LITTLE LECTURES ON MAGICK, PART 2: THE QABALAH AND THE TAROT

...Eliphas Levi declared that by arranging the Tarot cards according to a definite order man could discover all that is knowable concerning his God, his universe, and himself. When the ten numbers which pertain to the globes (Sephiroth) are combined with “22 letters relating to the channels, the resultant sum is 32--the number peculiar to the Qabbalistic Paths of Wisdom. These Paths...are analogous to the first 32 degrees of Freemasonry, which elevate the candidate to the dignity of a Prince of the Royal Secret. Qabbalists also consider it extremely significant that in the original Hebrew Scriptures the name of God should occur 32 times in the first chapter of Genesis...

Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

Kabbalah is an esoteric discipline for reading, and discovering, hidden knowledge encoded in the Torah.  This is, at least, it's original purpose.  One of Kabbalah's methodologies is gematria, based on the fact that the Hebrew alphabet--as with the Greek, Roman, and many others--served as numerals as well as sounds.  This means that Hebrew words are themselves all values.  For Jewish mystics, shared values between words indicated deeper connections which demonstrate the hidden construction of the world.  The most common example is that the Tetragrammaton, YHVH, has a value of 26.  26 is also the value of ABHA and AChD, "Love" and "Unity," which the Kabbalists read as insight into God's nature.

To better investigate the hidden meanings of words, Hebrew Kabbalah embraced Pythagorean numerical mysticism, and this more than anything made the discipline attractive to those outside of Judaism.  Aside from gematria, Kabbalists constructed a diagram--based on Pythagorean concepts--called the Etz haChayim or "Tree of Life" after the one in Eden.  This was said to be a blueprint of Creation, showing not only the structure of the Universe and Man, but the mind of God.  Hermetic Kabbalists--commonly referred to as Qabalists to distinguish them from Judaic mystics--adopted gematria and the Tree of Life to build their model of the universe.

The Tree of Life is constructed from the Numbers we discussed in the last chapter.  0, 1-10, and 22 are the most essential.  The entire schema is an attempt to "Square the Circle," or unite Earth and Heaven.  For this reason its skeleton is based on 3 and 4. 

For starters, the Tree of Life is made of four overlapping circles.  These correspond to the letters of the Divine Name, YHVH.  Y is the letter of Fire, the Father, and Atziluth, the Divine Plane.  H is the letter of Water, the Mother, and Briah, the Archangelic Plane.  V is the letter of Air, the Son, and the Angelic Plane of Yetzirah.  The final H is the letter of Earth, the Daughter, and the Elemental Plane of Assiah.  Where these circles or Planes overlap, Ten Spheres or Sephiroth are formed.  These Sephiroth correspond exactly to the values of the Numbers we discussed in the last chapter, so that the highest sphere is "Unity" and the lowest is "Completion."

The four Planes or Worlds are meant to show the process of manifestation.  The best way to understand this is by example.

There is a coffee cup on the table in front of me.  It Atziluth, the highest plane, it isn't really a coffee cup...it's a swirling pattern of atomic particles beyond my senses.  This is the "Divine Fire" that forms the true substance of Creation.  But the next plane, Briah, is the Ideal plane of consciousness.  This is where my idea of "cupness" resides.  It is the repository of all such ideas.  In Yetzirah, Fire and Water (Father and Mother) come together to form Air, the Son.  In this plane my senses read impressions from the cup (its shape, it's color, it's texture) and uses these to marry the phenomena to one of the ideas in my head.  The final result of this process is Assiah, the material world, where the object is not atomic particles but is now--for me--a cup. A coffee cup.  From a Qabalistic view we are all the Creators, using the ideas in our head and our senses to manifest the entire world from Fire.

It is easy to see, at this point, how nicely the ten Numbers fit into this plan.  Where Ultimate Reality (Y) and Ideal Reality (H) meet we have the three numbers of Heaven, Unity, Division, and Space.  Where Ideal Reality (H) meets Sensual Reality (V), we have Matter, Time, and Individual Consciousness.  Sensual Reality (V) meets with Physical Life (H) to generate Individuality, Sensation, Learning, Creation, and Completion. 

