Taomeow

I don't recall spamming you (or anyone else for that matter) so I'm assuming you meant to post this somewhere else and made an honest mistake. Could you please delete that contribution from here?

The one from today reads, "Where is everybody?"

That too, of course, but primarily Xuan Kong Flying Stars feng shui.

You are in good company. Confucius, at the end of his long and most accomplished life, was asked on his deathbed if he had any regrets. "Just one," he said. "I regret I can't live another 50 years and dedicate them exclusively to the study of the I Ching."

易經

Most so-called "Feng Shui experts" practice what I call toxic positivity (i.e. saying awesome things everybody wants to hear instead of actually doing any FS analysis, and/or in lieu of knowing any genuine FS to begin with). They only mention something negative when their pronouncements are tied to the products they're selling to 'protect" from that negative thing. Check out what I wrote on January 22 (before the Chinese New Year) in my "Taoist trivia and memorabilia" thread though. My FS analysis, started in November, was then ongoing, and by that date I knew what to expect and was jumping out of my skin with worry -- which I couldn't share with anyone, pretty much, no one would believe me, and that was the hardest part back then. "Any new contagious disease that has a 7 day incubation period (i.e. can't be detected till a week after it's been contracted, because the person who's contracted it will remain asymptomatic and unaware of carrying it) will go global within 24 hours. Wash your hands often, eat your healthy foods, take your supplements and herbs, keep warm, well-ventilated, moderately active and use the rest of those common sense precautions. And if you plan to travel by plane during Chunyun period, consider wearing a mask." (I wish I knew how to quote from one thread to a different one, but I don't, so I just copy and paste -- if you go to the original, you can see under that post it was never edited after January 22).

Cool! Reminded me of another painting -- an illustration a local artist friend, Anna Sobko, made to a chapter from my novel-to-be which I read to a few people. (Anna used to be an animated movies director at Moldova-Film, the Moldovan film studio and production company that ceased to exist with the demise of the Soviet Union.) She didn't get my point though. The snow leopard in that episode was very young and inexperienced, and the ibex was huge, way too big for her to take on. In Anna's rendition, the cat is not really challenged -- her situation is more like the first one of those Picasso paintings, whereas in my chapter it was, pound for pound, worse than in his second.

@Earl Grey @SirPalomides Outstanding -- and thanks for all the cats!

Nice thread. Paintings I like are many. Where do I start? Landscape, portrait, still life, allegory, alchemy? Europe, Asia, the Americas, Africa? Recent, ancient, well-known, mostly unknown? OK, let's start somewhere... last in first out? A contemporary Ukrainian artist, Yevgeny Leshchenko. A classical naïvist. Here's from his cats series:

Oh, there's a whole bunch of hexagrams where it will be mentioned. 20, Judgment 41, Judgment 45, Judgment 45, line 2 46, line 2 47, line 2 47, line 5 51, Judgment 59, Image 63, line 5. What form the offering would take -- there's some hints and pointers therein, the rest is up to the diviner to figure out. With experience, it can be understood from the situation. When in doubt, one can separately divine the appropriateness of the offering she has in mind.

I practice both Chinese astrology and I Ching studies and divination. Here's what I've been taught: 1. Neither one is used to "predict the future" in the same sense other divination systems might. Both are probabilistic taoist sciences and address the likelihood of certain outcomes by tracing the unfolding of certain initial conditions and extrapolating the tendencies discovered therein into the most likely future outcomes of following a particular course of action (or inaction.) In other words, they are in no way deterministic and were not designed to function in a deterministic universe of fixed futures, a universe that, to someone educated in taoist sciences, does not exist and cannot exist. On the other hand, they are very good at assessing probabilities of future events -- much like some of our modern stochastic sciences which can predict, e.g., the likelihood and expected depth of an economic recession, or someone's chances of developing a genetic disorder, or a pandemic. Only better. 2. If you do an astrology reading, provided you're proficient and get accurate information which you know how to accurately interpret, the traditional view is, it's a bit like playing the stock market based on inside information. It may give you an unfair advantage. It's not that you will "manifest" what you see in the forecast by forecasting, anymore than a weather man causes the rain by announcing that the chance of rain is 80%. It's a different mechanism -- knowing the odds for a particular future event is not just announcing it's going to rain but also having access to weather modification machinery. Well, the traditional view is, some forces of fate (which shall remain unnamed for purposes of this post) might not like it. They may punish the person who might have interfered with their secret plans by revealing them in advance. It's akin to punishing a whistleblower. But there's a remedy a "fate whistleblower" can resort to: offer compensation. If you do a reading for yourself, make offerings to appease the fate. If you do a reading for someone else, they have to pay, you can't do it for free or else the debt is on you, and fate will subtract from the diviner's "account." So, I've been taught not to do any astrology readings for free -- even if the payment is symbolic rather than for profit, they have to pay something, and then it's my responsibility to use part of it or all of it toward making offerings to fate, via deities and/or their representatives (e.g. a taoist temple or a teacher or a good deed.) If they don't pay and I don't make any offerings, fate might subtract from both accounts, mine and the one the reading is for. Not that it "will," that's also stochastic... but it "might." 3. It's different with the I Ching, in that the offering can be small (not in all cases but in small cases) -- burning some incense might be enough. Besides, the I Ching will tell you when she wants an offering and in what shape and form, so you don't have to guess. Of course she asks on behalf of the forces of fate or deities or their agents, not for herself. She needs nothing from you. "It is not I who seek the young fool; the young fool seeks me." And of course all of us are "young fools" to her, considering her age and wisdom...

