Zhongyongdaoist

This is the Starvation Response, which you can read about here: Starvation Response on Wikipedia In Chinese medicine fasting is generally frowned upon, it weakens the stomach and spleen weakening the digestion, and does nothing for Liver Qi Stagnation. The end result is that since many problems related to Liver Qi stagnation are Liver/Spleen disharmony, one will come out of the fast basically worse off than when one started. Get yourself this book: Between Heaven and Earth Advice which I have given over and over here and learn about Chinese Medicine. It is a good introduction to Chinese therapeutic diet and the basic Chinese Patent Herbal Medicines and also has a very useful self-evaluation questionnaire.

I don't have much time right now, but to address these quickly: There are many ways that it could be used, a standard way that one would begin is by using them as "doorways" to explore the energies and connect with them. On a level of magic, each of the trigrams have correspondences classes and categories in the world, from plants, animals, people, occupations, etc. Using these as a guide one knows what Trigram to use for any particular purpose and also ritual elements that can be used to connect. The Trigrams also have connections with the Nine Stars and the Nine Stars are important in Chinese magic. Jerry Alan Johnson gives traditional "hand seals" for each of the Trigrams and I have found these to be useful ways of connecting, but of course they are not necessary. The Hexagrams themselves can be used to describe an existing situation, either by an analysis based on ones understanding or using divination to get a description, then a Hexagram representing the desired state can be chosen and the changing lines are worked with to create a change. As a cross cultural approach the figures of Geomancy are binary also and consist of four lines, they can be used to represent the "nuclear hexagram" of any hexagram giving you an inner doorway to a situation. There is also an interesting series of illustrations in Jou, Tsung Hwa's The Tao of I Ching, which can be explored. The limitation on these things is ones knowledge, creative imagination and technical expertise. This would require a much longer discussion, but to give a pointer that relates to to what I said above: and refer you to my posts under: Confucian Qi gong I took my Tao Bums name, Zhongyongdaoist from the original Chinese of "The Doctrine of the Mean", Zhongyong.

Excellent summary and more or less what I had in mind when I wrote this: To learn to use the Yi Jing is to learn about the core of Lǐ, 礼, often rendered as "propriety". Proper action is action that is cosmogenic, and aims to promote harmony and restore healthy order, both in the individual and his/her environment. This is what being a Jūn​zǐ, 君子, the "Superior Man" of Wilhelm/Baynes, is all about. It is about living a life from ones personal center in relation to the Absolute. Of course you can also use it for magic.

As I noted a long time ago: Someone seriously interested in magic owes it to their "future" to become both good at divination and to figure out how to apply those systems to magical practice. I would particularly like to emphasize the importance of Geomancy in practical magic. Thanks to Aleister Crowley this system, which was a foundation art of traditional magical practice, doesn't get anywhere near the respect or attention that it deserves and which it will repay handsomely.

Interesting thread Zoom, I have only had time to skim it, but wish I had time to read it in detail and comment more. It was Maxwell whose equations were the writing on the wall, it took Einstein to play Daniel and read them correctly and see their real implications. This is why: They keep trying to interpret the implication of Plank's constant in a bottom up cosmology that no longer appears to work and never really could. Yes, there is profound change coming, but I suspect it is coming more from information theoretical approaches and not from 'string' theory with its eerie resemblance to such failed Nineteenth century theories 'vortex atoms'. I don't have time for further discussion, but will come back to see how Brian and Zoom work this out.

I did a little investigation and apparently all of the public pages are available on Google for a simple search like 'tao bums any user name' and up comes what seems to be a link to all of the posts on the Tao Bums by that user name on public parts of the forum, which does include profile pages and some public features of them like the 'find content' button, but not on protected forums, such as personal pages or the pit, at least as far as I can tell. There do seem to be limits to how much someone who is not signed in can see, and thus limits on nonmembers also.

There was a long discussion of this a while back here: What the hell is the abyss anyways? You might find that an interesting thread to read, though it does start to meander at a certain point. I am very busy right now, if I have time I may reply in more details to some of the recent posts here.

