Abracadabra: Encyclopedia II - Abracadabra - Thelema

Abracadabra - Thelema

The religion of Thelema spells the word "Abrahadabra", and considers it the magical formula of the current Aeon. The religion's founder, Aleister Crowley, explains in his essay Gematria that he discovered the word (and his spelling) by cabalistic methods. He appears to say that this happened before his January 1901 meeting with Oscar Eckenstein, one of his teachers. (At this meeting, Eckenstein ordered him to abandon magick for the moment and practice meditation or concentration.) The Word Abrahadabra appears repeatedly in the 1904 invocation of Horus that led to the founding of Thelema. (The Equinox I, no. 7. 1912) It also appears in a 1901 diary that Crowley published in The Equinox.

The essay Gematria gives Hindu, Christian, and "Unsectarian" versions of the problem that Crowley intended this magick word to answer. He also gives a qabalistic equivalent for each phrasing, and a brief symbolic answer for each. The unsectarian version reads, "I am the finite square; I wish to be one with the infinite circle." Its equivalent refers to "the Cross of Extension" and "the infinite Rose." Crowley's numerological explanation of ABRAHADABRA focuses mainly on this last formulation and the answer to it.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Thelema", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki