Crowley's I Ching

Crowley's I Ching, also called the Yi King, adapts the Chinese Book of Changes through short English formulations and verse. The commonly circulated electronic text accompanies the sixty-four hexagrams with an account of a divinatory method. The 1919 A∴A∴ publishing programme identifies the project as Liber CCXVI. This announcement is evidence of the project, not publication of its complete text inside the Blue Equinox.¹⁾

A hexagram has six lines, each continuous or divided. Six binary positions allow sixty-four combinations. The lines are numbered upward from the bottom. Each figure also divides into an upper and a lower trigram of three lines. Eight possible trigrams produce eight times eight pairings.

“Hexagram” here means six stacked lines, not the six-pointed star used in the hexagram ritual. The Chinese figures have their own numbering and internal positions; the ritual star has different geometry and uses. Sharing a name does not make the two diagrams interchangeable.

The introduction describes the system as mathematical and philosophical and compares it with Qabalah. Its account associates Tao with Kether, yang with Chokmah and yin with Binah. These are interpretive correspondences, not literal translations or evidence that the Chinese classic was originally arranged on the Tree of Life.²⁾

Labels for the figures also employ comparative occult vocabulary. The first entries use lingam and yoni; later headings combine elemental terms. These identify Crowley's reading but do not replace the Chinese names or exhaust a trigram's meanings. The adaptation is best approached as an encounter between systems, not as proof that their categories are identical.

The broad principle is the symbolic representation of changing relationships. A figure supplies a configuration to interpret in relation to a question. Positions and images make an answer more differentiated than a single affirmative or negative response.

Appendix I of 777 gives an earlier printed example of Crowley’s comparative arrangement. It places the eight figures beside names, body parts, directions and several occult attributions. The planetary and Qabalistic columns document his interpretive system; they are not a neutral translation of every Chinese tradition. This table is also distinct from the twenty-seven principal figures of Liber Trigrammaton.

777 (1909), Appendix I, p. 46. The eight trigram figures and their associated columns are reproduced together, preserving the original names and glyphs. Source facsimile: Keep Silence. Public domain: original page published in 1909. Click the image to enlarge.

The apparatus describes six coins or sticks, one distinguished from the others. Opposite faces represent yang and yin; the six results form the figure and the distinguished object selects a line. This differs from the familiar procedure of casting three coins repeatedly to determine individual lines.³⁾

That distinction matters when comparing results. The method, ordering of positions and treatment of change must all be specified. Otherwise readers may appear to consult the same book while following different procedures. The electronic witness should be described as it stands; its editorial history deserves care before every introductory sentence is confidently assigned to an original manuscript.

Entries generally give a short formulation for the whole figure followed by a six-line poem corresponding to its positions. The worked example separates these functions: the general passage describes the overall tendency, and the selected verse focuses the answer.

The first two line verses of Khien show how a repeated image acquires different implications through position:

The dragon lurks: it is no time to act.

The dragon's in the field: now make thy pact.

— Aleister Crowley, The I Ching.⁴⁾

The dragon remains the governing figure while concealment gives way to appearance in the field. The two lines consequently distinguish a time for withholding action from a time for entering a relationship. Reading either as a timeless definition of “dragon” would lose that change. The remaining verses continue through watchfulness, movement, flight and a warning against excess; the image is interpreted through a sequence rather than one fixed keyword.

Rhyme and compression support memory, but compression can obscure qualifications. Comparison with a fuller translation is useful where imagery or syntax remains ambiguous. The verse is a mnemonic presentation, not a reason to assume the classic has only the meanings that fit the rhyme.

The introduction's example is Thun, hexagram 33. Its lower two lines are divided and its upper four continuous. The upper trigram consists of three continuous lines; the lower contains a continuous line above two divided ones. Looking up this pair identifies the entry without counting the figure as a binary number. The conventional entry number and the visible line pattern serve different functions.⁵⁾

The distinguished object selects the second line from the bottom. The text then tells the reader to take the second line of the entry's six-line poem as the particular response, while retaining the opening formulation as the description of the whole situation. Crowley's verse presents retirement as a potentially effective action, and the selected line stresses maintaining purpose. The result is more differentiated than an instruction simply to abandon an undertaking: retreat can preserve a direction that immediate confrontation would jeopardise.

This example also prevents a reversal in reading order. The physical figure is numbered upward, whereas an English poem is read downward on the page. Its first verse line corresponds to the figure's bottom position, not its top. An illustration that labels all six positions makes the distinction easier to follow than an unlabelled stack of strokes.

The verse singled out by that second position reads:

Hold fast thy purpose subtly, even so.

— Aleister Crowley, The I Ching.⁶⁾

Within an entry about retirement, holding fast to purpose need not mean maintaining the same visible course of action. “Subtly” qualifies how the purpose is sustained, while the surrounding verses consider withdrawal and its manner. The example thus separates a continuing aim from a particular tactic. This is a reading of the printed response within its entry, rather than evidence that the divinatory selection predicted an external event.

In this apparatus the specially marked coin or stick singles out one position before interpretation. “Moving line” therefore names a feature of this particular method. A procedure that generates several changing lines has a different result to interpret and requires rules for handling it. Those rules should not be silently imported into the short example as if the introduction had already supplied them.

The visual vocabulary alone does not settle the procedure. The same sixty-four figures can be used with different ways of selecting lines and different commentaries. When comparing Crowley's notes or another person's record, the line pattern, selected position and consulted text are all needed to reconstruct the reading.

Crowley's account of divination elsewhere treats it as communication through an organised symbolic language. The relationship of question and figure matters. An unclear question makes almost any answer easier to fit retrospectively; repeated reinterpretation can conceal the difference between a result and a desired conclusion.

Historical records should preserve the question, figure, selected line and interpretation separately. A report that an answer was meaningful documents experience and interpretation. It does not by itself establish predictive reliability or a supernatural cause. These distinctions allow the text to be studied without treating either belief or dismissal as a substitute for description.

The accessible PDF begins with a transcription notice dated 1989 and identifies a change to the name of hexagram 51. This is a concrete reminder that electronic copies have histories. Broken characters and lost layout can affect line diagrams; consult a clear witness before relying on a pattern copied from plain text.

Crowley's Tao Teh King belongs to a separate project. Both works engage Chinese classics, but one develops philosophical chapters and the other organises interpretations around figures. Their separate entries in the 1919 announcement preserve that distinction.

• The I Ching, transcription and sixty-four entries.
• 1919 publishing programme, Liber CCXVI.
• Divination; 777; Tao Teh King.