Aleister Crowley's Lost Word.
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@Mephis said
"Perhaps you are simply jealous of our climate, well-being, and extant trees.
"Psh, crappy weather helps build CHARACTER
A Word that needs to be added to the list of lost
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Regarding the silences A.C. kept regarding 418, I am curious as to why he left chayyoth/chayyath out of the Sepher Sephiroth. That it was one of the first "beast" words used in Genesis and that it adds to 418 and that it is spelt identically to Cheth, as ChITh, would, one would think, have won it a spot. He has ChIVA, the singular form that adds to 25, but left it out. Why?
Also, why is this so little commented upon? Godwin has it listed but who has commented upon this very curious ommission? -
I suppose it has gotten so little comment because some of us don't think it's all that big a deal. There are hundreds of other words that could have been added with value.
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A.C. must have been well aware of this word.
For those unfamiliar with the Biblical background, there is here part of an excellent account of the various beast/creature/animal words used in the OT:
Theological dictionary of the Old Testament
The two main groups are those of the behemah group (from whence comes "behemoth") and those based upon "ChI", "life", which includes "chayyah" and this "chayyath" (as it is spelt in that volume). It is the word used in the Genesis phrase "beast of the field" (Gen 2:19).
(On a technical point, that someone here might be more expert on, the translation there is singular though the word is plural, and is translated as plural elsewhere in Genesis; as in sephira/sephiroth and qlippah/qlippoth. I suspect that it is there used as a collective singular; as in "the fish of the sea", in English.)
That phrase, which A.C. would undoubtedly have already been familiar with, was used in the 2'nd Aethyr of Liber 418:
"His building, let it be a cave for the Beast of the Field. (“His building” means the Vault of the Adepts, and the “Cave” is the Cave of the Mountain of Abiegnus, and the “Beast” is he upon whom BABALON rideth, and the “Field” is the supernal Eden.)"
If that is not obvious enough, there is also this (also much-neglected) passage in the 25'th Aethyr in which is this: "Who is the Beast? Am not I one more than he?". The apparent import is that the number of the Beast is the 418 of Cheth (and Teth, 419, is one greater). If he didn't believe that before that working, he would certainly have taken note afterwards; but he proceeded to keep quiet about it. He did not publish it in Sepher Sepheroth over a year later, in 1912. And, so far as I'm aware, he kept quiet about it for the remainder of his life.
I don't believe that that was because of any psychological resistance to it. On the contrary, I suspect that he believed that it was, for some reason, so important to the work, at that time, that it should remain secret. And I suspect that part of the doctrine that he kept back is that to do with another Biblical use of the word, in "Chayyoth ha Qodesh", what is usually translated as "the Four Holy Living Creatures". It may just as well be translated as "the Four Holy Beasts". They are supposed to be the same as the Cherubim and, of course, A.C. included depictions of them in the Book of Thoth.
They are also mentioned in Sefer Yetziyrah, as may be seen here:
Sefer Yetziyrah - a translation
Also of interest is the name of the mercurial genius given by Liber 231:
"Chiva-abrahadabra-cadaxviii". That, apparently, pairs the chiva/chayyah/beast word with abrahadabra, in a curious fashion. -
You're confusing chayyath (a singular word, spelled ChYTh, just like Cheyth0) with chayoth (a plural word - the plural of chaiah) spelled ChYVTh = 424).
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@Jim Eshelman said
"You're confusing chayyath (a singular word, spelled ChYTh, just like Cheyth0) with chayoth (a plural word - the plural of chaiah) spelled ChYVTh = 424)."
I'm glad that someone understands it.
ChYVTh in the Englishman's Concordance has five occurrences, four plural and one singular.
ChYTh in the Englishman's Concordance has 33 occurrences, 17 of which are used in a singular sense, "beast"/"living"/etcetera, 14 of which are plural, all "beasts", and 2 of which are collective singular terms: "the company" and "the congregation".
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"Are you saying that Crowley didn't publish it in Sepher Sephiroth because the beast/cherubim and their different spinx like qualities as depicted in the Thoth deck each represent a part of magical alchemy that when combined constitutes the lost word?"
No, I wasn't. But that is an interesting line of investigation. The four zodiac signs form a cross with the lion plus human (Leo plus Aquarius) adding to 99 and the bull plus eagle (Taurus plus Scorpio) adding to 56.
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"By the way - you're obviously better at gematria and the hebrew language than I - so I'm just checking - what is the value of hinei (as mentioned in Daniel)? I noticed HNA = 56 and HNI = 65 but I don't know how the word is written."
That seems to be merely a translation of the first word, VARV, "And behold"/"And there was before me", "henei" meaning "behold"/"here is". It doesn't actually occur in the verse, it's apparently just a word presumed to be familiar to the readership of the Orthodox Jewish Bible.
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@astralis accipiter said
"No, I wasn't. But that is an interesting line of investigation. The four zodiac signs form a cross with the lion plus human (Leo plus Aquarius) adding to 99 and the bull plus eagle (Taurus plus Scorpio) adding to 56."
Aquarius is Heh, 5. Leo + Heh = 14, Scorpio + Taurus = 56. Altogether, 70 (which, of course, is the secret!).
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@Pattana Gita said
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@astralis accipiter said
"No, I wasn't. But that is an interesting line of investigation. The four zodiac signs form a cross with the lion plus human (Leo plus Aquarius) adding to 99 and the bull plus eagle (Taurus plus Scorpio) adding to 56."Aquarius is Heh, 5. Leo + Heh = 14, Scorpio + Taurus = 56. Altogether, 70 (which, of course, is the secret!)."
Would the ancient Israelites have done that with the Mazzaroth?"
Probably not. Although that might depend on how far back one goes. There is evidence in the Zohar that an older tradition knew the correct attribution and masked it. (The story of the origin of the alphabet sequence quite explicitly says that Tzaddi has a deeper mystery that has to be kept secret. The letter Tzaddi on petitioning for First Letter status is basically told, "Shut up, kid, you're gonna spoil the surprise. Next...!")
Not sure it's important, though, what the ancients would have done if the question is one of what secret Crowley might (or might not) have been keeping.