Aithrobates

I've been reading that recent book: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10500.html It has an interresting theory about the origins of Daoism. There's a long linguistic examination, that is far too complicated for me to abstract in a few lines, but roughly: Lao Tan (the name of Lao Tzu) is the modern prononciation of an alternate, more chinese sounding, spelling of "Kao Tan" which indicates an old chinese *Gotama / Gowtama/ Gautama. And Dao in the same way is reconstructed as old chinese *Darma. He latter compares the teaching of Lao Tzu and Chang Tzu with what we know of what appears to be a very early form of Buddhism in India and Central Asia, as documented by the greek sources in the 4th BCE. And shows profound similarities. So according to the author it means that an "Early Buddhism" that in fact was not even yet called Buddhism , but simply refered as "Dharma" reached China long before Buddhism proper did. And that this Dharma participated to the shaping of Daoism. I'm not supporting this view, nor the opposite. I don't claim the knwoledge to pass a jugement on such complex matters. But I find the hyphothesis fascinating enough to be discussed.

Why is it often considered evil, inferior, or simply not worth it ? Do some of you know things about it ? Like different views different shcools have about it? Is becoming a ghost and unfortunate accident, or are there really people wanting to do this, practicing to reach this goal ? Etc...

My skill in classical chinese are very limited, but I enjoy banging my head at texts that are now too hard for me, but will be familliar one day. I does help my motivation. A lot. I browsed a bit the Inner Chapters on ctext.org and was able to get my way through some passages. The built in dictionnary on this database does wonder when you don't know a character (which happens to me a lot ^^). But reading on screens kinda sucks, I'd rather use this site as a dict. and read a book. So is there a good bilingual edition out there (I read english and most romance languages) ? I looked a lot, but there are so much editions... it's hard to find a bilingual in the mass.

Ancient greek source kept refering to Drudism as a celtic form of Pythagorism. And Pythagorism had all kind of links with Far East (in this context poetically named "Hyperborea").

The "two souls" schema, (just like hun/po) both of them existing before and after the body, so "reincarnating", is fairly common. I covers most of the animist ground, Eurasia and the Americas. It's not and Hindu or Buddhist thing, not specifically. More like a "background" stuff. The real question is more about the differences in view of and emphasis on the different traditions have on "reincarnation".

It's Ok to disagree, and I think we can do that for a long time. You are putting bits and pieces of myths here and there, only to stick them to your own interpretation, like it was part of the raw data. All the cosmological traditions about the North you give are authentic, but none prove your theory of artic colonisation in themselves, IMO. It seem automatic in your argumentation that a mention of the cosmological North equals the existence of an actual Northern land. It's your right to think so, but if you want to persuade others you'll have to give a demonstration. Raw data in themselves do not prove your interpretation of them. I think, and that it's not the first time I'm saying that to someone, that you ignore the existence of the imaginal world, the world of the soul, alam al-mithal. Laking this you are left only with the tangible material world, uncorporeal principles, and fantasies. Recognizing the truth in the traditions your are reading, you can not think that they are false, fantasies. As the datas are consistent en practical you can not take them for mere symbol of unattainable intellectual realities far beyond. So you have only one option left. This material world. But there is also a fourth option, that is the imaginal reality of the myths. Imaginal world is where myths happen. Those are not material events from the old times, they are atemporal events of the souls that are happening in Eternity. You do not need to find an historical truth behind the myths. Mythology is not an archaic form of history were things are recorded poetically. History as we know it was invented during the 19th, and goes with nationalism and romantism; that's why German or Indian or whaterver nationalists felt the urge to interpret their myths and to transform them into (fake) history. Parcelsus or Geber, the ones you find too hermetic to be usable ? Both Paracelsus and the persian alchemy form which Geber (Jabir Ibn Hayyan) comes speaks about how to acces the imaginal. Cosmological North is not about an inaccessible divine realm or the long lost city they founded there in the old days. It's a reality of the soul that can be experienced with the correct practice.

I'm not questioning the mystical signifiance of the North, nor the divine origin of spiritual traditions. That is documented in many, many cultures. What I don't follow is the claim of an Arctic country back in the days. But it's true that the mythical lands are often sublty assimilated to actual geographical, said to be there, and yet mysteriously beyond and elsewhere. Like if the material place was nothing but a mere manifestation of a spiritual kingdom that is not really located there. After all Pytheas did travel to Hyperborea. But Aristeas did too, and their respective travel point to two different places (Northern Europe vs Inner Asia). What I also do not follow is your claim about the origin of royalty, bloodlines, etc... Yes. Given the cultural context in which Zozimus talked it's probably about the Nephilim. Hard to say what was the view on them back in those specific times and places. If it's Nephilim we're talking about, we have indeed the theme of engendering royal bloodlines. But what are the analogies with Celtic and Northern myths? What about the Northern Otherworld ?

