Taomeow

Whatever did they do to you in Kathmandu?..

Possibly because this kind of magic constitutes about 90% of all magic practiced in places like Hong Kong?.. We live in an unfair society. "Getting even" sounds, well, not nice. But another way to put it is "getting back to the balanced state." Sounds nicer, eh? Technically it can be the same thing. You are wronged. You can turn the other cheek, will it restore the balance? Or will it make things a bit more "uneven?" Alternatively you can slap the cheek of the offender with the same force he applied to yours. Will it make things a bit more "even?" Many in Asia go with the second scenario. A Chinese friend of mine who traveled to a town in Hong Kong whose name I forget described a whole street of sorcerers (they like clustering specializations, there's streets of mattress makers and streets of computer assemblers and streets of sorcerers). There's hundreds of clients congregating there all day long in search of revenge. Employees wronged by bosses give the sorceress (most are female) the name, she writes it in a talismanic script on a piece of yellow paper, puts the paper on the ground, has the wronged party remove one of his shoes and pummels the name with the shoe, screaming and cursing. That sort of thing. He said he'd never been anywhere where the noise and screaming were on this level, and he's traveled the world. So, aside from the general "not nice" idea of the book's premise, what would your objections be to the procedures proposed? I read it years ago, and remember that I raised an eyebrow on a bunch of the author's ideas and concepts, but couldn't tell at the time if, e.g., his proposed procedure of dedicating a petition to a particular deity has anything wrong with it. You make offerings on the altar, write a petition, offer money with it (both are subsequently burned, which is also traditional and customary), close the ceremony banishing whatever may have jumped on the bandwagon, don't mess with any of it at night, only do the ceremony in daylight, and so on. Is anything specifically wrong with this procedure in your opinion? Or you were referring to the author's ideation rather than techniques? Or both?

RC, you are way off, but I don't want to hijack the Trump thread trying to get your full attention to what I'm really saying vs. the interpretations you offered that have nothing in common with what I'm saying. Peace out.

Bingo. Matriarchal culture is retained only by a few tribes still in existence but rapidly being transformed by tourism (a sly label for an open season for cultural destruction) into -- oh horror, sex toys among other things, like the Miao tribe in China where inheritance is matrilineal and sexual contacts can only be initiated by women, which is the only thing that makes sense in any cultural setting whatsoever, because it is the women who get pregnant and give birth to children of both sexes, so anyone who doesn't has no business deciding on things reproductive and things property. A woman raising one child may or may not want five, but it's not up to any man to make it happen or to make it so that those children are starving. And matriarchy is the only system that will ensure they won't. Not one child was ever "poor" or "disenfranchised" in a matriarchal society. Not a girl, and not a boy. It is not necessary to have lived in every society to have an idea of what it was/is like. No one but me in this thread lived under what they call "communism" yet ideas abound. Everybody and his brother and sister have an opinion. So that poster who shall remain unnamed who disqualified me from having an opinion about martriarchy yet expressed a hundred opinions about things like, e.g., Russia or Ukraine or what have you should have disqualified himself first if applying this criterion. I have a good handle on world history (though not the kind enforced by weapons of mass instruction) and a brain. Sapienti sat. Matriarchy is not a "rule" of anyone or anything over anything not already ruled upon by nature. Everything else goes against nature, and can never succeed because of that, in any shape or form.

There's no giving back anything to anybody without someone else having a bigger, earlier claim -- preceded by someone else's even earlier one. The whole planet is stolen.

You're awake before dawn? That's commendable. I am a weather shamanka, not a climate shamanka, so I can't change the climate, but I can tweak with the weather. Everything I wrote in this thread was part of the spell for rain I was casting. My method (taught by Mother of the Universe in the Amazon, in the course of a torrential flood) involves complaining and sulking, not commanding, because my wuxing phase -- Wood, which makes Water my wuxing Mother phase -- can't command Water (we Wood people command the Earth), but must approach her the way a child approaches a parent and use "but I want it" pure emotions rather than strong arguments or reason. It worked, as usual. A little rain I did get. Not a lot, but at least I won't have to wash my car. And there's some clouds.

Innuits of Siberian Tundra love to listen to Equatorial Africans explain to them how to avoid frostbite.

