Zhongyongdaoist

It is not so surprising how much the Bible borrows form other traditions, it is surprising the number of people to whom this is news. Problems with the Biblical narrative were noticed in the Seventeenth Century, by the Nineteenth they were the subject of considerable study and had given rise to serious and well argued doubts about the Bible as a historical document. With the development of Archeology in the Nineteenth Century similarities to other Near Eastern civilizations became a more and more common observation, with the Early Twentieth Century being a time when these were noted, organized and even brought together into a neat Two Volume scholarly package, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. People to whom this is news should start with the Wikipedia Article on the Historicity of the Bible. There is a great deal of well reasoned and accurate Biblical scholarship available in English and other languages, and people do not need to rely on the opinions of a UFO theorist lecturing in Italian with English subtitles. Doing the research is both interesting and worthwhile, and after doing it you will realize that all forms of Judeo-Christian fundamentalism, are so many castles built on foundations of sand, and that none of the religions that derive from the Abrahamic myth cycle, Judaism, Christianity, or Islam have any more basis for their claims than any other religion, and the "Bible" in any of its forms, any more claim to special status than Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and similar works of mythology.

I just thought I would give an example of this by this quote from the Analects of Confucius: So in China all persons of authority are seated in the North, thus the throne of the Emperor as the ultimate worldly authority is in the North. Daoist Temples have the statues of the Three Pure Ones in the North and a Daoist would face North in rituals designed to invoke them, the Doors to the Temple are in the South. On the other hand when a Daoist practices transforming him or herself into a Deity they face South. This carries over even into Feng Shui where North is the favored position and visitors should be admitted from the South. The Attributes of the Loshu also carry over from this, because with One in the North, there are three yang Hun Souls in the East direction of Wood, dwelling in the Liver, and Seven Yin Po Souls in the West the direction of Metal, originating in the Lungs, and it continues on from there, in too much detail to recount here.

And that's the Truth.

Your certainly welcome. There is a lot of literature that explains this background material, an excellent overview of the development of Chinese thought in both philosophy and cosmology is Disputers of the Tao by A. C. Graham. Graham is considered to be one of the top sinologists of the last century, and not only is it a good overview of the various Waring States period "schools of thought", but with its detailed notes an bibliography it is a good starting point for further research. While it doesn't deal with some of the more recent developments, it is a good sound introduction to the field as it was at the end of the Twentieth Century.

It is important to realize that both "Yoga" and "qigong" are subjects with complex connections, Yoga as a term that covers several types of disciplines such as Hatha Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Jnana Yoga and Raja Yoga, with apologies for spelling, it has been years (decades actually) since I studied about these divisions, whereas Qigong is one of many disciplines that make of a family of "gongs" or "cultivations", such as shengong, neigong, etc. Qigong is the cultivation of Breath, or the equivalent of Pranayana, which is a foundation Yoga practice mostly associated with Hatha Yoga, but common to all of its higher aspects. Chinese Qigong develops rather early in China and is found as a well developed mystical practice complete with the outlines of an esoteric anatomy and mystical cosmology as early as the Fourth Century BCE in the work the Neiye which influences both the development of Daoism and Confucianism (through Mencious in the late Fourth Century BCE at the very latest). The possible Egyptian origin of Indian yoga would refer to the higher aspects of Indian yoga, which involves "union" or yoga with divine energies through transformations into various Gods, which are taught in the Egyptian coffin texts which make up the "Papyrus of Ani", however these practices developed in Egypt from shamamic trance and spirit possession practices and to think that similar practices did not develop independently of Ancient Egypt is to denigrate the spiritual creativity of human beings around the world. On the other hand, there are some reasons to believe that Egyptian practices did influence the later developments of practices originating in India, among other things sometime ago I asked myself the question, "Where did all those Lotuses come from?", since there is a large amount of Lotus symbolism in Egyptian, Hindu and Buddhist practices. When I did a word search for lotus in some early India literature it was relatively rare, but showed up as a common feature of Egyptian practices, with Gods seated on Lotuses, etc., at a very early date. So one needs to be very careful with ones historical speculations and do some real historical research before making broad "cultural dispersion" theories, which are often unfair to different cultures and the spiritual potential and creativity of human beings everywhere.

