All This And A Book by Cath Thompson; ’Numbering the Letters of the Alphabet’ revisited
In the mid-to-late1970s English Thelemic magician Jim Lees, together with the group he’d gathered around him, started having interesting synchronicities around Crowley’s Liber Al . Particularly the verses that seemed to foretell the discovery of a Qabalah which used the English alphabet. I learned of this work via Ray Sherwin, who was sufficiently impressed with their discoveries to hand over to them the running of his Thelemic magazine The New Equinox. (I never really understood why this transaction happened, because Lees’ group immediately changed the mag’s name to British Journal of Magick. But I guess just having the ‘Equinox’ brand was important.) They used that imprint to publish their numerological findings, and I tried out their ‘English Qabalah’ on my own magical word-hoard. For anyone who has never developed a fascination with gematria, let me say that it’s astonishingly moreish, once you get the taste for it - the patterns that emerge have a quality of instant gratific...