Aithrobates

Yeah but the south european tarantula is small and non agressive. Nothing like the huge one you posted a photo of. But when I see one I try to persuade it to move far from me Different authors have this dance has been explained in term of shamanism or pocession. It' interesting to note that the last original pythagorean school was there, in Taranto.

Very interesting. Thanks. As an anthropologist I was trained to think that the unconscious worked that way. That is was apparent from the study of human cultures, specially symbolism. It was predicted that this temporary approach, a mere constatation and methodology, will be one day proved by hard sciences. Note that it is more or less compatible with Jung's theories of the unconsciouss. While I'm sometimes skeptical with the applications of the said theories, and with the fact that some wiseasses read that like the Bible... The theories in themselves are more than worthy. Not everything is good, but... that's how science works, you try, and you let other criticize you to improve your model. Sadly most people take Freud (or the small bits of his theories they've been fed with by mainstream culture) as granted, like it is the "scientific truth". So they will spend their lives trying to resolve personal psychosexual issues, while the true psyche and the true source of "sexual power" lies way deeper. The unconscious is not a pool where you store repressed data that will influence you against your will, untill the day you resolve your issues by talking about your parents. It is the ocean where the fish of counscioussness swims. The more you practice, the deeper you can swim.

Yes, but I allways think of people who will read the thread latter. I'm new to this forum, I do not write a lot, but I spend a lot of time each days learning things by reading old threads. When you are in that position you enjoy quite a bit that the content of the thread fits its title. That's all ^^

Don't apologize, I think I'm the one who started the diversion.

You're right. This thread is moving to a general "tree-stuff" chat. As a matter of fact what we are discussing, IMO, is more about the Earth, the Landscape, plants being a part of it, than with a specific tree practice, or specifically Tree Qigong. I enjoyed sharing experiences though

It fits my experience 100% too. This landscape is the Earth of alam al-mithal, a bridge connecting the corporeal world, that you experiment with sensation and the the spiritual world, that you sense with intuition. That's why you can, with your sensation, feel, give a form to, the intuition of Heaven, because it shares the properties of both levels.

Druidism is hard to disconnect from Pythagorism. East and West were one, so obviously "Western West" and "Eastern West" were one two. ^^ Pythagoras is said to have travelled to Tartessos, a celtic speaking land, just like he was linked with Mesopotamia and Egypt, and even Far East. So celtic countries were part of the equation too. As soon as -600 the Phocean greeks had a small empire in South Gaul. Traditions mixed, the Druids adopted the greek alphabet. The greeks always talked about druids as philosophers, precisely as pythagoricians. The last source we have about druids tells us of a druid familly from Brittany now installed in Burdigala (Bordeaux). After drudism was prohibited by the Romans they kept their traditions as priest of Belenos. But their names are... greek, and apollinian. Apollon and Belenos being cultural names for the same god... We have a continuum from Drudism to Pythagorism. And as we also have a continuum from Pythagorism to Shamanism in Central Asia and the Far East. So I'm not saying that Drudism = Shamanism, but that the connection is far from strange. I'm talking about historical Druidism. I have no knowledge of Neo-druidism whatsoever.

When I was a teenager I had not access to informations about spiritual traditions. I was learning floklore and mythology, and was striked by the importance of trees. So I started to "practice" out of that constatation. I would spend hours and hours, as often as I could, alone in the country, walking near the banks of the local river, making offering to the fairies, and asking for guidance. And I would focus on trees. I was thinking in term of analogy: my spine is like the tree's trunk. Fo years I would try to feel like a tree among the trees. A spine like a trunk, head as branches, feet as roots. That's how it started for me, I consider that trees were my first teachers. I noticed that some kind of tree was much more interested in what in what I was doing. Latter I started having dreams about ancient teachers, an anonymous crowd of greek philosophers, telling me that they were working in the tradition I was looking for. This gradually changed my ways. But eventually I learned that that the goddesses linked with that kind of tree (that was much more interested in what I was doing) were in fact very important in that tradition. Only more than 15 years after, I learned about the existence of tree gong, something like a week before the start of this thread. Now feeling the surrounding trees is so natural that I do it almost automatically.