Two more things must be noted. Above the Tree is what the Qabalists call Ain, or "Nothing" (the blue curve in the diagram).  The Tree of Life is understand to grow downwards, rooted in Heaven, from the concept of Zero.  It is best then to think of the first Sephiroth as the trunk of the Tree and the tenth as the summit.  Zero, then, exists above the Ideal Plane of Briah. We can have no conception of it.

Between the upper three Sephiroth and the lower seven (the 3 and 7 of Heaven and Earth) is a gap where no Sephiroth exists.  This is the Abyss, the gulf between Heaven and Earth caused (in mythology) by the Fall.  The Tenth sphere at the base of the Tree  replaces this gap.

Before we continue, please note that this arrangement creates three columns of Sephiroth, or "Pillars."  These grow down from and reflect the highest three Sephiroth of Heaven.  The right pillar grows from 2, and reflects Maleness and Force.  The left pillar grows from Space and reflect Femaleness and Form.  The middle pillar grows from Unity and reflects Consciousness.

So far we have seen how the basic framework of the Tree is based on the numbers of 3, 4, and 1-10.  But the number 22 is also crucial here.  As we noted, 22 comes from the three vectors of the Cube, the seven points of the Cube, and the twelves edges of the Cube.  As 3 and 7 are also Heaven and Earth, we see in 22 the sum total of creation.

Hebrew letters are themselves divided up this way.  There are three Mother Letters, seven Double Letters, and twelve Singles.  Since this is not a study in Hebrew, we needn't dwell on what that means.   What is important to us here is that Kabbalists believed the universe was something that Yahweh (YHVH) spoke into existence, using the letters of the Hebrew alphabet (again, simultaneously sounds and numbers).  Qabalists have a similar concept, in that the Mind creates the universe from numbers and letters as well.  The 3, 7, and 12 letters of the Hebrew alphabet thus form "paths" between the static Sephiroth.  They may be thought of as bridges or roads between the spheres, or conduits for the Divine Fire.  On the Tree of Life three are horizontal, seven are vertical, and twelve diagonal.  They correspond to the Elements (Fire, Water, and Air...Earth is the final Sephiroth at the base of the Tree), the Planets (Sol, Luna, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn), and the 12 signs of the Zodiac.

Taken together, this schema give us 32 categories of Creation.  This is again the Union of Heaven and Earth.  Think of One (Unity) doubling six times (the number of the Cube), 1 - 2 - 4 - 8 - 16 - 32.  This is the also the number of times God is mentioned in Genesis.  Into these "slots" the Qabalist is encouraged to categorize all phenomena, turning the Tree of Life into an elaborate memory palace.

Let us take as our example the 6th Sephira, called "Tiphareth" (Individual Consciousness in our Pythagorean model).  We know 6 is the faces of the Cube, connecting it to Earth, but it is also the product of 1 and 2 and 3, the  numbers of Heaven.  So we can see it as a sort of mediator or bridge between Heaven and Earth.  This makes sense; looking at the Tree again it is positioned in the Middle Pillar between 9 (the Ego, or Lower Self) and 1 (Unity, the Divine).  Six is then the Word Made Flesh, the Christ described by John.  It is the link between God and Man.  We should not be surprised then that the Cube, flattened out, makes a Cross.

It's Hermetic planet is Sol, the  Sun.  Again, this works; the Sun is the Son.  But the Sun is also our local star, and thus a sort of personal god, a bridge between Earth and the Heavens.  And the Sun rises and sets; in ancient mythologies Sun gods die and are resurrected.  So we assign other deities here, such as Osiris, Ra, and Dionysus.  Solar associations also give us metals like gold, animals like the Phoenix, and gems like the yellow diamond.  The list goes on and on and on.  Apply the same to the 31 other categories and soon we have an entire conceptual model of the universe built up on our Tree.

The Tarot

An imprisoned person with no other book than the Tarot, if he knew how to use it, could in a few years acquire universal knowledge, and would be able to speak on all subjects with unequalled learning and inexhaustible eloquence.

Elphias Levi

The Tarot was not created as an esoteric tool; it was a deck of cards for gambling.  The Italian tarocchi and its French cousin, from whom we get the word tarot, was played with four suits and an extra set of Trump cards.  It began to transition from a card game to a divinatory device in the late 18th century.  Antoine Court de Gébelin, a Protestant Freemason, speculated the cards were actually of ancient Egyptian origin.  Elphias Levi later connected them to the Kabbalah.

