The Use of Gemetria
Gemetria is a system of ascribing relations between words and concepts by reducing those words to pure number and exploring the relations between words and names that add to the same number. One can also look at relations between various numbers and come to new understandings about the concepts they are associated with. Gemetria, for me, has three uses. On one hand, it is a system for producing insight. While we may not necessarily go along with the idea that there is some objective relationship between these numbers and these ideas, associating the ideas with numbers gives us another way to look at them. These shifts of perspective allow us to see old information in a new light, and come to realizations that we would not have otherwise been capable of. The second use is as a means of verifying communication with spiritual beings and interpreting their meaning. In both astral encounters and evocation it is sometimes very difficult to separate one’s own interior dialogue or expectations from the information one receives. By removing the communication an extra step from our conscious influence* we make it more difficult to unintentionally ‘fudge’ the data with our own thoughts, expectations, and desires. Additionally, Gemetria can be used for the purposes of evocation in combination with the G:.D:. Z2 documents. By spelling a particular name in such a way that it comes to a particular number, and building the astral body of the force desired letter by letter, one can access the appropriate aspect of the spiritual being in question. In big workings involving numerous entities, I have found it useful to vary the spelling of certain names so that there is a mathematical harmony in the relations between the various entities who you’ve brought together to work on the same project.
I do not claim to be an expert in Kabbalah, but I have a great deal of practical experience with this method of understanding. Hopefully this limited discussion of the subject will prove useful to somebody.
*To those who protest that the Gemetric responses themselves arise from the subconscious, I suggest that this is a different kind of discussion. I do not often hear this argument from people with a really good grasp of Psychology and what the subconscious actually IS. Usually, people who merely understand the subconscious as some amorphous force capable of any feat imaginable raise this objection. You’ll find that these people use the subconscious as an explanation for everything they do not understand, making it more or less a replacement for an ignorant person’s understanding of God.
The first method is fairly straightforward, but it does require a certain understanding of what insight is and how it is obtained. In pursuit of this understanding I VERY STRONGLY recommend that people examine the work of the Canadian Catholic philosopher, Bernard Lonnergan, whose exploration of the subject is peerless, if exhaustive. In Lonnergan’s massive tome entitled simply “Insight,” he describes in great detail the means by which old information, when arranged correctly, is capable of producing new information. I could not do justice to the full scope of that work here, but I do know something about Lonnergan, so this is my attempt at brief summary.
First of all, a person needs to know a little bit about mathematics and a little bit about the Bible for this system, as we have it in Sephir Sephirot, to work. The more deeply one understands these topics, the more one is able to conceive of relations between them and thus produce new perspectives. Let me take a simple analogy. Let’s look at some old TV shows (old because I do not have my finger on the pulse of our culture, so any reference I make to pop material is likely to be very dated).
The Sopranos is a classic drama, with characters who have tragic flaws that move the plot forward. In every sense, we see how the characters own actions produce their undoing. Note that WE SEE this because of our perspective as viewers of the show. From the point of view of most of the characters, except in very obvious cases, they are often oblivious to the way that the flaw in their personality creates a chain of events that leads to disaster for them. For us, that's the story. For them, destruction usually appears to come from without. There are exceptions in the case of lead characters, but for the most part the characters remain oblivious to cause and effect. Lost is also show that also relies a great deal on the fact that we know what the characters don't, except in this case we become more aware of the level of connection between the characters. We are able to see who is intertwined with whose life in a way that they cannot. While Lost is not, I would argue, a tragic story in the literary sense, a great deal of the dramatic tension and the sense of mystery that is crucial to the show is built on our awareness of these relations.
If we imagine that the concepts found in the Bible are like one of these shows, the ability to relate those concepts to pure number is what provides us with our “viewers perspective” which makes us aware of the hidden relation between them. By making us aware of the occult connection between these ideas, we “see” a plot that we could not have seen before. As I said, I do not necessarily think this is an objective truth, but by giving us a new way to think about the connection between these ideas, we come to see them in a new light, making us susceptible to those "Ah ha!" moments which give us access to greater depth of meaning. If we go back and look at the same Biblical stories again, we now see them in a new light, because we have discovered a new relation between them. Suddenly, what was old has become new, and what was tired has become fresh. Most of all: what had only one meaning to us before now has multiple meanings, allowing us to conceive of even more relations. This is DEEP thinking. The more relations we become aware of, the deeper we can go. To return to my Lost example, in this show we see the same interactions between the same characters several times, but each time we see them we appreciate a new dimension of the event, because the back story we have been shown allows us to see the same information in a new light. Simple as it sounds, this is the foundation of insight.
