Sepher said:the title of the final dull as ditchwater section of '777 and other Qabalistic writings of Aleister Crowley'
Indeed Samhain, Sepher = book, Sepher Sephiroth = book of enumeration / book of counting. Sefirot would probably be closer transliterating than Sefiroth too. The final Tav is nearer T than Th I think though my Hebrew is VERY rusty. Never that good to begin with truth be told, good as starting from scratch with it again! Knew you were clued up on the stuff. You commented once when I had the tree up as my av, though it wasn't a particularly clear image once shrunk to avatar size IIRC?
I don't believe in any of this stuff literally. It's a kind of symbolic language isn't it, all the God names, angelic names, spirits, planets, attributes of the spheres and paths, attributes of the letters themselves, it's one big meditational / psycho-analytical system. Can get some interesting connections though playing around with Gematria like in the above examples, or Gen 18:2 "Lo, three men stood by him" being equivalent numerically to "these are Michael, Gabriel and Raphael", or by Notariqon the first word in Genesis, Berashith ( in the beginning ) being deemed an acronym of "In the beginning God saw that Israel would accept the Law". It's interesting stuff, if you're into that sort of thing and I haven't already bored the pants of you with this!![]()
The Kabbalah stuff is interesting intellectually as a system but I don't really believe it's a ladder of lights to God.
Sepher said:Crowley certainly tied himself up in knots at times trying to get a result he wanted playing around with alternate spellings or translating Hebrew to say Greek and then re-enumerating I think.
Sepher said:and that's really what I'm looking into most lately having connected with a local oasis of the O.T.O
Unless you like getting naked with Games Workshop types. Though I'm not going to hold that against you if it's your thing.
As you can tell, I'm not a Thelemite.
And yeah, if I had my way I'd be playing out with a GD group or connecting with the AA but the first are very thin on the ground, AA members perhaps even more so, I dunno? Figured O.T.O. was the best available option open to me that may lead to one or the other of the first two. We shall see.
Anyway, should you be talking to a Black Brother of the left-hand path?
I'm glad you said that. Though it's important to separate the (Hermetic) Kabbalastic doctrine on the nature of the universe (which in many aspects is eerily close to some of the ideas put forward by quantum physics) and Gematria - which, to my mind, is at best arbitrary and at worst total superstitious nonsense, although it can be useful in a meditative / contemplative / imaginative context.
it was one of a multitude of old handles used by a group of misanthropic hackers, html-terrorists and proto-trolls i was a part between 1999-2003. our group was originally active on certain manga forums but specifically based around invitation-only EZ boards in which we discussed and initiated such nefarious crap as mass board attacks, hostile takeovers, garnering/pooling various admin-positions and postal drug-receipt/forwarding (which was pretty successful until an inevitable proclivity towards greed ended up fucking things up)
screenname and i.p bans were sidestepped with proxy servers and an almost endless supply of communal accounts that would be meaningless and generic by necessity but as a means to recognise eachother anonymously around the places we frequented - a set of names was agreed upon and used, these included;
jacks smirking revenge
agent_orange
mr_foresight
MADali
hayatul_mujahidah
h4x02 (yes, back when you could talk leet incognito)
oh and of course, blind_helper_monkey :D