Zhongyongdaoist

I hate to agree with "alwayson" in pubic but: is, as he says in a round about way, not correct: For reasons that "C T" has made clear: In the ideal situation there are no "two minds" only the "enlightened nature", to which the guru has already awakened and which if all goes well, the disciple will also. Of course that is the ideal situation. I suspect it can go wrong. Now, can we get back to New Age bashing before I have to report you guys to a moderator? You Buddhist will do anything to get out of the Buddhist forum. The last two sentences, Just kidding of course. Edits: Added a comma, corrected "make" to "made" in "has made clear". Rushed as usual.

Sham-Wow, Thanks for posting this link! I have visited the site many times and it is certainly interesting, kind of a South East Asian (SEA) Petite Albert, it is a trove of interesting information ranging from natural magic spells to Daoist Thunder Magic. To really appreciate this a person does need a good background in practical magic and I also think that the blogger should have banner in big letters that reads "Kids, don't try this at home!". Aside from that the blogger's English is good and the posts entertaining and informative about popular magical practices in a very magical part of this big world. Thanks again and welcome to the Tao Bums.

When this topic first appeared I did not have much time to respond, but I did think that a simple reframe might be useful. This is roughly like asking a group of martial artists, please post your techniques that always work, or a group of doctors, please post your medicines or operations that always work. The response will be basically the same. Oh no martial art technique works all the time, opponents are different, what is the skill level of the persona applying the technique, etc. The doctors will answer in a similar way. Most people posting here have in one one way or another addressed these issues, but someone reading them might think that were just dancing around the fact that magic is unreliable in itself, which it is not, but it is also not different from several other important practical endeavors like martial arts and medicine. That said, one of the most useful practical procedures I ever used is called in the US, "uncrossing". The name has its origin in the voodoo traditions, particularly the New Orleans traditions. The root concept is that uncrossing is lifting a curse, a person who had been cursed was referred to as "crossed", meaning that one of the Ghuede, the spirits of death and the the dead, whose fundamental symbol was the grave cross, had been invoked and set upon the victim, thus the need to "uncross" the victim. As I studied the uncrossing procedures, the ingredients in the oils and powders, candles and other things used, I noticed that they were all as much healing as anything else and came up with another metaphor for crossed, "crossed" wires, "crossed" connections and things like that. Whatever else one may do in regard to a curse, such as sending it back, etc. the real essence is helping the victim, this is what uncrossing does. Uncrossing as healing quickly became a fundamental part of my approach to spell casting. Here is an example: so and so has broken up with their heart's desire, so and so will die if they do not get heart's desire back, rather doing a love spell, you do an uncrossing, if they are "destined" for each other, their relationship will be healed and they will reunite and live happily ever after, if they are not "destined", then so and so meets new and probably much better heart's desire and wonders what they ever saw in ex heart's desire, problem solved. Maybe even ex heart's desire finds someone more suitable too. Take money, always start by uncrossing a person's money, not with a money spell. The uncrossing will open things up and then one may go ahead with a money spell if that seems appropriate, with the ground cleared by the uncrossing, the money spell will work much more effectively. Uncrossing just about never fails, in the rare cases in which it does, then it acts like a diagnostic and will often reveal the direction in which one needs to go, maybe the person really needs a curse lifted, that will become apparent too. I hope that people find this interesting and useful.

http://www.adrianrasmussen.com/yeh-ming-ju/what-is-yeh-ming-ju-and-ye-meng-zhu/ Very interesting, thanks silent thunder. The above link has an interesting article.

I just noticed a new member to the Tao Bums. He posts as Dr_D, here is from his profile page: http://thetaobums.com/user/109824-dr-d/ Though I have often posted on Sifu Jerry Alan Johnson and defended him and his work in my posts here, I am not one of his students, nor do I know any personally, but I have done so because I believed based on his work that he deserved both respect and recognition. We are lucky on the Tao Bums to have Dr_D here now to be a more official representative and personally, I am happy that I won't have to post nice things about Sifu Johnson anymore, not that I intend to start posting bad ones. Please be sure to encourage Dr_D to be active here and give us lots of the inside scoop on the High Mysteries of Daoist Magic and Alchemy.