The earth rotates on an axis, or pole that runs from goes from North to South, this is why the Sun and stars seem to rise and set in the East and West, thus the ends of the "Pole" were seen as unchanging and the East and West as change and transformation. Since these ideas developed in the Northern Hemisphere the part of the pole that is visible is the North Pole and at the time these ideas were being developed the North Star was almost exactly North and everything seemed to rotate around it as the "Center of Heaven", with the stars of the Dipper, or Bushel as the Chines call it permanently pointing in that direction. Later when the Chinese developed the Loshu, the magic square of nine, this became formalized with the number one in the North as the Origin, thus the North Star became the star of the Heavenly Center, the One and the origin, and was associated with the trigram Kan, water, the original element from which the others arose, as taught in the Taiyi Shenshui, the Great One gave birth to Water. Everything in traditional Chinese cosmology, not just Daoist cosmology, was built around these ideas.

I actually do a great Dr. Evil imitation, but here is the grand dadddy of all sinister movie laughs:

To respond to the first, I sent this a while back to someone explaining our situation as Mods: Since there is bold text in the original, I have underlined the text which I thought needed emphasis. Basically in our official capacity as moderators we cannot take sides in any of the disagreements on the board, no matter what our personal opinions are, and in point of fact members are free to report what they consider bias on our behalf, to the “current admin”, which would get us in trouble. We are only allowed to intervene on matters of “breeches of the Civil peace”, and even then in a board like Dao Bums with an international membership which includes many different social groups with different ideas about what is and is not “civil” and changes in and respect for “common usage”, we are not free to impose our own values and notions of “civility” on the board, but must weigh the actual severity of an “insult” within the context of a multicultural milieu, which is not as easy in practice, as it is to describe in print. Strange as it may seem, we can only intervene in cases of racism, sexism, religious bigotry and other such matters, when the situation becomes so egregious and flagrant as to cross the often hard to determine line, into defacto insult. (Underline added to the above paragraph, ZYD) I hope that the above makes clear our own duties and position within the Dao Bums . . . After the debacle of the U.S. election, which was a very stressful period for us, we created the "Off Grid" sub Forum to deal with controversial issues with directly or indirectly involve matters as "racism, sexism, religious bigotry" and for those that go over a certain line, there is always "the Pit". The reason for this was to prevent The Dao Bums from becoming a public platform for such things, and to avoid attracting people to The Dao Bums to promote such ideas, while providing a private space for Dao Bums to discuss such things. I personally don't expect "healing", but that doesn't matter, healing is not our job, furthering free discussion is. As for promoting civility, regrettably this is not a Confucian forum, but a "Taoist" one, so people feel free to spontaneously express themselves, because that's what "Taoism" is all about. As far as communicating with people about their complaints, to my knowledge there is no set policy on this, but we do spend a lot of time discussing these complaints, debating actions and then filing the reports with an account of what action was taken and why, all on our own volunteered time. At this time there are only three mods and one admin, and we are about to lose one mod, as was announced here: and so far there is no throng lining up to fill that position. Everyone wants to complain to the Mods. No one wants to assume responsibility for receiving such complaints, much less acting upon them and then defending their actions or lack of action to Dao Bums members. Zhongyongdaoist Edit: This was accidentally posted prematurely, and I hid it to finish editing it, in the meantime several posts have appeared after this.

Alchemy is very definitely a specific discipline existing within a wider context, part of that context is "energy stuff", but modern terminology like "energy stuff", not only do not do the matter justice, but is very misleading. Unfortunately explaining this requires a lot of explanation and the need to let go of a great deal of modern misconceptions that are constantly read into older texts, and right now all I can do is point out that alchemy is a very specific application, and not some general term. I will try to expand on this and have posted a lot of posts that bear on this problem and the confusions associated with it over many years, but it will take some time to organize a better response. ZYD

