Abrahadabra
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Hi Jim
Thanks for your extensive comments on the Word (& for creating this thread).
I am indebted to your comments on Liber Legis 1:20 for the following. Aside from standard interpretations, there seems to be another layer to the Word that I haven’t quite figured out yet. Intuition tells me it relates to beasts and Language.
Beasts are typically characterized as dumb in contrast to the speech of humans. But as you pointed out, “beasts” in this case signifies humanity. We know that consciousness is emeshed within Language and that words constitute an infinite horizon of signification that never arrives at an end or answer, never able tell us what something “is”. As such human speech is “full of sound and fury”, signifying a primordial loss, alienation and emergence of self-consciousness. This makes us unnatural beasts as opposed to the beasts of Nature. In this sense Language is identical to 333 whose dissimulating and dispersive force must be countered through Silence.
If Language “cuts” or “carves out” a certain reality, both dividing and uniting humanity in a primordial loss, one interpretation of “The ending of the words is the word Abrahadabra” suggests a mantra formula for undoing linguistic conditioning, the repression of Nephesh. I am not convinced the point is to do away with Language all together, but possibly to restore a lost form of Language over its linguistic simulacrum.
Crowley notes in 777 that the Word by Aiq Bkr breaks down to 22 and “Manifestation”. Hence the Word manifests the 22 keys of the Rota (p. 46). What is interesting about the Tarot is that it constitutes a symbolic Language based on the visual sense, rather than vocal and auditory senses. I’ll leave it to others to debate how the language of symbolism and archetypes operates, but it seems to work through the visual sense and appeal directly to memory, intuition and understanding, bypassing the dispersive force of 333. This gets close to the alchemists “as above, so below” and affirmation that the highest metaphysical truths are mirrored in the Book of Nature.
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Are there any grounds to believe the “fence” of Cheth refers to Language – namely linguistic conditioning constitutes a form of judgment that keeps us out of the Garden?
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You mentioned in your comment to Liber Legis 1:20 that Cheth is most likely a corruption of Heh. What’s odd is that the Chariot Card uses the Cheth spelling and Crowley left it in there. This suggests to me the transition from Cheth to Heh held some significance in Crowley’s mind.
Any feedback welcome.
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@he atlas itch said
"1. Are there any grounds to believe the “fence” of Cheth refers to Language – namely linguistic conditioning constitutes a form of judgment that keeps us out of the Garden?"
The one descriptive word given to Cheth in Sepher Yetzirah is "speech." Draw your own conclusions!
"2. You mentioned in your comment to Liber Legis 1:20 that Cheth is most likely a corruption of Heh. What’s odd is that the Chariot Card uses the Cheth spelling and Crowley left it in there."
That discussion is kind of in a different category than what I've given here, and I'd prefer not to dip back into it (if for no other reason that that it requires an entirely different head space and framework than the above, and I'm trying to keep my head in my writing this afternoon).
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Oh, I got one I came up with a while ago.
The riddle in chapter 2
4638 ABK 24 aLʛMOR 3Y
x 24 89 RPSTOVAL.4 times 6 is 24. 3 times 8 is 24. "x" is the 24th letter. 89 is the 24th prime number.
So I map the first 26 primes to the English alphabet, and I get...
RPSTOVAL 61+53+67+71+47+70+2+37= 417, and I think I've got nothing, and then I realize that I left off the "period" at the end of RPSTOVAL. If you give it a value of "1", you suddenly get 418.
(although I'm not sure I get the ABK, the aLʛMOR, or the 3Y - although "ABK" sounds like Arabic for "your father" and "aLʛMOR" Arabic for "the moon", also a surah of the Qur'an of the same name)
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Ignoring the 418 part for a moment, I just wanted to say that this is some of the most original thinking on that puzzle that I've ever seen. Congratulations!
Except... 83 is the 24th prime.
(Just remembered: It's been more fashionable recently to exclude 1, in which case you're right.)
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Gee, thanks!
(yes, I come from the generation of kids taught that 2 was the first prime... although I never got advanced enough in math to be able to argue for the inclusion or exclusion of 1)
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Oh, and another (with a couple "IF"s):
If (1) we treat the first line using arabic/hebrew gematria and (2) the "Y" at the end of the first line is really a "V" (which is a bit of a push, but not entirely impossible when one looks at the manuscript*), then:
ABK = aleph-beyt-kaph = 1+2+20 = 23
aLʛMOR = aleph-lamed-qoph-mem-vav-resh = 1+30+100+40+6+200 = 377
3V = 3 (times) vav = 3*6 = 1823+377+18=418
Of course, even more than the second line, it's more than a bit of a stretch...
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You're treating a G as a Qoph?
(Isn't that the wrong 'Moon'? <g>)
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In the manuscript, the "G" has a very clear line on the top section, like ʛ
That's IPA for a "voiced uvular implosive", which sounds like a very good description of the arabic pronunciation of "qoph" (additionally, in many areas "qoph" is transiliterated as "g" or "gh").
EDIT: My rationale was also based on the previous verse, which says to "*listen *to the numbers + the words"" (emphasis added).
But, I also acknowledge that between the 'qoph' and the "v/y/gamma" at the end of the first line, it's all quite a stretch.
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Maybe this is the thread to mention a half-baked idea I had a while back. The BRAHADABR part of ABRAHADABRA seems a lot like Hebrew barah ha-dabar, "the word creates".
