"History of Ciphers" (part 4d) - The Thelemic Ciphers (IV)

    Dear Reader,

    In this fourth exposition of the Thelemic ciphers, my approach will be entirely different from my previous texts. The reason for this lies in the fact that I never duly explored these ciphers, and also, as it is a really big number of ciphers that I will talk about (comparatively to the other topics), I've chosen to just give a simple description of each cipher and my own comments, without being too elaborate. A set of (mostly online) references will also be given for each cipher, so that my Readers can get more information directly from the respective sources, and not be limited by my own brief explanations.

 

    There will only be one cipher that I explain more in-depth, as that cipher was devised by me in order to answer some of the riddles in Liber AL vel Legis — so, as you can imagine, I did explore it a lot. This will be the second time that I explain this cipher online. The first time was in a fundamentalist forum about Thelema, and it didn't... go as planned. 😅

 

    With these words, let us get to the fourth and final (finally!!!) part of this history of the Thelemic ciphers.

 

 

History of Ciphers

by Luís Gonçalves

 

Part 4: The Thelemic Ciphers (IV)

    In my first presentation of the Thelemic ciphers, I explained that since Aleister Crowley passed away in 1947, many people have tried to find their own "solutions" to the riddles of the Book of the Law; and since computers appeared, many, many ciphers were specifically devised (or in other cases, adapted/adopted) in order to accomplish this end. As there is an ever-growing number of these ciphers, this subject has become a taboo in most Thelemic circles. In some more fundamentalist cases, if you refer to any specific system of English Gematria as being a possible key to the mysteries of Liber AL, you will be ignored at best, or ridiculed at worst.

 

    Please be aware, dear Reader, that the order in which I'm showing these cipher has nothing to do with their "level of importance". It was just the order that I've chosen, for no other reason except my personal preference.

 

    The last of the ciphers presented in this text will be special, however. It is in fact my experimental cipher, that I devised while being inspired by the curious structure of James Lees' English Qaballa. As it is "my" cipher and the last one to be explained in this text, I will also talk a bit — not much — longer about it, since I explored it a lot more than all other ciphers in this text you're reading.

* * *

    The first cipher I will mention is one that I've already (very) briefly mentioned in my second text about the Thelemic ciphers. I'm talking about...

Linda Falorio's "Liber CXV: The English Qabalah"

From Liber CXV: The English Qabalah, by Linda Falorio.

    Author/discoverer: Linda Falorio (@anandazone).

 

   Year of discovery: 1979, according to Kenneth Grant in "Hecate's Fountain" (1992).

 

    Personal notes:

 

    The method of discovery of this cipher is completely unknown to me. Linda Falorio seems to have taken into consideration a wide array of sources for some of these correspondences between letters and numbers. A source that seems to be extremely important in her work is Robert Graves' book "The White Goddess", which contains many New Agey reflections on the ancient Celtic "Tree alphabet" called Ogham and its connections with the cycles of Nature. Some of these numerical correspondences seem to be a bit arbitrary, and apparently they don't follow any specific order (except a rather vague connection with the Ogham alphabetic sequence).

    In the table above, the values between parentheses correspond to the value of those letters in "sacred spellings".

    Online sources:

    — Liber CXV: The English Qabalah

    — Exegesis of Liber AL

    — The Letters and Their Values

    — Book of Numbers (Gematria database)

* * *

Samuel K. Vincent's "English Qabalah"

 

    Author/discoverer: Samuel K. Vincent (pseudonym of Emery Moreira).

 

    Year of discovery: 2008.

