The History of the English Qaballa

The English Qaballa was discovered by an English occultist named James Lees in 1976. In the text of the Book of the Law itself there is the prediction "Thou shalt obtain the order & value of the English Alphabet; thou shalt find new symbols to attribute them unto."(AL II:55) The idea of Gematria applied to the English language was not new, but nobody had managed to delineate a coherent system of practical value. The possibility of a new set of correspondences based on the English language was of revolutionary significance. The matter of a Qaballa in English moreover presented several questions, not least of which concerned its source, for if indeed the Book had a Key which could produce a consistent system of correspondences from words and phrases in English, it would mean that the Book of the Law was not composed by any human intelligence. It would also mean that the progress of the English language from its earliest beginnings was no random affair, but rather that the curious spellings, linguistic derivations, and rules of grammar that pertained in 1904, came about by design rather than by chance.

The ramifications of his discovery were clear to Lees and he spent four years subjecting the fledgling Qaballa to rigorous testing, using only the words which appeared in Liber Al to see if the correspondences matched with other symbol systems to begin with, and later including the names of the planets and signs of the Zodiac. It soon became undeniable that the Book held concealed within its text unsurpassable initiatory formulae, the first of which was concerned with the initial reaction of the reader, for the English Qaballa revealed layers of meaning hidden in sentences which appeared abhorrent to the undiscriminating mind and thereby led to rejection by the Book of the unworthy individual.

James Lees was born in Bolton, Lancashire, on August 22, 1939, and unlike the vast majority of people born in the West, he retained the memory of being born, and where he was beforehand. Chemistry was a childhood passion, and Lees became an analytical chemist in one of the foremost metallurgical laboratories of the day. He studied psychology and became preoccupied with the question of what would happen to him after his death, his unusual memories and a terrifying awareness of his own mortality presenting him with a terrible conflict, for human existence seemed catastrophic if there was only one life to live but quite a different proposition if reincarnation were involved. He realised that science offered no real answers, as every rule has its anomalies and exceptions. He studied Astrology and for a time made a living practising Horary Astrology, and became convinced that belief in the concept of a God who created the universe and populated it with inferior beings to watch them live and die and suffer for all eternity was quite untenable, a ludicrous state of affairs, with a miserably sadistic deity. Lees found the mental and emotional torment of these questions intolerable and he resolved to discover the answers for himself. He conducted an intensive examination of the world’s major religions and their mystical disciplines, looking for a system of meditation that would lead him to the Absolute Truth that he sought.

After much deliberation James Lees decided to use the Hebrew Kabbalah and the Tree of Life, in combination with the Yogic disciplines of Pranayama and Hatha Yoga. He was already familiar with the Hebraic magical tradition, his Astrological studies having led him to the invocation of planetary spirits using the Key of Solomon. Proving to his satisfaction that it worked, Lees went on to successfully complete the operation of Abramelin system. His work with the Hebrew Tree of Life continued for fifteen years, during which time he experienced all of the visions associated with the spheres on the Tree as his consciousness ascended the Middle Pillar, culminating in the Crossing of the Abyss and a final vision of Divine Truth, a spiritual attainment quite rare in the annals of mysticism.

Following this ultimate visionary experience, Lees wanted to find out if it was possible to help others on the same Quest for enlightenment. He wanted to know whether it was in fact possible to initiate any candidate into the Mysteries, as suggested in the teachings of the Golden Dawn. The group that he formed in 1974 with a few friends was informal, meeting often to discuss Hebrew Kabbalah, Astrology, and to perform traditional occult rituals such as those delineated by the Golden Dawn etc.

James Lees began a nine month Magickal retirement in February 1976 but was unable to find a suitable challenge. Every time he thought of a Magickal exercise, a ritual divination, or whatever, it all seemed like playing with child toys. Each time he applied to his H.G.A. he was simply told to remain silent. "A bit dull, when I wanted to do something spectacular, but every time I prevailed upon my H.G.A. I just got 'Remain Silent', or 'Silence'. During this time there was all the usual rubbish with lights going on and off, people going nuts, UFOs wandering around the place, blah, blah, etc. You get the picture."