Speak for yourself, not all of us. I long ago made a distinction between Friends and acquaintances. Your friends are people who care about you, your values and your personal integrity as much as you care about them, their values and their personal integrity, anyone else is just an acquaintance. Your friends are people who accept you as the person that you are and not people who want to you to be something else. Ask yourself if you want to give that much power over your actions to your acquaintances and if the answer is yes, then go right ahead, if the answer is no, then stand your ground.

You have a lovely statue and it is very interesting for reasons which I will get to in a moment, but first, Zhenwu's weapon is the Seven Star Sword of the Dipper, he would never be depicted with a weapon like this, anywhere, but especially on Wudang Shan. As for the box it is his seal box and so you have his two major aspects represented here, first as is obvious, his warrior status, and then because of carrying his seal box, it is also his status as a patron of literature. He is sometimes represented as reading the Spring and Autumn Annals and I have have lovely picture on glass which represents this, as Maspero notes, 'He is accompanied by his son, who carries his seal, and by his squire with halberd in hand.' (Henri Maspero, Taoism and Chinese Religion, University of Masschussets Press, 1981, p. 154-5) So you are doubly blessed with this statue representing the highest martial valor as well the cultivation of learning which was a high ideal in Chinese Culture and the inspiration for such later figures as Wang Yangming.

I have looked at some of your recent posts including your astrological chart. Having done so I agree with you, you are very different and you are rare, not many people here are equipped to understand you, but I do. You have the chart of someone who in ordinary life would be a police detective, possibly involved in undercover work, or attracted to special forces or things like that, but you are attracted to magic and the occult, so you will find yourself involved in the magical equivalent. I don't want to discuss the matter in open forum, beyond saying that an 'ethical hex' is an act of tough love, it is not an act of personal revenge, it is done as a last ditch effort to save someone, or a group of someone's who are so lost in power trips that the only thing they understand is power and the only way to get them to respect you, and thus maybe to listen to you, is beat them senseless. Regrettably even that may not reform them, but since it is, or should be a last resort, you know that you have done all you can. The problem is maintaining balance and the right perspective. You need to anchor your 'sky hook' on the highest ontological levels and center yourself in the cosmic center. Anything less is a danger to yourself and others.

This may be the result of confusion between what is a 'new day' to you and to what is a 'new day' to the Tao Bums server software. We are on world time here and one person's 'new day' is another person's bedtime. On a tech level it might be helpful to look at what time the server resets and post that and see if it helps people understand difficulties like this.

Pardon me if I begin as I ended: and give the full quote from which you excise this: "Or, as it refers to above - " in magic it is preferable to use the Sidereal Zodiac."" Which in full read: "for purposes of working with the Arabic Lunar Mansions in magic it is preferable to use the Sidereal Zodiac" I am a stickler for detail, but it is exactly this sense of detail combined with external time constraints which makes the present discussion so frustrating for me and why I felt it necessary to point out the article again. It is about all that I have time for right now and the most useful thing that I could contribute under the overall circumstances. I have noted that you are concerned about Aboriginal star lore and constellations, but what they have to do with Zodiacs is an interesting question, one that has concerned me a lot in my studies in Chinese astrology: Chinese astrology has lots of interesting star lore and at least one of its astrologies, Zi wei dou shu, is pretty much completely a 'star' astrology, with no 'zodiac' involved at all. On the other hand the Chinese do have a well formed Zodiac, as pointed out above, which seems to have very little relation to Chinese stellar cosmology. How these systems relate and how star lore becomes 'astro-nomos' and 'astro-logos', in other words how the primary data of star lore is turned into systems of 'star classification' and 'star logic' is a complex and interesting study. Too many questions, too little time. they are more about the properties of a period of time and not about the properties of a subset of stars occupying a particular position in space: I emphasized this to point out time is as important as space and that astrology is as much about time cycles as geometry and especially in more traditional astrology, those cycles as discrete blocks of time tend to trump planetary positions in space. I prefer to view both space and time as discrete 'sections' of higher dimensional space/time and to interpret astrology as sacred information theory, or in the words of the fundamental metaphor for astrology that I worked out circa 1970, 'astrology is the body language of the Cosmic Mind'. I hope that you and Michael Sternbach, a most welcome new voice here on the Tao Bums, will continue to have a fruitful and interesting discussion. I have simply tried to add to it as best as I can for now.

