thoth), continuing down through the works of the Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley in the main. Within Judaism itself, Qaballah constitutes a speculative fringe esoteric that has enjoyed some impact on Judaism as a whole but nevertheless remains of minimal importance for some very good reasons. Traditional Qaballah makes a lot of outrageous claims but proves almost nothing nor at any time succeeds at raising a standard of academic integrity worthy of all that much attention in the end. Outside the realm of Judaism, Magick (by whatever name we give it) is a vast and ancient compendium of beliefs and disciplines to which neither Hebrew Qaballah nor so-called Hermetic Qaballah represents anything more than a very tiny little slice of a very large and a very complex pie indeed.

My point in drawing attention to this discrepancy is to attempt to dispel the notion that the study of Hebrew Qaballah itself is some sort of necessary prerequisite to the study of Abrahadabra. Neither Hebrew nor Hermetic Qaballah are especially well-suited to the actual task set before us in Abrahadabra, which ultimately demands new ways of approaching some very old problems that traditional Qaballistic scholarship has simply failed to produce over a period of many hundreds of years. Too many Qaballistic assertions still boil down to a question of religious belief and it is important to understand that you don't have to believe anything at all to aggressively participate in this immediate discussion. Even the appearance of the Tree of Life within Abrahadabra cannot be mistaken for some sort of blanket endorsement of Qaballistic teachings since those teachings are not responsible for that discovery in the first place and they have neither predicted nor addressed its emergence or significance at any time in the distant past. Hermetic Qaballah in particular hovers on the brink of practical obsolescence, possessing neither the historical authenticity of the older Hebrew Qaballah nor the logical integrity of modern science which it so poorly parodies. So I think it needs to be stated, even if only by me, that while a passing knowledge of Qaballah can indeed work out to an advantage in certain instances, it simply is not the case that it somehow amounts to the Summum Bonum of magickal science itself or is essential to the study of Abrahadabra necessarily. It is fair to project that if Hermetic Qaballa survives at all in the future, it will be because it will have been altogether revamped and brought more properly in line with the Aeon of Science itself, something which has hardly occurred to date.

A more balanced view of Abrahadabra is going to be both willing and eager to look at as many different variables, factors and contributing influences as possible, not only from a historical perspective but also from the vantage point of any and all available contemporary knowledge that may happen to coordinate well with its underlying assertions. This is the approach that I take for myself and also recommend to others. Pythagorean influence is such a pervasive presence in Abrahadabra that I have been compelled to refer to it as "Pythagoras' Revenge" on more than one occasion. The link to Trigrammaton and East Asian metaphysics launches us into bold new territory that unites modern genetics into the mix and predicts the emergence of a legitimate physics of the Body of Light itself. None of this has anything to do with Qaballah in specific and one would never be able to arrive at any of it from within Qaballistic tradition alone. One has to be consciously looking in new directions in order for new directions to manifest themselves for the most part. Consequently, I am of the opinion that we should utilize Qaballah when it serves us to do so but not make too much of it and not fall into the trap of thinking that it is somehow more than it really is or we will surely miss those things staring us right in the face as people seemingly have been doing with this particular magickal formula for untold centuries already.

Finally, it may be asked why, in this case, would I draw to Hebrew at all in demonstrating letter assignments? The answer to this question takes us down a fairly complex road having to do with the inherent limitations of the English language as well as many other languages whose letter values are fundamentally "dead". Among its virtues, the Hebrew language is designed to accommodate mantra working from a number of interesting perspectives. Letters themselves are not "dead" in the sense that every letter has a personality, numerical associations, image associations, elemental associations and so on. In English, the letter "B" is just the letter "B" - no more or less to it than that. English letters are stripped down to the point that they have no underscoring spirit and we are not even free to embellish them intelligently. Hebrew has been adopted by English speaking people for its applications in magickal operations primarily because the letters themselves are dynamic...they are "alive" by way of comparison to English letters and come with a rich array of attributions as well as being modifiable in pronunciation itself. This doesn't make Hebrew exclusively perfect for our applications so much as it makes it exemplary in general. Any language elements we may find that share these characteristics would be similarly suitable to the task of mantra working and I will examine a few notable alternatives at another point in this presentation.

Perseverance Furthers

m1thr0s