Isopsephy is the Greek equivalent of gematria. It is the numerating of words so they can be grouped by value; words that have the same number are then contemplated mystically, the aim being to intuit the supra-rational truth common to all of them, the truth that is symbolised by the number itself. (The idea being, so to speak, that every number represents a phase of the divine unity, which is itself an emanation of the supreme zero, which is Nuit. “Every number is infinite; there is no difference.” AL I:4.)
The search for mystic meaning in numbers may sound strange, even pointless, to those unfamiliar with it, but with a little patience and persistence it can become very rewarding. This is especially the case if one has some knowledge of the correspondences of the alphabet, the Tarot, the Zodiac and the planets, for all these help to “tell a story” about the divine nature of each word. (Though such a preliminary is not completely necessary.)
Since the word of our Law, Thelema, is a Greek word, it is likely that isopsephy is of peculiar relevance in the new aeon. Crowley himself worked on a numeric dictionary of Greek words with Leah Hirsig, but very little of their labour has survived. The existing scraps were published by Brother Bill Heidrick as “Liber 1264: The Greek Qabalah,” a work which can be found online among the official A...A... publications. However, being a slim volume it does not give the beginning student much to cut their teeth on.
Last year I had the good fortune to come across a neat online app, which contains all the words given in Liber 1264 (asterisked, to indicate 1264 as their source) as well as a great deal more. Over time I have entered various numbers into it, and on the whole I have been very struck by the results. There seems to me, generally speaking, to be something a little more “obvious” about the numeric connections between Greek words, as compared to Hebrew gematria. Here are a few examples of numbers that are particularly relevant in Thelema, and the results yielded from horusset.com:
93 – will; love; by necessity; words; to be at hand; song, spell, incantation.
418 – Pan Babalon Pan; thigh; a little child; end, stump; a cut, stroke, wound; the parents; you abide; foundations, pedestals, feet; to quench; one’s love; all plagues.
666 – a division, part of a whole; the mind, the reason; five times; Teitan (an opponent of the gods who stormed Olympus); the Great Beast; from God; skill, resources, wealth.
If these examples “float your boat” then do have a go yourself, I think you may find isopsephy a pursuit worthy of investigation.