Powers of the Sphinx
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@ThelemicMage said
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@ThelemicMage said
"45 happens to be the secret number associated with the element of Air."Well, at least of Yetzirah
"Does this mean the other secret elemental number attributions, (52, 63, 72,) are also Yetziric attributions?"
No. They aren't numbers of the elements at all, but rather of the four worlds. 52 is the value of the "secret name" of Assiyah, 45 of Y'tziyrah, 63 of B'riyah, and 72 of Atziylooth.
These have analogies back to the elements or (more specifically) to the letters of Tetragrammaton. But they are not (for example) attributes of the elements themselves, especially not in the sense that the elements exist on one plane.
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Here is the origin of those numbers.
Tetragrammaton is Yod Hé Vav Hé, but those four letters (by a Rabbinical tradition) are spelled differently in each of the four worlds. Yod is spelled YVD in all four worlds. Hé is spelled HY in the first two worlds, HA in the third, and HH in the fourth. Vav is spelled VYV in the first, VAV in the next two, and VV in the third. When you use these different values to "spell Tetragrammaton" in full, you get different values.
For example, in Y'tziyrah, the name is spelled YVD HA VAV HA. These letters add to 45. For the four worlds (from top to bottom) the values are, thus, 72, 63, 45, and 52.
From these numbers are created synthetic words that are really the writing of the numbers in Hebrew letters. These are the "secret names" of each of the four worlds:
Atziylooth: 72 = OB
B’riyah: 63 = SG
Y’tziyrah: 45 = MH
Assiyah: 52 = BN -
Neat! Thank for the info.
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This is very interesting. Thank you, Jim. I cannot believe I have not thoroughly researched this set of principles.
Some things that were a bit shaded to me are now making sense in a newly charged light.
Hail Eris!
All Hail Discordia!! -
@Gnosomai Emauton said
"However, on the Tarot images of the Hierophant and Universe, he has flipped the Man and Eagle so that, read counter-clockwise from lower right, the Man is now He-Water and the Eagle is now Vau-Air. This seems to match Meral's attributions where the Eagle has been dropped entirely from Water and replaced by Dragon/Woman, but I'm coming up short on a source as to when or why Crowley made that switch."
In Daniel Gunther's new book (The Angel and the Abyss) he claims the Cherumbim and their position on the two Tarot cards (V & XXI) represent a N.O.X. formula that differs from the traditional scheme. Also the pentagrammaton formed thereby is balanced by the letter Lamed and not Shin making it's numerical value 56.
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Hmmm.... I haven't even thought about trying to deal with N.O.X. formulae at this point so, if that turns out to be true, I guess I can just set aside my Thoth switch concerns for a couple of years at least.
In related news, if I can claim any magical power at this point in my development, it would seem to be the ability to synchronistically find the answer to every question I ask in whatever it is I currently happen to be reading. This one didn't disappoint.
From The Foundations of High Magick by Melita Denning and Osbourne Phillips:
"The student should learn the various arrangements [of the kerubim] without confusing them, and without a premature bias to one or the other. This is important in magical learning. One's personal system, when established, should be based upon adequate knowledge. The subconscious is the dragon guarding many treasures to which it will give us access if we have the patience to teach it a sign-language it can understand, and then to address it in that language, but our dealings with it must be characterized by unbroken habit and absolute certainty. When once the code of communication is established, it should not be upset by experimentation with different systems, nor by "improvements" due to discovering that the letters TETRAGRAMMATON do not spell an actual name of God, or so forth. The time to learn these things and to make sure of them, is in one's student days before the code and the habit are established. Decisions are then made with a view to establishing contact with a mental sphere which should be powerful, lofty, and widely-connected, but not so nearly universal as to be featureless. When once the decisions have been made, however, they must be maintained; hence the well-known warning against changing the "barbarous names of evocation.""
It appears that, in their estimation at least, there are multiple possible attributions and it is up to the student to learn them all, feel them out, and then decide which one fits in best with her own path... and then stick with it once the real work begins.
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The shifts in those cards is a red herring. The elemental attributions are based on a fundamental ignorance of the origins of those symbols going back to very ancient Babylonia, distorted through Medieval Christianity. (Crowley's ignorance is understandable, since the old boundary stones part hadn't been squarely addressed by archaeologists at that point in time.)
And no, I don't have time to go into this in detail
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@Jim Eshelman said
"And no, I don't have time to go into this in detail
"Understood. Could you at least specify which boundary stones you're referencing so that I can start my own research? I'm guessing you're not referring to Terminus here.
Pretty please?
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The Babylonians bounded their fields with stones on which were painted, among other things, astronomical data.
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Cool. Thanks!
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@Jim Eshelman said
"The shifts in those cards is a red herring."
Possibly. But as far as I can tell Gunther's explanation does factor in a switch of elemental attribution between the Eagle and Man Kerubs. (Although these are re-named the 'Eagle-Dragon'(Air) and the 'Woman'(Water) respectively.) And all of this is linked back to what he calls the 'functional opposition' between the signs of N.O.X. as presented in Liber V vel Reguli, and reveals the Woman Satisfied.