My solution to AL II:76

    Dear Reader,

    In the previous text, published yesterday and named The wonders & magic of Alphanumeric Qabbala, I shared my solution to one of the most controversial verses in Aleister Crowley's Liber AL vel Legis. As the search for a "promised" English Qabalah has been the source of much dispute and confusion, and as I believe that this is still an extremely important subject to be studied in the context of Thelema, I'm sharing my solution as a separate post.

    Most of this material is already in the previous post, so if you want to know more about Alphanumeric Qabbala and its wonders I recommend you read it in its entirety. There's much food for thought hidden in that post...

 

    First, let's take a look at the verse(s) in question:

    AL II:75. "Aye! listen to the numbers & the words:

    AL II:76. "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."

    Liber AL, particularly the passages in AL II:76 and III:47, has been the sole reason for the creation of at least a dozen different ciphers, and an equally numerous amount of solutions that have been proposed to try to solve this riddle.

    In my series of posts about the Thelemic ciphers (parts 1, 2, 3 and 4), my Readers will remember that some ciphers delivered some quite good results when applied to this riddle, particularly English Qaballa and Trigrammaton Qabalah, as well as English Ordinal — just to number a few examples.

    For example, using the Ordinal cipher (A=1, B=2, ..., Z=26) the total of the verse in AL II:75 added to the string of numbers and letters in AL II:76 will be 777, a result that will also match the one obtained when using Joel Love's Cipher X. If you do the same with Alphanumeric Qabbala, the total sum will be 1209, which is 13×93, two very important numbers in a Thelemic context. If you calculate the value of the numbers & the words in AL II:76 using English Qaballa or Trigrammaton Qabalah the sum will be 351, the 26ᵗʰ triangular number (meaning that 351 = 1 + 2 + 3 + ... + 26, encompassing the whole alphabet, as it were). And if you use John Farthing II's Toavotea Key, the string of numbers & words will add up to 418 — a highly significant number in Thelema.

    Some of these systems have been called "The Key of It All" by their proponents, and all of them certainly have their merits, in a way or another.

    However, saying and demonstrating that a cipher is the "Key of It All" are two very different things, and in most cases what we end up with is a demonstration that any "pattern" can be found when we apply many different ciphers to the same riddle. So is the search for a "promised" English Qabalah a useless pursuit? Well... maybe it is. Maybe it has been in front of our eyes this whole time.

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My solution to AL II:76

Alphanumeric Qabbalism

    My solution to this riddle is in fact quite humorous... and simple... and with it we would certainly understand why the numbers & the words are in their respective "position to one another" — even though I can't really explain all of it. And I still have many doubts that this would be a definitive answer to AL II:76.

    This "solution", as it were, doesn't "mean" anything to me, except that the "riddle" was never intended to be taken seriously. There is no meaning as to which numbers or letters are used in it — but in fact how they are used.

    Four times the same message is repeated:

    "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"

    And the message would be: Letters always come after numbers — which is precisely the most fundamental characteristic of Alphanumeric Qabbala. And so the answer could be obtained, assuming that AQ was the intended "key" to decode AL.

    AQ = 0123456789 abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

    (Letters come after "numbers" — i.e. the numerals.)

    And this becomes extremely relevant in a Thelemic context, with AQ being a offshoot of Base-36 notation (a continuous, non-redundant sequence from 0 to 9, and then A=10 through Z=35) and 666 being the 36ᵗʰ triangular number.

    I can't explain why the same "message" would be repeated four times. However, what I do know is that the riddle contains exactly 28 numbers & letters, with 28 being a triangular number, just like 36. And if we organize the 0-Z alphanumeric sequence in the shape of a triangle, there will be exactly 4 rows for the numbers, and 4 rows for the letters.

    

    Assuming that this would be the answer to AL II:76, we could further elaborate upon a possible connection between the rows of the "AQ triangle" and the rows of the (decoded) riddle in AL II:76, putting them side by side and watching for similarities.

    Starting with the numbers, we will see that there does seem to exist some kind of connection:

    However, doing the same with the "words" (i.e. the letters) won't retrieve any noteworthy connection — besides the fact that the 2nd and 4th rows share exactly the same number of letters:

    Even not trying to "justify" this finding with Gematria, let my Readers consider the following:

    — The Law of Thelema, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" sums 777 in Alphanumeric Qabbala.

    — Then, consider that in Crowley's book of numbers and letters, Liber 777, Crowley listed the ten sephiroth numbering them from 1 to 10, and then the twenty-two Hebrew letters (the "paths"), numbering them from 11 (Aleph) to 32 (Tav).

    — If we were to adapt that system to the English Alphabet, listing first the ten Arabic numerals from 0 to 9, and then the twenty-six English letters from A to Z, we would end up precisely with Alphanumeric Qabbala: a continuous, logical and non-redundant alphanumeric sequence from 0 to Z=35.

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    This, of course, is still a work in progress, and I intend to keep studying the Book of the Law for more clues about this. Obviously, I will keep my Readers informed as my research continues.

    Also, I invite you, dear Reader, to read my previous post on Alphanumeric Qabbala. Scroll down almost to the end of the page and look for the section titled "The revelation of AQ in the context of Thelema". That part of my article will provide some of the reasons why I think that Alphanumeric Qabbala may be an important key to unravel some of the mysteries of Liber AL.

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    DISCLAIMER:

    I make no claims whatsoever about "my role" in this solution — my intention is not to claim that I've found the "Key of It All" or that I am the "magical child of the Beast". In my opinion, that's simply naïve and irrelevant, and won't lead anyone anywhere.

    I do believe, however, that AQ may be an important key in Thelema, and what I'm doing here is simply to play a bit with it, and trying to make it become more widely known in a Thelemic context.

    Let my Readers be the judges of this...