Wednesday, September 14, 2016

The Supreme Secret of the Illuminati

     If you are expecting to find celebrity entertainment and gossip, look elsewhere because Hollywood and the mass media are as far from the illumined adepts and their ageless wisdom as you can get. The word 'Illuminati', originating primarily from the Bavarian order of Adam Weishaupt, has lately been greatly bastardized and misaligned with what has been termed the Obscuranti, or those whose work it is to obscure rather than reveal the truth. Here I will continue as I have done in this publication to elucidate the actual wisdom being kept from the vulgar and ignorant masses who would largely prefer to stay focused on the pointless bread and circus charades of actors and clowns.

     Having surveyed as many books and sources as possible to try and find just how popular Qabalah and gematria were in the past among those 'in the know' ('IN THE ILLUMINATI'), the Architects, Freemasons, Rosicrucians, Illuminists, etc. and I have found certain particular sources that show indeed it was a central element in each, albeit largely unused or ignored even by the majority of members and certainly the general public as well and also being demonized and forbidden by the church as a form of 'divination' or sorcery. This knowledge was made public as far back as the late 1800's if not sooner, as illustrated in The Canon by William Stirling (1897). See chapter 3, The Cabala in particular, which specifically relates that this knowledge was in fact common among the Church Fathers, and “that the number 666 is not only the number of the Beast’s name, but also the number of God, that is, it is a number which God hath pleased to name and reveal to men, that by counting of this number, they might find out that other number, which it pleased not God expressly to name in this place, but rather mystically to conceal, etc.”




CHAPTER III.
THE CABALA.

The Jews, in imitation of the Pythagorean Institutes made the Cabala their codex or Canon Law.” — "Court of the Gentiles," vol. iii., p. 216.

“The Church of Rome persisted obstinately in affirming, though not always with the same imprudence and plainness of speech, that the Holy Scriptures were not composed for the use of the multitude, but only for that of their spiritual teachers.” — Mosheim, "Eccl. Hist.," vol. ii., sect, iii., ch. i., p. 25.

      In order that what follows may be better understood, we must now attempt to elucidate the principal doctrines of the Cabala. This singular work is known to have formed an important part of the Masonic traditions, and undoubtedly contains the nearest approach to a direct revelation of the ancient canonical secrets of the old world; and however obscure it may be, those parts which are intelligible provide us with a few fundamental facts, which are indisputably the basis of the old esoteric philosophy. The books of the Cabala which have come down to us are said to have been first written by Simeon Ben Jochai at the time of the destruction of the second temple, and afterwards expanded by his disciples. Mr. Mathers, in the introduction to his translation of the "Zohar," tells us that the mysterious science of the Cabala was said to have been communicated by angels to Adam after his fall. From Adam it passed to Noah and the Patriarchs, ** Moses, who was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, was first initiated into the Cabala in the land of his birth, but became most proficient in it during his wanderings in the wilderness, where he not only devoted to it the leisure hours of the whole forty years, but received lessons in it from one of the angels."

     Although statements of this kind are merely philosophic fictions, we may safely accept the antiquity of the Cabala as being very great. The legends of its origin are not made without a purpose, for underneath their fictitious terms a truth is concealed. For instance, the communication of the Cabala was said to be coeval with the Fall, because this event, allegorically understood, symbolizes the transmission of the mystical doctrine as an emblem of the divine essence or life existing in the universe. The Cabala was the emblem of the soul of the world, and, as all human art was created in the imitation of nature, the secret tradition symbolized the invisible soul, which inspired the letter of the Scriptures. And since it was a postulate of the philosophers, that the tradition or passage of the spirit or soul of God from heaven to earth was effected through the Zodiac and seven planets, so they alleged that the Cabala was transmitted through the mouths of the Patriarchs and the Messiah Christos, who personified the planetary system. According to the old cosmic arrangement, the universe consisted of three stages, the Empyreum, the seven planets, and the earth in the centre. This order we may call God, the Universe, and Man, and the cabalistic steps or degrees, embracing these three divisions, may be said to express the hypothetical agency through which the spirit flowed down to earth, and was first incarnated in the human body of the hypothetical creature, Adam.

     The cabalistic theology, representing the endless reasoning of countless generations of ingenious men, is the epitome of man’s first efforts to grasp the problems connected with the cause and continuance of life, the inscrutable mystery which has baffled the understanding of all inquirers alike. They reasoned concerning all the phenomena of
existence by their analogy to human creation, and it was supposed that the universal creation took place after the manner of human creation, and that the generative attributes of a man and a woman were those of God and the universe, and finally that all the bodily functions of a human being had their counterpart in the macrocosm or
greater world.

     The theoretical system based upon these ideas constituted the secret doctrine, which was taught orally, and was never written. All the old canonical writings are an exposition of its teaching, but these works are composed, so that only those persons, who are instructed in the rules of the hidden wisdom could discover their meaning. There was a mystical doctrine taught in all the old schools of philosophy. In the case of the Pythagoreans, a long and severe period of probation was required on the part of an aspirant, before the ultimate truths of the system were communicated. Although the true interpretation of the Jewish law depends upon a knowledge of these cabalistic
mysteries, it is possible, that not a single human being at the present day understands their meaning or application. Menasseh Ben Israel, a Jewish writer at the beginning of the seventeenth century, has recorded some valuable observations on this mystical science, and has given the thirteen rules for practical use in interpreting the myths of the prophets. He says," God delivered to Moses the written law, and the commentary called the oral law; the latter was to be retained mentally and to be transmitted by tradition; it is therefore termed ‘Cabala’ (received). Accordingly the two texts (Exodus, xxxiv. 27) are presumed to allude to the two laws, so denominated from one being an exposition of the other. . . .

     "All the known languages of the world, excepting the Hebrew only, owe their origin to human construction and art; but the Hebrew had the Lord for its author and framer, and is thence called the 'holy tongue,' as it proceeded from that consummate Wisdom, which is infinite; each word in itself contains the profoundest mysteries,. . . for which reason R. Simeon Ben Jochai says in the ‘Zohar’,  Woe to him who imagines that the Law only contains the superficial structure of its narration’.... and he, who supposes it has no soul comprised within its veiled mysteries, has no portion in the world to come.’ ‘Its body only,’ he continues, ‘the ignorant enjoy, but sages, who are the gifted servants of the Sublime and Most High King, look to its soul as its superior portion, and others still more learned to the soul of that soul. . . .
     “The least instructed are those who ... occupy themselves in the endeavour to learn how things happen according to the literal record; these are rewarded for their pious application (although they do not properly understand it) yet acquire salvation by virtue of their good intention. “Others employ themselves in studying the explanations of the precepts and ceremonies, that is, knowledge of the ‘Mishna,’ called by some the oral law, from having been formerly retained in the memory of sages, and conveyed verbally to their disciples.
     And lastly, many aspire to the highest contemplation of the mysteries contained in the words, letters, points, and musical accents used in the construction of the text of the law.

     “R. Simeon Ben Jochai termed the first of these, Masters of the Reading; the second, Masters of the Second or Double Lecture; and the third. Masters of the Cabala, that is, of Tradition (or the Received), it being an explanation of the divine law, received from the mouth of God by Moses, revealed by him to the sages or elders, and by them handed down to posterity. . . . ‘As Moses was a hundred and twenty days on the Mount, on three different occasions of forty days each, it is highly probably he learned them all during these three studies, dedicating forty days to each, and as all beginnings are the most difficult, he was gradually prepared, and rendered capable of attaining the highest contemplation of the Cabala, in the same period of forty days as he had employed in mastering the lesser ones, from being thus gradually instructed. Hence it may be understood what “Cabala” is, and how it is divided into two
parts. . . .

     “A demonstration will now be attempted, for the information of the curious, as to the means employed by the ‘Cabalists’ to discover the highest mysteries of the Law. . . . They have thirteen methods of discovering the mystery they attribute to the whole Law in a logical sense, and the secret meaning of its words. Brief examples of these
rules will clearly explain their nature. . . . “The second rule is called Transposition, that is, the letters of a word being transposed, and joined different ways, form various words. . . . This rule also seems to be derived from scripture, as it says in Genesis, ‘Noah found grace in the sight of the Lord.’ The letters in the name NCh, Noah, being transposed, form ChN, grace.” By this change the numerical value of the word becomes 708, instead of 58. . . .

     The third rule is called Gematria or Numeration, and is performed by numbers, being a mathematical mode of comprehending the Scripture, for as the Hebrew letters are numerals they contain everything, Pythagoras said, God created the world by numbers, as did Plato (See Question 71); so the word Berashith amounts numerically to the same as ITSR BTHVRH (He formed the Law), thus drawing the conclusion, that the Law was the instrumental cause of the creation of the world. To this question, Why does the Law begin with a B? They answer, To signify the two Laws — the written and oral, or justice and mercy, and similar things. This rule is used in different modes, as explained in ‘Pardes Riamonim’; they often add a unit to the amount of the letters in a word, which is called Colel, as to the word (Covenant) numerically 612, they add this Colel making it 613, saying, this word signifies the Law, which contains 613 precepts. This mystery of numbers also appears stated in Holy Writ; for in the case of the idolatrous priests of Baal, who accepted Elijah’s challenge, it says, that Elijah took 12 stones, according to the number of the sons of Jacob; his taking this number, for the special purpose of invoking the Lord, was not merely that 12 was the number of Israel’s sons, but because those sons were 12 in consequence of that special number In Scripture covering a profound mystery. The Talmudists also use this rule in various passages in the Talmud, and modern authors much more so; as R. Solomon Molcho, R. Jacob ben Habib, R. Mordecai, R.
Sabatai and others deducing great mysteries therefrom.”1  — “Conciliator,” vol. i., p. 206.
     [These statements are corroborated by Diodorus, who says “the Chaldeans preserve their learning within themselves by a continued tradition from father to son.”]

