Demons

[Zhongyongdaoist]

Stigweard sits patiently next to Rain enjoying the ambience of her sunset personality, thinking quietly to himself that we simply must get back to our five element discussion, all the whilst awaiting our new scholarly friends' next diabolical discourse.

 

 

Dear Stigweard and Rain, thank you for your words of encouragement.

 

Looking back on what I wrote previously, I think that there is actually a good opportunity to make a useful cross-cultural comparison before I continue into the Hellenistic period and bring this back to Chinese theory which is what most of the people here are concerned with.

 

In Harold Roth's translation and commentary on the Nieye (Original Tao: Inward Training, Columbia University Press, 1999) he has a discussion of vocabulary that is very interesting. It starts on p. 41 in a subsection titled, aptly enough, 'Technical Terminology'. For our purposes his discussion of shen is most interesting. On p. 43 Roth says that the translation of shen '... as "numen/numinous" (noun/adjective) instead of "spirit/spiritual" has several advantages: 1. it retains the sense of an other power superceding the individual will that Graham's "daemonic" has, but none of the former term's malign connotation in common English usage...'. Roth then references Graham's Chuang Tzu: The Seven Inner Chapters, p. 35 n. 72, for Graham's reasoning in regard to translating shen as 'daemonic', 'daemon' being the Latin version of the Greek 'daimon'. If I recall correctly, Graham also uses daemonic in his Disputers of the Tao (a truly wonderful book, well worth the read).

 

Now from the perspective of what I said in my previous post Graham is quite correct to use 'daemon', if he means it in its sense as Plato does, but most people are not going to judge it that way because of the connotative baggage that the word has, which Roth rightly points out. Using the terminology which I investigated previously, a good term for shen would be agathodaimon, but I am all with Roth in rendering it as numen/numinous for reason which I will develop in my next post.

 

That of course leaves gui to be rendered by cacodaimon. Now remember what I said in my previous post, talk about good spirits and bad spirits arose because people wanted to explain why bad things happen to good people, and good things to bad. Whether one likes this explanation or not and wants to give another one is up to individual judgment, there are other explanations and we are investigating this one to see what it can tell us about the concept of 'demon', whether one chooses to believe in such beings or not, these ideas arise from people trying to make sense of their lives, and they arise in ancient China as well as in the West and for roughly the same reasons, though there are some cultural differences that also arise.

 

So to summarize the historical and cross-cultural discussion so far, shen can be rendered as agathodaimon, people look to shen for inspiration, for accurate guidance and protection from life's downs such as accident and disease and the furtherance of life's ups such as health and prosperity, gui can be translated as cacodaimon and people expect disease, misfortune and generally speaking a bummer of a time from them. Gui might protect bad people and even help them achieve what are conventionally considered to be good ends and miscreants might even turn to gui for the furtherance of their own unworthy ends, something which could give us a working definition of what is usually called 'black magic'.

[thelerner]

When I was young I'd say goo goo, as I played people around me would do strange things, I'd watch without judgement and keep playing.

 

As I grew I divided the world into devils and angels. The devils were those who disagreed with me, kept me from my wants or worse ignored me. The angels were those who agreed with me.

 

Growing older the devils and angels fall away. I watch the world around me doing strange things and remember to take time to play.

 

 

Michael

[Zhongyongdaoist]

It may come as a surprise to some readers that in my previous post I was referring to Plato at all. At this time Plato is one of the most misunderstood thinkers of all time, and a lot of people who might benefit from studying him don't because they think he is some sort of 4th century BC Immanuel Kant. Well, he's not. John Rist (Eros and Psyche, Toronto University Press 1962) says Plato believed, '(people)...have the potentiality of divinity." and that Plato believed that '(people) can raise themselves to the level of divinity, or rather can "know themselves" to be in a sense already divine" and finally that "Plato's notion of theology is not so much anthropomorhic as his notion of mankind is theomorphic" If you went to a platonic philosopher during the Hellenistic period, it was not to learn to prattle on about this that and the other thing, it was to achieve liberation from the delusion that you were a mere mortal, a humanoid animal and to realize that you were a real partaker in divine nature and in some powerful and profound sense a god. This is what constitutes self-knowledge in real Platonism and was the explicitly stated goal of Platonic study from the First Century BCE to the end of the Hellenistic age, around 500 AD.

 

That said, let us return to the stated purpose of all this talk, the development of the concept of 'demon'. Having dealt with the Hellenic background earlier, and then taken a short digression into cross cultural comparison, I will now cover 'demon' as it develops in the Hellenistic period.

 

As I mentioned previously the concept of 'daimon' as a mediator between divine being and humans in the world became split into good daimons called agathodaimons and bad ones called cacodaimons. Some of you who are familiar with Western Gnostic writings may even have run across references to the Agathdaimon in them. The term was certainly used in a variety of movements in the early Hellenistic period.

 

As the concept developed a problem arose. If daimons could be good or bad, what did that say about their own ontological status? Were they too close to embodied human nature to be the real mediators between humans in the world and the Gods? Whatever the details by the time we reach Iamblichus (On the Mysteries)in the early Fourth Century AD, a new category had been introduced, Angels, and had even existed long enough to have been differentiated into two catgories, that of angels and archangels. The difference between either angelic class and daimons was that the angels, like the Gods, were wholly good. There could in this classification be no such thing as a 'fallen' angel, rather, the only thing that might 'fall' would be a daimon because of their more changeable nature. From this perspective the stories about fallen angels that arise in Jewish, early Christian and Gnostic literature would really be about daimons that 'fell' to earth, and a late Hellenistic commentator might critique them for being as misleading about 'angelical' nature as the older mythology was misleading about the Gods. Indeed since as the Hellenistic period developed daimons become almost solely associated with generation and becoming embodied, it would only be a daimon that could possibly fulfill the requirements of being attracted to women and descending to earth to mate with them, to create that race of giants, about which Genesis speaks.

