Zhongyongdaoist

While a little bit depended on time and country, this was seldom the case and certainly not in the case of such a high ranking title as duke, a title which like prince was often a sovereign in his own right, for example during the middle ages the Duke of Burgundy, was in all but tile, the greatest Sovereign Lord of Western Europe, whose wealth and power far outstripped that of the King of France. Such Titles survive in the Grand Dukes of Luxembourg, and the well known case of the Princes of Monaco and the more obscure Princes of Lichtenstein, unless one is looking for a tax have, or what about the really obscure Princes of Andorra? Generally speaking in the middle ages, the Knight would come from a class called the Gentry, though the younger sons of nobles, sons of Baron, Baronettes being a later addition, and up in England, would seek to earn fame, fortune and a title of their very own through military service, and for them their was a fairly clear path to the title of knight, one might almost call it an entitlement program of the Noble and Gentry classes, if one were so inclined, but rising through the ranks was also possible, and many was the brave common soldiers who through his heroic actions on the field was knighted there and then by a grateful Sovereign. Well, one could write a book about the complexities involved in such things, but this is all I can spare for now. So, don't give up on the idea of gaining a knighthood. Just remember, to Errant is knightly, to Knight is Divine Right, and you'll have not problems, well, even though Divine Right did cause the Stuarts some problems in the Seventeenth Century. Edit: Posted this without the Divine Right reference, I had thought of it, but got distracted, see how pernicious those attention problems are, and didn't make the change before posting.

two eagles on it: If you are talking about this: or related variations you are talking about the Austro-Hungarian Empire, not Austria itself and it is only one eagle with two heads, the the Austrian one and the Hungarian one, there are versions with two eagles, but they are not the heraldic griffins depicted on either side of the Coat of Arms you post, and technically an escutcheon is a shield design on which a Coat of Arms is placed. Minor technical points aside, this is a very interesting thread and thanks to Edward M. for starting it. Oh, and speaking of Eagle headed figures with human bodies, here is Lei Gong: The Chinese God of Thunder.

What it speaks to quite eloquently are the limitations of Jung's mind, whether “linear” or not, and it is the same type of limitation that “causes” him to think of “synchronicity” as “acausal”, because his definition of causality is that of Nineteenth Century “scientific” reductionism, which he confuses with reason and rationality. I have posted a little on Jung and magic and psychology here: and a little more about Jung and my preferred “psychology” here: was lost on a lot of people because Plotinus psychology is a real psyche-ology, a study of Soul that includes the soul of the world among others. I have a book whose charming title Soul-Sisters, certainly belies its dense text and scholarly rigor. Probably a published doctoral thesis, its full title is Soul Sisters; A Commentary on Enneads IV 3 (27), 1-8 of Plotinus (Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam, 1980) by Wypkje Helleman-Elgersma. It is a work on what I call the communion of all souls, for in Plotinus all souls are of the same essence and form a great family, sisters in this case because of the feminine gender of psyche in Greek. What a difference from the confused "collective unconscious" of Jung, to say nothing of the many "still stuck at the beginning of the Twentieth Century neurologists" who still dominate the field. There are of course exceptions among neurolgists and I have posted a little on them, but I don't have time to look those up, still, I did want to make a little time for you. From the Plotinian perspective even "physics" is "psychological", but nonetheless "real" and "objective" as a class of interactions between our souls and the soul of the world manifesting in a rigorously mathematical form. . . . (Emphasis added, ZYD) a class of interactions between our souls and the soul of the world manifesting in a rigorously mathematical form: What I mean by this is that a view of "the laws of gravity" and the "laws of electromagnetism" as mathematical descriptions of "substantial forms", which are the "formal causes" of our experience of "common sense", by which I mean the common sensory experience of "the world", the observation of which is the basis of physics. Plotinus' psychology is based on Plato's teachings and the result is a "rational" model of magic and how it works. It is "rational" because it is the working out of a coherent worldview starting from Platonic first principles. In spite of common usages involving "rational", "scientific" and "materialism", rationality is not identical with Nineteenth Century materialism, which materialism is proof of the adage, "garbage in, garbage out". Reasoning from materialist first principles naturally results in materialist conclusions which cannot be made into a coherent worldview no matter how hard one tries. The whole of Twentieth Century physics was a large scale reductio ad absurdum refutation of materialism. Finally at the risk of being verbose, but to clarify further the Romantism/Reductionism dichotomy, I will quote from my post on Romanticism in the Eliphas Levi thread: the thematic guide of the previous site is useful: So useful is it in fact, that the link is a large part of why I quoted the above post. Please read it, it is short and packed with information, and you will see a lot of ideas that characterize both Jung and modern magic. For those who have missed them, I hope to return to my discussion of Crowley et. al. shortly

