Measuring the otherworld

        There are plenty of good inspirational ideas for the Western Otherworld in the Kabbalah. Among them, an otherworld that is in many ways susceptible to numerical analysis. I would suggest that, as with kabbalistic geomatria, the Western Otherworld can be analysed using mathematical tools, recognises a fundamental connection between Word and Number, but can not be simply measured by those without sufficient abillity to fully comprehend its higher reaches.

        I'd aim for something like a notional synthesis of kabbalistic geomatria and modern higher mathematics - the lower world, particularly the mundane, may be understood by simple arithmetic, as the worlds grow higher the mathematics becomes more abstract and complex (with variant geometries, new dimensions, group theory and such coming into play), and the understanding of the relationship between Word (or indeed Rune) and Number becomes more fundamental to any answer. Mathematical transformations that seem predictable and understandable in our world become far more complex in world of powerful abstractions.

        Not that I'd say kabballah is the only inspiration we can draw on here - there are plenty of other examples of mathematical magic/'mysticism' (mysticism not intended the gloranthan specific use of the term), such as Pythagorean magic, Agrippa's number square magics, Trithemius and his codes, etc. Kabballah just happens to be one that has a broadly applicable scheme of correspondence between concepts and numbers, albeit a simplistic one. If I had my copy of Godwins Caballistic Encyclopaedia at hand I could whip out a few dozen examples. Zzaburi mathematics might be far more complex - each letter/Rune might correspond not to a number, but to a number/and/or mathematical transformation, for example.

        To my mind, at least, there is a certain symmetry in the sorcerous world view being one that makes the mundane world most comprehensible being also one that makes the higher levels very difficult to comprehend, which the combination of magical numerology and higher mathematics certainly sounds like it would be to me.

        Numerology may not seem logical to us, but when it comes down to it the logic of the Malkioni has some fundamentally different axioms to ours. We may recognise many of the rules, but the playing field is very different.

	Cheers
		David

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End of Glorantha Digest