Zhongyongdaoist

After my post it occurred to me that I made the same mistake as ernobe, I didn't say who Albertus was, and very few on the Dao Bums will have any idea. Frater Albertus was the single minded driving force behind the revival of laboratory alchemy in the mid Twentieth Century. I can only speculate at what ernobe may have meant by this: " Why does Rubaphilos first affirm the validity of a physical process of alchemy, and then say that the alchemists' belief in or rejection of transmutation depends on his own personal motives in making such a claim? " But, I would restate one way of taking what he says this way, basically quoting the first part as written: "Why does Rubaphilos first affirm the validity of a physical process of alchemy, and then say that the alchemists' belief in or rejection of transmutation depends on his own personal worldview and reasons which he has for holding that worldview, and whether that worldview allows transmutation as a real possibility or not." For example there are people who holding a rather common view of the world as made up of "spirit" and "matter", each of which obeys its own rules, might very well be open to a notion of "spiritual" alchemy and dismiss the notion of "laboratory" alchemy seeking to transmute "base metals into gold", would be so much stuff and nonsense. There are a large number of people here on the Dao Bums who would hold just such a view, and precious few who would be willing to seriously entertain the notion of a "physical" philosopher's stone, as past discussions of alchemy here on the Dao Bums has shown. I don't have time for a longer discussion now. ZYD

Before this degenerates into complete nonsense, let me do something that ernobe should have done, but did not, which is tell us who Rubaphilos is and something of his background, according to Occult of Personality: and has been the author of several books including some published by Salamander and Sons, which while they seem to be out of business also seem to have published some very interesting serious work on Laboratory alchemy. If he studied with a student of Frater Albertus, then he has a legitimate pedigree at least, and for those inclined to look at videos, there may be something to be learned from what he says. I don't care to watch videos, but for those who do, I don't think that he can be idly dismissed. ZYD

It seems you are referring to Daoist Weather Magic and Feng Shui by Prof. Jerry Alan Johnson. I have read it and the others in the Series, as well As Prof. Johnson's books on medical Qigong. Based on what I gather from your posts you would be wasting your time with any of the books in the Daoist Magic series, and would be well advised to do what his own students do and begin with his works on Daoist Energetic Healing (The link goes to his recommended sequence of reading/study). There is no hard and fast line in Esoteric Daoist healing between medicine and magic, so his books on Energetic Healing are full of useful Daoist magical training. However, I would still recommend, as I did in a previous post, that you start with Don Kraig's Modern Magick, I practiced Western magic, as well as Qigong, for decades before actually doing Daoist magic. The two studies are complementary and Western Magic is actually easier to learn. ZYD

If you are really serious get yourself a copy of Don Kraig's Modern Magick. Start practicing as he instructs for about a year or so and you will be able to charge Talismans, among other interesting things. ZYD

I know him, he used to be my gardener! Still trying to pass himself off as some kind of Master Magician is he? Some people never just never learn! ZYD

It's been a long time since I bothered with untangling Qabalah in its purely Jewish sense, not since the early 80s, but first of all, your dating of anything relating to Abulafia is wrong, since he was a medieval Qabalist, and anything that is his should be dated to the Thirteenth Century. Beyond that I don't have more to say now, since I would need to really rummage through my prodigious memory to say anything more than speculation based on some things that immediately come to mind. ZYD

The best news I have had in a long time. Welcome back! ZYD

Also available at: Archive.org Daozang The material in the books is an excellent guide, but you really need to bring knowledge to it, to know where to mine more knowledge out of it. At some point I will have to make a recommended reading list, but Saso's work would be on it, as well as others. ZYD

Move as per the above request. After thinking about it a bit I decided that because of its humorous slant this might be better in the Rabbit Hole then General Discussion. Zhongyongdaoist, Concierge