It's an old theory in social sciences, it was dominant in the 19th. According to it there is a unique evolution line, that all human societies follow. Some societies had evolved more quickly than the other, but basically the scheme should be the same for every society. Like if history is pre-written and each society will in its own time reach, via tha same steps, the level of modern western countries. Of course colionialism helps speeding up the process, that's why this theory was very popular in the 19th. :/ This theory has been abandoned since. It's clear that each society has a history of its own, wether remembered or not, and that they do not follow a pre-etablished scheme. There are different theories now, none is seen as an absolute science of culture (and of its evolution). Its more like a toolbox, each theory being good at explaining certain aspects. A lot of american anthropologists use culturalism, that is the study of each culture in its originality. Stucturalism is good for learning about the symbolic systems. And so on ... Sadly evolutionism is still strong in the mainstream, it's often the angle of ethnographic shows, etc... A lot of people will still speak about how a society is still in the Middle age, about "primitive" peoples. It's kind of like this basic knowledge everybody has of newtonian mechanics and other aspects of classical physics, while the actual physicists work on quantum mechanics, string theories, etc... If you don't study anthropology, there is a lot of chance that nobody will ever tell you about other methodologies, and that you'll always think that it is simply the truth. So some societies are, in this theory, seen as not having evolved much since the the dawn of man. By observing these societies it should be possible to see what the original human society and culture were like. Some people have been, for different reasons, considered the more primitive type. Sometimes it's Bushmen, sometimes Pygmies, sometimes Australian aborigenes, etc...

You missed my point. Comparatism is a good thing and the fact that you (and others) noted similarities between two distant cultures like China an Bushmen is indeed interesting, and a perfectly respectable way to support your view. What does not agree with me is evolutionism. When you claim that Bushmen represent "original humanity", and so that what you find there is the original tradition which shows how other traditions should be interpreted, I can not follow you. I'm criticizing your methodology. Trying to know which culture has not "evolved" since the dawn of humanity, and can show how it was like back in the days is the way ethnology worked in 19th. That's not about the Bushmen datas, but about the ethnologic concepts you use to interpret them. Of course two cultures with no contacts (as far as we know) for a very long time sharing similarities speaks for the antiquity of the similar elements! But from that to proving that it is "original humanity stuff", there an ocean... So I'm not aguing "from ignorance" of the Busmen culture but from my training in social and historical anthropology. While you're clearly 100 km ahead of me in the field of Bushmen ethnographic datas, it's your anthropologic approach that is, I think, problematic. Anyway I just wanted to share my point of view. Not to prove that I'm absolutely right and that people that do not agree with me are ignorants. Your ways seems overly intellactuals to me. Maybe it's because this sexual energy you keep gives a lot of power to your nervous system ? Fire generates Wood which is mind. If you find your way to liberation by this method, that's good for you, and fine by me. I just don't know how of to work like that. To me this direct connection of provable intellectual points with tangible material facts is a shortcut. It does not travel through the Soul world of alam al-mithal. And that's where the magic happens, in my experience.

Fighting is not a good term to describe and animated discussion, an argument ? Is it too strong ? English is not my language. I'm sometimes not good with nuances... Anyway the cute smiley was there too show that is was not a serious statement ^^ . As for the definitions, I was referering to khumos and dan being images of the elixir in theirs respective contexts. And so the western and eastern practice use the same referent to name themselves. But this is only partly relevant, as there are many other names.

"Alchemy" is based on arabic article "al" and ancient greek "khumos". "Khumos" is exactly equivalent to "dan". So yeah from a stricly linguistic point of view Neidan = Inernal Alchemy. In the west too the name of the goal was applied to the name of the practice. You're fighting over labels ^^

Same thing in the West. I do not know of any alchemical texts (I'm talking about old Greco-Egyptian stuff) that focuses on fluid retention. And among the earliest, most important masters we know of we have women: Cleopatra, Maryam.

