I have completed making edits and modifications to my book project, “Practical Qabalah for Occultists” and I have signed a contract with Crossed Crow Books and submitted the manuscript as part of the contractual obligation. This book is a republishing of the Llewellyn book “Magical Qabalah for Beginners,” which they decided not to republish and thus, returned the rights to me. I had the last manuscript version of the book in MS Word and also the galley PDF, and went through the manuscript and made updates to it so that it would more closely conform to the galley version, and also to make some additional changes, such as gender pronouns and other minor tasks, like capitalization consistency, etc.
What I found was that after all these years since 2012, I didn’t need to add or revise any of the content. Additionally, the text of the manuscript was written incredibly well, and in fact, it was probably some of the best writing that I have used in any of my books since that time. I guess it was a combination of passion and inspiration that made the writing of that book turn out so well. In some cases, I found the text to be almost lyrical, especially when describing the twenty-two paths. Going over the book with a fine eye for editing, I found that it was an excellently written book, and I was surprised that Llewellyn had made the decision to cease its publication. I am certain that CCB will be happy to take the revised edition and add it to their catalogue, perhaps sometime in late 2025 or early 2026.
Needless to say, this book represents a comprehensive background and practice of an occult version of the Qabalah, made relevant to Pagans and Witches and anyone else who is not of the Abrahamic religious faiths. What that means is that the book promotes a practice and methodology that doesn’t require anything additional. It is a complete and whole spiritual and mystical discipline by itself. There are magical aspects in the practices shown in this book, but they are more like theurgy than ceremonial magic. In fact, there really isn’t any ceremonial magical components in the book. The significance of this statement is that the Qabalah stands by itself, without any other practices or metaphysical attributes needed to make it a complete discipline.
Here is a quotation from my book, taken from the last chapter.
In the Book of Abramelin, the author, Abraham the Jew, tells his youngest son that he is giving him the wisdom of his knowledge of magic (in the book that he has written) because he must give the knowledge of the Qabalah to his eldest son. So it would seem that he has deemed to divide his wealth and wisdom between his two sons and the eldest receives, of course, the greater share. When I first read this passage, I was quite astounded, since it seemed to say that the knowledge of the Qabalah, in and of itself, was superior to the knowledge of magic. Here is the passage, found in the first book, chapter 9 (p. 34), where Abraham tells his son Lamech:
“The art of wisdom has its foundation in the secrets of the highest and in the holy Kabbalah, which belongs to your eldest brother Joseph, and not to you.”
It would seem, then, that knowledge of the Qabalah is not only greater than the knowledge of magic, but that through it, one could gain everything that magic would give and more. According to the Book of Abramelin, a mastery of the Qabalah is superior to the knowledge and practice of magic, and between the two, it is the greater prize by far. This concept becomes even more amazing to us when we consider that the purpose of the Book of Abramelin was to successfully invoke and manifest one’s Holy Guardian Angel.
To complete a practice of the esoteric Qabalah, one only needs to engage deeply with one’s religious faith, whether that be Wicca or some form of modern Paganism, and to use the practices in my book to build a complete religious, mystical and theurgic discipline. Ostensibly, an occultist can use my book and not have to perform any other magical rites to project their theurgic magic into the world.
So, if this is true then how do we employ the Qabalah into our ritual or magical ceremonial practices. The actual truth of the matter is that high forms of magic typically rely on an intrusion of the Qabalah to be merged with it so that it might have a greater impact in both the material and spiritual worlds. These forms of magic need the Qabalah, but the Qabalah doesn’t need any forms of ritual or ceremonial magic to achieve its objectives. Additionally, I have written five books on advanced ritual magical practices that can used by Witches or Pagans that doesn’t incorporate the Qabalah. That means that a Witch or Pagan could perform rituals of invocation, evocation, elemental magic, talismanic magic and sacramental theurgy without having recourse to the Qabalah. What that demonstrates is that the Qabalah is a distinct discipline, and that a magician can employ the Qabalah into their magic, but that choice is completely optional - there is no requirement to do so.