I checked on his site and then came back here to reread the posts. Patrick Lovett, is a member of the Dao Li Jiao, an inner school related to the Ching Yi Kung Fu Association, founded by Dr. Her Yu Wong. Back in the mid Seventies I study with Michael A. Brown, Dr. Wong's Number One Student, so while I have never met Dr. Wong, I have first hand knowledge of these organizations. The Ching Yi Gung Fu Association and Dao Li Jaio, are both legitimate Organizations with ties to Taiwan and mainland China, and have included such students and members as the late Giovanni Maciocia, whose TCM textbooks have been the backbone of the TCM curriculum in English since their publication, and Professor. Jerry Alan Johnson, whose work has practically created the field of medical Qigong in the U.S.. When I last corresponded with Michael Brown he specifically mentioned some Daoist Priests of the Quanzhen school who were members/associates and were doing some excellent work within the Organizations. That's all I know of the matter at present, but based on these associations I see no reason to be skeptical of his claims. I hope this is helpful. ZYD

You're asking about Zhenwudadi, "True Warrior Great Emperor", the Dark Emperor of the North: as the article continues: Xuanwu, or Zhenwu, is one of the Five Directional Emperors of Ritual Daoism, and his Five Dragons are important in his Cult, and for Daoist Ritual in General. For example, this invocation is used in Daoist Rituals for Purification of the Sacred Space: Also the article at the FYSK Daoist Culture Centre Database is very useful: The Great Perfect Warrior Emperor I hope this information is helpful. ZYD

Looks beautiful. Q. What do they do there? What kind of programs.. worship?? The site link doesn't mention much beyond history. Technically these are Temples of the Chinese popular religion, not strictly Daoist temples. Kuan Tai is a Temple of Guan Di (I prefer using his "emperor" title rather than one of the lesser honorifics.). This picture from its linked website: Has Guan Di, seated in center, his son is on his left, and his trusted Lieutenant stands holding a halberd on his right. It is a traditional depiction and I have the same scene painted on glass. According to Wikipedia the Thien Hau Temple, Los Angeles is: As you can see this Temple also venerates Guan Di, who is not a "god of war", but a god of righteous and just war, but also literature, culture and wealth. He is also a very popular character in Chinese Opera, and one of the most popular gods in the Chinese gods in the Pantheon of Chinese popular religion. It is easy to imagine a temple to Mazu, who would protect fisherman, but also trade by Sea and Guan Di, a protector of merchants as part of being a god of wealth, in a Chinese community in Los Angeles, since they would be connected to, and separated from homeland and loved ones by the Sea, and they would want to maintain a healthy trade with the homeland to keep their culture and traditions alive. I hope this is helpful. ZYD Edit: Changed line spacing.

No, youre meant to Understand Daoist reasoning.Koans present paradox rather than irony. A good point Stosh.

The problem is that probably 95%+ of people who are involved in this type of study and practice in the West have as a fundamental presupposition, the post Romanticist meme that logic and reason are bad for your spirituality. That is part of the reason why I have this quote from the Seventeenth Century in my signature: To point out that anti-rationalism in Western spirituality is a recent phenomena, well relatively recent, and owes itself more to crypto-Protestant thought patterns and reactions against late Eighteenth Century materialism than to the actual historical development of Western thought. The historical root of all of this is the "Reason vs. Revelation" debates of the Hellenistic period. The above just opens a tiny peephole into the results of research into intellectual history that goes back decades, but simply put, there is no real reason why either Wisdom or "spirituality" should be divided from reason, only the wish of people who want to hold on to what they already believe. ZYD

Thank you Mudfoot and Michael, I have quickly scanned the article and it seems well reasoned and very strong in its arguments about the Jupiter cycle. Though it was written in the late forties, I am not sure how influential it was. Walters bases his discussion primarily on Han Dynasty sources which are considered canonical, and if I were interested in going back to do scholarly work on the subject I would be interested to review Needham to see his discussion. The one thing that cannot be doubted about the Chinese adaptation of this material whatever its source, is the richness, creativity and the way in which, while being different, it in many ways seems to compliment its Western counterpart as if some larger pattern were being realized in the development of the two structures. ZYD

