Qabalah & Syncreticism
In statistics, apophenia is known as a Type I error, the identification of false patterns in data. It is the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data and has come to represent the human tendency to see patterns even when none are present. Addicts, paranoids, fanatics, scientific, political or religious bigots et al, exhibit this behaviour markedly and grow excited at any attempt to examine the rationality or source of their Belief. Any colouring of Consciousness will in fact lead to this error. Any unresolved passion, any emotion, imbalance, imperfection, weakness or strength, affects consciousness. The virture of the Qabalah, and Gematria is that it is impossible to deceive oneself in simple calculations which can be repeatedly tested, no matter how temporarily imbalanced one may be. But the Qabalah is more than Number and Letter alone, but the full perception of the Universe and containing this structure and Understanding in the mind. This is why it is said that the QBLH is rightly of the M∴T∴ alone,41 for pure spirit is Black like the Body of Space. And just as light travels through Space invisibly (that is without lighting it) until it hits upon a planet or some other gross material, so Purity presents no obstacle to the passage of Light, and because there is no reflection of Light, there is no Image.
Pareidolia for instance, is today catalogued as a type of apophenia dealing specifically with seeing images or hearing sounds in random stimuli. A common example is seeing the face of Jesus on toast, or Groucho Marx on the subway.
Finally, a third ‘invisible’ factor may be undisclosed to the observer. The improbability of the coincidence is destroyed if for instance, all three events took place at the same restaurant—the restaurant that a fastidious Mr. Fontgibu has been supping at every evening for the last forty years of his life. It would be no surprise in this case, if one ran into the old man every time one visited the restaurant. Or as in the case of The Book of Results, if W had the requisite knowledge of Egyptology and of P’s personal matters, sufficient to answer P’s questions and deceive him. All such extraneous factors abolish the integrity of the test.
These errors are to be scrupulously avoided.42 Probabilistic calculation serves best as means of Argument. The practitioner will test and continue to test (as well he or she should) until he or she is convinced of a direct causality. In this way, the probability factors tend to the binary distribution (1, 0): that is, we are either certain, or we are not (regardless of how coincidental some of the events appear to be). This is of too critical an importance for the Student to neglect.
Referring again to our example from The Book of Results, had W provided the incorrect answer for question 3, the probability of the event occurring randomly would now be quantified at 1 in 2,352,000 chance. (Since the probability of answering question 3 correctly is 1/10, the probability of answering incorrectly is 9/10 and hence we have p = 9/10 x 1/84 x 1/4 x 1/6 x 1/7 x 1/10 x 1/15). However the probability of answering any one (and only) of the questions incorrectly would be:
9/10 x 1/84 x 1/4 x 1/6 x 1/7 x 1/10 x 1/15 + 1/10 x 83/84 x 1/4 x 1/6 x 1/7 x 1/10 x 1/15 + 1/10 x 1/84 x 3/4 x 1/6 x 1/7 x 1/10 x 1/15 + 1/10 x 1/84 x 1/4 x 5/6 x 1/7 x 1/10 x 1/15 + 1/10 x 1/84 x 1/4 x 1/6 x 7/7 x 1/10 x 1/15 + 1/10 x 1/84 x 1/4 x 1/6 x 1/7 x 9/10 x 1/15 + 1/10 x 1/84 x 1/4 x 1/6 x 1/7 x 1/10 x 14/15
which is a 1 in 164, 093 chance.
Had P asked only the first 4 questions and received 3 correct answers, the probability of such an event occurring at random would be 1 in 200. Had P received only 2 correct answers the probabilities would still yield a 1 in 80 chance. These are still excellent odds for verifiability and (1 in 80 means that we would be correct 98.75% of the time in assuming the synchronous event was not random). Most prospectors would be quite justified in betting the House on such a prospect. However, we seek Science and immutable Law, not Chance.
Though this may serve to satisfy most rational tests (as in the safety of air flight), for the practitioner these probabilistic calculations will hold little weight. The perfection should be such (and he would do well to insist upon it) that no error is admitted no matter how long he extends the test, no matter how convincing the mathematics. He will abandon the inquiry (or at least must revise his understanding of his object) at the first error, for in practice Synchronicity will admit no error and its perfection mathematically improbable as it will be, will quite often overshoot the bounds of even the improbable and into the fantastical or miraculous, so that no doubt can be admitted in the practitioner and the facts and their probabilities serve only for empirical record or to convince the Skeptic.43 For there must and always will be, Voice to accompany Vision, in the same way that there must be Light where there is Fire; and so internal phenomenon must accompany external manifestation.44
38 (See Hume and other Rationalists on the notion of Causality).
39 As in the case of the neighbor and the traffic signal. A coincidence is always just a coincidence until one ‘sees the meaning behind it’; that is the observer endows the event with a meaning it may not have had. The question here isn’t (yet) whether this ‘meaning’ is illusory or not, but whether it ‘informs’ the event.
40 These ideas are presented fully in Jung’s Eranos lectures, which he developed and explored further with the Nobel-laureate physicist Wolfgang Pauli. Their findings were published and are available.
41 There is no Self beneath the Abyss and so no solidifying agent to act on one’s impressions. If they are perceived at all beneath the Abyss, they are felt vaguely as ‘intuitions’. Temporality and causality are affirmed beneath the Abyss though no evidence or empiricism can justify such notions. It is only above the Abyss where such constructs become visible for what they are, and the temporality or causality of things is proven by those very qualities that deny them beneath the Abyss. Furthermore the M∴T∴ possesses the Cup without which the Understanding would not be possible. All that will be seen are disconnected facts that assail the Reason and produce Wonder and Madness, which in themselves are trials of the Initiation.
42 Except in the case of the officer in BINAH, who has transcended such limitations and so is charged with giving himself to them, even if they be objects of deception and treachery, for they can not hurt the M∴T∴ and fulfill the Law. For in this way alone are the 42 made to follow and Drink, and so are brought slowly to the 14th Aire wherein the Choice is presented to them, Justice is achieved and the Conquering Child is crowned.
43 We provide examples of these in the sections on “The Living Key”
44 See footnote 53. By the time the Student passes the 14th Aethyr, he/she is immersed in these Supernal realities so that their existence is perceived directly, and there remains only the training and practice that comes with the acquisition of any language. The Qabalah and the concordances, along with the application of the Key will confirm and add to the Wonder of many such operations. It may serve as a useful test. For that same Practitioner is at Play with Babalon (156) and with Chronozon (333) and with three magi (441) though he know it not certainly until the 2nd Aethyr, for the 11th head in Daath will deceive him as has been said. Nonetheless, translation of the Key and its application to Name and Place will reveal not only the Temple, but its officers to the Practitioner, even when these functions are unconscious as it were, to the officers themselves.