"ALHIM", (Elohim) is the exoteric word for Gods.<<"Gods" are the Forces of Nature; their "Names" are the Laws of Nature.  Thus They are eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent and so on; and thus their "Wills" are immutable and absolute.>>  It is the masculine plural of a feminine noun, but its nature is principally feminine.<> It is a perfect hieroglyph of the number 5.  This should be studied in "A Note on Genesis" (Equinox I, II).
   The Elements are all represented, as in Tetragrammaton, but there is no development from one into the others.  They are, as it were, thrown together --- untamed, only sympathising by virtue of their wild and stormy  but elastically resistless energy.  The Central letter is "He" --- the letter of breath --- and represents Spirit.  The first letter "Aleph" is the natural letter of Air, and the Final "Mem" is the natural letter of Water.  Together, "Aleph" and "Mem" make "Am" --- the mother within whose womb the Cosmos is conceived.  But "Yod" is not the natural letter of Fire.  Its juxtaposition with "He" sanctifies that fire to the "Yod" of Tetragrammaton.  Similarly we find "Lamed" for Earth, where we should expect Tau --- in order to emphasize the influence of Venus, who rules Libra.
   "ALHIM", therefore, represents rather the formula of Consecration than that of a complete ceremony.  It is the breath of benediction, yet so potent that it can give life to clay and light to darkness.
   In consecrating a weapon, "Aleph" is the whirling force of the thunderbolt, the lightning which flameth out of the East even {24} into the West.  This is the gift of the wielding of the thunderbolt of Zeus or Indra, the god of Air.  "Lamed" is the Ox-goad, the driving force; and it is also the Balance, representing the truth and love of the Magician.  It is the loving care which he bestows upon perfecting his instruments, and the equilibration of that fierce force which initiates the ceremony.<>
   "Yod" is the creative energy -- the procreative power: and yet "Yod" is the solitude and silence of the hermitage into which the Magician has shut himself.  "Mem" is the letter of water, and it is the Mem final, whose long flat lines suggest the Sea at Peace HB:Mem-final ; not the ordinary (initial and medial) Mem whose hieroglyph is a wave HB:Mem.<>  And then, in the Centre of all, broods Spirit, which combines the mildness of the Lamb with the horns of the Ram, and is the letter of Bacchus or "Christ".<>
 After the magician has created his instrument, and balanced it truly, and filled it with the lightnings of his Will, then is the weapon laid away to   rest; and in this Silence, a true Consecration comes.
 

   It is extremely interesting to contrast with the above the formula of the elemental Gods deprived of the creative spirit.  One {25} might suppose that as ALIM, is the masculine plural of the masculine noun AL, its formula would be more virile than that of ALHIM, which is the masculine plural of the feminine noun ALH.  A moment's investigation is sufficient to dissipate the illusion.  The word masculine has no meaning except in relation to some feminine correlative.
   The word ALIM may in fact be considered as neuter.  By a rather absurd convention, neuter objects are treated as feminine on account of their superficial resemblance in passivity and inertness with the unfertilized female.  But the female produces life by the intervention of the male, while the neuter does so only when impregnated by Spirit.  Thus we find the feminine AMA, becoming AIMA<>, through the operation of the phallic Yod, while ALIM, the congress of dead elements, only fructifies by the brooding of Spirit.
 This being so, how can we describe ALIM as containing a Magical Formula? Inquiry discloses the fact that this formula is of a very special kind.
 The word adds up to 81, which is a number of the moon.  It is thus the formula of witchcraft, which is under Hecate.<>  It is only the romantic mediaeval perversion of science that represents young women as partaking in witchcraft, which is, properly speaking, restricted to the use of such women as are no longer women in the Magical sense of the word, because thy are no longer capable of corresponding to the formula of the male, and are therefore neuter rather than feminine.  It is for this reason that their method has always been referred to the moon, in that sense of the term in which she appears, not as the feminine correlative of the sun, but as the burnt-out, dead, airless satellite of earth.
   No true Magical operation can be performed by the formula of ALIM.  All the works of witchcraft are illusory; and their apparent effects depend on the idea that it is possible to alter things by the mere rearrangement of them.  One {26} must not rely upon the false analogy of the Xylenes to rebut this argument.  It is quite true that geometrical isomers act in different manners towards the substance to which they are brought into relation.  And it is of course necessary sometimes to rearrange the elements of a molecule before that molecule can form either the masculine or the feminine element in a true Magical combination with some other molecule.
   It is therefore occasionally inevitable for a Magician to reorganize the structure of certain elements before proceeding to his operation proper.  Although such work is technically witchcraft, it must not be regarded as undesirable on that ground, for all operations which do not transmute matter fall strictly speaking under this heading.
   The real objection to this formula is not inherent in its own nature.  Witchcraft consists in treating it as the exclusive preoccupation of Magick, and especially in denying to the Holy Spirit his right to indwell His Temple.