Zhongyongdaoist

It's called crying wolf And it doesn't help any of us, member's or staff alike, because it does take up time which should be used to deal with more serious infractions. It's to your credit and advantage not to damage your credibility.

Donald, I would be interested to hear your criticisms of Bardon's work. Best, UFA Thank you for your interest UFA, but I am busy now and into early next year with important projects of my own. I did give some thought as to how I might boil my criticisms down to a manageable amount, however I couldn't work out a short version that did justice to my thought on the matter. I will try to post something on it in the future, though I have some other projects that I am also working on that others have requested through PMs, and some things of my own in the works. ZYD

I would vote against moving it to Esoteric/Occult Because in his introductory post to Dao Bums hermeticTao professed an interest in Daoist practices, and even though he only mentions Western teachings in the post that starts this thread: and so I think that this is more of a general request than one that would fair well simply in Esoteric/Occult, but the decision is up to hermticTao. I have studied both Chinese and Western systems extensively over decades, they are not merely compatible, but complementary, and there can be value gained from a judicious study of both. ZYD

I had been thinking about posting about Don Kraig's Modern Magick, but really haven't had time for a proper post, but just as a quick note, I can vouch for Golden Dawn techniques in general and for Don's book as a good introduction to them. I didn't use the book to learn, since by the time it came out I had been practicing magic for about 20 years, but I did know Don when he was writing it, and we remained in touch. Don was a very intelligent fellow, and had 15+ years of experience in magic and maybe ten years teaching in local classes, by the time he wrote it. I have some criticism of it, but not as much as I have of Bardon's work. If I have time I will post more. ZYD

You are most correct! whilst "John Chang" is the real deal recently youtube is full of QI masters and its sad to see so many good people duped into paying LARGE sums of money to these crooks. I suggest people watch that first video of the static electricity generator causing sand to vibrate under the palm, you can use two pointed fingers also Many people here might recognise this, works better with black sand as more visual. Some people are so eager to find a teacher it leaves them open to opportunist crooks, we must be ever watchful Thanks for your opening post and this clarification. I am sure that others here will appreciate it and be able to enjoy your post for what it is, rather that reacting negatively to what it seems to be. One problem we have had here on the Dao Bums is people coming on to completely debunk any form of self-cultivation, rather than pointing out how phonies can fake the "real deal", and be on their guard for such tricks. Another problem we have had is certain people coming on and insisting that John Chang is the only real practitioner, so sometimes there have been some very heated discussions here, that have produce more noxious smoke than light. Many here are tired of discussing him mostly because of these unfortunate past experiences here with discussions about him. Since you have been around for almost three years, you have probably seen these. I hope this interesting beginning avoids that pitfall.

I have made a quick look at your posts and some of them indicate a certain level of knowledge on the subject of Chinese alchemy, both internal and external, theory and base on that, it seems to me that you are posting this as a reminder, albeit a satirical or ironic reminder, of how easy it fake "feats of qi" and that people need to be aware of this kind of trickery. I could be reading your intention wrongly, so perhaps you would care to clarify it.

Assange questioned by Swedish representative in Ecuadorian Embassy, mid-November 2016 Just information, putting in the context of your favorite conspiracy theory, or just file it away for future reference.

How about counting with each repetition like: one; Om-Ah-Ra-Pa-Tza-Na-Dhi, two; Om-Ah-Ra-Pa-Tza-Na-Dhi, three; Om-Ah-Ra-Pa-Tza-Na-Dhi, etc. If you loss count you can continue like this: two.one; Om-Ah-Ra-Pa-Tza-Na-Dhi, two.two; Om-Ah-Ra-Pa-Tza-Na-Dhi, three.two; Om-Ah-Ra-Pa-Tza-Na-Dhi, etc. and further: three.one; Om-Ah-Ra-Pa-Tza-Na-Dhi, . . . This is especially good for beginners since it allows you to gauge your progress, if you set a timer for five minutes and you find yours self reciting one thousand.six; Om-Ah-Ra-Pa-Tza-Na-Dhi when the timer goes off, you have a lot of work to do. Note Aetherous posted this while I was writing the above: while I was writing this. Edit: Corrected my spelling of Aetherous in my post.

