Taomeow

No one said it was a fish. It's a picture on the cover of the book. Of a cool axolotl with fingers. The title of the book mentions fish and also whales but does not assert that the illustration shows a fish, or a whale. Detracting assertions never made also has a name. References available upon request.

I can't explain a joke. I've met women like this one, and I thought it was a very funny picture. They do have eyes, by the way. Just blinded by the light. Might have been someone else. Freya is known to be riding a chariot pulled by two cats, Bygul and Trjegul. Here's some classic images: And the really horrible one is this. What deranged lunatic would use a whip on cats? Or puts the bits in their mouths?.. I hope the author of this one is in Hel, being fed to Freya's cats, bit by bit.

I know. If there was, google would have delivered. The "backward finger" was offered as a version by Virtue up the thread, and he interpreted it as the thumb, a very interesting idea, but the word "dactyl" can refer to a lot more things than a finger. And the word "retro" may mean a lot more things than "backward." And the word "retrodactyl" meant something in my dream, though not on google. I'm guessing some kind of pterodactyl, but not a googlable one. Maybe a pterodactyl that could fly backward (like a dragonfly can)? Maybe it's about tracing the animal that preceded the pterodactyl, some pterosaur or other that evolved into a pterodactyl? Some of them had wings pointing backward when folded (see pic), so maybe it's about that?.. I don't have meaningless dreams. Ever. Sometimes the meaning becomes clear only much later. A retrodactyl means something. I just don't know what -- yet.

Yup, it could mean that. Interesting idea. I don't think it did in my dream though. A taoist aside: there's realms that have "form and substance," then the ones that have "substance but no form," and the ones with "form but no substance," and finally the ones with "no form and no substance" -- which are, however, part of the overall reality. So my retrodactyl is stuck somewhere in the "no substance and no form" realm. Yet it exists. I suspect it exists as an idea of an animal, and if that was determined, it would transport it into the "form but no substance" realm. And from there, maybe it would even graduate into our "form and substance" world -- as an experimental beast in some secret lab, or as a fossil yet to be dug up, who knows. But for now it has no substance and no form, like all forgotten dreams. Only a name. The retrodactyl that can be named... a fine example of tao not revealing much through just names.

Ah, I remember. It started out like this... And then like this... And... Gorilla fingers with depigmentation: A chimpanzee finger and a human finger: And finally, the crown of creation of fingers:

Yeah... and his motto is, No mercy. God help us all.

I'll have to experiment with some dactyl poem now. I'll report on the findings if it proves worth reporting. But I think the dream thing was an animal.

Uh... I know Latin, I just don't know what the combination of retro and dactyl into one word in my dream referred to. I'm almost sure it was about some kind of animal -- related to the pterodactyl -- but what was it exactly?.. I think the dream may have been about some genetic experiments. But I'm not sure.

Nowhere near taoist. In taoism, the route of food in the body is determined by its type of qi, and the latter has affinity to different meridians and organs. The direction which a particular food item's qi will take is determined by its yin or yang dominance, its upward or downward route in the body, its wuxing phase, its warming, neutral or cooling thermal nature, moisturizing or drying properties and whether it will produce or reduce fluids, its tonifying, pacifying or stimulating effects, which organs it will affect and how, and so on. The ability to maintain healthy shens or spirits may depend (to varying extents, sometimes significant) on adequate food choices, suffer from inadequate ones, and be corrected with better ones. Bad food choices may damage one's shen, or the shens of particular organs (which will negatively affect the whole bodymind), better ones can facilitate optimal function. Spiritual alchemy processes typically take place against a backdrop of a short fast, or abstaining from particular types of food, or taking some herbal decoctions (in the broad sense -- they can include herbs, minerals and animals), or -- occasionally -- even massive overeating and consuming huge amounts of alcohol, swallowing hard-to-digest foods (large bones), and a lot of other unexpected non-new-age-compliant weirdness. But, like I said, in a typical case, you just fast -- anywhere from 24 hours to a week -- when you're approaching a transformational juncture in your practice. Unless otherwise instructed by your teacher.

Good luck with the rest of your project. I've never seen a blue lotus, but its close relative, European water lily, which I think only differs in how the leaves float on the water while the lotus leaves are submerged, was quite prominent in my life back in the day. I used to dive for them and follow the looooong slippery rubbery stem all the way to the bottom, sometimes not knowing if there actually was a bottom. Also, back in the day I once spent a month at a students' resort (belonging to the local medical school, with which I had nothing in common except friends who provided a spot) and was getting a bouquet of those lotus/water lily flowers every morning. It appeared outside my window like clockwork, usually accompanied by a short note with a funny poem. E.g., my real name rhymes with "knee" in Russian, so the poem would go, "TM, do show me your knee!" Or else something like, "I nearly drowned for these while you slept." Yup... a creative suitor. Dived for some water lilies for me every morning. I can't believe I didn't fall for him... What was I thinking. A doctor-to-be too!

