Anthony Testa - The Key of the Abyss.pdf

Chapter 19 : New Aeon English Kabbalah and Liber 49
There is a time honored technique for interpreting and deciphering the
results of magical communication, known as Practical Kabbalah and
involves the assignment of numerical values to the letters that make up
a word and then adding them together, producing a value for the word
as a whole 190 . There are in fact several techniques that are derived
from the basic theory that words have numerical values; popular
numerology is a bastardized version of this technique. The techniques
that we shall use are described by MacGregor Mathers in his
Introduction to the Kabbalah;
Gematria. (Heb.). A division of the practical Kabbalah. It shows the
numerical value of Hebrew words by summing up the values of the
letters composing them; and further, it shows by this means, analogies
between words and phrases. One of the methods (arithmetical) for
extracting the hidden meaning from letters, words and sentences.
(Theosophical Pub. Co., 1892, p. 127)
Gematria is a metathesis of the Greek work grammateia. It is based on
the relative numerical values of words... Words of similar numerical
values are considered to be explanatory of each other, and this theory
is also extended to phrases. Thus the letter shin, Sh, is 300, and is
equivalent to the number obtained by adding up the numerical values
of the letters of the words RVCh ALHIM, Ruach Elohim, the spirit of
the Elohim; and it is therefore a symbol of the spirit of the Elohim... 191
Further, there is a technique that, as we shall see, was used in the
“opening” of the book itself, as evidenced by verse 47 of Liber 49:
Even now thy hour strikes upon the clock of my FATHER. For He
prepared a banquet and a Bridal Bed. I was that Bride, appointed
from the beginning, as it was written T.O.P.A.N. (my emphasis). That
the text itself spells the word To-Pan out as T.O.P.A.N. merely
reinforces the argument that this was the intent (as if Babalon – or
whomever – didn’t want to risk Parsons, or his readers, missing it. In
any case this is an example of Notariqon (as Mathers refers to it)
190
This technique is more technically known as Gematria.
191
S.L.M Mathers, Introduction to the Kabbalah, Electronic Ed.
131