Zhongyongdaoist

The first two are a couple of my favorite quotes, the type of thing that I really resonated with when I started reading the Dao De Jing over 50 years ago: What is important here is the appearance of 自然, zìrán, with meanings such as, nature / natural / naturally, with a strong suggestion implied by 'We are as we are, of ourselves!', that "nature" as in human nature, the type of "nature" that would be implied by li as formal cause, that the work of the rulers of the "highest antiquity" were concerned with the actualization/realization of potential and not with making the "people" into something as an efficient cause would, by acting on them directly and obviously as opposed to doing something which was behind the scenes, or otherwise not an obvious action which helped them to realize their "self-nature". Unless someone wants to claim that the section in bold is such a bad translation as to be completely misleading, and then I hope to back that up with a cogent argument, the text seems to be quite clear and the "work" of the sage is done in a way that no one cane see. Finally, this quote which came up when I did a search on the occurrences of ziran in the DDJ: Thus he helps the natural development of all things 辅, fǔ, to assist / to complement / auxiliary 自然, zìrán, nature / natural / naturally and does not dare to act 而不敢為 而, ér, and / as well as / and so / but (not) / yet (not) 不, bù, (negative prefix) / not / no 敢, gǎn, to dare, venture; bold, brave 為wéi, do, handle, govern, act; be In the above two things are clear, the way of the sage is to assist things by the realization/actualization of the potential of ziran, and most importantly that the sage "does not dare to act", where act is wei, and wei is clearly distinguished from the preferred form of "assistance" fu, so based on this one might almost say that fu, not wei, is more accurate then wei not wei. The parenthetical comment "(with an ulterior purpose of his own)", is the translators suggested interpretation, and has no more authority than the reader cars to give it. So the implication is that the actions of butchers and lumberjacks and by implication anyone who may use the "li" or inherent pattern of something as part of their "making" process, which may be a Daoist method, is at least as far as the Dao De Jing is concerned not the way the Sage works through wuwei, and probably not even the type of work which the Sage undertakes through wuwei. Light may be shed on the matter by a look at the Neiye, so I will return to it in my next post. Oh, in case you are wondering ziran appears in he Dao De Jing five times. ZYD

Is there an explanation of the symbolic meaning of the rituals? Why are there trigrams on their robes, and what are the strips they are carrying around? Yes, there is a vast literature of explanation which incorporates practically every aspect of traditional Chinese cosmology and physiology and bases them on the fundamental patterns of the Hetu and Loshu. I could spend pages describing even the basics, and have done some explication of it in my various posts, but no single post or thread to which I could point that would would serve as a satisfactory discussion, nor do I have time right now to post more detail here. The works of Michael Saso describe it, as well as other authors, so that now there is a relatively large literature in Western languages. As a curiosity the pioneering work of the Dutch sinologist Jan de Groot might be of interest to you. In spite of its age it is still considered to be a useful reference, though it has been largely displaced by more recent work. ZYD

