13/11/2014 9:33 pm

This is a section from a larger project, still in progress, sometimes alluded to in the text, but it was interesting for me to find out some of the information here, so I hope others may find it interesting too. Because it is mostly a survey of "writing", particularly Crowley's, I have put it here rather than in Qabalah, Thelema, or Magick.

The number 333 first appears in Crowley’s works when Choronzon declares “My name is three hundred and thirty and three, and that is thrice one,” in The Vision and the Voice, 10th Aethyr. In the “Essay upon number” of 1910, Crowley explains the number as the gematria of “ChVRVNZVN” – Choronzon – “that mighty devil”, whose name earlier appeared, for the first time, in the 17th Aethyr of the Vision and the Voice of 2 December 1909.

But both the appearance of the name at all, as well as Crowley’s spelling of it, are surprising. In Dee it is mentioned only a single time in the voluminous accounts of dealings with the spirits (at Cracow, 21 April 1584; British Library, Cotton Appendix XLVI f. 91r l. 4, where it is spelled “Coronzom” (the first letter “n” is now damaged); compare page 92 of Casaubon’s edition, where he renders it as “Coronzon”), and it plays no role that I am aware of in the Golden Dawn’s practice of Enochian magic.



(British Library, Cotton Appendix XLVI f. 91r, ll. 1-9; Edward Kelly the seer, reports the words of the Archangel Gabriel explaining the loss of the Angelic language and the origin of other languages as a result of Adam’s fall. Hence, perhaps, Crowley’s understanding of the fundamental meaning of “C(h)oronzon” as “dispersion” (like the “confusion of tongues” at Babel))



(Isaac Casaubon’s transcription of this passage, from A True and Faithful Relation… (London, 1659), p. 92)

Crowley must have gotten it from his own study of Dee, probably in Casaubon. Why Neuburg – or Crowley – chose “Ch” to spell it is unexplained, but that is how it appears in the 17th, 12th and subsequent Aethyrs, and how it entered into the Thelemic lexicon. It is spelled as ChURUNZUN at the end of the 10th Aethyr, which implies that Crowley or Neuburg had already transliterated the first letter as a Hebrew Cheth, ח and knew its gematria. Therefore, if the spelling is originally Neuburg’s, we might speculate that Crowley, rereading the 17th Aethyr afterwards, sometime in any case before the preparations for the 10th Aethyr, decided it was inspired and did not “correct” it to Casaubon or Dee’s spelling. The fact that it added up to 333, which has no particularly evil gematria values – for instance in Sepher Sephiroth (except for Choronzon itself) - and should, as the “large (or “grand”) scale 3”, and Aleph spelled-in-full times three, be in fact a positive number, continued to puzzle Crowley a year later when he wrote the Essay upon Number (in Marseille, December 1910, published as the fifth installment of “The Temple of Solomon the King” in Equinox I,5 (March, 1911); see Confessions p. 656; Perdurabo p. 229):

“333. ChVRVNZVN, see Liber 418, 10th Aethyr. It is surprising that this large scale 3 should be so terrible a symbol of dispersion. There is doubtless a venerable arcanum here connoted, possibly the evil of Matter summó. 333 =37 x 9 the accurséd.”

Thus, a year later he could only offer the vague suggestions that it was “the evil of Matter summó” and “333=37x9 the accurséd.” (the “evil of Matter summó” should probably be taken as “Matter supreme”, i.e. materialism, or, the highest or end of matter, atomistic reductionism without unity or form).

At least sometime before December 1910 he had used 333 to work out the equation mentioned in the 14th Aethyr: “The eye is called seventy, and the triple aleph whereby thou perceivest it, divideth into the terrible word that is the Key to the Abyss,” because his entry for the number 210 in the Essay upon Number makes its identity with the word N.O.X. and its symbolism clear. That is, he had identified “the great and terrible word 210” of the 20th Aethyr of 30 November, with the “terrible Word that is the Key of the Abyss” mentioned in the 14th Aethyr of 3 December, through the formula of dividing 70 (the “eye”) by 333 (Aleph spelled in full times three), equaling .210, the formula of reducing the Dyad to Unity and thence to Annihilation, which, as we saw in section 4, is probably the original sense of this “terrible word”.

