Zhongyongdaoist

I taught myself hypnosis from an encyclopedia article when I was eight or so. I had a friend at the time who was easy to hypnotize and I had a lot of experience. At a certain point I realized that hypnosis could be dangerous and stopped doing it for years. I bought a lot of books to learn more at some point, and in my late teens was quite good at it and wondered if it might be useful in spiritual training. based on my own experience with the training that I did and some later experiments with another good subject I decided that it may be helpful, but was not necessary, so I left it alone until the late eighties or thereabouts when I met people into Neuro-linguistic programming. From them I learned that the techniques of Milton Ericson had been assimilated into and refined within Neuro-linguistic programming and set about studying and practicing that, and those techniques for hypnosis. Again the bottom line is that while such techniques are useful they are not necessary, nor are spiritual practices reducible to them. I said all the above to make clear that I have a significant background in hypnosis and related topics. Now for a quick look at the history of hypnosis. Modern hypnosis began in the late 1700s with the work of Franz Anton Mesmer who developed a healing technique based on what he called "animal magnetism" and using it to heal people, a technique which also could involve trance induction. Skipping over a lot of history to the mid 1800s, the idea of animal magnetism survived and was very influential, Poe for example wrote a story called Mesmeric Revelation, the link provides a lot of good good background information as well as the story. In the middle of the 1800s the skeptical Scot James Braid said that mesmeric trance was all suggestion and created the alternative name hypnosis and after that the notion of animal magnetism and thus energy tranmission, qi, shen, whatever, was banished from the field of hypnosis, this link to the Wikipedia article is also more informative than I thought it would be, I looked at it to remind me who that Scotsman was, and I was reminded of exactly how much interesting history I was only vaguely remembering, but was leaving out. So bottom line, hypnosis is not directly involved but suggestion may contribute to some aspects of the phenomena. All of that said, Shadow training is apparently in important aspect of Daoist training and mastering and using one's own shadow as well as the shadows of others is part of Daoist teaching. Professor Jerry Allen Johnson teaches in it his books. I have all of his books and he talks about it in two of them at least. I picked up my copy of Daoist Magical Transformation Skills: Dream Magic, Shape-Shifting,Soul Travel, and Sex Magic and found a section on it beginning on p. 72. So I guess Naruto is not simply inventing Shadow Clone Jutsu. I hope this information is interesting and helpful, ZYD

I'm glad this has stirred so much interest. The whole book is interesting, and part of a series of books that, overall, was very well done. It is the second essay in this book: The Structure of being, a Neoplatonic approach Titled: On logical structure and the Plotinic cosmos / R.M. Martin It is partly in rather technical prose which introduces and explains the proofs offered which are in a more symbolic mathematical framework. It is an outline of his suggested approach. It is also available on Archive.org as a limited preview with its usual restrictions on use and download for this type of work. There are several interesting papers of more or less technical/mathematical difficulty. I hope this information is interesting and useful. ZYD

A quick try at exposing some roots here: Regarding the "cause of causes", while I don't recall Plato using the phrase, he does make quite clear in the Parmenides that the One is the ultimate cause of everything, which would including the causes. I don't have time to go into more detail, but I have posted over and over again that, in his dialogue Parmenides, Plato gives an outline of metaphysics of the one, and this outline is the basis of: I wrote humorously about it here: Sinfest! You seem to have the most humorous response, even if it is not original with you. Congratulations. There is only one problem. As the whole Platonic tradition from Plato's Parmenides, through the abiding, procession and return of Plotinus' interpretation of Plato's thought, up the dialectical ladder of Proclus' commentary on Plato's Parmenides and down the propositional ladder of his Elements of Theology, the Platonists have conclusively demonstrated that the one is eminently, if tediously, effable. (Emphasis added, ZYD) Even the "ineffable one" has properties that can be deduced from aspects of itself as I posted here: It worked in Greek and translates well into English, the whole modern tendency is to put it in mathematical form, Martin's essay being full of the technical symbols of propositional calculus and set theory. Here is an example English paraphrase based on the first proposition about the One in Plato's Parmenides: If the One is a Member of the set of those things that are example of themselves, it is singular and simple, being singular and simple it is not a member of the set of wholes with parts, and thus has no beginning middle or end, either in space or time . . . This amounts to a propositional/set theoretical argument that the One "exists" outside of space and time, if and only if it is an example of itself. Plato finishes this argument by allowing that the idea of something existing outside of space and time doesn't make "sense", which some take to mean he is rejecting it, but many don't think that the rejection is to be taken seriously. I think there is a deeper rhetorical and pedagogical purpose at work in such a rejection, and it is a pointer to the unexamined concept "existence". I am also quite aware of many issues related to this dialogue, but I don't have time to go into them, it took me years of reading and reflection to reach understanding that I have of these issues, I can hardly summarize it in a few posts on the Dao Bums. Plotinian Platonism ("neo-Platonism") is in many ways an extended dialectical commentary on Plato's Parmenides. The proof is worked out in more detail in the original. All of which tends, to my mind at least, to render this assertion suspect: I have read the Zohar in English translation, it looks like you have not read much, if any, Plato in any language. My reason for preferring Plato is that being based on its starting from first principles it leads to its conclusions through rigorous demonstration and demonstrates that so called "mysticism", at least in its Platonic form, is not irrational, but something that can be proved by reason, thus creating the possibility of a Rational Mysticism which be used to offered as a contrast to the mechanistic reductionism of modern materialism which is haunted by the ghost of quantum interconnectedness, which after decades of determined effort, still seems to be a haunting that cannot be exorcised. Platonism also offers a good general model of Spiritual phenomena as I have emphasized in my many posts on Cornelius Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy. This is all that I have time for now. ZYD

