Dog pee

[SirPalomides]

I've heard from people on the Chinese side of my family that rubbing dog pee in one's eyes can allow one to see ghosts. This sounds like something kids would tell each other as a dare or practical joke but apparently it's seriously believed. I've also read about dog pee being used in Daoist exorcisms in a manner somewhat comparable to holy water in Christian traditions.

 

What's the rationale for this?

[Nintendao]

Here doggy doggy!

Spoiler

1. 🐕💦👀
2. ?
3. 👻👀‼️

 

Edited November 25, 2019 by Nintendao

[manitou]

 

 

I tried it and it allowed me to see the emergency room.

[JohnC]

Could you investigate and share your findings?

I could see it affecting your ghost channels in the eyes. I imagine if the dogs ate more asparagus it might be more effective.

 

What a novel solution with such an abundant resource.

 

 

----

 

Alright I'm joking, but that sounds funny to me as well.

Edited November 25, 2019 by JohnC

[SirPalomides]

In case anyone thinks I'm making this up, this is in Eva Wong's Shambhala Guide to Taoism:

 

Quote

In exorcising a ghost from a location, the sorcerer prepares an altar at the haunted site. On the altar are talismans of exorcism, a sword made of copper coins, and a bowl of chicken’s blood. Sometimes, dog urine is also used. The sorcerer begins the incantations that will draw the ghost or spirit out from its hiding place. Next, the sorcerer captures the ghost by throwing the coin-sword, flaming talismans, chicken’s blood, or dog urine at it— actions that freeze the ghost while the sorcerer speaks words telling it never to haunt the realm of the living.
 

 

And I have seen similar accounts in other sources not reliant on Wong, though I can't recall exactly where.

[thelerner]

24 minutes ago, SirPalomides said:

  Quote

In exorcising a ghost from a location, the sorcerer prepares an altar at the haunted site. On the altar are talismans of exorcism, a sword made of copper coins, and a bowl of chicken’s blood. Sometimes, dog urine is also used. The sorcerer begins the incantations that will draw the ghost or spirit out from its hiding place. Next, the sorcerer captures the ghost by throwing the coin-sword, flaming talismans, chicken’s blood, or dog urine at it— actions that freeze the ghost while the sorcerer speaks words telling it never to haunt the realm of the living.
 

There is a question of what is worse.  A pesky ghost rattling windows and doors or an exorcist who's throwing bowls of chicken blood and/or dog urine in your house.   After seeing the potential mess, a person might decide to live in peace with the ghost.  Maybe they were there first anyway. 

 

 

[Gerard]

17 hours ago, SirPalomides said:

What's the rationale for this?

 

IGNORANCE

SUPERSTITION

FEAR

 

My advice: move on!

[Walker]

No idea.

 

I know an Indonesian Chinese guy who says his father once picked up a book in a temple somewhere that said if you shave a child's eyebrows totally off, the child will see ghosts. The guy was four or five at the time, so his dad got out his razor and shaved off his eyebrows. He claims that he did see ghosts, and it was terrifying, and when his mom got home and asked what the f#$& happened to her son's eyebrows and everything was explained... well... she was not amused. I can't remember the end of the story well, but I think the guy might have said they needed to get his new "ability" "shut down" by ritual or something like that. He's a pretty weird guy, prone to thinking too much about this sorta yin stuff. I don't totally believe the story, don't totally disbelieve it either. If I have kids, I probably won't shave their eyebrows off, though. 

 

Edit: I also don't think I'll rub dog piss in their eyes, either...

Edited November 26, 2019 by Walker

[SirPalomides]

Yeah my family is from the same neighborhood (Malaysian part of Borneo) and they take the ghost stuff very seriously and there have been all kinds of witchcraft accusations within the family. My uncle has inherited some folk/ lay tradition of writing fu talismans to ward off the bad stuff. I have to improve my Chinese so he can teach me a thing or two.

[Taomeow]

21 hours ago, SirPalomides said:

I've heard from people on the Chinese side of my family that rubbing dog pee in one's eyes can allow one to see ghosts. This sounds like something kids would tell each other as a dare or practical joke but apparently it's seriously believed. I've also read about dog pee being used in Daoist exorcisms in a manner somewhat comparable to holy water in Christian traditions.

 

What's the rationale for this?

