Taomeow

That's reasonable -- I for one manifest everything good or bad that's happening internally on the surface, and so do some of my teachers -- I've seen some of them grow 20 years older or younger within 24 hours! -- depending on what's going on inside... (I've seen one of them appear 40 pounds heavier or lighter within hours too... wearing the same clothes, mind you.) However, he shou wu is not a remedy for baldness, it's a remedy for graying hair. The remedy for baldness is... um, I know many, many remedies that are supposed to work in theory, but practically, I've seen many quite bald TCM professionals, qigong masters, and the like. The God of Longevity himself is bald, so... apparently even the peaches of immortality don't cure that. Of course if hair loss is due to some minor internal/external imbalances rather than testosterone predominance leading to loss of follicular sensitivity to same down the road (a common cause), this can be corrected with internal/external adjustments of the general nature -- diet, detox, stress management, etc..

Why won't Chinese teach Westerners? I did come to the conclusion that a taoist who doesn't know Chinese is handicapped, and started learning. My first teacher was a kind soul who is an engineer, not a teacher, who agreed to tutor me when I failed to find anyone in the area doing it professionally. After a while he moved, alas, and became geographically prohibitive. My next foray was at a local community school. They offered a course, I took it. They offered a repeat of the same course, I took it for the second time! (I'm finding Chinese pronunciation quite difficult, whereas grammar is piece of cake... ...so I wanted to keep working on my pronunciation. Alas, the teacher, excellent in every respect, preferred to teach like this: she talks 95% of the time, she lets the students say something 5% of the time. With 20 or so people in class, my chance to work on my pronunciation with the teacher's personalized help came once a week for 10 seconds a pop, on average.) Now the second part of the course was supposed to be offered later but it never happened. Currently the only Chinese course the school offers is for someone who is planning a short trip to China and wants to learn 100 words and 250 sentences. That's not what I'm after. Nothing else is available. To compare, the same school offers 10 different-level courses of Spanish! Why can't Chinese in CA do what Mexicans in CA are doing -- meet the demand with supply? or even create the demand for that matter, the way Mexicans did, by NOT speaking English and YES teaching Spanish instead?! (I don't mean "all Mexicans" of course...) In any event, I'm finding it much easier to find someone to teach just about anything Chinese than someone to teach the language in a lay setting.

Oh, it wasn't a refutation of your most sensible posting, just a suggestion of an approach from a different angle.

Hi mrcuteblackie, you appear quite sensitive to the cosmic qi -- the reason you started worrying about it now while you didn't for the past 15 years is related to the nature of the time period that is about to begin -- the year of the Yang Metal Tiger is coming, with Wood/Metal in the stems/branches and with the Tiger sitting in a Grand Duke-facing direction. This is an accident-provoking arrangement, unfortunately, especially for some people. There's many ways to protect yourself, but of those practically available AND efficient, I suggest you get feng shui/Chinese astrological help from a reputable form-compass/4 pillars practitioner and follow the guidelines for do's and don't's for the duration of the year. In addition, I would suggest you take extra care (up to avoiding all activities and practices that might lead to injury) on all San Niang days -- that's all 3rd, 7th, 13th, 18th, 22nd and 27th days of each LUNAR month (do not mix them up with calendar dates). (An example of San Niang affliction in action from my experience: late at night my husband wanted to cut himself a piece of hard cheese and split a finger open to the bone in the process. We went to the emergency room, where a friendly doctor stitched it up and casually commented, "today is the day of cut fingers for some reason -- you are my patient number five since the afternoon with pretty much the same trauma." I looked it up later in my Chinese almanac and, sure enough, it was a San Niang with Metal Attacks-afflicted day. ) Well, the coming year will be Metal Attacks-prone because Metal and Wood are in conflict, the Tiger wearing weapons on its back will be irritated and periodically trying to shake them off, and it's a Yang Tiger who is pretty fierce, who wlll sit where he can't help offending the Grand Duke Jupiter. In short, a year is coming when whoever wasn't interested in FS/4P before might do well getting interested...