As an example of potential and its actualization or realization would be a synonym for actualization, but actualization is the philosophic technical term, little acorns and mighty Oaks are often used, I'm going to go ahead and do the same thing. An acorn is the seminal manifestation of the li, morphe or form of "Oakiness", it has the potential to become an oak three and nothing but an oak tree, it cannot become a banana tree, or an apple tree much less a dappled horse, it can only be an oak. In order to become a full grown oak making little acorns of its own and acorn needs good soil, adequate water and sufficient sunlight, lacking these it might not achieve the state of being a mighty oak producing other little acorns which as the actualization or realization of its of its potential is also its "end" or "telos". This "end" is also one of Aristotle's four causes, called the final cause in English, but it should be our final subject and not distract us too much now. Now there are things that might prevent and acorn from actualizing its potential, this may be easier if we examine another tree species, the orange tree. I am switching to orange for a variety of reasons, one of which is that an awfully long time ago I was reading a book on alchemy and it described the common metals as metals that had not reached their full potential in becoming gold, and that alchemy should be viewed as being an art/science that helped natural substances that had been impeded by environmental factors from reaching their full potential by becoming gold. Now in alchemy gold was the full realization of the potential of metals because it was "incorruptible", it didn't rust or decay, it was basically an "immortal" metal and alchemy "worked" because it helped nature to achieve its end as far as metals went. It then went on to use the examples of orange trees of these environmental features that would prevent something from actualizing its full potential, it also explains, in case you have ever wondered why orangeries, usually small out buildings on large properties used for entertaining and a get away, are called orangeries, just in case you have ever wondered. What this alchemical work said was that in warm climates such as sunny Spain orange trees thrived which meant that they actualized their full potential, they were able to produce seeds and continue to manifest "orangeness" in the world, but take them to the chillier climate of Britain and while they would grow and reach a certain level of development the cold climate prevent them from fruiting and producing seeds, and they needed the extra help of a greenhouse in order to reach their full potential. Since oranges were really popular those dedicated to growing oranges, naturally became called orangeries. Now there is a lot implied in what I have said above and it is very important to understanding the rational for both internal alchemy practices as well as laboratory alchemy, but that is outside of, but definitely related to, our topic here, which is the difference between wuwei, nonaction, and "flow". So I will return to that. In my previous post I mentioned foresters and lumberjacks and I will use them to bring this into focus. Foresters and lumberjacks look at Oak trees in totally different ways, a forester is concerned about an oak being healthy and growing to reach its full potential and contributing to the overall well being of the forest. A lumberjack looks at an oak as the raw material for his real interest, lumber, which oddly enough is why he's called a lumberjack. The forester is concerned about how well the oak manifests its oakiness, he is concerned about the li of oak, and seeks to encourage that oakiness to manifest as much as possible. The lumberjack is basically out to end the oak as an oak tree and "Make" it into an oak log, a lumberjack is the efficient cause of the making of oak trees into oak logs. He may become a "daoist" lumberjack by following the li of oak trees as he cuts them down and fashions them into log, just as the "daoist" butcher follows the li of oxen while he cuts them up, but neither of them really cares about either the oak or ox and its "realization", but only whether it is a good oak for lumber or a fine ox for a feast. Now what the sage is concerned about it the li of humanity and that human beings reach their full potential, he is not out to make them into something that he can use or sell, he is out to make them themselves, how that is accomplished and its difference from the making of the efficient cause is the difference between wuwei and flow and to further examine that we will bring us back to where we started with our quotes from the Neiye and the notion of the "unmoved mover", but first we will look at some of my favorite quotes from the Dao De Jing which will be my next post. ZYD

While looking for online sources with which to illustrate my points here I came upon this abstract of an article called, "The Classical Daoist Concept of LI 理 (Pattern) and Early Chinese Cosmology". Because of its references to two important early works the Huainanzi, with which at least some Dao Bums will have familiarity and the earlier but no less important Lüshi chunqiu, a less well known work unless you have done fair amount of study in late Warring States and early Imperial Chinese philosophy, I decided to tract it down so that I could read it. I finally did and it turns out to have some very important things to contribute to this topic, and I had to think about how and where to discuss them. I have decided that it is best to finish my discussion of Aristotle's Four causes and how they can be used to model and differentiate between "nonaction" and "being in the flow". We have already met two of these causes the formal and material in the analogies that exist between li and qi and form and matter in the Aristotelian sense of matter and not the usual modern sense of matter which is derived from the Seventeenth Century revival of Epicurean cosmology and its adaptation by such thinkers as Rene Descartes, and Issac Newton and John Locke, each of whom contributed, albeit unwittingly to the materialism that was formulated in the late Eighteenth Century and became the standard Western cultural meme of the Nineteenth and most of the Twentieth Centuries. So in my next post I will introduce the third of the four causes the "efficient" cause, which does not mean efficient in the sense that the related "efficiency" would indicate, but the "making" cause like the third definition given at Dictionary.com, "producing an effect, as a cause; causative", and to the examination of Aristotle's notions of Potentiality and Acutality, differentiate between foresters and lumberjacks and see how this relates the difference between butchers and sages, and thus between flow and nonaction. It will be fun, really it will. ZYD

