From: mimir@hardy.u.washington.edu (Al Billings)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Another file on Slopoke
Date: 7 Jan 1993 04:59:39 GMT
Organization: The Friends of Loki Society
NNTP-Posting-Host: hardy.u.washington.edu

Here is a file I found on the Monochrome Bulletin Board 
 ( telnet 138.40.11.1 login mono, password mono )


                       Qabbalistic Word Manipulation
                       -----------------------------
  Gematria
  --------
    One problem  that faces occultists  is the verification  of information
  that has been  communicated by 'spirits' or similar  sources. Naturally I
  will have questioned the  spirit as to its personal details,  eg its name
  and rank. How do I know whether its answers are correct ? Should I assume
  it is telling the truth when it says it is Gabriel ? How can I be sure it
  is not, in fact, the evil Glasyalabolas ?

    Gematria is  one method that can  help in these matters.  Gematria is a
  part of the  Jewish occult system known as Qabbalah  ("tradition") and is
  widely  used by  modern  occultists -  jewish or  otherwise  (e.g. it  is
  central to many rites of freemasonry).

    Probably the best  way to explain the  word gematria is to  say that it
  means "Hebrew numerology".

    The Jews don't have special  characters to represent digits or numbers.
  In Hebrew every alphabetic letter has a number associated with it :

    Letter                    Value                    Sound

    Aleph                        1                       A
    Beth                         2                      B,V
    Gimel                        3                      G,J
    Daleth                       4                       D
    Heh                          5                      E,H
    Vau                          6                      U,V
    Zayin                        7                       Z
    Cheth                        8                      Ch (as in loch)
    Teth                         9                       T
    Yodh                        10                     I,J,Y
    Kaph                    20  or  500 (final)          K
    Lamed                       30                       L
    Mem                     40  or  600 (final)          M
    Nun                     50  or  700 (final)          N
    Samekh                      60                       S
    Ayin                        70                       O
    Peh                     80  or  800 (final)         P,F
    Tzaddi                  90  or  900 (final)         Tz
    Qoph                       100                       Q
    Resh                       200                       R
    Shin                       300                      S,Sh
    Tau                        400                      T,Th

    ( final = value of letter when it occurs at the end of a word )

    Gematria simply  consists of adding up  the values of the  letters in a
  word. Words with the same totals are connected in some way.

    eg The Hebrew word for 'corpse' has the same number as the word for 'to
  extinguish'.  Therfore there  is  some  sort of  link  between the  ideas
  'corpse' and  'to extinguish'.  In practice  the connections  between the
  words will not be as obvious as this.

    Getting back  to the subject  of verification of  spirit communications
  let's imagine  that I heard all  sorts of wonderful things  from a spirit
  who said his name was 'Abs'.

    Using gematria  I would create  a word  with the sound  'abs'. Possible
  words would therfore be

        Aleph + Beth + Samekh = 1 + 2 + 60  =  63
        Aleph + Beth + Shin   = 1 + 2 + 300 = 303

    Looking up words with  the value 63, I immediately find  the Hebrew for
  'Dung'. Similarly for 303 I  find 'Putrefaction'. My conclusion from this
  is that  the demon 'Abs'  should not be trusted  and his words  should be
  taken with a bucket of salt.

    Please note that there  are no vowels in Hebrew, letters  such as aleph
  and ayin  do not  correspond exactly to  a and o.  Vowels are  written by
  placing marks  underneath the letters.  Thus we  may leave out  all vowel
  sounds from out gematria if we so wish.

    e.g. If I receive a  communication from someone called 'Saddam Hussein'
  saying that he  is the antichrist, then  I would have to  believe what he
  says because :

    'Saddam' = Samekh + Aleph + Daleth + Aleph + Mem
             =   60   +   1   +   4    +   1   + 600  = 666

    ( I could spell this with a double daleth, the sound would be the same)

    also

    'Hussein' = Heh + Vau + Shin + Shin + Heh + Nun
              =  5  +  6  + 300  + 300  + 5   +  50   = 666

    ( No need to  add a Yod to make an 'i' sound  for the reasons mentioned
  above.  Also Nun  is  not given  its final  value,  a common  qabbalistic
  cheat ! )

    There  are lots  of other  qabbalistic methods  that allow  us to  gain
  insight into the  hidden meanings of words. (Eg a  method called Thashraq
  consists of writing  a word backwards, therefore  'doli' (basket) becomes
  'yalad'  (to create).  I  will look  at just  two  other methods,  namely
  Temurah and Aiq Bekar.


  Temurah
  -------
    Temurah  has several  meanings :  permutation, wages  and compensation.
  Qabbalists are mainly interested in the first of these (unfortunately).

    Temurah is  a method whereby we  replace letters in a  word, or phrase,
  with other letters  according to a precise rule. Actually  there are many
  methods of temurah, though once you know one method, you know them all.

    Firstly split the Hebrew alphabet in  two, and place one half under the
  other, thus :

    K      I      T      Ch      Z     V      H      D      G      B      A
    L      M      N      S       O     P      Tz     Q      R      Sh     Th

    This particular method is called Athbash,  its name comes from the four
  letters on the far right of the table  ( A, Th, B, Sh ). Using athbash we
  would replace a  'T' with an 'N', an  'M' with an 'I', a 'G'  with an 'R'
  etc.

    The other variations  of temurah and constructed by  sliding the bottom
  row of letters along. Sliding one place to the right will give us Ashbar,
  sliding again with give Arbaq.

    Temurah  was used  by medieval  qabbalists to  construct god-names  for
  their  rituals. It  also crops  up  in the  bible. Consider  verse 26  of
  Jeremiah  XXV   which  reveals   the  rather  obscure   name  'Sheshakh'.
  Submitting the  letters ShShK to the  method of Athbash gives  us BBL, or
  Babel ! Thus the passage becomes crystal clear to the crafy qabbalist.


    Aiq Bekar
    ---------

    Aiq Bekar, or the 'qabbalah of the nine chambers', divides the alphabet
  into 9 groups according to letter value :

    Sh    L     G              R     K     B              Q     Y     A
   300   30     3            200    20     2            100    10     1

    M     S     V              K     N     H             Th     M     D
   600   60     6            500    50     5            400    40     4

    Tz    Tz    T              P     P    Ch              N     O     Z
   900    90    9            800    80     8            700    70     7


    One of the more prominent uses of aiq bekar is for reducing the values
  of  certain letters  in  a name,  to  enable us  to  construct the  sigil
  (signature) of a spirit or angel.

    As an example  of the use of  aiq bekar, let us construct  the sigil of
  Zazel, the spirit of Saturn :

    Firstly we take the magic square (kamea) of Saturn

                                4    9    2
                                3    5    7
                                8    1    6

    The idea is to convert each letter in the name Zazel (in Hebrew this is
  spelt ZAZL) into a number, then mark each number in the kamea. Finally we
  construct the sigil by drawing lines between these numbers.

    Z   A   Z    L    =    7   1   7   30

    The first three letters of the name  will fit in the kamea. Lamed won't
  - there is no number 30 ! By  aiq bekar we can reduce this to 3, enabling
  us to fit the sigil within the magic square.

                                4    9    2
                                *    5    *
                                8    *    6

    Joining these 3 (4) numbers gives us the sigil :


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