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Crowley-Legge Compilation?

IrfanK

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I've just come back to the I Ching after a 20 year absence. When I first consulted the I Ching, many years ago, I had a brief "honey moon period", where every time I consulted the oracle, it "made sense". But over a year or so, it became increasingly obscure, and I gave up.

Even though I've only been using it again for the past week, I'm finding that I approach the I Ching quite differently now. I love reading poetry out loud, it's the only way poetry makes sense to me. So now, I write down a question, cast the I Ching, then read out loud the judgement and commentary and lines from Willhelm's translation, over and over until the words trip off my tongue and I can feel the image. Often, the images speak, but I can't quite relate them to my question. But I record the words in a journal, and make some interpretations.

I always used to use the Willhelm translation, in the past. The only other translation I found that I respected was Legge. But a lot seems to have changed in 20 years: many more translations available.

I'm looking for a version now that 1) is clearly based on good scholarship; 2) counterbalances the Confucian-Jungian tone of Willhelm with other ways of looking.

I've bought the Alfred Huang version, which is very interesting. I like the gap between it and Willhelm: for me, by showing the difference between the interpretations of two people who studied the I Ching diligently for many years, it reveals how many valid interpretations there are.

Yesterday, rooting around on the Internet, I came across a rather strange document: it's Crowley's short one line interpretation of each gua and each changing line, but attached to a paraphrased version of Legge to flesh it out. Legge has been edited to reflect the Thelemic orientation of the author. I quite like this version, too, but I can't find any details of how it - or whether - it was ever published.

Does anyone know about it?

I could post a copy here, if anyone is interested and if that fits with site usage guidelines.

I should say that my very first introduction to the I Ching came from an individual who more or less devoted his life to Thelema, Crowley and the OTO. Even though we are no longer in contact, I still remember our many conversations on the topic and respect them.
 

IrfanK

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Thanks for the Wikipedia link to the article on Motta! That article actually mentions my friend, the Thelemist, William Barden, as being one of three of Motta's students. It also mentions that he's dead, which I didn't know.

A bit strange to learn about the death of an old friend from Wikipedia.
 

tobiasosir

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Hello!

I've come to the I Ching just recently myself--I started with the Huang translation and love it, but have read parts of the Crowley translation as well.

Crowley is interesting because he sees the I Ching as part of a larger structure of magikal tools. I can't say I know much about the OTO--you'll know much more than I, I'm sure--but from what I understand and have read so far, he saw it a bit out of context. His translations sem to be accurate, and they reflec tthe "feel" of the I Ching, so I think it's a perfectly valid text. But I haven't seen anything in his writings that reflects the history or "philosophy of change" that's so integrated with the I Ching. It may be there, of course; perhaps I haven't come across it yet, but that's my input for now.

Another thin to look into, if you can find it, is the Book of Thoth. I've been reading Tarot for many year,s and have always used Crowley's deck, but just came across this book, which is an in depth examination of each card, and how the deck was developed. More importantly, it goes into the kabbalistic interpretation of the cards; his thesis is that tarot is an extension/manifestation of kabbalah.
But what is relevant to this discussion is a diagram at the back of the book, which shows the Tree of Life, then a second which puts the Tai Chi, yin and yang lines, and the eight trigrams on the Tree. I'm still working through the implications of it, but what he's done is bring the I Ching into a Kabbalistic interpretation, which is very interesting and something you may be interested in. I'm not sure I can post an image here, but if you Google it, you should be able to find it easily.
 

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