Zhongyongdaoist

As a single volume introduction to magic as it was practiced in the late Twentieth Century you cannot beat: Don Kraig, Modern Magick, on Amazon.com I knew Don Kraig personally, and he was a fine person, an excellent writer, and knowledgeable about what he wrote with a good sense of personal integrity. All the internet "wunderkinds" read this and it is a good place to start in order to judge anything that they write. There has been a great renaissance in the art of Alchemy in the late Twentieth Century, largely the result of this man: Frater Albertus While his works and many other works ancient and modern are of value the best single volume introduction to Western Alchemy is probably, A Treatise on the Great Art by Pernety, freely available as a download on the link here: Thanks for posting this 'dawai', it will make it available to interested parties. This was one of the fundamental books in my understanding because it is the only one to clarify the nature of real Great Work as involving three stages, the development of the fire, the generation of the perfect sulfur and the compounding of the 'elixir' which is the actual 'medicine of metals' and is also used for treating people. This I was able to equate with the idea of three Dan in Chinese internal alchemy as part of what I have described as fruitful cross cultural comparison. This was not the only similarity, but only one of many. What is described in the second part for metals holds true for herbal working as well, it is paradigmatic of alchemical practice, which should not be confused with the outer method of making 'stones' and 'tinctures', which is sometimes called spagyrics to differentiate it from the genuine alchemical process. This is why this book is so important as a general overview, the Hermetic model of the cosmos which it describes is the model for all true alchemical operations, it is the Macrocosm of which, what is going on in the alchemists vessels must be an accurate microcosm, if it is not the operation fails. Thus the key to the book is seeing how the description of nature laid out in the first part is reflected in the paradigmatic operations of the second part I have quoted my own post to give it some context. There is unfortunately no single work that covers both fields well, and these are only a beginning to a long and complex study. Undoubtedly, other people will chime in with their own thoughts. Good Luck. Edit: Accidentally hit post while still editing this and need to complete it.

Corrected Apech's link which didn't seem to work:

However, mercury is very important in alchemy and alchemical symbolism. The key is actually in the importance of Cinco de Mayo, which is far more than an excuse to drink beer and eat nachos. You probably think that I am joking, but I'm not, though I am being highly speculative. Edit: I guess I was preparing my reply while Apech was posting his.

This is from the chapter on "Daoism in Japan", The Daoism Handbook, ed. Livia Kohn, p. 830 The text is rough because the OCR software doesn't recognize Chinese characters and I don't really have time to clean it up, but this clearly shows Sugendo practice of the kuji-in and many other Daoist practices. The chapter as a whole is very informative, but obviously I cannot quote it at length. If I have time I will comment more. Edit: Connected the line containing "Rinpyótôsha cai chinretsu zalzen", which was divided. When you come across some nonsense letter combinations in the middle of text, that is the software trying to make sense of Chinese characters.

This information from the Wikipedia article is essentially correct: part of Tammon-Ten's (Vaiśravaṇa), The God of the North, Celestial Thunder Court.: In Daoist usage it would be Xuanwu, Mysterious Warior also known as Zhenwu, Perfect Warrior, and the Dark Emperor of the North. He is the patron or all Daoist martial arts, and Military Magic. Mount Wudang is his sacred mountain. The two handed mudras are not part of Gehong's original teachings, but were added from Buddhist sources at an early date and both Buddhists and Daoists use them. Jerry Alan Johnson has a discussion of them on pages 86 to 90 of Daoist Weather Magic and Feng Shui, which includes an illustration of the Thunder Court and the names of the important Thunder Marshals who are its principle spirits, as well as the six Jia spirits (These are also mentioned in detail in Saso's Teachings of Taoist Master Chuang and in other works by Jerry Alan Johnson) which it summons. It's transmission to Japan was probably through Buddhist sources, though no one knows for sure, there is a great deal of Daoist teachings (and Confucian too!) that came over to Japan from China. I don't know a lot about Japanese practice, but the idea that it is a legitimate Onmyodo and Shugendo practice makes a lot of sense to me. Edit: Rushed, I forgot to put in link to Wikipedia article.