I still disagree with the claim that the mythologies tell that. But that's OK. You're aware of the nazi view on that matter. That's what I was wondering. Thanks. I have all of Zozimus here, any passage in particular so that we can discuss it precisely ?

Lol ^^ But this Arctic thing is really of nazi origin ! I was not even comparing d4r33n to a nazi. Just telling him that knowingly or not he was profesing such a theory. Thinking by default that he is, of course not, nazi, I'm just advising him to question the sources from were he got this idea, because he may very well find things he will not like.

Down to this point I'm ok. As for the rest... The Arctic origin of sacred traditions, royality, indo-europeans, even of civilisation itself, is a kind of right-wing fantasy. It's based on the idea that so called superior ice races from the North are opposed to inferior fire races of the South. If you do not identify yourself as a nazi and disagree with this racist view, I'd suggest you question your sources on this arctic theory.

I agree that the oldest greek traditions claim to come form Hyperborea, or at least to have been in contact with hyperboreans. But Hyperborea is not the physical Artic. It's a common mythological data of a "Northern Otherworld" you'll find it in Indian and Celtic myth too. Cosmological North, Axis Mundi, the Big Dipper. The greeks used their mythological traditions to describe positive geography. They had litteraly dozens of hypothesis on where Hyperborea was actually located. In the texts where early philosophers are said to be instructed from Hyperborea, the term descibes a land far North and East of the mediterranean world, that would roughly be our Tibet, Mongolia, Northern China.

I can not read the chinese text in the second image. But I can read the imagery, the greek, the hebrew, the latin on the first. The western image has a load of cosmological symbolism. You can trace all them back, through greek alchemists from late antiquity, to even older times when the word "alchemy" didn't even exist. If you follow the clues, that are very well hiddden in plain sight, you'll find yourself reading a greek poem advising to follow the Dao, and talking about many other things you'll find daoists parallels with.

And what about ethic ? There is also a big difference between willing to live long and healthy for one's own benefits of having a good and full life and wanting to go beyond mortality in order to fulfill a cosmic role. Being a good human is a good thing, many do not even achieve that. Following a boddhisattvic path is a different thing. It depends on whom sake we practice for. Us or all sentient beings. (I don't have the terms to express this in daoist terms, buddhists words will have to do the trick )

I was basically meaning that Fu Xi, Trigrams, etc... Just like Daoism evolved in an animist background, because Eurasiatic cultures have one. Not that they are "animist" because animism itself does not constitue a school in a culture that as a whole is animist. I would not have formulated that way but I agree with the going beyond animism and turning to Immortality. But to we have to start from somewhere to go beyond that place. The common awareness, life, etc... I'm talking about are of course not the mundane and embodied persons and consciousness we believe we are for some years before meeting death. I'm talking about what we truly are. That, we have in common with all the cosmos. Animist cultures, (specially in the Amazon from where I'll take an illustration), have very sophisticated views, explaining that every beings live in a state of intersubjectivity. We believe we are human and that we eat bread. But the boar sees himself as human too, an sees the bugs he eats as a bread, thickets as houses, etc... (That was the illustration) It's - sadly - not considered like the philosophy it is, but il clearly sates that beings are attached to bodies (when they have one) and and weave illusions by being attracted, particulary interested, or repulsed by things. I'm not saying that evey people in an animist culture are aiming at going beyond that complex web of subjectivity. Just that the consciousness of the illusion is here, and opens the gates for the creation of schools that will work towards this goals. Daoism, Mazdaism, Pythagorism, ..., and many lineages considered "shamanic" because they are from a country considered "shamanic" from the western perspective.

Indeed, there is no such things as an Animism tradition, with a capital A. Animism or better animist ontology is a concept, but a very clear and precise one, used to describe cultures that sees everything as alive and aware in ways that are just like the way humans are alive and aware. IMO Chinese culture as a whole is - in this understanding - animist. That's why I agree we can say Daoism (like all chinese traditions) is "rooted in" or "based on" or "participates of" an animist culture. The same applies for " Fu Xi, Yijing, Hetu, Luoshu, Chinese etymology ". ( Again animism is not a better term for "shamanism" it's a basic wordview in which (stuff described as) shamanisms and many other traditions exits. )

- Animism ontology is observed mostly in Eurasia in the Americas, in other places people see the way nature is differently. So let's not make it a general, universal theory. But I give you this is very ancient stuff. - Not all spirit work that are refered as shamanism in academia have specialists. In Siberia Mongol an Turk peoples have it, in other tribes have everybody has the right to shamanize - they call it familly shamanism. That's what I'm talking about when I say that the term is applied to many different traditions. So if you narrow the application of the term "shamanism" to the situation where the spirit worker is a specialized person, recognized and qualifed by the community, we're getting something more precise.