 

Now, these stories with their beginning in Genesis and their development in the apocrypha are an important part of the demonization of daimons, but they are not the whole of the story and it is not something that can be laid solely at the door of Christianity as it develops and most important we are not looking at the demonization of the Pagan Gods, even within Christianity, rather as I noted before the Gods have ontologically lower counterparts that follow in their train, roughly in the following order Gods, archangels, angels, daimons, humans. Iamblichus adds a couple other orders such as archons and heroes, but for the moment they are not part of our concern, in part because the do not survive past the Hellenistic age, but also because they are not directly relevant to our discussion of 'demons'.

 

How Christianity was to affect all of this is an interesting story, and one some surprising twists. The simple fact is that Christianity, far from demonizing the pagan Gods, angelicized them and made them a part, if a somewhat controversial part, of the Roman Church's claim to be a Catholic (i.e. universal) Church. For the surprising continuation of this discussion, tune in next time. Bye for now.

[Stigweard]

Don't stop now Donald, I've just made another cup of tea and am eagerly awaiting more.

 

I would also like to hear your learned perspective over in the Magic thread.

 

Edited January 9, 2009 by Stigweard

[Zhongyongdaoist]

Don't stop now Donald, I've just made another cup of tea and am eagerly awaiting more.

 

I would also like to hear your learned perspective over in the Magic thread.

 

 

Thanks for your continued interest Stigweard.

 

I am afraid that if I go over to the Magic thread that I may really start frothing at the mouth. As it happens I opened a can of worms here and I intend to deal with every wiggly little one before I am done. Maybe later I will wonder over to Magic, but frankly I am more interested in other things, such as the Neiye and the other Xin Shu texts of the Guanzi and their possible relation to the material in Charles Luk's Taoist Yoga.

[Stigweard]

Thanks for your continued interest Stigweard.

 

I am afraid that if I go over to the Magic thread that I may really start frothing at the mouth. As it happens I opened a can of worms here and I intend to deal with every wiggly little one before I am done. Maybe later I will wonder over to Magic, but frankly I am more interested in other things, such as the Neiye and the other Xin Shu texts of the Guanzi and their possible relation to the material in Charles Luk's Taoist Yoga.

 

Well my friend you have yourself an avid sidekick here to ride shotgun with you. Please continue ... let us find those tricksy worms!

 

I hear your comment of Xtianity angelicizing the pagan gods ... after all ol' Constantine had to do something to appease the disparate pagan cults of the decaying Roman empire during the 4th century.

 

What I have always found of interest is how, through the process of cultural shift, our daimons morphed from one cultural age through to another. For instance the polymophic relationship between Apollo, Dionysus, and Jesus.

 

I also particularly am interested in your research into the Neiye.

 

 

Warm regards,

[Zhongyongdaoist]

I hear your comment of Xtianity angelicizing the pagan gods ... after all ol' Constantine had to do something to appease the disparate pagan cults of the decaying Roman empire during the 4th century.

 

What I have always found of interest is how, through the process of cultural shift, our daimons morphed from one cultural age through to another. For instance the polymophic relationship between Apollo, Dionysus, and Jesus.

 

I also particularly am interested in your research into the Neiye.

 

 

Warm regards,

Well Stigweard thanks again for your interest, I hope some other bums are finding this interesting also, but it is not easy to write this. While the information is there somewhere in the cobweb strewn attic of my memory, I have to organize it in a good way and also try to keep digressions to a minimum, that is why I said at the beginning I would avoid any discussion of the ontological status of demons (worse than a can of worms, a veritable Peter's Pot sans Griders Hole, though no doubt haunted by the restless spirit of Mr. Grimethorpe), or any discussion of what may constitute good and evil (worse than Naraku's miasma).

 

Your own comments about Constantine remind me that even he could not have pulled off his interesting little piece of Religious realpolitik without collaboration from both sides of the fence. Had the Stoic Posidonius not decided that Judaism was the living survivor of the 'ancient monotheistic religion' of which Greek and Egyptian religion were only the decadent descendants, or had Justine Martyr not claimed Socrates as a 'pre-Christian Christian', Eusebius would have had precious little material for his Praeparatio Evangelica, and then where would the Prisci Theologica be? I may have to do a digression on religious syncretism in the Hellenistic period in order to lay a foundation for the Christian contribution to the development of the concept of 'demon'. This would also have some bearing on your own question of the cultural morphing which you describe.

 

And after all of the musty scholarly stuff, what must anyone who read looked at my introduction post 'Hello, they tell me I can do stand-up ...' think? Granted I did work in an oblique reference to Rocky and Bullwinkle in an earlier post, but so far only our esteemed web-master Sean has any idea of how funny I really can be. Oh well, my time will come, and then you will really realize why I often use the distressed looking gape-mouthed icon as part of my posts. Kind of my way of saying, 'Oh no, it's him again!'.

 

Preview of coming installments: one or maybe two to finish out the Hellenistic developments and then a cross cultural look at the early Buddhist influence on Chinese ideas about 'demons'. I hope to have these up by Monday.

 

Regarding my Neiye research I might start a thread on that or maybe write an article, perhaps a blog would be a good way to deal with it, in any case I think the other bums may find it more to their liking then this present exercise in intellectual aerobics, i.e. long winded hot air.

[Stigweard]

Regarding my Neiye research I might start a thread on that or maybe write an article, perhaps a blog would be a good way to deal with it, in any case I think the other bums may find it more to their liking then this present exercise in intellectual aerobics, i.e. long winded hot air.

 

Well if the buzzing in my brain is mere intellectual aerobics then it would be looking like this:

 

 

Play on my friend, play on!

 

[Zhongyongdaoist]

As I mentioned before, I am rummaging through the attic of a prodigious memory and dusting off research and the conclusions that I came to in the period of roughly 1975-85. Some parts of the story have been close to the front of this attic and are the Hellenic ingredients that became part of the Hellenistic milieu and how they contributed to the conception of 'demon', but one thing kept nagging at me and that was that one of the previous posts had mentioned the change of 'Deva' to 'devil'. I remembered that this predated Christianity and was the result of Persian uses that relate to Zoroastrianism. The Zoroastrians 'demonized' the 'devas' and the Indians demonized the 'ahura/asuras', tit for tat you might say. It is also to the Zoroastrians that we owe the notion of a conflict between 'good' and 'evil', and in particular the root of evil in the notion of 'the lie', which leads in Christianity to Satan as the father of lies.