A quick try at exposing some roots here: Regarding the "cause of causes", while I don't recall Plato using the phrase, he does make quite clear in the Parmenides that the One is the ultimate cause of everything, which would including the causes. I don't have time to go into more detail, but I have posted over and over again that in his dialogue Parmenides Plato gives an outline of metaphysics of the one

This discussion has gotten woefully off track, at least you are back to the bottom of the tree where the roots and trunk merge. I have watched this discussion, and have looked deeper into some points of interest, especially about the Elephantine settlement, where an apparent lacuna in Biblical history needs some investigation and explaining. It cannot be dismissed because it was brought up by an "independent scholar", truth is truth no matter who has said it. What is the truth in this matter. Gmirkin puts it in one framework, what others can be reasonable proposed, and what are their implications and consequences to the history of the "Old Testament"? That is what I want to know and examine. ZYD

Thank you, very interresting. It makes me wonder… that it kind of looks like a conciouss hoax/social engineering and a tool for control. What do you think? Just as a quick note, my take is that it was created as a defense against the type of libel and slander that emerged after the appearance of Manetho's attack on the Jews in about 300 BCE this attack is seen as a root of Antisemitism. I will say more soon. ZYD

It specifically concerns the Elephantine settlement, so it is good that you bring it up here as it will create interest in what I intend to post. I will also note that it was similarities between Qabalah and Plotinus that lead me to start investigating Biblical history back in the late Seventies. My research continued for several years. I will probably post more about that at some point. I have made the post I mention above in the Abrahamic Religions discussion section, a simple click on the link will get you there. I'm sorry that the post is so sparse, but the text quoted there is very interesting and relevant. I will post more in that section later to put it in a wider context, unfortunately I don't have time now. ZYD

The following is from a site called Vridar and is a part of a response by Russell Gmirkin to a review of his book Plato and Creation of the Hebrew Bible, published by Routledge Taylor & Francis: Personally I can’t help feeling that the terms “Judaism” and “Jews” are anachronistic when applied to this time period. I prefer Steve Mason’s preference for the term “Judeans” and wonder if it might be more appropriate to refer to the religion of the Judeans as Yahweh worship or simply the Judean religious practices. The emphasis is in the original. As can be seen this is about a large gap in the history of the Bible, one for which there seems to be no satisfactory explanation. I will post more about this later and about the Vridar site which I discovered about 2015 and how I believe this fits into the bigger picture in the next day or two, right now I just don't have time for more details. ZYD

Hello Sir Palomides, It's good to see you back. You raise some good points here and I will expand on them later today. I had started to prepare them in the Abrahamic discussion section, but may post them here. If I post them elsewhere I will post a link to them here. It specifically concerns the Elephantine settlement, so it is good that you bring it up here as it will create interest in what I intend to post. I will also note that it was similarities between Qabalah and Plotinus that lead me to start investigating Biblical history back in the late Seventies. My research continued for several years. I will probably post more about that at some point. ZYD