As for the second part, I believe this is fairly straightforward. I would, however, like to mention some things about the patterns I have noticed, and what I consider to be a good or a bad relation between numbers. For example, if I am looking to verify the identity of a spirit, I begin by asking for its name. Usually I get a word that either adds to the correct number, or has some analogous meaning. Because of her role in my work, 156 or 136 are both good results for an invocation of Istar, but 666, although it is a good number, is not. In really good communications, I find that there are usually relations between all the numbers that appear. If you don’t find this, try to identify the odd number out and take that piece of information, whatever it may be, with a generous helping of salt. In a recent invocation of the same Goddess, I received the numbers 156, 561, 615, and 181. Three of these are arrangements of the same digits, and another is totally different. 181 also has the meaning “vicious” or “faulty,” making it doubly suspicious. Sometimes one finds an obvious progression. In another recent working with Istar after opening OXO I got 161, 191, 221, and 121. The first three are separated by 30 each, and the last is reduced by 100. I would consider this to be good in spite of the fact that 121 breaks the pattern, because it has the association with the Lotus, and the Nelumbo Lotus is always the way which the vision of the rose of 49 petals appears to me when I open that aethyr. Building personal connections to aspects and entities through repeated workings is the only way to establish that kind of awareness.
Sometimes numbers appear during working that have no apparent relation to the entity in question, but when they consistently appear with every working with that entity one comes to see that number as a mark, or call sign of the spirit. For example, there is one entity I work with frequently which has NEVER failed to produce 202 when the working was successful. I have never quite understand the relationship between that spirit and that number, but I have come to regard it as a particularly good omen. It actually took me a while to realize that number kept coming up over and over, as when it appeared I would usually scratch out when I had been told and attempted to clarify the communication with pentagrams and divine names. It was only after a couple of months, while writing a summary of my records, I realized that it had appeared in each successful working. In the case of establishing the veracity of a communication or appearance of a spirit, understanding is less important than efficient recognition and consistency. But once again, if you do not work with the same entities over and over, you cannot possibly know what consistent behavior for the entity is, or recognize a sign of that nature.
As for the third part, this is the one that touches on Gemetric manipulations that make people uncomfortable. We see Crowley doing this all the time, mixing the Greek and Hebrew to produce the result he’s looking for, variations in letters and spelling based on phonetic considerations, etc. etc. To me, these concerns show a lack of understanding of how practical magical workings “build” an astral body. Rituals, yoga, or even simply a person’s conduct over a period of time can be structured by the spelling of a particular word or name. So while it may not be the "right" spelling according to a historian, it is the "right" spelling for a magician who wishes to produce a result consistent with the number in question. Looking at the Z2 documents and some of the G:.D:. rituals of invocation (stilted as dry as they may be) will help illustrate this point.
Once again, I am not an expert in what anyone would call Kabbalah, I have simply used Sephir Sephirot toward the ends described and believe that some account of that is worthy of setting into writing.
I do not claim to be an expert in Kabbalah, but I have a great deal of practical experience with this method of understanding. Hopefully this limited discussion of the subject will prove useful to somebody.
*To those who protest that the Gemetric responses themselves arise from the subconscious, I suggest that this is a different kind of discussion. I do not often hear this argument from people with a really good grasp of Psychology and what the subconscious actually IS. Usually, people who merely understand the subconscious as some amorphous force capable of any feat imaginable raise this objection. You’ll find that these people use the subconscious as an explanation for everything they do not understand, making it more or less a replacement for an ignorant person’s understanding of God.
The first method is fairly straightforward, but it does require a certain understanding of what insight is and how it is obtained. In pursuit of this understanding I VERY STRONGLY recommend that people examine the work of the Canadian Catholic philosopher, Bernard Lonnergan, whose exploration of the subject is peerless, if exhaustive. In Lonnergan’s massive tome entitled simply “Insight,” he describes in great detail the means by which old information, when arranged correctly, is capable of producing new information. I could not do justice to the full scope of that work here, but I do know something about Lonnergan, so this is my attempt at brief summary.
First of all, a person needs to know a little bit about mathematics and a little bit about the Bible for this system, as we have it in Sephir Sephirot, to work. The more deeply one understands these topics, the more one is able to conceive of relations between them and thus produce new perspectives. Let me take a simple analogy. Let’s look at some old TV shows (old because I do not have my finger on the pulse of our culture, so any reference I make to pop material is likely to be very dated).
