Study the I Ching

Thoughts

I read a very sad anecdote about Aleister Crowley today.

A younger occultist described meeting the late Crowley:

He met Crowley, by then a sad figure in a small lodging room and a heroin addiction. Nevertheless they discussed magic and Lawrence asked Crowley

'So where is your Guardian Angel now?'

A resigned Crowley shrugged his shoulders and gave a sad look that Lawrence never forgot. Lawrence asked Crowley what he would do if he could start again and Crowley replied

'Study the I Ching'.

As to the truth of this, one can’t be sure, but the message rings true. Especially in that these words are a near perfect paraphrase of another great exiled philosopher, Confucius:

If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Yi, and then I might come to be without great faults.

What did this text hold that moved both Crowley and Confucius, disappointed in their attempts at grasping the Secret, wish they had seized upon?

Perfect balance.

I am no confucian, so I will not speak on his philosophy, but Crowley dedicated himself to Qabalistic correspondence, something I tend toward myself. But as with much Western Occultism, the practice was deeply private, and while he made himself very public, and shared many secrets, and unveiled the illusion of difference, it would be difficult to say he was a balanced man.

I’d also hazard, that while I believe in a shared origin of Egyptian and Chinese culture, that the Qabala, derived by the Jewish and later Hermeticists from ancient Egyptian mysticism, was significantly more complex, and perhaps more dangerous.

The I Ching offers a perfectly proportioned cosmogram in a single brief text.

Why then has the I Ching never achieved popularity in the West?

Translations up to this point have been dry and academic, missing the forest of Tao for the trees of ‘accuracy’ and tradition.

If the I Ching is unreadable to a Western audience as a perfectly accurate translation, then it must be Made New. The Tao is not it’s name. A new translation must be Tao.

This is exactly what I’ve been working on the past year (if you’ve been a paid subscriber, you’ll know!) and this anecdote reinvigorated my desire to share this text with you all as soon as I can.

In the mean time, check out David Hinton and Richard Wilhelm, they have my favorite translations. And for Crowley people, the Beastly Book of Changes, another brilliant text which has deeply informed me.