 

What's the rationale for holy water?  We are in the realm of supernatural happenings, so rational theories are superseded by empirical observations.  You either see ghosts, or you don't.  You either exorcise them, or they exorcise you (which is the usual outcome with haunted places -- the ghosts exorcise the intruders.)

 

In taoist magic, a time-honored method to see ghosts is to use powdered rhinoceros horn.  You don't rub it into your eyes, you mix it with candle wax and burn the candle at a location where you suspect ghost activity.  A professional exorcist, in a typical case, will then catch the ghost into his or her gourd vessel, plug it with a cork, and then dispose of it in a suitable manner: release it in a more appropriate location, facilitate its transition to wherever it needs to be, dismantle it with talismanic or ritual power, or, if it's a harmful demonic thing, eat it and transform it into useful nutrients.

[SirPalomides]

6 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

 

What's the rationale for holy water?  We are in the realm of supernatural happenings, so rational theories are superseded by empirical observations.  You either see ghosts, or you don't.  You either exorcise them, or they exorcise you (which is the usual outcome with haunted places -- the ghosts exorcise the intruders.)

 

The rationale for holy water is that it has been specifically blessed with some rite for that purpose, often tied to the baptism of Christ in the Jordan river and the descent of the Holy Spirit thereon. Also water generally is associated with cleansing. And a sprinkle or splash of water isn't going to stink up the house.

 

I'm just trying to figure out if there is some folklore or mythology specifically imbuing dog pee with peculiar properties.

 

6 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

In taoist magic, a time-honored method to see ghosts is to use powdered rhinoceros horn.  You don't rub it into your eyes, you mix it with candle wax and burn the candle at a location where you suspect ghost activity.  A professional exorcist, in a typical case, will then catch the ghost into his or her gourd vessel, plug it with a cork, and then dispose of it in a suitable manner: release it in a more appropriate location, facilitate its transition to wherever it needs to be, dismantle it with talismanic or ritual power, or, if it's a harmful demonic thing, eat it and transform it into useful nutrients.

 

 

Rhino horn? Oh dear. Is there a method that doesn't involve A. anybody's pee or B. poaching endangered species?

Edited November 26, 2019 by SirPalomides

[Earl Grey]

13 minutes ago, SirPalomides said:

 

The rationale for holy water is that it has been specifically blessed with some rite for that purpose, often tied to the baptism of Christ in the Jordan river and the descent of the Holy Spirit thereon. Also water generally is associated with cleansing. And a sprinkle or splash of water isn't going to stink up the house.

 

I'm just trying to figure out if there is some folklore or mythology specifically imbuing dog pee with peculiar properties.

 

 

 

Rhino horn? Oh dear. Is there a method that doesn't involve A. anybody's pee or B. poaching endangered species?

I know a few methods and people who teach them, but they won’t yield quick results and may take years on average to get, and are most definitely not cheap unfortunately.

[SirPalomides]

To be clear, I'm not actually in need of a quick and dirty exorcism (that I know of), it's purely idle curiosity here.

 

Holy water seems to do the trick in my experience.

[Taomeow]

25 minutes ago, SirPalomides said:

 

 

Rhino horn? Oh dear. Is there a method that doesn't involve A. anybody's pee or B. poaching endangered species?

 

I don't think they needed to poach for this -- rhinos die a natural death too.  It's not taoist priests who endangered them.  You could make enough candles to last you a lifetime and have some leftover horn powder for your successor from just one horn of one deceased rhino, all you need is a tiny pinch.  Of course in a drug culture (a specter haunting the world) of today it has become a recreational drug, more efficient than Viagra and more expensive than cocaine, so one might want to look for different methods regarding ghosts.

 

There's plenty, of course.  But the use of urine (not just dogs', and not just animal) is present in this or that form in all magical and medical traditions, including modern medicine which resorts to urine lab tests to tell if you have diabetes and a whole host of other disorders, and the pharmaceutical industry that has made trillions of dollars by its own magical transformation of pregnant mare urine into the drug Premarin used for oral contraception.   

Edited November 26, 2019 by Taomeow

[KuroShiro]

Don't know about dog pee but human urine does seem to have superpowers.

Highly prized in China, especially children's urine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_boy_egg

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Drinking one's own urine for healing"(same one as above):

 

 

 

I guess you could call it Golden Dan.

 

I thought about start drinking it ever since I watched this documentary, but then it must have slipped my mind.

