AUTHOR’S NOTE: Here I’m nibbling around the edges of Aleister Crowley’s magickal formula, “0=2,” which I’ve always assumed to be purely Qabalistic, but that I now realize is more analytically rigorous (and just a bit beyond my college-level calculus).

Hermetically, I’ve understood zero (or “nothing”) to be represented by the three “Veils of Negativity,” but the “2” of the equation has eluded me except: 1) as stipulated in the proviso that undifferentiated reality (i.e. “Zero”) must first particularize (into “One”) and then divide (into “Two”) in order to comprehend itself and act on that self-awareness; and 2) as captured in Crowley’s explanation of the dualistic principles of the I Ching, where I’m on firmer ground.

In the Book of the Law, Crowley seized the opportunity to spring upon an unsuspecting world the sublimely subtle (and non-intuitive) inference that “0=2,” thus enshrining in euphoric verse his personal vision of negative existence that manifests and then withdraws (or “unmakes” itself in reverse order) that most Western occultists ascribe to the three Qabalistic “Veils.” I’ve recently seen this equation stated more lucidly (and economically) in Joe Monteleone’s Tarot Mysticism as “0 = +1 -1.” As I discovered after a little digging, Crowley himself used that expression in Chapter 5 of Magic Without Tears, where he discussed the nature of “nothingness” in both mathematical and mystical terms.

Crowley is at his most comprehensible in this regard when he explains it in the yang (positive) and yin (negative) language of the I Ching, which employs metaphysical addition and subtraction to arrive at philosophical zero (in this way deriving nothing from something by annihilating the individual properties of opposite and equal entities via their adaptive fusion); this fundamental paradigm should be more easily grasped by the algebraically-challenged reader. He loses me when he approaches it from the perspective of arithmetic abstractions that go into the ramifications of multiplication and division by zero (and even worse, a miscellany of presumed factors of zero) which I was taught always yields zero in the first case and, in the second instance, an undefined quotient that may only be an approximate value.

Mathematicians close ranks in rejecting this formula as logically unsound but Crowley, ever the esoteric theoretician, wasn’t speaking to them anyway despite applying their terminology in an arcane manner that is difficult to fathom even for those of (ahem) above-average intellect. He may have been indulging in a bit of abstruse whimsy (it can be hard to tell with him) and would have been wise to stop with the I Ching and the “leveling” effect of inverse qualities and quantities. But to be honest, I would rather struggle repeatedly with his convoluted thoughts until they make some kind of sense than spend much time with Monteleone’s more expansive but less immaculate text.

In Thelemapedia I came across this attempt to explain Crowley’s assumptions:

“A means of expressing this (i.e. 0=2) is as a pair of equations, which may demonstrate the change of perspective expressed in Liber Legis.

0 = (+1) + (-1) (combination of the original values of polar opposites resulting in annihilation of its members)

|+1| + |-1| = 2 (union of the absolute values of polar opposites resulting in the restoration of the members)

Thus yielding:

0 = (+1) + (-1) «=» |+1| + |-1| = 2“

This rational deconstruction provoked me to theorize that our earliest perception of objective reality (and our experience of subjective existence within it) arrives as a stimulating wave of conscious apprehension and then subsides into its former quiescence as we become inured to its novelty through constant immersion, and this act of familiarization and accommodation is repeated during subsequent episodes throughout life. If these waves of exceptional clarity (in a word, epiphanies) occur close enough together, we will encounter them as a seamless continuum that feels natural and unremarkable in its uniformity (in other words as an energizing daily event, a phenomenon with which I’m well-acquainted as a retired guy with lots of time to unpack its transcendental implications and turn them into blog posts). The tarot can be used to pick apart this monolithic facade, separating it into its constituent facets.

When I perform a tarot treading, I look for peaks and troughs in the existential flux that take the narrative beyond the status quo, either as a projected “tidal wave” of action or a period of deceleration culminating in becalmed inertia. I’m not proposing that a highly energetic card will overshadow and perhaps negate the influence of another card of equal stature and milder disposition (after all, Venus as the Empress has wiles to fend off intimidation by the Emperor’s Mars-ruled Aries), but there can certainly be trade-offs and compromises. It will seldom deliver a “zero-sum” outcome that produces a stalemate, but even an “agree-to-disagree” situation has elements of a negotiated truce in which the two adversaries achieve zero engagement, and this spell of deferred confrontation will benefit both.

Although I have seen it happen over five decades of tarot practice, only rarely will every card combination in a spread act to sabotage the thrust of the overall population (a clear case of “x=0”), resulting in a null inference for the seeker to wrestle with unaided by divinatory insight. If I see the challenge early enough as one of “trying to get blood from a stone,” I can cancel the session and attempt the reading at another time. However, a resourceful reader can usually find a thread to pull that will unbind and ideally liberate these tightly-wound dichotomies, letting each card breathe on its own and lending it individual traction within the scenario while still remaining mindful of its collaborative potential as the story unfolds.