Taomeow

Returning to the OP: have I seen wu wei yet?.. Everybody has seen wu wei. The classic description of the way it works is "doing nothing, accomplishing everything." One example of a phenomenon capable of this and available for direct and immediate experience is beauty. You've all seen beauty, right? It's doing nothing except for being itself. And it accomplishes everything, it has as much power as any action you could think of in some cases, and way more than that in others. There's a story about a young Salvador Dali going to a museum and seeing a painting by El Greco for the first time in his life. He fainted on the spot. That's wu wei for you.

Throw your biological clock in the trash is what taoism is all about.

Coming from a knowleageable New One, this sounds like a valuable bit of advice. Now if we could please return to the subject of the OP? (I'd love to learn all you care to share about the Australian Way if you open a thread on that, and we could even compare the Old Ones of your acquaintance with the Ancient Ones I met in Peru... though I'm not likely to want to talk about them, and if I ever do, I'm more likely than not to have only myself for the audience.)

Well, of course. Everything is older than humanity.

I've heard not under water but exposed to rains for a very long time. The markings are characteristic for water going down on it rather than surrounding it. For centuries at least, maybe millennia. One does not exclude the other though. Antediluvian rains, then submerged, then emerged. In the time frame official story grants it though, they somehow forget that the place has been dry as gunpowder. One of the least rainy spots on earth. As for you don't think so re intervention, this is not a kind of conclusion I would expect anyone to jump to based on any one, two, ten, or even a hundred bits of evidence. A thousand can start forming a picture though. That's what happened in my case. And I'm not certain about the intervention, it just seems to explain about a thousand things no other hypothesis has an explanation for, is all.

Hmmm... yes, I believe so. There's no scriptures in any tradition that assert that on the n'th day god created technology, artificial means of locomotion, or some such. There's the story of acrhons, of course (e.g.), the semi-artificial semi-organic demigods, they may well have thrown in that crutch humanity has been leaning on ever since. But this would of course mean "intervention," not creation or evolution. So, yes, probably "designed for humans," methinks.

There's usually two reasons the taijitu is inverted: the common one (people ignore the direction of yang and yin, heaven above earth below, so to speak) and the orientation of the image which signifies it (yang ascends, yin descends). And the uncommon one (people reverse the direction in alchemical pursuits, placing yang under yin, fire under water, etc.) So you may have chosen the inverted one either because you didn't faze in the fact that the orientation is part of the symbology, or intuitively chose the alchemical orientation. Here's the shield pattern of the Western Roman infantry unit armigeri defensores seniores (ca. AD 430), the earliest known classical yin yang image (though of course there's earlier versions that are MUCH earlier.)

This is the Sumerian god Marduk. A complete picture that I didn't find the first time includes a bucket in his left hand, from which a liquid substance is sprinkled by means of the pine cone. This is a traditional Mesopotamian art theme. Marduk is sometimes depicted as a winged human and sometimes as a dragon. The pine cone and the bucket are also used by Geniuses (or genii), semi-divine beings (angels, demons, alien geneticists?..) who are sometimes portrayed as humans with some insignia of partial divinity, sometimes as humans with animal heads (birds, most often), and more often than not winged. Invariably the details are intricate and every part of the depiction is meaningful, but what is meant can't be pinned down without delving into many, many thousands of words -- if then. However, here's a trail for you, but it goes in many directions from any point, so choosing just one is likely to lead to a dead end. I have been going there and back exploring these trails, and still am.

Accidentally or alchemically?

Thanks, Dawei, Unlearner and Kevin! Kevin, great link, very helpful. I have a Yixing pot and good artesian water, so I'll just have to sinologize the temperature and timing. And store it for "long term" since I don't think it requires any more aging.

With two snakes, that's the Staff of Osiris. It had the pine cone too, which the Greeks, in their turn, used as the symbol of healing and a vast number of other things with any number of snakes -- one, two, or none, e.g. on the staff of Dionysus. The pine cone got stolen. It can now be viewed in Vatican.

