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To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.divination,alt.magick,alt.occult,talk.religion.misc From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nigris (333)) Subject: Gematria, Language and Magick Date: 28 Feb 1998 19:11:57 -0800 49980111 aa2 Hail Satan! uncited: # >>>>Among South Pacific Cargo Cults, English is the # >>>>magickal language. and in Thelema too - after all, # >>>>our Holy Books were written in it. Josh: # >>I thought we were talking about languages as "words of power" # >>-- e.g. Enochian, Latin liturgies or Hebrew god-names. Not # >>sure the "holy books" qualify as such. Charlie Dake# >A "Magical Language", to the best of my knowledge, is one in # >which the name is the thing being named. Can you get the idea # >of a cat with no knowledge other than the letters "c" "a" and "t"? I thought that LeGuin did a decent job of illustrating, in her Earthsea Trilogy, what a magical naming language was and how it would be idealized in a work or game of fantasy (the mythologiza- tion of legends and stories which glorify the power of magick). typically it seems that older or constructed languages are used for 'words of power', often from a culture which the writer or magician considers to be ancient and potent or reputed by hir betters as the originators of magical power. it is not the 'idea of a cat' which is dealt with in magick but the very essence of catitude. one uses the 'real name' of a thing and is therefore able to control it. this is why one of the common choices for magical languages are those which underly, linguistically, the present spoken language. it communicates awe and splendor in its relation to present-day word roots and the Ancientes of Sivilizashun. jake stratton-kent : # The magical link between the name and the named is likely more # important than the particular language employed # # - the point with English is not whether it IS magical, but how # we can make it so - languages of their own are not magical on the basis of their form or structure but in relation to the magician. just as a dagger is not a magical dagger until the magician wills it so, also is the language not magical until it is discovered to be so by the magician or 'made' to be this way through force of will. the mage may indeed have to do something to it in order that she feel that it has become, finally, magical, but there are no set rules about this and one language could be just as magical as another. the real question is how far AWAY from language can one go and still call it 'a magical language'. glossolalia seems an important consideration. it is the utterance of what we would otherwise call 'nonsense syllables and sounds', even though the mystique of the act and the ignorance of the listener may contrive to begin belief that it is 'an ancient magikal langwidge' (the English- speakers seem to like to believe their mumbling is Latin, Greek, Hebrew or some other Biblical parlance). religion and the texts of religions are often key to what language passes for magical based on the associations made with gods and the power for their rites. thus in Euroamerican literati (perhaps 'Hermetic') tradition Hebrew and Latin have become favorites on account of the popular Judeochristian religious heritage. # ...so why not the language of AL too? this can be done, but I think some of the problems involve the typical intent to enter into a NONordinary experience while contemplating or communicating in that 'power language'. if one is not changing one's tongue (and often engaging a SECRET tongue known to the magician and hir sect) then how 'magical' can it be in this sense? it would take a powerful mage to be able to achieve the same effects with the tongue of the commons. I note that this seems to be an achievement of the village witch. LOW magick may well be achieved with the common tongue, but when one wishes to converse with the GODS, rather than just to speak with animals, potions and utter spells of enchantment, then one must begin to use the language of the Elders, the Ancestors, the Otherworld, etc. this is why Enochian is somewhat of an innovation on the favored Hebrew of Judeochristian peoples -- it is constructed for the PURPOSES of such communication, rather than as a currency of communication by previous peoples. these appear to be the two ways that power words are derived (cf. Austin Osman Spare on this point, who seems to have tried to take the science of power-word creation to new heights by demystifying it through psychological explanation -- chaos magicians have been using ancient technique without the mumbo-jumbo explanations thereafter). # ...we should lay to rest what Umberto Eco calls 'the crusty # old myth of Hebrew as the original language'. this is the way of most uncivilized tribes -- they consider themselves to be 'the people', living in 'the land', (if they are scientific) on 'the world', during 'the time', (if they are really aware) in 'the solar system', and speaking 'the language'. when they grow up a little they begin to realize that older is not necessarily better and that human life is not unique to their particular region, and that it may serve important psychomagical needs to have completely-constructed communication and evaluative systems at such a remove in time and/or space. [wishes to remain anonymous:] # The premise of gematria and of other forms of magic based on # the Hebrew alphabet is no longer credible; the universe is not # made up of Hebrew letters behind the scenes; with this I somewhat disagree. the premise of any divination system (be it tarot, astrology or gematria) is that it is a tool which can be used to attune to the unconscious world, to reflect using with forces and intelligences that have no direct connection otherwise to our waking minds. people select what we feel works for us in regards a magical language. trying to make a One Powerlanguage Fits All rule is, and this may be what you are talking about, ridiculous, though the force behind such assertions in magical tradition provides a kind of placebo effect that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. as for the Hebrew letters as cosmo-substrates, this is merely an instance of a particular culture being blown out of proportion as regards its value and cruciality. ONE'S SPOKEN LANGUAGE is of what our universe is created, since linguistic experience is in large what inspires the emergence of self-consciousness and, therefore, the awareness and 'substance' of the comparable world. for those who spoke Hebrew this was a fact. they mythologized their experience into a metaphor of value, implying through the understanding of translation the relationships amongst language, psyche and the formation of self-/other-consciousness. today we may or may not understand this but could select Hebrew as a powerlanguage by virtue of its ascendance in tradition. in fact history and the repetition of human beings can make a difference in the potency of an idea, tool, currency, or almost any behavioral form. toward what this LEADS may change, however, depending on the relationship one has to the culture from which the specific object or behavior is derived. the CONTEXT, as it changes, may also change the results of enactment, and this is unfortunately seldom undestood. it is largely for