Eight Lectures on Yoga is a book by English occultist and teacher Aleister Crowley about the practice of Yoga. The work is largely a demystified look at yoga, using little to no jargon or satirical humor. In the book, Crowley instructs students on the steps to approach mysticism through Yoga, and details the complications that arise along the path. One intent Crowley had in writing the book was to dispel the various myths surrounding Yoga in Europe at the time. Crowley covers, in detail, the philosophical, mathematical, and scientific aspects of Yoga. This is not a book to be read while standing or running. It is a high water mark of Crowley’s literary career, incorporating all that we should expect from one who had experimented with and mastered most technical forms of spiritual growth. There is humor here, a great deal of sagacity, and much practical advice. This book cannot be dispensed with for the student for whom Yoga is ‘the way.’
Here we have a Niyama of infinite delicacy, a spiritual intuition far, far removed from any human quality whatever. Here all is fantasy, and in this world are infinite pleasure, infinite perils. The True Niyama of Neptune is the imaginative faculty, the shadowing forth of the nature of the illimitable light. He has another function. The Yogi who understands the influence of Neptune, and is attuned to Neptune, will have a sense of humour, which is the greatest safeguard for the Yogi. Neptune is, so to speak, in the front line; he has got to adapt himself to difficulties and tribulations; and when the recruit asks 'What made that 'ole?' he has got to say, unsmiling, 'Mice.' Pluto is the utmost sentinel of all; of him it is not wise to speak.