     The Christian equivalent to the word Cabala was Gnosis, knowledge, and from innumerable references in the writings of the Fathers, it is evident that the new sect, in the construction of the Gospel and ritual of the Church, perpetuated the same mystical tradition which they had received from the Hebrews. The nature of the Knowledge is explicitly stated by Clement of Alexandria, in the following words: “And the GNOSIS itself is that which has descended by transmission to a few, having been imparted unwritten by the Apostles” (“Miscell.” bk. vi., ch. 7). St. Basil also alludes to it thus: “They [the Fathers] were well instructed to preserve the veneration of the mysteries by silence. For how could it be proper, publicly to proclaim in writing the doctrine of those things, which no unbaptized person may so much as look upon ?" — “De Spiritu Sancto” c. 27.

     From expressions of this kind it becomes apparent that the importance, attached to the unbroken continuity of the Apostolic succession, was due to the necessity for securing the transmission of the oral Tradition or Gnosis unimpaired, in order that the true interpretation of the Gospel might be insured to succeeding generations. The works of Irenseus, Hippolytus, and Epiphanius have numerous references to the Gnostic practices of the Christians, and particularly to the Cabalistic process of Gematria. The fact, that the numerical system of the Cabalists and Gnostics is generally condemned by the Fathers, appears to be no more than a priestly artifice, intended to deceive the vulgar, and prevent inquisitive people from prying too deeply into the mysteries, which were retained as the exclusive property of the few, referred to by St. Clement. That the Greek philosophy rested upon the same secret tradition, which was accepted and retained as the basis of the Christian theology, in common with other religious and philosophical systems, seems to be borne out by another passage from the “Miscellanies” : “Peter says in his “Preaching,’ Know that there is one God, . . . who made all things by the ‘Word of His power,’ that is, according to the Gnostic Scripture, His Son. Then he adds : ‘Worship this God, not as the
Greeks’ — signifying plainly, that the excellent among the Greeks worshipped the same God as we, but that they had not learned by perfect knowledge that which was delivered by the Son. ‘Do not then worship,’ he did not say the God whom the Greeks worship, but ‘as the Greeks ' — changing the manner of the worship of God, NOT ANNOUNCING ANOTHER GOD. . . . Neither worship as the Jews; for they, thinking that they only know God, do not know Him, adoring as they do angels and archangels, the month, and the moon. . . . For what belonged to the Greeks and the Jews is old. But we, who worship him in a new way, IN THE THIRD FORM, are Christians.” (“Miscell.” vi., ch. 5).

     Theophilus Gale, one of the most learned Puritans of the seventeenth century, says, that “The Jews, in imitation of the Pythagorean Institutes, made the Cabala their codex or Canon-Law” (“Court of the Gentiles,” vol. iii., p. 216); and again on page 217, he repeats, “As for the Jewish Cabala or Cabalistic mythologie it seems to me exactly framed in imitation of the Grecian Mythology and symbolic mode of philosophizing. It’s true the Jewish Church had even from its first institution, its choicest mysteries delivered in Symbols, Parables, Enigmes, and other terrene shadows.” He speaks further of the Jewish Talmud or system of traditions, called the oral Law, which, he says, the Jews “equalize unto, yea prefer before the Scriptures. For they say (just as the Papists of their Traditions) ‘that we cannot arrive at a perfect explication of the Divine precepts, but by the traditions of the ancients; again, that without the oral Law, the whole written Law is wrapped up in darknesse’.” This is corroborated by Lightfoot, probably the most competent Rabbinical scholar of the English Church, who declares, “That the Jews venerate the oral Law as the foundation of the written Law, and scruple not to say, ‘the words of the Elders are weightier than the words
of the Prophets’.”

     The Jews were not the only people who possessed a mystical tradition, for the Neo-Platonists of the Alexandrian School claimed to have had a “sacred succession,” by which the inner doctrines of the school were received and
perpetuated. The Christians also had their Gnosis, said to have been received from Christ, by whom it was transmitted to the Apostles, and successively to the heads of the churches.1

[St. Clement declared that the barbarian Scriptures were all symbolical, and to be understood required “an interpreter and guide. For they considered that, receiving truth from those who knew it well, we should be more earnest and less liable to deception ; “ and speaking of his own tenets, he says (bk. v., ch. X.), “Rightly, therefore, the divine Apostle says, ‘By revelation the mystery was made known to me,’ for without a guide or interpreter to reveal the meaning of the Scriptures, the mysteries are hidden and dark,” Such a revelation was given by St. John, only his “Revelation” is as obscure as the Parable which it is supposed to lay bare. A plain explanation of the
Gospel was handed down by oral tradition only, as St, Clement intimates, for “fear of the swinish and untrained hearers.” “Even now I fear, as it is said, ‘to cast pearls before swine, lest they tread them under foot, and turn and rend us!’ . . . . For scarcely could anything which they would hear be more ludicrous than those to the multitude.” (“Miscell.,” bk. i., ch. i.) Thus without disguise he gives the reason why “the mysteries of faith are not to be divulged to all.” All old philosophers and priests, Christian or otherwise, had the same dread of the vulgar and profane, and had the same motive for concealing their mystical doctrine from the people, namely, lest it should be turned into ribaldry.]

     It is explicitly stated by Mosheim (“Ecc. Hist.,” ii., p. 57) that “the religion of Rome .... is derived, according to
the unanimous accounts of its doctors, from two sources, the written Word of God and the UNWRITTEN ; or, in other words, from scripture and tradition.” By the Apostolic succession the true elucidation of the mysterious wisdom of the Gospel was secured, and presumably is still retained in the unreformed churches. After the Reformation the Protestants discarded the original traditions of the Church, and eventually ceased to regard the Papal authority, received uninterruptedly from St. Peter, as being of paramount importance. Thus the teaching of the traditions having been dropped, the veneration of the Pope, as the representative of the Apostolic succession, gradually lapsed, and the traditional knowledge intrusted to him has ceased to be known. Whether any part of the Gnosis, alluded to by St. Clement, is still received and transmitted by the modern Popes cannot be easily discovered, but judging from the Papal nervousness at present exhibited towards Freemasonry, it may be surmised that some faint remnant of the ancient knowledge is even now in the keeping of the Vicar of Christ.1

[The reason why his holiness has declared the ordination of the reformed Church of England to be invalid, is presumably because the Protestants, when they broke with the Church declined to acknowledge or teach the unwritten word.]

     As the practice of Gematria, defined by Menassel ben Israel, will be constantly used throughout the present work, the following instances will explain the method of its application in the works of the philosophers. In Hebrew the word THORA, the law, and Adonai, the bride, whose name was generally used as a substitute for the tetragammaton, or IHVH, have each the numerical value of 671, therefore, by the rule of Gematria, they
have the same signification.
     In Greek ΠΑΡΑΔΕΙΣΟΣ (Paradeisos) has the same numerical value, and is equivalent by Gematria to Ο ΚΟΣΜΟΣ, 670 + 1 = 671; and ΚΟΣΜΟΣ being numerically equal to 600, implies the number 1,040, which is the radius of the sphere of the Zodiac contained within the Holy Oblation for a vesica 600 broad is 1,040 long.
     ΜΑΚΡΟ ΚΟΣΜΟΣ, 831, was the name given to the Father, or the first three steps forming the upper triad of the Cabala. These three steps form a triangle at the crown of the diagram. And ΠΥΡΑΜΙΣ, a pyramid or triangle, has also the value of 831. By Gematria these two words are equivalent to ΦΑΛΛΟΣ (Phallus), 831, and according to the proportion of the figure of Cesarino, 831 multiplied by 9½ gives the height of a man, stretched crosswise in a square enclosing a circle 7,899 in diameter, or the length of the polar diameter of the earth measured by British miles.
     Again Η ΓΝΩΣΙΣ (the Gnosis), 1,271, and ΣΤΑΥΡΟΣ, a cross, have each the same numerical value; therefore the Gnosis of the Christians may be said to be the knowledge of the cross. ΤΕΛΕΤΑΙ, 651, one of the names applied
to the Greek mysteries, yields the same number as ΕΠΙΣΤΗΜΗ, science, and 651 is the diameter of a circle 2,046 in circumference, and 2,046 is the diameter of Saturn’s orbit, measured by the diameter of the sun. Therefore both the mystic rites, and science of the Greek religion signified the knowledge of the cosmos. And ΕΚΚΛΗΣΙΑ, the Church, who was called the Spouse of Christ, is equivalent numerically to ΡΟΔΟΝ, a rose, the emblem of the Rosicrucians, and was regarded by them as the antithesis of the Cross.

     The doctrine of the Cabala was reduced to a geometrical diagram, in which the ten steps were grouped according to a progressive scheme, so that the emanations of the Spirit of the Elohim issues from the first step called the Crown, and after passing through the whole figure is carried through the ninth step, and finally reaches the tenth or last of the series. The theory of the Cabala teaches that these ten steps symbolize a trinity of persons, whose function consists in receiving and transmitting the spirit of life in its passage from heaven to earth. The first three steps shadow forth the first person of the trinity, called “Long face,” the Macrocosm, or the Father. The next six steps are assigned to “Small face,” who is called the Microcosm, the King or Son, the second person of the trinity. The tenth and last step is personated by the third person, called Malchuth, the Bride or Mother. Each of these ten symbols is associated with one of the heavenly bodies, so that the whole diagram is an epitome and image of the universe.