Here is an example of reframing a standard time wasting question from the Scientific Proof that Magic Works(!) Thread. In it I invert the question and show that magic proves science: Since Magic in Agippa's sense is fundamentally tied to a world-view based on Aristotle's forms, the interpretation of physics in terms of Aristotle's forms, puts them on the same level as Aprippa's explanation of magic, thus magic is the proof of science. QED. The above discussion is somewhat tongue in cheek, but the fundamental thinking is correct. It was my realization that modern science could be reframed in a Platonic world-view circa 1980, that helped me to adopt Platonism as a fundamental perspective, my 'working model' of reality you might say. For an interesting view of a thoroughly Platonized universe see: Max Tegmark on Wikipedia Who in turn came up with this silly nonsense: Yep, the universe may be a computable function, but it may take a quantum computer to do it. (On Wikipedia) Well, the quantum computer is my idea not Tegmark's, I first came up with it about 2000 in my earliest investigation of the idea of Quantum Computing, though in the end I came to the conclusion that consciousness is not a computable function and that Mathematics is a structure embedded, in a sense, in consciousness by which consciousness becomes aware of itself. Or something like that. We are getting into some pretty deep stuff here, though I think it is ultimately compatible with a Platonic worldview. This is part of what I mean by thinking about science and magic in a different way. To go back to this: western rationalism seems to perfectly account for materialism and mechanics; What exactly does Western Rationalism have to do with the Seventeenth Century revival of Epicureanism? it is easy for one to overlook or unconsciously take for granted the most basic, most foundational assumptions made — through nurture, culture and education This is exactly the point made by E. A. Burtt in his book The Metphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science which I referenced in this post: What is hardest to shake is the idea that the objective world is the 'real real' and all else is imagination (in the weak sense) all our thoughts, feelings and so on just phantasms or noise in the information stream of dull facts: This is exactly what I have described as 'Closet Cartesianism' and yes it is hard to shake off and for reasons that I have mentioned, it is built into the language of object and subject. One needs to start to speak and think of the world differently. I became acutely aware of these problems in the late Seventies and early Eighties, the solution which I adopted at the time was to adopt Platonism as my working model of reality. This decision had many benefits, but I cannot go into them in detail here. While I wasn't to read the book from which the following excerpt is taken until circa 2000, I was very familiar with the ideas from other works: The Book was written and published in the late 1920s, but is still considered to be sound history of science. The worldview which Newton: 'carried to a more influential position a movement already well advanced', was basically a worldview of extended substances which were 'objects (hence 'objective') to which the senses were subject (hence subjective), this worldview was created largely by the work of Descartes and Locke. Burtt's book is available online and may be accessed from the link above. The Epicurean materialism that became a fundamental part of post Seventeenth Century Scientific thinking, was never the subject of Rational investigation, rather it became a set of unexamined presuppositions to Western scientific thought and continues to ride upon the prestige of science in a way that makes the Whore of Babylon and her Beast seem the merest of pretenders by comparison. Both Relativity and Quantum Mechanics can rightly be viewed as the working out of a Reductio ad Absudum refutation of materialism, thought people keep on holding on to it as if it were in itself rational. Far from it, convincing counter arguments existed from Plato and Aristotle onward, which is why the real history of Western Rationalism was not based on materialism, but on its early refutation. Edit: Bolded phrase "western rationalism seems to perfectly account for materialism and mechanics" and copied it out, added (Emphasis mine, ZYD) in quote.