With the following quote I will draw my beginning discussion of li as formal causes to a close so I can move on to how this relates to non action and flow, and why they are different: Aside from the use of li as "Heaven (-given nature)", the very title of this chapter, 刻意, rendered as "Ingrained Ideas" has some connection with li and a meaning I mentioned previously as "grain", like grain in wood, though in one of he online resources on it, it was mentioned as the grain in jade which allowed one to to carve the jade according to its inherent structure, just as the butcher carved up the ox according to it "ingrained" structure, and thus accomplished it effortlessly according to the "method of the Dao". So to look a little closer at it: 刻意, kèyì 刻, kè, carve, engrave 意, yì, thought, idea, opinion; think What interests me about this is its possible connection to the notion of innate ideas and there relevance to epistemology. On a more esoteric level, the notion of a "heaven" given nature echoes ideas in Neiye, passages in the Confucian Mencius and ideas in the Zhongyong ("Doctrine of the Mean"). Whether these echoes are significant or not remains to be seen. Finally I will finish this part of my discussion with this: I find this interesting because the YiJing is a formal system, basically a set of symbols that are linked in complex, but more or less well formed system of logical relationships. Seeing the hexagrams as li and thus as formal causes active in the universe gives a useful way to think about the traditional uses of the Yijing in divination, meditation and ritual. ZYD

You'd be amazed how much we show up like that. ZYD

You're welcome. Now let's look at the story of the Butcher: The important characters here are 神, shén, referred to above as "my spirit" and the combination 天理, tiānlǐ, rendered as "the natural lines", it is a combination that occurs many times in the Zhuangzi, probably enough to be considered a technical term, rendering tian as heaven and li inherent order we have an interesting combination in which indicates the idea that the inherent order derives from "heaven". Taken altogether it would seem to indicate that the "method of the Dao" involves discarding the senses and using the perceptual powers of the personal shen in order to perceive the "lines" of a pattern originating in heaven. Now let's look at another quote, this one will make the relation between the li and the physical body as perceived by the senses clearer: . Here we want to look at another character and its meaning, 形, xíng, appearance, look, as well as another combination, 生理, shēnglǐ, with shēng, life, living, lifetime; birth combined with li and which in modern dictionaries is translated as physiology. This last is extremely important and would indicate li or morphe, principle/form which is the source of a unified function of cosmic and human qi in the coordination of the body's harnessing of such cosmic functions as the electrical phenomena of the neurons in the brain and nervous system and the "spiritual" function of human qi and ultimately possibly the potentials of qigong and related practices. These are relatively long quotes so I am going to post this as it is and follow with a final quote and some commentary on all three, though I find the above quotes very suggestive and hope others find them interesting. ZYD Edit: Changed spacing in first quote to remove blank space in it to make the whole post more compact.

Are you saying Pneuma is not the same as Qi, Prana? No, I am saying that Pneuma is not the same thing as "matter-energy", and to my knowledge has never had a usage like hyle, one meaning of which is "wood", as the universal substance that is differentiated by morphe/forms. On the other hand qi has had just such a usage when used in the context of li. Look up pneumatics and pneumatology and then come back here and tell us all what pneuma is. In each of these words "pneuma" means very different things, in pneumatics it is ordinary air as the subject of a branch of engineering that produces such things as pneumatic drills, and in the other it is the Holy Spirit in Christian Theology, and in neither of these is pneuma the same as qi and prana. The same is true of qi which is why I said: (emphasis added, ZYD) The meaning of the character 氣, qì, will vary depending on context. Used to make up a word such as qigong which has a rough equivalence to pranayama, then the "vital energy" meaning above is meant, and then qi refers to something similar to prana, pneuma and spirit interpreted as vital energy, however used within a discussion of 理, lǐ and 氣, qì, as elements of a cosmology, then to equate it with pneuma in the sense of vital energy is misleading, its Greek equivalent would be hyle, or "matter" in the Aristotelian sense of the fundamental substance which in combination with li as form/morphe results in the world visible to, and experienced by sense including the phenomena which we ordinarily describe as "matter" and "energy", but which are complementary manifestations of an underlying "matter-energy" as primordial substance. In this cosmological sense qi combined with the right li, would give rise to the aspects of "physical" energy which I mentioned as being the electrical activity of the neurons involved in typing this and mixed with another li would give rise to "vital energy" experienced in qigong, but qi in this cosmological sense is not reducible to "vital energy", which is why said that the discussion was misleading. I will be explaining all of this in more detail as I continue in these posts. ZYD

