SUBLUNAR SPACE - gematria

Machinic Dendrophiles

2025-07-14T14:45:00+02:00

A Critical Reflection on Hyperstitional Occultism in general and the trope of the Tree of Life and the Numogram in specific, resulting from multiple attempts of working with these concepts. I know this article might rub practitioners of Golden Dawn style magick, Thelemites, Chaos Magicians and Neolemurian time sorcerers the wrong way, but it's just like my opinion, man ¹.

v.1.2 - July 18, 2025

I think it's for us to make sense of trees, not to use arborescence as a kind of criterion of philosophical insufficiency. Nick Land²⁶

Cutting Down the Tree

On my research journey exploring different popular Western magical currents I could not help but notice a widespread obsession with the trope of the 'Tree of Life'. It’s almost impossible to avoid. At first, I even assumed there was no way around it, since it’s so prominently featured in nearly all occult literature. While I totally understand the aesthetic lure of a schematic concept of reality, the more I delved into it the less it clicked with me. That also includes its cybergoth sibling, the Numogram.

To recap, the Tree of Life is the central diagram of most prominent of schools of Jewish mysticism, the Lurianic Kabbalah. Likely influenced by earlier mystical frameworks such as The Seven Palaces ² it is composed of ten spheres called Sephirot (סְפִירוֹת). It maps the process by which the infinite divine source, Ein Sof (אֵין סוֹף), emanates into creation. Each sephira corresponds to metaphysical principles, ethical qualities, archetypes, and aspects of the soul. The Tree serves as both a cosmological map and a contemplative tool, guiding the mystic in a lifelong process of refinement and return to the divine. It is embedded in Jewish liturgy, halachic life, and inseparable from the communal, theological, and ritual contexts in which it developed. ³ ⁴

It's deeply fascinating but I am neither Jewish, nor do I believe that it can be fully grokked outside of its spiritual tradition.

Although the diagram reached its most recognizable form in 16th-century Lurianic Kabbalah, its basic structure was already established in earlier texts. Christian thinkers such as Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Johannes Reuchlin were among the first to extract and reinterpret this structure outside its Jewish context ⁵. They appropriated the Tree of Life and reframed it through a Neoplatonic-Christian lens, using it to validate Christian theological concepts while severing it from its halachic roots. Fair enough.

My sincere apologies in advance to anyone using Victorian lodge magick in their practice, but in my opinion the really dumbed down misappropriation of the Tree of Life kicked off in the beginning of the 20th century when the magical order of the Golden Dawn placed the Tree of Life at its core, not in connection with any of its original Jewish theological depths but as a kind of aesthetic filing cabinet onto which planets, Tarot cards, Hebrew letters, alchemical symbols, archangels, astrological elements and other endless occult correspondences got mapped ⁶. This reification of structure and symbolic systemization was just the beginning.

Then came Aleister Crowley ("Hold my beer!") and took the Tree of Life further, subordinated it to his own take on pseudo-Kemetic philosophy called Thelema and layered it with Vedic chakras, his own numerological obsessions, erotic metaphysics, and personal empowerment ⁷. The result is even more of a cringeworthy intellectual and spiritual distortion.

From what I gathered, Jewish Kabbalists understood the mystical path as inherently bound to communal responsibility, reverence for the divine, and a centuries-long interpretive tradition. The occult appropriations, by contrast, are individualized, instrumentalized, and divorced from authentic mystical engagement. Where the Jewish kabbalistic Zohar spoke of the soul's yearning for union with the divine through humility and worship, or "Avodah" (עֲבוֹדָה), Crowley speaks of the magician imposing their will on the cosmos.

I find all of this especially problematic in the face of the unprecedented violence and marginalization of Jewish communities during the same period by the same cultures that romanticized their mysticism.

The obsession with the Tree of Life trope didn't die with the early 20th century occult revival. Fast forward to the end of the century where it was regurgitated during the 'Chaos Magic' fad and eventually mutated into something new when the academic artist collective Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU) picked up the trope and cyber-fetishized it.

Enter the Numogram

The CCRU was an experimental collective of theorists and artists at the University of Warwick associated with figures such as Sadie Plant, Nick Land, Mark Fisher, or Reza Negarestani who explored cybernetics, philosophy, science fiction, rave culture, internet culture, and occultism. They produced an impressive body of work that blurred the boundaries between theory and fiction.

