User:Elseware/Binary angels

= Introduction =

This is an idea which came to me when explaining the John Dee system for working with angels.

In the system, angels are expressed by their primary, secondary, third and forth aspects. In terms of Elements. If I recall some higher angels are expressed with only one or two elements, but I'm not concerned about them right now...

It occurred to me while explaining that there were 256 such angels (4 to the power of 4). Which is at least an interesting coincidence as the most common unit of computer storage is the byte, which can have any of 256 values (usually 0-255). A byte is stored using 8 bits. Each bit is just 1 or 0. Giving the total 256 (2 to the power of 8).

- C.Elseware

= Applications =

The main use I see for this concept is reducing a complex idea of an angel down into a single character or 2 digit hexidecimal number for use in a working, or attaching to a servitor, sigil etc.

It can easily be tagged into webpages, emails etc. Which are are huge part of our daily lives.

Although it would be possible to go the other way and work a single byte (character or number) into a complex description of an angel. Should that be useful in dealing with something.

= Description =

This is very much an idea I'm working out on the back of an envelope, but in public view. Other peoples input is, of course, welcome. It is a wiki afterall...

Binary Elements
The four main Elements can be mapped into two digit binary as follows (with decimal and binary value shown):

Fire  Dec: 0  Bin: 00

Water Dec: 1  Bin: 01

Air   Dec: 2  Bin: 10

Earth Dec: 3  Bin: 11

The least significant bit indicates 'gender' (0 male, 1 female) and the most significant bit indicating... (what's the word for distinguishing the set of water,fire from the set of earth,air?)

Expressing an Angel in Binary
First select the aspects of the angel. In my example I want something to keep the wiki working as a community. So I'll decide on water-of-air for the major aspects (emotional side of communication) and for the minor aspects fire-of-air (dynamic side of communication). So this gives the following. With most significant element on the left.

Air      Water     Air       Fire

Which can be written in binary as: 1 0      0  1      1  0      0  0

Which is 128+0+0+16+8+0+0+0 = 152 in decimal

and converting to hex: 1001 1000 = 98

In the iso-8859-1 character set this is this character: ˜ (a wavy line postioned at the top line of the text rather than ~ which is positioned at the middle line)

˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜˜

Converting a character to an angellic description
Lets convert the character $ to an angelic description.

$ is character number 36 (24 in hex)

In binary it is stored as: 00100100

Converting to elements

Fire (00), Air (10) , Water (01), Fire (00)

Exactly what fire-of-water-of-air-of-fire means is left as a medititation for the adept...

Associations
This is a table mapping elements to binary, hex and iso-latin-1 characters.