[manitou]

8 hours ago, KuroShiro said:

 

 

I thought about start drinking it ever since I watched this documentary, but then it must have slipped my mind.

 

 

Now that you've been reminded, will you be doing it any time soon?

[thelerner]

Pee drinking.. not a practice I'm interested in taking up.   There's always a chance that at the end of the book or video is a small disclaimer 'I was just kidding'.  If it was that healthy wouldn't everybody be doing it? 

 

On the other hand.  When Michael Winn did long term meditation in ye olde Taoist caves reportedly he, like them, drank urine.  He recommended not drinking the first or last third of it..as I recall. 

[silent thunder]

There may be merit in the pursuit for some.

Though I have yet to answer this one question for myself sufficiently to envision ever trying it.

 

If it's so amazing beneficial and healthy... why is my body naturally purging it?

 

That unanswered question, coupled with the fact that our 'latest notions' of what's medically 'good for us' is always changing... particularly throughout history.  We used to vent the bad blood from the system to cure the ill, or put holes in the body to let the 'demons of illness' escape... or inject the sick with harmful radiation relying on the body's ability to out-heal radiation that kills cancerous tumors.

 

 

Speaking of dogs and their waste products usages... Craig Ferguson lays out the medieval treatment for blindness to great effect...

 

"I'm blind I'm not stupid... I know whose dog this is..."  omg priceless!

[KuroShiro]

22 hours ago, manitou said:

Now that you've been reminded, will you be doing it any time soon?

 

Don't know.

 

It can save your life. Just don't wait until you're dehydrated:

 

 

No bottle? No problem:

 

 

 

1 hour ago, thelerner said:

On the other hand.  When Michael Winn did long term meditation in ye olde Taoist caves reportedly he, like them, drank urine.  He recommended not drinking the first or last third of it..as I recall.

 

Interesting, Daoist Masters drinking urine?

 

17 minutes ago, silent thunder said:

If it's so amazing beneficial and healthy... why is my body naturally purging it?

 

Have you ever heard about fecal transplant?

It's literally saving people's lives.

[Rocky Lionmouth]

Well, mr Grylls has made a name for himself by drinking it and there is some success in his life... 

 

Iirc fresh urine is sterile and contains both waste and nutrients, i don’t think it’d be healthy enough to substitute water and proper food with vitamins and stuff but i guess it’s a source of hydration. Idk if dog pee is anything like human pee and if there are benefits to drinking someone elses pee compared to your own.

Doesnt urine have a very high factor for conductivity? As a mixture of minerals and salts and stuff it has a lot of unexpected uses as a reactant.

There’s the old trick to ease jellyfish burns by drenching it in fresh urine which reportedly is fairly effective but not on par with other solutions containing ammonia in higher concentration or purer form (pardon my ineaxctness here, i’m just trying to dredge up info from the cobwebbed alleys of my mind).

It has moderate strenght as an oxidizing agent on copper and brass if i’m not mistaken.

 

For those knowledgeable in such matters to answer: isn’t urine charged with or somehow carrying turbid yin qi when it exits the body? Perhaps, if it has a strong yin property it’s interaction with ghosts who are very yin iirc puts their energy out of balance? I’ve been taught that something that is very yin interacts with more yin it causes the first object to overcharge and reversing it towards yang, at least in the case of a precaution i recieved that menstruating people should not physically touch certain talismans or objects on a daoist altar during the build and peak of their cycle, because such a body is highly charged in the yin spectra (i think) and it would mess with both the energy of the person and the object. No periodbashing on my part, i was told this by a male fung shui master when he installed a particular thing at my house. He also added that nobody except me or my partner should be allowed to touch fung shui remedies just to be sure nothing and nobody gets out of balance.

 

There is the sexual fetishes tied to urine, some people obviously get really excited by fantasizing about and interacting with pee, idk if that by itself says anything of pee having certain ”unseen” properties but as has been pointed out already many bodily products seem to be present somehow in occult and magic practices worldwide. Sweat, tears, urine, poop, blood, spit, lubrication, semen, menstruation, snot and whatnot has been mentioned in a number of the sources i’ve consulted on witchcraft, magic, talismans and stuff, both in pop culture, historical material and by oral (no puns intended) transmission.

 

Urine, there’s a lot to be said on the topic at least

[Earl Grey]

It’s male urine only for jellyfish stings, I recall.

