SirPalomides

Freemasons who are specifically interested in the esoteric aspects of masonry are rare, yes, but they are not hard to find either. And the Masonic organization itself is esoteric even if the majority of members want to treat it as an old boys club.

That's not usually how it works though. Plenty of "public esotericism" to go around through history. Some secrets are by their nature self-concealing- no matter how publicly and openly you explain them, only a few people will get it. Likewise an organization can make its existence publicly known but only expect to attract limited interest. Conversely there have been esoteric societies that pretty much everyone joined but no one was allowed to talk about, e.g. the Eleusinian mysteries, or even the Christian Church (the details of the eucharist were closely guarded for a while- a eucharistic prayer still used today says "...I will not speak of this mystery to Thine enemies"). For the OP, you can peruse reddit and other places to find plenty of people sharing their experiences in Rosicrucian, Masonic, and similar organizations.

Sure. And then one turns to the various "enlightened" lineage holders, and the institutions built around them, and the results are hardly more impressive.

There is the comparable aspect of avoiding evil rebirth through attachment, but I think there are major differences too. The gnostic metaphysics and cosmology were completely different from the Buddhists'. The quoted passage is more in line with Platonism- for example, see the chariot allegory in the Phaedrus or Diotima's discourse on love in Symposium.

Here's a juicy Daoist topic: ritual self-poisoning as a path to transcendence. I've been reading translations of a couple Shangqing texts collected in the volume Religions of China in Practice. It can found for free download online but I won't link it in case that is frowned upon by admins. One of the texts, translated by Stephen Bokenkamp, is Zhou Ziliang's records of visions he received from Perfected spirits leading to his death at age 20. The upshot of these visions is that Ziliang had been appointed to a post in the divine hierarchy but this meant he had to leave his mortal body early, through the use of an elixir, after a period of preparation. These records were collected by his master Tao Hongjing and treated like a scripture. In Tao's preface I get a sense of conflicting feelings- on the one hand, he takes Ziliang's visions at face value and does not question that his disciple achieved what he sought; on the other, he seems less than exultant: I am full of remorse about this affair. I regret that I did not earlier look into Ziliang's activities. His letter causes me to blame myself. Ziliang's own text is fascinating and there's a lot to say about it and the other Shangqing records included in this book, as well as predecessor texts like the Yuanyou. For now I'll talk about the bare practice of transcendence via self-poisoning. In my prior, very cursory reading about Daoist alchemical elixirs, I was led to believe that the poisonings recorded throughout history were accidents but it seems in this case it was very much not so and I wonder how often such a practice was taken. Evidently from Ziliang's secretiveness, and the shock and dismay of his master and family, it was not normative in the Shangqing circle... but it was also not exactly proscribed.

Moving on, another aspect that jumped out at me, in Ziliang‘s account, is something that admittedly I find least appealing in Daoism as it developed, namely, the bureaucratic vision of transcendence: "At present, our office has an open position. We desire that you fill it. The protocols are nearly settled so there is no need for me to say more about that. You are to be summoned in the tenth month of next year. I came to notify you so that you may begin making preparations ahead of time. If you choose to disobey this order, your records will be charged over to the Three Bureaus where the fate of mortals is decided. Do not be imprudent!" The spirit then goes on to say that Ziliang’s father couldn’t visit because… the appropriate paperwork wasn’t filed! Your father wanted to come with me today but could not because the proper documents have not yet been filled out. I perceive some tension in Daoism between the vision of transcendence- as seen in Zhuangzi, poetry, and wonder tales like the Soushen Ji- as one of carefree freedom, cloud-walking, etc, versus this heavenly paper pusherdom. I wonder how much the Celestial Masters are to blame for this. Bokenkamp mentions elsewhere in this book how the Celestial Master refugees from the north had some friction with southern ecstatic traditions and Shangqing arose as one result of this.

Tao says: From this time forward Zhou Ziliang was remote from me in both voice and form—he appeared to me in neither vision nor dream. Such is the gulf of separation between humans and the spirits. But should I not await the proper moment to meet with him again? The means by which Ziliang achieved the Dao as well as his present rank and style in the spirit world are all layed out in his records. Here I have simply summarized some of his earthly activities as well as what I observed of him to form a preface to his own records. At the end of the preface there is a note (I’m not sure if it’s by Tao or a later copyist) which tells readers to treat Ziliang’s records like scripture, with the appropriate reverence and ritual preparation.