 This state of affairs remained until the designated period was drawing near the end when, out of frustration, he began to investigate the English language as applied to Liber Al Vel Legis, the Book of the Law, a text received by Aleister Crowley in 1904 under mysterious circumstances, and one of the enduring puzzles of the occult fraternity. In the evening of November 26^th 1976 James Lees was at home with Brother Thoth, Sister Scorpio and Sister Thelema, (we have not been given permission to give their Earth names), and the subject under discussion was the sequence of letters and numbers in verse 76 of the second chapter of the Book of the Law. With calculators, pens, and paper, they each added up the values of the characters, giving numerical values to the letters of the English Alphabet as A=1, B=2, C=3, and so on. Independently they all got the same result, 286. James Lees saw that this number was the sum of 22x13 and 26x11, and also that 22 and 26 respectively were the number of characters in the Hebrew and English Alphabets. His Hebrew Kabbalistic training suggested that if 13 was an important number in the Hebrew system then 11 might be the Key to the English, a possibility put forward in the Book of the Law itself. Lees accordingly altered the order of the letters by 11 and got the sequence A=1, L=2, W=3, H=4, S=5, D=6, O=7, Z=8, K=9, V=10, G=11, R=12, C=13, N=14, Y=15, J=16, U=17, F=18, Q=19, B=20, M=21, X=22, I=23, T=24, E=25, P=26. This occurred at 9:12 pm GMT. Lees and Brother Thoth checked these values with some of the significant names in the text and saw that the correspondences paralleled traditional occult ideas.

It was at this time that the fledgling Ordo Argentum Astrum came into being. The group swore the Oaths of the A.’.A.’., and began to investigate the new Qaballa. There are a number of different English spellings of the Hebrew word Kabbalah because there are no hard and fast rules governing the translation from Semitic languages into English; in 1976 this particular spelling of the word ‘qaballa’ was not in general use, which was one of the reasons why Lees adopted it. Lees and Brother Thoth calculated the values of all the words in Liber AL and photocopies of the enumerated text were prepared with assistance from Sister Scorpio and Sister Thelema. Lees found that the traditional methods of Gematria worked with the English Qaballa, and other methods were derived from the text. Brother Thoth, a very accomplished Anglo-Polish Magickian, discovered the method called ‘counting well’. The next four years were taken up with the thorough testing of the new system, and at the same time the group membership expanded, the core ritual group consisting of eleven members. The primary work of the O.’.A.’.A.’. at this time was the testing of initiatory theory in accordance with Lees' researches into the English Qaballa.

In 1980 Kaaba Publications was established to make available to the public the essential details of the new Thelemic system. Between 1980 and 1982 Lees and Sister Thelema edited and published five issues of the magazine "The New Equinox - The British Journal of Magick," a title taken over from Ray Sherwin who, in his final edition of the magazine, published the first article about English Qaballa and an article about the Celestial Pentagram made by the Sun and Venus, worked up from notes given to him by Lees. Lees wrote a number of articles for TNE/BJM detailing the early work with the English Qaballa, including an introduction to the Double Tree of Life, the solution to the odd string of letters and numbers in AL II:76, and one account of his Middle Pillar meditation. He paid tribute to appropriate members of the group by publishing his writings under their names.

Lees later wrote that "...from no expected House...” (AL I:56) means a House in the Zodiac, and the House of the Child in the Zodiac is Leo; so the child is a Leo. This is followed by “Aum” AUM=39. The most obvious solution is a child who will be a Leo born in 1939. "It says again in AL II:76 “there cometh one to follow thee.” THEE=78=CANCER; the Sign that follows Cancer is Leo, and a Leo has expounded the meaning of II:76.
Incidentally, II:76 can be 11/76 i.e. November ’76, the date when E.Q. was discovered. Also, II = 2 = TWO = 34 = LEO again. 76 = TAURUS=PLUTO. The Sign Taurus and the planet Pluto have the same number and the same nature – look them up in ‘The Combination of Stellar Influences’ by Reinhold Ebertin.

"This doesn’t mean that the individual who discovers it will have any more significance than that he doesn’t claim anything, he just happened to be around in Heaven when they handed out the job. I said “why me,” because I was and still am a nobody. It should have been given to a charismatic Philosopher or at least someone significant, but not me; but I got the job just the same and there it is. Since then I’ve been impelled to write things and do things whether I like it or not by the lads upstairs."