The Crowley Connection.
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What is the Qabalah?

In Hebrew it is QBLH "a receiving" derived from the root QBL "to receive", and is generally seen to mean the handed down esoteric knowledge of the Judaic faith. It’s original beginnings with out doubt date back around 1800 years but it has evolved so much that what is used in the Western Magick Tradition today is indistinguishable from this early QBLH.

To give one example of it’s origins here is that of the original Judaic tradition:

"The Kabbalah was first taught by God himself to a select company of angels, who formed a theosophic school in Paradise. After the Fall the angels most graciously communicated this heavenly doctrine to the disobedient children of earth, to furnish the protoplasts with the means of returning to their pristine nobility and felicity. From Adam it passed over to Noah, and then to Abraham, the friend of God, who emigrated with it to Egypt, where the patriarch allowed a portion of this mysterious doctrine to ooze out."

I have seen a good definition somewhere of the different types of Qabalah that are generally encountered. These can be broken down into three types:
Kabbalah: This is will usually be seen to denote the Judaic mystic tradition. Its main text sources are "The Zohar", The Torah, The Talmud, The Sefer Yetzirah and the Old Testament. From these works grew the glyph know as the Tree of Life
Cabbala: This can usually be taken to indicate the Qabalah of Christian Mysticism. This is an extension of the Judaic Kabbalah with Early Christian Qabalists such as Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) finding many links with the Trinity of the New Testament and the Tree of Life. The Revelation of St. John is also said to contain many encoded Qabalistic symbols. Recently this spelling has also been adopted by many of the more New Age movements incorporating Qabalah in their teachings.
Qabalah: The most common spelling used within the Western Magick Tradition, from the Golden Dawn to the Aurum Solis. It’s meaning is usually quite different from that indicated above and its uses will be more thoroughly discussed below.

The Tree of Life.

"What', it will be questioned, 'when the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea?' 'O no, no, I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty!"

The Tree of life is not a map. It is not drawn to scale and it has no physical correlative. It is arbitrary (like almost all science) and based only on the perception and observation of Nature relative to each observer. As Quantum Physics has shown, it is not only Time that is relative, everything is!

Sometime early in this millennium, hermeticists started showing the Judaic Qabalah as a two-dimensional symbol constructed of 10 circles or Sephira (known collectively as Sephiroth). These Sephira (or “numerical emanations”) represent the Archetypes of the universe as we understand it.

Archetypes are symbols and can best be understood as the primal symbols showing aspects of our own nature. Carl Jung investigated these archetypes and found them common to all human races and cultures. What we are looking at here is not the gods or goddesses of human culture themselves, or the images of them, but something a lot deeper. Archetypes are the framework on which these gods and goddesses are built by the human race consciousness. Carl Jung described them as "deposits of the constantly repeated experiences of humanity - a kind of readiness to reproduce over and over again the same or similar mythical ideas...". In much of his work, Jung was convinced that the archetypes could shape matter (nature) as well as mind (psyche).

These sephira are numbered 1 to 10, using the generally accepted base 10 numbering system that seems so natural for counting to creatures with 10 fingers and 10 toes. To them we attribute these archetypes as the major god and goddess figures of Human Religion, colours, sounds, shapes. These figures tend to represent the sephira in its most basic or primal form. The gods and goddesses are often of the of Father and Mother, Brother, Sister, Judge, Teacher, Lover type. The sephira are joined by 22 paths, each one traditionally linked to a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. These paths can be seen as a blending or balancing of the energies and archetypes represented by the Sephira they connect. To them are attributed more gods and goddesses and, possibly, every other type of thing. The gods and goddesses tend to be more of a hybrid type, combining multiple aspects that show the effect of one sephira upon another.

Now, I don’t think this system was handed to anyone from On-High. It was built by many hands and many minds. They used the framework of the Tree of Life, the Universal Coat Hanger, to order their own beliefs. This work they passed on to others to complete.

777 by Aleister Crowley is probably the best example of this Magical Filing System as it gathers together the symbols of numerous systems and harmonises them by using the Archetypes inherent in the sephira and the paths of the Tree of Life.

Certain columns of 777 should probably be memorised by every beginning magician to get a good grounding on the system and a basis for their own tree.
The Hebrew Letters - Table 1 Col.2 and Table VI Col.CLXXV
The Numeric Values - Table VI Col.CLXXVI
Yetziratic Attributions (Zodiac, Planets and Elements) - Table VI Col.CLXXVII
The Tarot Trumps - Table VI Cols. CLXXIX to CLXXXI
The Colour Scales - Table I Cols. XV to XVIII

The particular gods and goddesses should be left up to the individual student to decide which they prefer and feel more comfortable understanding. Even then, a comparison between at least a couple of pantheons is probably necessary. Once we are able to understand the methodology behind this catalogue of gods, and goddesses, and myths and fairy stories and dreams, we will better be able to get an understanding of the Archetypes on which they, and in fact our whole existence, have been built.

So, what use is this Tree of Life thing?

You don’t stop at trying to understand why Crowley, and Allan Bennett, and MacGregor Mathers put Isis as Key Scale 2 - Chokmah, or Poseidon at 4 - Chesed. There are also colours and musical notes and magical weapons. The Tarot and the I-Ching are included. Each has been placed in it’s spot for a reason and will eventually lead back to the true Archetype of the sephira.

What you will in fact be doing is training your mind to be an efficient clerk. As you relate each item back to the sephira your unconscious mind will file it away under the correct archetype. When you need to remember that information, be it to create a new ritual, or open a closed door in a dream, or even fight off an astral attack, it will be retrieved faster by your unconscious mind and transferred to your conscious mind. You will be teaching your unconscious mind a new language that your conscious mind can better understand. The more harmonious symbols you assimilate the larger your mental vocabulary and the easier it is for your unconscious to communicate effectively with your conscious mind.

Once you get this communication between often opposing parts of your self working effectively you have taken a big step in turning Duality into a Unity.