Some additional context: About the bu hour (5:00 P.M.), Ziliang's younger brother Ziping found him in the meditation chamber of his hut burning incense. Ziliang came out to the door and asked Ziping why he had come. Ziping said, "Auntie has become ill. She wants you to come and fix a medicinal broth for her." Ziliang replied: "I am also feeling a little ill. I was just about to take some medicine. You should go back now. If she is not feeling better, you can come back again." Ziping saw that there was a half-cup measure of liquor heating in a kettle in Ziliang's hut. Ziping hastily returned to their aunt and repeated Ziliang's message to her. She was greatly alarmed. She immediately ordered Ziping to run back to Zi- liang's hut. When he reached the hut, Ziping saw Ziliang lying prone on the floor and did not dare enter. Within a few moments, Ziliang's mother and aunt reached the hut as well and, seeing Ziliang prostrate on the floor, began to wail mournfully: "What have you done? What have you done?" Ziliang only closed his eyes, raising his hand to snap his fingers three times, and said: "Don't cry out. Don't cry out. You will ruin everything." Ziliang's mother, in trying to raise his head, stepped on his headcloth. He rolled over, his hand still raised, and repeatedly fumbled with his headcloth, setting it straight. In a moment, his breathing ceased. Ziliang had ignited in his censer a sliver of frankincense about the size of a cowhage bean. When he died, it had not yet stopped burning. Judging from this, we can estimate that only about half the time it takes to eat a meal had elapsed since he took the elixir. He was only twenty years old. He had clothed himself only in his undergarments, his sleeping robes and his Daoist ritual robes, the sash of which was tightly tied. He had removed his everyday outer garments and folded them. His face and body were fresh and unblemished, as if he were still alive. Everyone who heard of the event or who saw him was shocked and dismayed. Now with regards to Tao, Taoist Texts may have a point- he later says that he found that Ziliang had burnt many of his writings, which caused Tao to be even more aggrieved. But it does sound like the recipe for the elixir was found, it just isn’t in Bokenkamp’s selection.

One thing that struck me about Ziliang's visions is how earthy they are, in the way the visiting Perfected interact with the environment much like flesh-and-blood people. His description is almost novelistic, quite different from the ecstatic visions of the Chuci. E.g.: Just then a wind arose and was about to blow over the umbrella, so he ordered his assistants to see to it. The youngster Chidou was playing in the courtyard. He came running by and was about to bump the umbrella, but an attendant pushed him lightly to the side with his hands. At the same time, Langshan came to fetch a cup from the shelf and, in so doing, knocked into the attendant and almost fell over, but other attendants caught him in time. "Who was that youngster?" the deputy asked. "His family is from Qiantang and is surnamed Yu," I said. "He was sent to this place [by his Buddhist father] to stay for a while." "Well, do not allow him to run around naked like that or the spirits will see him," said the deputy. The visions of Yang Xi in Declarations of the Perfected also have this novelistic quality.

In this case the elixir was taken after the visions (and the recipe was provided by the Perfected who appeared). Supposedly the elixir did include mushrooms; likewise I have seen speculations that the Shangqing revelations in general were facilitated by certain substances (which may have been part of the incense Zhou Ziliang was burning) but I don't know what the evidence is for this.

If the liver cancer story is false then Tian could have simply disproved it by showing himself. Instead the family gave the usual bullshit that he had ascended to another plane or something. This is typical cult behavior- for a more recent example see the Mother God cult. The “ascended to another plane lady” was eventually found mummified in someone’s trailer. Likewise when someone claims they received an ancient secret tradition that no one has heard of from some hermit or monk that no one can follow up on, run the other way. Again, typical fraud behavior.

I'm glad you agree.

Quoting the bare assertions of an online encyclopedia does not resolve the basic problem that these categories are nonsensical. And categorizing 玄學 as Daoism is just wrong.

They do not refer to distinct "philosophical" and "religious" schools. 道教 includes the study/following of the principles of the Tao Te Ching, so by your own definition 道教 belongs to 道家.

What's weird is that this distinction doesn't even work in a Western context before maybe the 17th century or so. Plato, Aristotle, etc. are clearly "religious" thinkers and philosophy has an inherent religious dimension. So basically we're taking a set of categories that only (and debatably) apply in a very narrow window of Western intellectual history, and applying it to a set of ancient Chinese texts for which it is completely irrelevant.

家 and 教 do not correspond to the terms "philosophy" and "religion." What else you got?

Where? What are the classical Chinese terms for "religion" versus "philosophy"?

There are no "philosophical Daoist" classics.

The whole tulku system is corrupt, abusive, and generally ridiculous. The tulkus may well be victims themselves... I suspect the experience of the poor second Kalu Rinpoche is hardly unique (incidentally the prior Kalu Rinpoche was quite the creep). As for the Dalai Lama, leaving aside the weird incident with the kid, he's shown he will meet with anyone who can shell out the cash. And if you're, say, the owner of a Mongol mining conglomerate he might even recognize your son as a tulku.