Yes, I am overloading his circuits, but I am doing it to a well defined purpose, but before that can become clear a little digression into my teenage musings on Gödel's incompleteness theorem are in order. Sometime around my seventeenth birthday, I made the happy acquaintance of Herr Gödel and his Theorem. To give the very informal summary of it that I made at the time, “Any formal system complex enough to be interesting will either contain a contradiction of the nature both P and not P are true, or there will be other obviously true propositions which cannot be proved within its axiom set.” In honor of Herr Gödel, I named these “P, not P” contradictions Gödel points and more importantly saw these Gödel points as extremely useful, among other things it means it is “back to the old drawing board time”. To me this had profound implications for science, which since it is the application of these “interesting” mathematical systems to “modeling” experience, must necessarily involve either contradictions or a “palpable” sense of incompleteness. This is one of the reasons why I find the whole notion of a “theory of everything”, laughably impossible and chuckle every time I hear that “we” are only inches from such a chimera. Within those inches is an abyss of the undiscovered just waiting to devour 'our' hubris. Most of the history of science from 1600 has been of the incompleteness type in which more and more phenomena that were assimilated into one of two models, particle mechanics and wave mechanics and this worked fine for a while, but I think that quantum mechanics is a perfect example of a Gödel point in which the micro level behavior of what we call “matter” has been revealed to be “particle, not particle” and “wave, not wave”, as both of these previously fruitful mathematical models reach the maximum of their explanatory value. This is also why circa 1980, I came to the conclusion that only a complete rethinking of physics would solve the problem. At the time I was reaching the end of my research into the Platonic/Aristotelean background of magic and I saw a potential relationship between ideas/forms and “information”, which is why I thought at the time that a possible direction for resolving the “wave/particle” duality would be through a “reframing” of physics in terms of “information”. Since that time there has certainly be a movement in that direction, and that is why I have emphasized “information” here. All of which contributes to my overall strategy in these posts. On a fundamental level I see our friend Mr. White in the psychological equivalent of a "quantum superposition" between Hamlet and Horatio and I have attempted a strategic of Hamlet's rebuke to Horatio, to more fit Mr. White's situation, which I see more like, “There are more things in Heaven and Earth then can be modeled in my axiom system” and I am doing everything I can to lay a firm foundation for a cognitive reframe of his ideas about heaven, earth, physics and magic, because judging by his posts and in particular this: He doesn't need more of the same, he needs a new way of thinking about these things, which is what I am trying to provide. Edit: Added "like" to the phrase "more like . . ." above.

The following two quotes are from my posts in a thread on self-knowledge, the first one deals with a traditional aspect of self-knowledge from the perspective of the microcosm/macrocosm doctrine, the idea that we as microcosms reflect within ourselves the whole of the macrocosm and I quote it both because it is an excellent look at the idea of "Jupiter is a formal cause that organizes information", the first quote in particular brings out the idea that the information is both within us and without us and has many aspects, the rest bring out its origin in Greek epistemology and Platonic metaphysics, a cross cultural manifestation in China and a profound application of it as a metaphysical/epistemological idea applied in practice drawn from the Hermetica: In the West it became fundamental to Metaphysics and Ontology, but originated as an Epistimological theory: Like is only known by like in Empedocles because it solves a lot of problems created both by Parmenides on the one hand and the early Greek Atomists on the other. This doctrine was worked out by Plato in a very profound way and continued to influence Western Philosophy up to Hegel. It existed in China as can be seen in this quote from the Confucian, Mencius: 7A:4 萬物皆備於我矣。反身而誠、樂莫大焉。彊恕而行、求仁莫近焉。 (Mencius at The Chinese Text Project) I prefer this translation to the one on The Chinese Text Project: "All the ten thousand things are there in me. There is no greater joy for me than to find, on self-examination, that I am true to myself. Try your best to treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself, and you will find that this is the shortest way to benevolence." (D. C. Lau, Mencius, Penguin Books, 1970, p. 182, Emphasis mine, ZYD) and was also used in Daoism. In Plato, as becomes very clear in Plotinus, all things, including our own divine being as already there within us, it allows this type of knowledge of God: as is found in the Corpus Hermeticum. The text which I emphasized above, "If, then, thou dost not make thyself like unto God, thou canst not know Him. For like is knowable to like", emphasizes the epistemological origin of this practice and it is only the Microcosm/Macrocosm analogy that makes it possible. This is a very Western approach approach to God as the fullness of Creation and the unifying One at its root, though the approach to the One as the one itself is also part of Western Philosophy especially in Plotinus. (Emphasis in the original, ZYD) FraterUFA has brought up the question of Objective/Subjective, and since I agree with his post in general, and see no reason to engage it in detail, I will just quote the following, which makes explicit the point that the microcosm/macrocosm doctrine effectively erases the pernicious dichotomy of objective/subjective: The same knowledge that is outside is inside and all true self-knowledge is base on this "objective" identity of microcosm and macrocosm. I will address some of the issues raised in other posts shortly.