 

The most interesting thing during the Hellenistic period is the conflation of daimons as spirits related to generation and fertility with evil spirits, and the source of this, rather than being developing Christian orthodoxy, is the various Gnostic sects, to whom the created world and its creator were evil, and thus the daimons as agents of generation in the world were agents of evil.

 

At this time I don't want to get into a long digression about gnosticism, but suffice it to say that if anyone can be viewed as the 'demonizers' of the Gods it was the gnostics and not the early Church as it was developing during the Patristic period. The Pagan Philosophers remained loyal to the old Gods practically to the end of the Hellenistic age and perhaps beyond, and some in the developing Church was only too anxious to use such sources as the Sibylline Oracles and the Hermetica as tools of conversion.

 

One of the things that amazed me when I started seriously studying Plato in the early 1980s was how much of so called 'Christian' ethics had been cribbed from Pagan sources, in particular Plato. This is one of the reasons that Justin Martyr could think of Socrates as a pre-Christian Christian. He was a Platonist who converted to Christianity and he must have had passages like the following, the conclusion of Plato's Gorgias, in mind, '...you may let anyone despise you as a fool and do you outrage, if he wishes, yes, and you may cheerfully let him strike you with that humiliating blow...' (W. D. Woodhead translation, cited from The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Bollingen, 1980, p. 307). Sound familiar? Someone who was really being really 'cheeky' might even say to turn the other cheek. That is only one of many I could site and the 'Golden Rule' appears in the writings of one of Plato's professional rivals Isocrates (As well as in both Confucius and Mencius) and may even have been proverbial in Hellenic culture.

 

The combination of these echoes of Pagan ethics in Jesus preaching (as well as Paul) and the need to proselytize among the educated classes would result in one of the most interesting myths that I have seen and it developed as a tool for the early Church to bolster its claim to being a 'universal', i.e. catholic church and this was the myth of the Ancient Theologians. The idea is that God revealed himself to man both through the 'his word' delivered to the Jews by Moses and the Prophets because of his covenant with Abraham, but also that the study of creation as had been done by the Pagans was a source of revelation. This gives two 'books', the 'word of God' given through the Prophets and also the book of Nature which reveals God through 'his creation'. The readers of this 'book of nature' were the 'ancient theologians' starting with Hermes Trismegistus (because the Hermetic writings were not dated correctly), followed by Orpheus, Zoroaster, Plato and Aristotle. It was this belief as well as the ethical similarities that allowed the Church to integrate large amounts of Stoicism and Platonism, as well as Pagan Cosmology, into its doctrines during the Patristic period. Since Pagan Cosmology during the Hellenistic period was strongly animistic and therefore the Planets were animated beings, i.e. the Gods and these Planetary Gods became assimilated to, if not identified with, the notion of Planetary Angels. This associations survive into modern European languages both as the names of the Planets and also as the names of the days of the week in Romance Languages, whereas in more Germanic based languages they are the Teutonic/Nordic equivalents. On the other hand the Planets and the Gods as part of the created cosmos that imprisoned human souls as envisioned by the Gnostics effectively demonized the Gods.

 

So by the end of the Hellenistic period we have our concept of 'demon' more or less complete, its name comes largely from the Greek daimon, but its 'evil' nature as followers of the 'lie' comes from Zoroastrianism. Its association with sex and sexuality comes from the Philosophical traditions as they began to differentiate the various hierarchies of spiritual beings and survived into the middle ages as the incubbus and succubbus which were the Western equivalent of the fox spirits, or for that matter the marvelously malevolent tree spirit of 'A Chinese Ghost Story', (One of my favorite movies and because of its echoes of esoteric practices worthy of a commentary in its own right.), which fed on the vital energies of people, which populate Chinese lore.

 

Next time we will look at the early Buddhist influence in China and see those demonized asuras, the distant cousins by the way of the Norse Aesir, and how they influence the development of the concept of 'demon' in China.

 

Short bibliography:

 

For Hermes Trismegisus and the ancient Theologians; see Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, especially the first part.

For the assimilation of the Pagan Gods; see Jean Seznec The Survival of the Pagan Gods and John Block Friedman, Orpheus in the Middle Ages.

[WhiteTiger]

Zhongyongdaoist, I very much enjoy your posts.

 

I genuinely thank you.

[WhiteTiger]

WHITE TIGER , respect to you for absorbing what I said and making astute sense of it. You got it. It's a distortion of purity.. 'mispractice of cultivation'.. ignorance.

 

As for the patterns of manipulation in life.. yep.. I have experienced it too. Seriously! I can only think that the people who duped me started out with an intent NOT to do so, but their weakness took over, so that the original self they showed me got submerged over time, and the less good self emerged. Either that, or I think that their impulse to dupe me had a root behind it, a motivation, that was beneficial to them - that they felt they needed something for me, bigtime.. and that the universe decided I could take the lesson and provide them with food at the same time.

 

Hope that makes sense.

 

xxx

cat

 

Thank you cat for your reply once again. I do appreciate it.

 

"Distortion of purity"

What are the other two things Purity goes with?

 

I'm truly sorry that others duped you. For whatever intent or reason.

 

btw White Tiger.. I wouldnt be surprised if we all have unwittingly duped others at one time or another..

 

I wish not to do that ever again!

 

All the people I've done I wish their wounds heal up and that I it never do it again. I have a great difficulty with sticking with Wuwei (non action) I find myself practicing Yang to balance myself out, but when problems arise with others, I must go Yin and not get involved. It arising GREAT ANGER inside me. An anger that i wish i could fix with or without others help. But I know my path I wish to lead, is a different then what most have offered me. I find myself in a perial without enough self control to find/gain ability of self strength to root myself to get back on my path. I happen to believing in a monastic Life. I also definately feel everyone around me is against me doing such a thing)

 

Everyone when seeing how much diligence and hard work i can produce want to use it to benefit themselves. This is the only time when people seem to truly value me.

 

Yes I was aware of it.

