The 37th Mandala

ON 37

Number 37 is Dee’s Prime, so named for its function in formulae derived from the Enochian Keys by Dr. John Dee and his scryer Edward Kelly. Aleister Crowley, Kelly’s reincarnation, who conducted extensive investigations into the astral significance of this prime, asserted that the number resonates to a transcendent dimension of enforced stability, as if appointed to keep chaos at bay, and will maintain itself at all costs, expunging any extra digit that threatens conversion to 38 (which falters before Dee’s Prime, being composed of the weak Malkuthian Lattice Prime 19, poorly reinforced by the Dyad) and also constantly adding to—thus overbalancing—pure 36, which is otherwise a most potent square, being divisible by both the Gnostic Prime and the Grand Triad, and having many mystical aspects and counterparts. 37’s influence is thus an essentially baleful one, not fully explicable in human terms, operating according to a geometry inconceivable even on an akashic plane and so resisting categorization as strictly “evil.” The keen-eyed numerologist will notice the manifestation of 37 in countless random places, in newspapers, motion pictures, bus terminals, telephone numbers—displaying an ubiquity exceeding the action of chance and bordering on deliberation. As an organizing principle, 37 is as threatening as it is fascinating, with many of its effects and attributes remaining therefore undiscovered and unexplored. Crowley’s journals lapse into incoherence during his study of the number in Arabia; while John Dee, toward the end of his life, reduced to conditions of persecution and poverty, reversed his lifelong attitude toward open-minded contemplation of the symbols in his work and, in a charred fragment preserved by the Ashmolean Institute, cautioned vehemently against any manipulation whatsoever of 37, blaming it entirely for the reversal of his luck….