     The ideas which the ancients connected with these three persons, combined into this figure of ten progressive steps, appear to form the basis of all their philosophy, religion, and art, and in it we have the nearest approach to a direct revelation of the traditional science, or Gnosis, which was never communicated except by myths and symbols. A very little knowledge is required to recognize the identity of the cabalistic doctrine with that of the Gospel, for the Christian Trinity is clearly derived from the geometrical disposition of the ten steps, Kircher (“Œdipus,” tom. ii., pars i, p. 289) has given one of the most complete illustrations of the diagram which is now available. And it is
specially valuable from the fact that he has placed the symbols of the temple in its various parts, so that he makes the temple synonymous with the universe, and identifies its furniture with the three symbolical persons. The first three steps are attributed to the Empyreum, while the seven planets are comprised in those which are below; the tenth step being assigned to the moon and the sublunary world. It is thus apparent that the Father represents the super-celestial region, the Son the intermediate space occupied by the seven planets, while the Bride or Mother is relegated to
the four elements, which have the earth as their centre. Consequently we see in the scheme of the Hebrew philosophy, that the Deity — in whose image man’s twofold body was formed — the temple, and the cosmos are one and synonymous.

     Although the only direct version of the Cabala which we possess is that of the Jews, it is absolutely certain that a similar oral tradition founded upon the same doctrine was current among the Greeks. All the early Christians, who knew their Cabala, declared that Plato had borrowed his ideas from Moses. Nor was Plato ignorant of that mystical symbol, the cross, which was a sacred emblem long before it emerged from obscurity in the first century. The allusion to the cross, in the famous passage in the “Timæus,” has often been commented upon, and there can be no doubt that it prefigures the Mythos, which afterwards appeared in the Christian Gospel. It is quite plain that Plato, in describing the Demiurge or Logos, compounded out of the Zodiac, all the planets, and the elements, is referring to the second and third persons of the cabalistic triad, whose bodies comprise the material universe, and who were created in the image of the Elohim, male and female. This Androgynous being the creator, “divided lengthwise into two parts, which he joined to one another at the centre like the letter X,1 and bent them into a circular form, connecting them with themselves and each other at the point opposite their original meeting point.” The two limbs of the cross symbolize the double sex of this “heavenly creature” whom we find in the Apocalypse standing amidst the seven candlesticks or planets, or as the image of Daniel, and again as the Man in Ezekiel’s vision, and, above all, as CHRISTOS extended crosswise in the Holy Oblation. This was the cross which Constantine saw in the sky, and his conversation meant that he was enlightened and instructed in the Christian
Gnosis, and saw with his spiritual eye the crucified man stretched across the heavens, and believed in the verity of the visionary Christ.

[The letter Chi has the value of 600 as a numeral, so that it is the numerical equivalent to the word cosmos, and a vesica 600 wide is 1,040 long, or the radius of the circle 2,080 in diameter which is contained in the Holy Oblation.]

     The architect Cesariano, who edited an Italian translation of Vitruvius published in 152 1, has drawn the two figures, intended by Vitruvius to embody the proportions of temples, with an anatomical exactness not to be found elsewhere. The first glance at these two figures shows us, that they are each disposed in the form of a cross.1

     [Cornelius Agrippa (“Occulta Philosophia,” Parisiis, 1567, p. 237) has depicted the figure of the Microcosm standing within a circle, on a quadrangular stone, with his arms stretched out to the circumference. In each hand is placed a five-pointed star, the emblem of the firmament. On page 238 he has represented the Macrocosm in a square like the figure of Cesariano. Four symbols are drawn opposite the four extremities of the body — an eye above his head, at his right hand a serpent, at his left a staff, and shield at his feet. There is another figure of the Microcosm exactly resembling the lesser man of Cesariano (p. 240). The square inclosing his body is surrounded by the twelve signs of the zodiac. There are also two other figures (pp. 239, 241), each drawn within a circle having one of the seven planets corresponding to some member of their bodies.]

     The man whose body forms the Jerusalem cross is relatively bigger than the other, whose limbs, describe the St. Andrew s cross or saltire, their proportions being so arranged as to exemplify the duplication of the square. The square inclosing the greater man is divided horizontally and vertically into thirty parts, thus dividing the area into
900 small squares. His height being 96 digits, the perimeter of the square is 384 digits — the number of the soul of the world according to Plutarch — and if he were were drawn within the Holy Oblation, then his body would extend
through the seven orbits of the planets to the sphere of the Zodiac or fixed stars, and exactly resemble the figures of the Macrocosm, which appear in the works of the mystic philosophers of the seventeenth century. The figure of the lesser man would occupy the square, whose area is half that of the Holy Oblation.1


     [The duplication of the square illustrated by the relative sizes of these two figures is minutely explained by Plato in the “Meno.” par. 82 (Jowett's translation, p. 43). The old Masonic writers declare that the true system of the universe, and the foundation of all geometrical proportion is to be found in the forty-seventh proposition of Euclid, as expounded by Pythagoras, and communicated in writing by Plato, because, apparently, the ratio which those two figures bear to one another is calculated by it.]

     Now the Microcosm whose body is disposed saltire-wise, like the letter X, exactly agrees with the description of Plato’s Logos, whom the early Fathers considered to be identical with their Christos. And when the Microcosm or Logos is stretched crosswise in a
circle, drawn within the Holy Oblation, the sides of the square surrounding his body measure 1,480 diameters of the sun, and the name Christos is numerically equal to 1,480 [ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ].

     On reading the treatise of Francis Potter on the number 666, it is obvious that the interpretation given is founded
upon some knowledge of the true meaning of the number, which it was not the intention of the author to reveal. For the “explanations” are very often mere verbal quibblings, which mean little or nothing. However, he occasionally commits himself to a direct statement, as when he says — following the interpretations of Rupertius and P. Bongus
(“De Numerorum Mysteriis”) — “that the number 666 is not only the number of the Beast’s name, but also the number of God, that is, it is a number which God hath pleased to name and reveal to men, that by counting of this number, they might find out that other number, which it pleased not God expressly to name in this place, but rather mystically to conceal, etc.” (p. 60). From this we learn that “by counting” the number 666 we may discover the number of God. The term “counting” might very properly be used here to describe the process of finding the circumference of a circle 666 in diameter, that is, 2,093 — The diagonal of a square whose sides are 1,480, the numerical equivalent of Christos, the name of God.

     Francis Potter does not count the number in this way. He extracts the square root of 666 which he computes at 25 41/51, or 25 25/31 or 25 806/1000, remarking, that “however the number of the fractions be variable, yet the number 25 is always constant and the same.” The fractions curiously introduced may possibly give us an indication of the
methods of those cryptic writers. For 41 multiplied by 51 produces 2,091, a number which is only one and a fraction less than the side of the Holy Oblation containing the square 1,480, the numerical equivalent of Christos. The next fraction is 25/31, and the product of the two numbers is 775, or the perimeter of the Holy Oblation, taking the Sun’s
distance at 10. It is, in fact, another way of expressing the number 2,093. The third fraction is apparently the true one: but the square root of 666 is more nearly 25·807 than 25·806.

     The two figures include three persons, for the Microcosm or lesser man represents the double sexed creature, whose bride, or the feminine half of his body, is fixed to his back. According to the Cabala, they were not always conjoined in this way, but were sometimes separated. In Cesariano’s figure only the masculine half is visible.

     In the case of the temples, it is difficult to see how these figures of Cesariano’s could have been used, unless they were associated with specific measures; therefore we may conclude that they formed the canon or rule of easurement in architecture. Any measure of the universe could be identified with their bodies and applied to a temple, and it would thus become possible to canonize a certain number of figures which for convenience and use could be recognized, as the sanctioned patterns for the practice of the architectural arts.
     Originally the builders must have been instructed by the priests, and the rule of Vitruvius could only have resulted from a theological system based upon cosmic science. An illustration by Cataneo the architect (“Architectura,” p. 37), who wrote in 1554, gives the plan of a Christian church disposed crosswise according to the figure of the Macrocosm, or, as he calls him, Jesus Christ.