Despite Choronzon’s own tallying of his name to 333 in the 10th Aethyr, we must not take the later (probably 1925) commentary note to this passage as disingenuous: “חורונזון = 333 = 3 x 111, and 111 = אלף = א = 1. 333 is also άκρασια, impotence, lack of control; and άκολασια, dispersion. The Seer had no idea of these correspondences; nor had Dr. Dee and Sir Edward Kelly, from whom we have the name.” Of course, Dee and Kelly would not have known the Greek correspondences, because they spelled the word “Coronzom”, so even if they had tried gematria, Greek or Hebrew, it would have added up differently.

(Nota bene, I can find no authority for Crowley’s translation of άκολασια as “dispersion.” According to Bill Heidrick, the first editor of The Greek Qabalah (O.T.O. Newsletter, vol. II, nos. 3 and 4 (1978)), Crowley’s main reference dictionary was Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon, of which his copy survives, replete with annotations (it would have been no later than the eighth edition; the ninth edition was not begun until 1925, with the last fascicle published in 1940); the meanings given for άκολασια are “licentiousness, intemperance.” (it is the negative condition, α, of κολαζω, “to restrain, curtail, cut back, restrict,” etc., hence “unrestrained” ) Nevertheless, I have also made searches in other contemporary dictionaries in English and French, and the meaning “dispersion” is never given; nor is it ever an appropriate translation in the Greek authorities cited in the Lexicon. Thus his attribution of this meaning to the word appears to be simply ad hoc, to justify the assertion in the 10th Aethyr that “Choronzon is Dispersion.” Crowley’s rationale may have been that a licentious or debauched person is dissolute, and dissolution is dispersion (of energy or substance); but from the usage of “dissolute” to “dissolution” is a semantic stretch even in English, and the Greek word cannot encompass this semantic range. The main Greek word translated “dispersion” is διασπορα, which has come straight into English as diaspora.)

Relevant as background to Choronzon and 333 as Crowley’s “dark half” is Richard Kaczynski’s insightful account of one of Crowley’s earliest visionary experiences (number 13 of eighteen recorded visions), under the guidance of Julian Baker and George Cecil Jones, around the time of his initiation into the Golden Dawn in November 1898:

“Traveling down a long gold-purple column that opened into a scarlet cavern, the student found his astral body besieged by lost souls attempting to break through the protective barrier of his magic circle. Among these, he recognized Pollitt’s face. ‘Who are these?’ Crowley asked.

“A voice said: ‘They are the souls of those whom thou hast caused to sin.’

“Truth or lie, it was an ugly sight. He raised an imaginary sword in outrage, and as he did, a hideous deformed giant lunged out the of the shadows and threw its black form repeatedly at the circle. To AC’s disbelief, the barrier nearly yielded, and he prepared to smite the creature. But a voice interrupted and warned that the monster was his own evil persona, and he ought not to banish it.

“Although the magician commanded his persona to stop tormenting him, the shadow responded more furiously than before. The circle yielded dramatically, allowing the figure perilously close to Crowley, who was confused about how to react. Finally, he raised his magic sword, traced a protective pentagram between himself and his alter ego, and intoned the Tetragrammaton, or sacred four-lettered name of God: Yahweh. In response the hulk sullenly withdrew.

“Crowley mournfully considered his dark half, extended his left arm, and instructed the beast to kiss his hand and repent. However, the wary magician extended his hand only part way, and the monstrosity bent only slightly toward it. Aleister Crowley’s two sides confronted each other that night and could not meet halfway.”

(Perdurabo, p. 55)

This dark, other half, would later emerge fully personified as Choronzon, the 333 half to his full 666. Therefore, I think that Crowley must have found symbolic significance in the fact that 333 is half of 666, although he mentions that simple observation nowhere (at least nowhere I can recall). 333 is therefore his other half, the dark form he began seeing in his earliest visions under the guidance of Baker and Jones, his own Dweller on the Threshold.