Even if they were not made as a divinatory tool, they certainly seem made for it.  By chance (?) the cards are built along the exact same Pythagorean principles as the Tree of Life.  To wit, there are 4 suits that correspond exactly to the Four Qabalistic worlds, each with 4 Court Cards that perfectly mirror the formula of the Tetragrammaton (Father, Mother, Son, Daughter) and 10 lower cards that correspond to the Sephiroth or Pythagorean Decade.   The Trumps, with evocative titles and images like the Devil, Death, and the Sun, are 22 in number (like the letters of the Hebrew alphabet or the dimensions of the Cube).  Even better, of the 22 Trumps one, the Fool, is numbered "zero," leaving 21 others...3 sets of 7.  The Tarot couldn't have been better suited to Hermetic purposes if it had been designed by an initiate.

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn made the Tarot central to its doctrines (alongside Qabalah and Enochian), and its most infamous graduate, Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) made it a centerpiece of his teachings.  In The Book of Lies he wrote;

The Great Wheel of Samsara.

The Wheel of the Law.

The Wheel of the Taro.

The Wheel of the Heavens.

The Wheel of Life.

All these Wheels be one; yet of all these the Wheel of the TARO alone avails thee consciously.

Meditate long and broad and deep, 0 man, upon this Wheel, revolving it in thy mind!

Be this thy task, to see how each card springs necessarily from each other card, even in due order from The Fool unto The Ten of Coins.

Then, when thou know'st the Wheel of Destiny complete, may'st thou perceive THAT Will which moved it first. [There is no first or last.]

And lo! thou art past through the Abyss.

Towards the end of his life Crowley worked with British painter Lady Frieda Harris (1877-1962) to create what must be one of the definitive esoteric Tarots, the Thoth Deck.  His companion volume, the Book of Thoth, is a masterpiece.  In it, he takes the Golden Dawn's encyclopedic correspondences and associations and brings the new Thelemic formula of the New Aeon to them (see the next chapter).  His Tarot, on the Tree of Life, is as follows;

The meanings of the small cards derive directly from the Pythagorean Decade, filtered however though the Element or Plane of each suit.

Wands: Fire, Y-The Father,Will and Action

Cups: Water, H-The Mother, Emotion and Ideals

Swords: Air, V-The Son, Thought and Definition

Discs: Earth, H-The Daughter, Matter and Senses

Thus, the Two of Wands signifies Separation or Polarity in Will, whilst the Two of Swords is the same in Thought.  The Eight of Cups is Learning from an Emotional experience, while the Eight of Discs is learning from Material ones.

The Court Cards, then, show the manifestation of the Tetragrammaton in each World.  The Knights represent the Fiery element, the Queens are Aqueous, the Princes are Airy and the Princesses are Earthy.  So the Knight of Wands is the paternal, Fiery portion of Air.  The Queen of Discs is the Maternal, Aqueous portion of Earth. 

The 22 Trumps are somewhat more complex, deriving their meaning from the Element, Planet, or Zodiacal sign they are associated with (by way of the Hebrew alphabet).  To get the reader started, I provide here Crowley's short poetic descriptions of each from The Heart of the Master;

0. The Fool

Know Naught!

All ways are lawful to Innocence.

Pure folly is the Key to Initiation.

Silence breaks into Rapture.

Be neither man nor woman, but both in one.

Be silent, Babe in the Egg of Blue, that thou mayest grow to bear the Lance and Graal!

Wander alone, and sing! In the King's Palace his daughter awaits thee.

I. The Magus

The True Self is the meaning of the True Will: know Thyself through Thy Way!

Calculate well the Formula of Thy Way!

Create freely; absorb joyously; divide intently; consolidate completely.

Work thou, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, in and for Eternity.

II. The Priestess

Purity is to live only to the Highest; and the Highest is All: be thou as Artemis to Pan!

Read thou in the Book of the Law, and break through the veil of the Virgin!

III. The Empress

This is the Harmony of the Universe, that Love unites the Will to create with the Understanding of that Creation: understand thou thine own Will!

Love and let love! Rejoice in every shape of love, and get thy rapture and thy nourishment thereof!

IV. The Emperor

Pour water on thyself: thus shalt thou be a Fountain to the Universe.

Find thou thyself in every Star!

Achieve thou every possibility!

