Magick in Theory and Practice (Section 3)

number of the Great Work, in 1901 e.v. He only discovered that 418 was the number of his house in conséquence of AIWAZ mentioning the fact. (b) His power to conceal a cohérent System of numbers and letters in the text of a rapidly-written document, containing ridelles and ciphers opening to a Master-Key unknown to the scribe, yet linked with his own System ; this Key and its subordi - nates being moreover a comment on the text. as the communication from Amalantrah. The letter ends as fallows: “Please inform your readers that I, Samuel bar Aiwaz bie Yackou de Sherabad, hâve counted the number of the Beast, and it is the number of a man. î 1 1 i n /p 1 r • , , , , N O I R Th (Read from nght to left) 50 6 10 200 400 666 Ileie, then, we see the most striking solution possible of the problem presented to Amalantrah. Observe that Amalantrah had refused to give the correct solution directly; as it would seem, in order to emphasize the remarkable character of the intervention of this Assynan correspondent. Observe, too, that the latter was totally ignorant of the ordinary Qabalah, it being quite generally known that TO META OHPIONadds up to 666 in Greek. Observe, moreover, that nearly four months had passed since the problem was propounded in The International? The Assyrian lived some distance outside New York, and was an entire stranger to any of the staff of 7 he International. The evidence appears overwAelming for the existence or Amalantrah, that he was more expert in the Qabalah than The Master Therion himself, and that he v/as (further) possessed with the power to recail this four-months~old problem to the mind of an entirely unconnected stranger, causing him to communicate the correct answer at the same moment as the question v/as being asked many miles away. Coincidence, so completely adéquate to explain the Fielding-Tom Jones incident, is utterly incompetent as an alternative theory. The directly purposeful character of the circumstances is undeniable; but if we are resolutely determined to deny the possibility of the existence of Amalantrah, which explains the whole affair so simply, we hâve still one resource. It involves difficultés which The Master Therion cannot conceive as less than those which encumber the other, but it is, at least, 259