by
Frater Phoenix 393
0°=0□
A∴A∴

“The fool readeth this Book of the Law, and its comment; & he understandeth it not.”
—AL:III.63

Understanding is Binah, the Sephirah veiled by the old ignorance of Da’ath.  The fool clings to knowledge & to words.  This is the millstone that keeps him from achieving the understanding of Binah.  Words fail above the level of Da’ath.  There is the fool who is 0 because he has not achieved knowledge, remaining empty, and the Fool who appears foolish because he has transcended knowledge.  He has applied the equation: 2=0.

The Fool is the letter H in English because that is the sound of the breath.  The Latin root ‘follis’ denotes a bellows, or windbag.  In the Divine Fool the breath is inspiration – it is the bellows that stokes the fire of the forge and the laboratory.  It is linked with the practice of Pranayama, illustrated in the Tower.  In the profane fool, ‘H’ is only the sound of hot air and empty words.

“As brothers fight ye!“—AL:III.59

Infighting seems to be the way of too many Thelemites.  Occultists are often more fickle & egotistical than a bunch of high school drag queens at a beauty pageant.  Unfortunately, I, too, have been carried away on the wind of my words & my enthusiasm too often.  Nothing of value is earned without strife, however, and this issue of the English Kabbalah is of a highly charged political & personal nature on nearly every level of the Thelemic world.

This verse enumerates to 729 = 27², which hints at the English alphabet & the double cube altar.  If the perfect cube, 3³, is a three dimensional square of Saturn, the top of the cube would then look like this:

The three levels of the cube represent the Kabbalah of nine chambers with the number values increasing by ten with each level.  In other words, the bottom level has the values of 100 through 900; the middle level has the values of 10 through 90; and the top level has the values of 1 through 9 of the square of Saturn.  The vertical axises of the cube, if all three levels are added together, would then have the threefold values related to the Spheroth – 111 to 999.  This cube then would contain representations of all the paths of the Tree of Life and the Sepheroth from Chokma to Yesod.  Were the cube faces unfolded into a Calvary cross it would appear thus:

            The letters in the cross would appear such:

			T	F	A
			D	E	N
			I	H	M
T	D	I	I	H	M	M	N	A
V	U	P	P	S	G	G	C	O
&	B	X	X	R	J	J	Z	W
			X	R	J
			B	K	Z
			&	Q	W
			&	Q	W
			V	Y	O
			T	F	A

The letter ‘L’ and the number 50 occupy the central space in the cube and would thus not appear on the cross because it only maps the faces of the cube.  This would indicate the central and hidden nature of Liber Al, as the Book of the Law was originally named ‘L’.

‘Words’ equals 333 by English gematria which emphasizes the connection between the alphabet and Da’ath by the conception of the Tree which I put forward in the illustration of Liber 222.

Conspicuously absent from this scheme is Kether and Malkuth.  The action of the letters contained in the cube give us the ability to describe Malkuth, our manifest reality.  Words are a sword (333).  They dissect and categorize the phenomena of our world.  In this way the cube as a whole can be attributable to Malkuth.  Such primitive means cannot touch Kether in any way except to suggest its existence and perhaps teach the lessons needed to attain it in some alchemical allegory.  Kether, being 0, is not divisible or capable of being cataloged by any word or number.  There are no vacuums in nature and zero is an abstract concept.  We can only draw near to it, but never grasp it by normal means.

It must be remembered that Set & Osiris were brothers, as were Romulus & Remus, Cain & Able, Jacob & Esau.  Civil wars are often described as a fight between brothers.  In the United States our two-party government could be described as brothers fighting.  The verse has often hinted at the adversarial nature of magickians.  Crowley said to Kenneth Grant, when addressing his harshness to his students, that gold is purified with acid.  Beneath Crowley’s verbal acid was a great love and respect for Grant and his ability.  This was clear to me after reading Crowley’s letters which Grant published in Remembering Aleister Crowley.

It is curious that this verse could very well mean that Thelemites should band together in their fighting, instead of fighting each other.  This is a novel concept to some, unfortunately.  This teamwork would only be possible if each ‘brother’, or ‘sister’, were to be aligned with their Will, or at least earnestly seeking after it.  This is the part which is missing.  Our attitude should be never to compromise our individuality, nor our Will, but to serve each other with true pride – pride in ourselves, pride in our Book of the Law, & and pride in our families, both our genetic and Thelemic families.

“My prophet shall prophesy concerning thee; around thee the maidens shall dance, and bright babes be born unto them. Thou shalt inspire the proud ones with infinite pride, and the humble ones with an ecstasy of abasement; all this shall transcend the Known and the Unknown with somewhat that hath no name. For it is as the abyss of the Arcanum that is opened in the secret Place of Silence.” —LXV:V.7

In Liber CI we see an outline of Crowley’s vision for the OTO which outlines not only the benefits of such a society, but the amount of service and the proper attitude needed to make the vision a reality.  This vision did not manifest, sadly, for many reasons.  I think we can still find the means to serve our fellow Thelemites and aspire to the infinite pride of Liber LXV.  This morality and service, and the pride we derive from it, does not die because any one organization has become defunct.