^^^^ Of course it's reductive! Every scientific study is reductive. That's how it works. You put your lens on some aspect focus on it. Gordon is reductive as he focus on village, clan cults, kula, and despises more philosopical views. The classic western view is reductive because it made thing of its own out of the indian reality. I'm not saying that this wiew of tantra is wrong, it's just different, change it the rule of Nature. The claim that is was allways like that is wrong. The virtue of this book is that is proposes a stand point that balances the common stuff you'll find in 2 sec with your favourite search engine. Tantrism is popular stuff in the West, so western consciousness changing it as it becomes integrated in its societies is invevitable. Look at how hatha yoga is now seen as sport or relaxation... As for celibacy or chastity, it did not came later at all, it's very ancient. It is about having a relationship with a goddess / female spirit, and so you abstain from having sex with mortal females so that the goddess acepts you, because she's jaealous. And because you'll need all your sexual energy to sleep with a goddess. It's shamanic stuff. Siberian hunters will not sleep with their wifes the nigh before the hunt. They do not want to smell of woman so that that the spirits will like them, and offer them game. If the can't seduce the spirit, the hunt will fail. Bushmen culture doest not prove anything at all. Your affirmation that they represent "original human culture" is absurd. All societies have a history, Bushment like the others changed during the last 200 000 years. We have no way of knowing what the "original human culture" was. The theory which states that some societies have not evolved and show us what it was like in the old times is called cultural evolution. It was the standard view in the 19th century, and has been totally abandoned since. I'll try to read all your links whan I can. I'm tired and busy right now.

I was not aware that there was so much litterature available on Bushmen sipritual traditions, that's interesting. I agree that this whole cerebro-spinal thing is ancient and widespread. I'm not sure it is possible to know for sure whereas Greece influenced China, or if it was the other way around, or something else. It's such a old body of shared knowledge that I doubt we can tell its story. Being aware of it is already a good thing. You're true, the mordern mind as no room for this cerebro-spinal complex, and for the control we can have on it via chastity, how it can be used, and for what purposes. But western conscioussness is so weird on that point, after two millemnium of mainstream christianity. No knowledge of the cerebro-spinal complex, the serpent is evil, as is sexuality... Celibacy is supposed to be good moraly (but no explanation given on how it works), etc... So the risk of misinterpretation is huge, and I think one should be very cautious. Again see White's "Kiss of the Yogini" on how trantric sex is a western invention. When it comes to cultural contacts aculturation is the rule.

Timaeus, Phaedrus, Republic. That's where he talks about the three part of the soul. He uses different terms, but the tripartite theory is constant. The names and the attributions of the parts is not really important, as they are just aspects of one of the two soul. But what strikes me as a reform is that now we have onely one soul, one psukhê, with three parts, while in earlier tradition psukhê and the threefold complex are distincts. And this two "souls" view is very old and very common. It's like hun and po, with many names in different cultures. So by reforming this, Plato effectued a dramatic shift in the consciousness of the civilisation that he was about to influence so much. And that is in that context that the notion of sperm retention appeared for the first time in the west. McEvilley has this paper about Plato: https://www.scribd.com/doc/124767577/The-Spinal-Serpent And for the archaic notion of the souls, see: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/182.html PS: I realise that I was too synthetic about nous. Sorry, I always do that, being too synthetic... The higher, intellectual part of the soul is referred (by Plato) as logos. And as nous is afterward considered, as mind, intellect, and as the finest part of the soul. The two concepts are very close, we can see that logos continued in a different way the archaic term of noos. -- My post will be edited to make that more clear. The reader will have the quoted part of my text in other posts to see the difference.