     What Hippolytus (“Refutation,” bk. v.) tells us of the doctrines of the Nasseni seems to show that their creed was derived from the Cabala, and is a valuable illustration of its meaning. The Nasseni were a sect of Christian Gnostics, who worshipped the Logos under the name and image of the Serpent. They appear to have been of Hebrew origin, for they took their name from the Hebrew word nachash, a serpent.1
[“For the serpent is called naas [in Hebrew]”. The numerical value of NChSh (serpent) is 358; it is therefore equivalent by Gematria to MShICh, Messiah.]
“These Nasseni magnify, as the originating cause of all things else, a Man, and a Son of man. And this Man is a hermaphrodite, and is called among them Adam” (p. 127): and a hymn addressed to him begins thus : “From thee [comes] Father, and through thee [comes] Mother”. . . . “And they say of this Man, that one part is rational, another psychical, another earthly. And they suppose that the knowledge of him is the beginning of the knowledge of God. And the Samothracians worship that Adam as the primal man, and in their temples “there stand two images of naked men having both hands stretched aloft towards heaven, and their pudenda turned upwards as the statue of Mercury on Mount Cyllene” (p. 140). “And the Nasseni affirm concerning the spirit of the seed that it is the cause of all existing things and is the secret and unknown mystery of the universe concealed and revealed among the Egyptians, who, after the Phrygians, are of greater antiquity than all mankind, and who confessedly were the first to proclaim to all the rest of men the rites and orgies of all the gods as well as the unspeakable mysteries of Isis.” These, however, are nothing but the pudendum of Osiris.
     “And the Greeks deriving this mystery from the Egyptians preserve it unto this day. For we behold the statues of Mercury of such a figure honoured among them. For Mercury is Logos who, being at once the interpreter and fabricator of the things that have been, that are, and will be, stands fashioned into some such figure as the pudendum of a man having an impulsive power from the parts below towards those above. And a Mercury of this description is a conjuror of the dead and a guide of departed spirits and an originator of souls. This is the Christ who in all who have been generated is the portrayed Son of Man from the unportrayable Logos, This is the greatt unspeakable mystery of the Eleusinian rites HYE CYE.1 (The above quotation is given in the words of Hippolytus, but it is condensed, and is not quite consecutive.)  [The numerical value of ΥΕ ΚΥΕ is 830, or one less than that of ΦΑΛΛΟΣ.]
     From the foregoing quotation it is plain, that the Logos or soul of the world, according to Plato, the Greek Hermes, and the Christ, according to the Christian Gnostics, are all one and the same as the Hebrew Adam Kadmon, who is the second person of the cabalistic triad. The Cyllenian Hermes, described by Hippolytus, so exactly resembles the lesser man found in Cesariano’s edition of Vitruvius, that they may be justifiably considered to be identical. According to the masonic traditions the initiated architects, who preceded the Collegia Fabrorum of the Romans, and the Freemasons of the Middle Ages, were called Dionysiac architects. They were said to have been instructed in the rites and mysteries of Dionysus, and to have constructed the temples according to the secrets thus imparted to them. And it is a remarkable verification of this tradition, that the lesser man of Cesariano is depicted with vine leaves in his hair and an upright phallus, both well known attributes of Dionysus. No one can look at these two figures of Cesariano without seeing that they are something more than mere anatomical patterns. In later editions they become so, but here we have clearly and distinctly a curious survival of the cosmic deity of Greece, copied and disfigured by the crude draughtsmen of the Middle Ages, but faithfully preserved, and recognizable to the last.
     There is still a further means of connecting the figure of Vitruvius with the Christ, and the Microcosm. From a passage in the Cabala we learn the following very curious fact as to the body of the King : “Longitudo autem membri hujus 248 mundorum.” Now this is the only measurement of the body of the Microcosm recorded in the Cabala, so that it is of the highest importance as a means of identification. The fact that the measurement is given in “worlds” is also remarkable. By the proportions of Cesariano’s figure, we can find the height of the whole body by multiplying 248 by 9 ½. But by adding colel or unity to 248 we get 249. And 249 and a fraction multiplied by 9½ gives 2,368, the numerical value of the name Jesus Christ. [ΙΗΣΟΥΣ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ]
     In the “Book of Concealed Mystery” (p. 46) the following interpretation of the first verse of Genesis occurs. “In the beginning the Elohim created the substance of the heavens, and the substance of the earth (the sense is : six members were created, which are the six numerations of Microprosopus-— viz., Benignity, as his right arm : Severity, as his left arm : Beauty as his body : Victory, as his right leg : Glory, as his left leg : and the Foundation, as reproductive).” For instead of “in the beginning,” it may be read “He created the six.” Upon these depend all things, which are below (principally the Queen).” From this it is plain, that the heavens and the earth are here supposed to take the form of man, and it is no wonder that the Christian mystics of the Middle Ages saw in the “Timæus” of Plato the same doctrine of creation, which they found in the Mosaic Law. Jowett, in his introduction to the “Timæus,” says, “The Neo-Platonists, believing that Plato was inspired by the Holy Ghost and had received his wisdom from Moses, seem to find in his writings the Christian Trinity, the Word, the Church, and the Creation of the World in a Jewish sense.”
     The Microcosm seems to have been used as a pattern in the practice of all the arts. Geofroy Tory introduces it in some of the letters of the “Champ Fleury,” 1529, and Silvanus Morgan, the heraldic painter, shows it on a shield intended to symbolize the charges of the sixth day of creation. It stands on the shield as the image of Mercury, i.e. Adam, He is surrounded by a lion, a hart, a horse, and a dragon, apparently corresponding to the four cosmic beasts of the Gospels (“Armilogia,” 1666, p. 188).
     Geometrically, the diagram containing the ten steps of the Cabala is shown by Kircher and other authorities in the form ascribed by Freemasons to what they call the “Double Cube,” that is to say, an irregular hexagon, which will exactly enclose a Vesica. Consequently its length and breadth are of the proportion of 26 to 15. It is said that the ten cabalistic steps, in their entirety, symbolize the aspect of the Deity expressed by the four mystic letters IHVH, whose numerical value is 26. This number was said by the Jews to comprise the most sacred mysteries of the Law. No explanation, however, has ever been given showing how the number 26 afforded a key to all the science of the Israelites. It is now suggested that the Vesica, whose proportion is in the ratio of 26 to 15, was the symbol of the hidden rule or canon, by which the synthesis of nature was reduced to a comprehensible figure, capable of demonstrating to initiates the truth and knowledge which constituted the secret wisdom of antiquity.
     Bryant, quoting from Eusebius, refers to a very singular fish, which, described in the language of hyperbole, is probably no other than the Vesica piscis. Eusebius copied his account of it from Berosus, a priest of Belus, and a native of Babylonia, who lived in the time of Alexander the Great. After declaring that writings were preserved at Babylon containing “a history of the heavens and the sea” for fifteen myriads of years, he says, that in those ancient times the Chaldæans lived without rule and order, when “there made its appearance from a part of the Eruthrean sea, which bordered upon Babylonia, an animal endowed with reason, who was called Oannes. According to the accounts of Apollodorus the whole body of the animal was like that of a fish; and had under a fish’s head another head, and also feet below, similar to those of a man, subjoined to the fish’s tail. His voice, too, and language was articulate and human; and there was a representation of him to be seen in the time of Berosos. This Being, in the day-time, used to converse with men ; but took no food at that season ; and he gave them an insight into letters and science, and every kind of art He taught them to construct houses, to found temples, to compile laws, and explained to them the principles of geometrical knowledge. He made them distinguish the seeds of the earth. . . . When the sun set it was the custom of this Being to plunge again into the sea, and abide all the night in the deep.” (Bryant, “Myth,” vol, iv., p. 129).
     Apollodorus called this animal ΜΥΣΑΡΟΣ, 1,011. Now the two vesicas whose perimeters are respectively 671 and 676 are each formed by the intersection of two circles, 1,006½ and 1,014 in circumference, therefore 1,011 would be a mean between the last two numbers. And the diameter of a circle whose circumference is 1,011, is 321¾, or the numerical equivalent of ΚΑΛΟΣ, beautiful, and ΝΑΟΣ, a Temple.
     A vesica formed of two such circles measures about 482 across. And 482 is the numerical equivalent of the name of ΡΟΜΒΟΣ, and if two intersecting circles, 1,011 in circumference, be inclosed in a greater vesica, the latter will be inclosed in a square contained within the orbit of Saturn. Moreover, the English word Truth has the value of 1,011, and ΩΑΝΝΗΣ, 1,109, is less than the numerical equivalent of ΜΙΚΡΟΠΡΟΣΟΠΟΣ, 1,101, the second person of the cabalistic triad. Finally, the names of the three persons of the Hebrew Cabala, Macroprosopos, 1,101, Microprosopos, 1,110, and Malchuth, 496, yield the number 2,707, which is the perimeter of a rhombus whose sides are 676, the square of 26, the length of the Vesica, and the numerical equivalent of the unspeakable name of God, IHVH.1
[The following statement of Plutarch may be compared with this of Eusebius.  “Anaximander concludes that men were first generated in the bellies of fishes, and being there nourished till they grew strong, and were able to shift for themselves, they were afterwards cast out upon the dry land.” — Cudworth’s “Intellectual System of the Universe,” vol. i., p. 189.]
     Another fish remarkable in antiquity is the whale which swallowed Jonah, It is called to ΤΟ ΚΗΤΟΣ [Matthew, xii. 40.] (370 + 598 =) 968, and if two circles 968 in diameter are formed into a vesica, their circumferences are equal to the two diagonals of a square whose sides are 2,151 ; and 597 is the circumference of Saturn’s orbit if the sun s distance be taken at 10.
     The Rabbis pretended that the mystery of the name IHVH (translated Jehovah in the English version of the Scriptures) lay in its proper pronunciation, and no pious Jew ever attempts to utter it, the High Priest alone being privileged to pronounce it once a year, in the Holy of Holies of the temple. Much philosophy may be extracted from the combination of these four Hebrew letters, which need not be discussed here, but it may be mentioned that the numerical values of the two Greek names of the Deity, ΖΕΥΣ, [Zeus] 612 and ΑΠΟΛΛΩΝ, [Apollo] 1,061, bear the proportion of 26 : 15 to each other, and the numbers, produced from the two spellings of the name Dionysos are in the same ratio to one another. It is also probable that this ratio was used as a means of expressing one number by another. For example, the word ΠΟΛΙΣ, a city, used as the name of the Bride in the Apocalypse, has the value of 390, and a vesica 390 broad is 676 long, and 676 is the square of 26, therefore the Greek word for a city may be taken to be equivalent to 26 IHVH, the Tetragrammaton.
     Again, the name ΙΗΣΟΥΣ yields 888, a number which is the length of a rhombus having a perimeter of 2,048, the diameter of Saturn’s orbit. And the number of the Hebrew name Messiah, 358, is the width of a vesica 620 long, and 620 is the value of K ether, the first step of the Cabala. And 666 is the length of a vesica, whose width is 384, or the sun’s radius measured by the tone. If the Greek numerals from one to ten be arranged so as to correspond to the cabalistic steps and their numerical values computed, we find that ΕΙΣ, 215, ΔΥΟ, 474, ΤΡΕΙΣ, 615, yield 1,304, which is one less than the length of a vesica which will contain a circle having a circumference of 2,368, and this triad represents the three steps of the Macrocosm.
     The next six numerals are ΤΕΤΡΑΣ, 906, ΠΕΝΤΕ, 440, ΕΞ,65, ΕΠΤΑ, 386, ΟΚΤΩ, 1,190, and ΕΝΝΕΑ, 111 — the sum of the numbers being 3,098 — and if this be taken as the perimeter of a cubical stone, or hexagon, the perimeter of its upper face would be 2,065,  mean number between 2,083, the side of the Holy Oblation, and 2,046, the diameter of Saturn’s orbit; it is consequently an appropriate number for the Microcosm who personates the Zodiac and seven planets.
     ΔΕΚΑ, the tenth numeral, has the value of 30, and this number denoting the distance from the earth to the moon, measured by the earth’s diameter, symbolizes the sublunary world — the cosmic counterpart of the Bride. Again, if the numbers of the second and third persons of the Triad be added together, their sum is 3,128, which is the width of two circles 2,083 in diameter, formed into a vesica. And thus are represented the two circles of the ecliptic, and the equator on a celestial sphere.”
-Pages 39-67 of The Canon, William Stirling (1897)



"Certain adhering partly to these [Ptolemy's measures of the universe] as if having propounded great conclusions, and supposed things worthy of reason, have framed enormous and endless heresies: and one of these is Colarbasus, who attempts to explain religion by measures and numbers." -Hippolytus, quoted in the beginning of The Canon

     Colarbasus, along with Marcus, another disciple of Valentinius, was said to maintain the whole plenitude, and perfection of truth and religion, to be contained in the Greek alphabet; and that it was for this reason that Jesus was called the "Alpha and Omega". Note COLARBASUS + CANONICAL = 666, the number of forbidden wisdom.