The CCRU had a lot of innovative ideas that influenced occult thinking at the time, most notably the concept of Hyperstition ⁸. The neologism that combines the words 'hype' and 'superstition' describes the process by which fictional or speculative ideas can influence reality by circulating through culture and belief. Unlike traditional superstitions, which are typically rooted in inherited myths or fears, hyperstitions are understood as self-fulfilling narratives.

Another key occult innovation from the CCRU was the inception of the Alphanumeric Qabbalah ⁹, a system of English gematria that assigns numerical values to the letters of the Latin alphabet. I make regular use of this system ¹ and plan to explore it in depth in a dedicated article.

The CCRU's most iconic hyperstitional tool is the Numogram ¹⁰, a symbolic diagram built on the base-10 numerical digits and made of ten numerical zones grouped into five pairs, or syzygies, linked by their digits adding up to nine. The difference between the numbers in each pair creates a current, forming the system's primary flows ¹¹.

At a glance the Numogram resembles the Tree of Life in its geometry and like its Jewish predecessor proposes a universal map of forces and movements.

Part of the hyperstitional myth is an explicit critique of the original Tree of Life as a distorted, degenerated form of the Numogram, reduced to a baroque relic unworthy of serious occult inquiry. While both diagrams share structural similarities, such as ten zones, numerological methods, and symbolic mappings, the Tree is portrayed as an incoherent system upheld by tradition rather than principle. Its structure is dismissed as arbitrary, with numerical order and Hebrew letters assigned mystical weight without any internal logic ¹² ¹³.

Where the magical orders of the early 20th century simply appropriated and dumbed-down the Tree of Life to shoehorn endless correspondences into it, the CCRU explicitly rejects its esoteric value and ridicules its Jewish roots in favor of their own techno-occult version of it.

Lemurian Time Sorcery

Based around the Numogram comes a plethora of esoteric lore ranging from Theosophy-esque myths of a forgotten Lemurian magical current that runs in opposition to the western Atlantean tradition, to a matrix of Lemurian correspondences too deep and complex to explore meaningfully within the scope of this article. A great primer on the topic is this article by Mikal Mindzenty.

The gist of the core of the myth is that numeric pairings of the Numogram are haunted by demons representing particular types of temporal forces, as well as Lemurs, described as ancestral or undead time-beings who drift through the channels and gates. These hyperstitional entities turn it from a static diagram into a dynamic network of haunting, often hostile, intelligences.

Obviously borrowing from the structure of magical grimoires the 'gram lore has inspired plenty of chaos magicians to engage with the system in practical ways - from divination using the Numogram to invocations of the demons and communing with Lemurs.

Notable sources of Numogrammatic magic are

Anders J. Aamodt's 'Unleashing the Numogram'
'Time Sorcery' by Vexsys and Neospare
The Lemurian Times community

From a Chaos Magic perspective, this is all very sound, exciting, and innovative. And again: apologies to all neolemurian mages out there having a lot of fun delving into all this. As much as I feel drawn to the cybergothic vibe of the CCRU's ramblings, and prefer a flat circuit of equal numbers over a hierarchical tree of emanations, and love the idea of "time sorcery," I just can't help but cringe at the blatant disregard for magical tradition, dismissed as unnecessary baggage in both Chaos Magic in general and the CCRU's occultism in particular.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed to the appropriation of magical traditions. I believe all of magic is, at its core, rooted in syncretism and appropriation. Just look at the Greek Magical Papyri, which blended Kemetic, Hellenic, Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian, and Mesopotamian elements. But it did so with humility and awe, placing reverence and worship at the heart of its practice rather than discarding them.

My critique of the Numogram isn't primarily about its rejection or misappropriation of the Tree of Life's origins. More than that, I simply don't find any convincing evidence that the Numogram holds metaphysical or practical value beyond the self-perpetuating fiction of its hyperstitional myth.

Channeling the Nine

The Numogram poses as a metaphysical diagram of time and desire, although its entire structure is arbitrary. It treats the decimal system as if it were cosmic truth.