I hope you didn't you bad hard headed skeptic you!(Insert smiley face of choice, I hate those things, though their judicious use might save me some problems.) Since first coming to The Tao Bums I have thought that a real presence from Dr. Johnson's school would be a benefit here. In particular I remember a very biased and self-serving account of a meeting with him that was posted. I don't think that it is up anymore and the poster no longer posts on the Tao Bums. I didn't reply because all I could do was speculate about aspects of this person's account and I did not think that would be productive. I saw Dr_D's other post under Talismans on the Taoist Forum. I originally posted this in General Discussion because I thought that finally having someone who could authoritatively answer any questions about Dr. Johnson's teachings, lineage and methods was a matter of general interest. It was moved here during the night and I just found it again myself a little while ago. Here it won't quite serve the purpose that I had intended, but if a lot of people take note of his arrival and welcome him, then he maybe he will realize how much he is needed.

The definition you offer of Theurgy is not mine, so I am not bound to it, I will however take a little time to address some of the issues which you raise. I find the definition way too pious and it misses part of the sheer hermitic "cheekiness" involved in the term theurgy, which should be viewed in this way: theurgy is the the inverse of demiurgy. Demiurgy is the making of people and refers to the actions which Plato describes in his Timaeus in which the “Demiurge”, literally “people maker”, creates the human soul as part of a class of souls that includes the gods. He then turns over the creation of mortal bodies to the “secondary causes”, so that these bodies can be mortal and destructible and not indestructible and at least relatively immortal like the soul. Theurgy then is "god making", in which the mortal inhabitants of this world, who have been gifted with the art, make the material bodies of the Gods. This is detailed in the Hermetic work Asclepius, or Perfect Sermon, a work named after its principle interlocutor with Hermes. A theurgist is literally a “god maker”, an idea which poor, perhaps overly pious, Asclepius, finds hard to accept. The details can be found here: http://hermetic.com/texts/hermetica/asclepius1.html I could tell you where to find exact passages, but you and other people might benefit from finding them yourselves. In the relevant passages, there are at least two of great importance, where this hermetic author basically turns Xenophanes criticism of the anthropomorphism of the gods on its head and makes it instead a celebration of the kinship between the encosmic gods and man, thus the Hermetic cheekiness of it all. There is more I could say about it, but I am infringing on OldChi's territory as it is. If you read my reply to him you will see why I will not post anything about or comment on my experiences. As for what I consider to be self perfection, I find it best represented in the Mencian branch of Confucianism as interpreted within the context of Zhuxi's “Four Books”. This core and other aspects of Confucian and Daoist thought and practice, is then in turn interpreted within the framework of the Platonic tradition, particularly as explicated by Plotinus, but not neglecting either Iamblichus, for his development of the religious and magical aspects of Platonism, or the profound thought of Proclus, who in many ways brings it all together. For want of a better term I call it Confucian Neo-Platonism. A term which because of the misunderstanding of both of these profound schools of thought is probably more misleading than helpful, but that is the best that I can offer in this small a compass. On a level of practice I have humorously described it as Cornelius Agrippa meets the Golden Dawn in Medieval China, which includes the Daoist magical and alchemical meditative practices which I have integrated into it. It is much less of a hodge-podge then it probably sounds on first hearing, since the Golden Dawn Temple and the Daoist Dan turn out to be complementary formal systems. I hope that you find all of this sufficiently edifying, I don't have time to say much more now.