 

You know, I find it happens often in practitioners some Chen Buddhists and some Taoists. (but maybe its just the specific sect they come from or the students strength ability to keep to their practice)

 

But I don't see someone like Smile doing such a thing... I wonder whats the difference... what do you see (I ask that question in a form, where i wish for it "not" to be answered to me, but rather to be answered to yourselves.)

Edited January 12, 2009 by WhiteTiger

[WhiteTiger]

btw White Tiger.. I wouldnt be surprised if we all have unwittingly duped others at one time or another..

 

Actually... Now that i have had time to think about what your referring to. I realize that you are probably talking about someone in specific.

 

Sad that i felt i did not get any trustful help (AT ALL) when this person realized how deep my issues was. She attempted more then once caused this within me. She consistently consciously and full of control tried to make me loose whatever cultivation i had left. In fact this directly speaks about the deamon (deimon) that i supposedly suffer from if thats what you even wanna call it. She played me with my weakness. Does anyone care, i doubt it. (because I believe in Taoism as a religion although I don't wish to practice with blind faith)

 

PLUS I have no root in reality any longer, and supposedly someone is enjoying offering me help but trying to scare me at the same time (definately a mispractice of cultivation) Do i blame them for it HELL NO... I wish to avoid such a situation... do i trust them though HELL NO. Do i respect not saying there name... god why the hell am i so nice, sometimes i hate myself for being so nice... it has no cause. Others have even looked at me like I'm crazy being nice like this.

 

Infact as i'm getting infurated as i continue to think about the specific situation your talking about, I would like to point out i left my last martial arts place specifically because all the teachers (but the owner of the school) did the same thing with me and trust me that

 

Y was much greater cultivation they screwed me over with. MUCH more.

 

I'll give you an example of a private message between me and this person with keeping them annonamous.

 

(Exactly copy and pasted... but a small qoute of what i said in the private message that would link the specific person that sent me to this THAT IS why thats left out.) In the qoute i was being even kind and polite.

Private message on these boards:

"Hi WT,

 

a classical text of the taoist canon (Shang-ching) describes the worms, sometimes referred to as monsters, as living in the three cavities along the spine, near the gates of the three dantiens. The dantiens gather qi when the gates are open. The monsters can close these gates and control your energy. They feed off unethical deeds, mundane worldly desires, and the grains we consume. Practices to eradicate them include fasting and/or avoidance of grains. There's other methods too, that has to do with overall cultivation and stilling the mind."

 

The only reason, I understood i did this to another person was i could see a reflection and a cry out of pain and what happened when the person suffered. No other indications were understood to me. I even felt that pain inside me and it did hurt me too. Sadly thats nothing compared to what i had before i finally left my old martial arts school. AND the person and reason i cultivated it such strength and power, now had the ability to make me suffer. AND he does not stop to persist. Even now when i have no one for advice or help. I do not even believe in humanity any longer.

 

 

You know what I think I'm done talking about this... i wish not to talk about it and relive it if i don't believe it will help me out.

Edited January 12, 2009 by WhiteTiger

[rain]

As I mentioned before, I am rummaging through the attic of a prodigious memory and dusting off research and the conclusions that I came to in the period of roughly 1975-85. Some parts of the story have been close to the front of this attic and are the Hellenic ingredients that became part of the Hellenistic milieu and how they contributed to the conception of 'demon', but one thing kept nagging at me and that was that one of the previous posts had mentioned the change of 'Deva' to 'devil'. I remembered that this predated Christianity and was the result of Persian uses that relate to Zoroastrianism. The Zoroastrians 'demonized' the 'devas' and the Indians demonized the 'ahura/asuras', tit for tat you might say. It is also to the Zoroastrians that we owe the notion of a conflict between 'good' and 'evil', and in particular the root of evil in the notion of 'the lie', which leads in Christianity to Satan as the father of lies.

 

The most interesting thing during the Hellenistic period is the conflation of daimons as spirits related to generation and fertility with evil spirits, and the source of this, rather than being developing Christian orthodoxy, is the various Gnostic sects, to whom the created world and its creator were evil, and thus the daimons as agents of generation in the world were agents of evil.

 

At this time I don't want to get into a long digression about gnosticism, but suffice it to say that if anyone can be viewed as the 'demonizers' of the Gods it was the gnostics and not the early Church as it was developing during the Patristic period. The Pagan Philosophers remained loyal to the old Gods practically to the end of the Hellenistic age and perhaps beyond, and some in the developing Church was only too anxious to use such sources as the Sibylline Oracles and the Hermetica as tools of conversion.

 

One of the things that amazed me when I started seriously studying Plato in the early 1980s was how much of so called 'Christian' ethics had been cribbed from Pagan sources, in particular Plato. This is one of the reasons that Justin Martyr could think of Socrates as a pre-Christian Christian. He was a Platonist who converted to Christianity and he must have had passages like the following, the conclusion of Plato's Gorgias, in mind, '...you may let anyone despise you as a fool and do you outrage, if he wishes, yes, and you may cheerfully let him strike you with that humiliating blow...' (W. D. Woodhead translation, cited from The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Bollingen, 1980, p. 307). Sound familiar? Someone who was really being really 'cheeky' might even say to turn the other cheek. That is only one of many I could site and the 'Golden Rule' appears in the writings of one of Plato's professional rivals Isocrates (As well as in both Confucius and Mencius) and may even have been proverbial in Hellenic culture.