In my original post here: 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 made the mistake of not posting some of my previous posts on this subject, such as this: or this: These have now been added so that general readers here will realize that if I recommend an article, such as this: Vedic Astrology - critically examined It is because I know a fair amount about the subject and think that the recommended article has much to offer. I am emphasizing this because it doesn't look to me like anyone followed the original link and read the article. In my own case, after reading the above article, I now know that the material which I bolded in the first quote above: is misleading and if you want to know how and in what way you should read the article. My strong point is the history of Western Astrology, as the above quotes from my posts makes clear, but based on the article I would now have to say that the use of Aries to begin the Indian Lunar Mansions is a relatively late practice and not based on the oldest Indian scriptural authority, as I thought it might be: So, zero degrees Aries as the beginning point of the Lunar Mansions and thus the Sidereal Zodiac was chosen much later then the Vedic scriptures, in point of fact after the introduction of Hellenistic Astrology to India. Details can be found in the article and it really is worth the read. I am glad that I found it and took the time to read it. Final note, the last section, 'The Role of the Zodiac in Indian Astrology', addresses some of the concerns raised here about the interpretation of the two Zodiacs in astrology and some interesting points are made. Addressing them might lead to a fruitful discussion, one which I presently do not have time to participate in.

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 went to the site that you mention, I don't have time for a long discussion, but I did find this interesting: Chi Energy and Human Light Photons I am not finished with it, but I do find it interesting, especially the idea of bio-light as being more coherent and emissions in the UV spectrum. None of this is too outrageous, infrared light emissions as 'body heat' are taken for granted and the basis of a lot of current technology. I realized a long time ago that there is quite literally a 'body of light' that permeates our 'physical body', if these people can harness it that could be worth pursuing. In another thread I posted this: If you are not familiar with this book, you may find it an interesting read, especially its discussion of information arrows, the importance of quantum physics in light perception, and quantum mechanics in consciousness. This is just a preliminary note, I have not had time to dig deeply into the site. Thank you for pointing it out.

If you would like a really interesting read try: Physics in Mind, Werner R. Lowenstein Two separate links above by the way. Here you can read about information arrows, quantum sensation and about how Maxwell's demon found work designing quantum molecules, that cleverly exploit the relationship between entropy and information, which Lowenstein calls 'Demon Molecules'. I always knew there was a place for him somewhere in quantumville. Edit: Corrected spelling of molecules and added phrase about entropy and information.

Now that I think about it, George Gamow's One Two Three . . . Infinity, probably helped too.

I think I first read Wilson in the a Gnostica magazine article about Leary's eight brain circuits in the early 1970s. I had already read too much of better literature for him to ever be much of an influence on me and I view him as primarily a popularzer. In my late teens I started viewing reality as a timeline in hyperspace unified by consciousness, that I suppose was my version of 'reality tunnels'. I owed it mostly to Ouspensky's Tertium Organum and a basic understanding of special relativity.