If employing the Qabalah into the practice of ritual or ceremonial magic is completely optional, then when would it be useful or optimal to combine it with the practice of magic? One of my complaints, and the reason why I wrote the “For Witches” series of books without any recourse to the Qabalah, is that I find that it has been overused. Not every ritual has to include Qabalistic attributes. Even the Golden Dawn did not always flavor their rituals with the Qabalah, although they did more often than was necessary, in my opinion. Yet I find that the Qabalah is used in a lot of rituals these days, as if to give them the authenticity that they might lack without it. My approach is to use the Qabalah when it is appropriate to do so, and then only when the function of the Qabalah is critically important to the working. Overuse, in my opinion, makes the Qabalah redundant, and diminishes its importance and its potency. Let me define where using the Qabalah is appropriate, then we can focus on where it would be redundant.
Tree of Life and the Four Worlds as a Map
The Inner Planes, as the domain of the World of Spirit, is actually formless and cannot be mapped or understood by any kind of model or structure. Since everything is related to the One in that domain, when truly apprehended, it appears as a unity without any differentiation. It is beyond conscious apprehension, and it defies the rational logic of language or the structures of the mind. It is like a mirror, and it reflects back to us our beliefs, religious signs, symbols, and metaphors, and the logical structures that we use to help define what it is. Yet none of these artifices approximate the true nature that it expresses. It is the great singularity, and beyond it, is the greater emptiness. Even the Qabalah, with its ideas of Ain Soph Aur can only dimly approximate the true nature of this phenomenon. This is true with all of the various religious, esoteric or occultic approaches to understanding the One that is the source and the ultimate object of all conscious beings. However, the protean flexibility of the One allows us to use models and language to stimulate and engage with this Unity, and we can therefore use the models, symbols, constructs and various glyphs to emulate our experience of it. But, we must never fail to understand that the models and linguistic artifices that we might use will always fall short of truly defining it.
The Qabalistic Tree of Life represents a model of the emanations that generated the many lights of consciousness from the One through a mathematical sequence of the numbers 1 through 10. This model uses the Pythagorean base-10 approach to describing the waves of emanations, but certainly other systems of numeration could be used. While numbers represent the emanations that flowed from the One to the Many, there is also a circuitous pathway for the Many to return to the One, and that is represented by the 22 Pathways that connect the 10 numbered spheres or containers of the light of the One. These Pathways are given the attributes of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, symbolizing that the means to regaining the apprehension and absorption of the One is through the holy literature of the Tanakh, or the Hebrew Bible.
Numbers, letters and words, waves of emanation and paths to unity, are the attributes of the Tree of Life. Yet there is also the finite structure of the Tree, and its placements of the ten emanations, and the relationships between them via the paths, that show its remarkable utility. These components can represent the structure of the Inner Planes, approached from the manifestation of individual consciousness and the ensouling of material beings from the unified and mysterious source. They are given various symbolic attributes, consisting of the four elements, the seven planets, the twelve signs of the zodiac, the thirty-six decans, the seventy-two quinians, the trumps of the Tarot, various Deities and metaphysical concepts of all religions throughout the world, and colors, perfumes, incense, gem stones, metals, minerals, herbal medicines, and every conceivable mental attribute and material element in the world of humanity. The Qabalah unites everything within its structure of emanations and paths.
Additionally, the Four Qabalistic Worlds also represent a map of the Inner Planes, since it is a four-fold definition of the Emanations and Pathways of the Tree of Life, collecting the myriad of attributes within the four worlds of the Absolute, Creation, Formation, and Manifestation, where the One became the consciousness of the Many. Organized within these four Worlds are the various residents, both of spirit and mind, which would represent the Godhead attributes, Super Archangels, Archangels, Angels and Demons, and the spirits of the Earth and the Underworld. These domains of consciousness are populated by various entities, as the emanations and paths are refracted through the Four Worlds, producing a more comprehensive spiritual map of what is largely a domain that is wholly and completely unified into a single expression of Being residing within infinite emptiness. The importance of the Qabalah is that is gives a structure and order to something that has no order or structure, but through the Tree and Worlds, we can apprehend in a small part of the truth, and thereby gain a significant spiritual perspective of the whole.