Since this whole subsection is about Western Esoteric practices, the magic in question is Western Ceremonial Magic as it was revived in the NIneteenth and Twentieth Centuries, and particularly as practiced in The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and it offshoots, and the popular styles of magical practice derived from it. Secondary to this is teachings of a quasi-tantric school called the Ordo Templi Orientis which is more of a Twentieth Century phenomena. Both of these schools have roots that reach back to antiquity and which reached their high points in the Renaissance. By the time the Western "revival" of esoteric doctrines occurred these roots were not well understood, and what was created by the revival of magic is a mixed bag which reaches its high point in the Golden Dawn, the doctrine and practices of which are of considerable value. The field of Western magic is a large one, with many aspects, and what I have said above does not and is not intended to do justice to those aspects, but just to answer the question. ZYD Edit: Added paragraphs after the first.

I've been so busy solving the world's problems, that I haven't really had time to say goodbye. Cheya will certainly be missed on the staff yachting parties, my hot air may have kept the sails full, but she kept our spirits up. ZYD Poohbah Plenipotentiary P.S. She also appreciated my weird sense of humor.

I'd been thinking of mentioning this myself, but I have been busy. Here is more information: Daoist Alchemy: Nei Gong – Final Edition At 628 pages there is a great deal of information in this book, the last parts of the book deal with material that comes from the work that the book Charles Luk Translated as Taoist Yoga, Alchemy and Immortality is a commentary on. Daniel Burton-Rose wrote his Master's thesis on the original work, which is both a commentary and partial translation. In his acknowledgements he thanks Professor Johnson for suggesting the work too him. The thesis is good and worth a read: Integrating Inner Alchemy into Late Ming Cultural History As for Professor Johnson himself, he has spent his life studying Chinese culture, medicine, martial arts and Daoist and Buddhist esoteric practice. You can find his biographical information on his site which you can get to by the link I posted above for his book. As I noted there is a great deal of information, almost too much for someone without a either a lot of familiarity with the subject, or a good teacher to guide them through it. Also at $200.00 US, it will be out of reach for many people. I have no regrets about purchasing it, or any of the other books of Professor Johnson that I own. Just to clarify, I am not a student of Professor Johnson, but I have a lot of respect for him and his work. ZYD

In light of my post in Kongming's: Career and Cultivation thread, I decided to bump this thread in which I have a lot of posts about, well, like the title says "Confucian Qi-gong", which has a strong overlap with Daoist qigong. Depending on time, I hope to post more in "Career and Cultivation", and maybe in this thread, among other things it turns out there are significant links between what is usually called Neo-Confucianism and Charles Luk's Taoist Yoga text.

Aetherous cannot move his posts by himself, he would have to ask a mod to help him do it and mods like me are notoriously lazy and loath to move a couple of posts around, however, this is an "Owner's Permissions" area of Dao Bums and you, opendao, as the person who started this thread "own it", if you already have owners permission, you have both the right and power to hide any post that you do not want to appear in this thread, if you do not have Owner's Permissions yet, you can apply for them by following this link: Apply for Owner's Permissions Here Read the first two posts on the conditions, rights and responsibilities of Owner's Permissions and if you don't find the burden of responsibility to much, just go to the end of the thread and ask for them, and they will be yours. I have already checked, you meet the requirements for minimum time of membership in Dao Bums, and also minimum number of posts, I can't remember if there is anything else, but we notoriously lazy mods would prefer that you use owner's Permissions freely and be a bit more polite in your responses. That would work for us, I hope that it works for you. Finally this is not an official mod notice, but just a friendly note from a long time Dao Bum who has found your posts interesting and informative. Good luck and good posting, ZYD Edit: Changed an "and" that was just a means of confusion to and "end" that justified this edit.

Great thread topic Kongming. Confucianism is one of the few if not the only "spiritual path" that tries to unify "spiritual growth" with "worldly success", however in the West it is very much misunderstood. I don't have much time to post now, but as a starting point I will quote this previous post of mine on Confucianism: I'll bet you didn't think that Confucians had that type of stuff in them, did you? And what is Professor David Maon's San-Shin Site about? Well, in his own words it's: Some people here may find it an interesting place to visit. I'll try to expand on this as time permits. Edit: I removed an "and" that didn't justify its means.

