Zhongyongdaoist
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Everything posted by Zhongyongdaoist
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Calling all magickians.....
Zhongyongdaoist replied to wallum's topic in Esoteric and Occult Discussion
This effect is a main part of why I teach people magic through drawing and all of magic stems from a generalization and extension of this effect. What is a drawing, it is a representation of something. What is a talisman or a symbol, it is a representation of something. What is a ritual, it is a representation of something. And what is the world in which we live, move and have our being, in the Platonic perspective on which such magic as that of Agrippa is based, it is a representation of of "the mind of God", a phrase which I use hesitantly, but is more likely to convey the idea then more technical formulations. To connect with the creative power of art, is to connect with the creative power of the universe. This level of concentration is not necessary to practice magic, but you already know that. You can probably already do most of Winger talks about, you just need to extend it. However it is useful to get better control of the mind. The brain doesn't like concentrating on one thing which is why your simple shapes go "wacko", it just takes time to learn that control and for you there may be better methods to achieve it, too many for me to give details now. Unseen_Abilities posted this while I was working on the above: A sigil is just a representation of something, Agrippa talks about them. They entered modern magic as a separate technique largely through the work of Austin Osman Spare as popularized by Kenneth Grant and others. Demystifying magic is great and stripping it down is good as long as one really knows what can be stripped away and what should be left in place. Just how simple it can be can be seen from this from Agrippa's Third book of Occult Philosophy: I quote this because there is a misapprehension among modern magicians that older magic is full of long winded and unnecessary rituals. While holding fast to a single technique many babies have been tossed out with the bath water. -
Chinese Astrology predates the introduction of Buddhism and is constructed on a different set of cycles than Western astrology. Chinese astrology takes it basic time scale from the 20 year Saturn/Jupiter cycle, the twelve year Jupiter cycle and the eight year Sun/Venus cycle, these provide the time periods which are the basis of Chinese Astrology. While the Animal Zodiac is well known the adaptation of those names is relatively late, but grafted onto an earlier system. I posted some useful leads here: I hope that this is helpful.
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Do you mean this one: The above quote is rather bias to say the least. Originally I was going to quote from some of my earlier posts on the Tao Bums, but doing a little more online research I found this long, but well reasoned and informative article: Vedic Astrology - critically examined It is well worth the read and the author's astrological and academic credentials are above reproach: Dieter Koch I don't suppose you mean this one do you? I have studied both Chinese and Western Astrology and both are interesting and I think basically complementary systems. I wish I could post more here, but I don't have the time right now, earlier on I did post a little about Chinese Astrology and elsewhere I have posted on Yijing astrology also, but not in the detail I might wish.
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Calling all magickians.....
Zhongyongdaoist replied to wallum's topic in Esoteric and Occult Discussion
As I said, I found it very useful. Modern magicians end up messed up more by the flaws in the new-magical worldview and their own egos. Recently I have been reviewing the practice and will have more to say about it later, but as I said I am short of time. I have spent too much time in the past few days posting on Confucianism and can't put too much time in here now. Regarding training visualization etc., here is an approach to training the 'internal senses' that influenced me circa 1980: Tao Bums thread on Win Wenger started by thelearner Since 1980 I have taught people how to visualize by teaching them to draw using Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. This manages to kill several little birdies with one stone, visualization, concentration, meditation and contemplation. My idea of teaching through art goes back to the early 70s when I was working in the idea of astrological images as part of a system of meditation/self-awareness, but a good book on drawing did not really exist until Edwards book appeared. This is all I have time for now. -
Calling all magickians.....