    Personal notes:

    This system seems to have been based on the famous verses from Liber AL vel Legis:

"Aye! listen to the numbers & the words: 4 6 3 8 A B K 2 4 A L G M O R 3 Y X 24 89 R P S T O V A L. What meaneth this, o prophet? Thou knowest not; nor shalt thou know ever. There cometh one to follow thee: he shall expound it. But remember, o chosen one, to be me; to follow the love of Nu in the star-lit heaven; to look forth upon men, to tell them this glad word." (AL II:75-76)

    The letter values seem to have been derived from this sequence, after applying it to the English alphabet, and using Hebrew Gematria as a basis for the values of the letters in the sequence of Liber AL. For example, the seventh character in the sequence from Liber AL is "K" = Hebrew letter Kaph = 20, so "G" (the seventh English letter) is given the value 20. And so on, and so on.

 

    The alternative values are given to the values depending on them being "soft" or "hard" (as is the case of letter "C"), "balanced" or "averse" (the letter "L"), final or middle/initial (the letter "N"), and a lot of other special 'conditions' of the letters. The reason why some of these values were chosen isn't always clear, and an abundance of alternative values for the letters does not lend this system enough consistency, in my opinion.

 

    Online sources:

    — The English Qabalah

    — The Key to the English Qabalah

    — The Alphabet (or Roman Script)

    — The Lexicon (Gematria database)

* * *

 

"The English Cabala - 111" by Perseverando

(a.k.a. "1=A=0" / LVX & NOX ciphers)

"The Order & Value of the English Alphabet" by Shane Clayton, 1995.

    Author/discoverer: Shane Clayton (Frater Perseverando).

    Year of discovery: 1995.

    Personal notes:

    After James Lees' English Qaballa (a.k.a. "ALW cipher"), this was perhaps the next system of Thelemic Gematria that I learned about. I really enjoyed it because of its simplicity. My Readers should know that this "cipher" is in fact two ciphers: one corresponding to the "order of the English Alphabet" (A=1), and the other corresponding to the "value of the English Alphabet" (A=0). Later, Clayton called these the "LVX" (Light) and "NOX" (Night) ciphers respectively. It's curious to note the similarity between "1=A=0" and the Gnostic name IAO — a detail which was of great importance to the author by the time of discovery of these ciphers.

    Notice, however, that if you look closely into this table, the letters "Y" and "X" are switched. This is not an error and it seems to be derived from the author's interpretation of a part of the above mentioned riddle from Liber AL II:76 ["... Y X 24 89..." — number 89 is the 24th prime].

 

    Using the NOX cipher, "The English Cabala" = 111.

    Online sources:

    — The English Cabala - 111 (archived — this is a must-read)

    — The Numbers and the Words (archived — fairly big Gematria database)

    — About The English Cabala - 111

    — Liber A vel Follis - The Book of the Holy Fool (An inspired text received/channeled by Frater Perseverando on January 23, 1995.)

* * *

The "English Qabalah" of AREXZ 1496

(a.k.a. English Extended)

Custom cipher table made with GEMATRO - Gematria Calculator. Click to enlarge.

    Author/discoverer: AREXZ 1496, also known as Tau Aleph, Bishop and founding member of the Ecclesia Gnostica Universalis (EGnU).

    Year of discovery: most probably 2001.

    Personal notes:

 

    This is a very simple and straightforward system of Gematria, with much in common with Hebrew Gematria. It attributes values to the letters by following their natural order: the first nine letters correspond to the units, from 1 to 9; the following nine letters correspond to the tens, from 10 to 90; and the final eight letters correspond to the hundreds, from 100 to 800.

 

    Obviously, this is the same system as the one we now know as "English Extended". Only the name is different.

 

    Using this cipher, "AREXZ" = 1496.

 

    Online sources:

  

    — The English Qabalah of AREXZ 1496 (Gematria database)

    — Other texts by AREXZ 1496 / Tau Aleph

 

* * *

 

 

"Mars Kamea English Gematria" by Frater RIKB

Cipher table by Frater RIKB (link).

    Author/discoverer: Frater RIKB. I don't know his real name.

    Date of discovery: April 2003, according to R. Leo Gillis in "Secrets of the Cipher Naughts".

