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To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick,alt.divination,alt.occult,talk.religion.misc From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (hara) Subject: Gematria, Language and History Date: 28 Feb 1998 19:08:42 -0800 49980126 aa2 Hail Satan! rose.dawn@ouroboros.org (Rose Dawn), omy kalidasakin wrote: # ...how would you avoid what I see as the distinct possibility # that the gematria systems propounded in _The Key to It All_, # or any other textbook-type source will come to be seen equally # as gospel by those who read em? unfortunately, without a greater degree of emphasis on critical thought in the occult world it will continue to generate religious spinoffs and cultish slavishness to traditional or hyped materials. # I don't think replacing Hebrew-centered gematria with # alt-language-centered gematria in a "follow the book" sense is much of # an improvement, & I suspect that anyone who blindly follows another's # system without ever questioning it, or wanting to know why it works # that way, or where it came from, would be likely to do just that. this is the fun in store for those of us living now: to break all the rules, recreating tradition through exploding the traditional limitations (perhaps what the Wizard meant about gematria), until there remains only the creation of entirely NEW structures of language (as Enochian) or the experiment with sign language, mathematics, or something one step aside from linguistics. anything can be used for divination. # ...do you really feel that folx don't *realize* that Hebrew is not # the only language with mystical applications to number & letter? I've met many whose ideas were precisely this narrow, yes. # ...the fact that _777_ contains a very high percentage of Hebrew # words & phrases makes it "easy" for people to use, people with a penchant for Hebrew language, sure. I think that the entire focus is due to an obsession with Judeochristianity and that this was established as standard within groups like the GD and as promoted by Crowley and his followers. # I think most of us already know that language & number have played major # roles in the philosophy & spirituality of many diverse cultures, so is # such a stepping-stone really necessary? if you're still talking about _The Key to It All_, which contains (apparently, I don't think I have that here :>) Sanskrit gematria values and interps, then it is traditional, it seems, for newer methods to be put forward in dogmatic tones to seize hold of the newer cult members' minds. thereafter the whole can be broadened through elaboration or revisionism. cf. Levi and his fabulous truths without followup. # ...one would be better served by reading a variety of others' # interps, *especially* those that tackle the same system & come # to hugely divergent results. for you to do. this way (as dogma) it serves those who are looking for "the key to it all" (which, unless one is very fanatical, will not serve long-term) AND as a part of a diverse research. this is how I have viewed the variety of tarot-interpretation books that are in the library here: many of them read like the One and Only Set of Meanings, and yet they are valuably compared and contrasted, some entirely dispensible but not all. # ...gematria _per se_has not been a traditional Hindu practice, # till fairly recently. from my recent read of John Opsopaus, I glean that the Jews got it from the early Greeks who may have had it from others, so borrowing of the system appears to be rather traditional and the Hindus are following in a time-honored practice: ...there is considerable evidence that the Hebrew practice [of gematria -- 333] is later than the Greek and probably derived from it. We'll consider the evidence briefly. First, the Greek use of their alphabet for numeration goes back at least to the fourth century BCE, whereas use of the Hebrew alphabet for numeration goes no earlier than the end of the second century BCE (Ifrah, Chs. 16, 17 [no reference to this author in his bibliography -- 333]). Indeed, Fideler (75) argues that the standard spelling of the Greek gods' names were formu- lated according to isopsephic ["isopsephia" means 'Greek gematria' here -- 333] principles under the influence of the Pythagorean League c. 500 BCE. He further argues (216-9) that many Greek temples, such as the Parthenon (447 BCE) and Apollo's temple at Didyma (300 BCE), were constructed isopsephically. The Greeks may have learned the idea from the Babylonians, who as early as the eighth century BCE constructed buildings according to an isop- sephia based on their syllabic writing system. Second, the only explanation for the word gematria is that it derives from the Greek word *gametria*, which is an alternative spelling for *geometria*, "geometry," but literally, "land surveying" (LSJ s.v. gametria, geometria; OED s.v. gematria). This is suggestive of its use (in Greece, Babylonia and perhaps other places) for laying out temples and other important buildings. Third, the archaic Greek alphabet had 27 letters; thus it divided naturally into three Enneads (groups of 9), which were assigned to the numbers 1-9; 10-90 and 100-900 in order. A B G D E F Z E Q I K L M N X O P q R S T U F C Y W 3 The later alphabet dropped one letter from each group (F q 3), resulting in three Ogdoads (groups of eight), which was also considered to be esoterically significant. However, the three Enneads were retained for writing numbers, which is the basis of isopsephia. In contrast, the Hebrew alphabet had only 22 letters, so there were no numerals for 500, 600, 700, 800 or 900. (The use of the final forms of the letters for these numbers cannot predate their appearance in the Square Hebrew alphabet of the first or second century BEC; Diringer 135-7.) How much significance should be attached to isopsephia? We cannot fail to be astonished when we discover that a square around Apollo's temple at Didyma has a perimeter of 1415 Greek feet, and that 1415 is the numerical value of O QEOS APOLLWN (*ho Theos Apollon*, the God Apollo); or that a hexagon inscribed in the same temple has a perimeter of 1061 feet, which is the numerical value of *APOLLWN (Fideler 216-7). --------------------------------------------------- John Opsopaus, "Introduction to the Pythatorean Tarot", on the internet at the following URL: http://www.cs.utk/edu/~mclennan/BA/PT/Intro.html _________________________________________________ I can't recommend his website highly enough. this also adds another usage to Harold's list: the intentional relation of architecture (and indeed any construction) and measurement related to gematric associations (whether Babylonian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanized English, Enochian, or whatever). blessed beast! hara -- tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (emailed replies may be posted); 408/2-666-SLUG http://www.abyss.com/tokus FUCK http://www.hollyfeld.org/~tyagi
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