I almost started a thread on this myself, though I might have limited it to Jung himself, after reading the following post: This certainly has nothing to do with the tradition of magic as it developed in the West from the Hellenistic Period to the Nineteenth century. I doubt that it really has anything to do with magic as thought of in many other cultures either. A tradition needs to be understood on its own terms, then one is in a position to make changes to it, otherwise one is like a surgeon ignorant of anatomy. God help his poor patients. Though I have made a lifetime study of magical traditions, I am not a traditionalist, I am a pragmatist and I want to be like the surgeon who knows his patients anatomy before cutting out this, or lopping off that, just because it doesn't made sense to me, which is what the modern "experts" on magic that I have read, seem to do all the time. I don't have any more time to waste on such nonsense.

Had Crowley had any real concern for, much less understanding of, Platonic thought, he would have been far more concerned about this: And this: Which are the true levels of Divine Inspiration, rather then then levels of the “frenzies”, which are purely the “Daimonic” levels, at best the beginning, but certainly not the end of the Philosophic Ascent. Some idea of the different levels of this ascent and it relation to Theurgy and the spiritual Hierarchy can be gleaned from Iamblichus, Theurgia or on the Mysteries of Egypt, who examines it in considerable detail. Edit: Added "or" to the Title of ". . . on the Mysteries . . ." Edit: Added the link to the Wikipedia article "Daemon", since many people reading here might not understand the original meaning or how it developed in the Hellenistic age and that it has next to nothing to do with a "demon".

The author whom you cite Nungali, is prone the oddest observations: The Platonic mythic image of the Soul as a Charioteer, seems a long way from "Steeped Horsehair": Perhaps the author got there using Crowley's Energized Ethusiam? Especially the parts about drug induced "enthusiasm". Aside from which using ideas from about one page of Plato's Phaedrus does not a Platonist make, nor contrary to the author's observation does using a little technical vocabulary from Iamblichus make a Theurgist. Now Plato puts these "frenzies" in their place in the Timaeus in a section beginning at 68c, where they are associated with the lower and mortal nature and in particular with the liver, and notes that such "frenzies" were not given to us for anything other than our weakness to act as a guide to those who had not gained noetic insight by opening "the eye of the soul", the third eye which Plato is credited with in antiquity. By the way these references play perfectly into my argument that Crowley was in point of fact anti-rational and that the only thing involved in his "scientific illuminism" is what I call "spiritual empiricism" and not "spiritual science" which requires the use of reason. P.S. I noticed that getting back to p. 210 seemed a little difficult when I tested the link, no problem, I took a screen shot of the original page if anyone has any difficulties getting there.

