Rituals · ritual
Five touches and five Hebrew words: a cross traced on the body, which opens and closes the pentagram ritual.
Liber O gives it as the first five lines of the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram and names it only at the end, when the ritual tells the reader to repeat them: “the ‘Qabalistic Cross.’” Its words follow the close of the Lord's Prayer, in Hebrew.
Each step gives the action in plain language, the spoken words with their Hebrew, and the corresponding line from Liber O in The Equinox I:2 (1909). The drawings follow those instructions.
(i)
Touch the forehead and say Ateh.
(i) Touching the forehead, say Ateh (Unto Thee).
(ii)
Touch the breast and say Malkuth.
(ii) Touching the breast, say Malkuth (The Kingdom).
(iii)
Touch the right shoulder and say ve-Geburah.
(iii) Touching the right shoulder, say ve-Geburah (and the Power).
(iv)
Touch the left shoulder and say ve-Gedulah.
(iv) Touching the left shoulder, say ve-Gedulah (and the Glory).
(v)
Clasp the hands upon the breast and say le-Olahm, Amen.
(v) Clasping the hands upon the breast, say le-Olahm, Amen (to the Ages, Amen.)
The names and words spoken in the ritual, with their Hebrew forms and meanings. Where dictionaries disagree, each reading keeps its source. All the names, across every ritual →
atah
“Unto Thee” in Liber O; “thou art” in the Golden Dawn's text.
The Golden Dawn glosses Ateh “thou art”, which is the Hebrew atah — the same word that opens the line AGLA abbreviates.
אַתָּה גִבּוֹר לְעוֹלָם אֲדֹנָי
ATEH (thou art)
malkhut
“The Kingdom”.
Read from the Tree's own row for Malkuth. The Patach Eliyahu uses the same word for the same sefirah.
מלכות פה
ve-gevurah
“And the Power”.
Read from the Tree's own row for Geburah; the ritual prefixes ve-, “and”.
גבורה דרועא שמאלא
ve-gedullah
“And the Glory” in Liber O; the word itself means greatness.
Gedulah is another name for the sephirah Chesed. Where the Lord's Prayer has “the glory”, 1 Chronicles 29:11 has “the greatness” — this word.
The verse has the article, ha-gedullah; the ritual drops it and prefixes ve-, “and”.
לְךָ֣ יְ֠הֹוָ֠ה הַגְּדֻלָּ֨ה וְהַגְּבוּרָ֤ה
Thine, O LORD, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty
Gedulah (greatness) is an alternative term for the sephirah Chesed
le-olam
“To the Ages” in Liber O; “for ever” in the Golden Dawn's text.
אַתָּה גִבּוֹר לְעוֹלָם אֲדֹנָי
זֶה־שְּׁמִ֣י לְעֹלָ֔ם
this is My name for ever
“So be it” — the people's answer.
וְעָנ֧וּ כׇל־הָעָ֛ם וְאָמְר֖וּ אָמֵֽן
And all the people shall answer and say: Amen.
The steps above follow Liber O. Here the Golden Dawn papers, older sources or later scholarship preserve another reading. Quotable editions give the passage; others give the page.
Liber O and the Golden Dawn touch the right shoulder for Geburah and the left for Gedulah, which is Chesed. Lévi, whose sign of the cross the order adapted, went to the left shoulder first, for justice, and then to the right, for mercy. The Patach Eliyahu, where most Jews meet the sefirot, makes Chesed the body's right arm — the opposite of the ritual.
(iii) Touching the right shoulder, say ve-Geburah (and the Power). (iv) Touching the left shoulder, say ve-Gedulah (and the Glory).
the initiate said, raising his hand to his forehead, "For thine," then added "is," and continuing as he brought down his hand to his breast, "the kingdom," then to the left shoulder, "the justice," afterwards to the right shoulder, "and the mercy"—then clasping his hands, he added, "in the generating ages." Tibi sunt Malchut et Geburah et Chesed per æonas
At some point, the direction of the horizontal part of the cross was altered from the Roman Catholic left-to-right to the Eastern Orthodox right-to-left. This is apparent from a comparison of the Regardie text with the earlier text
חסד דרועא ימינא. גבורה דרועא שמאלא.
“Chesed the right arm; Gevurah the left arm.” The body's right and left, not the page's.
Liber O glosses the first word “Unto Thee”; the Golden Dawn's text glosses it “thou art”. The verse the whole formula descends from begins with a different word again: lekha, “Thine”.
(i) Touching the forehead, say Ateh (Unto Thee).
Touch thy forehead and say ATEH (thou art)
לְךָ֣ יְ֠הֹוָ֠ה הַגְּדֻלָּ֨ה
Thine, O LORD, is the greatness
Correct Hebrew would put the article ha- before the three sephirah names, as the verse does, and the pronunciation is an imperfect Sephardic one. The verse's word for kingdom is not malkhut at all but ha-mamlakhah.
It would be more correct to use the definite article ha in front of the names of the three sephiroth Malkuth, Geburah and Gedulah. The Sephardic pronunciation is used, but again, in an imperfect form.
הַגְּדֻלָּ֨ה וְהַגְּבוּרָ֤ה וְהַתִּפְאֶ֙רֶת֙ … לְךָ֤ יְהֹוָה֙ הַמַּמְלָכָ֔ה
Liber O says le-Olahm and Amen together, with the hands clasped upon the breast. The Golden Dawn's text clasps the hands before the performer for le-Olam, and says Amen with the dagger between the fingers, point up.
(v) Clasping the hands upon the breast, say le-Olahm, Amen (to the Ages, Amen.)
Clasp thy hands before thee and say LE-OLAM (for ever) Dagger between fingers, point up and say AMEN.
“For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever” is the doxology of the Lord's Prayer — a late addition to Matthew — and the ritual puts it into Hebrew. The verse it most resembles names more sefirot than the ritual uses.
We see by the occult versicle of the Lord's Prayer, which we have cited in our Doctrine, that it was originally made after two manners
It does not appear in the earliest surviving MSS of the Gospel of Matthew, nor in the parallel version of the Lord's Prayer in Luke. It appears only in later MSS of the Byzantine textual tradition. It is probably an interpolation
It is quite likely that the doxology was inspired by a text from the Hebrew Bible, from the First Book of Chronicles
Thine, O LORD, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is Thine; Thine is the kingdom, O LORD, and Thou art exalted as head above all.
This sign, made after this manner, should precede and terminate the conjuration of the four.
Mathers and the other Golden Dawn leaders were quite familiar with Lévi's work; and the fact that they replicated the Hebrew solecisms in the passage above makes the influence almost certain.