Thank you for reading my post rather than reading into my post. Since you asked about affirmations and not visualizations, I posted about a practice which involves ritual 'affirmations' and not visualizations. Nor are these explicitly 'self-suggestions', which if I were to use them would be in a nifty NLP inspired form such as 'I truly can see (visual), feel (kinesthetic), experience (summarizing principle sensory modalities) and believe (intention) that all my channels are open and qi flows smoothly through them'. The language is ritual language, which especially in Daoist ritual has a quality which is best characterized as 'affirmation' and a certain poetic allusiveness, which is completely lacking in a straight forward 'suggestion'. The notion involved in ritual speech is rather more the idea of the creative power of the word, then the idea of 'self-suggestion', though most people would be happy to reduce it to such. Their loss, not mine. As you note the practice has nothing to do with the chakras, but deals with the channels/meridians, since you didn't ask about practices to open chakras, but about those related to the channels, I posted about a practice that relates to the channels, but deals with them in a wider context. Even the three dan, which are implicitly dealt with as part of the 'triple burner' channel, are not chakras in the commonly used sense of the word. I have a technique for 'opening' the chakras, but that is not what I posted about. It doesn't involve visualization either, we're back to the creative power of the word again. I worked it out in the late 80s, its language is not Daoist and I wouldn't call the verbal formulae affirmations. You asked about dangers, I dealt with that as much as I could. As to their benefit and purpose, that is too large a question to be dealt with here. To address rainbowvein's suggestion: Consider the practice I have referred to, if practiced for oneself as like a visit to the gym, if done for another then like going to a physical therapist or masseuse, both can be part of a healthy lifestyle, the question is one of whether you integrate them or not.

Yes it is quite possible to do this. In the late 90s I worked out a technique which I have described here: and here: The verbal style used far better described as an affirmation than anything else and I have no objections to using that word to describe it. It also uses traditional Daoist 'mudra' hand positions and other aspects of Daoist cosmology/anatomy, as well as the verbal part. I have never observed bad effects from using it on myself or others, who reported the experience as energizing to say the least, though they had enough experience and sensitivity to actually feel the effect. I don't think that anyone starting out with this is likely to have problems because at first the effect will be slight and by the time they are advanced enough to have a strong effect, their previous efforts should have cleared things up enough that there should be no bad effect. At the time I undertook this I already had decades of experience behind me, so my own good results may not be typical. When I was still teaching I used to use this to help my students. I have sometimes thought of offering it as a service to others, the one time I did do it long distance worked very well according to the person for whom I did it.

I really don't think that you want a serious response to this and I don't feel like wasting my time to give one either. It does invite some serious lampooning, but I will refrain from that also. Instead I will open a door to the historical context without which there could have been no 'hippies' and no 'new age'. Ladies and Gentleman, Boys and Girls, welcome to the wonderful world of: Romanticism This is the real source of the Tao Bums. When you know enough history to follow its roots and branches, back into the Eighteenth and through the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, one discovers a very weird and twisted tree, but it is also easy to see its flowers and fruits all over the Tao Bums.

You left out the Theosophy Society, but I guess that was just karma.

Personally, I rather agree with a position more like what Seth Ananda describes here, though that is rather more based on my study of Platonism than Qabalah, and while I studied many flavors of Qabalah, forty and more years ago, I could not say for sure whether this is the Lurianic Qabalah or not. On the other hand: I spent a lot of time in the early Seventies with Mather's Kabbalah Unveiled, an English translation of Knorr von Rosenroth's Seventeenth Century translation of certain key texts of the Zohar into Latin and available online here: Mather's, The Kabbalah Unveiled And I quote from that source: I can assure you that the notions of the Qliphoth go back to the Zohar and the Middle Ages. As can be seen there is mention of an averse Tree and a hierarchy of demons. That is from the introduction, but is traditional, however the Zoharic texts are not that detailed in their discussion, but rather deal with the basic doctrine: and Also Daath and the word 'abyss' can be found in the index of the book, but is not online and I cannot summarize those contents here, except to say that the word 'abyss' is used several ways. This book was first published in 1888 and was probably considered authoritative within the Golden Dawn, though there were also some 'esoteric' order teachings which are very interesting, but nothing like Crowley. Crowley, his followers and inheritors, certainly freely extrapolated on these. All of these issues are way more complext than my short notes would imply.

The search 'quantum weirdness in biology' produced this site: Quantum Weirdness in Life, Quantum Biology among others and may lead you in the right direction.

I suspect such things, both hell and karma arise out of a sense of justice. People need to feel that what they perceive as wrongs are righted, hell and karma serve two purposes, the assurance that all wrongs will be righted and also provide a socially approved story to discourage wrong doing in the first place, the moral of which is that 'crime doesn't pay', in the long run you never get away with anything.