Written by Andrew K. Arnett

It is November 11. The time is 11:11. Naturally, I am thinking about the number 11. Here is a curious number indeed. But what makes it so? For starters it is a double number. That is, it mirrors itself. Two ones facing off. Twins. Doppelgängers. There is here as well an allusion to magic. So what is that? In tarot, the first numbered card is the Magician. He is symbolic of occult power and the bridge between physical and spiritual worlds. With eleven we are dealing with two ones. A doubling down of this concept of occult power and knowledge.

According to magician Aleister Crowley, the number 11 is magick itself. He writes in Magick in Theory and Practice that 11 is “magick in its most transgressive and disruptive form.” Crowley associates 11 with the concept of crossing boundaries, going beyond the ordinary and the breaking of norms. Let’s contrast this with its preceding number, the number 10.

In esoteric terms, the number 10 is associated with order and completion. In Tarot, the tenth card is the Wheel of Fortune. The circle is the symbol of perfection. In Kabbalah, 10 is the number of Sephiroths that make up the Tree of Life—the complete structure of the cosmos. But just as Nigel Tufnel demonstrates in This Is Spinal Tap, the magician’s Sephiroths go “up to eleven.” What I mean by this is that, though classical Kabbalah does not recognize an “11th Sephirah,” occultists recognize a secret Sephirah hidden in the tree of life named Da’ath. This 11th Sephirah is associated with the Qliphoth, or “shells”—chaotic forces lying outside the balanced Tree of Life.

Da’ath, and by association the number 11, represents hidden knowledge as well as a gateway or a liminal point. A stepping beyond the structures of the norm. The threshold of occult knowledge. So it is exactly in this way that Magick, indeed most mystical systems in general, view the number 11 as a transgressive and chaotic force. Eleven shakes the Tree of Life itself. And what fruit falls from all this shaking? Da’ath. And within Da’ath is contained the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. A tree within a tree. Two trees for the price of one.

The knowledge of good and evil is of course the fruit that the God in the Old Testament forbids Adam and Eve of partaking. To do so would be a violation of the Divine Order. And so the number 11 represents “violation of the Divine Order.” 11 is also associated with the astrological sign Aquarius, the epoch in which our planet is entering into now. Aquarius is ruled by Saturn/Uranus and is equated with rebellion and revolution. You see the theme here continues on and on.

Speaking of epoch, Crowley considered number 11 as being the number of the New Aeon, of which he declared himself to be its prophet. As well, the Word of the New Aeon = 11 letters. And that word is “ABRAHADABRA” which Crowley views as the central formula to Thelema, his system of Magick. That is, the formula of the Great Work accomplished.

Andrew K. Arnett is the author of the book The Crowley Conspiracy available on Amazon.