     The book Materials for the Study of the Apostolic Gnosis by Frederick Bligh Bond and Thomas Simcox Lea (1919) is also very illuminating in the matters of the Apostolic 'sacred succession' as well, giving a lengthy exposition on the Greek (Isopsephy) values, including 999 - Ο ΑΠΟΡΡΗΤΟ, 'The Ineffable (God)', and ΘΕΟΣ ΑΝΕΚΛΑΛΗΤΟΣ, 'Ineffable God', The Hidden God or THE HIGHER POWER (within,
not above). F.B. Bond also has a book I have wanted to go into called The Gate of Remembrance which gives a 'psychic archaeological' investigation of Glastonbury Abbey, the publication of which lead to his realization that Gematria must have been utilized in its architecture, as it appears to have been in other monuments such as Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid. This book also lead to his castigation for bringing up the value of 666 in relation to the ground-plan of Glastonbury, the same sort of castigation which likely lead to its ruin. In John Michell's 1969 book The View Over Atlantis, Bond's work is mentioned in addition to the geometry based on Gematria of not only Glastonbury but also Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid:




     "The whole area around Glastonbury is laid out to a sacred plan, the key to which is to be found within the hidden geometry of the Abbey church. It is no longer known for what purpose the masons who built the mediaeval Gothic churches followed, in drawing up the groundplan, the old magic patterns handed down within their guild from times of remote antiquity. Yet, as the work of Lesser, Bond, Critchlow and others has revealed, this was undoubtedly their practice. In fact it appears that the unseen geometry, inherent in the proportions o the church fabric, as also in that of the preceding stone circle, reflects in microcosm the astrological geography of the surrounding countryside, the magical lie of the land. Evidently, from the record of William of Malmesbury's Glastonbury, there was once an actual plan of the Glastonbury scheme laid out as a mosaic on the floor of the St. Mary Chapel, of which he wrote,
     This church, then, is certainly the oldest I know in England, and from this circumstance derives its name (vetusta eccledia) .... In the pavement may be seen on every side stones designedly inlaid in triangles and squares, and figured with lead, under which, if I believe some sacred enigma to be contained, I do no injustice to religion.
    To what extent William of Malmesbury, who wrote his history in the twelfth century, understood the secret of Glastonbury will always be uncertain. From the cautious way in which he refers to the enigmatic pattern on the floor of the St. Mary Chapel, expressly denying any heretical motives in mentioning the subject at all, it was obviously impossible for him to speak any further on the subject.
     Eight hundred years later the question of the mystical groundplan at Glastonbury Abbey was revived by Bligh Bond, who published in 1918 in his Gate of Remembrance an account of a message received through the medium of automatic writing, believed to have been from the spirit of a monk, a fifteenth century member of the Glastonbury community. It is quoted as follows:
     Thhat which the brethren of old handed down to us, we followed, ever building on their plann. As we have said, our Abbey was a message in ye stones. In ye foundations and ye distances be a mystery - the mystery of our Fath, which ye have forgotten and we also in ye latter days. 
     All ye measures were marked plaine on ye slabbes in Mary's Chappel, and ye have destroyed them. So it was recorded, as they who builded and they who came after knew aforehand where they should build. But these things are overpast and of no value now. The spirit was lost and with the loss of the spirit the body decayed and was of no further use to (us).
     There was the Body of Christ, and round him would have been the Four Ways. Two were ybuilded and no more. In ye floor of ye Mary Chappel was ye Zodiac, that all might see and understand the mystery. In ye midst of yet Chapel he was laid, and the Cross of Hym who was our Example and Exemplar. 
     Braineton, he diddle much, for he was Geomancer to ye Abbey of old tyme.
     If this message was genuinely inspired, and no one ever questioned the honesty of Bligh Bond or of his collaborators in spiritualist research, it provides an important clue to the Glastonbury mystery. Yet the trouble in which Bond became involved as the result of its publication was only less sever than that which William of Malmesbury had cause to fear had he betrayed the secrets of the Abbey geomancer. For Bligh Bond was the victim of a sinister and almost incredible campaign of distortion and vilification, initiated by certain inquisitorial prelates, following his publication of The Gate of Remembrance. It was in this book that he revealed for the first time the psychic origin of the clues which led to his dramatic rediscovery of the foundations of the Edgar Chapel at the east end of the Abbey, and of other traces of the original groundplan. Frustrated and bullied, even covertly accused of invoking diabolic power in his work on the Glastonbury mystery, Bligh Bond was forced to resign his post as architect to the Abbey ruins. In his absence his excavations were concealed, much of the evidence for his discoveries destroyed and his plans altered and falsified. All this, it seems, was done at the instigation of ecclesiastical authorities, ever unwilling to acknowledge the true source of their own creed or to acknowledge the existence of those absolute spiritual principles, respected by the founders of all the great religions, from which the Christian Church derived its initial authority... -Pages 129-131
***Furthermore,***
 The Alchemical Fusion (Chapter 6)

     "Written across the face of the country in letters of earth and stone the cosmic knowledge of the ancient world is now within reach. It appears that in recent ages the human race has lost touch with some hidden source of power, some ultimate proof of cosmic order which inspired the monumental achievements of antiquity and produced the serene confidence of prehistoric life. Yet even though the past may now seem remote and dead, all its accumulated wisdom perished, nothing has in fact been lost, for the geomancers' manuscript is still legible.

     The key to the whole system of natural magic or elemental control, on which the whole civilisation of the ancient world was sustained lies in two numbers, 666 and 2,080, alternatively 1,080. Their associations are set out below. 
     1,080 + 666 = 1746. The combination of terrestrial and celestial forces produces 1746, the number of fusion. This mathematical expression of the former science of alchemical fusion was retained by the architects of the Christian gospels, for
ΠΑΤΗΡ, Father = 489
ΥΙΟΣ, Son = 680
ΠΝΕΥΜΑ (+1)
= 1746, a Grain of Mustard Seed

666 - The Sun, Fire, Sulphur, Imperial Power, Stonehenge, Glastonbury Abbey, The sum of the magic square of the Sun.

1,080 or 2,080 - Mercury, the terrestrial spirit, lunar influence, The Great Pyramid, Woodhenge, the sum of the magic square of Mercury = 2,080. Το Πνευμα Αγιον, The Holy Ghost = 1,080.
ΚΡΑΤΗΡΙΑ, Grail = 540 (½ x 1080)
Radius of the moon = 1,080 miles. Side of the Holy Oblation, a twelfth part of the earth's circumference = 2,080. 
ΤΟ ΕΝΤΕΧΝΟΝ ΠΥΡ, the fire stolen from heaven by Prometheus = 2,080

     [The analysis of cabalistic numbers reveals a definite association between the terrestrial current and lunar influence. 'Yesod is lunar in nature, the Moon being the luminary attributed, inasmuch as a curious relationship exists between the earth's dead satellite and the Astral Light.' -Regardie, The Tree of Life.

     The factor of lunar or stellar influence upon the earth was expressed in the number 1,080, often quoted by early astronomers. Hipparchus, for example, in about 150 BC established the distances and degree of brightness of 1,080 stars, presumably the number whose astrological significance he considered worth reckoning.]

666 + 1,080 = 1746 = ΚΟΚΚΟΣ ΣΙΝΑΠΕΩΣ, a Grain of Mustard Seed
In addition 1746 = Ο ΘΗΣΑΥΡΟΣ ΙΗΣΟΥ, The Treasury of Jesus
1746 = ΤΟ ΚΕΚΡΥΜΜΕΝΟΝ ΠΝΕΥΜΑ, The Hidden Spirit
1744 = ΜΑΡΓΑΡΙΤΗΣ ΣΟΦΙΑΣ, Pearl of Wisdom

      Other biblical phrases of this value, each referring to the same principle of spiritual enlightenment, are given in Bond and Lea's The Cabalah