this reason that I have never adopted Hebrew as a powerlanguage and taken up music and a mish-mash of glossolalia and foreign (often Sanskrit or Chinese) words as my reservoir from which to draw for my rites. it seems to me that pre-literate peoples or those many who favored the usage of barely-known languages for their power-words usually interspersed a variety of their own projection and imaginative constructs, and I would like to more formally acknowledge that innovation in a manner not unlike Spare (though without what seems to me his occasional disrespect of or disconnection from previous cultures in the semblance of uniqueness and rebellion). # and given this I wonder at the continued prevalence of these # methods in the ceremonial magic community. so do I. I figure it is the penchance for traditional repetition which drives magicians to select Hebrew. it has been done, it is an apparently important language to the Judeochristian religion from which many of these people have come, and it is taught by many of the early schwankers of the Correct Magical Methods that it is the Only Powerlanguage. so why not believe them? the usual ceremonial magician doesn't seem to exhibit rebellion very often, from my limited exposure, and so tradition is merely accepted. typically none of the mechanics or the processes which she is or will be undergoing is understood for what they are. this often requires background of a more extensive measure than is brought into the study of the Art (thus Crowley, who apparently had a classical education, recommended broad-based education prior to commencing serious study or practice of the magical enterprise). coming to such an understanding, few are interested in doing more than using the tools provided to them for their preferred purposes. innovation and imaginative reconstruction are simply too difficult and uninviting for the run-of-the-mill ceremonial. it takes a shamanic bent, a greater artistic flare and focus, perhaps a rebellious and Satanic character (in short genius or the 'office' of the Magus), to inspire major revolution in religio-magical procedures in any traditional setting. such genius inevitably results in sectarian disputes on the part of those who are limited and restricted in their thought or understanding. it breaks the glamor of the One Perfect Path, the Best Powerlanguage, the Most Powerful Tool or God, etc., and this is simply too much to be borne by the uneducated who need such structure and simplicity to continue to develop. # ...how do people who no longer accept [the basis of Renaissance # occultists] continue to employ a method that is dependent on # a discarded premise? this happens all the time in a variety of contexts. consider the keyboard on which most of us are typing (the 'QWERTY'). it was designed during a time when typing speeds were PROBLEMATIC to the delicate machinery of manual typewriters. the keys were placed to as to sufficiently SLOW DOWN the typist, rather than maximize speed with the most common letters nearest the fingers. the 'DVORJAK' keyboard apparently achieves this, and yet it is hardly ever used in today's business or writing fields. culture is a strange animal. it institutes traditions for no other reason than that they are functionally facilitated and become hard-wired into the education process. disentanglement from this kind of habit-pattern can be very difficult indeed. as many mages have suggested, habit-patterns are one of the most potent banes to real progress (personal and societal). [also wishes to remain anonymous] disagrees with the wizard above: # ...the universe can by definition be made up of Hebrew letters, # or any other set of letters or signs, or anything one wishes. letters are not generally considered to be a substance, but are more often understood to be patterns. thus their category, other than the above interpretation I have given regarding the innate result of linguistic development, is not of a kind possible to provide the structure of the cosmos except in metaphor. # it might be that assuming that the universe is composed of Hebrew # letters is useful in a particular situation and useless in others. usefulness doesn't provide truth, however. it may be useful to think that Sol rises and sets, that we remain stationary on a flat earth. that doesn't make it the One Correct Truth. # ...it might be found ...useful to see where one word's letters # match the numerical value of another's. yes, as a divination system, which I addressed above. # Second, I don't know that it is an essential tenet of Gematria # that the universe is made up of Hebrew letters, that the # practice of Gematria is dependent or based upon the premise given. gematria is, in a universal sense, a means by which letters are provided with enumeration for the purposes of valuative combination, comparison and contrast, tying together a numerical quantity with a quality of significance suggested by the word(s) constructed using those letters. no premise is needed to effect this form of numerolinguistic divination just as no premise is necessary to effect divinatory results in tarot, I Ching (or other forms of bibliomancy), or astrology (which is typically incorrectly understood, along with gematria, as hard-copy mapbooks to the cosmos). # From my understanding, Gematria requires only two assumptions: # # 1) That individual letters possess or are associated with a numerical # value, so that a numerical value for a given word or phrase can be # determined; # # 2) That words or, as the case may be, phrases of equal numerical value # have a mystical relationship. # # (See further p. 2 of "Gematria" in 777.) precisely put, thank you. Michael L. Buxton: #> ...the universe is not made up of Hebrew letters. Please share #> some literary reference to this postulation. John Everall : # ...the "Sefer Yezirah" seems fairly explicit with regard to this # particular idea: "Twenty-two foundation letters: He ordained them, # He hewed them, He combined them, He weighed them, He interchanged # them. And He created with them the whole creation and everything # to be created in the future". (II, 2 "The Book of Creation" ed. # Irving Friedman, Weiser, 1977) an excellent example of a source which purports, to those who find Hebrew to be a valuable powerlanguage, its relationship to their world. communication, self and society are all constructions that often seem to arise after the arrival of linguistics (esp. in an individual), facilitated or as a result of this tool. it is no more relevant to the modern mage who understands these principles than is any particular ancient technology used to effect results which continues to be valuable today. just because a plow has been used for centuries, this doesn't mean that it is necessarily the best means of tilling soil and planting seeds, even while they are often used for precisely this purpose today. tradition has its value and its pitfalls. for those who take the Sefer Yezirah as a mystical rule book on par with the Talmudic or Toraic religious rule books, this may be an important pointer toward their limitations. for modern mages of a more liberated style, however, this is more of an HISTORICAL than a technical commentary. blessed beast! nigris (333) -- 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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