I don't own reference sources, they were explained to me orally based on the works of Chinese archeologists Wang Guowei 王國維, Luo Zhenyu 羅振玉 , and Gu Jiegang 顧頡剛 . If you care to dig for them, give it a try, I wouldn't know where to start. Their work relates to pre-history. Look for Chinese archeology un-influenced by Western "help" and you shall perhaps find. I only have brief notes from in-person exchanges with people who know way more than me -- or Wiki.

Yup, I think you misunderstood what I was saying too. Hetu and Luoshu are older. Greek philosophers from whom we inherited the Four Humors theory may or may not have been in contact with the sons of Horus, but they were in contact with their professors at the university, which is what I was alluding to. The chart Mal posted is from that period, what was known earlier is... hmm, only everything, but not necessarily from Egypt, Sumer or Mesopotamia, contrary to popular belief. That later-stage knowledge will mirror earlier-stage knowledge because the latter happens to refer to something real is no surprise either, of course. The oldest yin-yang (taiji) symbols I've seen -- exactly like the "modern" ones -- are dated as 45,000--60,000 years old and were found at archeological sites in Europe. (Source: "The Language of the Goddess" by Marija Gimbutas, Ph.D. )

This view is in accord with traditional Western schooling that loses China off the map of philosophical and scientific contributions and primates as a matter of routine. Here's a book worth checking out for a better researched version: "Lost Discoveries," by Dick Teresi.

This is the Greek version, right? They also get these "elements" from combinations of two properties as I recall, and also place the outcome in the human body: hot and wet produce blood, cold and wet produce phlegm, cold and dry produce yellow bile, hot and dry produce black bile. (quoting from memory, please nobody throw anything heavy!) The similarities are not surprising because all Greek philosophers got their education at the University of Alexandria, where the Great Silk Road had brought some professors who had taoist teachers. It's a good thing though they only lost one "element" in transition. When the great library at Alexandria was burned, Metal (which is controlled by Fire) must have perished in the process! I re-read my yesterday's entries and feel frustrated because it's not simple enough to get away with going over it in a cavalry attack like that, and I failed to mention that Hetu and Luoshu must be looked at together actually, otherwise "why Fire isn't second after Water" still remains unclear, and and and... but then I thought, OK, this is stuff for oral transmissions anyway, and it has to be accompanied by hands-on practice involving exactly what you're trying to understand... at least that was my experience, I never learned any of this separately from applications, so I might not understand how to talk about it to someone who might be learning one thing while practicing another (or nothing at all). I got the wuxing picture from TCM and form-compass feng shui before I even knew the I Ching. I might suck at explaining it after all, because it's really hard to tell what is or isn't "obvious" to someone else. I may be forgetting how NOT obvious it was to me before the applications... so, sorry if that's the case.

As an illusion life is lived by a cold ghost. As truth, by a child.