    Personal notes:

    This cipher was devised from the Magic Square (in Hebrew: קמיע Kamea, meaning "talisman") of Mars, this being a table of 5×5 squares containing the numbers from 1 to 25, so that their sums by line, column and diagonal are always the same. Applying a clue contained in Liber AL:

 

"Paste the sheets from right to left and from top to bottom: then behold!" (AL III:73)

 

    ... and noting that there are 26 letters in the English Alphabet, Frater RIKB took A as Zero, and then found the remaining correspondences by pasting the "sheets" (i.e. the letters) "from right to left and from top to bottom", thus devising the Mars Kamea English Gematria.

    Using this cipher, "Mars square" = 107 = "Letter" = "Fivefold".

    Online sources:

    — Mars Kamea English Gematria (contains a small Gematria database)

    — Liber 244, The Book of Eternal Burning (PDF, 424 KB. Contains an analysis of AL II:76 with the Mars Kamea English Gematria)

* * *

The "Toavotea Key" by John Farthing II

    Author/discoverer: John Farthing II (Frater Omnia Redementur).

    Date of discovery: January 26, 2003.

    Personal notes:

    "Toavotea" stands for "The Order And Value Of The English Alphabet", no doubt inspired by a passage from the Book of the Law:

 

"Thou shalt obtain the order & value of the English Alphabet; thou shalt find new symbols to attribute them unto." (AL II:55)

    The process of creation/discovery of this cipher seems to have been partly logical and partly intuitive, but it was mostly based on a study of the "grid" in the manuscript of the Book of the Law (image here). At this time of writing I am unable to understand all the reasonings behind this cipher and how these values were obtained.

 

    Using this cipher, "Thelema" = 93.

    Online sources:

    — Exegesis 1: Toavotea Key (includes a calculator at the end of the page)

    — Exegesis 2: Toavotea Key 

    — Exegesis 3: Toavotea Key

(All three links above provide a very large Gematria database)

    — A Toavotea Decryption of Liber AL vel Legis, II:76

(Published in the Silver Star journal, issue 1, Spring Equinox 2004)

* * *

The English Qabalah by Frater Zephyros

(Liber 805 vel EQ)

Custom cipher table made with GEMATRO - Gematria Calculator. Click to enlarge.

    Author/discoverer: Paul Rovelli (Frater Zephyros).

    Year of discovery: (2010 maybe? Not sure about this)

    Personal notes:

    This cipher had as a direct inspiration the verse in Liber AL II:55 ("Thou shalt obtain the order & value of the English Alphabet"). The author interpreted this as meaning the order in which the letters appear in the text of the Book of the Law, thus finding this specific order for the letters (H A D T E M N I F S O U...). Then, similarly to Hebrew Gematria, the letters were given certain values: first the units from 1 to 9, then the tens from 10 to 90, and finally the hundreds from 100 to 800.

 

    The fact that the first chapter of Liber AL is the only one which contains all the letters of the alphabet (the 2nd and 3rd chapters lack the "Z") may give some significance to this specific order. This is a very ingenious cipher, even though I haven't explored it deeply enough.

    Using this cipher, "EQ" = 805.

    Online sources:

    — Liber 805 vel EQ (PDF, 584 KB)

    — EQ Sepher Sephiroth (revised) (DOC, 502 KB)

(Large Gematria database; includes Liber AL enumerated)

    — Thelemic Qabalah, Vol. IV - The English Qabalah (PDF, 3.2 MB)

(Includes the two texts above and some more)

* * *

 

 

Ron L. Adams' three Thelemic Numerologies

(HADT, NUTH & ABRH)

Custom cipher tables made with GEMATRO - Gematria Calculator. Click to enlarge.

    Author/discoverer: Ron Lee Adams (Frater Sabaechit).

    Year of discovery: unknown / undisclosed (?).

    Personal notes:

 

    I only know of one online resource for these ciphers, and it is the webpage of Ron Adams (see below). Even though these ciphers are nowhere explained, the reasoning behind them is sound. These ciphers, like the one mentioned above (EQ 805) are all derived from the order of appearance of the letters of the alphabet in the text of the Book of the Law:

    — The HADT cipher corresponds to the first chapter, which begins with the words: "Had! The manifestation of Nuit". Ron associated it with Manifestation Magick.