In that sense it's no more credible than other New Age concepts derived from decimal numerology, such as Vortex Mathematics by Marko Rodin¹⁴, or the 369 Manifestation Method¹⁵ that is based on a posthumous and unsupported attribution to Nikola Tesla:

If you only knew the magnificence of the 3, 6 and 9, then you would have the key to the universe. ²⁷ ²⁸

I would even argue Vortex Mathematics offers a more elegant and coherent system of numeric relations than the Numogram and possibly even more potential for magical application, it just lacks the cybergothic coolness of CCRU inspired techno-occultism.

What all of the mentioned systems have in common are their insistence that the relations between numbers in the common base-10 system reflect some kind of metaphysical gnosis. In any base-n, patterns emerge. The moment you change the number base, the supposed special status of 9 (n-1) becomes completely arbitrary¹⁶ ¹⁷. The truth is that patterns pop up all the time in mathematics, because mathematics is basically just the rigorous study of patterns.

While the authors, commentators, and practitioners all acknowledge the Numogram's arbitrary nature ¹⁸ and even discuss alternative base systems ¹⁹, some still paradoxically insist that this arbitrary decimal structure maps reality itself. The claim that the Numogram "completes itself from the beginning"²⁰ relies not on metaphysical rigor but on the illusion of internal coherence derived from the cherry-picked arithmetic operations used. Like Gnostic sects obsessed with secret numerical codes ²¹, discrete digits are fetishized as keys to transcendence, but any theological or ethical grounding those traditions historically claimed are rejected.

Numogram praticioners claim that the CCRU's magic is valid even if invented, because it "works" and has inspired practice ¹⁸. But this overlooks a deeper problem: when everything becomes potentially true via belief and performance, magic is reduced to a speculative solipsism. The Numogrammatic system of magic is not a revelation, but a simulation of one: occult spectacle, where vibe replaces structure, and memes masquerade as mysteries.

Of course I understand that this spectacle is not accidental - it's the whole point! The Numogram is embedded in the CCRU's larger theory of hyperstition. Rather than seek truth or spiritual transformation, hyperstition revels in simulation that self-replicates.

The fact that both the concept of hyperstition and the creation of the Numogram originate with none other than the supreme edgelord of contemporary philosophy, Nick Land makes me wonder whether the nihilistic void at the heart of the latter isn't, in fact, intended.

Into the Dark Land

Best known for his provocative fusion of continental theory, cybernetics, and occult aesthetics Land's early work combined Deleuzian metaphysics, Gothic horror, and anti-humanist cybernetics to formulate a radical vision centered on fragmentation, machinic desire, and the breakdown of subjectivity.

Over time, Land's thought shifted dramatically toward far-right accelerationism ²², embracing the unraveling forces of capitalism not as something to resist, but as an inhuman engine to be unleashed. He became a key figure in the Dark Enlightenment ²³ movement, promoting neo-reactionary ideas and anti-democratic techno-politics. In his writings on Bitcoin ²⁴, Land treats it as a form of decentralized, algorithmic governance, an emergent intelligence he aligns with capital's escape from human control. His writings reject emancipatory politics in favor of techno-mysticism, elitism, and the aesthetic glorification of entropy ²⁵.

Numbo Jumbo

I totally respect the work and effort being put into Neolemurian Timer Sorcery to make it a valuable system of magic beyond PDF archeology, ironic memes, and schizoposting but for me personally it feels like yet another take on the trope of reifying dendriform graph theory into something metaphysical.

At the end of the day the Numogram is just a diagram of decimal number relations. It is a symbol of hyperstitional belief mechanics rather than an occult map of time. Its "magic" seems to work through sheer belief but without metaphysics. Lemurian Time Sorcery is ritual without responsibility based on myth without meaning. It is aesthetic nihilism wearing occult drag, built to deconstruct, to signal mysticism without ever submitting to it.