Thanks, I was looking at the above and copied it to reply and the copy contained this material: Apparently added after your first edit right after your post. Interestingly though my browser displayed the earlier version, the copy function copied your later version, which caught me by surprise. This kind of discrepancy between browser display and what shows up in the copy function played a part in a major brouhaha that occurred shortly after I became a mod, in which we mods were actually accused of colluding with a member to alter his post to the detriment of another member, something which we would never do, and I think explains the phenomena quit nicely. When I refreshed the page that displayed your earlier version, your new version showed up, but I would not have know about your editing it while looking at the unrefreshed page. I'll have to bring this up in the "Star Chamber" because we were nonplussed both by the accusation and how the phenomena which the member experienced occurred, knowing that we had nothing to do with it, we tried to replicate it and failed, but now we have a clear answer to how this matter arose. In any case I was going to thank you for the reference to the section in the video above and explain why I don't watch video's unless I absolutely, positively have to do so. I appreciate your extended response, but now I don't have time to post further, and will have to come back later to respond to both parts of your post. Edit: Corrected usage spelling error, "you" to your.

Thanks 9th for an interesting and stimulating link, though part of what I found interesting was a link to another article at the site about the solving the wave/particle duality through a mathematical unification in terms of information theory: Information Theory Simplifies Quantum Mechanics Which, as I have posted elsewhere on the Dao Bums, has been something that I first conceived of as possible back circa 1980, but this is only tangental to what I what I want to address here, however, I would recommend people check out the linked article. There are several interesting aspects to the experimental work which is the subject of the article which you referenced, and since I have been following this thread, but have been to busy to post anything, I will take advantage of this opportunity to contribute something to the thread. First in the article written by Wolff that Apeiron&Peiron referenced: While I found the references to Clifford interesting, I am surprised that there is no reference to Maxwell, because these theories is inherent in Maxwell's equations, as is made clear in the famous Wheeler-Feynman papers which are mentioned in the article, and which form the basis of the Wheeler–Feynman Absorber Theory, which is based on the fact that Maxwell's equations have two solutions and these correspond to the inward and outward waves mentioned in the article and which are the basis of this theory. I first read about the two solutions to Maxwell's equations back in the late Seventies in one or another book on the history of science and filed it away as something that was possibly important, just as the dual solutions to the Dirac Eqaution, might open up some interesting, but seemingly otherwise impossible areas of physics, just as the prediction of anti-particles opened up a hitherto unexepected area of physics. In terms of the actual historical development of physics it could be simplified to Maxwell and Planck to Einstein to Quantum Physics, with Clifford being a fascinating thinker the importance of whose insights were only recognized in retrospect. I also became aware of wave models of particles and particle motion circa 1990, so the subject is something which I have already put some thought into, however, while I found the ideas interesting, they are in many ways as unsatisfying as a purely particle oriented model would be, but in different ways. As Spacester summarized: I have put a lot of thought into questions of determinism and reductionism, and how one can account for a "knowing mind" in the midst of a universe that seems to be a mindless machine and I hope that I can post a little about that in some follow up posts here. Though I need to put some thought into how I might organize them.

Craving cold drinks is a sign of internal heat in TCM. Depending on its source it may be relatively superficial and treatable be acupressure or acupuncture or may require the use of herbs if its source is on a deeper level. It can indicate a serious problem which simply drinking cold drinks will probably not improve and the cold drinks may create long term problems of their own. Also it may be tied into some of the medical drugs which you are taking and you may need to review their side effects.

Yes. It's a good record, people should listen to it more often.

