College of Thelema: Thelemic Education

Again, I hope it's not excessive self-promotion on my part here (don't want to be breaking any rules), but The Magician's I Ching is now actually available, on Amazon.

www.amazon.com/Magicians-Ching-Swami-Anand-Nisarg/dp/1904658652

It should be pretty interesting to anyone operating from a Thelemic background.

It comes from the fact you are the one performing the ritual. You are the center, the axel of the wheel. The angels naturally cluster about, enamoured by thy light, caught in your gravitational pull.

Adding to earlier comments one method of viewing is that first one creates an axis. The a direction force is created, the two intertwining to bring about the entirely natural unfolding of the angels.

Or another, simpler way to put it is:

C.R.C. + ABIEGNIS = VITRIOL
(You got your subtraction backwards.)

@Galahad said

"Also, where does Abiegnus originate? I don't recall it from the Fama."

Other Rosicrucian documents.

"And why does the C.O.T. article describe 72 as "[p]robably the most important theoretical no. in all of medieval magick"?"

Lotsa reasons - my notebook page on 72 is more like 2 pages. But most of the reasons boil down to the 72 pentades of the zodiac and their attribution to things like the Shem ha-M'phorash, the Goetic catelogue, etc. There are other important clues in the Latin Qabalah Simplex catalogue you consulted.

@Jim Eshelman said

"I remain uncomfortable with the sociological implications of "male" being linked to "hot" and "female" to "cold" - difficult for me to hear that as other than the bullshit that "guys want it, gals don't." But perhaps the Aristotelian original implications were different."

Unfortunately, my recollection of Aristotle is that he is the font of much misogyny in Western thought. Wikipedia, if you'll accept it as a source, confirms it.

I don't want to be a part of studying/using any system that carries latent thoughts forward, but the male/female duality seems to permeate so much of the teachings I've encounter so far. It's too bad we can't rename them at this point! Of course, from the little I understand about alchemy, we see all of the elemental forces present in all materia, just in different proportions - that includes individuals. So to describe all women as "cold" in equal amounts would be a gross error.