Those cones are a tad smaller though -- not exactly hats? Closing off the baihui point (GV20), one of the most important acupoints on the human body, sitting on the Du meridian (the Governing Vessel) which an acupuncturist might use in neurology and psychiatry, and meditators have numerous uses for too. What's that blue lotus thing really, a psychedelic?

Thank you for the article. No, it wasn't posted before. Do you buy their explanation though? -- the first idea of what it might be for? -- that beeswax cones must have been infused with perfumes (not physically present in the actual one found) so the heat, in the hot climate, melts it and the perfume is released onto the wearer's head and body so he smells like a god and therefore is treated as one? Almighty god, the melting point of beeswax is 147°F. The highest air temperature ever recorded on Earth was 134°F. Suppose it was still hotter at the time of those mummies, it's still hard to imagine that someone wouldn't get a heat stroke within minutes if they wore a beeswax (air-proof, sweat-proof, ventilation-proof) cone hat melting onto their head reeking of perfume to boot. (edit: opinion edited)

@Walker Thank you. We're on the same 4 out of 5 pages here. My training involves opening and closing the "gate of life" -- the mingmen -- depending on whether you're going to move or settle. (The "settle" position being part and parcel of every taiji posture, taiji means yin-yang and it's the yin part of the deal, which eludes many students who move-move-move instead of move-settle-move-settle, and many meditators too who settle in a position that is not really settled and is only suitable for moving -- and only briefly at that!) This used to be "secret" teachings, and the secret apparently hasn't been revealed widely yet -- to this day there's much confusion out there because teachers in the know probably kept the how-to of it to themselves, and those who did give instructions instructed their students either this one way or that one way but not the real way, not the yin-yang dynamics of opening-closing. I keep encountering the fallout -- incessant debates about "tucking" or "not tucking" the tailbone, "rounding" or "not rounding" the back... often vehement because "the Sifu taught us this way!" Knowing when/how to open and when/how to close it might, in the absence of live hands-on corrections, at least begin with understanding that the rounded lower back and tucked tailbone open the mingmen, qi gets going for movement -- and if you let it keep going when you're not moving, it simply leaks out. You want to open it for movement, close it to settle. To close it you straighten out the lower back and turn the tailbone slightly out. Closed = qi can circulate inside without leakage. This is also the "defense" position in every move in MA -- but not the "offense" position, for which you need to open the mingmen. If you're stuck in the "defense" position, you are too yin and can't move fast enough or efficiently enough, and your skill will basically suck. If you're stuck in the "offense" position, you are too yang, can't settle and restore and conserve, have no stability and your skill will basically suck. How does this relate to the full lotus? You want to close the mingmen. You want stability, a settled, balanced body that is in the best position for immobility, a physiologically sound one. Immobility in a geared-for-action position is not only harmful for the body but keeps sending conflicting messages to the subconscious mind and can, indeed, drive it crazy. It's like applying the brakes and the gas pedal simultaneously -- to your deeper consciousness and your qi, no less.

Exactly what I'm talking about. If you know there's one head and four paws per one cat, the invisible paws don't confuse you, it's 3X4=12 paws. I used to have three cat brothers who slept like that -- on top of me. Two years of cat harmony -- and then they started fighting... but that's for a different thread.

I read the Wilhelm/Baynes translation and found it pretty clear. Just bare bones of the foundational concepts, the ABC, the 2+2 of taoism. It's been an ongoing surprise for me for years that so few people bother reading THE (sic) Great Treatise and get the basics straight, and instead go to regurgitators of repeaters of obfuscators. It's like enrolling in the calculus class without having learned to count the cat's legs, or understanding that you can count the legs of the table using exactly the same procedure. Yet taoist cognition always builds up its complexity out of the simplest building blocks, the Simple and the Easy. If you have those, no amount of complexity can defeat you. There can be two tables stacked one on top of the other, and two cats on each, and some cats are coming and others are going, and then the table can expand to infinity and some of the cats will hide in Shrodinger's boxes... but if you know your ABC Ta Chuan, you'll still be able to account for every paw.