V. The Hierophant

Offer thyself Virgin to the Knowledge and Conversation of thine Holy Guardian Angel! All else is a snare.

Be thou athlete with the eight limbs of Yoga; for without these thou are not disciplined for any fight.

VI. The Lovers

The Oracle of the Gods is the Child-Voice of Love in thine own Soul! hear thou it!

Heed not the Siren-Voice of Sense, or the Phantom-Voice of Reason: rest in Simplicity, and listen to the Silence!

VII. The Chariot

The issue of the Vulture, Two-in-One, conveyed; this is the chariot of Power.

T R I N C : The last oracle!

VIII. Adjustment

Balance against each thought its exact opposite!

For the Marriage of these is the Annihilation of Illusion.

IX. The Hermit

Wander alone; bearing the Light and thy Staff!

And be the Light so bright that no man seeth thee!

Be not moved by aught without or within: keep Silence in all ways!

X. Fortune

Follow thy Fortune, careless where it lead thee!

The axle moveth not: attain thou that!

XI. Lust

Mitigate Energy with Love; but let Love devour all things.

Worship the name _______*, foursquare, mystic, wonderful, and the name of His House 418.

(This Name to be communicated to those worthy of that Initiation.)

XII. The Hanged Man

Let not the waters whereon thou journeyest wet thee! And, being come to shore, plant thou the Vine and rejoice without shame.

XIII. Death

The Universe is Change: every Change is the effect of an Act of Love; all Acts of Love contain Pure Joy. Die daily!

Death is the apex of one curve of the snake Life: behold all opposites as necessary complements, and rejoice!

XIV. Art

Pour thine all freely from the Vase in thy right hand, and lose no drop! Hath not thy left hand a vase?

Transmute all wholly into the Image of thy Will, bringing each to its true token of Perfection!

Dissolve the Pearl in the Wine-cup: drink, and make manifest the Virtue of that Pearl!

XV. The Devil

With thy right Eye create all for thyself, and with the left accept all that be created otherwise!

XVI. The Tower

Break down the fortress of thine Individual Self, that thy Truth may spring free from the ruins!

XVII. The Star

Use all thine energy to rule thy thought: burn up thy thought as the Phoenix!

XVIII. The Moon

Let the Illusion of the World pass over thee, unheeded, as thou goest from the Midnight to the Morning!

XIX. The Sun

Give forth thy light to all without doubt: the clouds and shadows are no matter for thee.

Make Speech and Silence, Energy and Stillness, twin forms of thy play!

XX. The Aeon

Be every Act an Act of Love and Worship!

Be every Act the Fiat of a God!

Be every Act a Source of radiant Glory!

XXI. The Universe

Treat time and all conditions of Event as Servants of thy Will, appointed to present the Universe to thee in the form of thy Plan.

And: blessing and worship to the prophet of the lovely Star!

WALKING THE CROOKED PATH: Some thoughts on "QUTUB"

"In speaking of the Poet and Poem we speak of the Point and the Crooked Path that strikes forth from it; we speak of the Way and of the Steps placed upon it.  We describe the breach between the centre of the world and the horizon, between the zenith and the nadir.  In speaking of Poet and Poem we speak of many things of which we may not speak.  Amid these words a secret is voiced.  Do not mistake it amidst its own echoes."

- Andrew D. Chumbley (as Alogos Dhu'l-qarnen)

Andrew D. Chumbley died suddenly, on his thirty-seventh birthday, of a severe asthma attack.  There is a qabbalistic irony in that I think he might have appreciated.  Thirty-seven is the number of the Perfected Man, the seven spheres of the tree of life below the abyss crowned by the divine triad above.  It is Adam before the Fall.  For a man who had so obviously mastered very deep arcana, departing the world after thirty-seven solar revolutions is an eerie coincidence.  This doesn't mitigate the tragedy of losing him at such a young age; it would have been extraordinary to see what he might have produced next.

I never knew the man, but I knew his work, and would comfortably place him alongside Austin Spare or Aleister Crowley in the list of the 20th century's greatest occultists.  This was not another self-help, mass market, Llewelyn New Ager.  Chumbley had tapped into very deep magic, terrific and terrifying, awesome and awful.  His Azoetia is probably the first genuine grimoire written in centuries, and his second work, Qutub, is a black jewel.  Both are now nearly impossible to find, commanding prices of one to two thousand dollars when you do, despite being less than twenty-five years old.  It's hard to imagine any occultist in possession of them being willing to let go.