Zhongyongdaoist replied to wallum's topic in Esoteric and Occult Discussion
My, my, . . .what did magicians do before they had Aleister Crowley to tell them all about yoga, and where would Crowley be if he hadn't climbed mountains with Oscar Eckenstein? Crowley himself practiced magic before he met Eckenstein, by his own account successfully, but he just didn't have the power of concentration that Eckenstein chided him about it. Indeed his evocation of the goetic spirit that he thought 'spirited' Allen Bennett off to the sunny climb of then Ceylon to 'cure' his asthma, was before he started such practices. What did he do back then? You don't suppose he practiced Golden Dawn style magic do you? On a serious note, listen carefully to anything BaquaKicksAss says about magic, I would say it is worth its weight in gold, but unfortunately that wouldn't be saying much, so just treasure her insights, even if they don't weigh very much. Right now I don't have much time to say more, but I couldn't resist the opportunity to make Crowley the subject of my own amusement and to praise the insight of an accomplished practitioner. I hope to have more time in a few weeks, and can weigh in more at that time, though I will for now say that I did an awful lot of practice of the Middle Pillar exercise based on Israel Regardie's The Art of True Healing in my late teens in the late Sixties. It was very useful, but after that I went very far afield. More later, I hope. Edit: Changed it to if in "even if they don't weigh much". -
Are you more or less suggestible during meditation?
Zhongyongdaoist replied to HoldorFold's topic in General Discussion
This is an anecdote about Alfred Korzybski that I posted Here, that I think is more relevant to this topic then suggestion and hypnosis: This does not readily fit into a paradigm of hypnosis or suggestion, but it does seem to have a ready relevance to what you are describing. Fully aware of what I am doing, dare I call this an excellent 'suggestion'? Four Stars out of a possible Five and might gain the extra Star if 'bin trucks come emptying huge loads of trash outside' means that they are emptying neighborhood trash bins and taking the trash away, or he lives near a dump and this is the sound of trash being deposited in his neighborhood. Only HoldorFold can tell us. Either way, its a good suggestion and one with a lot of applicability. I don't have much time now, but I may post more related to this later. -
do you know if any of the Guodian texts shed light on these matters as well? The Wikipedia Article on the Wuxing texts: Apendices Two and Three of Csikszentmihalyi's book are translations and Commentaries on the Goudian and Mawangdui WÇ”xÃng respectively. Here is the abstract of the other English reference cited in Wikipedia notes: don't some people consider the Nie Yeh at least partially "Confucian"? I do for one: A nice piece of polemical writing, but my position is the result of reading Mencius, Waley and Graham as I note on my site: Reading List Two is also worth a read if you want to know a little about the background of my own ethical theories. In my "Commentary on the Ming Te Mandala", which is my Tao Bums avatar, I give specific references for Waley: Most of these quoted works of mine are an odd mixture of Pinyin and Old School transliteration. They are definitely in need of some revision. I hope this is helpful. I was rather rushed in preparing this, my apologies for any errors and is also the reason for quoting from my own site, I don't have time to rewrite all of this for a post here. Edit: Corrected "Csikszentmihalyi's book" above.
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You're welcome manitou and thank you for your acknowledgement, I wish that I had more time to devote to this subject right now, but I don't. To return for a moment to this: The Confucian use of these ideas is quit old, Mark Csikszentmihalyi has written an excellent study of its roots in late Waring State, Qin and early Han, called Material Virtue; Ethics and the Body in Early China (Brill, 2004): Regrettably out of the reach of most people, but those interested might try inter-library loan.
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I wish you would put in references. I am already familiar with this site, but for most people this post would be a dead end (Though if they know how to toggle between HTML code and the HTML interpreter they would find the URL for the link.). The diagram comes from here: Chapter Four of Ten Diagrams of Sage Learning by Yi T'oegye From a translation and commentary by by Michael Kalton of a fascinating work that was originally written as a treatise on rulership for a Korean King. It is an excellent source for the study of several important texts and the start of it can be found here: To Become a Sage It is a free internet version of a book published by Columbia University Press in 1988.
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Of course Taurus has a spiritual side, very few of them would express it by posting on online forums, which is what is being measured here, not the relative spirituality of the signs. Taureans would have trouble grasping why people would want to spend all of this time talking about being spiritual, rather than being spiritual. It would be like phone sex, another thing they don't understand.
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Are you more or less suggestible during meditation?