     Here we have a numerical demonstration of the ultimate work of alchemy, the fusion of mercury and sulphur. This was the work performed at the Great Pyramid, where the germ within the crystal tip, the grain of mustard seed 1746, sprang from the marriage of solar energy (666) with the terrestrial spirit (1,080), accumulated within the Pyramid's bulk. 
     The Pyramid was the Egyptian centre of Mercury. The place of the Sun was the modern Aswan, Syene, [ΣΥΗΝΗ] which name has the value 666, hardly a chance coincidence, for it was here that Eratosthenes made his solar observations, as the result of which he gave the number 25,000 as the measure of earth's circumference. In England Stonehenge was laid out according to the square of the Sun to kindle the spark of celestial or solar energy, while Woodhenge near by was an instrument of Mercury.
     Again, at Glastonbury the Tor with its hidden subterranean caverns, traditionally a centre of initiation, was evidently associated with Mercury, the spirit of St. Michael, while the Abbey was constructed as place of the Sun. This pattern is repeated all over the country, for almost every old church is placed on or beside a mound, and these little hills were once generally believed to be the homes of the dead, the haunts of ghosts and fairies. It was on such a hill near his church at Aberfoyle that in 1692 the Rev. Robert Kirk, whose occult connections were locally notorious, collapsed and died, some said abducted by elemental forces. It appears that the prehistoric stones, which once occupied so many modern church sites, acted in conjunction with a nearby hollowed mound as accumulators and transmitters of a current generated from a celestial and terrestrial fusion.
    666, the predominant number at both Stonehenge and Glastonbury Abbey, has always been recognised as a solar number. Its traditional character is confirmed by its obvious significance as the sum of the numbers in the square of the Sun and it is the number of ΤΕΙΤΑΝ, a solar deity like Phoebus. Yet although 666 stands for an eternal, natural principle, transcending any mral category, the more superstitious among the early Christians came to associated the number 666 with an influence exclusively evil. Christianity was founded on the inspirational word of Christ, the Holy Ghost 1,080, composed of the male and female elements of the terrestrial spirit (ΙΗΣΟΥΣ, Jesus, 888 + ΜΑΡΙΑΜ, Mary, 192 = 1,080) Thus in the proposed resotration of the New Jerusalem on earth the Church as the spiritual force must recognise the function of a legitimate temporal authority, the imperial representative of the Sun, whose number is 666.
     In the words of Christ, 'Render unto Caesar things that are Caesar's'. In the Hebrew language the name of the emperor Nero has the value 666 and, as Bligh Bond shows, this number was allotted by the early Christians to other Roman institutions. The persecution of the Church by the Roman emperors persuaded some that the number 666 was not merely the antithesis, the opposite pole ot the spirit of Christ, but that it possessed in itself some inherently hostile, evil quality. The gnostics within the Church, however, recognized the number for what it was, an essential element in the true cosmic scheme, and in laying out their mystic citadels they allowed 666, the solar number, to occupy its due plance in the numerical order.
      The fameous reference to the number in Revelation reads, 'Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.' The Puritans, and those others whose opposition to the old magical practices brought about the Reformation, compiled their scheme to exclude the number 666. To them the beast represented some absolute principle of evil, irreconcilable with the iron rule of humanly created morality. The beast, like the dragon, had to be suppressed. Passing the village inn by night, the Puritan minister took no pleasure in its lighted windows and heard no delight the noise and music from within. The same attitude of nescient arrogance that rejected 666 for an anti-Christian number and destroyed as temples of the Antichrist such glorious magical structures as Glastonbury abbey, in whose proportions the number was prominently displayed, was also opposed to the festivals with which the number was associated. The feasts of Baal the sun god, Bel the Dragon, the beast, however the principle is expressed, were held over the country in seasonal fairs, games, bonfires, and processions and were celebrated in songs and legends. The suppression of festivals, musicians, and hostelries, which followed the Puritans' rejection of the number 666, gradually rendered the whole areas of the country uninhabitable. The people of the Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland, the structure of their social and spiritual life broken by the new tyranny, vanished or repined in helpless apathy. Everywhere the waning spirit left empty churches and crumbling homesteads. 
    It is, of course, absurd to associate 666 or any other number solely with 'the forces of evil'. No number in itself is exclusively representative of a moral quality whether negative or positive, for every natural principle has its own rightful place in the universe and its magical influence can be disposed in either direction. In any case it is inconsistent to relate moral principles to numbers, for numerical relationships are precise and unalterable while morals are neither, being simply mores, customes adopted by gneral consent in response to the circumstances at a particular time and place. It is believed by some that we now live in a more enlightened age than that of the Reformation, better capable of distinguishing between what is true and what is merely expedient. Yet only a few years ago superstitious fear of the number 666 on the part of certain prominent clergymen produced the miserable quarrel at Glastonbury, the persecution of Bligh Bond, and the falsification of his archaeological records. 
     The issue which was never publicly aired was this. Bligh Bond discovered by excavation that Glastonbury Abbey was constructed to a hidden groundplan, which consisted basically of a rectangle composed of 74-foot squares. The rectangle which contains the whole Abbey structure is none of these squares in length, and four in width. In other words the rectangle measured 666 feet x 296 feet. Ever since 1918, when it became known that the clused which led to his archaeological discoveres had been obtained in the practice of spiritualism through the medium of automatic writing, Bligh Bond had been regarded by some as a necromancer in league with proscribed powers. He was thus in much the same position as Galileo and Copernicus centuries before, inhibited from declaring what he perceived to be the case, that the true length of the Abbey was 666 feet. Insteade he reduced the length of the rectangle by one 74-foot square and announced the measure as 592 feet (74 x 8).
     Many have been puzzled at the bitterness of the controversy which followed Bligh Bond's published estimate of the original Abbey length, and have failed to realise the implications of the number 592 upon which he was so insistent. For in this affair he acted precisely in accordance with traditional cabalistic practice, establishing an apparently innocuous fact, whose implications could be understood by those who further examined the evidence. The pattern of sacred geometry which Bond detected within the proportions of the Abbey and, which Critchlow has lately rediscovered and extended, is entirely related to the fact that the basic rectangle is not eight, but nine squares long, that the true length of the Abbey was originally conceived at 666 feet. 
     In 1645 Franz Potter published a book entirely devoted to the subject of 666. He identified it with the Antichrist, yet he gave 666 as the combined measure of the diagonals of the New Jerusalem and therefore an important element in the true Christian religion. The deluded utopians, who shattered Glastonbury Abbey for the devil's temple and would have dealth the same way with Stonehenge had they known the secret of its groundplan, ignored what a wiser, more realistic generation had found acceptable: that a true cosmology must encompass every created element. The New Jerusalem is not planned by human architects and lawyers, and its elements are not selective, for they comprehend the universal scheme...
-Pages 133-137, The View Over Atlantis, John Michell (1969)




     Another author whose work has been greatly important and enlightening is that of Elizabeth Van Buren (born Giulietta Elizabeth Van Buren Verdon-Roe, Feb. 20, 1929- Sep. 2, 2011) She was apparently related to the eighth President of the United States, Martin Van Buren (source) as well as the Italian Illuminist and Carbonari member Giuseppe Mazzini (according to the inscription on the inside of Refuge of the Apocalypse, 1986). 

     Her books have much knowledge in them regarding the above matters and more, and I often wonder if she knew or knew of Kenneth Grant and his work. It was through the bibliography of The Ninth Arch that I found a reference to her 1984 Land of White Waters: Secret Links Between the Himalayas and the Andes. Each of her six books are rich in information and have tons of illustrations, and despite having no references to Kenneth Grant in particular does connect in relevance on a number of subjects from the Merovingians and their symbols to the 'Ufologickal' phenomena known by the ancients to be associated with Sirius and other prominent star-systems, as well as our terrestrial 'cults' and temples which seem to have been directed towards them, figuratively and literally as in the case of the Great Pyramid. 

     In Lord of the Flame (1981) the first chapter is about the recurrence of the number 13 and its stellar importance, being as it is a veil of the 'hidden' sign of the Zodiac Ophiuchus, the Serpent-bearer, which is a metaphor for the hidden flame within or the Kundalini serpent-power. In this book she also brings up a prophetic statement that a Great Initiate would discover the secret knowledge of the Pyramid(s):

     Although the Pyramid contains much knowledge already decoded, the Sphinx itself remains essentially mysterious. There is a theory that it depicts a deity, for the Ancient Egyptians worshipped gods who were formed as half-man, half-animal; but every one of these gods without exception had the body of a man and the head of an animal or bird, whereas the Sphinx has a lion's body and a man's head.  Then there is the belief that the monument symbolizes the evolution of man from beast, the conquest of the spirit over the animal nature. 
     Edgar Cayce, the greatest prophet of our age, stated that in a vault in a small pyramid which would be discovered shortly lay records and predictions for the world, in particular for the years 1958-98; he also foretold the return of the Great Initiate for the "fulfillment of the prophecies". 

     This relates to the book and work in general, which is referenced by E.V.B., of George Hunt Williamson, particularly Secret Places of the Lion. SECRET PLACE OF THE LION = 666, the solar value of the Temple complex of the GIZA PYRAMIDS - as well as the place wherein the forbidden wisdom would be found when the Great Initiate is able to access it at the proper time (666).  Whether G.H.W. realized this formula is not specified anywhere in his writings, though he was well read and extremely wise so it is likely he had. Using the prompts from these books I have effectively reformulated the ancient lost knowledge of the Hebrews and the Egyptians they derived much of their secret wisdom from through Moses and others and updated it along modern aeon lines.

    Furthermore, in The Sign of the Dove (1983), we see another prophetic reference:

     "In "The Secret of Mont-Segur" we learn that there is a book in existence, a book that had been guarded and preserved by the Cathari, a manuscript which lies in a leaden casket in the depths of a cavern. This cave, in spelunca adornata, the tradition states, a decorated grotto, is probably one with walls covered with paintings. The manuscript is called "The Book of Love".
     When certain of the Cathari underwent torture, they admitted the existence of this book, known only to a few high initiates. This manuscript is attributed to St. John the Divine, and is said to contain:
     ". . . sublime teachings, marvellous revelations, the most secret words confided by our Lord Jesus Christ to the beloved disciple. Their power would be such that all hatred, all anger, all jealousy would vanish from the hearts of men. The Divine Love, like a new flood, would submerge all souls and never again would blood be shed on this earth."
     It is said that this book will be found, at a "pre-ordained time, by a predestined person". Furthermore, it states in "The Secret of Mont-Segur", that this predestined person, "a being of perfect candour, innocence and absolute purity", will be "UNDER THE SIGN OF THE DOVE".
-Page 7 of The Sign of the Dove

      The Book of Love is a metaphor for Liber Mundi, or the Book of Life mentioned throughout the Holy Bible which refers to the Akashic Records of omniscient Wisdom underlying all Creation, the natural blueprint which the Chokmah Nestorah or Secret Wisdom of the Qabalah and Gematria represents and teaches. The wall paintings bring to mind the Tarot attributions to the letters that tell the archetypal story of manifestation and realization. The 'cavern' is a metaphor for not the subterranean but the subconscious strata, and the leaden casket the body itself, or perhaps the skull (see the SKULL OF THE TEMPLARS). The Key to this book has been given in Revelation 13:18; "This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666." This primary number is the very key to the Secret Wisdom of CHALDEAN MAGICK (Kaph final, 500), which as Blavatsky states on page 517 of Vol. 4 of the Collected Writings of Helena Blavatsky (1882-83): 

     The word “Chaldean” does not refer merely to a native or an inhabitant of Chaldea, but to “Chaldeism,” the oldest science of astrology and occultism. And in that sense the Zoroastrians are the true heirs to Chaldean wisdom, “the light which shineth in darkness,” though (modern) “darkness comprehended it not,” and the Parsees themselves know nothing of it now. The Hebrew Kabala is but the loud echo of the Chaldean; an echo which passing through the corridors of Time picked up in its transit all kinds of alien sounds that got mixed up with the original keynotes struck beyond the epochs known to the present profane generations; and thus it reached the later student of Hebrew lore as a confused and somewhat distorted voice.
     Yet, there is much to learn in it, for him who has the patience and the perseverance required, since first of all he would have to learn the Gematria, Notaricon, and Themura.* When speaking of the Kabala, the Lecturer meant by it, the universal, not any special, esoteric system, already adapted to a later exoteric creed as is at present the Jewish secret science. The word “Kabala” is derived from a Hebrew root meaning reception of knowledge; and practically speaking it refers to all the old systems handed down by oral transmission, and is very nearly allied to the Sanskrit “Smriti” and “Sruti,” and the Chaldaic “Zend.”


