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To: fiatlvx@cmns.think.com
From: RJB@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: A *Friendly* Gematria Challenge
Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 15:36:47 -0700 (PDT)

I thought I'd say a few last words about certain aspects of
magic, especially since the subject of the "validity" of
gematria and similar pursuits was raised a while back.

My overall point is that there is a philosophical (as opposed
to mythological or superstitious) understanding of these
things which has been a part of western esotericism for a
very long time; to illustrate that point, however, I'll make
a bit of a detour.  (For the distinction between philosophical
and mythological, see Plotinus' essay against the gnostics.)

Many years ago, when I taught university English composition 
classes, I used to do a unit on causality which involved working 
on identifying and describing causal relationships in convincing 
prose.

One of the things I used to teach was the Aristotelian scheme of 
four causes -- efficient, material, final and formal (when the 
class seemed especially acute I would sometimes throw in a fifth, 
for extra credit).  I used the familiar "triangle of combustion" 
to explain just how there could be four kinds of causes, because
it enabled me to point out in passing the veiling effect of the
almost universal modern tendency to explicitly recognize only one
kind of cause.

The "triangle of combustion" is a conceptual device used to teach
about fires and fire safety.  The idea is that three factors are
necessary for a fire to occur:  fuel, heat, and oxygen.  If any
one of them is removed, fire will not occur (or an existing
fire will cease).

This device can be used to illustrate the Aritsotelian types
of causation as follows.

The "efficient" cause (or "mechanical" cause) are the events or 
processes that lead to the effect in question:  the presence of 
fuel and oxygen, the increase in rate of oxidation caused by 
heat, and so on.

The "material" cause are the materials necessary -- for fire
to exist (fuel and oxygen).

The "final" cause is the end for which the fire has come into
existence -- to collect insurance money, perhaps, or to illustrate
a point in a fire safety class.  For organisms, or self-regulating
systems, the final cause is like the setting of a thermostat:  the
system creates fire so that the air will be warm enough for the
fire to be unnecessary.  (For organisms, the "final cause" is the
internal governance of the organism that draws it to come to fit
its proper form.)

The "formal" cause is the definition which the process of oxidation
must fit in order to be fire (and not, say, simply rapid oxidation).
In other words, one of the factors that causes a thing to be a chair
(and not a stool, couch or bench) is its congruence with the definition
or form of a chair.

I used to point out that the scheme of Aristotelian causation implied
the existence of a human observer (more clearly in the last two modes), 
and that, depending on the observer, one mode of causation would often
be salient, and the others treated as subordinate.  Thus, one way
to stop fires is to remove their necessary material basis (e.g., 
oily rags); another is to change the balance of rewards and punishments
(e.g., by changing arson and insurance laws).

One of the essay topics I often assigned was a discussion of the
causes of coincidences -- the point being that, in coincidence
(or synchronicity), the salient mode of causation is the formal
cause, the (implictly pre-existing) definition of the co-occurrence
of two events as significant.  (Events occur together [co-incide]
all the time:  only some rate as coincidences.)  But the co-occurrence
of these events "constellates" or "activates" that implicit
definition, brings it to the foreground.

If my telephone number contains my birthday, it's striking; 
if it contains someone else's birthday (as it surely does), 
it's not so interesting -- unless that someone is significant to me.

If my telephone number contains your birthday, and yours mine --
or say if Chris' contained Tyagi's, and Tyagi's Chris' -- then
a greater sense of significance would arise (for some people;
for others, the concurrence of these events would be quite 
meaningless, a simple statistical fluctuation).

Now, one of the core claims of the esoteric tradition is that the
cosmos is in some sense mind-like (for post-Cartesian esotericists,
various phenomenological maneuvers can produce a similar result).
Significance, and formal causation, are not accidents of a human
mind which is an epiphenomenon of the primary reality of brain 
processes, but are in certain ways part of, even constitutive of,
the nature of things.

Without an understanding of this claim, many of the core themes
of western esotericism (and of other esotericisms: the recognition
of cosmos as mindlike is a defining trait of esotericisms) can only
be misunderstood:  it is the key to a true understanding of what 
Swedenborg called correspondences, and what the neo-Platonists 
called Sympathy -- and without which astrology, gematria, divination,
tables of "yetizratic imagery", and so on, become, in the words
of Thomas Vaughan, "a petty trash of small conspiracies".

When Faust asked Mephistopheles how he could get out of Hell to come
talk to him, Mephistopheles made the famous answer, "Why, this is Hell,
nor am I out of it."  Anyone who supposes that this is a geographic
statement is missing the point as completely as someone who complains
that a pun (l'ame agit indeed!) or an isopsephism is just an accident.

These things are especially esoteric and obscure nowadays:  to
Swedenborg or Blake they were revelations; to Dante (and to
many others) they were the basis for their works, a basis that they
assumed would be understood by any educated reader.  Without the
understanding of the way in which the condition of the soul constitutes
the soul's world, the justification for the emblematic torments of the 
_Inferno_ is utterly lost.

The idea of the Sphere of Sensation as the true magic mirror may have
been formulated in those particular terms by the authors of the Golden
Dawn material; the idea itself, however, is an ancient one. A great 
deal that is peddled nowadays as great occult secrets,
or insights attainable after many years of effort, is available
quite at much less cost (at least, in money and time) through  studying
medieval and renaissance literature and hellenistic philosophy.

On the other hand, the cost in actual personal effort might be a bit
greater.


LeGrand Cinq-Mars
rjb@u.washington.edu