Zhongyongdaoist replied to HoldorFold's topic in General Discussion
The primary difference between hypnosis and meditation is the state of rapport that must exist between the hypnotist and the hypnotic subject. Except in 'guided meditation' this is not an issue. On the other hand in a guided meditation scenario the rapport that should exist between the guide and the people being guided is part of the process. In short it is the rapport that makes for suggestibility and not the 'alpha' state. People who are in rapport can make a lot of suggestions to each other without even realizing it. Practitioners of Neuro-Linguqistic Programming use this all the time, it is called pacing and leading. I hope that this is helpful. -
Analect Four - Daily Introspection
Zhongyongdaoist replied to ChiDragon's topic in Confucian Philosophy
I have said elsewhere several times that I 'believe' that the most profound and useful form of introspection and self-inquiry is the inventory of beliefs. To take advantage of what Manitou has posted take an inventory of all the things that you do believe and then assume that you are wrong about them. Then take an inventory of everything that you don't believe and then assume that you are wrong about them. Then ask yourself why do I believe this, why don't I believe that. It's no good saying that 'so and so', whether great mystic, prophet or teacher said it, because then you have to ask why do I believe what they said. You can't say that it is scientific, or 'church' doctrine because then you have to answer why do you believe that science or the 'church' can be considered authoritative. Eventually you come down to the decisions that you have made about what you believe and why you believe it. Some people try to short circuit this process by saying "I don't believe it, I know it", but then the question is 'Why do you believe that you know it?' and what beliefs do you have about 'knowledge' that allows you to claim it? I could go on, but I have said enough to get the general point across, however, I anticipate a criticism that such an inquiry is all about words and beliefs and I should get 'out of my head and into my heart and belly.' Since I have recently had reason to mention General Semantics on the Tao Bums and have mentioned it elsewhere in the past, I will quote an interesting story told about its founder Alfred Korzybski: 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. -
Analect Four - Daily Introspection
Zhongyongdaoist replied to ChiDragon's topic in Confucian Philosophy
Welcome to the Tao Bums. In regard to this: You may find the discussion here of interest: Confucian Qi Gong -
I agree with this: When I first read the Tao Te Ching almost fifty years ago I took the first verse to be an ancient version of the fundamental axiom of General Semantic, 'the map is not the territory' and also as anticipating the wider implications of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. It talks only about the inadequacy of names as anything other than convenient labels. A name can be merely a label and does not necessarily involve a 'mental construct', however the historical context in which this chapter was written is 'the rectification of names' a movement in China that attempted to bring names and the act of naming in to a system which made them unambiguous, to create names that were more descriptors and which communicated something of the nature of the named in the name, thus removing the cause of misunderstandings. This chapter is a reminder of the difficulties of such an endeavor.
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Keep Mantak Chia's book and save it for later, which reminds me of one of my favorite English Beat songs, but be that as it may, moving meditation is the best way to learn to sense qi. When I was starting out there was next to nothing available and I had to make do with some books, insight and creativity. One of the things that helped was to think of qi as a field like an electromagnetic field and my body as like the coils in a generator, motion through the field induced qi flow as motion in an electromagnetic field produced produced current flow in a generator. I took some of the moves from 'Tai Chi Ch'uan' and started repeating them instead of doing them as part of a longer set. Later I found 'Tai Chi ruler', which is based on the same idea: Good luck.
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Being a comedian requires being intelligent, not only do you need to be able to 'think outside of the box', you have to understand enough about people to lead them outside the box in a way that they find funny. Since they psychologists are materialists, anything that disagrees with materialism is ipso facto a disease. Healthy monkeys are materialist monkeys. Its OK to be open minded, as long it falls within the purview of a materialist worldview. See above. It's just tingling from anomalies in the blood circulation, 'tis this and nothing more'. Ask any materialist physiologist. They are not necessarily intellectual, but definitely quick thinkers, but with the general improvement in educational opportunities more contemporary comedians intellectual then say fifty or more years ago. There is a real difference between being smart and being crazy. The smart ones know what's inside the box and what is outside the box. The 'crazy' ones don't. I posted a little about my theory of humor here: Zhongyongdaoist's Limitless Mischief Machine Which unfortunately is not accessible to our guests, but those of our members who haven't read it might find it interesting.