It's been a while but as I remember it the animal names of the "Chinese Zodiac" were a relatively late addition to an already established Chinese system called the Earthly Branches and not only based on Sun/Moon Conjunctions, but more fundamentally, on a twelve year cycle of Jupiter's stations in its retrograde/direct cycle. Thus in Chinese Astrology Jupiter is the Year Star and the fundamental sign is ones year sign. This was then combined with a Solar cycle of the Twelve Earthly branches which is 180 degrees out of phase with its Western counterpart. In other words the Chinese Solar Earthly Branches begin in the middle of the Western Zodiac signs. For example the "Solar Rat" begins at fifteen degrees of Sagitarius, which makes a direct correlation between the Western and Chinese yearly cycle impossible, which further undermines any attempt to make the Chinese system dependent on the Western one. To my mind there is no good reason to believe that the Chinese system has a Western origin, but instead bases itself on observations of different planetary cycles, in particular the importance of the Ten Heavenly Stems cannot be underestimated. While I have never read about their possible origin in the Sun/Venus cycle, I think this is a highly likely, but apparently undocumented, possibility. For those not familiar with the Sun/Venus cycle it consists of the alternation of Venus being the Morning and Evening Stars, where basically as the Morning star, Venus is ahead of the Sun in the zodiac and rises before the Sun, while in the case of Evening Star, Venus is later in the Zodiac than the Sun and sets after it. Going around the Zodiac this creates a cycle of five Morning Stars and Five Evening stars, or Ten events which alternate like yin and yang and trace out a five sided or pointed figure in the Zodiac. The Ten Heavenly Stems are just such a cycle of the five elements through Five Yin/Yang cycles for a total of Ten divisions, and seems to link fundamentally with Five Element theory. The Ten Heavenly Stems and the Twelve Earthly Branches then creates the Sexagenary, or Sixty year Cycle of the combinations of the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches, the "Jiazi", named after its first member "jia" the first Earthly Branch and "zi", the first Heavenly Stem. This sixty year cycle then ties in with three conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn, which form a triangle in the sky, and this in turn is related to the cycles of the Nine Stars, all of which I don't want to get into, but my understanding is that this was all well in place and had been for centuries, by the time that the Twelve Animals were introduced and associated with the Earthly Branches. So the fundamental patterns and cycles from which Chinese Astrology arises are very different than those of Western Astrology and the Western Zodiac and the animal names have been documented as a late addition to an already existing system. This is mostly based on my reading years ago of the books of Derek Walters, and others even earlier than his works, though his were the most comprehensive of the popular books. ZYD

As I have mentioned I do not have time to be an active participant in this discussion, in part that is because you both need a lot of work in this type of thing, though wandelaar has at least realized that Stosh's long statements need to be broken up into "bite sized morsels" to be chewed on and digested. I have been thinking since yesterday of how best to best to contribute here and the following from my thread Plato and Platonism 101, from which I have already quoted, seems to be a useful starting point, which is the difference between knowledge and opinion: In order to understand anything about the distinction between Knowledge and Opinion, it is necessary to understand this: As a hint of the direction to go, since all of Stosh's statements represent his opinions and thus his beliefs about "morality", many of the statements that wandelaar has started breaking down into an "edible size", can be simply coated with the my secret sauce and served up in this form the form of questions about beliefs, but it is first necessary to at least define, or attempt to define what it is that you are talking about, thus, "You have mentioned 'morality' in general and then also made references to a 'Standard Morality', can you be more specific about what you, believe these things to be, for example do you believe that 'standard morality', is like "the Standard Model' in physics, something that is agreed upon by a group of specially trained experts in a field, or if not, what do you believe it to be?" Even this is a little advanced and should have been preceded by, What type of subject do you believe 'morality' to be? By which I mean is it a study such as mathematics that confers a specific skill such as accurate calculation? Or a skill such as persuasion such as one learns from studying rhetoric? Is is a study like biology that classifies living things, does it classify things according to certain criteria of similarity and difference? These are the types of things that should be asked at the beginning of a "Socratic Inquiry" into morality. I hope that this is helpful, and also demonstrates why I don't have time to be an active participant in this discussion. As an amusing aside, I will point out that having read all of Plato's dialogues except the Laws, sections of which I have read because of their general importance, I don't ever recall "morality" being mentioned at all, there is a lot of talk about Wisdom, Virtue and Happiness, but "morality" just doesn't seem to come up anywhere. I wonder why that is? ZYD

