Crowley: Wander alone; bearing the light and thy staff. And be the light so bright that no man seeth thee. Be not moved by aught without or within: Keep silence in all ways. Illumination from within, secret impulse from within; practical plans derived accordingly. Retirement from participation in current events. (BT p. 257)

The I Ching gives a warning to "THE HERMIT" regarding his lonely wandering.

Kua 28, The sequence: NOURISHING WITHOUT PUTTING TO USE FINALLY EVOKES MOVEMENT. MOVEMENT WITHOUT END LEADS FINALLY TOO FAR, TO OVERWEIGHTING. (p. 525)

Kua 32, line 4: NO GAME IN THE FIELD. WHEN ONE IS FOREVER ABSENT FROM ONE'S PLACE, HOW CAN ONE FIND GAME? (p. 549)

Crowley: Be not moved by aught without or within.

Crowley: (I Ching, kua 32) "Keeping to the path." By persistence are great empires built. There is no law beyond do what thou wilt. Lust of result mars will in every way; ... Maintain thy virtue - heed not criticism! ...

Kua 32, The image:... THUS THE SUPERIOR MAN STANDS FIRM AND DOES NOT CHANGE HIS DIRECTION. (p. 127)

Wilhelm: (kua 32) ... the independence of the superior man is not based on rigidity and immobility of character. He always keeps abreast of the time and changes with it. What endures is the unswerving directive, the inner law of his being, which determines all his actions . If a man remains at the mercy of moods of hope and fear aroused by the outer world, he loses his inner consistency of character. (p. 127)

Crowley: Illumination and secret impulse from within .

Kua 28, The image: THUS THE SUPERIOR MAN WHEN HE STANDS ALONE, IS UNCONCERNED, AND IF HE HAS TO RENOUNCE THE WORLD, HE IS UNDAUNTED. (p. 112)

Crowley: Retirement from participation in current events.

Wilhelm: (kua 28) The ideas of standing alone and of renunciation of the world are derived from the situation indicated by the hexagram as a whole. Standing alone unconcerned is suggested by the symbol of SUN, the tree, and undauntedness by the attribute of TUI, joyousness. (p.527)

Kua 28, line 2: A DRY POPLAR SPROUTS AT THE ROOT. AN OLDER MAN TAKES A YOUNG WIFE. (p. 113)

Wilhelm: (kua 28) This means an extraordinary reanimation of the process of growth. (p. 113)

Kua 28, line 5: A WITHERED POPLAR PUTS FORTH FLOWERS. AN OLDER WOMAN TAKES A HUSBAND. (p. 113)

Wilhelm: (kua 28) A withered poplar that flowers exhausts its energies thereby and only hastens its end. An older woman may marry once more, but no renewal takes place. Everything remains barren. (p. 114)

Crowley: (the) highest symbolism of this card is, therefore, fertility in its most exalted sense, ... In this trump is shown the entire mystery of life in its most secret workings . (BT p. 89)

Wilhelm: (kua 32) Duration is rather the self-contained and therefore self-renewing movement of an organized, firmly integrated whole, taking place in accordance with immutable laws and beginning anew at every ending. (p. 126) ... The conditions necessary for duration are then set forth. They consist in perseverance in the right course, that is to say, continuity in change. This is the secret of the eternity of the universe . (p. 547)

Crowley: His (Mercury's) representative in physical life is the spermatozoon. (BT p. 88)

My summary of all this: The enduring thing, the secret impulse from within, that which provides continuity in change, the unswerving directive, the inner law of being which determines all of ones actions, the secret of the eternity of the universe, the entire mystery of life in its most secret workings?

DNA - the lonely and hermit like molecule at the center of each cell in the body of man. This molecule carries the set of directives which determine the inner law of the cells being and direct all of its subsequent actions. Crowley intuited a portion of the formula when he points to the sperm as symbol of the hermit.

