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At the suggestion of Tisha, I'm starting a topic about Liber Al vel Legis (The Book of the Law). For reference visit the thread 'Cults' at http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6083&whichpage=3

To give a starting point for discussion, I'll quote my post from that thread:

quote:When/if reading Liber AL vel Legis (AKA: The Book of the Law), please consider that the following quote is from a twelfth century pseudo-Hermetic treatise titled "The Book of the XXIV Philosophers"

"God is an infinite sphere, whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere."

Relate that line to the descriptions of Nuit and Hadit in verses 2 and 3 of Chapter 2 in Liber AL vel Legis and see if that influences your opinion about the originality or authenticity of the book. For further reading (though dry at times) check out the book "Planets, Stars and Orbs: The Medievel Cosmos, 1200 - 1687" by Edward Grant. You'll find the above mentioned quotation on page 175, but there's other points in that chapter to compare with Liber AL as well. Hadit says "I am not extended". Well, the topic of whether or not God could be seen as an extended magnitude was a hot topic for quite some time. Even Sir Isaac Newton weighed in on the subject.

If you have an opinion about Liber AL vel Legis (http://www.sacred-texts.com/oto/engccxx.htm), this is probably the thread in which to post it.

For what it's worth, the correspondence between the camel and the letter Gimel is noted in the book 777 and I believe that it's also mentioned in The Book of Thoth.

Anyway, I think that Crowley was right to discourage 'comment' on Liber AL... like religion and politics, it means too many things to too many people. By looking at it from a given perspective hard enough, it seems to always yield some correspondence with that perspective, real or not.

Some elements of Liber AL jump out in front of the others, such as the ones you wrote about, Jilola. I think that's because they make some sense, whereas much of the rest seems to be somewhat unintelligible at face value. While it's possible that Everything else in the BOL is commentary or BS, I wonder if there are some gems hidden in there that can be found if one digs enough. Maybe some specific practices can be found and even related to specific traditions with which A. Crowley may have encountered in his travels and studies. I pointed at one such example in my initial post.

For another example refer to Chapter 1, verse 61. Here we see a reference to the desert in the same verse as a reference to the 'coiled splendour' and a 'rich headdress'. Now, the coiled serpent ('coiled splendour'?) seems to be a common representation of Kundalini. The 'rich headdress' also makes me think of Kundalini. The desert evokes the image of a camel, the letter gimel from the Hebrew alphabet, and therefore the path from Tiphareth to Kether on the Tree of Life.

Adrian,
Yes, that's the book.

I believe that Robert Bruce wrote about a feedback loop that occurs when both 'bodies' or levels of consciousness become aware of eachother's presence in their immediate vicinity. Apparently this has some effects that are difficult to manage and can cause problems with the projection. Because of this, I think that your second answer is the correct one -- do not look at the physical body, but simply 'shift' to a forward location facing the same direction.

Another term for such an entity is an egregore. In essence, it's a created entity acts as a battery for psychic energy. Certain occult orders made/make use of these. Fraternitas Saturni (and its offshoots) use/maintain an egregore, for example.

Without being omniscient, how would the yoga teacher know? It's probably safer to say that nobody has convincingly claimed in a large forum such as world press to have had kundalini experience in the past 50 years. Even that would be difficult to prove, since it is not the sort of thing commonly verified through scientific methods. So, no, I doubt it's the truth.

BTW: a good book on the topic of Kundalini is:
Kundalini: The Energy of the Depths
by Lilian Silburn
(although it says it's out of print, I was able to get it a couple of years ago as a special order through a local bookstore)

http://www.sunypress.org/details.asp?id=50542

For people not using MS Internet Explorer, you will likely not see the menus, which is where you would click on Personal -> Edit Profile. If so, then you can still edit your profile. Once you're logged in, follow this link:

http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/pop_profile.asp?mode=Edit

I've emailed the forum administrators to see if they can add that link to the other hyperlinks near the top of the page so that non-MSIE users can easily access the Edit Profile page. I guess we'll see if it shows up there.

It was Ozzy Osbourne who wrote a song about Aleister Crowley... the song was titled 'Mr. Crowley'.

When/if reading Liber AL vel Legis (AKA: The Book of the Law), please consider that the following quote is from a twelfth century pseudo-Hermetic treatise titled "The Book of the XXIV Philosophers"

"God is an infinite sphere, whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere."

Relate that line to the descriptions of Nuit and Hadit in verses 2 and 3 of Chapter 2 in Liber AL vel Legis and see if that influences your opinion about the originality or authenticity of the book. For further reading (though dry at times) check out the book "Planets, Stars and Orbs: The Medievel Cosmos, 1200 - 1687" by Edward Grant. You'll find the above mentioned quotation on page 175, but there's other points in that chapter to compare with Liber AL as well. Hadit says "I am not extended". Well, the topic of whether or not God could be seen as an extended magnitude was a hot topic for quite some time. Even Sir Isaac Newton weighed in on the subject.

A good link for information regarding cults is http://www.cesnur.org
CESNUR stands for Center for Studies on New Religions.

That's a good link for an overview of the (well-known) series of six cakras, called Satcakra (covered in a text named Satcakranirupana). Note that the seventh, Sahasrara, is the lotus located above the series of six.

I'd like to mention, though, that there is another system composed of a series of five cakras, known as Pancacakra. This system is described in detail in a (hard to find) book titled: The System of Five Cakras in Kubjikamatatantra 14 - 16. The '14 - 16' means that this book is an examination of chapters 14 - 16 of the Kubjikamatatantra. The five cakras in the Pancacakra are: Devi-, Duti-, Matr-,Yogini- and Khecaricakra.

In terms of location, the cakras of these two systems appear to be related, though the symbolism will differ between the systems.
In terms of location:
1. Devicakra corresponds with Muladhara (Adhara) and Svadisthana (below the navel).
2. Duticakra corresponds with Manipura (navel).
3. Matrcakra corresponds with Anahata (heart).
4. Yoginicakra corresponds with Visuddhi (throat).
5. Khecaricakra corresponds with Sahasrara (above the head).
The Pancacakra does not have a cakra that corresponds to the Ajna cakra of the Satcakra system.

Finally, I'd like to add definitions of cakra and mandala as used in the Kubjikamatatantra. A cakra is a circle or group of deities and a mandala is their seat ('the mandala is the adharah (locus) and the cakra (of deities/mantras) the adheyam (located)').