Sotto Voce
05-13-2006, 03:07 AM
"Thelemites have labored for decades to determine the "order and value of the English alphabet" referred to in chapter I verse 55 of Liber AL. Crowley's magical son Charles Stansfeld Jones, aka Frater Achad, arrived at a partial solution as long ago as 1918, but abandoned his efforts at an early stage, unwilling or unable to carry them through. That task fell instead to Carol Smith of British order the OAA, who succeeded in deriving a viable English Qabala from the text in 1974 a full 70 years after it was first transcribed.
Although difficult to summarize, Smith's approach basically entailed treating the letters of the alphabet as if they were fixed points on-the circumference of a circle and numbering them sequentially, starting at A and counting forward 11 places each time. Thus L became number two, W number three, H number four and so on. By continuing in the fashion until all 26 characters had been assigned a value she arrived at an elementary substitution code similar to those once common in juvenile spy fiction."
"To begin with, the letters comprising ALBERT K. BENDER have a value of 195, which, as Stephen Dziklewicz points out, also = ALIEN ABDUCTIONS. Significantly, Gray Barker's roman a clef The Silver Bridge deliberately shortens Bender's name to AL K. BENDER which has a value of 114, THE NAME (i.e., Bender's name held the key to his experiences) and even more unambiguously, CHOSEN ONE."
Although difficult to summarize, Smith's approach basically entailed treating the letters of the alphabet as if they were fixed points on-the circumference of a circle and numbering them sequentially, starting at A and counting forward 11 places each time. Thus L became number two, W number three, H number four and so on. By continuing in the fashion until all 26 characters had been assigned a value she arrived at an elementary substitution code similar to those once common in juvenile spy fiction."
"To begin with, the letters comprising ALBERT K. BENDER have a value of 195, which, as Stephen Dziklewicz points out, also = ALIEN ABDUCTIONS. Significantly, Gray Barker's roman a clef The Silver Bridge deliberately shortens Bender's name to AL K. BENDER which has a value of 114, THE NAME (i.e., Bender's name held the key to his experiences) and even more unambiguously, CHOSEN ONE."