The Tree 528 Part II: Why 528?
The Lightning Path
Part I
As detailed in Part I of this Series, roughly a decade ago I developed a new method of extracting information from the Tree of Life using the implicit values of each Sephirah derived by adding up the sum of the individual values of the letter-paths leading to each Sephirah - like so for the Sephirah of Malkuth:
My first attempt used the letter-path arrangement of the Kircher Tree, the one that is overwhelmingly used in modern Western Occultism - to the point of exclusion of all other forms of the Tree. Then I tried an arrangement that was reflective of more original Jewish sources, and then a variety of others. In each case, I found the numbers that were derived from those arrangements to be unsatisfactory. Eventually I settled upon the arrangement that became the Baphometric Tree - The Tree 528:
The Tree 528
(Click on Image For Larger)
So why, you might be asking yourself, is it called the Tree 528?
The answer lies in the series of letter paths that run from Kether, the highest Sephirah, down to Malkuth, the lowest, touching each of the remaining Sephiroth along the way: The Lightning Path. (As the most common arrangements of the Tree of Life in older Kabbalah and in general Magickal practice utilize a tree structure that does not have a direct path from Binah to Chesed, following the methods of Crowley, the value of path between Kether and Tiphareth is utilized in lieu).
On the Tree used by Crowley and the Golden Dawn (and pretty much everybody who uses the Tree for Magickal purposes), the value of the Lightning Path is 777. By adding up the value of each of the nine letters that comprise and wend their way down the tree along this path, that is what you get. For the Baphometric Tree, the value of the Lightning Path is 528. From top to bottom, those are the Paths of Heh (5), Shin (300), Kaph (20) - this is the one that crosses the Abyss, Daleth (4), Samekh (60), Cheth (8),Mem (40), Tzadde (90), and Aleph (1). 5+300+20+4+60+8+40+90+1 = 528.
At the time of the construction of The Tree, this number didn't really mean anything to me. 528 is the Triangle Number of 32, and I knew that there were 32 paths on the Tree and all, but the import of that had not yet sunk in. I thought (at the time) that there were 32 Paths was more of a fluke, a random happenstance, rather than an integral factor of the system. I would have been way more excited if it had been the Triangle Number of 31 (496), or of 33 (561), what with 31 supposedly being the "Secret Key" to Crowley's channeled masterwork Liber AL, the Book of the Law - or 33 being the big mucky-muck highest Grade of the Scottish Rite Masons and the sum of the three Elemental mother letters spelled in full - ALP + MIM + ShIN. You know something cool.
But, I had made my Tree and now I had to climb it or something, so I started investigating the number 528. First, I determined that it being the Triangle of 32, was indeed a Very Big Deal. It, in no uncertain terms, is a representative number of the Sephirothic Tree as a whole, the sum total of all the possible paths. (As mentioned in the article The House of 22 Stones, the idea of a complex symbol like the Tree of Life being both internally consistent and information rich is a core concept in Baphometrics). To be clear, the Lightning Flash, which is used as a defining factor of a given Tree arrangement uniting all the Sephiroth from top to bottom, on the Baphometric Tree equals 528, which as the sum of 1+2+3+...+32 is itself also a symbolic representation of the actual structure of the Tree of Life as a whole. All self-referential and smack.
And, to just nail home that point. On the Baphometric Tree, the intersections also add to 528.
So even if one was inclined to dismiss the Lightning Flash valuation as something without merit (as it is really just a fancy of the Golden Dawn that that series of paths has actual import), even so - the intersections on the Tree (a feature common to all Trees) also add to 528. The likelihood of such an occurance, with 6 out of 22 letters to pick from, one of which (in terms of how it intersects with other paths) is counted three times (the path between Chesed and Geburah), another twice (Kether to Tipahreth)... seems to be honest, vansihingly small.
I began to believe that 528, was indeed the MPTHCh מפתח, Key, to the entire system.... (It shall be his child & that strangely).
By this time I had also gotten my hands on some rather more thorough Gematria references than Sepher Sephiroth in 777 and started my deep delve into the number 528. [ed. note Coleman and St. John]
528 is HALPBITh האלפבית - The Aleph Beth, the alphabet. Here again, is a self-referential um... referent, to the whole. The alphabet, in the form of the letter-paths, is The Tree. It is that which fills the symbol with meaning. There is a Kabbalistic notion that the Sephiroth, are in a sense, both one and the same as the unknowable divine, but also vessels for the outpouring of the divine effluence as it makes its way down through the aetherial realms to our own mundane plane of existence. The alphabet can be seen as the expression of this outpouring.
This effluence, this abundance is called the Shefa Ha-Chokmah - ShPAa HChKMH שפע החכמה - the Abundance of Wisdom, and it too has the value of 528. The Outpouring of Wisdom is, in Kabbalistic terms, that which sustains the Universe. The essence of All.
528 is thus BMChShBH HAaLIVN במחשבה העליונ, In the Thought of the Most High, for it is in this thought, Machshavah, that the Universe was created and is always becoming.
It is ChShK QDMVN חשכ קדמונ, the Primordial Darkness, for in Hebrew cosmology darkness always comes before the Light. It is HVIVTh MAIN הויות מאינ, Existence from Nothingness, it is ChVVIH MVChLTTh חוויה מוחלטת - Absolute Experience, what Walter Benjamin descibed as "an equiprimordiality prior to their differentiation". MLKVTh KBVD מלכות כבוד The Kingdom of Glory - Kavod, or Glory being a referent of the Shekinah the immanence of the Divine which also equals 32, the same as LB לב - Heart, so 528 is also the Kingdom of the Heart and the Kingdom of 32. It is God the Father, God the Mother and God the Spirit ABA ALHIN + AIMA ALHIM + RVCh ALHIM אבא אלהימ + אימאמ אלהימ + רוח אלהימ. It is PRI AaTz HChKMH פרי עצ החכמה, the Fruit of the Tree of Wisdom. It is SVD NPSh HChIH סוד נפש החיה, the Secret of the Living Soul, and SVD ShLMH HChKIM סוד שלמה החכימ, the Secret of Solomon the Wise.
It is PAN SVPIA פאנ שופיא Pan Sophia, the Universal Knowledge. It is HABN HShNPIL האבנ השנפיל The Stone that Fell.
It is BPVMTh בפומת.
BAPHOMET.