OldChi, I don't know what your problem is with an “armchair practitioner”, one could do a great deal of say, Bardonian training and magic in an armchair. I have done some myself, though my present mode is seated in a lotus posture, not in an armchair of course, it is hard to do a lotus in an armchair, with my cute and adorable Chinese style short sword across my knees with the pummel cupped in my right had which forms the sword mudra and the tip of its scabbard cupped in my left hand in such a way that my left thumb is free to trace out star stepping and trigram patterns according to the Houtu or the twelve earthly branches on my fingers according to the Daoist old school single handed mudras. This has been my preferred form for about fifteen years. Though I do others depending on what style I am practicing. Oh, but excuse me, perhaps you meant to type “armchair occultist”! A very pejorative term for a person who is all talk and no action. It's a good thing I am not and never really have considered myself an occultist, otherwise I might think that you intend to characterize me as such and be offended. If I had to describe the odd combination of science nerd and budding magician that I was in my teens, I would have to call myself an occult scientist, because my whole approach was strongly conditioned by the type of dialectic between theory and practice which characterizes the scientific method. As such my research program and the hows and whys of what studies I pursued and practices which I performed were never understood, much less appreciated by my “occultist” friends. There are probably people here who don't and maybe can't understand them either. I have stated elsewhere as part of a long series of posts, that I consider theory and practice inseparable. I choose to post on the Tao Bums almost exclusively on historical and theoretical issues because there are not many people who can do it well and there are important issues of theory and history which are completely misunderstood. I have only so much time to post here and I chose to post on what I consider is most important. On the other had there are is a lot of posting on the internet of the experiences of people who may be fools, madmen and/or just plain liars. I will not pour my experiences into such a polluted stream. Then there are the comments of people who, like the children of the King of Siam, mock their poor English tutor for trying to educate them about ice and snow, until their Father the King enters and allows as how he has seen such things himself, thus settling the issue. Who is to be the King of Siam here? Who will silence the mocking chatter of the children? It is useless to share ones experiences with people who live in their little tiny hermit crab shells and fancy that they know everything that there is to know. I write the way I do, about the things I do, so that anyone can check sources out for themselves. I write in a logical well formed style to demonstrate that these matters can be dealt with reasonably and that my posts are not the incoherent blathering of someone who has not taken their "meds" today. If someone wishes to disregard what I say because they make the mistake of believing that it is not the fruit of hard won experience, as well as deep and profound study, that is their loss, not mine.

I can only assume that this is in reference to myself, though maybe I have missed something and my idol Donald Tyson is now posting among us. If this is intended for me then thank you for your vote of confidence. I don't take compliments well. In person I have a modesty that certainly does not come through in my serious writing, which I believe should be written in a style as authoritative as one can manage. In person I am prone to dismissing complements with a little self deprecating humor, such as my comment about Mr. Chicken. Not knowing how to reply is my only defense for taking so long in acknowledging your generous comment. Edit: Sometime back a person referred to my reference to Donald Tyson as my idol as if had meant it seriously, I was being very facetious, I have elsewhere on the Tao Bums been extremely critical of him, summoning as much politeness as I can, I consider him a pompous, pretension twit.

As a person who spent many hours pondering the Zohar, the Aesch Mezareph and other esoteric works ostensibly based on the Bible, I came to a conclusion similar to, but not exactly the same as: That much was being read into the Bible and much taken out of it, but little read out of it. Granting that there is much of interest and also inspirational value there, there remains the interesting question of whose Bible, because as a prime example, the Roman Catholic Bible includes books, usually referred to as the Apocrypha, which were excised from Protestant versions and the Coptic Bible, as I recall, even includes more of these texts such as the books attributed to Enoch. That the "Old Testament" is a "cut and paste" job assembled from several texts by different authors writing in different periods for different purposes, still comes as news to most people, though it has been know to Bible scholars for about two hundreds years. A good introduction to this is Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliot Friedman. After one reads this it is hard to view the Bible as the real source for something like Qabalah, though a lot of effort has gone into making look like it is. In many ways the same can be said of the "New Testament" as a composite work, much gone over and for sometimes conflicting purposes. As a suggestion which you might find interesting for the surviving "Great Granddaddy" of Biblical Esotericism, you might look into Philo of Alexandria, whose voluminous writings survive intact and are available in various versions, including as I recall, a Loeb Classical Library version. All that said I will go back to echoing your original post "words and sections from the Bible really have a lot of depth and power behind them" and add that for a work so varied in its origins, I find that there is an odd coherence to it, for which I have no explanation beyond the concept of "emergence", an idea as nebulous as it is fascinating.

