The Eastern Mysteries: An Encyclopedic Guide to the Sacred Languages & Magickal Systems of the World : The Key of It All, Book 1 (Key of It All)

Rating:
Summary: Overwhelming
Review: Can anyone truly digest all the knowledge in this book and its companion the Western Mysteries. It is impossible, but as references for whatever you indulge yourself they indisposible. If you want to figure out sanskrit or hebrew, either to write or number, or even to explore the magical implications of language, these books are a must for your bookshelf. You will find something useful for whatever path you follow.

Rating:
Summary: What a value!!!
Review: This book and it's "Western Mysteries" companion contain extensive amounts of interesting and valuable information. They truly bring together so many of the fundamental aspects that are shared across cultures and disciplines. Even though the books may appear, at first glance, somewhat complex, their many, many entry points provide easy access for both casual reading and deep exploration.

Rating:
Summary: Author's review of The Eastern Mysteries
Review: This book is the first volume of a two volume set that took me over 20 years to research and write. As a child I was drawn to the magic of the ancient alphabets. At nine years old, I had already committed to memory the Greek alphabet. I was able to write in my child's hand the Egyptian hieroglyphic phonetic alphabet. I also copied out from an encyclopedia the Phoenician alphabet, and saw the connections between Egyptian, Phonecian, Greek, and Roman script, and how our own English alphabet of 26 letters evolved from the picture images of these ancient scripts (i.e, A was a bull, and B was a house). In the late 1960s I discovered the number values for the ancient Hebrew alphabet. I was fascinated by the concept that every letter of the alphabet had a different number value, and that the range of numbers spanned from 1 to 9 to 10 to 900 to 100 to 900. This revelation somehow triggered deeply within me past life remembrances of previously studying the sacred nature of the alphabet. From my first exposure to Hebrew, I searched out other cultures and other languages that were isopsephic (i.e., languages that use the letters of the alphabet as number value in addition to phonetic values). What really fascinated me was that any word in an isopsephic language could be measured and numbered by the number values of the letters composing that word. And if two words equalled the same number, they served as poetic metaphors to define the mystical nature of that specific number. As my research progressed, more and more languages unfolded, until I discovered languages in both the east and west that held this mystical property. When I finally recorded all of my research, my occult archaeological discoveries fell naturally to two books, one dealing with the eastern mysteries and one with the western mysteries. The Eastern Mysteries contains so much new material that have never seen print before in English. This includes the numbering of Sanskrit, including a key to the letters on the flower petals known as the chakras. The Tibetan alphabet is also deciphered for the first time, as well as the stroke count of the Chinese language based on Taoist Spirit practices. A key to the actual layout of the I Ching is also deciphered for the first time, and connected back directly to the stroke count of Chinese calligraphy. Beyond these rare discoveries the middle eastern languages of Cuneiform, Hebrew, and Arabic are fully deciphered. There are also many appendices to the 6 chapters in this first volume that offer additional insight into the number philosophy of the ancient world, including the number system of Gurdjieff and the ancient eastern elemental system known as the tattvas. This work, though highly detailed, is aimed at the lay person, and does not require any previous knowledge of any of the alphabets or symbolic systems. I would recommend this book alone, on the merits of the last chapter. For I have written the best possible explanantion of the I Ching that has yet to see print. For in my research with the I Ching over the last 30 years, I had discovered the key to all of its symbolism. That key is the 8 basic trigrams that make up the 64 hexagrams. Once the reader understands these 8 basic shapes, then all of the complex oracular vocabulary can be understood. The Western Mysteries should also be purchased, since the two volumes complement each other, and were originally written as one large volume.

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Reference
Review: This is a excellent reference for all students of Magick.
The volume abounds in tables and cross references for many Magickal Systems, the section on Hebrew, is an outstanding resource. With corrispondances from a number of major sources, including Golden Dawn, Aliester Crowley, and Eliphas Levi. with correlations between them.

If you want a reference to Magickal systems, Alphabets, and corrisponding number systems, this book is Great.