Wandelaar is essentially correct, but needs to have develop a better sense of what type of questions to ask. I don't have time to be an active participant in this discussion, but I will try to contribute by quoting from my posts that I consider relevant. This was the follow up post to my discussion of "Socratic Method" as cathartic ritual: We all 'ate' a lot of words growing up and a lot of them are there in our hearts and our bellies and the they determine who we think we are and how we act. Maybe we should get to know what they are. and similar sentiments elsewhere on the Dao Bums. This gives some idea of the types of questions that need to be asked and also the importance of words and ideas as influencing our emotions and feelings. Someone who says its OK to do something because it feels OK to them needs to be asked, "and why is your feeling enough of a reason", people will say that they feel it is wrong to do what you say is alright because it "feels" alright to you, given these differences in peoples feelings, how are we to create a general guide to moral action? I will try to post some other pointers from my previous posts that may be helpful. ZYD Edit: Corrected "Someone how says" to "Someone who says" in the penultimate paragraph.

This book was also translated by Arthur Waley in 1931, as The Travels of an Alchemist. I never found it of much use for alchemy, but in the interim I have gained enough knowledge of Confucianism to recognize the first letter ostensibly from Genghis: Is obviously written by someone deeply familiar with Chinese norms based on Confucianism and who is basically claiming for Genghis the Heavenly Mandate to rule. This is something that Genghis himself believed: Which among other things should be a caution to those who believe that only Western Abrahamic religions promote world conquest based on a divine revelation. As I noted above, I never found the book of much interest to alchemy, but as a piece of history and travel it has much to recommend it. I suspect that it was basically created as a piece of pro Daoist propaganda to aid in the Daoist/Buddhist rivalries in China. ZYD

Seems a fair enough comment to me. What you are taking as my "I don't see what your cynical derogatory tone" was not aimed at you, but what I consider sardonic humor, based on decades of hearing people talk about what Plato and Socrates and what they are not or are not, based on next to no real information, and aimed in general, and not at you personally. I am sorry that you took it personally, because I meant my serious comments in support of the idea that you seemed to proposing, the general usefulness of Socratic method to spiritual development, whether Daoist or otherwise. However, Daoist texts are usually interpreted in a strongly anti-rational fashion, and in general people attracted to them are very Romanticists and anti-intellectual in outlook, and consider the type of questioning involved in the Socratic Method as an overly intellectual waste of time, so it is an uphill battle to share these ideas with them, a little humor sardonic and otherwise, is part of my way of dealing with them. I wish you the best in all your endeavors. ZYD

That is exactly the danger of debates, the stirring up of animosity. The Socratic method will possibly be an antidote to that. (Emphasis mine, ZYD) The Socratic method will possibly be an antidote to that.: Well it is supposed to be an antidote to that, that is why Plato preserved it, as a "cathartic" antidote, that would clear people of the conceit of thinking that they know something when they really don't, like the number of people around here who think they know what the "Socratic Method" is, or that they can make judgements about it by bandying about various English translations of a rather old and obscure book. A while back I attempted to show what the Socratic method really was by quoting from Plato: As I said in my old "Intelligble Order of the Dialogues", the Protreptic dialogues attracted the students, but: Not many people paid attention to it. Then, there is the knotty question of what exactly is knowledge, something which I also address in that series of posts, and someone who is interested can find them for themselves. A while back I posted this very useful online resource for "the Socratic Method" Granted, actually knowing something about what you are commenting on in your posts goes against long established internet norms, however, that doesn't mean that learning something about what you think you are talking about, but really aren't, isn't a good idea.