OldChi, I hope that you won't mind if, first I decline your challenge and second I borrow your thread for a moment to talk about: The reason for the first is because of I am of that old school that believes that discretion in these matters is important and as such I limit myself to long, boring, but informative, well least to the patient, posts on history and theory. Well at least I hope that they are informative, to the patient, at least. How old of an old school it is can be gleaned from the fact that this summer marks the fiftieth anniversary of my making the acquaintance of “that guy Dantalian” aforementioned. Yes, fifty years ago as a lad of twelve I bought A. E. Waite's The Book of Ceremonial Magic. Nowadays that might not seem unusual, but in those old pre Harry Potter days it definitely marked one out as rather odd. In those ancient pre internet times you also actually had to go to a bookstore! Yes, a real brick and mortar bookstore, preferably large ones with bookshelves that went high over the head of adults much less kids, such as myself, the heights of which could only be scaled by ladders which could be repositioned along the shelves. Books like Waite's and Crowley's Magick in Theory and Practice, which I bought the next week, always had prices of $10.00 printed on the dust jacket, but in practice were always marked down to $4.95. This seems modest today, but correcting for inflation since 1963, it's more like fifty or more of today's dollars. So, that's how old school I am. As for the second and Dantalian, all the spirits that taught something were of interest to me and there was something odd about the description of Dantalian who “appears in the form of a man with many faces of men and women.” (Waite op. cit. p. 219) Which brings us back to our esteemed new member, Esteam'd Punk's interest in Dantalian. Since she seems a bright young woman, I thought I might introduce her to the work of a bright older woman, Sarah Rappe, who in her essay Self-knowledge and subjectivity in the Enneads in The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus has a very interesting discussion on Plotinus' using the image of a sphere as an object of contemplation. It begins on p. 261 and ends on page 262 this way: This is a curious presentiment of the appearance of Dantalian isn't it? Her note 33 refers us to VI.7.15.25-26 Which as everyone knows means: VI Ennead Six, On the Kinds of Being 7 Seventh Chapter, On How the Multitude of Forms came into Being and on the Good 15 is the subsection of Chapter Seven 25-26 are the lines in the original Greek which faces the English from which I will quote at length to give it context: In reponse to Esteam's Punk's request: I recommended my thread "Theurgia-Goetia, on Gods and Demons", from which I will now quote: And now a certain method to my madness may be clear. Obviously Plotinus is not referring to meditation on Dantalian, but rather to divine being itself, Dantalian is just such a “dim and distant reflection” as I mentioned above. The many spirits of the Goetia have appearances that are images of natural things or their supernatural equivalents in the case of spirit 37, Phoenix. Where would such an image as Dantalian come from? Somehow or other I don't think that the authors of the Goetia and the collections which proceeded it had a copy of Plotinus sitting around to inspire them. It is a curious mystery. To conclude, Plotinus himself concludes saying, “one must become that, and make oneself the contemplation.” Weeeeeell, Esteam'd Punk, now you have a mystery to embrace, I don't know whether it will save you any brain ache though. OldChi, I hope you and others find the above interesting enough that it makes up both for its length and its being rather off topic. Edit: I realized when I got up this morning that I had been unwittingly misspelling OldChi's handle as Old Qi, roughly, but not exactly the same. No offense was intended and I hope none was taken.

The post which follows is a reply to a post that appeared in Apech's Ancient Egyptian symbols thread (http://thetaobums.com/topic/26848-ancient-egyptian-symbols/?p=405379). Apech suggested that it be moved and I am copying it here as a new topic, as I mentioned I might in my response to him. It is an attempt to clear up misconception related to gods and demons and the process of demonization that occurred in the Hellenistic period. It deals tangentally with matters of Theurgy and Goetia. There are some interesting cross cultural references in it. If I have time I will endeavor to reply to questions on its content or the content of the posts which it references. Unfortunately because of time constraints, I cannot guarantee a response at all, much less a timely one.

Well... since you ask... and since you are interested in Dantalian, you might try this: http://thetaobums.com/topic/27141-theurgia-goetia-on-gods-and-demons/ But there are lots of interesting threads here.

"Jest" checking.