Jeff Bezos recently reported estimated net worth of $90,000,000,000 is an obscene amount of money. Professor Johnson's fees are regrettably prohibitive for many people, but unless one has actual knowledge of his exact financial situation, such as how much he has to pay the Chinese in order to be in the position in which he is, of actually bringing the real possibility of Daoist initiation to Westerners, I don't personally think that one can stand in judgement of him. I have posted before about the origin of Western attitudes about money and spirituality originating in Christianity: In the West this results the cultural influence of Christianity and the 'sin' of simony. This attitude is based on Matthew 10:8: Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give. In other cultures the situation is more complex and we should be wary of unwittingly using a set of values derived from Christianity to judge the practices of another culture. That doesn't mean that we can't use such values, it just means that we need to be aware of them and ask ourselves why we believe that they are applicable. The operative phrase in Matthew is 'Freely you have received', with the implication that something of value really was received, in other words the power to 'Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons'. Since this was supposedly said by Jesus for a believer this would have the authority of a divine commandment, but for someone who is not working within that tradition and has worked hard, both in terms of study and practice and expended both time and money in the pursuit of the knowledge and ability to 'exorcise', they may be justified in charging and we are the ones who need to justify our attitudes about why they should freely give to us, what has cost them so much time, money and effort. (Emphasis added, ZYD) The attitude to money and spirituality of far Eastern cultures is very different from that of the West, here is an interesting comparison which I originally got from Magic SEA Blog: Unfortunately with his present reconstruction, this particular page is no longer publicly available, what I have posted above is my copy of this page. By the way this is a really good site, the author is a real practitioner, and knows his stuff, there used to be some really fascinating posts on it, but with his recent reconstruction, to, as he says: " . . . make sure that only suitable and comprehensive materials for intended readers.". He is moving a lot of material to a restricted part of his site. As a person who has done exactly what I have said earlier: The unfairness of the types of criticism about money that I hear all the time on the Dao Bums, is a real sore spot for me, there is not a single person here on the Dao Bums, much less Jeff Bezos, who could pay me enough to part with some of the things that I know and have learned and paid big prices for in terms of time, MONEY, and hard effort, to acquire, yet I continue to post here for free, those fruits of my labors which I consider can be taught openly and posted freely to the public. Finally unless you, and yes, I mean you, whoever is reading this, have actually taught students, as I have, you have no right to judge me, or anyone else who teaches these things. I stopped teaching years ago, out of shear frustration, about things like actually having to beg my students, as I did in one case, to a student who was not getting the expected results from what I had taught him to do, when he was in point of fact not doing what I had taught him to do, "please, humor me, pretend that I actually know what I am talking about, and that your preconceived notions about what you can leave in and leave out of my instructions is not correct, and just do it the way that I taught you to do it, just once, please, just pretend that I know what I am talking about", and when he did do it the way I said, to be awakened out of a sound sleep at 2:30 in the morning by a call, "Oh, my god, I can't believe it, I did it the way you said to do it, and its actually working the way you said it would, this is amazing!", in a tone that said "Wow, who would have thought!" And this was not some "dumb person", I didn't have any "dumb" students, this was a lawyer who taught at a law school, he was one of the best "natural" psychics that I have ever met, and had some background in Eastern and Western esotericism, but was too smart and too self assured for his own good. That is just one of the "Stupid Students" anecdotes that I could tell you, most teachers "have a million" of them that they share among themselves. All of that said, I have never stopped thinking about: And how to answer that question, so I have spent the past several years thinking about how I would integrate the last thirty years of study and practice with the previous 20+ which was the basis of my earlier teaching, so that I could actually have an answer for "a guy like me", and have actually made plans to teach again, whether I will act on those plans, and there are people who do want me to do so, remains to be seen. However, this post is long enough already, to say nothing of the time that I put into preparing it, so I will address some of the issues raised here in another post, I hope, in the next day or so. ZYD

In the U.S., there is the program of Jerry Alan Johnson, the beginning of which is described here: The rest of this can be found on Professor Johnson's site: The Temple of the Celestial Cloud Daoist training program As well as information on Professor Johnson's background, training, books and DVDs available, etc. There is a student of his here, qicat, though she has posted about going to China and while she has been on recently may not be available soon. I have the Volumes one to four of Professor Johnson's Medical Qigong texts, the earlier edition not the present one, and all Eight of his primary texts on Daoist magic. They are full of good information, his new books on Chinese Energetic Medicine, if they have material like their predecessors, could probably be used as beginning books in these studies, even by someone with a real aptitude studying on their own. Though most people cannot learn this type of thing without guidance and so self-study is not recommended. ZYD