 

The combination of these echoes of Pagan ethics in Jesus preaching (as well as Paul) and the need to proselytize among the educated classes would result in one of the most interesting myths that I have seen and it developed as a tool for the early Church to bolster its claim to being a 'universal', i.e. catholic church and this was the myth of the Ancient Theologians. The idea is that God revealed himself to man both through the 'his word' delivered to the Jews by Moses and the Prophets because of his covenant with Abraham, but also that the study of creation as had been done by the Pagans was a source of revelation. This gives two 'books', the 'word of God' given through the Prophets and also the book of Nature which reveals God through 'his creation'. The readers of this 'book of nature' were the 'ancient theologians' starting with Hermes Trismegistus (because the Hermetic writings were not dated correctly), followed by Orpheus, Zoroaster, Plato and Aristotle. It was this belief as well as the ethical similarities that allowed the Church to integrate large amounts of Stoicism and Platonism, as well as Pagan Cosmology, into its doctrines during the Patristic period. Since Pagan Cosmology during the Hellenistic period was strongly animistic and therefore the Planets were animated beings, i.e. the Gods and these Planetary Gods became assimilated to, if not identified with, the notion of Planetary Angels. This associations survive into modern European languages both as the names of the Planets and also as the names of the days of the week in Romance Languages, whereas in more Germanic based languages they are the Teutonic/Nordic equivalents. On the other hand the Planets and the Gods as part of the created cosmos that imprisoned human souls as envisioned by the Gnostics effectively demonized the Gods.

 

So by the end of the Hellenistic period we have our concept of 'demon' more or less complete, its name comes largely from the Greek daimon, but its 'evil' nature as followers of the 'lie' comes from Zoroastrianism. Its association with sex and sexuality comes from the Philosophical traditions as they began to differentiate the various hierarchies of spiritual beings and survived into the middle ages as the incubbus and succubbus which were the Western equivalent of the fox spirits, or for that matter the marvelously malevolent tree spirit of 'A Chinese Ghost Story', (One of my favorite movies and because of its echoes of esoteric practices worthy of a commentary in its own right.), which fed on the vital energies of people, which populate Chinese lore.

 

Next time we will look at the early Buddhist influence in China and see those demonized asuras, the distant cousins by the way of the Norse Aesir, and how they influence the development of the concept of 'demon' in China.

 

Short bibliography:

 

For Hermes Trismegisus and the ancient Theologians; see Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, especially the first part.

For the assimilation of the Pagan Gods; see Jean Seznec The Survival of the Pagan Gods and John Block Friedman, Orpheus in the Middle Ages.

 

Found you again today, thank you for being so clear with so much material, condensed!

Reading it seemed to me that the early zoroasterians were more into terms like constructive and destructive energy(ies) than evil and good..entities? Surfed around and read some more and.. I'm wondering what you make of the gnostic figure Abraxas?

[Zhongyongdaoist]

Zhongyongdaoist, I very much enjoy your posts.

 

I genuinely thank you.

Thank you White Tiger, your courtesy amidst your distress indicates that you have the making of a true sage. Whether you realize it or not you are on the path of the junzi (君子, most commonly 'superior man', but better as Tu Wei-mings 'profound person' or even better as 'exemplary person', in Roth and Cleary). You need to realize this and determine with all your will to be a sage. This is no easy task and part of the pain and distress that you feel are the birth pangs of your nascent Jen (仁, humanity, benevolence=latin for good will). This old junzi honors your struggle and in complete sincerity (诚, sincerity, authenticity) bows before your nascent humanity. Thank you for appreciating my efforts on your behalf!

 

I wish not to do that ever again!

My, how our young tiger roars!

 

All the people I've done I wish their wounds heal up and that I it never do it again.

Yet how vast is his Humanity! How great is his good will!(仁, jen in both cases, but both meanings need to be emphasized)

 

The yin and yang that you are trying to balance, can never be balanced because they are false yin and yang. To discover the mystery of true yang you must go deep into yin. Look at the symbol of Tai Chi, there deep within the yin, you see the yang, this is the yang which this is the yang with which you roar out when you say "I wish not to do that ever again!"! This is the fierce determination to cleave to the good and never falter. Realizing that that this is the direction to true yang, you must go deep within yourself, you must cultivate your good will and seek your Zhong (中, center) and then your true yang will transform your false yin into true yin and you will find the gentle strength that you seek.

 

Since you are a martial artist I will speak in Tai Chi Boxing terms.

 

To retreat when attacked is to fight yang with yin.

Your center (zhong) is your true yang.

Every attack creates the right retreat in those who understand the water way,

Thus you must hold fast to the yin to find the correct retreat.

Every attack opens up a weak spot, this is the yin at which you must strike.

When you retreat correctly, you open the yin within the yang

all attacks are met, and all opponents are defeated.

 

I will leave you with this;

 

There is much wisdom to be found in the Hexagrams 24, Fu/Return and 23, Po/Splitting apart (I take these from Wilhelm/Baynes which is readily at hand.) Both of these represent yang amidst the extreme of yin.

 

Is not the Thunder of Return the echo of your own voice when you say, "I wish not to do that ever again!"?

 

And as for the 23, the Junzi finds a chariot at the top (line 6) and who are these mysterious Court Ladies (line 5)? The Court Ladies are the Jade Maidens who serve Hsi Wang Mu, the Queen Mother of the West, the Chariot is to take you to her court where a Peach of Immortality is reserved for you if your are faithful to your path. Hitherto this has been a secret path, but I reveal it now specifically for your benefit, but hopefully others who may read this will benefit also.

 

That is all for now. I was right to reply to your post, my effort has been well rewarded. Find your center, know peace and grow in your Humanity, for this is your true Heavenly Nature.

 

Zhongyongdaoist

[WhiteTiger]

 

Since you are a martial artist I will speak in Tai Chi Boxing terms.

 

 

Oh, I humbly claim to be on the path of the martial artist. But I DO NOT claim to be much of a student/practitioner of martial arts.

 

 

Zhongyongdaoist,

 

I understand that it is in the Taoist Religion to speak about things openly, and its up to the student to gain or have the ability to understand. If not have the ability they must contemplate on what has been spoken, spending long effort time and work to figure it out.

 

After you say, "That is all for now" does that mean I will not talk to you until you decide to speak again?

 

 

P.S.

In my experience teachers use and abuse you, for their own gain. I do not become a student of a teacher only later to find out I'm not imparted a whole of what the person has to teach.

[WhiteTiger]

 

Yet how vast is his Humanity! How great is his good will!(仁, jen in both cases, but both meanings need to be emphasized)

 

 

I have reason to believe that their is now a worm at my middle gate. Catching it when it is "eating energy", as explained in these terms that signify certain feelings in the body, is exceedingly hard for me to figure out right now.

