Qabalistic Cross

Technique used in ceremonial magick to begin nearly every ritual (including the well-known LBRP). The Qabalistic Cross essentially relates the magician to the whole of the universe, declaring hir to be at its center-point, and puts hir in balance between the four elements.

Instructions

1. Stand erect, feet together and arms at your sides, facing east. Visualize yourself reaching up, through the ceiling, out of the solar system, and past the edge of the universe, to where there is limitless white light.
2. See this light descending to the crown of your head as you reach up physically with your dominant hand to touch the center of your forehead and say, “Ateh” (pronounced “AHH-teh”: ארה; meaning “thine, belonging to you”).
3. Bring this radiance down through your body and visualize it shooting out through your feet, to the other end of the universe as you point to your groin and say “Malkuth” (pronounced “MALL-kooth” or “MALL-koot”: םלכות; meaning “[the] kingdom”)
4. Now visualize a line of brilliant white light springing out at right angles from the one that stretches vertically through you. This one goes from that vertical line of light, out to your right from your solar plexus, reaching to the ends of the universe. Bring your hand to your right shoulder and say “ve Geburah” (pronounced “veh geh-BOO-ra”: וגבורה; meaning “and [the] power”)
5. Visualize this horizontal line of light continuing out to your left, to the ends of the universe. (Big surprise, huh?) Touch your left shoulder and say “ve Gedulah” (pronounced “veh geh-DOO-la”: וגדולה; meaning “and [the] glory”)
6. Visualize a ball of clear white radiance at your solar plexus, where the lines meet. Bring your hands together across your solar plexus and say “le-olam, amen” (le-olam is pronounced “leh oh-LAHM”, spelled לץלם and means “forever”; “amen” actually means “so be it” or “so mote it be”)

In all these steps, the words are not to be said in a normal tone of voice, but rather “vibrated”: they should be half-chanted, half-sung in a resonant, vibrating voice, with the breath coming from the magician’s diaphragm. The effect should be as if the magician’s entire body is vibrating, not just hir vocal cords.

Analysis

The words, of course, are well known to Christians around the globe. However, the specific Hebrew words used – Malkuth, Geburah, and Gedulah – are all also names for the sephiroth of the Qabalistic Tree of Life. Specifically, they refer to the sephiroth (“spheres”) at the bottom, left, and right of the Tree. These names predate Jesus by at least a few hundred years, if not a millennium or more. This has led to some speculation that Jesus (née Y'shua bar-Yosef, remember) was versed in cabalistic lore before he began to preach.

Since the Tree of Life represents the totality of the universe, the magician has just identified hirself with the entire cosmos. Since the universe detailed by the Tree is not simply the physical world (that would just be Malkuth, the lowest sephira) but rather the entire gamut of creation between the mundane and God, the magician has also just identified hirself as a bridge between the sacred and the mundane – which is very apt.

Variations

This ritual has been used by a wide variety of groups – mostly ceremonial, but even including Alexandrian Witches – and many of them have added their own “tweaks”.

The Golden Dawn, in particular, taught a version in which the hand gesture for “Malkuth” was not to the groin, but rather the solar plexus. This appears to have been simple Victorian prudery, and may well have been corrected in the inner order. Since the ray of light descending from the zenith of the heavens extends out beyond the feet, the symbolism isn’t sexual in any case – you’re not so much pointing “at your groin”, but rather “as far down as your hand will go along the center-line of your body”.

Some Thelemites make an extra step in between “Ateh” and “Malkuth”, stopping at the solar plexus and saying “Aiwass” (the name of Crowley’s Holy Guardian Angel). This appears to be a misunderstanding of the principles involved; while this form may have been appropriate for Crowley, his followers should be using the names of their own HGAs. Indeed, most of them don’t do it this way.

Alex Sanders, who studied various forms of ceremonial magick before starting his Wiccan tradition, used “Kether” instead of “Ateh” (pronounced “KEH-t'er”: כתר, meaning “crown”, the name of the topmost sephira of the Tree of Life).

Various Pagan versions have also been devised, with variations ranging from shifting the language out of Hebrew to English, changing “thine” to “yours” (thus implicitly pluralizing the addressee), and so on.