But how would Rice know?.. We're talking emotions here. Their outer manifestations in Egyptian "ordinary" folks is an unknown to him, but even if it was known, would anyone buy what slaves manifest for the record? Not me... The Soviet Union where I grew up was, in its early and middle phases at least, essentially built by two kinds of slaves, the happy ones who rejoiced in their work, and the unhappy ones who were accused of not rejoicing in their work enough and made a lot more miserable as punishment (covering up economic incentives, as punishments are wont to do, even today in the US with all its overflowing private for-profit prisons, sort of two birds with one stone, or more than two.) So the happy ones who wanted to stay out of the worst of misery made sure they rejoiced enough. Did Rice ever think of this kind of dynamics? I've seen it in action. I've read my grandfather's letters to his teenage daughter, my mother, e.g., sent from Moscow when he went there on a business trip. They were amazing letters. Most of what was written was either written by a happy subject glorifying the gods, the rulers, the country, the system and every brick in the pavement of the shining road to communism... OR by a smart subject who knew that a private letter is not necessarily private and had an eye on any other eyes that might read it. Oh, and you'll never guess the amount of self-censorship I apply when writing anything myself, despite seeming more outspoken than many. I'm my grandfathers' descendant. I never knew either of them but the one who was rejoicing enough survived longer, the other one was slightly less happy I guess, ever so slightly. He was executed. Bottom line: I believe any kind of slavery is the end of the story of human happiness. Even the delusional or cleverly deceptive kinds of happiness in slavery are really misery and pain and self-negation. I don't think we're cut out to be happy slaves at all. Maybe happiness-simulating robots, that's all over the place. But I don't really trust happiness displays that are not really backed up with our legacy of freedom, something civilization took away from everybody.

Ah, I see. Well, there's no such thing as "semitic DNA" to begin with, the term actually derives from linguistics (despite being incessantly misapplied to all manner of racial theories) and in reality refers to a family of related languages, spoken by not necessarily related ancient peoples (including probably some Africans too -- King Solomon, e.g., is likely to have been black.) I was thinking more in terms of historical accounts, but my timeframes are a bit hazy, don't know which was the chicken and which was the egg, and whether the Egyptian egg may have been from a totally different bird or the same one. I would probably fall for Pan-Sumerianism too if it wasn't for my somewhat better (than with Egypt or the Indus Valley) handle on China, Southeast Asia and the Americas.

Indeed.

The New Year in Sumer was not celebrated at the end of December, of course, it was still astronomically correct. The New Year's feast, however, was even more special then than it is now. The land was vast and wealthy, the people worked hard and got little for themselves. Everyday food consisted of bread, dates, porridge, some fish, some greens, and beer. Few could afford more than that. A government employee received rations -- a designated amount of grain, vegetable oil, and beer. No one could afford meat -- it was the food of the gods, Dingir. The Dingir were getting meat every day. The rulers and their families were of course invited. Only during the New Year's celebrations the black-headed "masses" ate meat. The once-a-year feast was copious, the tables sagging under the weight of many dishes, sweets, and wine. And everybody rejoiced and feasted, with loud and boisterous celebrations and singing and dancing in every yard and on every street. That's how they lived, looking forward to the New Year all year round. They knew the future will never fail to bring joy. Once a year. Technically, it was the case in many places, beginning with Sumer -- indentured servants or peasants could enter slavery voluntarily, and did if it was their only way to survive, and legally a slave could buy his or her freedom -- sometimes practically too but more often theoretically. Theoretically they could, but practically, e.g., in Tibet, not only could slaves never put together enough coin to buy their freedom but their "debt" grew, was inheritable, and in the 1950s, e.g., one-third of the population were born into slavery already owing a debt incurred by their parents, great-parents and great-great-parents. I tend to be rather skeptical about any and all stories of the good old days of "gentler, kinder slavery." Yes, some slaves were treated almost like family, including in the US, with "indoor" slaves quite often treated a whole lot better than the "outdoor" slaves, and incidentally considering themselves a special privileged social class and snubbing their field-working brethren. Slavery is not a way of life that fosters human normality, and all kinds of projections are psychologically possible, of course -- and one can treat a slave like family, especially considering lots of family members (notably females, younger sons, children in general) were often treated as slaves themselves.

Slaves rejoiced in their work? Let me guess... 9 to 5, medical insurance, paid vacations, perhaps free lunch in the cafeteria? A gym? And of course a generous pension plan, that goes without saying. But I don't doubt they were proudly patriotic. Or at least "seemed" to be. Perhaps "a lot happier and positive" is the default state of a people living in a better climate? I live in a city that has the reputation of having the best climate on Earth (among cities that is, I'm pretty sure there's lots of rural areas whose weather is nicer -- and it's too dry and not green enough for me personally, I miss the rain and occasionally even the snow and a lot of other real world stuff.) And, yes, everybody who can afford a good life here seems a lot happier and more positive than those who just get on the road and go elsewhere because they can't be happy and positive while having nowhere to live, work, or get helped when sick. So... I think Egypt would be a nice place to be happy and rejoice if it wasn't a horror show for too many -- but then, when you're a slave owner rather than a slave, things always look nicer. Incidentally, in Sumer, slaves were never a major work force. What about Egypt?