In Religious Daoism the Primary Gods are the Three Pure Ones, this section from the Wikipedia article is a satisfactory overview: After that it gets significantly more complicated. This is because the Pantheon is a synthesis of Heavenly Master, Shangqing and Lingbao systems, but in terms of the important ritual practices, those related to self-cultivation and internal alchemy it revolves around The Pure Ones and what I like to call The Five Virtuous Emperors, the Emperors who rule the five elements, direction, planets, yin organs and more. These are the principle officers of the Daoist Ritual Dan or Altar and are also part of the Daoist internal practices where the Five Emperors are manifest in the Five Organs and the Three Pure Ones in the Three Dantians. In the body, along with other less important spirits they are meditated upon and dealt with through ritual practices that are both interesting and diverse. Obviously this is a very complex issue and one not easily dealt with in a discussion like this, but insofar as I have time, I will try to explain more. Specific questions could give me some idea of where to go with this, but I cannot guarantee a speedy answer. ZYD

two dark wisps of smoke like things that sometime take shape around my bathroom area: This doesn't surprise me as bathrooms have long been considered trouble spots because of their connections with and to the underworld and decay, indeed in the large urban areas in which most of us live the only naturally occurring nature spirits are what, since I read this in the late 60s: I have called "sewer snoids". When the energy is bad, these guys will come up and cause problems, indeed sometimes they are specifically called upon to cause problems, or can show up when magic has been poorly performed and gone awry. To get back to exorcism, here is just some of my further advice: I want to first introduce two fundamental concepts that are useful to understanding the practices I am about to explain. These are practices of Natural Magic as it was traditionally called in the West and these things are very much misunderstood by the modern person when they first approach them. Natural Magic deals with the properties of natural things, such as herbs and stones that can be used for magical purposes and the fact that Professor Johnson has a whole book in his Daoist Magic series, Daoist Mineral, Plant and Animal Magic shows that it is important in Daoist Magic also. The first of these concepts is: 理, lǐ: texture / grain (of wood) / inner essence / intrinsic order / reason / logic / truth / science / natural science (esp. physics) / to manage / to pay attention to / to run (affairs) / to handle / to put in order / to tidy up and this corresponds to the Western concept of “Form”, and is the basis for the possible usefulness of natural preparations in magic. I will explain more of this in another post, for now I want to get to the recommended procedure which involves the use of the lǐ, or inner essences of salt, vinegar, lemon and sandalwood. The easiest way to use these is to add a little vinegar, salt, lemon oil and sandalwood oil to purified or preferably spring water, and then starting as I specified before, reciting the first invocation to the Heavenly Lord Taiyi and the Golden Light Invocation and follow it with this: Heavenly Lord Taiyi who rescues from distress, Bless, Heal and Protect me, Help me to realize my Heavenly Nature, To transform my Earthly Existence. Bless this liquid made from precious natural treasures, Unify and bring together into an effective treasure The inner essences of Water, Vinegar, Salt, Lemon and Sandalwood Into an efficacious tool of cleansing and purification. With Vinegar dissolve all evil aggregates, With water carry away all evil phantoms, With Salt keep the forces of corruption far away, With Lemon spread light and happiness to fill my house With Sandalwood establish a firm base for happiness and success, Let my home be as much like your Eastern Paradise, As can be realized here on Earth, That I may realize the fullness of my human potential. In happiness peace and quiet. Repeating it over your soon to be magic water several times until it feels strongly “charged”. This is a process of making something Magically Efficacious, or as the Chinese say: 灵, líng: quick / alert / efficacious / effective / to come true / spirit / departed soul / coffin Something being spiritually effective, or ling, is the difference between an effective tool of exorcism and salad dressing, though it is also possible to make magically efficacious salad dressing. Notice that in the invocation above I have emphasized both of today's Daoist magic vocabulary words and one use, efficacious treasure, or líng bǎo is an important concept about which I will have more to say. This magically effective liquid can be sprinkled around the house, used to wipe off surfaces and even as an ingredient to bath water to clear up ones own aura. If you don't have sandalwood or lemon oil laying around then ground sandalwood and lemon peel can be used by making a tea of them. First you bring water to a boil, then turn to a simmer and add the sandalwood an let it simmer for not more than a minute, turn off the heat and add lemon zest or shavings from the skin of a lemon, dried lemon peel will also do, but you don't want to boil it otherwise the lemon scent will be boiled off, and you want that. Then add this to a mixture of water, salt and vinegar. I should be noted that only a small amount of vinegar is needed, no more than a tablespoon per gallon of water, because what is needed is the power of the inner essence, and not concentrated acetic acid, which could of course damage things, so for magical uses, a little goes a long way. I hope that these instructions are clear enough and I will expand upon them if necessary. ZYD Edit: I realized after I had posted this that I left salt out of the invocation and it is important. As it is written this is not material that I habitually use, but is based on sound principles and if followed, should produce good results, such as those I have seen time and time again.