Agreed.

Indeed. We have no consensus and no common definitions. That's the whole point of the argument.

So now I'm siding with neidan ? A tradition I have not acess to and never claimed to be initiated in ? I never said that "animisn is not the root of anything". Quite the contrary. Animism, that is thinking that everything is alive, is the basis of many traditions including the one we - more or les adequately - call "samanistic". And, again, of many more traditions. I'm saying that we are confusing shamanism and animism. Not all animism is shamanism, which - again - is a just a conventional term invented by anthropologists to describe and classify. The first practices that were described as shamanism in Siberia consists mostly in working with spirits relevant to hunting, like animal spirits, and spirits of the forest that rule the animals and can give them. Like by marrying the daughter of the spirit lord in order to have and alliance with him. Just like you would do to have and alliance with a another tribe. This is pretty specific. The term has been applied to many traditions regardless of many variations in goal and practices. The common element being only the animist word view that offer the possibility to find other aware being, beyond human persons, to work with. That and the healing practices. But all cultures have healers. Those who work with spirits uses their alliance to heal too. How so ? Because Daoism is rooted in an animist world view, not in shamanism. A tree is rooted in the soil, not in another tree.

Yes indeed. I'm just saying that "shamanism" is a very cloudy concept after decad of academic and pop-culture use and missuse. I just think that so many different people will give so many different meaning to this word, that I feel that nobody is really sure of what we are talking about when we write it. Anyway I tend myself to use the word in specific context, when I think it's ok (ie not too far from Siberia) But I find this tricky. Let's ask what is the "shamanism" eveybody is talking about, and we will have a dozen of definition. I've talked with people who think that shamanism is defined only by altered states of conciousess, or only by the belief in spirits, that it was an adequate word for evey type of spirituality because it is the "primordial tradition", that ir is the samed as witchcraft etc.. etc... I even met a stoner telling be that smoking weed made it a shaman (because of the altered states of conciousness...) ^^ Yo got me wrong, I'm not criticizing any kind of spirit work, nor the traditions involving Immortal teachers . While I'm not qualified to say if what you say is or is not Daoist - and that it's not my point, I agree with what you said in this post, and that similar things can be documented in many cultures.

Shamanism is not the root of anything. It's an outdated, etic anthropological concept. And in another hand it's a very popular word with a very wide range of meanings, and so in the end sometimes no meaning at all. Here is not the place to give an lesson in anthropolgy but, in a nutshell, it is now considered that there is no such specific thing as "shamanism" but simply an ontology that is animism. Animist ontology views comparable interiorities in differents exteriorities ("bodies"). So human or stag or wolf corporeal bodies, or no corporeal body at all (a spirit) it's all the same, in the inside there is an awareness just like ours. In this line of thinking it becomes possible, as animal and spirits are deep inside exactly like us, to interract with them. War, alliance, marriage, teaching, etc... That's what, as observed in Siberia in the first place, was named shamanism after a local name. But... it's only one of the possibilities that are available in animism. All shamanism is animistic , but animism is not allways shamanistic. So if we can consider that Daoism has an animistic ontology, it does not mean that it is rooted in shamanism, only that it shares with it a very old an very widespread view.

Yes, yes. But as I introduced this notion in the thread, I feel kind of responsible for the sub-topic. Jeff, just use a search engine it's a common notion, it has a wiki page an everything. It's preferable not to answer the HGA question here, or the thread will go in too much directions, and be unreadable (it happens a lot here ^^). Let's stick to the inital topic. You can create a thread about it if your are intrigued.

I'm not sure it's relevant. My contribution on the the two Spiritus in Catharism is just a side note. A weak hypothesis, if you will.

"Holy Guardian Angel"

Kundalini is not only "your" energy, it is a form of Shakti, which is somewhat similar to the feminine Spirit (Pneuma) or Wisdom (Sophia) of God. The comparison stops here as AFAIK there is now talking about differents forms of the Holy Spirit, a general one, and personal manifestations. Holy Spirit is Holy Spirit. Period. (It may not be like this, I know very few things about Orthodox esoterism, after all). The so called "Cathars", the "Great Heresy", had a Spiritus Sanctus Principalis and a "personal" Spiritus Sanctus, that you get when you are baptized in fire, in spirit, not the regular water one. H. Corbin equates this with the Spiritual Twin he studies in iranian religions (he thinks that Catharism as iranic influences, the classical view that it is a form of Neo-Manicheism). That would be traduced as HGA in new age lingo. But the awakened Shakti as something of the spiritual double, guide or guardian, as it is the inner guru, the inner presence of the Goddess and its wisdom. So we may not be too far.