I'm glad it was helpful. If after you develop your programs, you need more information on specific dates to test your accuracy, let me know, either here or by private message. I don't "do FaceBook", so unfortunately I cannot see your research, but just what you have been posting here sounds interesting. Since you said that you are a programmer, you might find Astrolog interesting: Astrolog Homepage While this is a Western oriented program, it is open source and the source code can be downloaded in C++ and compiled in Unix. I don't know how difficult it would be to port to Linux, even "out of the box" it is an amazingly powerful program for a free one, with some astronomical and very strong macro features, so if you are clever, even as it is, with a little thought a lot can be done with it. Also the author of this has started supporting it again, for about 20 years there were only versions like 5.4 available, now it is at 6.10. Good luck with your programming and research. ZYD

It's OK, you'll be fine, just suspend two garlic cloves from a string around your neck and post again in the morning. (Humor meta-note, is the old joke about what all doctors say whenever you can actually get a hold of them on the phone, "Take two aspirin, and call me in the morning", too long forgotten for the reference in this humor to be obvious?)

That's the whole secret point of the conspiracy, chat vampires from cyberspace! Appearing soon in a chat room too near you, or are they already among us?

Here is a complete printout of a Bazi chart for Southern California: This is actually a report from Imperial Astrologer, which is published by Esoteric Techologies. I use their Solar Fire product for Western Astrology. The Delemme printouts are very interesting and useful for health, but their interface is a little clunky, so it is easier to use Imperial Astrologer if all one wants is quick look. Most of the things here are advanced, but to summarize: you combine the Element of the Stem, Fire, with the Animal of the Branch, Monkey, thus the year is the Fire Monkey and the same with the others giving: Month = Earth Dog Day = Wood Rat Hour = Water Rooster I hope this is helpful.

Jiayin is part of a cycle of sixty created by the interaction of the ten "Celestial Stems" and twleve "Earthly Branches", of which it is the 53rd. This cycle is used to mark out hours, days, months and years, so the jiayin day is going to happen six times a year, but what days in a year will be the jiayin days will vary from year to year. Here is the link to the Wikipedia article on the Sexagenary Cycle as it is usually referred to in English: Chinese Sexagenary Cycle You might wish to read the works of Derek Walters: The Complete Guide to Chinese Astrology And Chinese astology software such as that provided by Delemme software: Delemme's Chinese Astrology programs They have been around for a long time and their free trials of their software actually give a lot of free charts before you have to buy the software.

Even though I am very busy, I am going to take a little time for a short post here. To understand part of these issues you need to understand Aristotle's treatment of causality, because that is what this thread is all about, causality, and from Hellenistic times to 1700, the default theory of causality among the educated was Aristotle's Four Causes. That is why I made a special thread about them in my posts about Agrippa here: Aristotle's Four Causes in Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy and attempted to show their usefulness in the understanding of an important aspect of magical tradition, that of "occult virtues", here: Occult Virtues as formal causes in occult philosophy Which is why this bears repeating here: Rituals also have "occult virtues", as systems of representation with a well formed logical structure. This is an aspect of rituals that is completely lost in modern magic. In thinking about causality in magic in Aristotelian terms, the magician and his training become an efficient cause, but also the whole root of his ability to do magic is the "occult virtue" of his "soul" as a microcosm and its reflection in the macrocosm. The occult virtues of natural things, of times and places and yes, even of ritual and verbal formulae, are the result of formal systems as the expression of the the Platonic "ideas" existing in the "archetypal" world, and magic becomes very much the study of the formal properties of such systems, whether expressed in Natural, Astrological, or Ceremonial magic. As for egregores, I am familiar with its origin in fiction, and the details of how it became used in magic are not important, but if I recall correctly Levi used the term, but it had certainly become a technical term by 1900. I spent a about year of intense study, beginning in the summer of 1968, with the most complete book of theory on them in English, Mouni Sadhu's, The Tarot, so I certainly know about them and their use and construction, but the whole theory and practice is little understood these days either. While my study of Sadhu's book was before I read Agrippa, what I learned from Sadhu can definitely be assimilated into that framework and even benefits from it. This is why I said here: In regard to Roman Catholic sacraments, while Aristotle's four causes contributed to the discussion of them, at least to believers their efficacy has to be assigned, not to anything magical, but the grace of God manifest through the covenant with "the Church". That said the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation is probably the most interesting interpretation of the Eucharist among the Christian sects from an esoteric and magical point of view. As I said I am busy and I don't have much time right now to elaborate on any of the above.