(This article assumes the reader is familiar with the basics of Qabalah, in particular doing Gematric calculations.)
Devised by Shawn Knight, founder of Golden Triangle Temple, in 1998, EQ31 is a table of values for the English Alphabet, for use in Qabalistic computations.
Unlike Greek and Hebrew, the English language has no numerical values connected with its letters, beyond their simple ordering from "A", the first, to "Z", the twenty-sixth. EQ31 was devised in response to the command in Liber AL vel Legis II:55, which says:
Thou shalt obtain the order & value of the English Alphabet; thou shalt find new symbols to attribute them unto.
Drawing upon the work of Frater Achad (Charles Stansfeld Jones), Knight started counting from the letter "A", one, eventually "looping around" the end of the alphabet, skipping the "A" the second time through, and stopping on the thirty-first letter: "F". This letter was assigned the gematric value of 2. He then repeated the process, effectively counting down five letters each time (31 – 26 = 5). The result was the following table:
A 1 B 22 C 17
D 12 E 7 F 2 G 23 H 18
I 13 J 8 K 3 L 24 M 19
N 14 O 9 P 4 Q 25 R 20
S 15 T 10 U 5 V 26 W 21
X 16 Y 11 Z 6
While other Thelema-based formulations of English Qabalah exist (notably New Aeon English Qabalah), EQ31 has led to some remarkable results, many of which are still being discovered. We cite only a few here:
- The number 93, the Greek qabalistic value of "Thelema" and "Agape" ("Will" and "Love") respectively, is equal to "Babalon", the Thelemic name for the Scarlet Woman or Great Mother archetype. It is also equal to "HRILIU", the sound made by the Priest and Priestess in Liber XV (The Gnostic Mass) in emulation of "the sound of mating doves".
- The EQ31 value of "Thelema" is 86, a number shared by the words "Hermes", "Lover", and "World".
- The words "Gnosis", "Masonry", "Wisdom", and "Ordeal x" (a reference to Liber AL III:22) are all identical in value: 89.
- "Albert Pike", the author of Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, has the same value (111) as "Hiram Abiff", the central character in the allegory of the Master Mason degree, and incidentally as "Liber AL".
- "Golden Dawn" has the value 137, the same as the word "Qabalah" in the original Hebrew numeration.
- "Imhotep", the architect who designed the first pyramid in Egypt, has the same value (80) as the words "Pyramid" and "Sphinx".
Members and friends of the Temple have found many, many other correspondences via the EQ31 system. It is part of the "curriculum" being developed at the Temple. While we do not claim it is the only system of English Qabalah, or even the best, it is in a sense ours. Indeed, when the name of the Temple was chosen, EQ31 was used to validate the name. And taking the Temple's name, and adding its number 31, we get 303, which is the value of the phrase "The word of the law is THELEMA".