I am sorry to be so long getting back to this, but in looking for online references for the subjects of the following post, li and qi, I did some extra research and came up with some fascinating quotes from Zhuangzi about li, including its use in the story the Butcher which has been cited in relation to “flow”. I have decided to post the following as an introduction and then will post a discussion of these quotes from Zhuangzi to show how the concept of li is used in the book attributed to him, and possibly by the “great man” himself. One of the disagreements that has arisen here is one of whether Wuwei is the same as “flow”. I don't think that they are the same and will argue this in terms of what I have l have already proposed, that of modeling Wuwei using Aristotle's four causes which will show a clear line of demarcation between Wuwei and “flow”. This will be further examined by references quotes from both the Dao De Jing and the Zhuangzi, but first I need to do what I mentioned before of taking a few characters from out quotes and examining them in more detail, in the process I will introduce two of Aristotle's Four Causes, matter and form. In Greek matter is called hyle and form, morphe, this leads to one of the fundamental characteristics of Aristotle's theory, Hylomorphism. The two characters which I will cull from what we have quoted so far are: 理, lǐ which roughly corresponds to Aristotle's Formal Cause and 氣, qì which roughly corresponds to Aristotle's Material Cause While just about everyone here is familiar with Qi, very few know much about Li, which, depending on context can have meanings like: The common usages of qi as energy or bio-energy are at best a small part of the meanings of qi, again depending on context, which can include accepted two and three character combinations with qi, that are part of traditional usage. The following should give some idea of the range: For our purposes the tradition usage that is most useful is that of a general “substance” which is a basic constituent of all manifest things, and thus is similar to Aristotle's concept of matter. The combination of li as “intrinsic order” and qi as an underlying substance which is ordered by li, has a rough equivalence to Aristotle's form and matter combination as the basis of “physical” objects. A modern author commenting on this use of qi as “hyle/matter” had this to say: Which is accurate but then follows it up with a comparison to “pneuma” which is in a sense misleading and reinforces the tendency to think of qi solely as some sort of bio-energy when in fact it is as much at the root of the electrical phenomena running the devices upon which I am typing this and on which people are reading it, as it does the electrical phenomena taking place between my brain and fingers as I type this and the electrical phenomena happening between the eyes and brain of the reader. So, the reader can look forward to some interesting quotes from Zhuanzi about li in my next post. ZYD Edit: Minor edit for clarity about Wuwei and "flow" in the second paragraph.

... with a legion of celestial beings featuring ancient emperors, mythical monkey beings, immortals (in spirit form), ancient philosophers, impersonal spiritual energies, gods that created stuff, gods that destroy stuff, gods that resemble dramatically other buddhist gods, which in turn resemble Indian gods, etc... It is all that and more. That is what Daoist Religion looks like to the outsider and the lay practitioner or member of a Daoist Temple, but to the practitioner it is a very powerful system of internal cultivation with both ritual and meditative aspects that provides powerful tools both for magic and internal alchemy. I first became familiar with the broad outlines of the "Religious Daoism", which I prefer to call Ritual Daoism a little over forty years ago when I read Michael Saso's Taoism and the Rite of Cosmic Renewal. At the time I had been studying, since I was about twelve and practicing, since I was seventeen, Western magic, and since my early Twenties supplementing it with qigong and what I would call Daoist awareness meditation based largely on my understanding of Charles Luk's Taoist Yoga book supplemented with what little literature existed at the time. Saso's book was a real eye opener and I was immediately taken with the whole system described there. I liked it so much that in humorous response both the the "born again" Christians who were popping up every where and my Neopagan "witchy" friends, I started jokingly referring to myself as a "born again heathen". I don't know how much detail the OP wants about Daoist Religion, but there is a lot to it and it is both a fascinating study and rewarding practice. ZYD

1 and 2 are hopelessly bad translations 3 and 4 are just bad this is correct, yes quite close I'm not a big fan of Roth myself, however his book is probably the most common version available and part of the reason for the popular interest in Neyye, so I quote him. Right now I don't want to get bogged down in details and we agree on the basic point that the passage is "practically a description of wu wei and ...... very close to the notion of the "unchanged changer" of Aristotle". This is not the place for textual analysis, though I may pull some of the Chinese characters out of the text for closer examination down the road. The purpose of the citations was simply to establish a possible relation between ancient Chinese concepts and those of Aristotle to see if anything in Aristotle will be useful to modeling what the Chinese are trying to describe and help us understand better what is going on and how one might actually be able to achieve wu wei.