You have to wait until the period they started copying other traditions , like Neoplatonists You don't have to wait until the Late Platonists to see Christianity using Platonic sources, Jesus himself does it in Mathew as I noted in a post some time back: Later in the thread I post an example of this which is too long to quote: Plato's Gorgias in Mathew 5 Earlier in the same thread I had posted about my earliest experiences with Plato and my first negative impression him and how I worked past it here: Early experience with Plato and moving past it (note that the post which it says "45 years ago" was posted in 2013, the actual time was about 1968, 55 years ago now.) I had started the topic from which these are taken with the intent of developing it to a larger extant, but for variety of reasons it never got further than a beginning. I hope that the above posts are interesting and informative. ZYD

It would be more accurate to say Arabs and Hebrews were polytheistic since Muslim and Jewish are monotheistic religions, while the former are ethnic groups. Pagan was also originally used as a pejorative term, like the English "bumpkin" to to denigrate non Christians as unsophisticated "country folk" who were not smart or educated enough to convert Christianity like people in the cities had done. Polytheism would therefore be a more respectful term, though paganism has certainly lost its original negative connotations in ordinary usage. ZYD

I appreciate this. Even tho i see him as mostly a mythological being, i think his sayings are beautifull and the narrative of forgiveness, sacrifice and ressuraction as powerfull. I also belive in God as in a singualar, transcendent deity. The trinity is a good concept aswell. If that makes me Christian i do not know. I think it is undeniable that the church is a hoax and all that, and all my knowledge of the bible is just what i have picked up naturally by living in a traditional western country. When it comes to the more lulu part of scripture i just throw them in the bin. But in the bigger picture, how can you hate a guy who said (well, he probally did not, but at least it is attributed to him,) said stuff like this: I know barley anything about judaism or islam tho. This might just be my perfection, but i get the sense they are often reluctant to talk about their faith with outsider. Lucky for you and everyone else here, I did all the research years ago, as for an interesting model of a historical Jesus, try out the link in this post of mine: I hope this is helpful to you and anyone else who may read it. ZYD

In answer to this I will repeat what I said earlier: Ignorance is what allows these religions to spread, knowledge can stop them, if it doesn't come to late. ZYD

First my thanks to Nungali for his defense of me here: Second in regard to this: In the widest possible sense of "Abrahamic", but as i emphasized below the context in which it is interpreted does affect things: As I mentioned in the post that I quoted from, this took place in my late teens, probably eighteen and closer to nineteen, but I am not sure at this time and after all of these years I don't have the records that I kept of such work anymore. The experiments were done within the frame work of Dion Fortune's Mystical Qabalah and Gareth Knight's Practical Guide to Qablistic Symbolism. The were simple and used only the material available, but avoided using the aspects of Kether that were traditional, such as the divine name, archangel etc., and avoided such things as Tarot cards etc., the attributions of which, I did not completely trust at the time. So they were as much within a more traditional form of practice than I might have done some years later. I will say that once I actually got a copy of Regardie's Golden Dawn and had a chance to examine the Golden Dawn system in detail, i was very much impressed by its creativity and scope and consider it a truly great achievement. Finally, I think an important part of creating this forum would be to define it's scope as being related to an examination of the historical development and influence, that it is not intended to be any kind of "my religion is better than yours" free for all, much less a platform for recruitment. Thinking about this brought back to me the memory of how much trouble there was when I first joined with some very over enthusiastic Buddhist who would span and interrupt any thread dealing with Daoism or Western traditions, condemning them and preaching the "truth" of Buddhism, especially Tibetan. People tend to forget that Buddhism is also a very "evangelical" religion. There was also the spamming of Mopai advocates which was so bad that discussion had to be completely banned. ZYD

I think this is a good point of view. On surface level they seem dogmatic, boring, even insane, but i do think gnosticism, sufism, mystical jewish traditions are interresting. It is not that important to me personally, just thought about it since all other major traditions are represented. As can be guessed from my own post above, I am in fundamental agreement with NaruraNaturans suggestion, and similarly inferred from this excerpt in another post of mine: I have not only theoretical, but practical experience with "mystical Jewish tradtions", AKA, Qabalah, albeit within the framework of Western magical practice as developed within the Order of the Golden Dawn, version of Qabalah which I was later to Humorously refer to as "Wasp Qabalah" because of its social milieu consisting of White-Anglo Saxon Protestants. To a certain extent we have a forum for dealing with these matters in "Esoteric and Occult Discussion", but it is more focused on practice then the historical religious background which forms the social context in which such beliefs and practices exist. A forum dealing with the Abrahamic traditions would provide such a source for information and comment on such matters. Most people on Dao Bums are not much interested in such things, others are outright refugees from the worst aspects of the Judaeo-Christian environment which surrounds them, for these reasons it may not be one of the most popular sub-forums on Dao Bums, but with the right contributions it could be a useful and informative addition. ZYD