He he was on earlier today, but didn't post and has posted as recently as: But that was the first one since February 19th earlier this year. So still comes around, but for whatever reason has cut back on his posting. ZYD

The simple answer is no, weiqi has nothing to do with the "Qi" that is circulated in the Microcosmic Orbit and such practices. Weiqi and the other qis that are mentioned in this discussion are all "post natal" qis and related to the functions of the body. Unfortunately the exact qi phenomena that is involve in the Microcosmic Orbit, are not easy to describe, but they are rooted in the prenatal jing, qi and shen and their development through meditation, and it can't be easily described in a single post. Charles Luk's Taoist Yoga text describes most of what is involved, but it is not an easy text to understand. However the one thing that is abundantly clear in it is that you do not start with circulating energy, you start by deep meditation in which you become aware of your original Shen. No original Shen, no real circulation. Forget about qi and work on deep meditation. Sit and Forget.

I think some stuff from Mencius would be useful... I had not heard of the greater self vs lesser self in Mencius... not that I read him much... but interested to hear more. Thanks. Here are the two quotes from the Mencius, that are most relevant to the notion of the greater and lesser: and: The underlined numbers in the upper left will take you to the Chinese Text Project. Now, in the second of the above it is important to keep in mind, 耳目之官不思, The senses of hearing and seeing do not think, and, 心之官則思, To the mind belongs the office of thinking, the the character for thinking: 思, sì, think, consider, ponder and that what Mencius means by "思, sì", may go significantly beyond what would normally be covered by "think, consider, ponder", and instead bear in mind its derivation from: 心, xīn , heart; mind, intelligence; soul 田, tián, field, arable land, cultivated and be open to the idea that what he means is something more akin to "meditate, contemplate", then ordinary "thought", and that the character "田, tián", which is the same as in 丹田, dāntián, could be taken to have a meaning of "cultivating soul", our "greater nature". The force of these passages will become stronger once we have make the acquaintance of the farmer from Sung who thought to encourage his crops to grow by pulling on them, but since that is a long quote we will have to cover it in another post, which will follow shortly. ZYD Edit: Corrected some spacing in the text.

You pretty much went with that were I thought you would go, and I both agree and disagree with what you are saying, but I don't have time to explicate that it in detail, but part of the issue is with the difference between what is usually considered to be Mencius view of "nature", xing, as good, and Xunzi view of "nature" as evil. In both cases what is meant by nature is "human" nature, but in the case of Xunzi, he takes human nature to be the "nature" of the body, and of human beings as animals, while Mencius takes nature to be, our "heaven conferred" nature, the "fullness of human potential", where "the 10,000 things are already there within us" which is Ren. This is the difference between the "greater self" which Mencius says that we should grasp, and the lesser one which we should forgo. From this perspective it is the lesser, "evil nature", that should be "emptied" so that that the "greater, good nature" can be grasped, it is this greater nature that is "actualized". I started studying the Taoist Yoga text in mid to late 1971, and so it was very easy for me, forty or so years later, to see those aspects of Neidan that show up on the Zhongyong as well as Mencius, though I was puzzled as to how Mencius knew these things, and part of my early research into Warring States literature and the roots of Confucianism, was to find out where Mencius got these ideas. When I read the Neiye, it all became abundantly clear, and then later, rather ironically, when I went to review the Daode Jing, and reread the introduction to Waley's translation, The Way and Its Power, a text that was very influential on my interpretation of Daoism and its relation to meditation and alchemy, there was Mencius in the introduction with the Neiye, something that I had completely forgotten in the intervening years. That is the "secret" reason why I took the name Zhongyongdaoist on the Dao Bums, because, of this deep level connection to internal alchemy. I hope that this short outline is clear enough, I can support it in detail with quotes from Mencius and other works, but to assemble that would take more time than I have now, or wish to put into an exposition here. ZYD Edit: Italicized Daode Jing in second to last paragraph.