[Taomeow]

Urea, a component of urine, is widely used in dermatological preparations today, both cosmetic and prescription topicals, to rehydrate, promote wound healing, remove  dead tissues, etc..  In folk remedies, it is obtained by storing urine in a container for two to four weeks, which concentrates it, gives it a most foul odor (if you haven't changed your kitty's litter for too long, you'll get the idea of how bad it can smell when it gets older), but also retains all the hormones that synergize with the action of urea, and is used externally for the same purpose.  For internal consumption, there's a whole bunch of naturopathic protocols, usually people start with just one drop administered under the tongue and move on to two drops, etc., very gradually, up to something like 50 ml I think, no one is advised to drink "all of it."  I've also heard from a special forces dude that they are instructed to pee on a wound if there's nothing else immediately handy to disinfect it and also for pain relief.  The pain relief for burns specifically is nothing short of miraculous -- if you ever suffer a kitchen burn and are not too squeamish to experiment, pee on it and see for yourself.  The pain relief is immediate, and the healing is fast.  

 

I expect a modern adult's (or dog's) urine to be not exactly what it used to be in a healthier, less toxic environment (though even then a child's urine was often preferred in folk medicine, for its purity).  I suspect it's for the same reason that I've personally observed near-miraculous effects of homeopathic remedies on small children but never on adults (with the exception of a couple remedies used for acute trauma, which still work perfectly well on adults).

 

5 hours ago, Rocky Lionmouth said:

 

It has moderate strength as an oxidizing agent on copper and brass if i’m not mistaken.

  

I used to know a sculptor in LA whose creations were made out of various metals -- he experimented a lot with oxidizing the surface of the finished work with all kinds of chemical agents toward some interesting visual effects.  He came up (don't know if it was his own idea though) with his favorite method that produced most stunning surfaces -- he would immerse the statuette in a container of urine for a month or two, shaking it from time to time, and it would develop this unique patina the likes of which I hadn't seen.  He called it "peetina."    

[liminal_luke]

This whole topic seems humorous to modern sensibilities.  Well, at least my modern sensibilities.  Dog pee?  Really??  Perhaps the power of dog pee was discovered empirically: some enterprising Daoist scientist rubbed it in her eyes and noted the effects. I wonder what it´s like to live in a world where people who do such things are not regarded as weird.  Might be nice.

Edited November 28, 2019 by liminal_luke

[Taomeow]

14 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

This whole topic seems humorous to modern sensibilities.  Well, at least my modern sensibilities.  Dog pee?  Really??  Perhaps the power of dog pee was discovered empirically: some enterprising Daoist scientist rubbed it in her eyes and noted the effects. I wonder what it´s like to live in a world where people who do such things are not regarded as weird.  Might be nice.

 

I wonder what would happen to one's seeing ability if they were to rub an eagle's pee...  no wait, eagles don't pee...  well, an eagle's guano into one's eyes.  Bat shit cures night blindness, by the way.  (Tons of vitamin A in it, as was discovered in modern times, from all the bugs the bat eats.  Vitamin A deficiency is the primary cause of night blindness.)  

 

"Modern sensibilities" are very local and very conditioned in their nature -- I was amazed to discover, e.g., that most Americans have been trained to go "eeewww" when you mention dishes made of organ meats, the most prized part of the animal throughout human history, and still valued elsewhere.  Japanese women pay a lot of money for cosmetic creams with nightingale guano that whitens the skin.  Chinese, for swallow's nests (yes, they eat them.)  Both used to be disgusted with dairy though, and older people in Asia might still refer to cheese as "rotten milk" and be appalled by the idea of eating it.        

[Earl Grey]

1 hour ago, liminal_luke said:

This whole topic seems humorous to modern sensibilities.  Well, at least my modern sensibilities.  Dog pee?  Really??  Perhaps the power of dog pee was discovered empirically: some enterprising Daoist scientist rubbed it in her eyes and noted the effects. I wonder what it´s like to live in a world where people who do such things are not regarded as weird.  Might be nice.

 

I have to clean up dog pee daily with my two dogters, so while I have many opportunities to experiment should I ever feel so compelled to do so, I will still take a hard pass, but if anyone needs me to donate some material, I'll be happy to provide it if they pay for shipping and packaging (I assume no responsibility for any medical issues that may inevitably arise, including therapy).