 

I am not aware of what I did to have this unfold on me. I direly wish it to stop.

[Zhongyongdaoist]

White Tiger you are like a 12 cylinder racing engine that is so badly out of tune that it does nothing but make noise and slowly destroy itself. I said in my previous post that you can never balance the yin and yang that you are trying to balance, because they are false yin and yang. Here are two examples from your post on Monday:

 

Oh, I humbly claim to be on the path of the martial artist. But I DO NOT claim to be much of a student/practitioner of martial arts.

This is false yin, there is nothing humble about a person who would say:

 

I do not become a student of a teacher only later to find out I'm not imparted a whole of what the person has to teach.

What arrogance, what presumption! What false yang! What have you ever done for any of your teachers that would make you worthy to know all 'the person has to teach', especially when you claim 'NOT to be much of a student/practioner'? What promise do you have for humanity, that any real teacher would take you on?

 

In my experience teachers use and abuse you, for their own gain.

Funny, my experience of students is that they use and abuse me for their own gain. They wheedle and cajole you, but in reality they are like meek and humble Uriah Heep, ready to turn on you, or abandon you, as soon as they believe that they can get away with it. I will not enter into details, but the danger spoken of about pearls and swine and being rent, is very real.

 

After you say, "That is all for now" does that mean I will not talk to you until you decide to speak again?

I don't see how it could be otherwise. If I were to post something asking something of you, aren't I also left waiting until 'you decide to speak again'? Because I have been generous enough to take the time to make these posts, am I now at your beck and call? Are you at mine? I am generous enough to make these postings, enjoy your gift, but do not importune on my generosity too much. You have no idea how much time I have spent since Monday thinking about your situation, as expressed in your posts, as I understand it, when I should have been doing other things.

 

Which brings us back to the beginning. I compared you to a 12 cylinder racing engine because I see great potential in your posts, but you really are badly out of tune. Because I see that potential, I will address your concerns about the 3 worms and your second dan in my next post. Then I will make a short response to Rain and finally I will return to my posts about demons.

 

In complete sincerity I wish you well.

[Stigweard]

I have reason to believe that their is now a worm at my middle gate. Catching it when it is "eating energy", as explained in these terms that signify certain feelings in the body, is exceedingly hard for me to figure out right now.

 

I am not aware of what I did to have this unfold on me. I direly wish it to stop.

In my experience and observation these 'worms' can only gain purchase within one's being through the 'leakages' inherent within a consciousness that has been distorted away from from it's pristine nature. In another topic I have given the descriptive 'psychodiverticuli', these are literally pockets of psycho-energy that, through the artifice of conditioned personality creation, are diversions away from the main stream of one's life force.

 

These 'psychodiverticuli' are the cracks through which we haemorhage vital energy and are also the portals of entry and fertile breeding ground for said 'worms' and other parasites.

 

So to your dual inquiry of "How did they get there?" and "How do I rid myself of this affliction?" then you must look to the root of the problem that being the sum contents of your personality. One must also give oneself in dedication to your Taoist practices, like virtuous fulfillment and nei tan etc, because these practices in my experience are the most direct and effective in resolving these energy abstractions.

 

Edited January 14, 2009 by Stigweard

[WhiteTiger]

White Tiger you are like a 12 cylinder racing engine that is so badly out of tune that it does nothing but make noise and slowly destroy itself.

 

Nice analogy. I enjoy the depth of the analogy has to offer.

 

Funny, my experience of students is that they use and abuse me for their own gain. They wheedle and cajole you, but in reality they are like meek and humble Uriah Heep, ready to turn on you, or abandon you, as soon as they believe that they can get away with it. I will not enter into details, but the danger spoken of about pearls and swine and being rent, is very real.

 

I don't have a problem with abandoning a master, a person willing to teach me. I have a problem when a student themselves finds a way to take advantage of me (maybe a more advanced student, but yet still a student and someone that has not already undergone what I'm facing) latches onto my destiny and uses and abuses me.

 

I don't see how it could be otherwise. If I were to post something asking something of you, aren't I also left waiting until 'you decide to speak again'? Because I have been generous enough to take the time to make these posts, am I now at your beck and call? Are you at mine? I am generous enough to make these postings, enjoy your gift, but do not importune on my generosity too much. You have no idea how much time I have spent since Monday thinking about your situation, as expressed in your posts, as I understand it, when I should have been doing other things.

 

Your right, I should not be at your beck and call nor should I be at yours.

 

I've also spent much time thinking about your posts and i have to put much more time into it.

 

Which brings us back to the beginning. I compared you to a 12 cylinder racing engine because I see great potential in your posts, but you really are badly out of tune. Because I see that potential, I will address your concerns about the 3 worms and your second dan in my next post. Then I will make a short response to Rain and finally I will return to my posts about demons.

 

Thank you very much *courteous bow*

 

I shall keep a more natural flow to my learning.

 

In complete sincerity I wish you well.

 

I wish you well, in complete sincerity.

[WhiteTiger]

In my experience and observation these 'worms' can only gain purchase within one's being through the 'leakages' inherent within a consciousness that has been distorted away from from it's pristine nature. In another topic I have given the descriptive 'psychodiverticuli', these are literally pockets of psycho-energy that, through the artifice of conditioned personality creation, are diversions away from the main stream of one's life force.

 

These 'psychodiverticuli' are the cracks through which we haemorhage vital energy and are also the portals of entry and fertile breeding ground for said 'worms' and other parasites.

 

Thank you Stigweard I very much enjoyed that post (I did spend a good amount of time reading that post)

 

I am not finding a good or strong enough connection to the cause of the "consciousness that has been distorted away from from it's pristine nature." so i can once correct the pristine nature. (I'm loving these terms... giving me some education perms often found in Buddhism which i do need to spend more time learning about)

 

I understand the fact that my I'm having trouble finding my true Yin and Yang because they do not come from my Zhong is part... or the way to fix me moving forward so i can find these psychodiverticuli. But i do seem to be still in distress for I'm missing key components that aren't making sense.