If the Jewish Tree of Life once served as a guide toward transformation and communion with something greater, the Victorian orders reduced it to a fetishized aesthetic. Mutated into the Numogram, it now gazes inward into a void of its own making, where meaning is endlessly deferred. The Tree of Life served as a ladder, the Numogram is a closed circuit. It remains a hyperstitional black box, a trap for the imagination, not a tool of liberation.

machinic dendrophiles = AQ 369 = a dubious inheritance = beautiful creatures = completely untrue = drowned continents = entirely by machines = everything counts = fear is the mind killer = intellectual dark web = little lemur people = master manipulator = mirror of existence = neosavage aesthetics = no room for excuses = numerology for life = pandemoniac practices = pathbreaking research = qabbalistic resonance = rituals and doctrine = struggle for power = subordination codes = the demons of unbelief = the ghost continent = the great conspiracy = they all look the same = vortex mathematics = warping into zones ↩↩
Bethsheba Ashe, The Trees of Life, Times of Israel, December 10, 2020 ↩
My Jewish Learning, Isaac Luria and Kabbalah in Safed ↩
Center of Online Judaic Studies, Lurianic Kabbalah and Mysticism ↩
Wikipedia, Christian Kabbalah ↩
Hermetic Library, Samuel Scarborough, The Tree of Life: Filing Cabinet of the Western Mystery Tradition ↩
Thelemapedia, Tree of Life ↩
0rphan drift archive, Delphi Carstens, Hyperstition, 2010 ↩
Hypestition Blog, Qabbala 101: Part 1, July 14, 2004 ↩
Cybernetic culture research unit, Decimal Numogram ↩
Each zone's digits add up to a gate, which determines a channel, a hidden path connecting different zones. These channels form the Numogram's secondary flows, connecting otherwise separate parts of the diagram. The currents divide the system into three time loops: the Time-Circuit (a central cycle), the Warp (upper loop), and the Plex (lower loop). Gates and channels link these time systems, enabling movement between them and shaping how time is manipulated within the diagram. ↩
Cybernetic culture research unit, absctract culture, digital hyperstition, 6a. The Vault of Murmurs, "1. Numogram and Otz Chaiim" ↩
Hyperstition blog, Qabbala Unshelled, December 28, 2004 ↩
Backup of the Rodinaerodynamics.org website ↩
Ipek Williamson, Tesla’s Code to the Universe: Understanding the 369 Manifestation Method ↩
Thayer Watkins, The Sum of Digits for Multiples of Numbers ↩
The Problem Site, Vortex Based Math - Ask Professor Puzzler ↩
Cluness, Bob. Step into the Pandemonium: On Breathing Life into the CCRU's Invented Magical Traditions. February, 2021. ↩↩
Colectiva Tzitzimiyotl, IMEX Research Reconstruction Program, X profile @Numogrammatix ↩
Vexsys, Time Sorcery, Gate Zero, 2020, p. 15. ↩
Kalvesmaki, Joel. 2013. The Theology of Arithmetic: Number Symbolism in Platonism and Early Christianity. Hellenic Studies Series 59. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. ↩
Nick Land, A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism ↩
Nick Land, The Dark Enlightenment ↩
ŠUM | Journal for contemporary art criticism and theory, Šum#10.2 / Nick Land: Crypto-Current, An Introduction to Bitcoin and Philosophy, November 20, 2018 ↩
Verso Books Blog, McKenzie Wark, On Nick Land, June 19, 2017 ↩
The Dangerous Maybe, Nick Land Explains the Numogram, July 1st, 2025 ↩
While he was deeply fascinated by numbers, frequencies, and resonance, there is no documented evidence that Nikola Tesla espoused any specific theory about 3, 6, and 9 having mystical properties. The only attested anecdote is that he was especially obsessed with the number 3. ↩
OCD UK, The History of OCD, Nikola Tesla ↩

Daimonic Scrabble

2019-05-01T22:00:00+02:00

A confusing article I wanted to get out on Mayday. I will probably elaborate further in the near future

"The bird rights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God's name is Abraxas." [1]

On Mayday two years ago during a holiday in the French Provence with extended family I had a strange dream in which a scar faced demon gave me three words:

GOD ANKHOR SOLEX

I did not know what to make of it and these words puzzled me for a long time.

The meaning of God was self-evident. I suddenly understood Ankhor ("Horus Lives") during a walk with my daughter two months after. But Solex remained an unsolvable riddle...until exactly two months ago.

I was hanging out in the Charm the Water Discord chat and someone there was trying to figure out the meaning of a word he got in a dream. I was reminded of my aforementioned dream. Aaron suggested to use gematria and I checked the isopsephic (Greek gematria) value of the Greek spelling of SOLEX: ΣΟΛΕΞ.

It is 365!