I would love to see more discussion of Daoist gods, magic, ritual, etc. from a practical, historical, or comparative perspective, but that doesn't seem to interest many people here. "Philosophical Daoism" is a fake construct and I find qigong boring.

My first thought is, I would definitely expect to find lines like this in a book of Norse poetry that had been edited by Christian clergy. I'm not saying it's definitely an interpolation, I'm just raising an eyebrow here. Christian apologists tend to take two different approaches to "pagan" lore- one is the obvious solution of demonizing it; the other is to read foreshadowings of the Gospel into it, just as they do with the Old Testament. For all I know, it could also be perfectly authentic.

Christianity was consciously a mystery religion. Baptism and the eucharist are still officially called "mysteries" in Greek and for a long time unbaptized people were not even allowed to witness the eucharistic rite. There is still a vestige of this in the liturgy of John Chrysostom and other eastern liturgies where the deacon proclaims "Catechumens depart!" (catechumens= Christian disciples not yet baptized) before the eucharistic consecration. Baptism is regarded explicitly as a mystery initiation. Cyril of Jerusalem's catechetical lectures are a classic exposition of this thinking, eg https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310103.htm. It's fortunate that so many Patristic writings in English are available for free online, so if you want to see an ancient commentary on a passage of scripture it's fairly easy to find one or several by various writers. I find debates about what Jesus really meant about x, y, z to be pretty irresolvable and arbitrary. The history of the composition and editing of the New Testament texts is obscure and sorting out authorial intent is basically impossible. More relevant, and more demonstrable, are how these texts were received and interpreted by various schools through the ages.

I have to step in and defend the Epicureans here. Yes, I am aware that modern scientism/positivism etc has put Epicurus in its lineage, particularly via the rediscovery of Lucretius, but in spirit the Epicurean school was quite different. It is maybe the most unjustly maligned and misrepresented school of Greek philosophy, in its time by detractors and nowadays chiefly by putative heirs. The Epicurean materialism was a lively materialism, a universe animated by desire. Lucretius' opening hymn to Venus in his De Rerum Natura is often read as an aberration by those who misunderstand the spirit of the Epicurean system. Epicurus' first concern is the enjoyment of life with equanimity. The Epicurean natural philosophy has the overriding purpose of curing the fear of the gods and of death, by providing plausible explanations for observed phenomena that do not rely on the agency of powerful deities whose wrath must be appeased. For many phenomena multiple explanations were offered- what would nowadays be called strict scientific accuracy was not a top concern. However the desire of the Epicureans to remove the fear of the gods would be wrongly interpreted as atheism. It is not a mistake that the beginning of his Letter to Menoeceus, and the first of the Principal Doctrines, are concerned with the gods, particular the understanding of god as a perfectly happy being who does not threaten or interfere with our lives, but provides instead an inducement to good living by example. The Epicurean gods are often dismissed as a fig leaf to their atheism, a ploy to avoid persecution. Reading the actual writings of the Epicureans, including the fragments being translated from Herculaneum papyri, it is clear that the Epicurean theology is not only sincere but central to their system. Meditation on the gods is foundational to the Epicurean ethical system. Epicurus and his followers gladly and sincerely participated in the feasts and sacrifices of popular religion and exhorted others to do likewise. The worship of the gods was a way to contemplate and absorb their blessedness, particularly their fearless and undisturbed bliss. The entire Epicurean ideal is only knowable because of the images of the gods that visit us, most vividly in dreams but throughout our lives (since the images are constantly streaming from the gods' bodies). When Epicurus closes his letter to Menoeceus with Meditate therefore on these things and things akin to them night and day by yourself, and with a companion like to yourself, and never shall you be disturbed waking or asleep, but you shall live like a god among men he is being quite literal. Stoics and Platonists would distort the Epicurean teaching in polemics, but more often they simply met the Epicureans with scornful silence, but I think the Epicureans did have enduring influence in these schools later on. The theurgists' conception of the gods as not actually inclined to favor or vengeance toward mortals (interpreting these rather as figurative descriptions of the happiness or suffering deriving from our assimilation or disharmony with the gods), likewise their understanding of sacrifice as benefiting worshipers, not the gods, by drawing worshipers into participation in the divine- in my opinion these are clearly echoes of the Epicurean theology. Other influences would include the streaming eidola theory of dreams, which appears for instance in Synesius' On Dreams.

To say Tertullian “apostasized” to Montanism is probably anachronistic. Orthodoxy was still coalescing and ecclesial lines stayed blurry even after Constantine. It does seem Tertullian is the only Latin father to have really influenced later Greek theology (Augustine, by comparison, was pretty much unknown in the East).