Qutub is, like the Emerald Tablet or Crowley's Liber AL vel Legis, a work of extreme brevity but tremendous depth.  It's seventy-two verses took a year to write and one could profitably spend ten times that puzzling them out.  As Crowley said in his "Initiated Interpretation of Ceremonial Magic," the world of magic is a mirror, and Qutub explores this riddle in slowly spiraling mysteries.  Magic is both a mask and a mirror, a projection and reflection, a lie and the truth, and the point where these opposites merge into one.  That place is Qutub, the Arabic word for "point."  The verses of this meditation are designed to bring you there.

From the Qabbalistic perspective, by stripping God of its "darker" attributes and assigning them to Satan, the Christians are committing a very serious kind of blasphemy.  God must be the totality of being.

Qabbalistically speaking, "nothingness" or "zero" is a kind of code word for God (or "ultimate reality," if you prefer).  God contains all things, and thus nothing is all that can be said of it.  It cannot be said to be "good" because that denies it "evil," it cannot be said to be "male" because that denies it femininity, it cannot be said to be "light" because that denies it darkness.  This is why the Buddha called it nirvana, and why the Hebrews didn't give it a name.  God must contain all opposites because it is the source of all opposites.  Aleister Crowley nicely summed this up as n + -n = 0.  If you take all opposites and add them together, they become nothingness, perfect, without definition or limits, eternal and unchanging.  Nothing lasts forever.  Nothing is perfect.  From the Qabbalistic perspective, by stripping God of its "darker" attributes and assigning them to Satan, the Christians are committing a very serious kind of blasphemy.  God must be the totality of being.  They are cutting it in half.  (I have always found useful here the notion of "nothing" as an empty sheet of paper...because it has nothing on it, it has the potential to become anything.  Once you start to write or draw on it, you start limiting it, defining it, and stripping that unlimited potential away)

The Point then is that first breath God took before it said "let there be light."  A point exists, but is without length or breadth; it is unity, but right on the very doorstep of being nothing itself.  After that breath, the moment God says "let there be light" we now have "Two," the duality of light and darkness.  But that initial "One" is the very first stirring of creation before that happens.

Qutub then--which enumerates to 111, also the number of the Tarot Trump "The Fool," symbolizing the beginning of the Journey--is the start and the finish, the initial step out the door and the moment of arrival, the alpha and the omega, if you will.  It is where something comes from Nothing and returns to Nothing.  This is the sense in which Chumbley uses it.  It is a cosmological code word for the ultimate mystical experience, the dissolution of the ego and the sense of becoming "one" (or Nothing) with everything, as well as the act of creation.

This is all pretty standard mysticism.  A Sufi, a Buddhist monk, a Hindu ascetic, and a devout Christian contemplative could all relate to it.  But Chumbley takes us there along the "crooked path," a phrase which at once reminds us of both the Qabbala's "lightning strike" of creation and something more sinister.  And by "sinister" I mean the Latin for "left-hand."

The Left Hand Path (properly vamamarga) is a Sanskrit concept that arises in some tantric practices.  Without getting side-tracked, what it amounts to is a "short-cut" to enlightenment through antinomian practices.  If the goal of the Right Hand Path is to overcome the Self through bhakti (love and faith) or karma (work and meditation), the Left Hand Path seeks to do the same through jnaya (knowledge and experience).  By intentionally breaking taboos, not out of animal weakness or by accident, the seeker breaks down all barriers between him and the Infinite.  He overcomes the Self by dissolution.  Thus in India the tantric would do things like eat meat, drink wine, or engage in ritualized sexual activity with "unclean" women.  The point was not to party, but to unwind the Self and undo identity.

The term shows up in Western esotericism in a somewhat bastardized sense, but with some similar characteristics.  Here it takes on more Jungian dimensions; the merging with the Shadow.  It attempts to reach that essential state of Nothing by embracing the negative and darker characteristics of the personality as a lover; again, n + -n = 0.  The Seeker makes a bride of those things in himself he has been taught to reject.  This is in defiance of conventional religious law, which keeps the individual divided from himself, told to embrace only the "good" within him and reject the "bad."  The Left Hand seeker embraces both in an attempt to know the totality of experience and being, and from this vantage point sees opposites reconciled.