Thanks for the clarification, that is what I more or less thought. More about Papus and the French school of Occultism in a bit, first we need a little review general history. One of the important things to bear in mind with neo-magical theory is the extent to which the beginnings of the magical revival corresponded to the development of Romanticism. Romanticism itself has beginnings as early as the late Eighteenth Century, in Philosophy with Rousseau and in the arts and literature with the Sturm and Drang movement. Toward the end of the Eighteenth Century these movements, which were more rebellions against the restraint of neo-classicism became fused with a growing dissatisfaction with the “scientific materialism” being loudly put forward by the Evangelical Atheists of “D'Holbach's Coterie”. Circa 1800 a group of philosophical thinkers hijacked Kant's philosophy and basically created a movement that conflated reason and logical thinking with materialism and encouraged both anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism, though at the same time creating a type of approach to spiritual phenomena which I call “spiritual empiricism”, which is in some ways an imitation of “scientific empiricism”. It is under the Aegis of Romanticism and its descendants that the Magical Revival and the "Journey to the East” were undertaken, and the whole of modern “mysticism and magic” is more or less tinged by Romanticism, which of course includes the Dao Bums. At least a little familiarity with Romanticism is a good thing, you may even see aspects of yourself there. This cite is a good beginning point because it separates out important themes that are fundamental to Romanticism: Thematic Analysis of Romanticism The Wikipedia article covers this in more detail, but having the thematic guide of the previous site is useful: Romanticism Article on Wikipedia The intellectual, artistic, social and spiritual descendants of Romanticism are a diverse bunch, with Nazi and Hippies being distant cousins, just like Jerry Lee Lewis and Jimmy Swaggart are cousins, though you couldn't tell it from anything other then their family trees. As the Nineteenth Century developed there was a tendency, following the influence of Hegel, to want to reconcile opposites, thus was born the wish to reconcile magic and mysticism with science. This tendency has already been observed in the wish to model older magic on mesmerism, but is also alive today, though mesmerism plays little part, having been replaced by Jungian psychology. In my own opinion magic has not benefited by these attempts to reconcile it with science, in part because they have not understood magic on its own terms, nor did they have the view of science that we have today. Generally these attempts have resulted in a diminution of magic as the "Archetypes in the Mind of God" have become the mere archetypes of the collective unconscious. The extreme was reached a little after 1900 when in the mind of one man, magic became mere neurology. That man's name was Edward Alexander Crowley, whose non de plume, was Aleister Crowley. I will cover more about him and the French schools in the next few posts. Edit: Spelling

Someone might wonder where this thread has gone also. For those who had missed my contributions, they may be pleased to know that I will be returning to post more and to examine: Part of the reason for this is that someone did actually PM me about this thread and we had a short discussion which got me thinking more about neo-magic and my own development and the particular importance of this: to my eventual understand of the Golden Dawn and that it is basically an understanding of how magic was conceived pre-Crowley and thus magic as understood by the founders of the Golden Dawn, among other things it should be remembered that Mathers spent most of his time in Paris and that Papus was a member of the Paris temple of the Golden Dawn. Curiously Regardie's Golden Dawn, is one of the handful of Anglo-occultism books to make it into Sadhu's Bibliography. This pre-Crowley understanding would also help with understanding Dion Fortune, or any other Occult author writing in the late Nineteenth or early Twentieth Centuries. For those who don't already have a copy or would like a nice study copy which they can mark up and make a mess of, a PDF version can be downloaded from here: Sadhu's Tarot in PDF I will repeat that this is, very purposefully, not an easy book to understand, but if you want to really understand the Golden Dawn as the founders and high ranking members did, this is the book. I should note that Sadhu uses the Continental system of the Tarot cards following Levi and with his attributions of Planets and Zodiac signs to them arrives at a different set of meanings ascribed to them then the Golden Dawn. I may expand upon this at some point, but it is not germane now. The Golden Dawn's teachings are literally the high point of neo-magical theory and practice and they were and remain important to me for reasons which I hope to discuss here, as well as the contribution of Aleister Crowley to neo-magical theory. Crowley's prolific output makes him probably the single most influential author on Neo-magic, or magick, as he preferred, than any other, and he did make some contributions to the post 1900 version of neo-magical theory which were very influential and continue to be. In my opinion they were not good and I will examine these issues shortly, unless there is serious objection from the OP.

