Magical Angkor Wat
This course is an anthropological and esoteric study of the ancient Khmer civilization, focusing on the sacred city of Angkor. Drawing from the 13th-century eyewitness account of Zhou Daguan, we explore the daily life, rituals, gender roles, spiritual practices, and architectural cosmology of a society that encoded its metaphysics into stone, ceremony, and social custom. While grounded in historical detail, the course also reads between the lines—tracing the invisible threads of belief, power, and sacred design that shaped one of the most sophisticated civilizations in Southeast Asia.
Four 90 Minute Sessions
SESSION ONE
The City as Cosmogram – Architecture, Kingship, and the Order of the World
Historical Focus:
Overview of Angkor as the Khmer Empire’s sacred capital (9th–13th centuries)
Orientation of Angkor Wat to celestial bodies (equinox alignments, Mt. Meru symbolism)
The king as devarāja (god-king): sovereign, priest, and axis of the world
Urban planning: moats, bridges, towers, gates, cardinal directionality
Esoteric Thread:
Cities as mandalas: inhabiting the sacred geometry of cosmos
Temples as machines of resurrection: spatial technologies of post-death orientation
The king as an activated node in the world grid—a tantric anchor between planes
SESSION TWO
Silk, Skin, and Ceremony – Family, Sexuality, and Power
Historical Focus:
Marriage customs, female autonomy, and matrilineal inheritance
Child-rearing and communal parenting
Fashion as status and ritual language—bare skin, gold, sarongs
Sexual freedom and Zhou’s account of monk–woman liaisons
Esoteric Thread:
The erotic undercurrent of temple culture: sacred femininity unspoken but present
Women as guardians of continuity and liminality: birth, death, market, ritual
Was there once a Tantric or yogic substratum suppressed by later Theravāda reforms?
SESSION THREE
Offerings to the Invisible – Spirits, Monks, and the Ritual Ecology
Historical Focus:
Daily life of monks: robes, rules, hierarchy
Spirit houses, omens, astrologers, and animist rituals beneath Buddhist norms
Funerals, processions, and festivals as major social events
Food practices: communal eating, fermented fish, rice wine, women's market power
Esoteric Thread:
Angkor as a ritual ecosystem: humans, spirits, and sacred sites in constant exchange
Monastic celibacy vs. lingering shamanic sensuality
Ritual as cosmic tuning fork: not mere observance, but vibration management
SESSION FOUR
Children of the Temple – Education, Time, and the Afterlife
Historical Focus:
No formal schools, but boys enter monkhood as initiation
Play, apprenticeship, and embodied learning
Eschatology: cremation, funerary rites, beliefs about afterlife and rebirth
Zhou’s confusion over sacred symbols, misreading what he could not decode
Esoteric Thread:
Childhood as a sacred state of permeability
Time in Angkor: cyclical, not linear—death is a return, not an end
Temple inscriptions and architecture as hyperdimensional texts read with the soul, not the eyes reforms?
YOUR GUIDE
“What grips me about Angkor is not just the grandeur of stone, but the ghost of a worldview—one where kings aligned with stars, markets pulsed with sacred rhythms, and the unseen was offered fruit and flame. Through Zhou Daguan’s startled eyes, I glimpse a civilization that never separated the visible from the invisible, the practical from the divine. It wasn’t just a city—it was a way of remembering how to live in a world where everything meant something.”
- Vanese Mc Neill
“I'm a testimonial. Click to edit me and add text that says something nice about you and your services.”
- Olivia Green
Investment Details
Tuition: $200 | 4 Weeks | Includes Recordings
This course is for those who feel something stir when they hear the word Angkor—
a sense that behind the ruins lies a living memory,
and that memory might still speak.
Over four weeks, we’ll explore the everyday magic of the Khmer world:
its rituals, its architecture, its women, its monks, its markets—
all drawn from the only surviving eyewitness account of the time.
Each session will be recorded, so you can move at your own pace
or return to the material when it calls you again.
And if you decide to join us in person this November
on the Magical Egypt: Asia journey,
your tuition will be fully refunded.
Because this course isn’t just a preview—
it’s the beginning of the path.
WHEN: AUGUST 18, SEPTEMBER 1, 8, 15
8PM EST
LIVE AND RECORDED
Magical Asia Awaits...
Join us for an unforgettable journey through ancient temples, hidden rituals, and breathtaking landscapes. Learn about our upcoming trip, Magical Asia, and how you can be part of this transformative adventure.i.
Presented by Magical Egypt
