Faith

93

Thelema and Agape in Greek isopsephy
The number Thelemites greet each other with. It is the Greek value of both Thelema, Will, and Agape, Love, the two halves of Crowley's Law.
Documented

Two words, one sum

In Greek isopsephy, Thelema totals 93 and Agape totals 93. Crowley built on this equality: the Law of Thelema pairs Will with Love, do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law, love is the law, love under will, and the matching sums were taken as proof the pairing was written into the alphabet itself. Thelemites still open letters with 93 and close with 93 93/93, three ninty-threes for the three key words, the fraction because love is under will.

Assessment: The arithmetic and the greeting custom are both documented, in Crowley's letters and in current practice. The meaning of the match is doctrine, not math.
Stories

A password for the initiated

The story of how 93 lives: as a shibboleth. Two strangers meet, one signs off 93, the other answers 93/93, and each knows the other's shelf. Crowley designed a religion that fits in a signature line, which may be the most modern thing about it: a creed compressed to a verification code decades before verification codes.

Assessment: The shibboleth function is documented in the community's own etiquette guides. As social engineering it is exactly what secret societies have always done, just with better compression.
Interesting claims

The alphabet voted

The claim: Greek letter values were fixed long before Crowley, so the Thelema-Agape equality predates the religion by two thousand years, which means either the equality is meaningless noise, or the alphabet itself was loaded, a message waiting for a religion to notice it. Some practitioners take the second reading literally: isopsephy as a channel, not a game.

Assessment: The pre-existing equality is the genuinely interesting fact: the alphabet really did contain the match. What it contained it for is untestable. Filed as the cleanest case of a number founding a theology rather than decorating one.
Sources and further reading
  1. Thelema, 9+5+30+8+40+1, and Agape, 1+3+1+80+8, checkable isopsephy
  2. Liber AL vel Legis I:40 and I:57, will and love under will
  3. Crowley's correspondence, the attested 93 salutation
  4. Thelemic Union, 93 Explained, current practice
Worth asking

If will and love share a number by the accident of Greek letter values, is the equality a cosmic signature or a founding coincidence promoted to doctrine?

Open in the interactive archive
GR8YFILES · competing origin stories, labeled by the strength of their evidence · readers 14+