Only one sperm will fertilize the egg, setting off a change which makes the egg impervious to penetration by another sperm. So, in a symbolic sense, the DNA molecule contained in that sperm is a hermit. That he finds a mate in the DNA of the egg gives rise to the imagery of "the hermetic marriage" which is described in other trumps. The union of these male and female "opposites" creates a third "hermit" or DNA molecule, which is a synthesis of the original male and female principles. Each parent brings 23 chromosomes to the union. Crowley says that the number 23 is "the glyph of life - nascent life." (p. xxv of "777")

Kua 32, The Sequence: THE WAY OF HUSBAND AND WIFE MUST NOT BE OTHER THAN LONG-LASTING. HENCE THERE FOLLOWS THE HEXAGRAM OF DURATION. DURATION MEANS LONG-LASTING.

It is the purpose of my book to present evidence that the 22 trumps of the Tarot represent that half of the genetic code which corresponds to the amino acids and punctuation codons. The 64 codons which code for these chemicals find their representation in the 64 kua of the I Ching. The merging of these two systems of occult knowledge and its isomorphism with the genetic code point to the possibility that knowledge of the genetic code was known to man millennia before its rediscovery in the mid twentieth century.

Hidden within the symbolism and structure of these systems and buried beneath centuries of revision and misunderstanding lie concepts and principles which, when shorn of excessive verbiage and dogma, demonstrate an understanding of the logic and processes of molecular biology by those persons who initiated the occult traditions.

The primary tool of qabalistic research is the manipulation of the Hebrew language so as to provoke hidden meaning from traditional texts. Since the Hebrew letters have a numerical meaning, and number is considered to be the purest form of symbolic representation, words are converted to numbers and those words which have the same numbers are considered to be related.

All of the following references to Hebrew words are taken from Aleister Crowley's "dictionary" contained in that compendium of his writings titled; "777 and Other Qabbalistic Writings of Aleister Crowley", Weiser publications.

As noted above, the number 23 is understood to be a glyph of life. In Crowley's dictionary there are the following words which have the numerical value of 23: life, thread, parted - separated. It may just be the result of an over-heated imagination that I can see in this conjunction of words a description of the process of DNA replication. It may also be that such an association was intended by someone who had a hand in creating the form for those words.

The DNA molecule is often referred to as "the thread of life" in the literature of science. That this thread of life is segmented, in the human species, into 23 chromosomes each for the egg and sperm at their union is highly evocative. Upon union, the separate strands of DNA merge to create a new thread which will thereafter be the blueprint for an entirely distinct and novel individual. It is this thread which then propagates itself into every cell of the growing body by a process of replication. Replication entails the splitting or separating of the double helix of the DNA molecule and the duplication of the half strands resulting in the creation of two identical DNA threads. Each thread then inhabits a separate cell and the process of DNA replication and cell division continues.

There are 64 codons in the genetic code and 64 kua in the I Ching. Each kua has 6 lines making a total of 384 lines. The Hebrew name for Adam has the numerical value of 45, that of Eve is 19; their sum is 64. A hebrew word for semen or sperm has the value of 277. A word for egg has the value, 107. Their sum; 384. I do not wish to claim that these associations are "proof" that the ancients had access to knowledge of the genetic code. I do, however, wish to argue that these "coincidences," along with many others, point to that possibility.

Crowley: This card (THE HERMIT) is attributed to the letter YOD, which means the Hand. Hence, the hand, which is the tool or instrument par excellence, is in the center of the picture. The letter YOD is the foundation of all the other letters of the Hebrew alphabet, which are merely combinations of it in various ways. The letter YOD is the first letter of the name Tetragrammaton (YHVH), and this symbolizes the Father, who is Wisdom; he is the highest form of Mercury, and the Logos, the Creator of all worlds. Accordingly, his representative in physical life is the spermatozoon; this is why the card is called The Hermit. (BT p. 88)

DNA, as the instrument for the expression of life in the physical form can be understood, in poetical terms, to be: 'the hand that creates, the foundation for the physical expression of life, the carrier of the alphabet of life, the expression of the wisdom of life; which is to give all things their chance to be; the logos or word(s) of creation, the hermit who stands alone in the center of each cell and dispenses the light of creation throughout the entire body of man.