(Oh, and congratulations for the second mention of the IPA in the forum. But the symbol for the velar implosive as shown in Pullum and Ladusaw's Phonetic Symbol Guide doesn't look at all like the G in the manuscript.)
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@gmugmble said
"Maybe this is the thread to mention a half-baked idea I had a while back. The BRAHADABR part of ABRAHADABRA seems a lot like Hebrew barah ha-dabar, "the word creates""
Yes... but add the Aleph back and it puts the first word into the future tense also: Aberah h'adevara means, "I shall create as I shall speak."
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"Yes... but add the Aleph back and it puts the first word into the future tense also: Aberah h'adevara means, "I shall create as I shall speak.""
Now, it makes perfect sense!
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I wonder if Pete Carroll derived his 8 Magicks from the aforementioned....
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@AvshalomBinyamin said
"In the manuscript, the "G" has a very clear line on the top section, like ʛ
That's IPA for a "voiced uvular implosive", which sounds like a very good description of the arabic pronunciation of "qoph" (additionally, in many areas "qoph" is transiliterated as "g" or "gh").
EDIT: My rationale was also based on the previous verse, which says to "*listen *to the numbers + the words"" (emphasis added).
But, I also acknowledge that between the 'qoph' and the "v/y/gamma" at the end of the first line, it's all quite a stretch."
You acknowledge it's a stretch and I thought I would add that at no time was the articulation of this phoneme 'implosive' in any Semitic language. The theoretical historical pronunciation in Arabic was probably a voiced uvular plosive, and the g/gh transcription you refer to is sadly just a regular, boring old voiced velar plosive.
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@Dhakhair said
"You acknowledge it's a stretch and I thought I would add that at no time was the articulation of this phoneme 'implosive' in any Semitic language. The theoretical historical pronunciation in Arabic was probably a voiced uvular plosive, and the g/gh transcription you refer to is sadly just a regular, boring old voiced velar plosive."
Agreed on both counts.
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Another, simpler working of the top line could be (although I am sure others have worked this out before):
4638ABK24aLGMOR3Y
46, 38, and 24 each stand for "X" (as a clue to the second row).
ABK = aleph-beth-kaph = 1+2+20 = 23
alGMOR = aleph-lamed-gimel-mem-vav-resh = 1+30+3+40+6+200 = 280
3Y = 3 x 10 = 3023+280+30 = 333
Of course, as gimel, it could no longer refer to "the moon". Gamor could mean "perfected" in Hebrew or "united" in Arabic. And "Abk", "your father".
But, since it's not 418, it's not really on-topic anymore...
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@AvshalomBinyamin said
"Another, simpler working of the top line could be (although I am sure others have worked this out before):
4638ABK24aLGMOR3Y
46, 38, and 24 each stand for "X" (as a clue to the second row).
ABK = aleph-beth-kaph = 1+2+20 = 23
alGMOR = aleph-lamed-gimel-mem-vav-resh = 1+30+3+40+6+200 = 280
3Y = 3 x 10 = 3023+280+30 = 333
Of course, as gimel, it could no longer refer to "the moon". Gamor could mean "perfected" in Hebrew or "united" in Arabic. And "Abk", "your father".
But, since it's not 418, it's not really on-topic anymore..."
Just curious to hear a perspective: do you choose vav vs. ayin for Latin "O" depending on the result? Would you mix them in a single calculation, i.e., would you ever give O the value 70 in one place and 6 in another?
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My personal perspective would be phonetic based, and my Hebrew pronunciation is (probably overly) influenced by Arabic. So O=ayin doesn't generally compute for me. I chose vav, because it seemed like a logical semitic construction to me. But I have no intellectual issue with an argument that uses O=ayin.
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@AvshalomBinyamin said
"My personal perspective would be phonetic based, and my Hebrew pronunciation is (probably overly) influenced by Arabic. So O=ayin doesn't generally compute for me. I chose vav, because it seemed like a logical semitic construction to me. But I have no intellectual issue with an argument that uses O=ayin."
The arguement isn't so much that A'ayin=O as that A'ayin stands in the same place in the Hebrew alphabet as O stands in descendant alphabets. Also, the oldest (primitive) form of A'ayin actually was an O shape (a circle, presumably for "eye").
Hence the frequent Qabalistic substitution. Cf. for example the Greek Omicron = 70.
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Thanks! that makes sense.
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@AvshalomBinyamin said
"Oh, I got one I came up with a while ago.
The riddle in chapter 2
4638 ABK 24 aLʛMOR 3Y
x 24 89 RPSTOVAL.4 times 6 is 24. 3 times 8 is 24. "x" is the 24th letter. 89 is the 24th prime number.
So I map the first 26 primes to the English alphabet, and I get...
RPSTOVAL 61+53+67+71+47+70+2+37= 417, and I think I've got nothing, and then I realize that I left off the "period" at the end of RPSTOVAL. If you give it a value of "1", you suddenly get 418.
(although I'm not sure I get the ABK, the aLʛMOR, or the 3Y - although "ABK" sounds like Arabic for "your father" and "aLʛMOR" Arabic for "the moon", also a surah of the Qur'an of the same name)"
Sorry for the long quote but I couldn't get myself to edit this masterpiece;)
I was taught by a very wise person that the answer to this puzzle is 424. He said when I figured it out I would know why:p
Anyway, I haven't figured it out yet:p