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Are you 'skeptical' of your 'skepticism'? Or is your 'skepticism' simply the result a set of unexamined beliefs about the world that are common in our culture? A real skeptic questions all beliefs, most particularly those that are taken for granted. Someone who simply doubts because they uncritically accept the common set of 'materialistic', 'scientific' beliefs about the world and our place in it, are stuck in a worldview from about 1900 that is no longer 'scientific', the intervening century having destroyed its very basis. If this belief system is the basis of your 'skepticism', you have already been 'suckered'. Feel free to grow out of it.
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Don't have much time right now but how about the: Du Channel The nose is important in Daoist meditation and has a 'body god/shen' of its own which is invoked in certain practices.
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spells that always work
Zhongyongdaoist replied to nine tailed fox's topic in Esoteric and Occult Discussion
You're welcome Nungali. It's just that you were posting on the Tarot and some other things like a Thelemic fundamentalist again and not like the thoughtful intelligent person that I know is there somewhere. Regarding your more serious questions I am as usual a little stuck for time, but I look at the whole question of the Golden Dawn as an emergent phenomena. Interestingly, I think the transition point can be pinpointed rather exactly, but that also means that what came before is not as important as how the new emergent system integrates it. I hope to have more time in a few weeks and then maybe I can post more on this. Great tats by the way. Have they helped your romantic life? -
spells that always work
Zhongyongdaoist replied to nine tailed fox's topic in Esoteric and Occult Discussion
Well, at least now you are quoting good sound Golden Dawn doctrine and Proverbs (Proverbs xxvi. 12.) also, and I hope that you are know you are, and aren't quoting from Crowley's plagiarized and lightly edited version, the LIBER LIBRÆ, SVB FIGVRA, XXX , Equinox, 1, p. 17, thinking that it is something that Crowley actually wrote. If so I am not sorry to disillusion you, but check it out for yourself at this site: SOCIETAS ROSICRUCIANA IN AMERICA It is from an instruction of the Golden Dawn Practicus grade, 'On the General Guidance and Purification of The Soul' If you thought that Crowley actually wrote it, then I counter your counter with this: and this: and hope that the exorcism is successful. -
Exorcist_1699 has given a good starting point for the rooting of the virtues in the body and the relation of Confucian cultivation to TCM. I remembered that I had a long post about basic Confucian principles in conflict resolution which may be a useful starting point in applying these ideas to social interactions. The context is advice to use the Yi Jing in conflict resolution, thus the discussion of Yi Jing in the post: I hope this is helpful.
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Ah yes, the joy of Roddy Piper in one of his finest roles.
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Divination, What do you use, what do you practice?
Zhongyongdaoist replied to thelerner's topic in General Discussion
Yes, with Baqua Zhang you can definitely "walk the walk". -
Divination, What do you use, what do you practice?
Zhongyongdaoist replied to thelerner's topic in General Discussion
You are most certainly welcome. Discovering the Confucian Dao was one of the happiest discoveries of my life. I wish it had made that discovery about age thirty rather than fifty! I strongly recommend the works of Tu Weiming. Especially Humanity and Self-Cultivation, which came to my hands in an odd manner, and was of inestimable benefit. I don't have time for that story now. I am glad you are reading the Doctrine of the Mean, it is a wonderful book and in many ways the key to Confucian magic and Alchemy. Two things that have probably never occurred to most people. I prefer to call Zhongyong "Concentrating/focussing (on/in) the Center". Good luck. -
I am glad that you took my advice: and wish I had more time now to address these issues: Time constraints were one of the reasons I had to stop posting before and are part of the reason I cannot post here in detail now, but I will refer you to: Daxue Zhongyong These are the two of Zhuxi's Four Books that are most understandable to modern readers. The site where these versions are located is A. Charles Muller's excellent site: Resources for East Asian Language and Thought If I find time I will post more, thanks to exorcist_1699, both for starting this thread and for bringing it back to the surface again today.