Where immortals live an arrow flies forever chased by its target

Alas, Chapter IX, when clicked upon, yields 404 --Resource Not Found. OK, I'll type it in from my hard copy. P. 308: "they (in reference to sections of Ta Chuan under scrutiny) represent the beginning of the connection between the number speculations of the Book of History (Shu Ching) and the yin-yang doctrine of the Book of Changes.(...) To understand this connection, which can be mentioned here only in passing, we must go back to the diagram known as Ho T'u, the Yellow River Map, said to have originated with Fu Hsi (fig.4). This map shows the development out of even and odd numbers of the "five stages of change" (wu hsing, usually incorrectly called "elements.") Water in the north has sprung from the one of heaven, which is complemented by the six of earth. Fire in the south has sprung from the two of earth, which is complemented by the seven of heaven. Wood in the east has sprung from the three of heaven, which is complemented by the eight of earth. Metal in the west has sprung from the four of earth, which is complemented by the nine of heaven. Earth in the middle (t'u, the soil, the earth substance as distinguished from ti, the earth as a heavenly body) has sprung from the five of heaven, which is complemented by the ten of earth." Now this clearly states that Water has sprung from the one of heaven, the very first manifestation (remember -- "tao gives birth to one?" -- that's what it is that it gives birth to, what did you think it was that tao first gives birth to, a tree?.. A tree needs... um, water in order to start growing. The beauty of it all is that it is a ganying fractal, you've seen the sequence in your everyday observations many times... as above, so below... if that's what you saw below, that's what happened above, taoism is a natural science before it is a supernatural one.) Now of course the above-cited paragraph also happens to resolve much confusion about the place occupied by earth. There's two kinds of earth under scrutiny -- earth as a wuxing phase of qi (t'u, the soil) and earth as the heavenly body of Hetu (ti), or rather as a heavenly number (numbers are real forces of creation in taoism, not mental abstractions... but don't let me digress.) To add to the confusion, they also liberally use "earth" to mean "yin" as opposed to "heaven" used to mean "yang" as in the case of the yin (even) and yang (odd) numbers spoken about in the above paragraph. So... When they place earth in the middle of the wuxing cycle, many many MANY MANY schools mistake one for the other. The earth of Hetu, earth the heavenly body and the primal-creation heavenly number (which, in the case of the earth, happens to be five), ti, does indeed sit in the middle. Whereas the earth of wuxing, t'u, is part of the cycle of the five phases like everything else, nothing special about it. Both systems are wonderful to work with, each has its magnificent applications. It only begins to suck when one is confused with the other and a whole doctrine "springs" out of this mistake. These were the ones I originally referred to as "full of crap." Maybe it was too harsh. It's all so simple people quit believing their eyes and start getting all mysterious and metaphysical... and vice versa: deceived by the superficial simplicity, even mundanity of the phenomena they're looking at, they get stuck with some banal explanation and fail to grasp the mystery. (The numbers of Hetu! Mystery of mysteries!..) The same confusion is, e.g., revisited many times in regard to Water of wuxing and Water of the bagua: they are different waters. How wuxing phases get to be arranged in the sequence of creating/nourishing each other is something that can be as simple or as complex as you like, but please understand -- if in your daily life Water nourishes Wood, so does Water phase of qi nourish Wood phase of qi, not Fire. If in your daily life Metal is mined from Earth, so does Metal phase of qi get created by Earth phase. If you melt this Metal and it flows rather than grows or rotates or goes up, it means Metal phase of qi generates a Water, flowing kind of qi. Start with common sense and the sequence will fall into place. No, not even that. Observe and experiment and common sense will fall into place. In any event, I never planned to spend so much time on this, so if I've still left you unhappy, I'm sorry but I've no time to pursue it any further for now. Maybe some other time if need be.

Far as I know, i's a local phenomenon, it's not done elsewhere in the world. (Correct me if I wrong whoever lives anywhere else it's done.) I currently have a hole in one of my wisdom teeth (I have all of them and I'm quite a bit older than you) and there goes the dentists' theory that they don't participate in chewing and we don't really need them. Every time I eat something, the goddamn hole participates like crazy -- I can't figure out how to chew so as not to get stuff in it. So I need a filling... so I'm bracing myself for a visit to a dentist. I know what he/she will say. But I'm going to fight for that tooth. Tooth and claw.

In alchemy we go against the rules. I was talking the rules. I don't understand people (no one here on this forum, of course ) who go against the rules without knowing first what the rules are. I mean, I'm a rebel in my own right, but to rebel inside my own jing-qi-shen, inside my own body-mind-spirit, inside my own life-afterlife without knowing the rules first would be like randomly wrecking my own house in hopes that a bigger better one will miraculously build itself out of the rubble as soon as I break enough stuff. I am not in favor of alchemy that is not based on a thorough understanding of the business-as-usual fundamentals and practical applications of same to inner and outer tasks for at least a few years prior to turning it all upside down. I'm not in favor of starting fires in the attic and floods in the basement just because I don't know which pipes normally go where and which ones are gas and which ones are water and which ones are the sewer. I am not in favor of masters and schools that get people to do things that are based on such ignorance, that are taken out of context and on faith and then defended to the death out of loyalty to a teacher, a sect, a school, or one's money and time invested. I can't help it... my numerological number is 22 and that's a "reformer of a culture" if it reaches its full potential, which it can only reach if it follows many rules before undertaking a revolution. And my gua is Gen, which is responsible for "setting and upsetting the limit." I understand upsetting the limit as knowing what it is first and where it's set before undertaking the upsetting. Rant over, excuses out...