 

So to your dual inquiry of "How did they get there?" and "How do I rid myself of this affliction?" then you must look to the root of the problem that being the sum contents of your personality. One must also give oneself in dedication to your Taoist practices, like virtuous fulfillment and nei tan etc, because these practices in my experience are the most direct and effective in resolving these energy abstractions.

 

 

I should stick to my practices, the fear that is left with me, when i practice these practices whom is the one giving me guidance or help through these practices. Remember these old teachers used and abused me. But i guess thats no reason not to put effort into practicing and giving lots of hard work time and effort.

Edited January 15, 2009 by WhiteTiger

[Zhongyongdaoist]

(I notice that in the time I have been working on this post White Tiger has replied both to my previous post and to Stigweard's. Thank you White Tiger for your thoughtful consideration of both of our posts, it shows that we are not wasting our time. I will just post what I had already written as it was before I noticed your responses. As I noted at the end of this post I hope that this is helpful to you. ZYD.)

 

Thank you Stigweard for your own interesting observations. When I perused the Magic thread I noticed the post with 'psychodiverticuli' in it and thought it an interesting and useful concept.

 

You see White Tiger, others are concerned about you too, and as I promised here are some observations on the problem of the 'three worms'.

 

The body naturally produces jing, qi and shen. It is an intricate process involving all of the organs and each of them contributes to the total process in different ways. The the total complex that describes this whole process is called 'san jiao' or the three burners. It is these three burners that become the basis of the three dan of internal cultivation, where the natural process is stepped up and and refined by meditation. The 'three worms' may be thought of as the potential for this process to go wrong. They are imbeded in the system as it were and are part of the mortality of the body. The san jiao are complex systems that as we age become more and more out of balance, and start to interfere with each other. They can also get out of balance because of disease, wrong thinking, wrong training practices and things like that.

 

When I said you were like a 12 cylinder racing engine that was badly out of tune, it is a reference to this type of complex process. Think of an engine with its electrical system, its cooling system and the energy creating system with all of its intricate parts that keep gasoline flowing into the cylinders in the proper amounts at the right time. Tuning keeps the engine working quietly and smoothly. The ordinary person is like a four cylinder engine, there are people who are like six and eight cylinder engines. Imagine the noise of 12 cylinders going bad! Yikes, this is not a happy thought.

 

There is much more to this, but that gives you enough to understand the basics. The 'three worm' are so much a part of human physiology that you cannot simply exorcise them, traditionally they were 'killed'. The notion that they live on grains is one of the stranger misapplications of the law of causation. Long, long ago, someone noticed that everyone ate the five grains, and that everyone died. It's the grains they said and then told everyone else and a curious belief was born, which survives to this day. Traditionally Daoists might take elixirs made from mineral concoctions, which may have killed the worms, but often killed the person who drank them, this became known as 'Liberation by the Corpse', but who is to say that those people who supposedly died from such concoctions may not even now be residents of the Land of the Way? Daoists were also told to avoid the grains and go into the hills to search for the sacred mushroom of immortality and live on herbs, not very practical in these times.

 

The 'lower worm' may interfere with the functioning that produces jing, but more ordinarily it simply wastes one's jing potential on sexual excess. One interesting example of the jiao interfering with each other is when the liver is overly hot, and sexual activity becomes a means of venting the liver's excess heat. Many a 'manly man' who believes that he has a real stud's sex drive, simply has an over heated liver and they are dispersing their kidney energy quite literally down and out like an engine with a leaky radiator. These people are filling the coffers of the makers of Viagra and things like that, if not now then surely later, but Chinese herbal tonics for kidney yang, yin and jing work much better and rebuild the bodies jing and qi. In woman this type of liver problem manifests as difficult menses with profuse bleeding.

 

The 'middle worm' will interfere with chi production, or waste it as the lower worm wastes jing. On this level emotions matter and reading between the lines from what you have said this would seem to be why you have 'middle worm' problems. It sounds to me that you are nice to people, you try to please your teachers by working hard and when they do not respond 'correctly', in other words just the way that you want them to respond, you become sullen and angry and go out and work out your anger in martial arts practice. Here your problem with false yin and yang creates a pattern that disperses and wastes your qi. Again it may also be a problem with an overheated liver, because people with overheated livers usually have hair-trigger tempers. If the heat becomes stagnant, they will be sullen, this is the fire scorching the liver. Since lungs are metal and should control the liver, then there are two things that naturally suggest themselves, righteous action and breathing exercises such as the six healing sounds to breath out liver heat. I will return to this later, after I have quickly discussed the 'third worm'.

 

The 'third worm' causes problems with shen, which might be called 'consciousness potential', as long as one remembers that it is as misleading as calling qi 'energy' (much less 'bio-energy'!). In this case there may be insufficient qi to make shen for a variety of reasons, including that nasty second worm! However, in many ways it is wrong thinking that causes problems on this level. Many people deplete their jing and qi in the pursuit of pleasures believing such to be good in themselves and the only thing in life that matters, such people live lives not much different than animals and at death they are delivered to the 'Yellow Springs' by these two big dudes with animals heads, all the while half protesting, half wondering 'What did I do wrong! What did I do wrong?' Such people are greatly to be pitied. Their whole lives they had animal heads and they didn't even know it, and now it is too late. Now they are simply among their own kind.

 

Here is where wrong thinking betrays you. A great sage once said we must be 'good for goodness sake' (yes, I know it's from a cheesy Christmas song, I won't even dignify it with the word carol, but as Whichcote said replying to Tuckney 'Truth is Truth, whosoever hath spoken itt' and no I didn't misspell 'itt', this is just 17th century English), we must also be nice for niceness sake. In any dealing with people you only have control over what you do and if you get angry because people are not nice back to you, is it because your niceness was not 'true' niceness, but a ploy to get a certain response from them? Do you regard 'do unto others, as you would have them do unto you', whether said by Jesus or by Mencius as some sort of magical formula or other type of manipulative strategy that will compel people to be nice to you? This is neither wise, the virtue of the liver, nor righteous the virtue of the lungs, and it is also false yin, of which I have already spoken. You are being like the 'meek and humble' Uriah Heep of David Copperfield, whose example I mentioned in the previous post, not a budding young sage. In all situations, without using guile or violence, the only person over whose actions you have any control is your own. When you can be 'nice for niceness sake', without any consideration of how other people respond to you, this is righteous action and you will be on the path of virtue. Eventually you will find that virtue is not only its own reward but the key to unlocking everything else, including wu wei which you say you are having so much difficulty with. Wu wei works well for sages and others on that level, in the mundane world by people not sufficiently advanced, it is not as effective as good manners and empathy, practiced with righteous intent, in other words for their own sake.