Let me start with two quotes, the first from the Neiye: In the above the phrases "But to transform without expending vital energy; to alter without expending wisdom" is practically a description of wu wei and the phrase "Exemplary persons act upon things, And are not acted upon by them" is very close to the notion of the "unchanged changer" of Aristotle which I mentioned above, and finally "Only exemplary persons who hold fast to the One are able to do this" points to the importance of the One as a causal factor in this type of "non action". The second is from the Dao De Jing: This points out that even the Dao De Jing recognizes the importance of the One. In the West Plato outlines a "Metaphysics of the One" in his dialog Parmenides and Aristotle's Four Causes and the "Unmoved Mover" is developed in several works, mostly his "Physics" and "Metaphysics". During the period between 200 BCE and 300 CE the "Middle Platonists" worked to synthesize these ideas, this diverse body of work was further synthesized and systematized by Plotinus, whose work marks the transition from Middle to Late Platonism usually called Neoplatonism. In my next post I will expand upon this with both references to my posts here and more internet links as well as some important books. ZYD Edit: Spacing and minor corrections.

Maybe in the second half of the book, it looks like he is taking a more broad view from there on. I will keep you informed. I found Western Classical Philosophy particularly Aristotle's Four Causes and his concept of the "unmoved mover", better translated as "unchanged changer", to be very useful in modeling wu wei. There are passages in both the Neiye and the Dao De Jing that support this comparison, especially in regard to the notion of "the One". I have posted on these ideas in several places, but if you are interested I can work up a post and some references for here. ZYD

The discussion about black holes is somewhat bogged down because it needs to consider Hawking Radiation which describes how and why a "photon" might leave the black hole. That might not satisfy Taoist Texts though since he may also dismiss quantum physics as a religion.

Interestingly it is one of the proofs why GRT is bogus: because there is no need for it to explain the lensing. Deflection of light by the Sun Henry Cavendish in 1784 (in an unpublished manuscript) and Johann Georg von Soldner in 1801 (published in 1804) had pointed out that Newtonian gravity predicts that starlight will bend around a massive object.[15][16] The GRT plagiarized an idea discovered a 100 years before and used it to position itself as a globalist religion. (Emphasis added, ZYD) I would have left this discussion alone, but I am really astonished by this post and its implications for you own thinking, but to address the purely scientific aspects of the matter, Newtonian corpuscularism is an obsolete worldview, one which failed experimental tests and was and is incapable of providing the basis of a coherent worldview, to say nothing of how it was and has been used to attack the spiritual traditions of East and West. Basically it seems that for reasons that are only implied in your post, you are perfectly willing to dismiss everything that science is because of your position that General Relativity is a "globalist religion" and a revival of the claim about Einstein made by the Nazi and anti-semite, Philipp Lenard, as your use of the term "plagiarized" strongly implies. To be honest I really do not want to go where all of this is pointing, I have always begun any of my disagreements with you with the phrase "with all due respect", but based on the implications of the sources and apparent inspiration of the ideas which you are citing, I may never be able to do that again. I leave it to others to follow through on the sources and implications of what you have said, I am only concerned about the integrity of science, and if your opinions are based on the types of sources which have been implied, then you have no real basis for criticism, based on anything that can be considered legitimately scientific, for that reason I consider the matter closed and will not post further in this thread. ZYD

but, but... thats how GRT is proved: by observing how the gravity of the sun changes the direction of the starlight. Apparently you are also incapable of distinguishing between a direct and an indirect effect: As far as the "light" is concerned it went in a perfectly straight line. All of this goes back to the every day experience of the "Bent Stick" where a stick when partially submerged in water seems to be bent, but in point of fact is not. This "optical illusion" was noticed in antiquity and was was eventually formulated as the "principle of least time" by Fermat and was considered very important by Leibniz. In the early Eighteenth Century it was generalized as the "principle of least action" by Maupertuis and in the late Eighteenth Century was used to reformulate Newtonian Mechanics in the form of integrals instead of differential equations. Maxwell's original equations were in this form as Quaternions, which of course implied four dimensional solutions, and the later Nineteenth Century rebelled against them because of there implied teleology as I noted here: It is this implied teleology that is represented by the two solutions to Maxwell's equations which result from the advanced and retarded waves as the two solutions of Maxwell's equations one of which, the advanced, was ignored by Nineteenth Century physics. The whole problem as you are understanding it derives from thinking that light is a "beam", or a particle such as a "photon" which passes through a "space" in a particular "time", which are "common sense" notions that are not supported by either the experimental evidence or the mathematics used to model it, if you want to toss all of that out because you don't understand it, fine, but be honest about it, and don't assume that people who actually understand the science think in terms of light "being bent", it is space--time that is bent according to the scientific understanding of the matter, for all intents and purposes thinking of it as a beam of light which is bent is just a simplification offered to the general public so that they can get some idea, even if a misleading one, about what is going on, it is NOT what the science is talking about. Unfortunately there is not an agreed upon interpretation of exactly what is going on at present, but the criticisms that you have mentioned are not based on the actual science, but upon simplifications offered up for popular consumption, they are in a sense pseudo-science, but General Relativity is not. I do want to say that most people, including some scientists, who criticize Relativity and Quantum Mechanics have no idea of the conundrums which research into electromagnetism had presented to physics in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century and the enormous amount of clever research and thought that went into solving problems such as black-body radiation and those presented by spectroscopy. One can get an idea by wading through E. T. Whittaker's two volume work, A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity (2nd edition) as I did, after doing so it will become clear how difficult the problems were and how unsatisfactory all other approaches were to solving these issues. Relativity and Quantum Mechanics emerged as legitimate, and successful models of the physics because nothing else worked. They were accepted because they worked in theory and practice, however much they may offend commonsense and the older notions of physics. I could write pages more on this, but I think the fundamental point is that what has been proposed so far as being problems with General Relativity, it is more an attack on popular misconceptions about the science and not the science itself, and as such it misses the mark completely, and really is not worth any more of my time. ZYD