I had already decided that I was conversing with an intelligent person with at least a semi-technical background who was trying to understand these matters in as scientific a manner as possible. The questions were partly rhetorical and partly probes in the sense that how you responded would tell me more about your background. Your response to the first question on what a force is, tells me that your technical background is beyond the semi-technical stage. Your response to the one about gravity organizing information, that it "feels appealing", also tells me something about your unconscious orientation. This one in particular I left very open ended, for example I didn't intend any analogy between consciousness and gravity beyond the notion that they are forms, but I also didn't want to say something so close ended as "gravity is a form that organizes matter". While this might have been more immediately intelligible, I wanted to point beyond that, to implicitly ask what matter might be. By information I am referring to this sort of thing: But I don't want to get too involved with that now except to say that it is very Platonic and since the early 80s, I have viewed the "physical world" as something that models mathematics and not mathematics as something that models the "physical world" Now regarding "causa formalis", I started the thread to which I referred: Agrippa and Aristotle: the Aristotelian background of the Occult So that I might refer to it about formal causes and things like that, and have a discussion that was geared to examining things like magic and astrology and also the relationship of these ideas to modern science so I could refer people to it. My exposition is incomplete, but it is a good start, which is why I recommended it. I probably should have made that clear. My bad as they say. In any case if you look at it you should let me know what you think about it. So, what I am really pointing toward is something related to, but between “consciousness as a formal cause that organizes information” and “gravity as a formal cause that organizes information” and which I will explicitly formulate as “Jupiter is a formal cause that organizes information”, including of course that physical information which we call the planet Jupiter and its orbit, but a whole lot more as well. In more strictly Aristotelian terms "consciousness", "gravity" and "Jupiter" would be "formal causes", which had as their "material causes" certain types of "information". organize to what end? to what purpose? This of course would refer to the "final cause" aspect and I don't want to go there yet. I will develop these ideas as we go along, but I think you may start to see why I took an interest in this thread. I hope this attempt at clarification is helpful.

I figured that Nungali and Michael Sternbach would weigh in here and overload your mental circuits, so I wanted to wait before making any reply. As a change of pace from some of the things on which I have been working, I thought I might take some time here to ask some annoying questions and point in some odd directions that will make clearer some of the things that I have already posted, in particular my posts in the section on Cornelius Agrippa and his work. So let's start with some annoying questions about this: Can you elaborate on what you mean by that statement, though?: I suspect that what you want is some anecdotes about using astrologer for character analysis, event prediction, etc., which taken as a whole would demonstrate it. I can certainly provide them, but I am more interested in a bigger view and I hope that you will indulge me, and then I may give some interesting anecdotes. This is actually very close to my understanding of what it should be like if we are indeed talking about natural universal forces: There is for example this notion of “universal forces” and you use gravity as an example. Do you know what a “force”, universal or otherwise, is? Let's dig a little deeper into that can of worms that I mentioned. In the worldview in which astrology arose, during the Hellenistic period, a worldview that was largely Platonic/Aristotelian, the logical implications of that worldview were not, “how could astrology work?”, but “How could astrology not work?”. In other words the worldview of the educated elite of the Hellenistic world made astrology a “no brainer” in terms of providing a logical and well formed rationale for its existence and efficacy, the problem was to find space within these implications for things like “free will” and self-determination. In other words, “Where is astrology not going to work, so that I can see myself as free, rather then a slave of some form of astrological determinism?” A very different conundrum isn't it? The whole modern worldview sees astrology as a fantastic and absurd set of ideas that could not possibly be true, because, “How could the position of Jupiter affect me, when its gravitational pull is miniscule in comparison to that of earth?”, but this very framing of the question is based on a certain way of viewing the world in a way in which everything is disconnected, as opposed to the Hellenistic worldview in which everything is connected. This so called “scientific” worldview is now taken for granted by nearly everyone, and is the result of cultural trends which I have analyzed elsewhere and to which I will refer. By the way, this worldview doesn't save “free will”, it replaces it with a determinism of atoms, in which all thoughts are merely a flow of atoms and consciousness an epiphenomenal dream that floats above them, powerless as a ghost in a machine. This view that started with the revival of Epicureanism circa 1600, and grew ravenous with Cartesian dualism, and devoured all in its path until 1900 when its unruly child, science, like another unruly child, Zeus, was to rise up and show the problems with this worldview, a revolution that is still unresolved and is being waged around us even now. So I hope that you don't mind if I dwell a bit on the big picture and then when that is clearer, start telling a few anecdotes which illustrate its details, and yes the discussion will also address such matters of “magic” as are implied in this: As a preparation for this you might find my thread: Agrippa and Aristotle: the Aristotelian background of the Occult Philosophy may help to set the stage along with this quote from another post: And I particular draw your attention to “If one looks at consciousness as a formal cause that organizes information, that solves a lot of problems about knowledge and freewill.” And ask “What happens if you view gravity as a formal cause that organizes information?”