The needs of live creatures are real. The ideas of live creatures of our species... not so much. I need the sun and the rain. Being of the Wood phase of qi and all. My bazi says "both, or you're screwed." That's a human interpretation of the way it is. The way it is is not contingent on how I interpret it, it is contingent on itself. I need things that are different from what bacterium deinococcus radiodurans needs. It needs a nuclear reactor to live in. I don't. It doesn't need rain. I do. Tao is not politically correct and not an equal opportunity employer. Where deinococcus lives, there's no tao for me. There's tao for the deinococcus there. Its tao is proprietary and individualized. So is mine. One size does not fit all. "Blowing on ten thousand things so each can be itself." Not "so each can be the same."

Docility of the slaves relies on their acceptance of things toxic, cruel, torturous as normal, beautiful, perfect. Read "1984" -- the scenes of teaching the main protagonist this party line of "everything is perfect and you only have to accept it" are the best illustration of the real-life practical applications of this doctrine I know.

Thank you. This sky, a very traditional and very popular subject of taoist painting, is full of qi, and so is the artist depicting it. You don't remove yourself from this flow, you don't take an absentee "observer" stance in order to get it -- there's no getting it unless you're part of it and it is part of you. Quite a few famous old taoist paintings actually have the artist himself painted in, captured by the brush in the very process of looking at this landscape and this sky, being part of it, not separating his mind or body or spirit or the brush in his hand from the mind of tao and the flow of qi it engenders. He is looking at the transformations of qi that are life. Taoism is fundamentally about life. Let this sink in... From solid earth to flowing water to soaring mountains to clouds and mists disappearing into the unknown, leaving you with the image of a dragon ascending from the earth to the sky and melting away into mystery -- all of it is of interest to a taoist, it's non-hierarchical and emptiness is not the "goal" or "true state" or anything like that, anymore than nonexistence is a "true state" vs. existence. It is not. Being comes from nonbeing like a child from the womb, not like a criminal thrown into jail (or hell, purgatory, illusion, what have you) to pay for her transgressions. Nonbeing is nurturing, the great mother, and she does not hate her children, the beings. Sky and earth are beings, both her children, and neither is a "favorite child." The taoist circle of life is not a vicious circle. It is a virtuous spiral. "To paint the bamboo," the poet and painter Su Shih wrote in the 11th century, "one must have it entirely within one. Grasp the brush, look intently [at the paper], then visualize what you are going to paint. Follow you vision quickly, lift your brush and pursue directly that which you see, as a falcon dives on a springing hare---the least slackening and it will escape you." Chinese painters were expected to paint from memory rather than depicting a landscape that lay before them. The artist deliberately chose materials forcing him to paint quickly in one continuous process. Quick drying ink and absorbent paper which could not be erased or retouched. What is, as is. The 11th century landscape painter Kuo His wrote: "In painting any view the artist must concentrate his powers to unify the work. Otherwise it will not bear the peculiar imprint of his soul..." So, my soul -- or rather my qi and my all shens -- are players when I gaze at the sky, my heart-mind has a memory, an opinion, a mood, a feeling, an imprint of my whole life's experiences -- and none of these are "bad," "not real nature" by any religious authority's decree, none are on trial for being "not the true mind, " none suspect unless I myself suspect them and undertake to cultivate them away because I want to, not because I'm afraid of some boogie man or other (rebirth, maya, deviating from the dharma, whatever...). They are legit. I am simple and complex -- visible and hidden, yang-hard and yin-soft, showing-revealing and hiding-concealing, playing with things mild and misty and feather-light and with things sharp and unyielding and powerful. When I look at the taoist sky, I play with qi... ...and if I don't know how, I shouldn't gaze at the sky, much less paint it, much less proselytize about its "true nature." How would I know if there's things I exclude -- e.g. my love of water, my love of life, my ability to notice that there's a prolonged and devastating drought going on in SoCal?.. My true nature is not a dogma. It is what it is. To disown any part of it on cue, because someone tells me to, is, from a taoist's POV, ridiculous. (Zhuangzi drove the point home with a rather blunt statement of where tao, "the true nature," can be expected to be found -- good luck excluding it from anything, let alone from a cloud in the sky! -- which I won't repeat here...)

Only if we look through the prism or our conditioning. Remove that and what's to stop you from seeing it as it is? It is what it is. I have to water my plants every day. Seeing the sky differently doesn't water them. It's barren not because of the way I see it, but because of the way it is. Always clear. No rain. Drought. Barren. Pregnant with potential? For six years? I call this impotential. The sky is yang in the taoist paradigm and it has potential indeed, but pregnant... that needs yin. Except in systems that would rather knock up the male principle than deal with the female.