...this is where we must remember magic is a mirror...if you look into the darkness and see only evil and sin, that is because your brought them there with you...

Thus Qutub invokes some very dark characters in its verses.  Chumbley himself says of it "...this work treats the Arcanum of the Opposer, a magical formula of the Crooked Path concerning the Powers of Self-overcoming."  That Opposer--again the Shadow--is encountered in the work at various turns as Lilith (the first wife of Adam from Jewish folklore who refused to obey and was replaced by Eve), Iblis (the Islamic satan), and Melek Taus (or Malik Tawas, the "Peacock Angel" of the Yezidi religion, believed to be a Lucifer that rebelled but was later forgiven and redeemed).  But this is where we must remember magic is a mirror...if you look into the darkness and see only evil and sin, that is because your brought them there with you.  As Chumbley says at the opening of the book, "he who is illuminated with the brightest light casts the darkest shadow."  This is precisely why the Peacock Angel is the epitome of transformative redemption.

The whole of Qutub has a very intentional Arabic, "Sufi-esque" vibe.  Indeed, one of the "non-dark" figures invoked by the poem is Khidir, a sort of Sufi "saint" or "boddhisatva" who appears in many guises to help people discover the Infinite.  Qutub is a shadowy reflection of the poet Rumi, who wrote of God as the Lover and the Other.  My old mentor, the Sufi and religious scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr, often cited the Sufi teaching that there were many revelations and many paths, all leading to the same center.  This imagery is referenced again and again by Chumbley as the poem unfolds, as are many other images drawn from Arabic and Persian mysticism.  Looking for the center is like seeking an oasis in the desert.

...the magician discover(s) his True Nature and embrac(es) it, taking his rightful place in existence.  In doing so he becomes the current of magic flowing from the center of all things into the world, he becomes the very path he walks upon...

And where does the poem lead?  What is the destination?  "The main purpose of magical practice," Chumbley tells us in the poem's commentary, "...is to refine, develop, and eventually to transmute the Entire Being of the Magician, this process being in accordance with his Will, Desire, and Belief.  It is to recreate oneself in a form aligned unto one's True Nature.  ...Although the (magickal) Current (which originates and flows from the center) affects all Nature, it has conscious direction through the Initiate, who, being possessed of the Gnosis, actively works to manifest this Current: to become Magick Incarnate.  This is the subject of the poem Qutub."  We seem to be seeing a variation here of Thelema and its doctrine of "True Will," a concept far too large to properly enlarge here but which, in essence, states that all things in the universe have their own path or trajectory proper to them, determined by composition, position, and in the case of sentient beings, disposition.  It is not fate or destiny becomes it does not claim to know the end, but merely the proper direction one should head in.  For Thelema, the main thing is to discover your True Will and to do it, and thus you will have the "inertia of the universe behind you."  Chumbley's own Arte Magickal seems to embrace a similar line, with the magician discovering his True Nature and embracing it, taking his rightful place in existence.  In doing so he becomes the current of magic flowing from the center of all things into the world, he becomes the very path he walks upon.  Those familiar with the Tao Te Ching or certain schools of Buddhism will recognize the concept.

But the question we are left with, is “does Qutub deliver?”  Can it actually help one discover himself and follow his path?  This is a valid question for any esoteric document, and the answer is always the same; “yes...and no.”  Chumbley is very up front with this in his commentary;

“...The mystical and symbolic language of the Poem is, in a literal sense, occult; it simultaneously conceals and reveals the sum of its meaning by way of cipher.  The eternal nature of Symbols is revealed facet by facet, moment by moment.  In being cast out before the Mind their timely significance is divined and, like a mirror, will reflect the Beholder.  Do not blame the mirror for that which it reflects.  Look Beyond--Look Within!”

In short, this is not one of those New Age works that crowd the shelves at Barnes & Noble.  This is not force-fed consumer illumination.  Qutub is challenging and will unlock only for the right people, something that can easily be said for the Tao Te Ching, Liber AL vel Legis, or a thousand other esoteric works.  But it is a genuine work of esotericism, and a very powerful instrument for self-realization, something few modern books on the “occult” can actually claim.  For this reason I cannot but recommend it highly for the serious student.  With time and contmeplation, Qutub not only unlocks its doors, but yours.