Since there seems to be a bit of confusion about terms, it might be worth sorting a bit of this out.
Generally speaking, yoga encompasses a variety of methods for achieving enlightenment, liberation from suffering, or union with the divine. Classic forms include karma yoga (the path of good deeds), jnana yoga (the path of scholarly knowledge), bhakti yoga (the path of devotion to a deity), and raja yoga (the path of practical techniques), which also is sometimes known as ashtanga (eight-limbed) yoga. Raja yoga includes asana (physical postures) and pranayama (breathing techniques), among other techniques.
"Yoga" was first mentioned in the Rig Veda around 1500 B.C.E. It defined yoga as "yoking" or "discipline," but didn't provide any systematic method of practice.
The early Upanishads refer to yoga as a method to achieve liberation from suffering. They mentioned two methods: karma yoga and jnana yoga. The Maitrayaniya Upanishad presented a sixfold path (breath control, withdrawing the senses, meditation, concentration, contemplation, and absorbtion) that later became the basis for raja yoga. The Bhagavad Gita mentions karma yoga, jnana yoga, and bhakti yoga. It has a bit on the practical techniques of bhakti yoga, but not much.
Then came Patanjali and his Yoga Sutras (about 200 B.C.E.). Patanjali synthesized a lot of what came before into an eightfold method of practice: (1) yama (nonviolence, truthfulness, noncovetousness, abstinence, and nonattachment to material goods); (2) niyama (cleanliness, contentment, austerity, self-study, and devotion); (3) asana (physical postures), (4) pranayama (breath control); (5) pratyahara (withdrawing the senses); (6) dharana (focusing on one point), (7) dhyana (meditation), and (8) samadhi (liberation). It’s a practical method to be practiced in series: you first put your life in order by obeying certain moral and ethical precepts, then gain control over your physical body and breathing, then gain control over your mind, focus, meditate, and achieve enlightenment.
Crowley was big on this eightfold path of raja or ashtanga yoga, and much of his understanding comes from Vivekananda’s book "Raja Yoga," which covers the subject in a fair amount of detail. Raja yoga harmonizes nicely with the classic Western Esoteric Tradition, and Crowley incorporated it into the instructions for the A.'.A.'.
The asana or hatha yoga portion of the eightfold path is a lot of what people consider yoga today. The weird thing, though, is that the yoga postures don’t really come from Patanjali or earlier. The Yoga Sutra only mentions one asana, sitting. The classic Hatha Yoga Pradipika (fourteenth century) only has 15 asanas (most of which are sitting poses) and the Gheranda Samhita (seventeenth century) only has 32. The real basis for most of the elaborate poses in hatha yoga today is the Sritattvanidhi, a book written in the 1800s by a puppet Maharaja installed by the British, Mummadi Krishnaraja Wodeyar. The book had 122 postures (including handstands, backbends, lotus, etc.) as well as a ton of information about the gods, music, meditation, games, and natural history. But it looks like many if not most of the poses that weren’t mentioned in earlier yoga texts actually came from classical Indian wrestling and gymnastics -- and even from British gymnastics.
Modern yoga really comes from Krishnamacharya, the man who trained the two most influential yoga masters alive today, B.K.S. Iyengar and Pattabhi Jois. Krishnamacharya was sponsored by the same royal family as the guy who wrote the Sritattvanidhi, and it looks like he synthesized the Sritattvanidhi with previous yoga sources to create much of what we consider "yoga" today. (Krishnamacharya claimed that some of his teachings come from Tibet, or from a book dictated to him in a trance by the ghost of a thousand-year-old ancestor. Believe it if you will.)
Iyengar yoga is taught by B.K.S. Iyengar and his students. It focuses on hatha yoga with some pranayama, and emphasizes doing the postures as rigorously and fully as possible, given the limits of each student’s ability. His book "Light on Yoga" is generally considered the bible of hatha yoga. I don’t know that much about modern Ashtanga yoga (as taught by Pattabhi Jois), but it seems to focus on synchronizing breathing and postures. (It also claims to be based on an ancient palm-leaf manuscript called the Yoga Korunta that Krishnamacharya found in a Calcutta library. But the manuscript was "eaten by ants." Oops.) Other modern forms of yoga that involve physical postures generally descend from these sources, directly or indirectly.
So back to magic. Crowley focuses on raja yoga in his books on the subject, and incorporates bits of asana and pranayama into his A.'.A.'. instructions. The idea seems to be that the magic student should gain control over his or her physical body and breathing by practicing asana and pranayama. But, absurdly, Crowley measures "control" by the ability to balance a saucer full of water on the head without spilling it, or to breathe in certain set patterns, rather than by being healthy, flexible, and strong. (And his understanding of asana and pranayama techniques is about 100 years out of date.)
So what would I do if I wanted to incorporate yoga into my magical practice? Well, I'd find a good hatha yoga class of just about any flavor and start studying. Truth be told, any martial art probably would do almost as well, but modern hatha yoga has a certain intense focus on posture for posture’s sake that I've always enjoyed. |
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