My mind was blown and a lot of associations rushed through my head. Obviously, 365 days of a solar year, but specifically 365 is also the isopsephic value of one of the most powerful magical names: the seven lettered ΑΒΡΑΣΑΞ or ΑΒΡΑΞΑΣ! The megas archon and ruler of the 365 spheres of the Gnostic Basilides, the "the power above all, and First Principle" according to Epiphanius.

Many things have been written about Abrasax (I recommend this and that), but the most significant piece I found was by Carl Gustav Jung in his neo-gnostic work "Septem Sermones ad Mortuos":

"Hear Ye: I begin with nothing. Nothing is the same as fullness. In the endless state fullness is the same as emptiness. The Nothing is both empty and full. One may just as well state some other thing about the Nothing, namely that it is white or that it is black or that it exists or that it exists not. That which is endless and eternal has no qualities, because it has all qualities.

The Nothing, or fullness, is called by us the PLEROMA. In it thinking and being cease, because the eternal is without qualities. In it there is no one, for if anyone were, he would be differentiated from the Pleroma and would possess qualities which would distinguish him from the Pleroma." [...]

"There is a God about whom you know nothing, because men have forgotten him. We call him by his name: ABRAXAS. He is less definite than God or Devil. In order to distinguish God from him we call God HELIOS, or the Sun.

Abraxas is activity; nothing can resist him but the unreal, and thus his active being freely unfolds. The unreal is not, and therefore cannot truly resist. Abraxas stands above the sun and above the devil. He is the unlikely likely one, who is powerful in the realm of unreality. If the Pleroma were capable of having a being, Abraxas would be its manifestation." [2]

Abrasax is the all-uniting god, he is above the benevolent god and the malevolent devil, beyond concepts like morality, sin, good, and evil. In a most Jungian psychoanalytical sense he represents the Principium Individuationis, the individuation of a subject in reconciliation with its own shadow.

Hermann Hesse used this neo-Gnostic Jungian image of Abrasax in his coming-of-age (auto-)biography "Demian" where the protagonist Sinclair chases after the meaning of a god named "Abraxas". (This was one of my favourite books as a teenager, but I completely forgot that Abrasax was part of it)

A powerful paragraph in the book that makes this Jungian understanding of the god very clear is the following:

"You consider yourself odd at times, you accuse yourself of taking a road different from most people. You have to unlearn that. Gaze into the fire, into the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak, surrender to them, don't ask first whether it's permitted or would please your teachers or father, or some god. You will ruin yourself if you do that. That way you will become earthbound, a vegetable. Sinclair, our god's name is Abraxas and he is God and Satan and he contains both the luminous and the dark world. Abraxas does not take exception to any of your thoughts, any of your dreams. Never forget that. But he will leave you once you've become blameless and normal. Then he will leave you and look for a different vessel in which to brew his thoughts." [1]

I admit, it might seem quite a stretch to claim that SOLEX equals ABRASAX just based on the isopsephic value they share, but let me add a few more pieces of the puzzle. Take the recent synchronicities and adventures following my initiation into the sphere of Jupiter and the fact that the word ANKHOR as "Horus lives" was also significant during another synchro-mystical visit to my hometown.

My ongoing individuation, current readjustment of my relationship to my parents and also my progressing magical journey are all tightly tied together.

In some of the old Gnostic texts Abrasax was seen less as "god above god" but more as a powerful "archon", ranking even below the demiurge Yaldabaoth. Initially the two different concepts seem to contradict each other and are very confusing, but when you try to leave dualistic thinking and rational logic behind and view everything from further above, when you "squint down" onto it - to borrow a Gordonism - from a more irrational, magical "daimonic perspective", these contradictions slowly dissolve and metaphysical borders can get blurry.

Two years ago, when I received the three words, I was confused and I agonized over their meaning. I wanted to know the one real message that was encrypted. After waking from the dream I did not even remember if the second word was ANKHOR or rather ANCHOR, it could even have been ARCHON. Today I do not even want to sharpen the blurriness anymore. Why not take all of them?

It is the same with SOLEX. Yes, it has a strong connection to ABRASAX. But it also contains SOL, the sun; and EX, Latin for "out". But that seems to be precisely why I received SOLEX and not ABRASAX. Because it is "all of the above":

GOD, ANCHOR, ARCHON, HORUS LIVES, SUN OUT, ABRASAX, 365

It was a daimonic message, not a rational one. It makes sense to me now. It is full of Christian, Gnostic, and Egyptian meaning. I can't really explain why in a way it makes sense. It just does. It's beautiful. And it took two years to reach this point. Individuation. Embracing the blurriness.