I got a present from a friend which may be more than what I deserve, since my tea-drinking style is neither sophisticated nor particularly Chinese (though it isn't American, English, or Indian either.) Aged pu-erh bricks, at least 70 years old (possibly older), made by a process that went extinct in maoist China, so tea made this way is no longer available. I'm told they are a collector's item, but since two of them were intact and one slightly nibbled at already, I decided to keep using that one. The taste, smell, flavor, color -- everything about this tea is different from what I'm used to. I don't drink it often, maybe because I'm afraid that if I really fall in love with it I'll wind up finishing it all off and there's no replacing it. My question is, what's the right way to store this so it doesn't get damaged? I got it wrapped in paper, put it in a wooden box that used to contain some other tea from China, but I'm not sure this is the right way. Any suggestions?

An aside. Grimoire means "grammar." A spell is a "spelling." You use magic the way you would use any language -- you need grammar and spelling in order for things to come out the way you intend them to and be understood rather than misunderstood on the receiving end. If you say "congratulations on your erection" while you mean "election," this can cause some embarrassment. Unless that's what you want to generate by mis-spelling. So I can envision someone exceedingly proficient in the language of magic doing whatever they "wilt" -- but I wouldn't recommend this to someone who is still in the process of learning a "foreign language." Mistakes in spoken or written ordinary languages can be minor enough to not matter, or major enough to change the game entirely. A classic example, in the age of telegrams, was a dispatch that was meant to say "pardon him, can't execute" which cost the guy in question his life when the telegraph operator misplaced the comma -- "pardon him can't, execute." This comma in a magical "telegram" could potentially cost quite a bit more. Which is one reason (out of a number) that I look for "authenticity" -- though my definition of it may not be the same as that of the "fake vs. real" contentions about pretty much everything esoteric out there. There was a spelling and/or grammar reform following every major social revolution (the French renamed the months, e.g., Russians eliminated a letter from the alphabet, etc.) This is not insignificant in occult terms. You are recognized by the proficient ones by the grammar and spelling you use -- you open yourself to much scrutiny whether you intended to or not. Every day someone asks me "where are you from" -- because I reveal something about myself just by the way I pronounce words of American English. You reveal a lot more to the spirit world by the way you pronounce spells and write the signs and symbols. If that's your intent it's one thing... if it's a mere side effect, consider its potential to do what you "wilt not..." ...

SOTG, you have a dozen versions of the Necronomicon? I think I know how this works... you let them fight it out in your mind. Seriously though, I have well over a dozen versions of the I Ching (and have read over two dozen versions of the Tao Te Ching) -- must have access to the whole morphogenic field (or akashic record or whatever), create a hypersaturated solution, then drop a last drop and whoosh -- it all crystallizes into a coherent structure, ziran, by itself. That's my favorite way to learn anything about anything. But since I only have one version and got it only recently -- what do you think of this one? @ Nungali: about modifying and fixing stuff in it -- do you just ignore the grave warnings against doing this found in Simon's version, or have you used some other version that does not include them or even encourages getting creative with it?

OK guys, keep it coming. I've only spent 24 hours with this book and already it's getting super eventful. I knew nothing about it yesterday when I got it (in general, I've nothing on any Western occult modalities except pure theory, save for some Eastern European odds and ends which are largely pagan) and it already manifested a neighbor bearing tamales as soon as I got the munchies, $500 in unexpected profit from a source I didn't anticipate any money from, and several posts above that are only whetting my appetite. I didn't do anything other than read it so far. Levenda is a taoist these days, mostly, no? I'll try reading again with this hypothesis in mind. Oh, I forgot to mention why I got it. I was at Barnes and Noble for an entirely unrelated book when this one jumped at me (you know how books sometimes jump at you, right?..) I picked it up, opened it at a random page to read a random line (this is how I always determine if I should get the book that's jumped or it was just an earthquake that had nothing to do with me). The line went, "Enki, remember!" Two significant words from my own universe. But I still wasn't sure. So I took the I Ching from the adjacent shelf and asked, without throwing coins or anything, just by the same quickie-mart random page method, "I divine buying this book." Got a response to the effect, "normally I wouldn't advise it, but these times we're in, they ain't normal, so feel free." Not a strong message one way or the other, more like, it's up to me. It was cheap, so I got it. I anticipate as much fun as I had with my last mysterious acquisition, The Voynich Manuscript... but don't let me derail my own thread.

Here's a bit of his "oral transmissions" -- from sermons he gave in Strasbourg which some people transcribed. He sounds very Zen. I pray to God to rid me of God. God is within, we are without. The eye through which I see God and the eye through which God sees me is the same eye. He is He because He is not He. This cannot be understood by the outer man, only the inner man. Find the one desire behind all desires. God is at home. It is we who have gone out for a walk. Through nothing I become what I am. Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.

