EsoteriaA library of sacred & hidden knowledge
Liber XXXII · Thelema

Liber XXXII · Thelema · Chapter III: Tarot & Qabalah in Thelema

Abrahadabra: Crowley's Word of the Aeon and the Number 418

Abrahadabra in Thelema: how Crowley turned the old charm abracadabra into the Word of the Aeon, its value of 418, the five and six, and its ritual use.

7 min read 1,551 words Updated

Abrahadabra is the word that Aleister Crowley called the "Word of the Aeon", the magical formula of the new age announced in The Book of the Law (1904). It is a deliberate respelling of the ancient charm abracadabra, altered so that its Hebrew letters add up to 418, a number Crowley regarded as a key to the Great Work. For Thelemites it summarises, in eleven letters, the union of the human microcosm with the divine macrocosm.

From Abracadabra to Abrahadabra§

The older word has a long history in amulet magic. The earliest clear record is in the Liber medicinalis, a Latin poem of medical remedies attributed to Quintus Serenus Sammonicus and usually dated between the late second and the fourth century. It recommends writing abracadabra repeatedly on a strip of parchment, removing one letter at each line so that the word shrinks to a point, and wearing it against fever. The vanishing word was meant to make the illness diminish with it. Similar diminishing word-triangles are found among Greek and Egyptian magical amulets of the Roman period; see Ancient Egyptian amulets and the wider survey of amulets and talismans.

The origin of abracadabra itself is unknown. Proposed derivations from Aramaic or Hebrew phrases, or from the Gnostic divine name Abraxas, are attractive but unproven. By the early modern period the word had become a byword for empty conjuring, and it is chiefly in that sense that it survives in ordinary speech.

Crowley's change was small but, in his eyes, decisive. By replacing the central c with h, he produced Abrahadabra, a word whose authority, he believed, The Book of the Law confirmed in 1904. The new spelling hid the name Had, the root of Hadit, at the heart of the word.

Abrahadabra in The Book of the Law§

The third chapter of The Book of the Law, spoken in the voice of the war god Ra-Hoor-Khuit, opens by naming Abrahadabra as his reward, and its closing verses describe it as the word with which the book ends. Crowley understood these passages to mean that Abrahadabra was the "Word" of the new Aeon in the technical sense used in his system: each age of human history has a magical word or formula that sums up its spiritual method, as the dying-and-rising god had summed up the previous age. His account of the reception in Cairo, published as The Equinox of the Gods (1936), presents the word as one of the proofs that the book contained a hidden numerical and Qabalistic design.

The word is therefore bound up with the doctrine of the Aeon of Horus and with the three speakers of the book, described in Nuit, Hadit and Ra-Hoor-Khuit. For the text and its setting see Thelema and The Book of the Law.

The Qabalah of 418§

Crowley's Qabalah, inherited from the Golden Dawn, treats words as numbers by giving each Hebrew letter its traditional value, the practice known as gematria. Written in Hebrew characters as Aleph, Beth, Resh, Aleph, Heh, Aleph, Daleth, Aleph, Beth, Resh, Aleph, Abrahadabra yields 1 + 2 + 200 + 1 + 5 + 1 + 4 + 1 + 2 + 200 + 1 = 418.

The same number appears when the letter Cheth is spelled in full (Cheth, Yod, Tav: 8 + 10 + 400). Cheth is the letter of the tarot trump the Chariot, whose charioteer Crowley associated with the bearer of the Holy Grail, the cup of Babalon. The equivalence linked the Word of the Aeon to one of the central images of his mysticism. Crowley gave the number to Liber 418, the record of his Enochian visions published as The Vision and the Voice, and noted that his house at Boleskine on Loch Ness could also be made to total 418 under one of his spellings.

Such calculations are typical of Crowley's method. He catalogued Hebrew and Greek words by value in Sepher Sephiroth (1912) and the correspondences of the Tree of Life in Liber 777; the number 418 occupies a prominent place in both. Critics, including some Thelemites, have pointed out that gematria can be made to support almost any connection, and Crowley himself warned that numerical coincidences prove nothing on their own unless they illuminate experience.

Five and Six: Microcosm and Macrocosm§

The deepest meaning Crowley found in Abrahadabra was arithmetical in a different sense. The word has eleven letters, and eleven was for him the general number of magick, the sum of five and six. Of its letters, five are A and six are consonants. Crowley read this as a formula of union: five stands for the pentagram, the four elements crowned by spirit and the human being as microcosm; six stands for the hexagram, the union of fire and water, the sun and the macrocosm or universe. The Great Work, in his teaching, is the uniting of the two, the human self with the divine.

This interpretation draws on the Golden Dawn symbolism of the pentagram and hexagram rituals and on the Rose Cross, whose emblem combines the rose of five petals with the cross of six squares. In the light of The Book of the Law, Crowley also read the formula in terms of the cosmic lovers Nuit and Hadit, whose union gives rise to the child Horus. Abrahadabra thus condensed his entire system into a single word: elemental man joined to the solar god, the point joined to the circle.

Abrahadabra in Thelemic Ritual and Practice§

Crowley wrote Abrahadabra into several of his rituals as a word of power to be vibrated at climactic moments. The best known is Liber V vel Reguli, a ritual of the Mark of the Beast that he designed as a Thelemic counterpart to the Golden Dawn's Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. In Magick in Theory and Practice, part of Magick: Liber ABA, a chapter on the formula of the Holy Grail discusses it alongside other magical formulae such as IAO and the Word of the previous Aeon, treating it as the method by which the magician unites with the object of the work.

Thelemites use the word in different ways. Some treat it chiefly as a doctrinal symbol, a compact reminder of the union of microcosm and macrocosm. Others use it in ritual and meditation, in personal correspondence, or as a closing word after an invocation. The word has also given its name to modern introductions to Thelemic practice, such as Rodney Orpheus's handbook of the 1990s.

Interpretations and Comparisons§

Historians of esotericism read Abrahadabra as a clear example of Crowley's method: he took a piece of inherited magical vocabulary, re-engineered it according to Qabalistic number, and then found the result confirmed by a revealed text. The procedure resembles the medieval Jewish and Christian practice of finding divine names in scripture through letter values, but its purpose was to authorise a new religious dispensation rather than to interpret an old one.

Later writers have extended the interpretation. Some practitioners of English Qabalah have looked for further meanings by assigning number values to Latin letters, a method Crowley himself did not use for this word. Writers in the Typhonian current associated with Kenneth Grant have linked it to their own speculative system of names and numbers. Others are content with the plainer reading Crowley gave in Magick: that the word expresses the accomplishment of the Great Work.

Frequently asked questions§

What does Abrahadabra mean?§

In Thelema, Abrahadabra is the Word of the Aeon, a formula for the union of the human being (five, the pentagram) with the divine (six, the hexagram). Crowley adapted it from the old charm abracadabra and found it named in The Book of the Law.

Why is Abrahadabra associated with 418?§

Spelled in Hebrew letters, its values add up to 418. Crowley noted that the letter Cheth spelled in full also equals 418, and he gave the number to Liber 418, The Vision and the Voice.

Is Abrahadabra the same as abracadabra?§

It derives from it. Abracadabra is an ancient healing charm recorded in a Roman medical poem; Crowley changed one letter to produce a word with the value 418 and the name Had at its centre.

How is Abrahadabra used in ritual?§

Crowley used it as a word of power in rituals such as Liber V vel Reguli and discussed it among the magical formulae in Magick. Thelemites today use it in ritual, meditation and correspondence.

Sources and further reading§