I pretty much agree with what you are saying here. I think that 小梦想 owes you and also us Mods, because we have had to deal with this, an apology for his actions. I also don't think that editing should be alllowed, but it may not be possible to not give that along with the power to hide. This is a recent upgrade and it was delayed longer than it should be because of ways in which it endangered such feature as these PPFs. There has been a lot of tinkering with categories of moderation and how much is possible in any particular level. We have worked out a lot of problems, but some may remain, and it could be a choice of giving the editing power, or no PPFs, and we think that most Dao Bums would prefer having the PPFs. Even if the Edit function has to remain, I don't see this as a problem that ruins forum integrity the way the iceberg sunk the Titanic. The vast majority of people here have been very reserved in their use of the powers which have been granted to them. They come here to freely discuss matters and with rare exceptions, they tolerate the free expression of others. Since this is the first time that this has happened, Mods and Admin will be discussing the issue internally, and more than likely, if the Edit function has to remain, future actions like 小梦想 did will not be treated lightly. Zhongyongdaoist, Mod

What this demonstrates is that PPF owners cannot edit someone else's post without leaving their signiture: And that the editing signature will be that of the last editor. While I could only guess as to why 小梦想 would wish to leave his signature, it might be that he wished to show that there is no way to edit a post without someone knowing it. Now I can see the ILovecoffee hidden posts in the PPF about which he started this thread, and the only edits listed there are those of ILovecoffee, which makes sense because he claims that after he discovered the edits he edited again, thus erasing any evidence of tampering. Unfortunately this leaves us with a claim which cannot be investigated because the evidence that it did take place has been erased and the matter degenerates into Ilovecoffiee's word against 小梦想's word, something which we can neither investigate nor adjudicate, so please if you wish to raise an issue for us, don't erase the evidence, otherwise you are just wasting our time. This also solves the problem raised here: No one can fool with a anyone's post without it being obvious, and thus even a regular member's posts are safe, much less a lineage holder's posts, because the person who attempts to disrupt them, points a finger at themselves. So maybe 小梦想 did this this just to see what what would happen. Obviously it was noticed very quickly, and brought to Mod attention. Zhongyongdaoist, Mod Edited: for to simplify some passages.

Oh, I have boatloads more advice, and there will be more here, but in order to post what I have so far, which to think through and organize takes a lot more time than it does to read, I have had to put off doing my own personal things, and my Mod duties here on The Dao Bums, and I am trying to catch up on both as well as to organize what else I intend to post here. I had intended to post some necessary background to these things which will help in practice, but since you have an immediate need for further advice, I will concentrate on that and post something shortly, hopefully within the next 24 hours. I am glad to hear that what I have posted so far seems to be helping with your situation. ZYD