You must come from not too far from where I come from. As for my research, "studies" have been very marginal to my pursuits -- I researched traditional diets, globally and historically. Pre- industrialization of food supply, pre- big agrobiz, pre-Monsanto is where it's at. Not the fads, not the trends, not the ideology-driven, profit-driven, or misanthropy-driven foodstuff.

(Translation: This is not a pipe.) ------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: Personal Values

Well, I believe some are born with good instincts but many are born already conditioned away from them. E.g., they found that pregnant rats who were fed sugar water during pregnancy give birth to sugar-addicted ratlings. So it's not always a sign of healthy instincts if a "civilized" child is after certain foods and dislikes certain other foods, it could be any number of things instead. But for a child conceived, carried to term, and born under more natural nutritional circumstances, this would probably be the case. And then individual "what's good for me personally" patterns would play out-- provided that's available. I believe that I had instincts right on as a kid because later I did extensive nutritional research (investing many years) and it confirmed that I was spot on. It's not just preferring proteins to carbs, vitamin-rich veggies to depleted ones -- it's also the pattern of eating and the amount of food consumed. It is now an established scientific fact (FWIW) that the only method to prolong life that's been proven experimentally and worked every time in every mammalian species is a low-calorie diet in childhood. (Does not prolong life if started by a grown-up, only if it took place during childhood years). Animals underfed in childhood (but offered quality food, not junk) grow up to be smaller and leaner than the controls but live, in the case of some species, twice as long, and are much healthier for a lifetime. So, what I always wanted, and was never allowed to do, was to eat very very little. At one point, when I was 5, my dad allowed me to have my next meal when I ask for it, and I wasn't going to ask for it yet three days later (sponaneous fasting instinct!..) -- those were the happiest three days of my childhood. My dad didn't trust my instincts enough to wait any longer till I ask for food, and at the end of the third day canceled the deal and enforced a meal. What sweetened the disappointment for me was the fact that he did get me a shish kabob, medium rare. If it was macaroni and cheese instead, it would have broken my heart.

Well, I was the opposite -- I wanted nothing but meat (very little was enough at that -- the portion in front of the kid in the video is positively scary, I would lose my appetite from just one look at this mountain I would be expected to move -- and as unprocessed as possible... prepare something the nutritionally crazy way like that octopus, i.e. with a starchy crust on top of the lean protein, toward an unresolvable digestive conflict, and all my instincts would scream, "nooooooo!") Never wanted any grains products, legumes, root vegetables, dairy, or sweets. In fact it was ongoing torture to have to eat these. But I was quite, quite pure and innocent none the less -- as are the poorest South American kids I've seen devour meat with bliss-lit eyes, or Innuit kids in the tundra or Mongolian kids of the herders who have not much else available for much of the year. The children here are having First World Problems with their diets...

Nah, "does it have a head" reveals that the kid was exposed to a certain brand of brainwashing already. (A cabbage has a head too. And is alive until picked and eaten. So?..) Anyone who had kids who were picky about their food would recognize immediately what the boy was really doing. This is not a video of a cute smart pet endowed with speech, contrary to what people who watch it the way they watch kittens and puppies on youtube may have perceived. This is a human child. He is using his brain. He is using it toward his goal -- to wit, finding a way to bail out of a meal he doesn't feel like eating. You don't see him all over those rice and potatoes offered as the alternative, do you? If he was hungry, and opposed to eating "animals," he'd eat the rice and potatoes. Problem is, mom's schedule says "dinner time" and son's senses say "not hungry." He's been round this block before -- hundreds of times. He learned. There's no bailing out of a meal by appealing to his senses which mom can't relate to. He has to use his brain. I know the deal, this is how I got smart too -- figuring out by trial and error how to bail out of an unwanted meal in a manner that the adults will accept. He found his. Kudos. But no kudos to mom for predicating her acceptance of her son on his responsiveness to her agenda. The subtle message he gets from her is, "if you are this way, I will love you. Be a certain way to deserve my love. Be the way I program you to be, that's how you go about deserving my love." Subtly deforming... Ubiquitous.

Oh, come on. Every taoist can read the neijing tu regardless of whether she can read Chinese.