I'm glad that this notion has found some support among staff, while I can understand that many people here would have no active interest in these proposed areas of study, I think that it is important for them to have a basic understanding of the origin and development of the Abrahamic religions so that they will be in a good position to not be fooled into taking them as being true and thus to be given serious consideration. As examples I will note that last summer we had a former member, whom I remember as being quite interested in Daoism, who had been converted to some form of fundamentalist Christianity and wanted to share the "Good News" with us for the sake of our salvation. Had this person been well informed about the history and development of Christianity this would not have happened, and while back we had member who came to Dao Bums advocating Sufism, which is little more than a pseudo mystical smiley face with which Islam seeks converts. Fortunately there were members here, including myself, who were in a position to deal with his incursion and he left. I view a sub forum dealing with this subject as like a clinic to "inoculate" Dao Bums against the possibility of becoming fooled by the fallacies that are promulgated by Christianity and Islam. I also hope that this can be done in a way that can avoid antisemitism while examining the historical origin of the Old Testament. One reason why I have not posted much on Biblical history is because it could be used to support antisemitism, and that is something which I hope that we can completely avoid. Recently I was very hesitant to post this criticism of Philo of Alexandria: for fear. that taken out of context of the whole historical development of these ideas, it would be interpreted in an antisemitic fashion, something which I very much wish to avoid. ZYD

I have been thinking about this idea for several days and I can see some good things that could come out of it. I don't have much time to detail them now, but I will attempt to clarify the notion of an "Abrahamic" Religion. Basically an Abrahamic religion would be one that claims to have rightfully inherited the Covenant which "God" supposedly made with the Biblical character Abraham. The big three in this regard are of course Judaism, then Christianity and finally Islam. In order to provide some authoritative background for this definition I decided to do a search for Islam and Abraham and found that the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article had most of the pertinent details: I hope that the above will stimulate some fruitful discussion which may further clarify the notion of an Abrahamic Religion. I'll post my own ideas about how I believe such a forum could be useful shortly. ZYD

Despite what some have said about this the main problem is that we have created categories like 'religion', 'secularism', 'superstition', 'philosophy', 'folk religion' and so on and then try to fit various ways into them. For instance people look for pure original Daoism (or Buddhism) - these never existed. Most of these labels are not useful or even unhelpful. I would say that the only useful label that can be applied here is between Theory and Practice, that Daoists practice their "folk magic" within an framework provided by Daoist authors and Buddhist within a framework which they believe is provided by Buddhist texts. There is a lot more that I could say about the history of these distinctions in the West, but that would take more time than i have now, involving as they do a long a digression into the religious conflicts of the Reformation and Counter reformation, contentions within the Catholic Church between Nominalists and Scholastics, and the rise of such libertines as John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, and its continued development among the Baron D'Holbach and his coterie. As you can well imagine, the explication of all of that would take much time and lead us far afield. ZYD

My favorite Trinity is the Three Pure Ones, you can read about them in Wikipedia article linked below: The Pure Ones There are many pictures of them on the internet, such as the pretty ones below: As to the notion that this type of practice is a religion, I have said this elsewhere: Even the famous Freemason author J. S. M. Ward would agree with this assessment and a treatment of it such is he gave the Hung Society as he gave in his three volume account of its rites and teachings. Those who are interested can follow the links below to nice PDFs. Personally, I have a first edition signed by the author, but these PDF are very useful for study. Volume One Volume Two Volume Three You can read about the history of the Hung Society on Wikipedia here: Tiandihui I am quite aware of the organization's unsavory later history, but the above information is provided here as an example of how Ritual Daoism should be regarded and treated in my opinion. Now for a little historical background on the development of the Trinity concept in Chistianity, which, as will probably surprise many people has its origin in Plato, not the Hebrew Old Testament, as is made clear by the following quoted from the Stanford Encyclopedia article on the development of Trinitarian doctrine: The whole discussion from which the above is taken, is interesting. I could post more, but this post is long enough already. I hope that the above material is interesting and helpful. ZYD