Here in SoCal we call it "the drought." Clear sky, warmth and radiance -- without clouds, mists, fogs, rain -- = barren. Taoists are fond of gazing at a different sky...

Nah, you get confused about me being confused. Of course the internet is not the best medium to transmit a joke. I wrote more but it wasn't meant to be... when I tried to remove the god of fire from the quote so as not to duplicate the image, it got, instead, enlarged and possibly enraged and struck down my humble paragraph. Ah well. It was a great paragraph if I say so myself... but chances are it would've pissed you off too. So, maybe for the better.

This is true (I've even seen a study), but only for salt taken late in the day. If you don't eat anything salty later than 3-4 hours before your bedtime, you will be fine. Eating salty stuff after 7-8 pm can cause delayed sleep, disrupt all its phases for 2-3 hours, and negatively affect its quality. Where I come from it's common knowledge. We are fond of salted fish, e.g., but it will be typically served as part of breakfast or lunch, not dinner. And of course all those salty snacks people like to indulge in in front of their screens -- potato chips, salted nuts, pretzels, what not -- are not traditional, and used to be reserved for an outing with friends that involved beer and took place not too late in the day. Timing rules, as usual.

This came back with the information that Venus is Vulcan?..

NASA are your people?..

Care to look deeper? How exactly did the goddess Diana Lucifera (who shines with the "true light of her own") become the devil Lucifer who shines with reflected light?..

They were officially cancelled only about 150 years ago, when the human mind was proclaimed almighty, omnipotent, omniscient. This ruse was planned and implemented in order to offer people rendered completely powerless a comforting illusion of control they can't have in reality. When someone picks your pocket, why look outside yourself for the perpetrator? It's your own other hand stealing from you, it's the only devil you can ever catch. Don't bother complaining. All your problems are in your mind. (Walks away with your wallet grinning a devilish grin.)

According to the Greek Orthodox scriptures, "the Devil shines with reflected light." They were definitely onto something.

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Try porcini mushrooms. They umami like the sun don't shine. Of course other varieties of wild (sic!!!!) mushrooms will do the job too, but porcini are intense. If you want to have an umami vegetarian dish that is healthy and yummy and won't disappoint even a hardcore carnivore, wild mushrooms are the way to go.

It's a Sichuan dish, "twice cooked pork." And not pork back as I mistyped above, pork belly, the same cuts that are used to make bacon. I know what you mean about an unforgettable meal -- once in a blue moon, you encounter something so delicious that it's a seminal event capable of changing your perceptions forever. I've been blessed with quite a few such encounters here and there, now and then, and remember them all. Smoked Baikal omul (a fish far from "average"), kybynlar (Crimean Tatar meat pie), alfresco de maracuya (Peruvian passionfruit cake)... ...damn, I've made myself hungry! I wonder why the most striking encounters are with things I'm not likely to be able to make or find ever again, or unless I travel back in space and, for some items, in time.

Because an immediate reaction to MSG is as individual as, say, an immediate reaction to alcohol. Many people get a headache from red wine, e.g.. I never do. I never get a headache from MSG either -- though it does make me sluggish and lethargic (subjectively it feels like heavy weights attached to my qi), which is how I know it's been slipped into my food at a Chinese restaurant even though they put "no MSG" on the menu. I just know a bit of neurochemistry, which is why I won't go by whether I get a headache or not, most effects are cumulative and either asymptomatic or the symptoms can masquerade as something entirely else. Besides, if they overdo it, I can taste it and I hate the taste. There's this one restaurant I used to frequent with my Chinese friends that serves many authentic Chinese dishes (the clientele are 99% Asians), and I was particularly enamored of their pork back with cabbage dish that is pretty impossible to make at home, it takes hours and something like local expertise. Always ordered it there. Then one day it tastes of MSG and I can't enjoy it. I ask the waiter, new chef? He confirms. Bummer. I loved that dish.

Among other things. It's pretty much everywhere in processed foods. And in Asia, where consumers are not (yet) as suspicious of the manufacturers' antics as in Europe and, to a much lesser extent, the US, the situation is even worse. The Asian market I buy this and that from regularly has huge bags of MSG honestly labeled "MSG" on the lower shelf, I mean, something like 25 lb bags. And a generous selection of smaller bags on upper shelves. Many people who shop there, if they see one of those "no MSG" stamps you posted above on a package of something they want, will buy an extra package of MSG to spice it up. It's very cheap.

No. Vegan sushi with fake fish laced with MSG. And the like.