If anyone is in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary or Edmonton, I'm going to be touring those cities in August and September; and there I will be giving workshops on the I Ching (and on Yi Fa Qi Gong).
If anyone wants to participate or wants more information please feel free to message me or email me about it!
@Al-Shariyf said
"Awesome book. Really. I found the iChing to be intimidating and very inaccessible until I read this book. Good job."
Thank you very much!
You should feel free to check out The Magician's I Ching facebook group. There's a lot of great conversation going on there on the subject. Good mix of Thelemites and non-thelemite I Ching fanatics.
I felt I should update this to point out that the book is now available from Karnac/Aeon, and the discussion group is going very strong with about 500 members, and many interesting conversations from both the Chinese and Western-magick perspective.
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.
@Galahad said
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@Swamiji said
"I really don't mean to self-promote, but I'm soon to have a book published that will deal with the I Ching through a focus on the Great Work and the perspective of a western magical practitioner ("The Magician's I Ching", coming out almost any time now)."
Please, self-promote away! 
I hadn't heard about your book, but now I can't wait to read it - *(http://www.amazon.com/Magicians-Ching-Swami-Anand-Nisarg/dp/1904658652:2z6wo296)"
Why indeed it is! I had no idea that was up already!
I really don't mean to self-promote, but I'm soon to have a book published that will deal with the I Ching through a focus on the Great Work and the perspective of a western magical practitioner ("The Magician's I Ching", coming out almost any time now). I talk about Crowley and his relationship to the I Ching and why he's important in the history of I Ching in the west, as well as other things about how to relate the I Ching to western magical practice.
I would definitely agree, as interesting as Crowley's version of the I Ching might be, that you probably need to look at other versions/translations.
In Crowley's method of I Ching casting, there's only ever one moving line (and always one moving line). This would be interpreted, if from the context of traditional I Ching, as the central and most important part of the casting. It would be, in essence, the advice that tells you how you should be acting RIGHT NOW, with the main text of the original hexagram serving as the background of the whole situation, and main the text of the "resulting hexagram" (the new hexagram formed when you change the 'moving line' into its opposite) as representing where the situation is going.
In systems where it is possible generate more than one moving line, or indeed no moving lines, the interpretation gets a little more complex than that.
Those various "eastern writings" are quite clearly myth and misinformation based on hyperbole and misunderstanding.
From the very early (theraveda) accounts of the Buddha's life, we know he slept. For that matter, we know that he had trouble sleeping comfortably in his old age.
As for the question of sleep itself, its certainly true that becoming advanced in meditation means you need quite a bit LESS sleep than the average person. This has been my own experience as well. But its a leap from there to the idea that no sleep is needed at all, this was quite clearly fantasy written by people who were more interested in religious/miraculous claptrap than anything else, possibly motivated by frauds making absurd claims, and recorded and copied over time by people who had no personal experience to judge what they were talking about.
I see. So the direction and the name positions are both changed.
That's a simple enough answer for the banishings; what happens in the greater pentagram rituals? Where would the Invoking fire pentagram go? In which two directions would the active spirit pentagrams be performed?
@Jim Eshelman said
"No."
So to clarify, are you suggesting that if you do the Star Ruby in the southern hemisphere, you should start in the East with "Therion", then move south with "Hadit"?
If you were doing the hebrew LBRP, you would start in the east with IHVH, then go north with "AGLA"?
And with the Greater Pentagram Ritual? Would the active/passive pentagrams of spirit or the opening/closing portal signs remain unchanged as well, in your opinion? So you would begin in the east with the portal opening and end in the south with the portal opening?
@Frater Horus said
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@Swamiji said
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@Frater Horus said
"There is also maybe a problem with the definition of the grand architect of the universe. It is said it is Ain Soph. "
Where exactly is that said?! Because I can tell you that in the Chapter degree of the Holy Royal Arch the true name of the Grand Architect is revealed, and that ain't it.
93!"
I read this in a masonic book. It was in an advanced degree, after 33°(memphis misraim system).
As far as i understand now there is no dogmatic conception of god in masonry.
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There is no dogmatic conception of "god" in masonry; in fact the central teaching about "god" is about the transcendence of dogma in favor of universal deity.
As for the memphis-mizraim rite; they aren't considered regular rites. Very popular among the esoteric crowd but never recognized.
93!
I'm working on a new book at this time, which will tentatively be called "The Magician's I Ching"; a take on the I Ching that's oriented toward the actual practitioner (rather than the academic or the merely curious), and specifically to present the work to be of service to western magicians.
