Ngrams and Golden Dawn

On Postmodern Magic, there is a post about the new Google Labs tool Ngram. And the post was right. Ngrams are addictive.

(Ngram is a point in a data set. In this case, the dataset is the English contained in books, with the point marking the frequency of a phrase.)

How do I know? I have spent quite a bit of time tonight playing with the Ngram tool. Hehe.





Ngram Wicca 1800 to 2000



It started with me looking at the Ngram for Wicca which was mentioned in the post. Then I started to punch in various terms from my OCD checklist. Such as Golden Dawn.

NGram Golden Dawn 1600 to 2008

What is up with the hump around 1785?

Ngaram Golden Dawn 1850 to 2008

Of course, this is the frequency of the term "Golden Dawn" found in books. Someone will be tempted to misuse the data pattern. Next I looked at famous people and the term (by famous, I mean known Golden Dawn members).

Ngram Golden Dawn and Israel Regardie

Ngram Golden Dawn and Aliester Crowley

Ngram Golden Dawn and William Butler Yeats

Ngram Golden Dawn and David Griffin

There weren't any surprises here...except for one. 

Finally, I punched in some organizations and traditions...call it market research.

Seriously, if you were going to write a book or program, which one would you choose?

So that was my night, abusing the Google Labs Ngram tool.

Remember people, do not do a Morgan---use the Ngram tool responsibly and not to shore up your pet theories.