A Trigrammaton Qabalah Commentary on The Book of the Law

The qabalistic exegesis of Aleister Crowley’s The Book of the Law, (also known as Liber CCXX, Liber AL vel Legis, or simply Liber AL), is a treacherous subject.  Not only are there a multitude of meanings layered into the text, but according to the Class A Comment on Liber AL; “The study of this Book is forbidden...” and this statement has created controversy from the moment it was penned by Crowley, for how is the adept to fathom the mysteries of the Book without studying it? Consider the caveat found in verse III:42: “Success is thy proof: argue not: convert not: talk not overmuch!”

It is my contention that the Prophet himself, Aleister Crowley, provided the solution to verse II:55, “Thou shalt obtain the order & value of the English Alphabet; thou shalt find new symbols to attribute them unto.”  The letters of the English alphabet are attributed to the various trigrams by the Prophet alone, and by applying the key of Base 3 to decode the trigrams, the numerical results set forth here are inevitable. The sole responsibility for these results lies with the Prophet and his Holy Guardian Angel, Aiwass.

Any attempt at an exegesis of Liber AL has to concern itself with one primary fact: there is a distinct difference between the original Holograph manuscript, (called Liber XXXI), and the typeset edition of it known as Liber CCXX.  In all cases it is presumed that the Holograph takes precedence as the original source material, penned in Cairo in 1904.  Nevertheless, Liber CCXX represents the Prophet’s official publication of Liber AL according to the intent of Aiwass as he understood it, and this received text will be the benchmark of the following analysis.

According to TQ gematria, the complete English text of Liber CCXX has the value of 257,790.  Dividing this by 10 equals 25,779, which is the number of years in one complete cycle of the Precession of the Equinoxes.  This number 257,790, however, does not represent a complete accounting of Liber CCXX, for the text also contains several other letters and numbers.  These additions include the word , which equals 93; the letter Tzaddi, which equals 90; the numerals 4, 11, 418, & 718, which equal 1151; the verse numbers, which equal 8,221 and finally the great Cipher found in verse II:76. 

Below is the summation of the complete text of Liber CCXX. 

The number 267,696 has been called The Global Sum of Liber CCXX; this title has a TEG value of 220, which is the numeration of the book based on its number of verses.

There are five important sections of the Book of the Law that provide a formula to find the global sum of the text. These are: the first verse, the last verse, the Cipher verse, verses I:46-48, and the entirety of Chapter 2 (in conjunction with the number Pi).

Each of these five sections will be explored in-depth in the following chapters.