Book: 777 And Other Qabalistic Writings Of Aleister Crowley Including Gematria And Sepher Sephiroth by Aleister Crowley
This book is a dictionary for the art of Gematria, or interpreting numbers as standing for words. This is not an easy pursuit, but this book helps a great deal. The first part is an article on Gematria (which takes its name from the fact that the Hebrew letter Gema, equivalent to Gamma or C/G, stands for the number 3), a basic description of how it works and why it's important. The third part is a dictionary of commonly used Hebrew magickal words, listed by number. The second part is the meat of the work: Liber 777, a magickal dictionary. Here we find that every number from one to 32 corresponds to a particular name, scent, element, tarot card, &c. An experienced magus can use these correspondicies to create a spell more effectively.After at least a full year of immersing myself into Crowley's magick and occult studies, I continue to find myself coming back to this book. When I first got the book, I tried reading it and to make heads or tails of what I was reading, but to no avail, so I put the book down until a spark of light drew me closer to understanding. I remembered at one point reading in 'The Eye in the Triangle', a biography written by apprentice Israel Regardie, mentioning Crowley's fascination with mystery novels. I am not a big fan of mystery novels, but I decided to take one up (Robert B. Parker's Godwulf Manuscript for the curious), and it struck me at that point that it seemed to make sense that Crowley enjoyed these kinds of books as they are so evident in his own writing. This is the point of view in which I decided to understand Crowley - that is, to understand his work as a mystery waiting to be solved. You are the detective and you must put the pieces together.
All the information is in front of you, but you must understand, interpret, infer, and join various bits of information to gain the whole picture. 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings is just that - a string of puzzle pieces that are shaken up in the box, and its up to you to put the work into it to make the connection. Crowley is not one for spoonfeeding information and this book certainly demonstrates this by having to understand numbers, symbolically and mathematically - how they relate to the Hebrew and Greek alephbet, tree of life, Chinese and Indian philosophy, and the universe: micro and macrocosm, and of course algebraic and trigonomic formulations. With this information that is put into a uniform system of systems. A good rule of thumb to keep in mind when studying (vs. reading), is that every sentence counts. Each line, number, column, diagonal, and row all have a correspondence to each other to make a relationship that, as the Gestalts would say, is "greater than the sum of its parts."
While this work is not for the beginner, and difficult for any novice, it is certainly a must for anyone who wants to dig a little deeper than love potions and money spells. If you can master the work in this book to the point where it is second nature, then Crowley's other works will illuminate itself freely to the trained mind. Crowley's writing is for those who want to "do the work" and not for the lazy person's guide to enlightenment. 777 stands as Crowley's testimony to his mastery over the subject as well as his versatility with understanding the nature of language and how it can be expressed; i.e. compressed information. I suggest to book cautiously to only those who are willing to take the task and set themselves on a journey into another world.
777's tables of coorespondence unites in a comprehensive system many of the worlds greatest systems of mysticism through tighly knit association of symbol and meaning. It is truely essential to any magician, particularly those who are looking for symbolism appropriate to customized magickal needs.
777 And Other Qabalistic Writings Of Aleister Crowley Including Gematria And Sepher Sephiroth
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