(I'm currently talking with a couple of publishers, but if anyone here is interested in helping and has publisher connections please get in touch)
In any case, I thought I would share with the forum a link to a Facebook group of the same name, which is a place to discuss and work on the I Ching from the perspective of the western practitioner:
www.facebook.com/groups/346543022152305
Please feel free to join it, or recommend it to others.
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Becoming an Adept doesn't turn you into a Superhero. You don't get to know anything without prior study. What you do get is the chance to understand things better, see further, learn faster. But anyone who thinks that becoming an adept means you will effortlessly pull out actual factual knowledge out of nowhere and doing no work will be disappointed.
93!
@Frater Horus said
"There is also maybe a problem with the definition of the grand architect of the universe. It is said it is Ain Soph. "
Where exactly is that said?! Because I can tell you that in the Chapter degree of the Holy Royal Arch the true name of the Grand Architect is revealed, and that ain't it.
93!
@Frater Horus said
"It's the "belonging" part. I dont remember the exact words but there is a notion of "you belong to masonry", not to "great white brotherhood" but to "masonry". Or maybe i was paranoid when i read this and interpretated in a weird way.
I'm not sure what you're talking about. There is no such element to any Masonic oath in any of the degrees I've taken (and I've taken quite a few).
The core of the degree oaths have to do with keeping secret the special parts of that degree; there are also obligations in some degrees to defend and assist your brothers in the order. There is nothing whatsoever in regular masonry that says you "belong" to the order. In fact, there is explicitly nothing in the oaths which are contrary to one's religious duties (assuming he already fits the religious conditions to be fit to be made a mason in the first place).
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@Jim Eshelman said
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@Frater Horus said
"Are black bros supposed, for instance, to consciously plan stuff to control or kill people and enjoy consciously the process? Or are they supposed to think they're genuinely loving and helpful? Or are both ways possible?"
Not necessarily evil. They could be nice, sweet, well-intended teachers feeding you lines of misleading bullshit based on fear and an unwillingness to surrender themselves to the annihilation of the Next Step.
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That's almost always the case. Intentional frauds are just common frauds, generally; they don't get to the point of being black brothers, because to get to that point you have to have actually tried.
Black brothers are garbage, but because they're garbage to themselves on the inside; on the surface level (the face of it, the "facade") they are desperate to convince themselves and others that their position of rejecting the need to change is somehow noble.
93!
The thing is, insight is great but you need a combination of insight and techniques of concentration. If I recall, the book you mentioned says that too, though perhaps its not very clear on how those two interplay; the way out of the "dark night" is through the development of both.
So to return to the subject, let's say someone has read the basic texts (crowley's enochian writings, Duquette's books on the subject); what would you say is the first thing someone should do?
Alternately, what would be the simplest and fastest way to start actually doing enochian work?
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What would you suggest for someone to start out with Enochian magick? Assume its someone who has experience with ceremonial magick but has not done any enochian work before.
Similarly, I would want this person to be able to get working fairly quickly, relatively speaking, and not get overwhelmed in study without any actual practice.
What's the right way to get started, and what do you think would be the least someone would have to do in order to actually start practice and not just theory?
93!
@Patrick Ossoski said
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@Q789 said
"KCHGA is the Western version of the Buddist 'Enlightenment'."
That varies, I think. Might just as well be the crossing of the Abyss. I'm no Buddhist expert, though.
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As someone who has spent quite some time in both worlds, as it were, I would say that there is a huge amount of "buddhism" and "hinduism" out there. Saying a single thing about it and trying to say "that's buddhism" is like finding something that is agreed upon by all branches of Christianity, living and extinct, exoteric plus esoteric. There are probably a few, but not much. Ditto for Hinduism.
There are branches of both that are as dogmatic as Catholicism, or as stunted as the basest of evangelical churches, and there are branches of both that are profound mystery schools. And, just like with western religion, the most "mainstream" versions of both faiths are the least useful.
What I can tell you from my own experience is that its clear to me that there is a "Sanatana Dharma" (or Philosophia Perennis, if you prefer), a single formula of underlying Truth that is not what "all religions believe" or nonsense like that, but it IS a formula that can be found in almost any culture, in the esoteric systems hidden in that culture.
I can also tell you from my own experience that part of this formula involves three stages (degrees, if you like, with non-initiate/profane/cowan/whatever being the fourth stage); these stages could be summed up as "Initiate, Adept, Master". And of course its quite possible to break them down into further sections.
Because of the aforementioned variety of belief systems found in Buddhism and Hinduism, you can certainly find individual sets of systems that do not correlate correctly, but from my own experiences and exploration of Truth, I could tell you that what is generally termed Enlightenment begins at crossing the abyss.
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This is very true, very important, and often overlooked.
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