I always had a problem understanding this whole do-not-ejaculate thing. I mean not only in the context of chinese traditions, but in any tradition. While chastity can be a good thing in certain situations (taking a bit of distance from the passions for a while, keeping yourself for a goddess so that she won't be jealous, etc...) I don't see that a as "high" spirtitual practice. This thread speaks a lot about sex or no sex, keeping your fluids, or your energy for yourself. But one thing is clear, the point of menstruating and ejaculating is reproduction. The fact that we are able to produce new lifes, new bodies from our own resonates with the fact that Empitness produces everything in this world of multiplicity. It's the nature of Reality, it unfolds itself. And we are a part of it, so we work like that too, at our own level. Stoping this process in yourself instead of integrating it with its wider, deeper, cosmic version, can only lead, IMO, to duality, to polarity. How is that wise ? Nature does not work like that. And this Essence we are so concerned with... It does not belong to us, it comes from the Ancestors, we are part of an ancestral stream, we recieved it from our parents and can transmit it to our children. Parents recieved it from their own parents, and so on. I dont think we have the right to claim it for us, we share it with Nature, and more locally with our anscestry. Why thinking it a small thing of our own ? To me it seems fairly individualistic, and so quite incompatible with the goal that is to be a conscious part of the great natural process. When we come to this world as babies, we start recieving it, untill we reach our adult age, and we are now in a position to emit it. We can materialize things and tell how children have such a big and soft pineal gland, and how it dies later when the sexual glands start to work. But it is only the bodily, fleshy manisfestation of the process, just like creating a new life is transmitting the anscetral flow, while materially our sexual fluids create a body for it. So we want to refuse playing our roles as adults and we do not want to emit ? That is not only quite literally childish, but pointless. Those twos stages are only two halves of a natural process. Choosing one over the other is equally half-wise. Come on! It's not about plumbery! It is about this quality of consciousness we lose when we start to have this "adult" egoistic, isolated, state of mind, and that in the same time we are fully socialized, and identify more and more with humanity, less and less with the rest of Nature. So if you chose to keep your energy for yourself, don't you think that you feed that individualism? I consider that its wiser to let if flow naturally, and to do the same with conscioussness, so that it is not confined to that transitory body. This way we can carry it on to a more sublte body, one day, even maybe to the great body/non-body/wathever that is Emptiness. I studied this subject quite a bit in the context of western civilisation, and I think I know at what point this notion of not ejaculating entered greek philosophy, and the harm it did. In the homeric language, that was still used by early philosophers, you have a system of "souls" that is not so far from the chinese one. A psukhê (a po if you like) and a complex of logos-menos-thumos that is related to shen-qi-jing. The raw power of feelings and passions, that includes attraction and lust was in the domain of thumos. Then came Plato, and it changed the system. Not only did he say that the "three parts" were parts of the unique soul, that is to say that shen, qi and jign are part of po, but he did something else. The three were now logos, thumos and epithumia. The menos was banished, and the "lower parts" were now a thumos and and even lower thumos. The higher, intellectual part of the soul is now logos. And nous (a form of the world noos) is afterwards considered, as mind, intellect, and as the finest part of the soul. So the two concepts are very close, we can see that logos continued in a different way the archaic term of noos. So you have only a po constitued by a shen, a jing, and another jing o_O An then he told that sexual activity was not "lower part", not thumos attribution, but the result of spiritual activity when it was turned to the external world. So we have to renounce to sexuality, in order to turn the fluids upside and keep it for a spiritual usage. Sounds familliar? And in a single clever work we have eveything. A single soul and the need to oppose sexuality in order not to give its power to the body. This vision lasted for long and influcenced deeply our civilisation. It would be the position of mainstream christianity, a spirituality we are not sastisfied with so that we turn to the East, only to misinterpret its teachings in the light of that "western unwiseness". D.G. White wrote "Kiss of the Yogini" to show how this western view virtually destroyed the original indian approach of tantrism, and I think that we extended that view to China as well. Last but not least this view is sexist, as menstrual blood is seen as the female counterpart of sperm (even in scientific terms it works: spermatozoids are in sperm, ovualas in the blood, right ?). So while a male can choose not to ejaculate, a woman has to bleed. So women are seen as sprititually inferior. Platonic love, the anti-sexual "love" of the philosopher is stricly male-male.