 

I can hear people cringing at the word righteous, but to simply say 'right' intent is not strong enough, like true and false yin and yang, there is also true and false righteousness. Real righteousness is the flood-like qi of Mencius 2A2, which fills the whole space between Heaven and Earth, its root is right motivation, but the much abused English word righteousness is the only thing that does it justice.

 

Readjusting your thinking and doing exercises such as the six healing sounds will help in time. If you have severe problems with liver fire blazing, herbs and acupuncture or massage can be applied to good effect by a knowledgeable practitioner. The book Between Heaven and Earth by Harriet Beinfield and Efrem Korngold is a good introduction to TCM and includes questionnaires for evaluating your own situation. I have been heartily recommending it for years. It is only a beginning, but a beginning is better than nothing.

 

I hope that this is helpful to you, and again in complete sincerity, I wish you well.

[rookie]

How about struggling with your demons?

 

Somehow internal struggles are often projected, disowned, and can be seen as a completely independent entity. Then you can remain innocent. The demon is no longer you. God no, how could it be

[WhiteTiger]

I was wondering if we could talk more privately.

 

Zhongyongdaoist,

 

sincere regards... wTiger.

Edited January 15, 2009 by WhiteTiger

[Zhongyongdaoist]

I was wondering if we could talk more privately.

 

Zhongyongdaoist,

 

sincere regards... wTiger.

I suppose that we could arrange what you suggest, certainly I can certainly understand your wish not to hash out private issues in an open forum on the internet. However certain ground rules will have to be set, and I have not yet reached a firm conclusion as to what they should be. Sorry to be so long to be getting back to you, but my schedule varies and sometimes have more and sometimes less free time for things like this. Among other things it now looks like from Mozart's birthday through the middle of February I will be so busy that I will hardly have anytime for posting here.

[Zhongyongdaoist]

Found you again today, thank you for being so clear with so much material, condensed!

Thank you Rain, I remember that you and Stigwead were the first to encourage me in my posts to clarify the nature of the concept of 'demon', and I appreciate it. I do try to be very clear and concise, believe me it is not easy. I am very much a perfectionist and between rummaging through the old attic, and then deciding what absolutely needs to be said and what can be left out and then summarizing it in a few paragraphs and then getting the writing just right, well it's a lot of work. It may take someone less than a minute to read my posts, but the prep time is more like six hours.

 

Reading it seemed to me that the early zoroasterians were more into terms like constructive and destructive energy(ies) than evil and good..entities?

Aside from the fact that it doesn't matter what the early Zoroastrians were into, it only matters what the people living in the Hellenistic period believed, rightly or wrongly, they were into, what you are saying sounds somewhat anachronistic for such an early time period, and I am somewhat suspicious of it. Generally speaking the ancients had no problem with thinking in terms of 'entities' rather than 'energies', that's more of a modern problem, where heaven forbid that anyone might wish to thought of as an animist, much less the dreaded theist! Moderns find it easier to talk about 'energies', but the ancients just didn't seem to have that hang-up. So unless you can be a little more concrete about the sources that give you this impression, so that I could examine them, there isn't much I can do except share my skepticism about the sources to which you are referring. If you don't have time to go back and find this, I can certainly understand. I don't have the time to do so myself, and I need to finish up these posts so that I can have a little time for my own recent area of interest, group theory and symmetry and their relation to quantum mechanics.

 

Surfed around and read some more and.. I'm wondering what you make of the gnostic figure Abraxas?

A funny thing happened to me on the way to Abraxas.... I read Plato. This came about because I was looking for the roots of Qabalah in the Hellenistic period and started to study Gnosticism. In the midst of reading Elaine Pagel's The Gnostic Gospels, an odd question occurred to me, what is the difference between the Qabalistic Adam Kadmon, the Gnostic Anthropos and the Platonic 'idea' of man? In order to understand how odd this was you would have to realize that my earliest exposure to Plato as a senior in High School left me with a very negative impression. So for me to be asking such a question was unusual to say the least. When I dug into the matter I found that I had been quite mistaken, there was an enormous value to Plato, especially as his ideas were to develop and be explicated during the Hellenistic period. It turned out that Plato and to a lesser extent Aristotle was part of the whole background of Gnosticism and that once you knew enough about Plato and Aristotle you could see the inspiration for many Gnostic themes and ideas. Kurt Rudolph in his Gnosis pretty much characterizes Gnosticism as popular Platonism, but I had already come to that conclusion before I read his book.

 

So about Abraxas? Abraxas is a mythological embodiment of certain ideas, however the name is used by different sects with somewhat different ideas, so he turns out to be a slippery character. Modern Occultists have worked with with the name and Carl Jung also seemed to have an interest, but Abraxas really doesn't interest me that much, any more than most mythological figures do, because of their inherent slipperiness. One of the things I like about the Daoist religious system is that, at least on certain levels it is very systematic, and it is systematic on a fundamental level, whereas in the West the pagan Pantheons are a mess and any attempt to systematize them results in very arbitrary reconstructions of the Deities nature so that it will fit into the new structure. As I studied Qabalah its systematic structure became something that I really valued, but Gnostic 'revelations' seemed too scattered and incoherent. Thus Qabalah would remain with me long after I lost any real interest in Gnosticism. I even worked out a 'Platonic' Qabalah long before David Godwin published his Light in Extension. I would rather spend my time explicating something like the relation between Plato and Plotinus, and how different notions of the soul affect Iamblichus concept of Theurgy (The Hellenistic equivalent of Ceremonial Magic), than speculating about Gnostic mythology. Sorry I can't be of much help with Abraxas.