How about: This is Chinese and would have many of the characteristics of the Phantom Zone. Perhaps "phantom zone" could be kept in the description, as a cultural metaphor it is very descriptive. So something like this: The Realm of Hungry Ghosts, a "phantom zone" of sorts where threads that do not conform to the Dao are banished for penitentiary reflection. Feeding these ghosts is not recommended. Enter at your own risk. Edit: Added the sentences beginning with "Feeding these ghosts . . . "

This is a very good point. Hun Dun is rather the primordial source rather then then the "pit", which is the end point of rebellious and to avoid confusion with the presently overly romanticized "chaos", anti-harmony forces of the universe. Its cultural inspiration was Tartarus, the abode to which the Titans were banished. I have kind of followed this discussion and agreed to a certain extent with some of Songstan's original points, but had not had time to really think about the matter. I would like to propose "the Phantom Zone": used close to this original sense, though in this case it is the "crimes" and not the "criminals" that are banished. It keeps a somewhat negative connotation and also, most of these disagreements are chasing phantoms of one sort or another. Edit: Somewhat rushed I forgot to link the "the Phantom Zone" reference above with its Wikipedia source.

You certainly know how to open a nice wiggly can of worms don't you? There is a great deal to be learned from studying "astrology", this is because astrology is based on traditional cosmology and thus whether you want to accept the idea that astrology works, which it does whether one wants to accept the idea or not, a great deal of traditional information is contained in it and it must be studied in order to access that information. To begin with I would like to point out something I have said elsewhere: I advise you to look at the whole post from which I am quoting and remain very open minded in pursuing this type of study because culturally China, Indian and Europe have somewhat different cosmological models which represent different but complementary paradigms and investigating them is a complex study which can hardly be undertaken in a format like this one, but it is one which is of great value on several levels. I don't really have time now to enter into a long discussion about this, but did want to point out that you will gain a lot by being open minded and paying attention to the formal, "logical" structure of the different systems that have been worked out over the years, because in a very real sense they are complementary. First the Chinese and Western systems are the most different and thus the most fruitful to study in terms of widening ones "intellectual bandwidth". The Indian system is much more similar to the Western system and shares so many commonalities while at the same time a different emphasis in the details, that familiarity with one is very useful for understanding the other, as long as one remains open minded and keeps the big picture in mind. So, as long as one avoids the mistake of assuming that one of these big systems is better than the other, one can definitely gain from this type of study, they are complementary and bring different aspects of reality and experience into focus. If one starts to get sectarian about it, well, the boards are full of acrimonious rants about why one system is a the absolute truth and another the height of folly. For myself, I have put most of my time and energy into understanding the Chinese and Western systems and I value what I have learned from each. I am sure others here will enter into the discussion, bear in mind what I have said about "filters" and pray for an intellectual "babel fish".

I figured you probably did, but I wanted to see if I could coax you into sharing it with us.

Flying. The matter is beyond dispute. Flying Tortoise this I know, Because Microsoft tells me so: It's been the desktop on my laptop for years.

All the way up too, but nobody seems to have noticed.

Very good, you are asking the type of questions I was back in the mid to late sixties. When I asked myself what is the difference between the pronouncements of Buddha, or Laozi and the Prophet Iassaih? Or for that matter the ranter on the street corner. I was to eventually formulate it as an inquiry into what do I believe and why do I believe it and came to the conclusion that until this inquiry was at least seriously engaged, everything else was a waste of time.

A good observation. That different practices can work with different "energies" is a hard point to get across to some of the energy work tyro's who think the know everything because they have read Bruce and have little experience. It is exactly the different level of energy that the MP works with that makes it so interesting and such a worthwhile practice.