As I was reading for the first time the Cantong Qi, I was impressed by the images of a chariot, associated with circular mouvement, and going down. I should have noted the place of that passage precisely, anyway I'm sure it's in there. I got intrigued, because I seemed to fit another chariot image I know very well from the greek Parmenides' poem (500BC). It's hard to explain that in a few words. But basically it's the Chariot of The Sun, and you are invited to it by Godesses who lead the way and drive the Chariot. And they are describded in a language that clearly alludes to the fact that you are marrying them. It sends you in a paradoxical place deep in the underworld where high and down merge (you're both in the top of heaven and at the roots of the earth), where the opposites are the same thing, in a way that mortal intellect can not comprehend. There Parmenides meets with a Godess which, in a nutshell, explains that the world we live in seems to be ruled by the balance of light and darknesss, but that the two of them are utimately the same reality. The description of this descent is filled with references to circular movements and to the sound of flutes, the hissing of snakes. Now there is this iranian text, a part of the Avesta, the Mihr Yasht, a hymn to the God of The Sun, Mithra. There too you have that Chariot of The Sun, with Godesses leading the way and driving the chariot. They invite Zarathustra to enter it. Here too the chariot makes a peculiar sound. By other texts we now that one of this Godesses helps your soul to get the other Goddess pregnant, this way a Saviour is created. Remember that Parmenides is married to his Godesses too. And we know that in the kind of mysteries the greeks were involved the initiate was considered to be born again, to become a baby, often represented with the head of an adult. Latter the cult of Mithra, now called Mithras found its way into the Roman Empire, and we have that famous text: the "Mithraic Liturgy". There the Sun is mentioned in association with the sound of a flute. And we have a lot of representations of Mithras entering the Chariot of the Sun. Well. The Chariot in which the Sun travels beetwin the underworld and our world draws the rythm of nature which determines the cycles of day and night, of seasons. It creates this world, ruled by the play of light and darkness. If Hermes, God of traduction, is with me... The paradoxical underworld where the light/darkness, yang/yin is not relevant is the Pre-celestial state (Heaven and Earth do not really exists as they are mysteriously the same). Our world of life and death where light and darkness are different and interract is Post-Celestial. Does is make sense ? The Sun as it travels from one realm to the other, symbolises the processes of generation and reversion to the original state. When it rises it emanates mortal life from the underworld-heaven, and when it sets it reverses back to it. So in entering this Chariot, we conscioussly align with the processes of nature, instead of following our human only, one person only, life. This is theory, I do NOT know (for sure) the practices that correspond to it. But you'll admit that with the image of the child and this possibility of reversing generation (by following the path of the Sun into the underworld), it smells a lot like Alchemy. Greek speaking people working in the ways of Parmenides latter moved to Egypt. There they participated to the melting pot that will eventually gave birth to Pagan, then Christian and Islamic Alchemies. So... Weird as it is... That's what I think when I hear of that chariot in the Cantong Qi. I latter read about a "River Chariot" in Wang Mu, and searching the net with that key word I found that reference of it being a "macrocosmic circulation". To me the circulation of the Sun, as described here, seems macrocosmic enough. Is there any truth in that intuition, or is it just an educated guess ? At this point my whole understanding of Alchemy is that it affects the body not through something circulating inside it (microcosmic circulation), but through something that circulates in the whole cosmos. Btw. Parmenides is considered the founding father of western thinking, the creator of our logic. In that case, the apple landed far from the tree.

The more I re-read my question, and the more I see how your answer is multi-layered and cautious, the more I find that question irrevelant. If the ancient put those texts together, there must be a reason. And maybe I was about to fall into the old good western "let's cut everthing in little pieces in order to examine each of them separately", you know... à la carte knowledge which destroys the integrity of what your trying to be inspired by I'm doing my first steps in the realm fo Chinese litterature, so everything is still a bit confusing. I'm working with Archies Barnes' "Chinese through Poetry", and I'm starting to grasp bits and pieces of the texts here and there. So reading the Chuci should be possible in a few mounths. It's all on ctext.org but I'll have to find a book. For the time beign, the Nine Songs english traduction I ordered and the ctext.org Chinese text will be a good start.

Thanks. I'll try to find a place in my book buget for this one. Should I assume that a lot of what I'm looking for is inside the Chuci ? Are those texts the only of that kind ? Or should I investigate this anthology as a whole ?