You mean like this? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ghost_of_a_Flea, no emphasis needed, ZYD)

The world is a funny place isn't it? He always replies with something cryptic: He already replied something cryptic by giving you the banana chips. Now, is there a scientific explanation: Not yet but there are faint echoes from the future that indicate there will be. My verdict, not a hallucination. By the way you could have posted it in General Discussion, but thanks for posting it here, this little corner of The Tao Bums needs as many treads as it can, being a bit "thread bare" you might say. Also, I like your moniker, E'steamed Punk, rich! Welcome to The Tao Bums.

With all due repect: There is nothing inherently "irrational" about the Microcosm/Macrocosm doctrine. In the West it arises as an explanation for how knowledge is possible, the earliest surviving seed idea being in Empedocles. This was developed and reached it highest expression in Plato, where it became the basis of Western Philosophy for over 2,000 years. Plato only hints about it, his famous "aviary" story in The Theaetetus being a fanciful rendering of it as an analogy, but it is obvious taken within the whole context of what Plato says regarding knowledge that this is what is intended. In China the doctrine is not purely Daoist and is very clearly expressed by the the great Confucian thinker Mencius: Unfortunately it is common cultural meme that the conscious mind and a set of unexamined cultural memes left over from the revival of Epicureanism in the 17th Century as fossilized as 19th Century "scientific" materialism constitute the "rational mind" and are the limits of rationality. This is demonstrably untrue with the direction which science has taken since 1900 amounting to a reductio ad absurdam proof that such materialism is not scientific and holding onto it is not rational. Unfortunately I don't have time right now to deal with this in more detail, but I hope to have such time soon.

First it is my understanding that symptoms involving the gallbladder almost always are manifestations of an underlying liver problem. This is because the gallbladder can act as a safety valve for the liver. For that reason most formulations address both, but some do concentrate on correcting gallbladder problems and digestion problems that can arise from such imbalances. If your concern is with digestive problems or with gallbladder problems the Bupleurum (Chai Hu) formulas are effective. In the late 80s I started to experience problems, both along the Gallbladder Meridian and with acid reflux. Beginning in 1991I started working a lot with both Lungdan Xiegan Wan and Xiaoyao Wan, I also used other formulae during to improve digestion and by '98 or so my digestion was great and so I thought that things were more or less cleared up. The two formulae I mentioned can improve digestion, I found early on for example, that taking Xiaoyao Wan before meals prevented any post meal indigestion, as well as those wonderfully disconcerting episodes where you are awakened from a sound sleep choking on stomach acid. However, none of these addressed the emotional aspects of liver qi stagnation which is really the most important aspect for long term because the problems can be very troublesome and emotionally debilitating. More importantly the existence of such profound imbalances may make it hard to alleviate them on your own, even with very powerful techniques at your disposal.

I noticed that the issue of Jerry Alan Johnson was raised in regard to required time an money and reference made to a treatment of his which lasted six weeks. This bothered me because I remembered this episode from his book and and while the poster does allow that a direct comparison could not be made based on Dr. Johnson's own account, I have been bothered that it didn't mention that, as I remembered it this episode took took place in the mid 90s and also dealt with a woman who had a diagnosed cancer and not merely emotional disturbances. I finally have decided to look up and post Dr. Johnson's account, here it is at length: As noted the above account took place over twenty years ago and in the meantime Dr. Johnson's technique must certainly have improved. I leave it to others to decide the relevance of the above situation to CrunchyChocolate555's own, but based on everything I have read about it, I even question whether an "entity" is involved at all. In an earlier thread a few months ago I posted a recommendation to CrunchyChocolate555 to try a particular Chinese herbal formula: I don't know if CruchyChocolate555 has bothered to follow that advice or not, but if not in light of the continuance of these problems a little experiment might be in order. At the time I did not note that the other things which I had tried had significantly improved physical problems related to digestion and also significantly reduced most of the physical markers of Liver Qi Stagnation, so I was not thinking of it as being important anymore after the late nineties and it was only in early 2011 that it became clear that it was contributing to ongoing emotional problems and I set out to find a solution. Since I made that post the emotional aspects of the Liver Qi Stagnation are even less of a problem and I don't take the formula as much as I used to take it because the formula has worked to clear up the root condition of which the emotional problems were a manifestation. I don't have time for much more than this now, but there are several other issues that are involved here which I may address in the future.

