Taomeow

The literal translation of the components of the Chinese "herbalim" is "grass medicine study," herbalist -- "grass medicine master." The wuxing (5 "elements") theory which is an important part of the foundation of classical Chinese medicine views plants and animals as belonging to the same wuxing phase of qi -- Wood. From the evolutionary perspective (to name one), this is absolutely accurate. E.g., genetically we are only half different from bananas (50% of our genes are identical to those of the latter), and our hemoglobin only differs from chlorophyll in that the former uses iron where the latter uses magnesium. Far as wuxing phases of planet Earth are concerned, the whole totality of biological life is classified as belonging to the Wood phase. As Terence McKenna put it, "Animals are something invented by plants to move seeds around."

Most alchemical and magical herbs can also be used medicinally, but differently. For herbs proper, i.e plants, there is an alchemical formula based on a certain vine combined with a couple other native Chinese herbs which is the taoist counterpart of ayahuasca. Master Wang Liping told me about it when we were discussing my ayahuasca adventures. His teachers used that concoction on him on a few occasions (don't remember how many, but not many, maybe two or three times.) It was part of the general alchemical education, not the main focus. He was of the opinion that risks outweigh benefits in those "shortcuts." We were talking via an interpreter, and Master either didn't name the plants or the names didn't get translated.

Minerals that are used medicinally are also in that category in TCM. Just the way everything of natural origins they use medicinally is classified. From the therapeutic point of view it makes no difference -- there's many formulas that contain herbs, animals, insects, and minerals, but the prescribing professional is known as a herbalist (or, as they say here, an herbalist, swallowing the h.)

Alchemical herbs are mostly animal parts. Most are either prohibited for sale, sold illegally (and are prohibitively expensive), falsified, or belonged to animals gone extinct. (Multiple reports in the imperial Yellow Register Archives of sightings of unicorns, e.g., make me at least consider the possibility that they may have been real before they became mythological. The rare sightings were considered auspicious omens and the emperor, e.g., would decide whether to start a military campaign or not based on those sightings. False reports were punishable by death.) Some (possibly all) double up as magical substances. E.g. powdered rhino horn mixed into a candle allows one to see ghosts if they are present.

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home. -- Matsuo Basho

Or a lot harder.

Good friday to you. Who's the artist? This is the first painting I'm seeing of Christ before Pilate where Pilate's dog is present. That dog, named Banga, is a protagonist in "The Master and Margarita" novel, but I am not aware of any other sources mentioning its existence, except maybe Pearl Jam's lyrics -- "like Pilate, I have a dog" -- but they may have read the novel and got the dog from there (just like Mick Jagger got "Sympathy for the Devil" out of it.)

It must be the beer... An off-key voice in the night: "It must have been love!"

Cats are obligatory carnivores. Aside from this being a much-ignored axiom, there was this study with cat diets done by Francis Pottenger, MD, in 1932-1942. Of the thousands of cats divided into groups they fed different diets, the only diet they found adequate (resulting in perfectly healthy cats with perfectly healthy posterity) consisted of 2/3 raw meat, 1/3 raw milk, supplemented with cod liver oil. All cats that received versions of different diets (with cooked meat, pasteurized milk, or some combo of raw and cooked/pasteurized) fared much worse. And that was the era before commercial cat food, so those cats didn't eat what today's cats eat: corn, wheat, soy, artificial preservatives, artificial colors and flavors, carbohydrate fillers (aka cellulose, which deer and goats can digest but cats can't), sweeteners, vegetable oils, and something the labels call "animal digest" which is cattle manure. A long time ago, I did an internship working with patents, and saw many that were for chemicals designed to make what cats wouldn't normally eat attractive to them. Complex neuroscience behind each of those! Best scientific minds working on fooling cats, compromising their health and shortening their lives.

The cat thread is in the Rabbit Hole. It was originally conceived of as dedicated to what its name says -- Wild cats, but other kinds of cats show up from time to time too. Commercial cat food is a sad topic... "Research" experiments on cats is a sadder one. I try not to go there.

"(Qi) blowing differently on 10,000 things so each can be itself." -- Zhuangzi The artificially achieved commercial uniformity of fruits and the natural variety within a particular kind are as different as a uniformed and identically disciplined army is different from a group of friends brought together by similarities of interests, experiences and abilities. Tao likes variety, it's true, but it also likes boundaries -- the devil is in the details. Natural biological boundaries make sense on every level -- if you plant cabbages, you don't want to be surprised by harvesting cacti. If a couple decides to have kids, they expect (and are likely to prefer) human kids, not baby elephants, not even kittens, cute as they may be. Changes and differences within sensible boundaries are part of normal on the Way. Neither excessive erratic changes nor arbitrarily imposed boundaries are. Yes, even erratic changes are part of it, but there's a boundary for the extent and amount of those as well, and if this boundary is violated and erratic unnatural changes become the "new normal," this is a sign of a departure from the Way. Ditto the excessive imposition of unnatural boundaries. In the "old country" they painted the bottom part of the fruit trees with lime -- instead of doing nothing about the bugs or using pesticides. This imposed a sensible nonlethal boundary on many kinds of critters that would otherwise damage the crop and surprise you with a worm inside an apple. Not that it never happened, but normally you wouldn't get a worm in more than one apple out of a dozen, and it was easy to spot -- you just examined the surface for the hole and if you saw one, you cut the apple open and kicked the squatter out.

