A recent discovery in mathematics teases Western magicians with a new possibility. Perhaps one day soon we will see through the illusory bonds of all Division.
Perhaps, seeing the abyss of number as the three-petaled Flower unfolding at Our very heart, Peace will descend through and around the very particles of tumult. Perhaps the Inaudible Thunder underlying all phenomena will be that of our own Divine Voice.
“For I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union.” —AL, I:29
Western Adepts train our minds to work with a magickal alphabet of the numbers 1 through 32. These are the 32 Paths of Wisdom–the 10 spheres on the Qabalistic Tree of Life and the 22 Tarot paths connecting them. Our purpose in doing so is to “hear” in an undistorted way the Holy Guardian Angel’s voice through the phenomena of our own magickal Universe. After all, the Tree of Life provides an all-purpose map of both the seemingly external universe and its microcosm within our own multi-layered body.
To weave our perceptions into a harmonious whole and hear our divine Self through them, we pay attention to the resonances of numbers with factors among these first 32. For example, if I am #33 in line to see someone about my driver’s license renewal, perhaps I notice that my number is 3 x 11. Perhaps that thought helpfully reminds me of the magical (11) dimension of all Form (3). Maybe it wakes me up to the way I have lost my Self recently in superficial distractions.
Yet what of numbers not derivable from 1 through 32? What is the import of these prime numbers larger than 32 and how do we Adepts work with them? Recently, mathematicians Larry Guth and James Maynard may have moved the field a step closer to proving the related Riemann hypothesis. While not a function that spits out only and all the prime numbers, the Riemann hypothesis tells us something precise about how the prime numbers are distributed, and thus about how the field of numbers is structured on a grand scale. According to the author of the linked article, primes comprise the basic building blocks of number. A prime number is any natural number greater than 1 whose only factors are 1 and itself. No other two numbers multiplied together will equal a prime number. Perhaps, the author suggests, the primes undergird number similarly to the way in which the chemical elements underlie all chemicals and their interactions.
Adepts can’t work with the prime numbers above 32 in the usual way. We encounter each of these primes larger than 32 as a unique monad or element. Presumably each of them has a resonance beyond the Universe, perhaps beyond even our own Angel, or at least what we can know of It. Of course, we can and do analyze any number’s digits in Tree-of-Life terms, and that will illuminate a meaning for us. Yet, something of unfiltered, unique Mystery remains of each prime number.
The Two-ness Comment
The lowest prime number, 2, is of course the only even prime–the only female prime, if you will. The very archetype of Division, 2 (= 1 x 2) marks the intersection of the human and Divine minds in the Vesica Piscis, the cradle of Resurrection.
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It has long been said that the universe of form is evil. According to much tradition, She is a Witch that seeks to pull men down into hell, enslaving them in the prison of the sensible world. But today this is a dirty lie. This statement purporting to warn men against entrapment proves to be a major snare.
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The Universe is Virgin. Already perfect, She needs no purification. Her apparent evil, if any, indexes the impurity of the magician who beholds Her. So it is we, beginning with our minds, who must purify and master ourselves. We must steel ourselves for the Adventure.
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Whence the impurity? Habitual error, constantly reinforced by the minions of the Slave God. A misuse of The Devil path that links our minds with the center of All. A failure to recognize the apparent inner and outer as One in the Nothingness. A failure to recognize ourselves as kaleidoscopic theophanies of the Secret, Unknown God. There is nothing to do but to Do.