Magick 101: on QBLH

A brief essay on ha QBLH By: Jonathan Barlow Gee June 8, 2020.

Introduction: What is ha QBLH? Written History of ha QBLH Pre-History of ha QBLH Metaphysics of ha QBLH Conclusion: ha QBLH and you.

Introduction: What is ha QBLH? Put simply for the lay-person “ha QBLH” is defined as “Jewish mysticism.” There are, modernly, a variety of “branches” of ha QBLH, but all of them originate from the same “root.” There is “Cabala” which is considered a Christian cult of traditional QBLH; there is “Qabala” which is considered an astrological and theosophical version of the same; and there is also “Kabbalah” which is considered the more conservatively traditional Hebrew craft. The Hebrew word-origin for all these modern schools is: ‫( קבלה‬Qoph-BetLamed-Heh), and translates into English as (literally): “Receipt.” This meaning becomes more clear considering the definition of Kabbalah according to the “Oxford Languages” dictionary: “the ancient Jewish tradition of mystical interpretation of the Bible, first transmitted orally and using esoteric methods (including ciphers).” So to reiterate, “ha QBLH” is - in essence - the “received tradition of Hebrew mysticism.”

QBLH is often transmitted “esoterically” using ciphers, and the most prominent example of such a QBLHistic “cipher” is the “tree of life” diagram - a strangely-shaped model onto the vertex-corners of which are placed 10 attribute-traits describing G-d, called the “Sefira” (emanations). Now, like ha QBLHistic schools as well, this cipher shape comes in a variety of forms, which adds much mystique and curiosity to its study. Assuming there must be a single, “correct” and/or original form of this model maybe right or wrong; nevertheless, a wide assortment of such purporting to be so exist. Likely the most wellknown version of the “tree of life” at present is the “Golden Dawn” model, labeling the “sefira” as planets and the “paths” between them as the 22 trump-cards of the “RiderWaite” Tarot deck; the even more recent, “Thoth” version of the same - replacing the GD tarot trumps with those of the Crowley-Harris deck - changes very little (outside the saying “Tzaddi is not the star”) in its attributions. The “Golden Dawn” arrangement of this model, Aleister Crowley notes in his magnum opus, “777,” is based on the so-called “Naples arrangement” for the shape. Older models use a slightly altered shape as the framework for placement of these holy adjectives, however all are in general agreement that the “supernal” 3 emanations are arranged above the “subtended” lower 7. This description often assumes the form of a hexagon with 2 of its 6 “face-sides” extended.

Written History of ha QBLH The oldest text on ha QBLH is called “Sefer Yetzirah.” Its “short version” allegedly derived as an oral tradition from the patriarch Abraham himself and seems to have

already been known in a verbal form prior the first century AD. It was then that the “Bahir,” the second oldest text on ha QBLH, was written down by the school of Tanna Nehunya ben HaKanah - which included Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha. In the late first and early second century AD, we find the stories of Rashbi Shimon bar Yochai (and perhaps his son, Eleazar ben Simeon) supposedly hiding in a cave for 13 years to compose the oral Midrash (commentary on the Torah) that, when published centuries later by Moshe ben Shem-Tov (Moses DeLeon, 1240 - 1305 AD), came to be called the “Zohar.”

Following Catholic pogroms persecuting the Sephardic Jews of Spain in the 1400’s AD, the ideas of ha QLBH espoused in these works began to flood across Europe and, combining with Christianized “Neo-Platonism,” fueled the 15th and 16th centuries Renaissance era. From this time-period, countless “grimoires” claiming to be authentic works on ha QBLH arose and, though few can be rightly canonized, none should be neglected as inapplicable to this study. Included among these, the “greater and lesser keys of King Solomon,” the “6th and 7th Books of Moses,” the acrostics of “Abramelin,” the “Armadel” and “Almadel” of Honorius and the “Enochian” works of Dr. John Dee may all prove useful curricula for any student of this esoteric mystery-school tradition.

The popularization of English translations of these grimoires during the 20th century AD led to a “new aeon” of thought on “Magick” and ha QBLH. During this time many new experts published their interpretations of these ancient mystical texts while other scholars sought to translate and present the source texts themselves in English. Among these are notably the “Sefer Yetzirah” edited by Aryeh Kaplan and the 23 volume edition of the “Zohar” with commentary by Rav Yehuda Ashlag. By now (2020), the vast majority of works on and about ha QBLH have been published in English translations and are accessible to students of any and all religious faiths - no longer being strictly a tradition of “Jewish” mystics only.

Pre-History of ha QBLH Evidence for the study of ha QBLH from prior to the beginning of recorded history some 6,000 to 4,000 years ago - does exist, although maybe more “speculative” and circumstantial proof for such than an arrowhead maybe rightly seen as a direct artifact of hunting. Current historiography of our oldest oral stories dates the majority of mankind’s mythemes to the region of Oceania during the last N. Hemisphere ice-age, when Australia was still mostly connected to mainland Asia by dry land. From this same region and time we may also trace the origins of the looped string-game nowadays called “Cat’s Cradle,” in which a specific series of hand-gestures results in a certain, ladder-like lattice with 22 loops that, in many respects, resembles the later shape of the “tree of life” of ha QBLH. The discovery of this novelty dating contemporary to the origin for such myths as a “tree of life” itself should not be overlooked.