    — The NUTH cipher corresponds to the second chapter, beginning with the words: "Nu! the hiding of Hadit". Ron associated it with Revealing Hidden Mysteries;

    — The ABRH cipher corresponds to the third chapter, which starts with the words: "Abrahadabra; the reward of Ra Hoor Khut". Ron called it The Reward of Horus the Avenger.

    Note that of the three chapters, the first is the only one containing all the letters of the alphabet. The second and third chapters don't contain the letter "Z", so it was simply added to the end of the sequence in the NUTH and ABRH ciphers.

    Using these ciphers:

    — "Nuit" = 31 in the HADT cipher;

    — "Hadit" = 31 in the NUTH cipher;

    — "Ra Hoor Khut" = 62 (or 31+31) in the ABRH cipher.
    

    (Note that "Thelema" = 93 in Greek Isopsephy = 31+31+31)

    Online source:

    — The Fourfold Secret of Liber AL (contains a Gematria database)

* * *

Qabalistic Permutations of the English Alphabet

(EQ-1 through EQ-25)

    Author/discoverer: N/A.

    Year of discovery: N/A.

    Personal notes:

 

   James Lees' English Qaballa is by far the most well-known of all Thelemic ciphers. It's structure is very curious and symbolically relevant because it is actually a permutation of the English Alphabet: from A=1 we count 11 letters until we arrive at L=2, continuing this cycle with W=3, etc, until P=26.

    In fact, this cipher was one among many possible permutations of the alphabet that had already been explored in a Gematria program called Lexicon by the late Soror Ishtaria (archived references to it can be found here and here). Unfortunately, this software won't run in most modern computers. I was one of the lucky guys who used it for some time, and I had the opportunity of seeing all the (hundreds? thousands?) of permutations of the alphabet that this software allowed to use, even though the mostly explored cipher was, obviously, James Lees' English Qaballa / ALW cipher.

   
    In my studies about Thelemic ciphers, I was recently inspired by this cipher in order to devise other ciphers that could also be derived from permutations of the English Alphabet. This can be done linearly and without interruptions only with those permutations whose cycle is neither a divisor of 26 (the number of letters of the alphabet) nor a multiple of its divisors. In so doing, I found exactly 11 ciphers (besides the Alphabet itself, here shown as "EQ-1") that matched that condition:

    EQ-01: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

    (English Ordinal / Simple English Gematria / Serial English)

    EQ-03: A D G J M P S V Y B E H K N Q T W Z C F I L O R U X

    EQ-05: A F K P U Z E J O T Y D I N S X C H M R W B G L Q V

    EQ-07: A H O V C J Q X E L S Z G N U B I P W D K R Y F M T

    EQ-09: A J S B K T C L U D M V E N W F O X G P Y H Q Z I R

    EQ-11: A L W H S D O Z K V G R C N Y J U F Q B M X I T E P

    (This is the cipher known as English Qaballa / ALW / NAEQ)

    EQ-15: A P E T I X M B Q F U J Y N C R G V K Z O D S H W L

    EQ-17: A R I Z Q H Y P G X O F W N E V M D U L C T K B S J

    EQ-19: A T M F Y R K D W P I B U N G Z S L E X Q J C V O H

    EQ-21: A V Q L G B W R M H C X S N I D Y T O J E Z U P K F

    EQ-23: A X U R O L I F C Z W T Q N K H E B Y V S P M J G D

    EQ-25: A Z Y X W V U T S R Q P O N M L K J I H G F E D C B

    Note that in each of these ciphers, the first letter is always A=1, and then it continues with the second letter being given the value of 2, etc, until 26. For example, in the case of EQ-5, we begin with A=1, then we count 5 letters to F=2, then K=3, etc, until we reach V=26.