The Good News for modern pagans is Henadology and its prophet Edward Butler. What are Henads you might ask, and it would be a good question. Henads are an ontological framework for paganism derived from the Pythagorean part of Platonism. Henads are "unities" which derive from and participate in the One, they provide an ontological basis for paganism. The paper by Butler linked below is a good introduction and shows how it influenced the Christian mysticism of Meister Eckhart. A good discussion of this can be found in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Phil0sophy here: 6.1 The Boiling (Over) of Being: Eckhart’s “Metaphysics of Flow” and the downloadable paper here: (PDF) The Godhead Beyond God and Proclus's Henads This is an extract from the paper's Abstract: Henads gave me an explanation through Eckhart's doctrine of bullitio for an experience that I had when working to invoke and understand the various sephiroth of the Qabalistic Tree of Life in my late teens over fifty years ago. When I reached the top of the Tree and proceeded to invoke Kether the first sephiroth, rather than finding the expected experience of pure unchanging One, I found myself envisioning what could only be described as a radiant white cauldron bubbling with life. This was my own experience of Eckhart's bullitio, decades before I had any idea of Eckhart's ideas. My personal Pythagorean interpretation of Henads at this time is that they are like the set of prime numbers, numbers which are only divisible by one and themselves. At last I have a use for the prime factorization that I learned in high school algebra! i hope this information is helpful, it would have been very useful to me, oh so long ago. ZYD

I could literally summarize decades of research, study and practice into a hefty, but very informative book, but for now the following reply is the best that I can do. That it is very interesting, but what's the actual method? As I noted in my post I don't have the time to bring everything together at this time and thinking through all the source I might cite I decided that the one following this one giving the reference, was the best that I could do: In The Art of Chi Kung by Wong Kiew Kit (Element Books, 1993) there is a short section on Confucian "Chi Kung". Silent sitting is one of the primary forms of Confucian self-cultivation. The poet wants to make the point that it is not borrowed from other traditions, but is native to the the Confucian 'Dao'. The last two lines reference the teachings of the Zhongyong on Zhong, as the root of personal and cosmic existence: Muller's translation is very good and anyone who wants to get some idea about the depth and profundity of Confucian doctrine will find this a good place to start. Which taken in the context of these two: This state of "no mind" is the real basis of Qi cultivation, and the means by which one discovers: This experience is the real beginning of Qi cultivation and without it one is wasting ones time. There is evidence in the Neiye that this experience was known in China as early as the Fourth Century BCE, and probably earlier. ZYD at least points in the right direction. It took a lot of time too whittle the possibilities down to this, and for right now I don't have time to post more. As a final note I should say that Gao Panlong is not just a poet, but a respected Confucian scholar who who wrote some very important works. ZYD

Those interested in the Confucian, AKA Ruist, contribution to qigong may find the "Confucian Qigong" topic created by exorcist_1699 a useful introduction. While it was created in 2008 before I joined Dao Bums in January 2009, I didn't notice it until a post in 2013, after that the OP and I made some interesting posts. At some point I will have to post on why the "Taoist Yoga" book should have been call Confucian Yoga, but that is a more complex project than I have time for now. Happy reading, ZYD

Exorcist 1699 has, as usual brought, up an excellent point here: This state of "no mind" is the real basis of Qi cultivation, and the means by which one discovers: This experience is the real beginning of Qi cultivation and without it one is wasting ones time. There is evidence in the Neiye that this experience was known in China as early as the Fourth Century BCE, and probably earlier. ZYD

I confess that Magick it self teacheth many superfluous things, and curious prodigies for ostentation; leave them as empty things, yet be not ignorant of their causes.: This piece of advice is excellent. Agrippa is writing a very comprehensive work which deals with both theory and practice. Much of what he writes would be well known to the educated of his day, that is one of the interesting things about it, and the theory which he introduces is as good now as it was the day he wrote it, but the material which he uses to illustrate these principles, while consisting of quotes from some of the most authoritative sources available to him, read like nonsense today. This make the importance of paying attention to the underlying principles and understanding them and then viewing his exposition as possibly outlandish examples, but examples nonetheless, and understanding them as attempts to illustrate those principles, is a good guide to getting more out of these books than would otherwise be the case. I will try to write more about this, but today I don't have much time to write, but thought I would go ahead and start this and see what response we can get. Out of fairness to Joseph Peterson and his great site from which we will be quoting, I think the least we can do is promote one of his products, which will help support his site: Esoteric Archives on CDrom

Here is some necessary background: The most common astrology is based on a cycle of Sixty "Stems and Branches": Another important one is based on the Nine Stars: The above two are used to give meaning to time periods that are part of long repeating time cycles, such as the Sixty year cycle mentioned in the first one. Finally the Twenty-eight Mansions of the Moon are also important: They are used in a type of astrology that is more like the Western "astrological chart". Familiarity with the above will help in understanding any further posts of mine in this thread. ZYD