Another source from earliest civilization (some 5,000 years ago) - that indicates complex ciphers and numerology were already, by then, subjects of some long study in the Levant - are the 7 “Kamea” number-square talismans. Each of these maybe depicted as a square of Hebrew or English letters, of gematria numbers, of astrological symbols, as a “Kamea” sigil-pattern, etc. and so each maybe arranged into a series of cubes of 7 consecutive sizes. This idea of cubic “nesting” demonstrates a highly advanced level of thinking in an era when - it is now believed - mankind was still cultivating the first, rudimentary use of canals in agriculture. Although since obscured by the “sands of time,” the original meaning of these “Kamea” number-squares should be thought of as being intrinsically tied to the study of ha QBLH. Even the “gematria” (letter-number substitution) of the word “QBLH” itself indicates a very advanced ancient knowledge of what today can only be called “occult science.”

Qoph (100) + Bet (2) + Lamed (30) + Heh (5) = a sum total of 137: the 33rd prime number and, in quantum-mechanics, ostensibly tantamount to the “fine structure constant’s” reciprocal sum, which is currently believed to be precisely 137.036. It is extremely unlikely the ancient Hebrews (from around the 20th century BC) who coined the term “QBLH” knew of its gematria in the context of it being the “fine structure constant’s” reciprocal sum in quantum-mechanics - a field of science that arose much later (in the 20th century AD); nevertheless, this coincidence persists, unexplained.

Metaphysics of ha QBLH Ultimately, whatever 2-d shape is thought to be an accurate depiction of the “tree of life” diagram of ha QBLH by anyone, there should be little debate that the original form all these images sought to outline in shadow on plane-space was the regular, 4-d polytope now known to geometers as the “hypercube” or “tesseract.” The simplest form of such is a single cube over time, where the “4th-dimension” is figuratively measured as the difference between the cube and itself. As this spatial shape is then examined and rotated, its appearance becomes distorted and it appears to resemble different shapes.

The single-cube shape can cast a hexagonal shadow when lit from above one of its vertex-corners. Likewise, the 4-d hypercube casts a single-cube shadow into 3-d below it when lit from above one of its vertex-corners. However, when the cube or hypercube is illuminated from above one of it face-sides, the shadow it casts is quite different and, again, when the light is shown from above one of the shape’s “leg-edges” the shadow changes shape again. In the former case the shape cast as a shadow of the hypercube shows the twin cubes “nested” (one within the other) and in the latter case the shape cast as a shadow of the hypercube shows the twin cubes “conjoined” (one beside the other, merged along one face-side like two cubical rooms sharing a common wall).

In the context of literature on ha QBLH, the shape of the twin cubes “conjoined” is of utmost significance to ancient metaphysicians because it symbolizes the “upper” and “lower” realms (of which it is said, “as above, so below”) it conjures up imagery of the “rough” and “perfected” ashlars of F&AM and of the “double-cubical altar” of the GD, shown by Crowley (likely inverted) in “Magick: book 4” - in the section on the “implements of ceremonial Magick” - where the cube of the 4 elements is placed supernal to the 4 “Watchtowers” of John Dee’s “Enochian” system.

From my own studies I have found that, using 32 smaller cubes, one may construct a rudimentary model of the “tree of life” in 3-dimensions as a pair of “conjoined,” larger, empty cubes, such that there are 20 “paths” along 10 exposed “face-sides” (including the top and bottom). These 20 “paths” may then be labeled with either 19 Hebrew letters from the ancient Hebrew alphabet of 22 letters (omitting the 3 “mother” letters, “aleph, mem, shin”), or else with their correspondent astrological signs - signifying the 12 constellations of the zodiac as horizontal paths and 7 classical planets of antiquity (including sun and moon and with mercury appearing twice) as vertical paths.

Comparing such models we may find quite easily that the corresponding astrological signs to the Hebrew letters that spell QBLH: “Qoph-Bet-Lamed-Heh,” appear to be, respectively: “pisces, moon, libra, cancer.” It should be noted by any ardent researcher that the attributions given here for each Hebrew letter from astrology differ in my own model’s arrangement from all others such that, for example, “QBLH” - according to the GD’s “tree of life” diagram - would correspond to the astrological signs: “moon, mercury, libra, aquarius,” respectively. I am not saying one is right and the other wrong; I am simply positing my own form of model for the “tree of life” as mapped onto a “conjoined hyper-cube” in 3-dimensional space.

Conclusion: ha QBLH and you.

QBLH often comes encoded and the more complex the encryption method, the more aligned to modern cybernetics the study of such cryptography becomes. The “chaos” and complex “systems” theories that arose in the latter half of the 20th century AD are both methods for the human brain to comprehend itself. Modern cellular-computers merely mechanically mimic our brains - those “biological supercomputers” that remain capable of processing at faster-than-quantum speeds. Thus, the more complex the model of ha QBLH, the more it engages the brain and lights up our neural pathways. The most complex such model remains now the 4 “Watchtowers” model of John Dee’s “Enochian”

system. Decoding what has been written about it by SL Mathers (1854 - 1918) in the “Golden Dawn” work published by Israel Regardie (1907 - 1985) - let alone picking up study of this model where the GD left off at the turn of the last century - maybe a daunting task to one preoccupied by material concerns such as money, lust or hunger.

Nevertheless, the study of John Dee’s “Enochian” models does “expand the mind” by exposing the brain’s neural-network to a more complex model for cryptology; ostensibly, it “increases one’s intellect” by teaching them something they didn’t already know.

However, there are also those who proselytize that ha QBLH is evil and they have invented as justification for their feverish phobias the imaginary boogeyman of the “black cube of Saturn” premise. This idea roughly connects the “hexagonal” EM-fields around the north and south poles of the planet Saturn to NAZI “hollow earth” theories and to the political agenda of “radicalizing Islam” by slandering the Kabba of Mecca, a centerpiece of the modern Muslim religious faith. If such nay-sayers do not wish to share in a technologically improved utopian future, they yet remain free to assail ha QBLH as leading to a cyborg and even AI dystopia, even though such is the opposite of the truth.