    The only finding that was worthy of note when I used these ciphers (yeah, I actually used all these ciphers, all at the same time — call me crazy!), was two words which have the exact same value in all these ciphers: "Isis" which sums 56, and "Aum. Ha!" (the final words in the Book of the Law) which sums 44.

(click to enlarge)

    The equivalence between the name of the Egyptian goddess Isis and the number 56 was of special interest in a Thelemic context, since in a section of the Book of the Law, "Isis" seems to be alluded to as the word of Nuit, whose number is 56:

 

    "Now, therefore, I am known to ye by my name Nuit, and to him by a secret name which I will give him when at last he knoweth me. Since I am Infinite Space, and the Infinite Stars thereof, do ye also thus. Bind nothing! Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing & any other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt." (AL I:22)

    "But whoso availeth in this, let him be the chief of all!" (AL I:23)

    "I am Nuit, and my word is six and fifty." (AL I:24)

    "Divide, add, multiply, and understand." (AL I:25) 

 

    Working with these ciphers also showed me a very intriguing connection between EQ-21 (AVQ) and Joel Love's Cipher X, as both appear to share some similarities in their alphabetical sequences. Just compare Cipher X...

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

    ... with EQ-21:

 

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

 

    ... and you'll notice how there are groups of 3 letters following exactly the same order in both ciphers (ex.: "AVQ", "OJE", "ZUP", "DYT", etc).

 

    Some time after I worked with these ciphers, I found that the website of Ron Lee Adams (already referred to in the previous section) also included calculators for these "EQ" ciphers — and more! 👀

    In fact, it includes calculators for all permutations of the English Alphabet, from EQ-1 to EQ-25 (i.e. also including EQ-2, EQ-4, etc, which I didn't include in my list). Links to those calculators will be given right below.

    Online sources:

    — Quest for the English Qabala (EQ-1 through EQ-9)

    — Quest for the English Qabala 2 (EQ-10 through EQ-18)

    — Quest for the English Qabala 3 (EQ-19 through EQ-25)

* * *

My own experimental Thelemic cipher:

Abrahadabra Cipher / Elevenfold Qabalah (AC/EQ)

 

Custom cipher table made with GEMATRO - Gematria Calculator.

    Author/discoverer: Luís Gonçalves.

    Year of discovery: around 2008.

    Personal notes:

 

    Obviously, I'm the best person to talk about this cipher, as it was me who devised it. And in fact, that's why I left it for last. 😁 

 

     The name "Abrahadabra Cipher" was inspired by two things: firstly, the Law of Thelema ("Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law") has 11 words, just like Abrahadabra, the Word of the Aeon, has exactly 11 letters, so it served as a nice name for my cipher. And secondly, "Abrahadabra Cipher", written as "A.C.", can also serve for "Aleister Crowley", thus serving as a kind of 'homage' to the man who was behind the doctrine/religion/philosophy of Thelema.

    The secondary name that I devised for this cipher was initially "Elevenfold Gematria", but more recently I re-baptized it as Elevenfold Qabalah, for some very specific reasons:

    — The acronym "EQ" is used as a synonym for a lot of Thelemic ciphers (this same article is the proof of that);

    

    — "EQ" sums 11 in AC/EQ:

 

 

    — "Elevenfold Qabalah" sums 65 in AC/EQ, and 6+5=11:

    Being based on a cycle of 11 numbers/letters, this puts this cipher in strict connection with James Lees' English Qaballa. In fact, if we write the letters corresponding to the numbers 1-8-4-11-7-3-10-6-2-9-5 in the AC/EQ cipher, we'll obtain the same order of letters as in English Qaballa:

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

    The Abrahadabra Cipher / Elevenfold Qabalah also delivers some interesting results when it is applied to the Book of the Law, particularly to the first verses in each chapter:

"Had! The manifestation of Nuit" (AL I:1)

"Nu! the hiding of Hadit" (AL II:1)

"Abrahadabra; the reward of Ra-Hoor-Khut" (AL III:1)