For a person who is always touting his achievements in Neidan Taoist Texts you have a surprisingly three dimensional and sense based perspective on science. I'm sorry to quote something from the popular press, but it was quickest to hand and also spot on in terms of its relevance. It is both contemporary and brings out the point which I wish to make, which is that "gravity" as an effect of mass has no direct effect on light, its speed or direction, which is one of the unstated premises of such arguments cited by Taoist Texts such as this: In general relativity it is space-time that bends, not the path of light, and the "beam" of light should it wish to comment on its path would say, "I didn't notice anything strange", and be quite flummoxed when presented with evidence to the contrary. Science proceeds from what is "observed in our human experience" to what can be deduced from and confirmed by experiment and further observation, and measurements and "meter readings" are part of that human experience. As a person who has spent time studying the historical development of electromagnetic theory, and seen how both Quantum Mechanics and Relativity are related to a full interpretation of Maxwell's equation's including both advanced and retarded waves, an aspect of the theory half of which Nineteenth Century physics swept under the carpet, a deficiency which Wheeler and Feynman attempted to rectify in their early Absorber Theory, I have a "synoptic" view of the matter, and I have a view far more similar to Tetrode and the Kaluza-Klein models, but also working in the direction of an information based approach, which would unify a Kaluza-Klein viewpoint with the Transactional Interpretation. I don't have the purely technical and mathematical skill to work this out in detail, but on a conceptual level something like this makes sense to me, based on my reading of Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century history of Science. Unfortunately this is all that I can contribute to this topic at this time. ZYD Edit: Corrected some spacing problems, which may have been due to gravitational distortion. Edit: Corrected the "light beams" comment to "I didn't notice anything strange" from "a thing strange".

First of all as for a source to what I mention, I am afraid that after decades of reading and study in largely intellectual history and focusing on the esoteric and its practices, any knowledge that I have of Chinese social structure was incidental, and to come up with source at this point in time would be more work than I care to do, but I remember the order which I mentioned because I thought it interesting at the time. Occupations of tradesman and farmer are what common people do, since the question was about tradesman and farmers, I gave an answer about common people, not about the elite. I don't want to get into a detailed discussion about social structure, it is not of much interest to me, and I could no more give specific citations for my opinions about that than about what I have for the lower classes. I could for example speculate that one of the reasons that this classification developed was to put social climbing tradesmen who had accumulated large fortunes in their place as money grubbing exploiters with an eye on the money and a thumb on the scale, but that would be pure speculation. Wrong. This assumes Medieval feudalism as a universal model and projects it everywhere, and while as far as I can tell it this can be done for many times and places it is not universally applicable, and there are local variables. It is often not applicable to the earlier periods of societies and particularly those where there were small family run farms such as early Republican Rome. Again I am not going to cite anything for this, just as Stosh has not. I don't intend to put any more time into this, I hope that those who continue it have fun. ZYD

It is because the traders were considered to be people who profited from other peoples productive labor, and created nothing themselves, except profits for themselves. Peasants were at the top because they were farmers who created food, the necessity for all, and then craftsmen who created useful items from tools to clothing. ZYD