We were supposed to be equal. I remember a taoist source (but forget which) that asserted "people of old" were much more similar to each other than they are today. (Keep in mind that the source's "today" was taking place some 2000 years earlier than our "today.") The analogy was given -- if you plant some seeds (forget which, let's say cabbage), under normal conditions all of them will have the same soil to germinate in, the same amount of it to spread out in, access to equal amounts of sunlight, water, and care. After a while, they will all sprout on the same day, grow at the same rate, have the same level of health and resilience, look pretty much the same, mature at the same time, flower and bear fruit together (unless harvested, in which case they will all taste the same), and so on. But if different parts of your plot are uneven in quality, you will find that you plant some of the same seeds in fertile black soil, some on rocky terrain, some on a sandy patch in full sun, some on a muddy one in the shade of large trees, and so on. Try planting some seeds so close to each other that they have to compete for space. Then try watering some but not others, overwatering still others, pulling weeds around some but not others, and so on. You will soon see vastly different plants that do not germinate or grow simultaneously, don't mature in unison, some will shoot up and others will wilt, some will be healthy and some, sickly, the development of some will be stunted while their peers will thrive, and so on. The source asserted humans are only very different from each other for exactly the same reasons. I'd add, thousands of reasons, thousands of factors. Sometimes it's blatant -- you can tell how someone came to be the way they came to be -- but more often it's impossible to know. Which nutrients were missing from that particular patch of the soil? Which poisons present? Who knows...

Solitude embraced. A tea rose in a bottle from Asahi beer.

Like everybody else, Muslims are very different from other Muslims. Yesterday's terrorist act at a concert in Moscow was claimed by the Islamic State (IS) militant group. 133 people were killed. About the same number of people were saved by a 15-year old Kyrgyz boy named Islam who worked as an usher at the concert hall where the attack took place. He had the key to a back door located somewhere away from the public premises, and amidst the automatic weapons shooting and grenades thrown, he started yelling to the panicking people to follow him and led them to safety. He exited last, making sure every single person in the crowd of over 100 who followed him was out of that door, only then getting out himself. Comments to the interview he gave today: "That boy is a Muslim, and the terrorists are shaitans (devils, evil spirits.)" Alas, it's not as simple as that. Humans can be easily turned into shaitans -- and the "level of satisfaction" of shaitans doing evil and happily expecting paradise promised them as reward for murder may be as high as anyone else's -- or even higher.

The real horseback riding stance https://www.facebook.com/reel/1570590947143131

Not even medicinal? In CA, before they legalized it, for a while it was legal for MDs to prescribe it for chemo patients and for glaucoma. It did have a dubious status at the time because of the discrepancies between the state law and the federal law -- so the state allowed dispensaries for medical weed available with prescription, while the feds raided them and confiscated the goodies on a fairly regular basis. So not every doctor was willing to prescribe it, but it was possible to find one who would. It' supposed to improve brain health and, in particular, blood flow to the brain, but when I tried it, it gave me a headache. I'm not prone to headaches (knock on wood) so I'm fairly sure it wasn't a coincidence. Might give it another try, it was a long time ago. If it helps with intraocular pressure, this may be part of the overall effects, but I haven't seen or heard anything on the subject (doesn't mean anything of course, I wasn't looking closely.) I think herbs that are in general reputed to improve eye health might be useful -- bilberry, eyebright, goji berries, Chinese chrysanthemum. Fat soluble vitamins. Fish oil.

I read this book, by two Yale researchers if I remember correctly, when it first came out in 1997. I remember one of its main conclusions: there's nothing that works better to lower intraocular pressure than marijuana. And for severe glaucoma, it's been presented as sometimes the only salvation. The most prescribed glaucoma drops, pilocarpine, constitute an alkaloid obtained from a jungle medicine herb, pilocarpa, native to South America. I don't know how the natives used the plant itself and how they fared, but the pharmaceutical version is highly toxic and many people find it hard to tolerate. MJ, on the other hand, is well tolerated by many, but I don't know what its legal status and/or availability are in your parts. If that's not a problem, try to make sure you steer clear of the GM strains.

Then and there, cats were gods. Here and now, however, gods are cats.

These are sculptures of the deity Tlaloc from the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. To the natives, he was "the god who came from the sky," god of thunderstorms and destruction. However, some of Tlaloc's depictions do not look god-like or menacing. For example, here he looks more like a rather depressed pilot from a crushed plane.

@Nungali Strange indeed. But dream-weavers are liars. In the 8th grade, I had a dream about America. In the morning, when I came to school, a boy in my class told me he had a dream about me in America, and apparently some relative I had there left me an inheritance of $76 million. I still remember that number, and am still waiting...

Definitely. But if you're offering them alcohol (for some gods and immortals, it's a must), you discard it afterwards. A bit of a different approach is used with Zhurong, the God of Fire, who is is present in the cooking fire in your kitchen. Since you're into cooking, here's a tip: offer him some hard liquor from time to time, you just need to sprinkle a little on the burning fire, e.g. by dipping your fingers in your drink and shaking the drops off while inviting Zhurong to partake and giving him thanks for cooking your food. This is supposed to improve its taste and bioavailability, and prevent mishaps like under- or overcooking, burning, oversalting, etc..

Thanks for the tip. I'll put that Paris scarf in my pocket, pull it out, see what happens. Please stay tuned.

This makes total sense. If you don't hold a live rat in your teeth, the kundalini snake will have no good reason to rush upward. (That's why most practitioners fail to awaken it. Masters who know this secret guard it closely.) And if you don 't sit in lotus, you won't have a legit reason to claim spiritual practice. But in reality, the snake will rush upward to get the rat even if you sit in any other upright position for a while.