Your appreciation is appreciated, and thanks to the thankers. Just to make it completely clear, it is Master Ni's version that should be used for the practices I am suggesting. In about mid 2009 I obtained a Chinese version and set about to answer some of the questions that the differences between the two translations raised, part of it is simply the fact that the invocation consists of four character statements, and thus the person translating it has to read into these four characters a great deal in order to make it into comprehensible English, but of the two Lagerway's is generally more literal which is understandable because he is an academic writing for a scholarly audience, Master Ni on the other hand is writing for his students and other interested parties and needs to provide something that is for people of unknown skills and backgrounds. I provided Lagerwey's version to let people realize that this invocation is potentially very powerful because even though Master Ni's version is not as literal as Lagerwey's, it is still connected to the original, and for this practice approaching it through the Heavenly Lord Taiyi, it will be even more effective, because the Heavenly Lord Taiyi will make sure it makes the necessary connections and is effective without being dangerous. In Chinese the character for this type of text is 咒 (zhòu), which I prefer to translate as "incantation", and this incantation turns out to be one of the most important in Ritual Daoism, and shows up in many places. Lagerwey's translation is part of his discussion of a performance of the Rite of Cosmic Renewal, one of the most important Rites of Ritual Daoism. Another authority Master Javewu, lists it among a set of Eight basic incantations, he calls them Mantras, which in his tradition are essential to the practice of his tradition. The link given in his name above will take you to the Chinese text and you can find these Eight Essentials listed down among the comments and notes. Starting out as I said in my earlier post one does the Mantra to the Heavenly Lord Taiyi and then finishes the last repetition this way: Heavenly Lord Taiyi who rescues from distress, Bless, Heal and Protect me, Help me to realize my Heavenly Nature, To transform my earthly existence. Bless my performance of the following invocation, That it may be safe, powerful and effective, And Protect me from evil influences, Open my understanding to its deepest meaning to further my self-realization. And then one repeats the Golden Light Invocation: The mysterious origin of Heaven and Earth is the source of pure energy. With this energy I can rectify the imbalances and communicate with the entirety. Within and without the three spheres of the universe, only the Tao is most revered From the Tao I receive the subtle Golden Light to envelop and protect my body and soul It is so subtle that it cannot be seen or heard. The subtle Golden Light permeates Heaven, earth and me. It nourishes and educates all life. I touch this Heavenly invocation with deepest sincerity. (Changing touch to feel if you want) All spiritual beings gladly guard me. All high deities of the five Directions come to assist me. All the Divine Immortals kindly accept me. The Golden Light enables me to transcend all worldly troubles. I am given power over all evil forces The enlightenment comes from the Divine immortals like thunder breaking the dark clouds. They inspire my clear wisdom to see through all things that are obstacles in my way. My upright chi is shining and active. - May the Jade Marrow of Heaven fill my bones. May the holy medicine of immortality grow within me. May the spiritual resources always reach me. I truly know the holy medicine of immortality is colorless and flavorless. After 10,000 repetitions of this invocation, the wonderful secrets of all supernatural Beings become self evident to me. From the Jade Emperor, the Everlasting One of the Universe. may his Golden Light descend and guide me. at least ten times and up to forty-nine. Breath Golden Light into your Lower Dan and then let it radiate out so it envelopes your whole body and extends some distance beyond it. This is the preliminary meditation/recitation practice, I will probably say more about this, but I am going to do some posts on necessary background, which will explain the cosmology that exists in the background of these practices and others that have been mentioned in this thread, such as Baqua mirrors, baths and other things and explain why such things work and why it is not reducible to just “energy”, whatever “energy” means. After that, I will explain a little about why we are starting with these practices and what they have to do with exorcism.