Thanks Steve, I have been doing the posting equivalent of biting my tongue for three or so hours, but I didn't want to post again unless absolutely necessary to get past this obstacle, and I was hoping that someone else would bring up these points, so I wouldn't have to. ZYD

With all due respect wandelaar, if I were going to discuss complex numbers I would use a number theory approach, and show how both "negative" and "imaginary" numbers arise from doing such basic operations as addition and subtraction, multiplication and division, on what are called "the Natural Numbers", then the nature and origin of these concepts, such as negative numbers can then be seen as answers to questions which naturally arise, like "I know that 8-7 equals 1, but what does 7-8 equal?", and becomes much clearer. All the best in your endeavor, ZYD

I have studied and practiced Western Magic since the 60s, and started to study and practice Qigong in the early 70s, I became familiar with the Daoist magic related to Qi development in the late 70s, finally starting to practice it in the early 90s, you might find these and other posts in my PPD interesting: What, me teach? Ok, sure why not . . . Proposed Curriculum; the What, the How, and the Why My apologies to casual readers who cannot follow these links, but they are open to registered Dao Bums only. ZYD Edit: Corrected some spacing issues.

There is no evidence that I am aware of to indicate that Frater Albertus had done anything more than to popularize alchemy. I have yet to come across anything which suggests he had succeeded in achieving a mineral stone and much to indicate that he had badly erred in some fundamental ways. No others who have publicly come forth from his "lineage" have offered any public evidence (or private, though of course I may not be privy to it) that they have succeeded in any significant respect either. FraterUFA, I was hoping that you would put in an appearance, and as the only person posting on the Dao Bums whose opinion in these matters I would give credence to, I consider your criticism to be anything but an idle dismissal. My "I don't think that he can be idly dismissed", was intentionally about as lukewarm as I could make it based on my own quick look at him. As for your observations about Frater Albertus, I had reached similar conclusions by the mid 70s, but where would any of us be without him? On the other hand when you said in one of your posts years ago, that alcohol was not the mercury of the vegetable kingdom as many moderns maintain, I knew that you had thought deeply about the matter and read the sages carefully. While alcohol is a "spirit" and a menstruum it cannot be "the Mercury" because it lacks the generative virtue which "the Mercury" must have. The fact that you knew that, and other things that you have said, are to my mind convincing evidence that you have gone far deeper into the matter than many others. I don't have time to say much more than what I have, though I did think about writing my own defense of laboratory alchemy, as I was not impressed with what I read about his speculations about quantum mechanics etc, but on thinking about it, I decided it would be way to time consuming at this time. ZYD

After my post it occurred to me that I made the same mistake as ernobe, I didn't say who Albertus was, and very few on the Dao Bums will have any idea. Frater Albertus was the single minded driving force behind the revival of laboratory alchemy in the mid Twentieth Century. I can only speculate at what ernobe may have meant by this: " Why does Rubaphilos first affirm the validity of a physical process of alchemy, and then say that the alchemists' belief in or rejection of transmutation depends on his own personal motives in making such a claim? " But, I would restate one way of taking what he says this way, basically quoting the first part as written: "Why does Rubaphilos first affirm the validity of a physical process of alchemy, and then say that the alchemists' belief in or rejection of transmutation depends on his own personal worldview and reasons which he has for holding that worldview, and whether that worldview allows transmutation as a real possibility or not." For example there are people who holding a rather common view of the world as made up of "spirit" and "matter", each of which obeys its own rules, might very well be open to a notion of "spiritual" alchemy and dismiss the notion of "laboratory" alchemy seeking to transmute "base metals into gold", would be so much stuff and nonsense. There are a large number of people here on the Dao Bums who would hold just such a view, and precious few who would be willing to seriously entertain the notion of a "physical" philosopher's stone, as past discussions of alchemy here on the Dao Bums has shown. I don't have time for a longer discussion now. ZYD

Before this degenerates into complete nonsense, let me do something that ernobe should have done, but did not, which is tell us who Rubaphilos is and something of his background, according to Occult of Personality: and has been the author of several books including some published by Salamander and Sons, which while they seem to be out of business also seem to have published some very interesting serious work on Laboratory alchemy. If he studied with a student of Frater Albertus, then he has a legitimate pedigree at least, and for those inclined to look at videos, there may be something to be learned from what he says. I don't care to watch videos, but for those who do, I don't think that he can be idly dismissed. ZYD