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Happy new year! Can you help me with some examples/signposting to Daoist funeral music traditions - sonic, written, video, transcription, any depiction really - for new bit of academic research [and probably a bit personal too]. Reaching out to see what knowledge is here. Any advice appreciated!

Hi everyone, I'm a 43 yo martial artist thriving to consolidate spirituality into and with... Well, with everything, not just MA's, since the themes of 'struggle', 'preparation', seem to pervade more aspects of life than just the physical - thus the 'struggle against oneself or lower self'. Casually or not, I came to know of this site by stumbling into the 'exorcism' thread in this forum, which may seem unrelated with my goals and self, or maybe not, since the time I spent studying Kabbalah and Neoplatonism helped me understand some symbols better. It seems that in ritual magic, and ritual exorcism, there is not a clear understanding of the nature and purpose of symbols, and a materialistic, depth-absent approach on them. Salt, e.g.: You can throw salt on a ritual and the only thing that it'll kill or block is bacteria. So if the ritual is not meant to banish bacteria, then why salt? Because it's just a symbol. Nothing physical can thrive on salt, and the spiritual intent on a ritual is to analogously block spiritual negativity, but obviously it's your mind and intent that creates that effect, not the salt. Incense: Incense means the 'smoke' resultant from the spiritual efforts made on our quest to better ourselves, from our internal will or fire. Thus no spiritual entity will enjoy the scent and perfume of the physical incense, but of the immaterial one, of which the physical is just a symbol. I'll pause here for now due to the length, but anyone can jump into. Blessings!

In the catholic doctrine, and, I suppose, also in most esoteric orders, there exist the concept of "ex opere operato" — the result is produced by the operation. For example, if a sacrament is made by a priest as indicated in the missal, then, according to the catholic doctrine, the sacrament will be valid, the "ability" of the priest being irrelevant to this operation. This last point bothers me. I only see a few reasons why an unskilled priest (or magician in case of a loge) would suddenly be able to do the same work as a skilled one. One of them would be that the sacrament itself is a kind of spirit's "contact form" (in the catholic doctrine to God itself) which does the work for the priest. An other would be that the sacrament is a kind of recipe which permit anyone following it to achieve a similar result. However, I also find many reasons for "ex opere operato" to be a superstition. If you excuse me this sophism, there is an very good motivation to invent it. In the case of an organised religion, without that concept, there would be no guarantee that a priest could perform all sacraments (and even with the guarantee that a priest could perform them, nobody would be sure that he is not slacking on his job). A better reason to doubt this concept is that certain sacrament were changed through time. For example in the case of the baptism, it was first performed on adult people which were naked and completely immersed. Later the baptism was mostly performed on babies, with the complete immersion replaced by a sprinkling of water on the head. An other reason is the intangibility of the result of most sacrament, which is therefore impossible to verify (which led some people to doubt the sacraments themselves, but this is not the topic). On this last point, in case of magic, from which we can expect tangible results, there exists a very large number of spells and rituals to gain money, to get sex, to curse, to find buried treasures, etc... Of course, they were created as an answer to a demand, and some people cast spell after spell, and perform rituals after ritual without success. Therefore, I tend to view the "ex opere operato" with a certain amount of skepticism, even if I can entertain the idea that there might exists certain rituals which are effective in themselves. What is the opinion of other bums in this matter?

I finally finished the book a few days ago. I was thoroughly entertained throughout Now, I've realised something due to things that are repeated several times in the book. Of course, Chuang Tzu wasn't a Taoist as he was a pioneer of bringing the ideas into text. The Taoist came later - us who study the Tao. Ok, let me stop here for a minute. Isn't such study the exact thing that Chuang Tzu was ridiculing all throughout the book? Isn't this what Confucius and many others were doing and just not getting it? The idea of ritual is spoken against yet a lot of us sit in meditation daily as a routine. Many strive for enlightenment, but aren't we just chasing something that isn't there by doing so? A lot of us on the forum get caught up in metaphysics and spiritual ideas/dogma. Is this really being a Taoist? If so, I think that Taoism might be missing the point a little bit. The debates that are had are somewhat pointless in the eyes of Chuang Tzu, right? Do discuss!

These may be of interest: Video of Chime Phakme Nyingtik Drupchen http://vimeo.com/34372057 Podcasts on a variety of topics http://www.khyentserecordings.org/namo/Podcasts.html