All right. Let's assume I don't mind the tone. For the greater good, I will provide, for the third time, the reference I provided on two prior occasions -- to wit, Ta Chuan, The Great Treatise (Great Commentary), one of the first books included in the taoist canon and the fundamental basis for many thousands of other taoist sources, both the ones that get it right and the ones that are full of crap because they either don't get it or didn't care to look as far as the basic fundamentals of their subject matter. (I will be very careful if a cop tells me "careful" and explains to me what kind of statements he'd rather I make or don't make. If you show me a badge, I will extend this careful stepping on eggshells to the ones you specify as well. ) Back to the reference though: can be found by itself or appended to the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching on pp.280--355. Chapter IX on p.308 is the one you might want to peruse. At the risk of further wrath I assert that I gave my Russian/embryonic/any which illustrations of the fundamental assertion I made based on Hetu/Ta Chuan for informal conversational purposes and in the tone of friendly discourse that clearly and unambiguously implied this goal, and therefore won't accept any homework related to either. I think your attitude (taking my corrections personally instead of realizing that their source is a passion for the art and whatever humble understanding it has produced to date, as impersonal as it gets) has gotten in the way of a darn good chance for you to understand the wuxing dynamics (one of the most beautiful, enlightening and practically useful episodes of cognitive perfection in all of taoism) which I would otherwise have been more than happy to explain, to the best of my ability, in such manner that you would never need any second or third party's opinion to rely on ever again because you yourself would see it everywhere and understand it as well as that an ox is not a horse.

Thanks for the tip! I'll try to do the same if I can next time I travel. When I was coming back from Russia a few months ago, boy was I glad I'm an American citizen. Everybody else got retina-scanned. Not that we're not gonna be next... but for now... I have this thing even with supermarket scanners -- they used to mess me up something horrible in my first year in this country, I would get sharp pain in my eyes from it just being used on my (or someone else's) merchandise, spells of nausea, dizziness, and instant depression. I dreaded shopping till I got "acclimated" to this. And my Asian friends told me (ha! with all the talk we have here about the horrors of pollution in China!) that in the first six month or so upon arriving in the USA, they and all their family members dreaded contact with tap water because it caused violent nausea and vomiting if they drank it and even if they so much as brushed their teeth. Eventually everybody gets used to it... the body shuts down its screaming sirens if the thing that is capable of setting them off is a permanent factor in the environment. I still remember my first sip of an aspartame-laced drink. I spat it out in panic and nearly died of fright, because I thought the can had been tampered with by terrorists or lunatics or whoever -- it tasted like some horrible poison to me. That's because I had never been exposed to it before. Someone whose pregnant mom drank it won't have this reaction, it's been shut down... like lots and lots of other natural sensitivities are shut down when the sensorium is overwhelmed. Yeah, the consequences can be dire. Thanks, Smile.

Whatever systems do that don't know their taoist fundamentals. I'm pretty sure about this one, Hetu makes it obvious and if it doesn't to you, please check out the Ta Chuan -- whatever schools use it by overruling it are full of crap. In some languages, e.g. in Russian, the primate of water as the phase that starts it all is reflected in the fact that we have the same word for "kidneys" and "buds" --it's "pochki" in the human body (Water phase, North) and "pochki" from which leaves spring on a tree, I'd say a transitional Water-Wood interface. A book on embryonic development will reveal the same sequence -- the kidneys are the first organ of the body to form.

I don't know what it is, but lately they are getting more and more dramatic. I live by the ocean and I check them out often so I know what a "typical," "average" one looks like here -- well, in the past month or so I'm noticing they aren't "the usual," they are so spectacular, so expressive... A couple of weeks ago I saw one like a giant crimson jellyfish, then one like the open belly of some ephemeral sky-sized animal bleeding into the ocean, and today -- an enormous winged dragon in flight across the ocean, its mouth open, a red tongue sticking out, red flames coming out of it too, dark wings covering the rest of the sky. Been wondering... has anyone else noticed any changes in the "style" of sunsets where you live? ???...