just how far removed these Israeli, Lurianic lineages are from 'Hermetic' Qabalah: I learned it when I read Herbert Weiner's Nine and Half Mystics back in the early 70s. The difference between his work and “Hermetic Qabalah” was so significant that I coined the categories “Kosher” and “Wasp” Qabalah for them. Don Kraig, whom I met in 1980, later used those terms in Modern Magick, he also “borrowed” a few other jokes from me, not that he wasn't a very funny guy in his own right, as anyone who knew him knows. I studied the differences for some time reading a lot of Kosher Qabalah, but at a certain point I lost interest because I saw that the Tree of Life as a formal system was not dependent on Judaism, other than originating there, but rather, as I have pointed out in other posts on the Dao Bums, could be interpreted within a Platonic context, where it seemed, to my judgment at least, a better adaptation of Platonic ideas than Proclus, not that one shouldn't study Proclus. I came to these conclusions in the late 70s and stopped following Kosher Qabalah by the mid 80s. Is there still value in the GD: Yes, in my opinion based on my study and experience, there definitely is value to the Golden Dawn tradition, but as I have pointed out in many of my posts on the Dao Bums, but mostly recently in the thread on Eliphas Levi, the theory of magic as it existed in the late Nineteenth Century was severely flawed and it is only when the Golden Dawn system is practiced within the wider theoretical structure of Agrippa's Three Books on Occult Philosophy that it is really planted, one might say, in fertile ground. This in turn requires a fully formed Platonic ontology and metaphysics, without these the source withers and dies. I don't want to get into the issue of its offshoots, but I could enter into detailed criticism of Crowley and to a certain extent of Case, though of the two, Crowley was the more damaging to the theory and practice of magic. The issues related to Mathers and Westcott are too complex to enter into here, but based on what I have gotten from digging rather deeply into their system, I would have to say that somehow or other they plugged into something. Now, what I value most in the Golden Dawn system is what most people study the least, the structure of the initiatory rituals, and the reason that I do is the so called “Z Documents”, which, from the time I first read them in late 1970, to the present, I have thought were some of the most suggestive and profound works on magic that I have read, beginning with the idea of using the formal structure of the rituals as a pattern for the magical rituals which one performs, a development of an idea which I later discovered is to be found in Agrippa's work, and continuing into the details of the construction and form of the initiatory rituals themselves. Obviously I cannot go into more details of this here, if for no more reason then space. And the reason for the included quote from TTC: Yes, I saw its relevance, but wished to take advantage of it to point out the logical conundrum involved in such statements, especially when taken out of the context of the complete DDJ, as they often are. Edit: Spelling

Thanks for the clarification. I thought your statement a little ambiguous, even the "smiley". "When the world knows beauty as beauty, ugliness arises When it knows good as good, evil arises" The problem with statements like this, no matter who has said them, is that some cheeky lad or lass in the audience is going to as ask "So, does that mean its good not to recognize good and evil?" Which opens a very wriggly can of worms indeed. Though if you have enough patience they can be sorted out. I certainly don't have time now. As for such esoteric interpretations of "Old Testament" texts, I spent a lot of time with Mathers' Zohar translation in the early 70s and after a few years came to the conclusion that while the author or authors had gone to a lot of trouble to justify the doctrines they were espousing through copious Biblical citations and "rationalizations" of great ingenuity, that they were basically reading things into the text that were not intended by the original author or authors, though I suppose a "sensus plenior" interpretation could be used to answer that, but I find sensus plenior a rather egregious case of begging the question. However, the conclusion that the source of the doctrines was not in the Bible itself, but elsewhere, did lead to an interesting line of research, which by the way leads us back to Philo of Alexandria and what was going on in the centuries around the middle of the Hellenistic Era. Which opens up a can of worms of a different type, and I don't have time for that now either.

Yes, because we all know what Biblical authorities Westcott and Mathers were. I hope that you don't mean to imply ironical disdain to Mathers' and Westcott's Biblical expertise, because aside from the fact that in the late Nineteenth Century they would have learned more of the Bible in Grammer school then most undergraduates in modern theological seminary, the diagrams in question deal with Qabalah and pictorial illustrations of ideas from the Zohar, in particular the Sifra diTzni`uta/Book of the Hidden (ספרא דצניעותא), which Mathers had very conveniently published a translation of just a year before the Golden Dawn started taking members. This was a translation of the Latin of Knorr von Rosenroth, but collated with the original Hebrew, of which Mathers knew quite a bit. Was his study and scholarship as rigorous as a modern academic's would be? No, it was not, but it was certainly good enough.

All the Church Fathers are basically indebted to Philo of Alexandria, also known as Philo the Jew for his own thoroughgoing Platonization of the Old Testament. This gave Jewish mythology a respectability that it would otherwise not have had, and as I noted Here: Edit: Spelling

Thanks for this Brian, but: Naturally of course, they read it back into the old paradigm, a paradigm first introduced in modern times for animals by Descartes and then extended to humans by La Mettrie, both of which were purely speculations at the time, unsupported by any sound experimental evidence, nor did any evidence exist, nor was there any satisfactory way to investigate this at the time, but the dogma remains at the core of Western medical thought. The best that could be said then, as now, is that organic life forms are organisms that have parts that harness mechanical properties to achieve certain ends, and yes I am aware of the implied teleology of that statement and have left it open on purpose, but anyone who wants to can go ahead and tack onto it "such as survival" and move it back into a more traditional biological framework is free to do so. Granted, survival is a rather brutal editor of the book of life, life's apparent creativity needs explanation. So, some progress yes, but a long way to go.