     The sign of the dove is obviously the Typhonian symbol utilized in the Gnostic, Catholic ('Universal') and Thelemic Orders from ancient to present times, symbolic of the Holy Spirit. Their Key, largely obfuscated, feared, and ignored - is the central Key that fuses all disparate traditions into a workable Scientific Illuminist system of practical magickal exercise, if but the true essence and understanding can be apprehended with it in order to unlock all others. Only by its understanding can the key of it all be used at all. As far as the revealing of secrets is concerned, most are guarded by way of their plain and openness, and the perception level of the seeker themselves. Who is to say who may or may not reveal a secret, but the secret itself, certainly those who show no sign of possessing said secrets are in a position of authority to determine for anyone else.The 'Supreme Secret' of the O.T.O., which Crowley refers to in De Arte Magia, II - Of the Importance of the Secret obviously refers to the Secret Wisdom which is obtained through the understanding of this Gnosis:

      "This secret is the true Key to Magick; that is, by the right use of this secret man may impose his Will on Nature herself... In this way, although all recorded Knowledge were destroyed, it would be possible for an adept of this secret to restore it."

     Being particularly related as it is to the IX°, its 'right use' lies in the ability to use the Knowledge it provides as a door to the Astral plane, where the Solar Lord and His Lodge has the True Communion to flesh out in Malkuth (X°). The final 3 degrees, IX°, X° and XI° can be thought of as the Astral Light/Plane, Materialization/Waking, Other/Outward shell/Object(s), and the Key (666 and thus THE WHOLE QABALAH, or THE QABALAH OF NINE CHAMBERS which it unlocks: 111-222-333-444-555-666-777-888-999) being the true secret to Magick, or 'Sex Magick', shows that seeing as how libidinal energy (Love) is the basis of all manifestation, with astral-etheric awareness activated the Will can 'impose' itself on mundane nature through its self-same unity with nature in the quantum mechanical interaction between the 'Astral/Etheric' levels of sub-atomic Being and their  morphological representations of waking 'reality'. 

     The controlled discipline of various systems such as that of the grade system of the A∴A∴ is primarily geared toward the gradual process of 'waking up' to more sattvic levels of Being than the waking or uncontrolled dreaming state, and it is in this numinous-luminous inner realm that the Supernals are accessed and the outer shells, atoms and cells are invested with the fructifying life-substance of the Tree and the Ego reoriented towards the True Will (which can be a difficult ordeal if too far strayed therefrom). This Key (666) therefore provides access to the hidden gate within, THE SOUL WITHIN which reflects THE DREAM OF MANIFESTATION without, centering around and emanating through the solar-center of the Ruach. 

     The word LOVE has the value of 111, the value of the first Hebrew letter Aleph (ALPh) which links with the Hebrew word for Love; אהבה which equals 13, a veil of Unity (אחד) and the 1 in 3/3 in 1. It was Frater Achad who provided the Key to Liber AL, as well as that of the Egg of MA-ION = AL:76 and in the 107th year of the Aeon of Horus the Egg reappeared to me on the precise date it did to Achad, April 2nd (also his birthday, and the date of the sinking of R'lyeh in The Call of Cthulhu) and by the 111th year of the Aeon of Horus (2015) I had realized its significance and published a record of my Initiation as Liber Mayan. This was the year I realized the full extent of my Work and the significance in my realization of these particular Keys in the overall greater scheme of the Aeonic unfoldment as it occurred, and the verification of my initial Initiatory proposition on September 9, 2009 to discover the meaning of '999', which I came to find was the value of LIBER MAYAN (Nun final, 700) after the fact of naming it according to my magickal motto. This is also that of THE BOOK OF ETERNAL LIFE which again, is synonymous with THE AGELESS WISDOM OF THE QABALAH and the fundamental laws of THE HYPER-DIMENSIONAL MATRIX

     This 'ancient' wisdom is still very much relevant to our modern crises and dilemmas, and being truly Ageless, it has the potential to also be utilized in extrapolating and formulating the guidelines for future discoveries and realizations in uniformity with the existing and past/forgotten wisdom of eld. A curious statement made by Kenneth Grant in the Commentary to verse 559-11 of Liber OKBISh in The Ninth Arch (2002) shows that he knew there was still very much to be learned. It was the motive of Nu-Isis Lodge to achieve contact with forces beyond the ordinary geometrical spaces of manifestation, which resulted in two channeled texts: The Wisdom of S'lba and Liber OKBISh, which were preserved and distilled by Kenneth Grant in Outer Gateways (1994) and The Ninth Arch.


559-11. Zos embalmed her magick in a new geometry glyphed by the spider’s thread …

     There is a drawing extant [Man is a Bundle of Ids by Austin Osman Spare. See Frontispiece.] depicting Clanda surrounded by the sigils and graphs of Spare’s ‘new geometry’. This was the picture that Dr. Phineas Black was so eager to decipher, for its strange sigils (strange even to him!) contained the secrets which form the life-blood of this Book 29 woven from the luminous body of OKBISh. Is not the verse-number that of all Magick and of the Qliphoth, both of which Clanda strove to manipulate? She carried the egg which symbolizes the shells (qliphoth), and we are told that the cypher ‘O’ signified with the Ancients the number ELEVEN. This is confirmed by the Oracle which totally void of correspondences (in the Book of Numbers so far compiled at the time OKBISh was received), and which still is!

     This last sentence comes somewhat as a surprise considering 559 has some pretty basic correspondences, and though the word 'PROSTITUTE' which is mentioned in the quote from verse 458 in the previous post shows that Grant was obviously familiar with the application of Hebrew gematria to English phrases, though he likely didn't consider it a method or formula to be considered as consistently applicable - or maybe he simply hadn't yet found many of the values using this formula for whatever reason(s). For one, it would be very difficult to keep such a database of values before the point when personal computers were available, and even with them there still doesn't appear that that many people- if anyone - has considered to do so until relatively recently. My own personal database transcribed into a handwritten physical version and of merely the sequence 1-999 consists of 5 large books; 1-199, 200-399, 400-599, 600-799, 800-999 with little room for more than 1 page per number, with the exception of the triple values which I gave added space for. (Note also that 'O.T.O. PROSTITUTES' has the same value as The Scarlet Woman, 667 = Η Κοκκινη Γυνη.)

     The particularly peculiar value he apparently hadn't been aware of regarding 559 is that of THE O.T.O., = 'THE SEX MAGICK NUMBER' which he claimed to be rightful Successor and O.H.O. of (Outer Head of the Order). 559 has some significant correspondences relating to the 'New Geometry' referred to in the Commentary as well. This New Geometry very likely relates to the 'New Knowledge' mentioned in the Commentary of Verse 398-22, quoted in Opening the Watchtowers, as well as to the 'New Symbols' of AL.II.55 which refer to the application of the newer English letter-symbols to the ancient Hebrew value system (or vice-versa). 559 is 107 less than 666, therefore showing a multitude of relevant combinations; THE THELEMIC O.T.O., CHEMICAL-ENERGY HARVEST, THE X-Y-Z SPACE, MATHEMATICAL SUBCONSCIOUS THOUGHT, etc. (THE THOUGHT SPACE = 666, THE FACULTY OF CLAIRVOYANCE = 559. Note 107 is also 'ULLAM', consciousness and GOLD, the alchemical symbol of illumination.)

     559 particularly relates to the propositions set forth in the previous posts regarding the THE SUBCONSCIOUS QABALAH or the MATHEMATICAL SUBCONSCIOUS faculty. 559 veils THE ANGELS of THE SPACE (Euclidean) as well as THE QUANTUM ENERGY FIELD and THE FRACTAL HOLONS, i.e. the Sephirothic web composing the COSMIC KALEIDOSCOPE. Relating to the O.T.O. and their secret of Sex Magick veiled in the number 666 it is also THE SEXUAL RADIOACTIVITY or THE BIO-MAGNETISM contained in and formulating the Auric Egg (107) of THE AKASHA. 559 is 1 more than Hριλιυ, the orgasmic energy and dealing with the nature of these correspondences as it does, seeing that it is also the value of A LIGHT WORKER shows the practical nature of the Astral Light in relation to Gematria as MAGICKAL QUANTA. (666 is A QUANTUM COMPUTER KEY, the GOD IN THE MACHINE - INSIDE A SIMULATION - THE LOOKING GLASS reflecting manifestation outwardly, misinterpreted as the 'FALSE REALITY THEORY' INSIDE VIRTUAL REALITY as a qliphothic inversion of THE HIDDEN OCCULT LIGHT.) 559 is also A BIOLOGICAL LIFE-ENERGY which is channeled via THE CADUCEUS or Staff of Hermes, symbolic of the Kundalini with its triple-flame of Spirit.


