Deriving Sigils by Aiq Bkr

Qabalah, Kabbalah, Cabala, Gematria, Tree of Life Path-working, and light Philosophical / Religious discourse.
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Caliban
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Deriving Sigils by Aiq Bkr

Post#1 » Sat Aug 27, 2011 1:41 am

Aiq Bkr is a method in Qabala for distilling names or words to their most basic numerical value. Since the letters of the Hebrew alphabet each possess a numerical as well as phonetic value, these are used in various ways, of which Aiq Bkr is one. This technique takes its name from the fact that all letters can be classed into nine categories by numeric value. Aleph denotes one, Yod ten and Qoph one hundred. If you add 1+0, you get 1, as you do if you add 1+0+0. That's the Aiq - Aleph, Yod, Qoph. Bkr is Beth (2), Kaph (20) and Resh (200). And so on.

The method of making a seal from a name by this method as given by Agrippa is feasible, but is sufficiently well known that I do not care to discuss it here. You can find it in Book III of his Three Books of Occult Philosophy if you are curious. I know that Esoteric Archives has the public domain version of the English translation on their website.

My method is rather different. The numerical value of letters all distill via Aiq Bkr to the integers from one to nine. These also make up the kamea or magic square of Saturn, which can be shown with Aiq Bkr values thus:

Image

Now Saturn is the planet of limitation and restriction, that is of the defining of one thing as distinct from all others, so by plotting a name upon this square, one composes a sigil that represents that particular force and no other, and also constrains it by its own nature thus making it subject to Magical conjurations et cetera.

But let us take a specific example. Say I wished to make a sigil to represent the forces of the planet Mars. The Hebrew name for Mars is Madim, מאדים, which is also the plural of mad, מאד, meaning force, might, strength. I note in passing that the name has five letters, which is harmonious with my purpose as Mars, or Geburah, is the Fifth sphere whether in the Ptolemaic or Sephirothic reckoning. I decide to proceed with that name.

So I consider the letters in Madim: Mem, Aleph, Daleth, Yod, Mem final; 40, 1, 4, 10, 600. Notice that the last letter is Mem, and that in Hebrew this has a distinct form at the end of a word which has a numeric value, 600, different from the usual form of Mem, 40. As a rule, Gematria does not consider the value of final forms, but - and this is a crucial point - Aiq Bkr specifically does.

Reducing these five letters, then, by the method of Aiq Bkr, we come up with 4, 1, 4, 1, 6. We therefore make our sigil by starting in the 4 section of the kamea, drawing a line straight to the 1 section. But now we need to turn around and go back. Rather than retrace our existing line we draw a hairpin curve and come up to make a line from the 1 to the 4 parallel to the first. Now we need to go back to 1 again! So we add another hairpin and draw our third line back down to 1. Here we get to move in a new direction adding a line from the 1 section of our kamea to the 6. We draw a small loop at the end where the sigil begins and a crossbar where it ends so that later on we know which is which as we trace it:

Image

This is our finished sigil, which may be inscribed on a talisman or traced in the air with our wand, or used in whatever other way we might wish to signify the planet Mars in our work. Since all letters can reduce to a value from one to nine, any word can be represented in a sigilic form by this method. Also, if we simply derive a sigil from the numbers one through nine in sequence (with a loop to represent the 5 midway along the line that passes through its section from 4 to 6):

Image

we get something very much like the traditional sigil of of Saturn as given by Agrippa, and we may be reasonably confident that this is how it was derived:

Image

I have been using this method of deriving sigils from names for several years now, and have found that it is simple and moreover effective. While there are many, many more elaborate means of deriving sigils from names or words, I have never seen my own method presented elsewhere, and thought it might be of some interest. Enjoy!
"Stoop down unto the darkly splendid world,
And be wedded to that Blind Creature of the Slime."

-- Liber Tzaddi

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