Another important factor is that the many different attributes of the 10 Sephiroth, 22 Pathways and the Four Worlds can be placed into tables of correspondence, thereby giving intrinsic meaning and comparative commonality to very different associated elements. Each Sephirah and Path has other attributes that help to give it meaning, such as the planets or signs of the zodiac, and to these are associated colors, gem stones, metals, plants and herbs, various Deities from other pantheons, and a host of other attributes. Singularly, they are not as meaningful except when combined and grouped together where they gain their greater importance.
For instance, a simple list of spirits in any order by itself is not as meaningful as when it is placed within a matrix associated with attributes of the Tree of Life, and fixed within one of the Four Worlds. Then each spirit in the list inherits a whole catalogue of attributes and a spiritual hierarchy to help qualify it, including a sigil to specifically identify it. When performing an invocation of a spirit and using this kind of table or matrix to characterize and qualify it, then that operation is what I call invoking through a grid or matrix, and it produces the best results because the spirit is fully defined before being summoned.
Therefore, the Tree of Life, the Four Worlds, and the tables of correspondences represent a significant methodology for defining the Inner Planes, characterizing various hierarchies of spirits and giving individual entities an identity, function and purpose. Defining the Inner Planes in this manner makes them accessible to the practicing magician, and gives a disciplined methodology to the mystic who seeks to regain that once state of One that is the source of all. The Qabalah functions as a universal repository of all religious and spiritual symbols, and embodies a spiritual discipline for both the mystic and the magician. It provides a roadmap through a world that has no distinctive geographic features, habitations, roads or pathways, milestones showing the distance traveled, nor does it contain any idea of a destination, since to enter that domain is to unwittingly and immediately arrive at one’s objective.
Arithmology - Number and Letter/Word Manipulation
Determining and defining the domain of the Inner Planes is one of the features of the Qabalah, however, it is not the only important and valuable technique. Since the Emanations are numbers and the Pathways are letters, then it would be obvious that mathematics and literature would be the products of these attributes. Although the Qabalah is limited regarding mathematics, it would be conceivable that any mystical system of numeration would be readily expandable to include geometry, algebra, trigonometry, differential and integral calculus, linear algebra, and beyond. However, the numbers are not only quantities, but they have an intrinsic esoteric value, so that working with them, and with alphabetic letters, which have their own intrinsic meanings, to form equations can be understood as having an occult value as well as a mathematical value. Still, this is beyond our consideration here, since we must limit our discussion to the traditional Qabalah and my profound lack of mathematical expertise.
Systems of arithmology in occult studies within the Qabalah include the practices of Geomancy, Notariqon and Temurah. Additionally, there are the tools of magic squares equating letters and numbers, the inherent numeric values associated with the letters of the alphabet, and the use of alphabet wheels that allow for the production of linear vectors representing the sigil of a name or phrase. Branching off of that methodology is the modern mechanism of generating sigil or glyphs from lettered names or phrases. Each of these techniques serve a magical and occult purpose, and they are used to expand the power of numbers, letters and words.
Gematria is a system of number substitution for letters, where the numeric values of the letters in a word are added together to get a total value. The value for specific words and phrases is then compared in a compilation called a Sepher Sephiroth, a book of numbers. The basic premise in Gematria is that words and phrases that have the same numeric value must be strongly related. This technique is most useful when the occultist has a body of written lore or holy scriptures upon which to apply, extracting occultic relationships between different words and phrases. It is less useful for someone who doesn’t have sacred writings, because then the words subjected to this kind of scrutiny do not have the context of holy writ to build meaning. I have found Gematria to be interesting, but I have found that some occultists overuse it, such as the manner that Kenneth Grant has employed it to announce as fact the most tenuous connections through Gematria. Without any critical alternative proof or corroboration, Gematria alone does not satisfy the need for deriving solid occult knowledge. This is, of course, my opinion.
Notariqon is the art of building and exploding acronyms. I have found this technique to be very useful, since I have used it to construct magical formulas where letters, words and declarations are expressed at certain ritual point intervals (like the four watchtowers or angles, or any combination), and then a combined formula word is derived when the letters and words are joined, causing the circle nodes that they represent to be unified. These formula words can be words unto themselves or they can have no meaning other than representing the holistic expression of the letters set to the circle points. All my advanced ritual workings use this mechanism so that the layers within a series of rituals are sealed and expressed in a unified manner, and the final expression of the working is where the first letters of each formula would be used to build a formula that would define the working as a unified structure.