Thank you for posting this link. I have downloaded the text and taken a quick look at the introduction and table of contents and it looks like an interesting dissertation, notable for its early use of computer textual analysis on "microcomputers", the first incarnation of the modern PC. I don't know when I will have a chance to look at this in more detail as my reading "stack", meant in a computer sense as well as pile of books, it overloaded as it is, but the subject is more interesting than might seem on the surface. Welcome to the Dao Bums

I don't think anyone has really noticed that the exemplar of the these "Ten Commandments" of logic, the Ten Commandments of the "Old Testament" are largely negative and state what one "Shalt not do", which is why these are a collection of logical fallacies, things which you shouldn't do in reasoning. So all of this talk about these not being a guide to logic are misplaced, they are a guide to the rocky shoals which should be avoided. As for waiting 'til a ripe old age to study dusty, boring books on logic, why not start now with your family and friends playing games such as "WFF 'n' Proof", a game of propositional calculus, or the game that deals with logical fallacies, "The Propaganda Game", you noobs can find out about what us Sixties math/science nerds have known for decades by going here: Games for Thinkers Then you can learn how to give a "Thinker's Damn". Edit: Slight change in format.

Thanks for the detail of your reply. I like to examine things in context so I am looking at sections 9-11 of your link: The Diamond of Perfect Wisdom Sutra very carefully. Section nine's mention of: "Because ‘srotapanna’ means ‘stream-enterer,’ and there is in fact nothing to enter" reminded me of this: "We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not." It looks like I am going to be very busy over the next few days, so I probably will not reply more until next week. I already see an interesting take on the matter, but I need to look over it more closely.

Sounds like an old Dao Bum, conspirachi, returning with a new name. He likes to do that. It sounded that way from the content of Marblehead's post, but the reference to "drew" in the original would seem conclusive. You could try conspirachi's last known web address:

With all due respect Taoist Texts, in regard to this: and this: This reading of the characters looks like it comes from a commentary tradition, and if so I am sure that all of us here would benefit from knowing more about that tradition and why it should be taken as so authoritative as to make any translation that doesn't observe it a "very incorrect translation". This would seem to include the three online translations still available of the four that you quote without acknowledgement from Wikipedia. The four sites in order give: I did some other poking around also, none of which seemed to justify your usage based simply on the characters, which is why I am asking about its possible origin from some commentary tradition.

It's funny you should mention Rife, my brother was very interested in him in the 70s. Regarding the paper that you linked, I just skimmed it, but found it very interesting, with many ideas that I have been thinking about for sometime. I can't go into much detail now, but I found the mention of E. T. Whittaker in the paper interesting, as I had read his A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity, Vol. I and II, sometime back with considerable interest. I often considered unfortunate that he did not finish his projected Volume III. All of this has a great deal to do with my research into Mathematical Magic and how the classical magical tradition of Agrippa could provide a real framework for Radionic devices as I mentioned here: It will be interesting to see what Brian has to say about the paper.

yes he is ! Did you read: The Maestro and the Boy Pontiac's very moving memoir of his relationship with Manley P. Hall? I really is a good read. Yes, you recounted her sad tale in considerable detail here: Woman in the Magical Tradition Rereading the above I wondered whether you have read Mary K. Greer's: Women of the Golden Dawn I loved that book, it is very well researched and written. Another neglected woman, who is actually of great importance to the pre-Golden Dawn era, and well known to the founders, was: Anna Kingsford and also: Anna Kingsford Site, Her Life and Works