At least read the article referenced for chrissake, don't go running to the shelter of the next new age nazi little helper from it, it won't bite. All it will do is help you wrap your head around the fact that the SEMITIC all caps population was the NATIVE all caps population. They were the ABORIGINES. The COLONISTS all caps were SUMERIANS. Or rather, they were REFUGEES or SETTLERS or NO ONE KNOWS EXACTLY WHAT AND IT'S A SCIENTIFIC FACT -- and SEMITIC ABORIGINES didn't interfere with their activities in any way FOR TWO THOUSAND YEARS -- until the CIVILIZED and the NATIVE populations finally clashed. And even then nobody colonized anybody until... wait... wait a minute... shit, I'm talking to Gendao. I almost forgot. Nevermind. Not gonna happen. "Wrap your head around" -- who am I kidding?.. Nevermind. I think it's time for you to bid your farewell out of this thread. You've successfully proved that the impenetrability of your head is the envy of all those mighty walls, from Gobekli Tepe in Turkey to Sacsayhuaman in Peru to the Great Wall of China. I won't bother knocking anymore. Nobody home.

Ah, interesting! So apparently the "red-faced" were "Adam," the indigenous population. And we also get the Sumerians=Aryans of course (" Laurence Waddell (...) maintained that the Sumerian royal dynasty was blonde (Aryan) while the lower masses (or 'subject' people) dark black haired primitives.[31] ) I wonder where he got that, but then, he was the real-life prototype of Indiana Jones, and in all likelihood the inspiration for all later generations of Pan-Sumerians, including Sitchin and our very own Gendao. His "Aryan Origin of the World's Civilization" was first published in 1917 and formulated Pan-Sumerianism asserting that many cultures and ancient civilizations, such as the Indus Valley Civilization, Minoan Crete, Phoenicia, and Dynastic Egypt, were the product of Aryan Sumerian colonists. @Apech -- what do you think about the Sumerian origins of Dynastic Egypt proposed by this theory? For those who haven't checked out the tablet referenced by Nungali -- here it is: The god Mir-ku* (noble crown) in concern, raised a protection? lord of noble lips, saviour from death of the gods imprisoned, the accomplisher of restoration, his pleasure he established he fixed upon the gods his enemies, to fear them he made man, the breath of life was in him. May he be established, and may his will not fail, in the mouth of the dark races which his hand has made. The god of noble lips with his five fingers sin may he cut off; who with his noble charms removes the evil curse. *Marduk In the light of what my coy informer has been telling me, these lines are of particular interest: "he fixed upon the gods his enemies, to fear them he made man." That's pretty much his story of far-away "prehistory": his civilization at war with another, and that another modifying humans of the time (very antediluvian, but I don't remember his exact time frame... will have to doublecheck) to make supersoldiers and unleashing them onto his kind. His kind doesn't like our kind because of that, nothing personal -- traumatic history, they were apparently minding their own business but then their first encounter with humans came, in the form of terrifying supersoldiers under their enemy's control. (Nevermind my asides regarding my informant since I don't really want to "go there," just making some brief notes when some of the stories he's been telling seem to be independently corroborated by some of "our" sources, for a possible closer investigation.)

@gendao OK, I detract my earlier offer to point out what exactly is wrong with that Pleiadean new age story. My resources of time and goodwill are, sadly, limited, which precludes offering a bless you to every achoo. Nor can I tell you what really happened -- everyone who works it out for themselves will be saved, but not anyone who was told by someone else, and I wouldn't dare endanger your salvation. So, just three tips, this much I am allowed to give. Abandon the false trail you're on or else abandon all hope. Work it backward from today and from the ongoing effort to microchip everything that moves in the nearest future. What would that be for? Who profits? How exactly? Is a multimegatrillion-dollar endeavor really undertaken for the sole purpose of giving us the earth-shattering advantage conferred by not having to carry a wallet in our pocket? Find out what quantum entanglement means for purposes of communication in real time (not the figurative real time of our current telecommunications, but its quantum entangled counterpart) and who you would have to communicate with if you figured it out, and what it is that you would say. (Tread carefully.) And please no more "proof" without authorship, references, something tangible to punch down nor any more new age terms with neither the former nor the latter available, such as "Original Planners," "The Founders," and "vibes," nor anything about Christian Anunnaki colonialists or their Jewish god. Last tip: not only were they not Christians but Jews didn't exist either at the time the present thread tackles, and their ancestors, Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples of West Asia, worshipped the Goddess, not YHWH. And colonial history is the history of everything that ever happened anywhere in written history, so let's not single anyone out for scapegoatship. If you want to discuss any of these, I would recommend your own thread.