While I use Notariqon to fashion and build acronyms and explode them as words that represent meaningful phrases, it is likely that a Qabalistic practice uses sacred writings would focus that methodology on deriving and building deeper meanings within the text of the scriptures. Since I don’t have that feature in my religion, I can use this technique in a more creative and free-flying manner. I still generate deeper meanings and themes when I employ it in my rituals, but it doesn’t tie back to any scriptures, which would give such constructs even more depth and meaning.
Temurah is a system of letter substitution, function primarily as a set of ciphers where the Hebrew alphabet is broken into two columns of 11 letters, and the association of one letter to its pair is the how letters are substituted. There are a total of 24 different ciphers that can be developed from this mechanism, where the alphabet is split in two and realigned to produce letter pairs. This technique can be used to uncover occult aspects of words or phrases, or it can be used to either disguise writings or to discover coded messages that used this technique to hide their true meaning from the profane.
Another technique of Temurah is used to substitute letters for numbers so they might be used to draw sigils and seals on magically numbered squares. This technique is called the Aiq Bkr or Qabalah of Nine Chambers, since it is a table of nine cells that contain like numbers distinguished by their factor of ten. Thus the first cell would contain the numbers 1,10,100, for the letters Aleph, Yod and Qoph, and if a Qabalist had to fit the letter Qoph into a magic square for Jupiter, whose max number is 16, then they would have to exchange it for a Yod to use the number 10 in the square.
Aiq Bkr requires the use of what is known as magic squares, and these squares are associated with the seven planets, from Saturn (3), Jupiter (4), Mars (5), Sun (6), Venus (7), Mercury (8) and the Moon (9). Magic squares are used to create sigils and seals for spirit names that fit within the category of one of the planets. Magic squares, however, is a system unto itself, and represents both a Qabalistic discipline and a system of magic.
Since Temurah employs a system to derive sigils and seals for spirit names using magic squares, then any other methodology used to produce the same product could be loosely associated with this discipline. Thus, the use of alphabet wheels to draw sigils, and the system that Spare developed to produce sigils and glyphs would also be a part of this occult technology.
The systems of arithmology are important to the practice, research and determination of meaning in the study of the Qabalah, but they are also very important in the writing and development of magical rituals and ceremonies. Since I have applied this methodology to most of the magical rituals that I have devised, especially the advanced rites, then this is a technique that is most useful and universal to my approach to ritual magic. I don’t use Gematria, but forms of Notariqon and Temurah are ubiquitous in the magical technology that I employ.
When to Use the Qabalah
This brings us to our final considerations about when it is appropriate to employ the Qabalah in ritual magic. First of all, I use forms of Notariqon and Temurah in nearly all of the my magical rites. If we consider the use of occult acronyms, both their expression and exposition, and the use of various types of sigils, then I make use of these techniques everywhere, but they just aren’t obvious or deliberately Qabalistic.
Where I employ the Tree of Life and the Four Worlds is wherever I need to work with a map of the Inner Planes. There might be other approaches to determining these kind of structures and their seemingly limitless tables of correspondences, but when I am performing any kind of invocation, evocation or in some manner, traversing the Inner Planes through my magic, then I will employ the Qabalah directly in my rituals, and add significant details and depth to my working that it would otherwise not possess.
If I am working simple of forms of magic, such as elemental, basic spirit conjurations, simple forms of talismanic magic, sacramental theurgy, or initiation ordeals, then I don’t have to use the Qabalah. This is why I was able to write the five books in the “For Witches” series without any recourse to the Qabalah. However, any complex magic that is being worked through a symbolic grid or that requires a spiritual hierarchy, or is traversing the Inner Planes will use the Qabalah, and my more advanced magic, which employs these methodologies, does indeed make extensive use of it.
This is the rule that anyone who would use the Qabalah in rituals and ceremonies should apply to their work. I would recommend using the Qabalah only when you need it, otherwise, I would recommend sticking with simpler methodologies so as not to overuse it. Overusing the Qabalah is to make it less meaningful and significant in one’s magical work, and I would advise you, my reader, to avoid that pitfall.
Frater Barrabbas
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