About Twenty years ago I bought a book by Hua-Ching Ni, the Workbook for Spiritual Development of all People, and found this on p. 109, and after reading it I thought “I like this!” and proceeded to recite it as part of my own practice. The Golden Light Invocation The mysterious origin of Heaven and Earth is the source of pure energy. With this energy I can rectify the imbalances and communicate with the entirety. Within and without the three spheres of the universe, only the Tao is most revered From the Tao I receive the subtle Golden Light to envelop and protect my body and soul It is so subtle that it cannot be seen or heard. The subtle Golden Light permeates Heaven, earth and me. It nourishes and educates all life. I touch this Heavenly invocation with deepest sincerity. All spiritual beings gladly guard me. All high deities of the five Directions come to assist me. All the Divine Immortals kindly accept me. The Golden Light enables me to transcend all worldly troubles. I am given power over all evil forces The enlightenment comes from the Divine immortals like thunder breaking the dark clouds. They inspire my clear wisdom to see through all things that are obstacles in my way. My upright chi is shining and active. - May the Jade Marrow of Heaven fill my bones. May the holy medicine of immortality grow within me. May the spiritual resources always reach me. I truly know the holy medicine of immortality is colorless and flavorless. After 10,000 repetitions of this invocation, the wonderful secrets of all supernatural Beings become self evident to me. From the Jade Emperor, the Everlasting One of the Universe. may his Golden Light descend and guide me. The only thing I didn't like about it was the line beginning “I touch this . . . “, which didn't seem like good Engish, whereas everything else in it was beautiful, rich and evocative English, so I replaced touch with feel to read the line as “I feel this . . .”, and after that I could recite happily, and did so quit a bit. At the about the same time I got Stephen Bokenkamp's Early Daoist Scriptures, and became fascinated by the final section on a Daoist scripture he called The Wondrous Scripture of the Upper Chapters on Limitless Salvation. As I recited the above “invocation” I would have insights into it and some of them echoed ideas that I read about in Bokenkamp's book, also it started to sound eeirily familiar, and I finally realized that it reminded me of something that I had read years earlier in John Lagerway's Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History and after a little digging I found it on p. 86: The Golden Light Hymn Mysterious ancestor of heaven and earth, Root of the myriad energies. Widely practiced for eons: Guarantor of my spirit-communication. Within the Three Realms and without, I alone am the honored one: Its body gives off a golden light Which envelops and illumines my person. Neither visible to the eyes Nor audible to the ears, It contains heaven and earth And nourishes all life. Having sung this ten thousand times My body becomes luminous, The Three Realms wait upon me, The Five Emperors welcome me. The myriad gods pay homage before me; I put the thunder and lightning to work: Demons and fiends lose courage, Imps and sprites disappear. In it dwells the thunder, The thunder god who appears and disappears. Universal wisdom interpenetrating, The five energies soar on high. Golden light, appear quickly: Cover and protect the Perfect Man. Yes I thought the similarities are definitely there, but what differences, Hymn, ha, this is pretty obviously a thunder magic incantation! I wondered, are these translations of the same text, or are they translations of different, but related texts? Time provided the answer to this and other questions and shortly so will I. With all this some people are probably wondering what all this has to do with the “secret sauce” that Kenobi was wondering about. Well . . . everything, I am trying to explain the ingredients and that takes a little time and background, someone who really pays attention to what I am saying will discover that I am not only tossing him a life jacket, but an inflatable raft. Whether he or anyone else is able to figure out how to inflate that raft is another question, but like a good story teller I know how to keep my audience interested, well, at least I hope I know how to keep my audience interested. ZYD P.S. This, with the exception of italicized text, is all the same font and size in OpenOffice, the word processor that I use to prepare longer posts, but paste it in here and its all different. Growwwl.

I want to talk a little about “First Aid” and for that purpose I am going to recommend two practices which will complement and reinforce each other, the first of these focuses on the Heavenly Lord Taiyi and the second is a very powerful tradition Daoist invocation best known in English as “the Golden Light Invocation”. Now why do we start with the Heavenly Lord Taiyi? Well for the sake of guests as well as continuity I am going to bring his picture from my PPD and some of the things that I said there here: There is a good discussion of him here: The Heavenly Lord of Supreme Oneness and Salvation from Misery for those not familiar with the site if is a great online reference which, while it doesn't seem to be active anymore is maintaining an excellent reference for all things related to what I prefer to call Ritual Daoism. There are several reasons for starting with the Heavenly Lord Taiyi, first of all he can and will be helpful in himself, secondly you can use him to help you connect with other aspects of the Daoist Pantheon in a safe manner. I don't want to take up to much time here posting warnings, qicat has already done a lot of this, but if someone is in trouble and does not have access to good guidance you can't at least through them a life jacket. So, the beginning practice is to print out the picture of the Heavenly Lord Taiyi and to frame or mount it in a suitable way. You need some nice sandalwood incense, Nippon Kodo's Morning Star brand being a good one and generally readily locally and definitely online. Sandalwood is used because of its good clean “energy signature”, and I will explain more about that type of thing as we go along. The first practice involves a simple mantra which I created as a simple means of connecting with the Heavenly Lord Taiyi. It goes like this: Heavenly Lord Taiyi who rescues from distress, Bless, Heal and Protect me, Help me to realize my Heavenly Nature, To transform my Earthly Existence. Now to explain this, why do I call him the refer to him as rescuing from distress, rather than saving from misery? That is because in John Lagerwey's excellent book, Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History, which I read, and deeply studied about thirty year's ago, describes him as “saving from distress” and I in time in my own usage became "rescues from distress", and so it remains my usage. If you want to use “who saves from misery” that is up to you. The original Chinese will support either translation. The request to “Bless, Heal and Protect” is to be as helpful as possible. Blessing in this case should be taken to mean, expand my possibilities and potential and open new way to advance. Heal intended as physical and emotional and also to maintain health by healing imbalances that may not even have manifested as symptoms yet, and protect is pretty obvious from the context of this post, but means protect in every way, physical, emotional, spiritually and from spirits. The request for help to “Realize my Heavenly Nature”, is a kind of poetic, but traditional way of saying realize the reciters full human potential. In writing this I particularly had in mind one of the most important concept in Chinese philosophy, that of 仁 rén, which is usually translated as benevolent or humane, and while these are satisfactory in a worldly sense, it leaves out the notion of “Human Potential”, which is to rise above the animal levels from which we start and become a Zhenren, an authentic person. These ideas are inherent in one very important interpretation of the character rén, which I will enlarge to show detail: 仁 the left side is considered to be derived from the ordinary character for person 人 rén and two horizontal lines, the top one is associated with Heaven and the Bottom one Earth and and is taken to be a symbol for the Human Potential to form a trinity with Heaven and Earth in which one ultimately becomes a Sage on Earth and a Shen in Heaven. Thus the request for help to realize one's Heavenly Nature to transform ones Earthly existence. Look as the Heavenly Lord Taiyi's picture, burn incense and repeat the Mantra for Ten to Twenty minutes and then clear the mind as much as possible and focus on your breath. This should be at least as long as the incense is burning and longer if you it feels appropriate. ZYD Edit: For reasons not at all clear to me it was impossible to make the text before the enlarged Ren character the same as that which followed it. I tried before posting and I tried by this edit, but nothing worked. Now I have another reason not to like editing features of the recent upgrade.