The Sopranos is a classic drama, with characters who have tragic flaws that move the plot forward. In every sense, we see how the characters own actions produce their undoing. Note that WE SEE this because of our perspective as viewers of the show. From the point of view of most of the characters, except in very obvious cases, they are often oblivious to the way that the flaw in their personality creates a chain of events that leads to disaster for them. For us, that's the story. For them, destruction usually appears to come from without. There are exceptions in the case of lead characters, but for the most part the characters remain oblivious to cause and effect. Lost is also show that also relies a great deal on the fact that we know what the characters don't, except in this case we become more aware of the level of connection between the characters. We are able to see who is intertwined with whose life in a way that they cannot. While Lost is not, I would argue, a tragic story in the literary sense, a great deal of the dramatic tension and the sense of mystery that is crucial to the show is built on our awareness of these relations.
If we imagine that the concepts found in the Bible are like one of these shows, the ability to relate those concepts to pure number is what provides us with our “viewers perspective” which makes us aware of the hidden relation between them. By making us aware of the occult connection between these ideas, we “see” a plot that we could not have seen before. As I said, I do not necessarily think this is an objective truth, but by giving us a new way to think about the connection between these ideas, we come to see them in a new light, making us susceptible to those "Ah ha!" moments which give us access to greater depth of meaning. If we go back and look at the same Biblical stories again, we now see them in a new light, because we have discovered a new relation between them. Suddenly, what was old has become new, and what was tired has become fresh. Most of all: what had only one meaning to us before now has multiple meanings, allowing us to conceive of even more relations. This is DEEP thinking. The more relations we become aware of, the deeper we can go. To return to my Lost example, in this show we see the same interactions between the same characters several times, but each time we see them we appreciate a new dimension of the event, because the back story we have been shown allows us to see the same information in a new light. Simple as it sounds, this is the foundation of insight.
As for the second part, I believe this is fairly straightforward. I would, however, like to mention some things about the patterns I have noticed, and what I consider to be a good or a bad relation between numbers. For example, if I am looking to verify the identity of a spirit, I begin by asking for its name. Usually I get a word that either adds to the correct number, or has some analogous meaning. Because of her role in my work, 156 or 136 are both good results for an invocation of Istar, but 666, although it is a good number, is not. In really good communications, I find that there are usually relations between all the numbers that appear. If you don’t find this, try to identify the odd number out and take that piece of information, whatever it may be, with a generous helping of salt. In a recent invocation of the same Goddess, I received the numbers 156, 561, 615, and 181. Three of these are arrangements of the same digits, and another is totally different. 181 also has the meaning “vicious” or “faulty,” making it doubly suspicious. Sometimes one finds an obvious progression. In another recent working with Istar after opening OXO I got 161, 191, 221, and 121. The first three are separated by 30 each, and the last is reduced by 100. I would consider this to be good in spite of the fact that 121 breaks the pattern, because it has the association with the Lotus, and the Nelumbo Lotus is always the way which the vision of the rose of 49 petals appears to me when I open that aethyr. Building personal connections to aspects and entities through repeated workings is the only way to establish that kind of awareness.
Sometimes numbers appear during working that have no apparent relation to the entity in question, but when they consistently appear with every working with that entity one comes to see that number as a mark, or call sign of the spirit. For example, there is one entity I work with frequently which has NEVER failed to produce 202 when the working was successful. I have never quite understand the relationship between that spirit and that number, but I have come to regard it as a particularly good omen. It actually took me a while to realize that number kept coming up over and over, as when it appeared I would usually scratch out when I had been told and attempted to clarify the communication with pentagrams and divine names. It was only after a couple of months, while writing a summary of my records, I realized that it had appeared in each successful working. In the case of establishing the veracity of a communication or appearance of a spirit, understanding is less important than efficient recognition and consistency. But once again, if you do not work with the same entities over and over, you cannot possibly know what consistent behavior for the entity is, or recognize a sign of that nature.
As for the third part, this is the one that touches on Gemetric manipulations that make people uncomfortable. We see Crowley doing this all the time, mixing the Greek and Hebrew to produce the result he’s looking for, variations in letters and spelling based on phonetic considerations, etc. etc. To me, these concerns show a lack of understanding of how practical magical workings “build” an astral body. Rituals, yoga, or even simply a person’s conduct over a period of time can be structured by the spelling of a particular word or name. So while it may not be the "right" spelling according to a historian, it is the "right" spelling for a magician who wishes to produce a result consistent with the number in question. Looking at the Z2 documents and some of the G:.D:. rituals of invocation (stilted as dry as they may be) will help illustrate this point.
Once again, I am not an expert in what anyone would call Kabbalah, I have simply used Sephir Sephirot toward the ends described and believe that some account of that is worthy of setting into writing.