Contrary to what has been said above it is exactly the lack of rigorous “intellectualism” that is the problem in discussions like this. Let me take what has been said here: As a starting point. First I would like to point out that neither is the same as the system of elements introduced by Plato and Aristotle, but for the sake of developing the discussion I will use that of Aristotle, which unambiguously contains five elements and is often conflated with the yogic one. Second, I would point out the analogical resemblance here to what I said about alchemy and chemistry here: The shared “elements” are earth, water and fire, the Chinese system (It is common to Confucianism too by the way.) adds to these two metal and wood, the Indian system (It is shared by Buddhism also.) has air and akasha, and the system of Aristotle share's air with the Indian system, but has ether instead of space. Now aside from this each of these systems creates “models” of these elements and their interactions and these models are a fundamental part of a paradigm. Models are logical/systemic structures that map out a set of relationships between the elements of the model, thus the Chinese system has the generation/destruction cycle as part of its model. It also has a probably older model based on the four seasons and the earth as center, further behind that is the primary systemic substrate the Trigrams. I am already in a sense simplifying for the sake of discussion and will really not go into the Astronomical cycles which may be part of the background, etc., but limit myself to Chinese five element theory for this discussion. As with Alchemy and Chemistry all of this background means that the apparently common elements are conceptualized very differently within the logical/systemic model of the “Five Elements”, than they are in either the Indian or Aristotelian systems. Despite their similar names, the four elements earth, water, air and fire are also conceived of very differently between the Indian System and Aristotle. Without going to much into detail, I will base this description on the account given by Rama Prasad in The Science of Breath … Nature's Finer Forces, a work published by the Theosophical Society and usually referred to just as Nature's Finer Forces. This book was very influential and was the vehicle by which the “Tattvas” (or tattwas) entered the Golden Dawn system and eventually formed what we might call the “new age” version of elemental theory. In this theory the “elements” are viewed as vibrations which form “solitons” in five standard shapes, each with different properties. These five shapes are the primary tattvas which can be combined, but that is outside of the scope of the discussion. Each of these five have different attributes of which we will focus on these five; to akasha, space, to air, movement, to fire, expansion, to water, contraction, and to earth “cohesive resistance”. These are all well known to people who have studied Bardon for example. Now all of this exists within a bigger context, just as Chinese elementary theory does. Now let us compare this to Aristotle. In Aristotle all manifestation is because of “substantial forms”, which provide all of the attributes of a manifest thing. For the elements the there are four attributes, two primary, heat and cold, and two secondary, moisture and dryness. Every manifest thing on earth will at least to a certain extent manifest these qualities, in their purest form, Fire is hot and dry, Air warm and moist, Water is cold and moist and Earth is cold and dry. Everything that exists on earth will be more or less hot or dry, etc. whatever else it may be. Each of these also has a “natural motion”, Fire and Air rise and Earth and Water descend, that is why the elements have divided themselves up into layers surrounding the earth The fifth, Ether is in a sense the odd man “out”, who does not fit into this because it is not part of the earth, but of the heavens. I won't go much into Ether's qualities, but is natural motion is Circular and is the “cause”of the “circular” motion of the Planets and stars. All of this also exists in a bigger context just as Chinese and Indian element theory does. Now most people just stop here and say, well they can't all be right, but the conclusion to which I came very early, like before I was twenty, was that they could all be right to a certain extent, by which I mean, that if we look at their logical/systemic forms as being like a lens that when it brings somethings into focus, but blurs other things, or like a color filter that separates out "information" about a single color, each of these might be viewed as complementary systems that bring out different aspects of reality, just as the experiments of quantum mechanics brings out the wavelike and particlelike properties of “particles” on very small scale. For some of these it may even be possible to do what I mentioned here in regard to alchemy and chemistry: Which would be like bringing together the results of a red filter and a green filter and a blue filter (RGB) to create a full color picture. This is type of rigorous intellectualism that I have pursued for decades and because it has always been pursued as complementary to practice, rather than being mere mental self-abuse, it has been very fruitful.