Well you are making progress already, you have managed to turn this affliction into a possible learning experience. This is very good progress indeed. I am not ready to post more yet, but I am working on it, but as a starting point you may want to visit this part of my PPD: The Heavenly Lord Taiyi; Daoist God of Mercy and Salvation In such situation as you have described the Heavenly Lord Taiyi is one of the best friends anyone could ask for, and much more friendly and a lot less potentially dangerous than most of the Daoist Deities that deal with exorcism. Edit: Adjusted spacing between paragraphs

As I said I don't have much time to put into this, but I have given the matter some thought, actually more than some thought, and am in the process of preparing a longer response, in the process I am going to try to avoid long digressions, but some of that may be unavoidable, however I will try to avoid them unless the discussion requires them. I hope to post something more in the next day or so. ZYD

The works of Professor Jerry Alan Johnson offer plenty of information on the subject: Buying guide to the Medical Qigong and Daoist Magic Books This is however a complex area and one does need a certain level of skill to approach the matter, including the ability to distinguish between poltergeist phenomena derived from actual nature spirits and artificial elementals, and other sources that can contribute to such phenomena. If you don't have the necessary background performing some sort of Daoist ritual can be anything from a waste of time to a prelude to disaster. I don't have time right now to enter into more concrete details, but Daoist methods usual involve the use of the Loshu as a fundamental diagram, and may involve the invocation deities ranging from the local God of the Soil, to the Heavenly Lord Puhua and the Dark Emperor of the North. On these levels you get into Nine Star magic and the Thunder Spirits, and you don't want to mess with this without a whole lot of background. ZYD

Actually I loved it, and went so far as to track it to its source, a fellow who collects Marvel's Dr. Strange comics, which is why the format. It reminded me of what "weird old uncle Al" said about the actions of Parsons and his buddy at the time, L. Ron Hubbard: I first read that quote sometime in the early 70s, and thought it was funny at the time. I still think it is rather funny, but the intent of Parsons was to take the Liber Lunae, AKA, the novel Moonchild, literally and achieve the incarnation of some entity, not merely summon it, and that is what uncle Al considered lunacy. So, bottom line, thanks to nohbody for that delightful post. I have actually wanted to say that since it was posted, but I have been too busy. ZYD Edit: I decided to add the original post, it really is funny.

It is also August between a partial eclipse of the Moon on August Seventh and a total eclipse of the Sun on August 21st as was posted here a couple of months ago: There could be all kinds of problems judging by the news already. Things happening on the Dao Bums will probably seem pretty tame.

Mod notice We actually have had one report, and the person involved has been asked to edit their post. We prefer people to edit their own posts and so I have notified offending party to that effect. More action may follow, but I am the only one online now, under the circumstances that is about all I am willing to do. Please keep centered and consider how much of a fool you might be making yourself appear to be for the sake of a cheap shot at someone else. Zhongyongdaoist