    Particularly, the names of the speakers in those chapters are numerologically relevant, since "Nuit", "Hadit" and "Ra-Hoor(-Khut)" all add to 31, and this matches the value of "Thelema" as well (and as we know, in Greek, "Thelema" = 93 = 31+31+31):

    Likewise, the first words in the first and second chapters, both add up to 13 (a reflection of 31):

 

     If we calculate the value of "Ra-Hoor-Khut", the 'speaker' in the 3rd chapter of the Book of the Law (usually considered to be the 'Lord of the Aeon'), we'll obtain a curious set of matches as well:

    In my presentation of James Lees' English Qaballa, I also talked about a verse in which the number 56 is explicitly connected to Nuit:

"I am Nuit and my word is six and fifty" (AL I:24)

    ... and I also mentioned another verse where Nuit is called the "azure-lidded woman" and how that seemed to imply a reference to the specific order of the letters in English Qaballa (ALW) — and by extension, in AC/EQ:

"O azure-lidded woman, bend upon them!" (AL I:19)

    In fact, "azure-lidded woman" sums 65, the reversal of 56. We've seen how reversals seem to be recurrent with this cipher:

    Finally, the last words in the Book of the Law are "Aum Ha", and interestingly enough, they perfectly match the value of "New Aeon" — again, involving a reversal:

    A negative characteristic in this cipher, however, is that it only contains low values (from 1 to 11 max.) so, like the reduction ciphers that I've explored in some of my previous posts, it allows for less effort in order to find a match. Of course, the easier it is to find a match, the less strength that match will have (mathematically / probabilistically speaking) — and my own experimental AC/EQ cipher also fails in that test.

 

    Anyway, as my intention in writing about these ciphers is mostly to keep my Readers informed, and to let them know about other alternative ciphers, I took the liberty to talk about a lot of ciphers in this text — even some that I really don't like. As it is usually the case, I tend to avoid making judgments against any cipher, since I prefer my Readers to take their own conclusions, independently from what I might think or say.

    Online source:

    — The only online reference to this cipher is a single text that I posted on the "Lashtal" forums, on December 15th, 2008. It was the first and last time that I wrote about this cipher, at least on the internet. I must admit that my post was a bit clumsy and I wasn't taken very seriously — which anyway was more or less to be expected, since most systems of English Gematria aren't generally taken too seriously in a Thelemic context (except in some limited circles), when compared with their Hebrew and Greek counterparts. Anyway, here's this cipher again, 13 years passed, for everyone who wants to explore it further. 

* * *

Concluding Remarks on the Thelemic ciphers

    In this series of articles about the Thelemic ciphers I talked about several different ciphers that are mostly (but not only, in some cases) used in the context of Thelema:

    — In Part 1, I explored the basic history and events leading to Aleister Crowley's channeling of Liber AL vel Legis (The Book of the Law), the religion / doctrine / philosophy of Thelema, and how Liber AL contained many clues and riddles that seemed to imply that a system of English Gematria would be found in order to unravel its mysteries. One of the first progenies of this "quest" for an English Gematria was James Lees' English Qaballa, also known as the "ALW" Cipher (for all those using Gematrinator, it's the "ALW Kabbalah" cipher). It has nothing to do with Kabbalah, however, and the circumstances of its discovery and the events leading to it are all highly worthy of attention, and this cipher is truly a very strong candidate for a promised system of Thelemic Gematria. It delivers some strong results, even though I would contend that it is fairly easy to get "significant" matches with each and every Ordinal-like cipher (meaning: having only small values, usually between 1 and 26).