Correct, but it's not my perspective, it's Ta Chuan (the Great Treatice) and Laozi (tao gives birth to one. One in the North is where it's at.) The diagram you posted is left-right reversed. Hetu comes first. Look at the clockwise cycle of creation. That's about the only thing this version of the diagram got right. You posted this version of the diagram before and I think I pointed out its problems at that time. It's not a very good diagram, it has a few mistakes. I don't want to go over them once again -- maybe you can find the original discussion somewhere?

Sure. Soaring Crane is in Germany. An assistant of the teacher I learned the version of alchemy under discussion from occasionally gives seminars in Germany. The teacher is Wang Liping, the assistant who does seminars in Germany is Qin Ling. I discussed this with Crane in PMs and explained that I've been asked to learn but not to teach this stuff, so that's why I told him, "you know who to look up and where." Not Da Vinci enough I'm afraid.

no in answer to the first paragraph yes, to the second no, to the third. People had negative thoughts throughout their history. Cancer rates at the turn of the 20th century were less than 1/100th of today's rate. (No, it's not because of "better diagnostics" and not because of "longer life spans." The most dramatic increase has been in the rate of cancers that are very aggressive and can't avoid being diagnosed in children and young people, blowing to bits both arguments. Cumulative DNA damage will do it. Negative thoughts won't.) By the way, not just the DNA but the ability to think critically. A huge number of pollutants used for "our protection" (notably fluoride, aspartame, and low-frequency radiation) are CNS suppressors. People who don't see the picture can't see it because they have been lobotomized. The happily compliant who laugh off "negative" "conspiracy theories" are victims of spiritual terrorism who have lost pattern-discerning functions of their CNS. They only retain the ability to follow orders from higher up. This function is normally suppressed in adults by pattern recognition brain machinery, and expressed only when the latter had been damaged and a simpler, earlier, more primitive system ("just do as you're told, mom and dad know best") has to take on its functions of assessing reality instead.

Granted. People corrupt enlightened being's wish for the right to prevail over wrong. This results in the cessation of K-related fighting and all other forms of resistance to wrong. No one can set anything right anymore. Welcome to the wrong side of the tracks... forever. I wish I could give some of my post-taiji high to someone in Europe who could benefit from being awake right now. (It's freakin' 4:44 am here.)

Likewise, Stig. Um... you're dealing with the next step at the Stems/Branches stage. Stems/Branches are generated by wuxing combinations, not vice versa. Wuxing are generated by Hetu, which shows the development out of even and odd numbers of the five stages of change (the infamous "elements" of most translations.) If you look at Hetu you will see that it is Water that starts the cycle. Water in the north has sprung from the One of heaven, which is complemented by the Six of earth. Fire in the south has sprung from the Two of earth, which is complemented by the Seven of heaven. Wood in the east has sprung from the Three of heaven, which is complemented by the Eight of earth. And so on. ("Of heaven" and "of earth" refers to odd and even numbers, respectively, also corresponding to yang and yin.) Earth in the middle is legit. It's just not the only (and for some applications, not the best) arrangement, a circular one being also legit.

Yup, it's good. And the image is pretty apt. By the way, the same book contains a Circular I Ching diagram somewhere in the vicinity of this one if I remember correctly. I can't overemphasize its profound value and its usefulness as a meditation focus. I went apeshit with this one a few years ago, I was drawing it everywhere, on paper, in the sand, on the wall, on a t-shirt -- I went as far as to start crocheting it on a doily -- but that's when it turned into a loudspeaker and yelled at me, "you think you are already immortal and have all the time in the world to waste on stupid shit like that?.." -- so I stopped of course... I still have that doily with shaoyin and shaoyang and taiyin and taiyang on display in the Hall of Shame on the street in my mind... Oh, and about that wuxing thingie used alchemically... you know I can't go into that here and now, and you know who to look up and where.