Happy Beltane!

Shudderful Names

2017-09-12T19:30:00+02:00

(Version 1.0, 12/09/2017)

Every since my discovery of the missing formula in the Stele of Jeu papyrus and its torn edge with the vowel annotation, I've been obsessing over the seven vowels and their use in the PGM (1) and excessively diving into heaps of articles and books about the topic.

My left brain keeps insisting "There's gotta be a system or pattern!" while my right brain keeps smiling, saying "it's all just about the harmonic sounds, dude!".

Anyways, this post serves as a (growing) public collection of my notes about "the shudderful names" and to some extend also the "barbarous words" and how and if they are related to the single spells they are part of.

The Alphabet in Mystic and Magic

The best attempt of an academic analysis of the seven vowels I have found so far is in a German book from 1925 called "Das Alphabet in Mystik und Magie" by Franz Dornseiff.

In Chapter II §3 the author lists examples of the vowels and in which context they were used in different papyri and gnostic texts. He states that the prayers that contain vowel variations are addressed to the following Egyptian deities: Isis, Osiris, Thoth-Hermes, Sarapis, Harpocrates-Chnuphis. More than to the Egyptian gods they are used in prayers to the Jewish/Christian god JHVH/IAÔ and in a few cases to the Archangels. Other deities are Helios, Aion, Abrasax, but mostly Apollon and Hekate.

He talks about the directionality of the vowels and the way they are supposed to be pronounced according to the PGM. Ne also notes, that the vowels are used more at the end of invocations than at the beginning, as most powerful magical words. Dornseiff points out that the source of these vowels is most probably to be found in Egyptian theurgy. He presents the two often used quotes by Demetrios and Nicomanchus (see below) and pinpoints the beginning of the use of vowel variations to the end of the 19th dynasty (around 1150 B.C.).

One probable reason for the vowel combinations is the magical practice of seeking a deity's "real name" beyond their given name that ususally does not come close to their true essence in a limited human alphabet. He also notes that one should not forget that not all magicians were pious idealists, some also made up gibberish on the fly, because they had paying customers.

He refers to a paper by his colleague A. Harnack who alleged that the rows of vowels could be a "dialect" of the "convulsive languages" ("speaking in tongues") and that they need to be ecstatically vibrated.

What follows is a list of use cases of different vowel variations, that they are written in triangle shapes, or cycling through them forwards, backwards, and so on and so forth. He does not offer any conclusion about the vowel use at the end of his chapter about this topic, but in general Dornseiff notes that evidence against a randomly used gibberish and for a system is the fact that a lot of the voces magicae including the vowels are often accompanied by an explicit comment about how many letters long they are. Often these numbers refer to the stars: 7 (planets), 12 (zodiac), 28 (mansions of the moon), 36 (decans) or kabbalistic numbers 12, 42, 72. Sometimes they are palindromes, in other cases written in triangle or other shapes (wings, grapes, heart).

Books & Documents

Correspondences

Google Spreadsheet with correspondences found for the seven vowels

Quotes

The Seven Vowels

The Seven Greek Vowels symbolised the seven heavens, or Planets, whose harmony keeps the Universe in existence, each vowel having seven different methods of expression corresponding with a certain Force, the correct utterance of these letters and comprehension of the forces typified being believed to confer supreme power, bringing success in all enterprises and giving complete control over all the powers of darkness.

(William T. Pavitt & Kate Pavitt, 1922, The Book of Talismans, Amulets and Zodiacal Gems, 2nd edn., Rider & Son, London, p.65.)

Greek letters became hieroglyphs, [...] while Egyptian hieroglyphs could be ‘spoken’ in Greek; Egyptian priests claimed Greek vowel sounds as the divine inheritance of Thoth, while Greeks turned the same vowel sounds into the visual insignia of cosmic forces.