    — In Part 2, I explored two ciphers mostly, even though I referred to 4 ciphers in that text. The two ciphers that I explored the most — without, however, doing them the justice that they deserve — were R. Leo Gillis' Trigrammaton Qabalah (the "LCH Kabbalah" cipher in Gematrinator) and Edgar Joel Love's Cipher X (called "KFW Kabbalah" in Gematrinator). Trigrammaton Qabalah has the merit of being directly inspired on Crowley's rough sketch(es) of a possible "English Qabalah", based on his own Liber Trigrammaton, while Cipher X is tightly connected to James Lees' English Qaballa, being a base-3 inversion of that cipher. Both of these ciphers are highly interesting, and the works of their authors didn't receive the treatment and further exploration that, in my opinion, they justly deserve.

    The other two ciphers that I mentioned in Part 2 were David Cherubim's Thelemic English Qabalah, which is also called "English Sumerian" in Gematrinator, as well as Aleisterion's AngloQabalistic Key, which coincides with the more widely known English Ordinal, or Simple English Gematria. These two were only briefly explored — in fact, they should have been included in this fourth part, but anyway, there they are. 😅

    — In Part 3, it was the time of two non-Thelemic ciphers to be explored in a Thelemic context. The first one was my all-time favorite cipher, and the one that was introduced to the world of Gematria through my work alone — the Illuminati Novice cipher. In fact, for many years I seemed to be the only nutcase researcher in the whole world who tried to bring people's attention to this cipher, and how it showed some curious patterns and "coincidences" when it was applied to the Great Seal of the United States (see my first text in this blog dedicated to it). So this time it was the time to apply this cipher to the context of Thelema, due to some synchronicities of symbolism and meaning that were to be found between Thelema and the Bavarian Order of the Illuminati.

    The second cipher that I talked about in the third part was a cipher that came to my life in April this year, through a series of intriguing synchronicities and that became one of my most favorite ciphers of all times, due to its internal consistency and "non-redundancy": the Anglossic Qaballa (AQ), also known as Alphanumeric Gematria. This cipher isn't available in Gematrinator, even though it should, in my opinion. Just like the Illuminati Novice cipher, this is not, technically speaking, a Thelemic cipher — even though it is true that it delivers some eye-opening results when applied to the Holy Books of Thelema. This is mostly an experimental field to explore further, and it was started by the creator of this cipher: the "borderline philosopher" Nick Land, who wrote "Qabbala 101" (link here).

One of the first references to the AQ cipher that I know of, from the CCRU / 0[rphan] d[rift] collaborative work "Meshed Syzygy" (1999). Click to enlarge.

    — In this 4th Part, I decided that there were many other Thelemic ciphers that also deserved to be mentioned, even though not as thoroughly explored as the previous ones. After all, wasn't I writing about Thelemic ciphers? What sense could there be in selecting only a few Thelemic ciphers, while ignoring the rest? So that's why I wrote this 4th part. I didn't explore any of these ciphers (excepting my own: AC/EQ) so I took the decision of giving only the essential information about each cipher, and giving some online sources for them, so as not to make my text unnecessarily long and boring. In so doing, I'm giving my Readers the opportunity to know other alternative/experimental systems of English Gematria, so that they (i.e. You) can explore them further, and maybe even experiment with other ciphers or techniques and see what results can be obtained with them. This can be highly enriching in our practice of Gematria. Experimentation is always welcome, but it should always be tempered with good sense.

* * *

    Dear Reader,

    I hope that this fourth part of my "History of Ciphers" has been enlightening to you: or at least useful in some sense.

    In the next part I will be exploring the Mathematical Ciphers. This is a field where there is an incredible lack of information, allied to the fact that most of these ciphers are experimental. However, during these last weeks, while I was writing this same text, I came to find some historical sources for most of these ciphers (the oldest one that I know of is from 1683) — and as Gematrinator also includes some of these mathematical ciphers, I thought that a text like this would be necessary, so that our knowledge of these ciphers becomes more complete.

    In the meantime, if any of my Readers wishes to send me a word or two, or even send me suggestions of ciphers to write about, I will be most thankful for receiving and answering your messages. You can do this by using the Contact Form at the right side of this Blog (PC version only), or by using the Comments section at the end of each blog post.

    Please receive my kindest regards,

    

    Luís Gonçalves