Be careful with Peter Kinsgley ... I got my copy if "In the dark places of widsom", and then of "Reality" 10 years ago. I then started reading Parmenides and Empedocles, and 10 years latter I'm still reading them! And I think I'll read them all my life. I started having dreams telling me what topics to investigate, so I bought the relevant books, and books have their own way to tell you what to read next (ie bibliographies). My personnal library moved from a bunch of SF and Fantasy classics to an unmanageable amount of books about spiritual traditions, which fills half of my (25 m2) home. I learnt greek, and bit and pieces of other ancient language (you do really not need to learn shcolarly, just be a jack of all trade, master of none, get enough of the language you need to read the texts you need, ans screw the rest). Ten years latter, I'm still reading Parmenides or Empedocles, only to "discover" from time to time that this teaching I've just heard of in a book about Zoraster, Buddha, whaterver... well it was here, in the greek text too, and I did not noticed up to that point. The same can be said of Peter Kingsley's own work. He really absorbed the style of his masters, so he says stuff in a way so simple, so honest, that you can read a passage 100 time without understanding that he's giving you a perl. That's because we're used to this complicated and deceptive world we created for ourselves, and we are no longer able to recongnize the truth, even if it's in front of our nose. About Buddhism: there's a book about "Pyrrho: Greek Buddha: Pyrrho's Encounter with Early Buddhism in Central Asia" by Christopher I. Beckwith It will be available this summer. A lot of BS have been said about Pyrrho, but if you read honestly what's left of his teaching you'll realize he's close to Parmenides. As far as I know one italian shcolar saw that, but he must feel lonely. BTW, I ordered a translation a study of Nine Songs for cheap, and the chinese is available on ctext.org. thank you again for this hint.

Hi everybody. I discovered this forum yesterday, and had not enough sleep as I spent a good part of the night reading I fancy myself a seeker of wisdom, and my main interrest is in Greek philosophy, as I believe that each civilisation has the responsability to take care of its own traditions. But obviously all traditions are connected, have allways worked together. We should not have that extreme position: that there is only one universal tradition and that we're free to cook our own eclectic new-age mix, but on the other hand thinking that Pythagorism, Mazadaism, Buddhisms, Manicheism, Daoism, Bön, etc, etc... are entirely separated fields is equally extreme. We have plenty of affinities to meditate on, and plenty of historical sources telling us about actual conctacts. When it comes to the greeks we have that oldest of the old kind of philosophers, sometimes called the "Hyperboreans". Hyperborea is a mythical land, a kind of Northern Otherworld, that you can see elsewhere in Indo-European mythologies (the islands north of the world in Irish lore, etc...). But the greeks tended to identify it with actual places they travelled to and lived in all around Eurasia. So in that context, the hyperborean place where those early philosphers were said to travel is a wide region corresponding to Northern China, Mongolia, Tibet. So IMO Far East traditions are "sister-traditions" to the western lore. And as greek philosophy turned to the intellectual chit-chat we all know (and it happend early in the antiquity), I feel it is important to seek fresh air in the East. I mean in order to find the missing pieces of the puzzle (and it is really a puzzle: ancient philosophy is preserved in fragments, and of course all lineages died centuries ago). This is getting long So after years of seeking the pieces in ancient lores (mainly Middle East) I landed in Daoist territory. And well, we'll talk more about this in future posts. I hope. Have a nice day/evening/night (depending on when/where you read that). AB

Thank you for telling me about Nine Songs. That's exactly the kind of things I was hoping to discuss by joining this forum Be sure I'll get my hand on that and read it! It's true that in Parmenides' poem the focus is more on the wheels of the chariot (their circular movement, their sound) than on the chariot as a whole.

Yes. I just did not wanted to complicate things even more. But indeed this Chariot too send people to the divine world. And in some Merkabah texts, the trip is a descent.

Anyway I would personally prefer not to elaborate on anything other than presentation here. I'm totally for keeping the right topics in the right subforums. And I don't really care about many people reading my answer, as long as the member asking the question gets it.