     Crowley knew of this 'Supreme Secret' of the O.T.O. and gave many references to it aside from making it rather obvious to those with the appropriate degree of intiation:
     "Although I was admitted to the thirty-third and last degree of Freemasonry so long ago as 1900, it was not until the summer of 1912 that my suspicion was confirmed. I speak of my belief that behind the frivolties and convivialities of our greatest institution [i.e. Freemasonry] lay in truth a secret ineffable and miraculous, potent to control the forces of Nature, and not only to make men brethren, but to make them divine. But at the time I speak of a man came to me, a man of those mysterious masters of esoteric Freemasonry who are alike its Eyes and its Brains, and who exist in its midst - unknwon, often, even to its acknolwedged chiefs... This man had been watching my occult career for some years, and deemed me now worthy to partake of the Greater Mysteries. With these he proceeded to acquaint me, and my life has since then been devoted principally to their study and practice." -Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God, (1973) page 174.
Letter from Fr. Achad to Gerald Yorke.


"Our Order possesses the KEY which opens up all Masonic and Hermetic secrets, namely, the teaching of sexual magic, and this teaching explains, without exception, all the secrets of Freemasonry and all systems of religion." -Francis King, The Secret Rituals of the O.T.O. (1973), pg. 17
See also Amrita for the 'secret' methods of REJUVENATION OF THE O.T.O. / LIFE-REJUVENATION KNOWLEDGE. ThE AMRITA = 666

     THE MYSTERY OF SEX MAGICK is the eternal interplay that makes the SUPREME TANTRA of the dew of stars in the womb of Nuit forming eternally THE ONE MAGICKAL ACT - THE RITUAL of the THE CIRCLE of Tao, ever whirling into oblivion or zuowang. In Fundamentals of Tai Chi Ch'uan, Wen-Shan Huang makes it clear that Tai-Chi is always flowing in circles so MOVEMENTS IN CIRCLES during THE PHYSICAL EXERCISES is a good rule to take into account being as it is an archetypal hallmark in mystical, shamanic and magick rituals. Banishing in particular, for PARASITES and QLIPHOTHIC FORCES of DEMONIC FORNICATION  spawn from the use or misuse of CONSCIOUS LIFE ENERGY, which is why it is very important to LEARN MAGICKAL DISCIPLINE and TRANSCEND DESIRE.

 
     Many of our lower drives and impulses involve little deep inner deliberation, which can be a very destructive and counterproductive thing. True Conscious Self-Awareness comes rather fleetingly when in the moment of fast decision making and is usually fleeting in the case of most biological organisms lives. The true secret of sex magick is not in any Kama Sutra techniques, although as some have said there are biological basises to the 'Mysteries', but in the sexual radioactivity of the maximally self-aware and healthy, living, breathing Human Being. The traditional methods of maintaining vigour while directing the magickal Will is to exercise mind and body weekly focusing on the planetary energies of the days and their hours, going by the month or lunations following the LUNAR TIDE CYCLES and THE PSYCHIC PULL OF THE MOON, and during PEAK LUNAR ENERGY periods - especially eclipses - releasing the accumulated energy-sphere at the climax of a FULL MOON MAGICKAL RITUAL, as the tradition of witchcraft has preserved in THE MAGICK CONE OF POWER Ritual. This provides a means of working with the light and dark energies of the conscious and subconscious for the alchemical fusion to align and engage from macrocosmic-planetary to microcosmic-cellular levels.

     THE VIOLATION that resulted in the 'WRONG OF THE BEGINNING & END' was, after all, part of the fruit of knowledge which rendered us self-aware and one of the authorities or archons of Terra in the first place. This singular supreme value of 666 veils the DOCTRINE OF ATONEMENT, or at-One-ment, all things magnified in their complex unity. Thus 666 does in actuality combine both Science and Religion as THE RELIGIOUS GNOSIS of Mystical and Magickal Union between Self and Other, and the unique connections and conditions - as well as the Scientific VICTORY OVER GOD that is THE MISSION & MOTIVE OF HUMANITY, being invested in the pride and arrogance it is, and the eventual recalibration of the life-wave of this planet under THE TRANSHUMAN MOVEMENT - if we cannot form an Organic Transhuman Order to regenerate the planet via THE TIKKUN OLAM, or repair of the world through the realigning to the Supernal Wisdom.

     666 is the CELL OF CONSCIOUSNESS itself, COGNITION - the DIGITAL CONSCIOUSNESS CODE or MATHEMATICAL CONSCIOUSNESS supposedly eluding all these billion-dollar scientists who ignore and deny THE ULTIMATE SCIENCE of SCIENTIFIC SYNCHRONICITY, THE UNDENIABLE EVIDENCE of which is OBVIOUS & UNPARALLELED. Once you learn the basic formulae, you can see the obvious values without even trying. 666 is THE KEY OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS and THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE HUMAN MIND - which if professors and psychologists really wanted to help teach their students would advise them to keep journals not only of their lives and learnings, but also the entire contents of their minds to the best of their ability. Not necessarily through LifeLog technology, but simply in the interactive learning process of the formulation of language and its patterns, the individual would be greatly benefited to have a physical transcript of their own 'magickal universe', which is essentially what a gematria database is if used properly.

      It is this once lost but now revived knowledge that will further unlock the mysteries of the ancient megaliths and monuments which have eluded explanation and understanding, as well as pave the way for NEW POWER SYSTEMS and FUTURE TECHNOLOGY MACHINES for within this Key to Forbidden Wisdom resides the SCIENCE & KNOWLEDGE OF THE FUTURE, as it is THE SCIENCE OF FUTURE KNOWLEDGE, being THE KEYS OF HUMAN GENIUS left occulted by the ignorant. This DIGITAL QABALISTIC ALGORITHM will become increasingly relevant as time progresses and the overall OUTLOOK changes as the Solar-power reimbues the Earth. 

     That 666 is THE UNIVERSAL KEY OF THE O.T.O. and was revived by The Great Beast, ΤΟ ΜΕΓΑ ΘΗΡΙΟΝ, 666 in his incarnation as Edward Alexander Crowley should come as no shock considered how confidently he associated with it. It is also the value of my own name in Hebrew, which no longer surprises me as I too have long gravitated toward it and its Gnosis for my own revelation of the further mysteries it veils under the sign of the Dove, the original Typhonian zootype which the O.T.O., Gnostics, and Catholics still utilize to symbolize the Holy Ghost, as Gerald Massey says in A Book of the Beginnings

     "Another typhonian type was the dove. The name of this bird in [p.379] Egyptian is menat, and it must have been an emblem of the primal genetrix as it bears her name, both as menat and the dove, or tef (Eg.), the Hebrew רות. The dove was the bird of breath or soul, the later ghost. An Egyptian statuette of the Nineteenth Dynasty shows a dove with a human head and wings extended over the bosom, typifying the breath or soul. It was a type of the goddess Hathor, in Egypt, and it brooded over the statue of the Syrian Juno at Hierapolis in the shape of a pigeon made of gold. To call it a solar bird has no significance. It was the image of the gestator, the bird of breath, and as such is held in the hand or on the sceptre of Hera in the act of visibly incarnating the soul of breath. It was the bird of the virgin mother who was the brooder, the generator of the soul when both truths were assigned to the genetrix. Hence the two turtle-doves of the Jewish offering, and hence also the dove of the Holy Ghost continued in the Christian iconography. The Jews charge the Samaritans not only with the worship of the dove, but also with a form of circumcision dedicated to the dove[58]. This was the dove that was synonymous with the sword, and the rite was the 'Reproach of Egypt.'"

     (Note that the transliterated pluralized form of RVTh with an added 'S'=60 = 666=200+6+400+60. DOVE (85 = DIVINE) is 581 (HORUS, 'SAINTS') less than 666 as well, the Dove being associated with the Saints and a bird-form of Ra-Incarnate. 666 is the chamber with the KEYS OF THE DIVINE that unlock the GNOSTIC ECCLESIA OF GNOSIS, or Gnostic Church of Sacred Wisdom, embodied by the true DIVINE SAINTS.)

     That the ©aliphate O.T.O.™ is no longer in possession of the wisdom of these Keys or the knowledge of how to use them is evident from their lack of significant progress since the passing of Crowley and the excommunication of Grant, both of whom remain unsurpassed in their Work, and the need for others to bypass and surpass this stagnant order and create their own systems from the ashes of the Phoenix. Francis King also recognized this when he wrote his now banned book The Secret Rituals of the O.T.O. (due for reprinting in 2017, no doubt to cash in some more on what they can as usual.) :
    "My conclusion is that no group can estabish any legal claim to be the O.T.O. Nevertheless, any group which works in the genuine spirit and can make the required contacts with the forces on the higher planes that are behind the O.T.O., can regard itself as magically speaking, a section of the genuine O.T.O. Today many such groups are coming into existence. The publication of the O.T.O. rituals will aid them in their tasks; for too long these rituals have circulated only in inaccurate versions amonst tiny coteries who imagine they have some right to deflect the magical current that is designed to regenerate our Planet."

     The work here laid out is yet still a mere conglomeration of signs upon the Path pointing to deeper and greater mysteries yet to be realized and applied in their full potential. These Keys are accumulating to point a new system and Order based not on temporal authority and external comradery, but internal and self-contained, self-explanatory 'secrets' not hidden, but secreted from the deepest strata of our inner-most being to the outermost voids. The Supreme Secret of the Illuminati is the gold key of 666 which when obtained unlocks all doors and expounds all mysteries. It is both the number of Beast, Man and God, and THE EVOLUTION therefrom. When approached with fear and condemnation it is a force of DESTRUCTION, but if approached with Wisdom and Understanding provides the Key to Παραδισος (Paradise).