Yes, a few of us did. I didn't think that you shouldn't have said it. Oh well, sic transit posti mundi. My Latin is too rusty, replaced mindi with mundi and of course "posti" is the closest I could come to Latinizing a plural for post.

Yes, thank you for posting this. I would be interested to know what was the nature of the meditation instruction and whether it was "value free" or involved any subtle form of conditioning for greater empathy, but I also would expect that the researchers would have anticipated this as a possible criticism and tailored their meditation instruction accordingly so as to minimize criticism from this direction.

ShouYi, thank you for posting the Komjathy link. I have only skimmed it so far, but it looks very interesting and informative. One could hardly guess it from my posts over the years, but one of my primary reasons for joining the Tao Bums back in January of 2009 was interest in the Neiye. From early 2006 to mid 2009 the Neiye was the focal point of studies of Warring States literature with the intent of understanding the context in which it appears and its relationship to Mencian Confucianism, a connection which Roth is at great pains to minimize and no one seems to want to explore. Komjathy seems content to largely follow Roth's lead, but at the very least his introductory historical and terminological discussion seems to be very good. Thanks again. ZYD

The Nei Yeh is not traditionally a part of "Daoism". It is from a collection of texts called the Guanzi after the purported author. At different times in its long history it has been considered "Daoist" or Legalist. It has been a focus of interest for Western Sinologists looking for proto-Daoist quietist texts. That is the use that Arthur Waley makes of it in the introduction to his Daodejing translation, The Way and its Power. Harold Roth used it to propose the existence of pre-Daodejing "Daoism", but his arguments are a little forced. The Nei Yeh and some other texts in the Guanzi contain many interesting correlations with both later Daoism and Mencian Confucianism, but neither the Guanzi as a whole nor any of its parts, has ever been a part of regular "Daoism", especialy religious Daoism and therefore will not be found in any Daozang. This is too bad in a sense, because a careful reading of some of the Guanzi texts seems to indicate an early origin to the type of meditation practices from which "Daoist" alchemy appears to derive, but such purely historical considerations are not part of a tradition that assumes that such practices go back to basically mythic times, which perhaps they do, since the earliest surviving reference is not the same thing as the earliest use of practices or ideas.

From the description of the book on Amazon: On a historical level I don't trust these people to either research accurately or think clearly. Levi's Baphoment probably owes more to the Seventeenth Century Jesuit Kircher's images of Typhon and Pan then it does to "devil worship and witchcraft": Generally speaking people don't realize how much the Roman Church assimilated and preserved pagan knowledge and symbolism. I tried to emphasize that in my posts on Gods and Demons: This tendency became stronger in the Renaissance, but was destroyed by the Reformation and Counter Reformation as the Roman Church became more defensive about the Pagan aspects of its claim to be universal, i.e., Catholic Church. Kircher's work was well known and used by "occultists" from the 17th Century onward. These figures are referenced in the Golden Dawn "Portal" Ritual which is the bridge from the outer grades to the Adeptus Minor Rite in the sections related to the Death and Devil cards. While trying to find the above images I came across this PDF file which is interesting, I have only skimmed it, but covers some material which can be of interest here: http://www.hermetics.org/pdf/Continental.pdf I'm not sure I agree with everything she says, but she does mention Kircher and also the work that Joscelyn Godwin is doing in this area. I have not looked at tarot history for some time and so I am not familiar with the details of Godwin's work, but in general I have lot of respect for him.

"Spectacularly obvious" to me and thee cat, but try telling that to a born again "Crowleyite"! For good or ill, and to my mind mostly ill, Crowley was the most influential author on magic of the last century, just ask the myriads who spell it with a final "k". "Generally, for the rest of us the flags are less generous at waving themselves for all to see." What is generally true has its exceptions. Crowley himself implied he was exceptional and all of his followers would agree, that is why it is important to make it plain that he is not. Indeed the wreckage that is Aleister Crowley is one of the great reminders of why self-knowledge is essential and to my mind the most important type knowledge is about what one believes and why. The key to this is to ask and ask again until you have gone back to its beginning, "What do I believe and why do I believe it?" Just about everything else is personal trivia.