(Frankfurter, 1994, “The Magic of Writing and the Writing of Magic.” From p.211)

The Greek initiates also recognized a fundamental relationship between the individual heavens or spheres of the seven planets, and the seven sacred vowels. The first heaven uttered the sound of the sacred vowel Α (Alpha); the second heaven, the sacred vowel Ε (Epsilon); the third, Η (Eta); the fourth, Ι (Iota); the fifth, Ο (Omicron); the sixth, Υ (Upsilon); and the seventh heaven, the sacred vowel Ω (Omega). When these seven heavens sing together they produce a perfect harmony which ascends as an everlasting praise to the throne of the Creator.

(Manly P. Hall. Secret Teachings of All Ages (New York, NE:Tarcher/Penguin, 2003[1928]))

Sound and Harmony

[...] if all existing things were tunes, they would have been a number, but a number of quarter-tones, and their essence would not have been number; and the one would have been something whose substance was not to be one but to be the quarter-tone. And similarly if all existent things had been articulate sounds, they would have been a number of letters, and the one would have been a vowel. And if all existent things were rectilinear figures, they would have been a number of figures, and the one would have been the triangle. And the same argument applies to all other classes.

(Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book X, Part 2)

There are seven vowels, seven strings to the scale, seven Pleiades. . . and seven heroes who attacked Thebes . . . [The Pythagoreans] also assert that xi, psi and zeta are concords . . . because there are only three double consonants, and . . . there are three concords. . . . And they point out that the interval from alpha to omega in the alphabet is equal to that from the lowest note of a flute to the highest, whose number [twentyfour] is equal to that of the whole system of the universe.

(Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book N, 1093a-b, in H. Treddenick (trans.), (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. 300-301)

And the tones of the seven spheres, each of which by nature produces a particular sound, arc the sources of the nomenclature of the vowels. These are described as unpronounceable in themselves and in all their combinations by wise men since the tone in this context performs a role analogous to that of the monad in number, the point in geometry, and the letter in grammar. However, when they are combined with the materiality of the consonants just as soul is combined with body and harmony with strings—the one producing a creature, the other notes and melodies—they have potencies which are efficacious and perfective of divine things. Thus whenever the theurgists are conducting such acts of worship they make invocation symbolically with hissing, clucking, and inarticulate and discordant sounds.

(Nicomanchus of Gerasa, "Manual of Harmony")

The seven strings of the magic lyre gave out, as they sounded, vibratory numbers corresponding to the astral waves of the seven planets. The Hierophant applied, for his musical purposes, the mechanism of the cosmic vibrations, and it was thus that at the propitious moment, he proceeded to the animation of the transvitalized phantasm of the Pharaoh. To capture the astral influx of planetary life, and to transfuse it into the mummy, the Hierophant made the seven notes resonate magically: A, G, F, E, D, C, B; according to a slurred ternary rhythm which repeated like a charmed circle.

Then the atmosphere of the tomb was animated by lines of subtle energies, and the prodigy of an extraordinary condensation of cosmic life manifested by the rhythmic palpitations of the supervitalized air.

The astral waves became more and more condensed, so as to form a wondrous fluidic spiral, the shape of the magic vortex of protection and animation whose center was the mummy itself. At that instant, the Hierophant intoned the incantation of astral life and fixed it, following the law of magical correspondences, in the breast of the mummy, whose phantasm was animated by an inextinguishable flame: and the miraculous existence of the Pharaoh's double would last as long as the land of Egypt.

(Fidèle Amy-Sage, "Le secret de la sépulture d'un Pharaon")

Sound is a form of energy. Different vibrations of sound cause varying energy levels. Your state of consciousness can be changed by your own vibrational rate. You can also obtain visions of the gods and shape-shift [...]. When sound is used as a mantra, your concentration, visualization, and power during magic can be accelerated. The rate of vibration in your pronunciation of words and names changes energy molecules. Every cell of a thought, emotion, plant, animal, person, and all that is visible and invisible, vibrates, because every atom of every molecule within a cell is energy. All that is animate and inanimate consists of energy. The human voice produces two different sound qualities: consonants and vowels. Each quality releases and enhances the energy of your consciousness and therefore empowers your divination or magic work.