Taoist Texts you "Wascally Wacoon", you're just trying to pull my Legge aren't you? My own thinking and understanding does not depend on Legge, I always preferred D. C. Lau's version anyway: It may lack the temporal aspect of your version, that of "becoming a Sage", but it does have the virtue of a simplicity which yours lacks. It does however have the virtue of keeping the translation of 形, xíng as body, but none really plays on the homophonic resonance between 形, xíng as "body" and 性, xìng, from 天性, tiānxìng, "Heavenly Nature", which would have been important both when the the text was written and its later interpretation, though maybe you are hinting at such a relation by saying "The body is also from Heaven". Lau's translation also has the virtue of being anointed by Tu Wei-ming, who cites it with approval on p. 165, note 1, of Confucian Thought; Selfhood as Creative Transformation, as part of his discussion of the meaning of 践形, jiàn xíng, you know the last two characters of the quote, which apparently took on something of a life of their own, but with sagehood as its context, on p. 149, where he says: Sorry about the old school spelling in the quote but, "it's in the book". I know that you are only trying to see if I know what I am talking about and trick me into some long winded discussion, that, like Wascally Wabbits, is what Wascally Wacoons live for, but I don't have time now for more than this quick note. I will however expand on some of this in the Daoism and Western Esotericism thread. P.S. By the way thanks for bumping the thread, like I said here: I hope that you did find it interesting, but "let go of my Leggo!"

As suggested the Greek equivalent would be: a more common one, at least in the Western Europe would be the Latin "spiritus", spirit. This covers traditional names for qi as "vital force", beginning in the late Eighteenth Century we can find the idea reappearing as the "animal magnetism" of Mesmer, in the Nineteenth, as the "odic force" of von Reichenbach, and in the Twentieth Century as the "orgone" of Wilhelm Reich, in short "vital force" is a concept that simply will not "die". However there is also a larger sense of qi as "substance" in the the Chinese lǐ/qì (理氣, Principle/"matter-energy") tradition which is very similar to Aristotle and this connection is something very useful to keep in mind for East/West comparison, as I have mentioned here: Actually the whole discussion of that thread is rather interesting and I recommend following the link and then going to the beginning of the thread and reading all of it. It is a short thread, only two pages, but very interesting nonetheless.

I said "ostensibly" written, these days some people think that she might have have written them, but I honestly don't know, though I did a lot of internet research a few years ago and there is still some controversy on the matter and several more or less plausible candidates, But whether she wrote them or not, she was still a remarkable woman. Of course I know Thomas Johnson, I read Platonism in the Midwest, the seminal scholarly work on the subject of the post Transcendentalist mid-American Platonists, back in the late 70s. In many ways it was one of my favorite reads because of the dedication of the leaders, like Johnson and Jones, and the people who learned from them, whose enthusiasm for Plato and the Platonists, kept the movement going for decades. The brilliant Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie was its dying breath. Guthrie's Plotinus translation is still one of the best, not that there are a lot, but it is definitely clearer than Mckenna's and for a non-scholar better than Armstrong's translation. Aside from that, isn't Ronnie Pontiac a great writer and scholar? I discovered him a few years ago and almost posted about him here, but I had other matters to take care of and never got around to it.

With all due respect Taoist Texts, I will have to disagree, as a person who has studied both the Golden Dawn temple and the Ritual Daoist Ritual/Meditation Dan in considerable detail, I would have to say that there are interesting similarities and differences and that they actually have a high degree of complementarity that exists between them, and I think that complementarity summarizes their relationship very well, but I don't have time now to go into detail now. To my mind the keyword here as above is complementarity, however most "occultists" don't have nor do they really cultivate the type of analytic skill necessary to achieve good results which is the difference that I draw between eclecticism and syncretism, between a jumble of practices and a well formed synthesis. I'll try to expand on these topics, but I have other things on which I am working which must take precedence. Among other things I am dividing my allotted Dao Bums posting time between this thread and the one on Eliphas Levi, though I have to say there is a certain complementarity between these two threads also. Edit: Minor spelling Edit: Added link to Eliphas Levi thread

I actually spent a lot of time and thought comparing Charles Luk's Taoist Yoga, Alchemy and Immortality, with Western Alchemical texts in the early to mid 1970s. The study was interesting and I think the time was well spent. When I read Michael Saso's Taoism and the Rite of Cosmic Renewal circa 1977, I found a new and interesting look at Daoist internal alchemy and my focus changed, though I still kept the Luk book in mind as an important text and practice. I don't have time to elaborate on this now, but I have posted a little on these subjects in other threads on the Dao Bums, though I don't know if those tidbits would merit a search. I will try to elaborate on this shortly if I can. Edit: Minor punctuation.