Here's a very simple analogy. (Of course one has to be careful not to mistake analogies for the actual phenomena they stand for -- which are always more complex.) I like this one because it can illustrate what classical alchemical taoists want to transform into what and what they prefer to conserve rather than "transform." Yes, they can burn the candle like everyone else -- even faster if they like, by adding some saltpeter and making it not just burn but explode. But knowing that increasing the light of the spirit means sacrificing the body faster, one can consciously decide for oneself if that's what they're really after. (And understand that you can't have it both ways. You can't eat your cake and have it too. You can't transform your jing into qi and qi into shen and have your candle too.) So -- knowing that, you can decide if you want to burn the candle or try to keep it as intact as possible. Burn it fast and furious or be very conservative about it and light it only when absolutely necessary. If it's burning cleanly and evenly (to accomplish that is less than half the task, but without accomplishing it the task gets way harder), there's methods that can be then used to gather the light back into the flame and the flame back into the candle. And that's taoist alchemy. The rest is just chemistry.

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell.

The thalamus is the center for processing sensory information and for pain perception.

Big hug and best wishes of healing, strength, and luck.

An isolation revelation.

@Apech Thanks for the videos -- I haven't watched yet but will make time. And if it's about a society that's known no civilization nor was epigenetically modified by coming into contact with civilization, then I agree in advance, it has nothing to do with coronavirus. But everything civilization has everything to do with coronavirus. My position has been consistent for years. Epidemics, pandemics -- these are a regular, predictable, and inevitable built-in feature of civilization. They begin with civilization and in all likelihood end civilizations. If not this one, then the next, or the one after. Bats have been eaten by humans for thousands of years (much more elsewhere than in China though -- e.g. South Pacific Islanders have always been fond of the bat soup), so bats inhabiting this or that biohazardous lab would never guess that they are something novel. Yet they are. Incessant novelty (which we taoists call "restless/confused/entangled qi," the outcome of harmony-destroying pathological processes, whether in the body or in society) is also a built-in feature of civilization. And now back to our regular broadcast.

Things joined by profit, when pressed by misfortune and danger, will cast each other aside; but things brought together by Heaven, when pressed by misfortune and danger, will cling to one another.-Zhuangzi

Yes.

I'll take stock market advice from nearly anyone -- can barter for advice on nearly anything else.

Anytime.

Well, was about to step away from my computer when I saw this. Good idea though, thanks. So, once I do step away (very hard these days, has been since January), I'm going to finish making dinner. (It's 6 pm here). My teff dough has risen so I'll put the loaf in the oven. The liver for the liver pate has been cooked and now I need to finish working on it, recreating the time-honored family recipe. Then I'll also grate and prepare a humongous horseradish root which I've been meaning to utilize for the longest time -- it will make enough antiviral, delicious, and seriously dangerous prepared horseradish to last me till the end of a lockdown of any length -- well, any realistic length. Then I will watch the next episode of Season 3 of Babylon Berlin. Then I will give my son a prophylactic fire cupping treatment and check the computer again. And if I don't get pulled into this or that rabbit hole, meditate for half an hour and go to bed.