(Eleanor L. Harris and Normandi Ellis "Ancient Egyptian Magic")

Gematria and Isopsephy

For the monad, therefore, as being beneficent, they assert that there are consequently names ascending, and beneficent, and masculine, and carefully observed, terminating in an uneven number; whereas that those terminating in the even number have been supposed to be both descending, and feminine and malicious. For they affirm that nature is made up of contraries, namely bad and good, as right and left, light and darkness, night and day, life and death. And moreover they make this assertion, that they have calculated the word Deity, (and found that it reverts into a pentad with an ennead subtracted). Now this name is an even number, and when it is written down (on some material) they attach it to the body, and accomplish cures by it. In this manner, likewise, a certain herb, terminating in this number, being similarly fastened around (the frame), operates by reason of a similar calculation of the number. Nay, even a doctor cures sickly people by a similar calculation. If, however, the calculation is contrary, it does not heal with facility. Persons attending to these numbers reckon as many as are homogeneous according to this principle; some, however, according to vowels alone; whereas others according to the entire number. Such also is the wisdom of the Egyptians, by which, as they boast, they suppose that they cognise the divine nature.

(Egyptian Theory of Nature; Their Amulets, Refutation of All Heresies (Book IV), Chapter 44, Hippolytus)

the inhabitants give attention to every branch of learning and especially to astrology; and they use letters which, according to the value of the sounds they represent, are twenty-eight in number, but the characters are only seven, each one of which can be formed in four different ways

(Iambulos Island, Diodorus Siculus, Book II, pg. 37)

Gnostics

"There is no mystery which is more excellent than these mysteries on which ye question, in that it will lead your souls into the Light of the lights, into the regions of Truth and Goodness, into the region of the Holy of all holies, into the region in which there is neither female nor male, nor are there forms in that region, but a perpetual indescribable Light. Nothing more excellent is there, therefore, than these mysteries on which ye question, save only the mystery of the seven Voices and their nine-and-forty powers and their ciphers. And there is no name which is more excellent than them all, the name in which are all names and all lights and all powers.

"Who then knoweth that name, if he cometh out of the body of matter, nor smoke nor darkness nor authority nor ruler of the Fate-sphere nor angel nor archangel nor power can hold down the soul which knoweth that name; but if it cometh out of the world and sayeth that name to the fire, it is quenched and the darkness withdraweth.

"And if it sayeth it to the demons and to the receivers of the outer darkness and their rulers and their authorities and their powers, they will all sink down and their flame will burn and they will cry out: 'Holy, holy art thou, most holy of all holies.'

"And if one sayeth that name to the receivers of the wicked chastisements and their authorities and all their powers and also to Barbēlō and the invisible god and the three triple-powered gods, straightway if one will say this name in those regions, they will all fall one on another, will be undone and destroyed and cry out: 'O Light of all lights, which is in the boundless lights, remember us and purify us.'"

(Of the highest mysteries and of the great name, Pistis Sophia, Book V, Ch. 143)

Iota, the Universe came out; Alpha, they will turn them; Omega, will become the completion of all completions.

(Jesus quote, G . Horner (trans.), "Pistis Sophia" ( London : Macmillan, 1924), p. 180.)

But these are the names which I shall give from the Boundless One downwards. Write them with a sign, that the sons of God should be manifested from this place onwards. This is the name of the Deathless One AAA ΩΩΩ . And this is the name of the sound by which the Perfect Man was moved III. But these are the interpretations of the names of these Mysteries. The first is AAA. Its interpretation is ΦΦΦ . The second is MMM or ΩΩΩ . Its interpretation is AAA. The third is ΨΨΨ . Its interpretation is OOO. The fourth is ΦΦΦ . Its interpretation is NNN. The fifth is AAA. Its interpretation is AAA. He who is upon the throne is AAA. This is the interpretation of the second AAAA AAAA AAAA. This is the interpretation of the whole name.

(G. Horner (trans.), Pistis Sophia, p. 62)

Yea, yea, for I adjure you in the name of the 7 letters that are tattooed on the chest of the father, namely, A 7 (times), E 7 (times), E 7 (times), I 7 (times), O 7 (times), U 7 (times), O 7 (times), yea, yea, that you obey my mouth, at this moment, before it passes and another one comes in its place, and you appear to me in a vision that is not frightening, through the power of the holy father.

(Spell to obtain a good singing voice, London Oriental Manuscript 6794)

(1) Betz, ed. by Hans Dieter (1992). "The Greek magical papyri in translation including the Demotic spells" (2nd ed.). Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.

(2) Kieren Barry, "The Greek Qabalah: Alphabetical Mysticism and Numerology in the Ancient World", 1999 by Red Wheel Weiser