Well, that started with the GD, that was the first time the concept was included in 'Hermetic Kabbalah: The attribution of the Sephiroth to the "Body of God" is a relatively early part of Qabalistic symbolism and even if Genesis did not say that Adam was created "in the image and after the likeness" of God, the Microcosm/Macrocosm analogy would have allowed this type of practice at any time in the development of Qabalah or its adaptation to other Western Traditions. I cant find the original GD paper on it at the moment: The document is question is, "On the Work to be undertaken Between Portal and 5-6" that is between the Portal and the Adeptus Minor degree. The actual name of the practice is "The Tree of LIfe in the Aura", and it is nowhere stated that it has anything to do with chakras or or with physical or psychic anatomy. It is that "puddin' headed" new ager Aleister Crowley who probably makes the first association in 777, column CXVIII. It is an extremely useful practice, but my own interpretation is too complex to enter into now and off topic. That is part of the reason I am writing book and need to get back to it. As far as the general direction of this thread, I favor the word of Frater UFA and the spirit of Michael Sternbach. Alchemy has no need of chemistry per se, to use Kuhn's terminology they are two paradigms that have a common set of experiences, but even this common set is interpreted completely differently, a good example is the phenomena of hygroscopy and deliquescence, these are common to both fields, but they are essential to Alchemy and interpreted in a far more profound way than can ever be conceived of in chemistry, which considers them a relatively interesting, but not essential phenomena. Aside from some useful knowledge about possibly improved lab equipment, technique and dangers etc., chemistry contributes relatively little to the practice of alchemy and nothing to its understanding. On the other hand I think it quit possible to create a "meta-chemistry" which could unify them both, but it would be necessary to completely rethink chemistry integrating the ideas of formal and final causes, i.e. the chemical elements as being mathematical forms instantiated in chemical phenomena. This could open up new areas of investigation which might prove useful and reveal a whole set of new phenomena, but would be a very complex process. The world view of Alchemy would contribute more to this than the present worldview of chemistry would. Edit: Changed "not need" to no need.

They are objective and because they are objective you cannot just mix them up willy-nilly and expect to come up with anything of value. I will point to my post here which begins: Unfortunately I was not able to post the intended series due to time factors, but the rest of the post outlines the general idea and should be read. I did however start a series on Formal and Final Causes in Agrippa, which can be found here: Agrippa and Aristotle And which is incomplete, but helpful. The New Pearl of Great Price can be found here: The New Pearl of Great Price on The Alchemy Web Site and in the light of what is said here: From the PDF which is downloaded by the link which Michael posted here: The discussion of Alchemy and the Hermetic tradition begins with section seven, "Alchemy and the Renaissance" and if taken in light of the discussion here: The Sola-Busca Tarot and Alchemy Sheds new light on the importance of The New Pearl of Great Price, which specifically mentions Aristotle's letters on Alchemy and thus ties in with the worldview which apparently is the background to the Sola-Busca Tarot, and in particular that it was intended as a visual treatise, basically a Memory Palace, on "the Art of Rulership" for the Italian ruling class. Of course the letters attributed to Aristotle are not by the historical Aristotle, but that they were attributed to him should indicate the importance of the ideas which Aristotle introduced, such as formal causes, to the whole Alchemical enterprise. This is all I can say for now.

The English edition is of two essays which Hinze characterizes as the "most important" from the German edition of the same title, Theseus Verlag, Zurich, 1976. You may find this, and any other German works he might have, of interest.

Regarding the Chakras and the planets, I posted this awhile ago: Hinze's Tantra Vidya consists of two fascinating essays, one a treatment of the Chakras related to these planetary periods and the other a discussion of the similarities between the Greek philosopher Parmenides and Tantric doctrines. This is an extremely interesting book and analyses the Chakras from the perspective of the Planetary periods as found in Ptolemy. It puts forward the "Chaldean" order of the Planets as found in Gichtel. And yes, even though I said I would not be posting for while (Here, for those that missed it.), I will put in little bits like this from time to time. I cannot enter into a detailed discussion at this time.

Thanks for that, a very interesting post. I did read Republic (well, bits of it) in school, but you are quite right that I did not learn about the One! I find it quite extraordinary that this is the first time I'm hearing of it, actually.. Thanks for that: You and anyone else who may become aware of this for the first time are certainly welcome. So one further small break. Obviously your teacher did not point out this passage in the Republic: And point out that Plato went on to develop these in detail in the Parmenides and that they become the basis a whole school of Western Rational Mysticism. I find it quite extraordinary that this is the first time I'm hearing of it, actually: Unfortunately this is all to common which is one of the reasons why I felt it was necessary to post. Thanks for giving me a great opportunity to do so.

While I have said here that I will not be posting on the Dao Bums for a while to work on writing, here: Yes, I am writing a book. this is an excellent post and reminds me of the way words are use in real Platonism as I have attempted to describe it here: The Plato you didn't learn about in school There are also some interesting passages in the Neiye that indicate that a teaching on the essence of words and their application to "the Art of Ruling" existed. I won't be breaking my creative concentration often, nor will I comment on what I post, beyond saying, "read the rest in my book."