Zhongyongdaoist

First and easiest, peach wood is sacred in Ritual Daoism because of the Peaches of Immortality, which are an important part of Daoist belief. As for the rest of the things that you mention, certainly a Daoshi is going to be able to use these safely and effectively, and even prepare efficacious versions of these for others, but most of what is offered for sale is going to be useless to most people, however it is possible to learn enough through available books to be able to make some of it practical. I reviewed just such a book here: It is practically an encyclopedia of traditional Chinese symbolism as well as practical instructions in traditional Chinese Talismanic Magic. I hope this is helpful. ZYD

In Qigong there is a relationship between qi and blood like there is in TCM as described here: Qi and blood in Qigong Anyone who is seriously interested in Qigong should study TCM enough to understand the underlying traditional Chinese physiology, and how it relates to Qigong practice. It is also very useful to study Chinese herbology and traditional cooking theory. The importance of these is taken for granted by the Chinese, but getting Westerners to take it seriously is more difficult. A good introduction to these ideas is Between Heaven and Earth by Harriet Beinfild and Efrem Korngold, a book which I have been recommending since it came out in the early Nineties. The other aspects that you mention have more to do with religion and magic and are not part of Qigong proper. There is a lot of "superstiion" in religious and magical attitudes about blood, but there is also a core of practical knowledge, but that is another matter and too long and complex to examine now.

Professor Johnson's teaching site is: Temple of the Original Thunder While at the top it is not clear that 2019 registration for his seven year program is closed, it gets around to saying that at the bottom, where it also has a form to be notified if and when a new class series opens up. As I posted a few years back: They seem to agree with me because their guide to buying Daoist books recommend buying . . . (books from the medical qigong series, at the time of my post, the first two, but see below for more recent recommendation, ZYD) Also at the bottom is the list of texts used in his course and it now includes the first three of his Chinese Energetic Medicine series, which, in the earlier version, is what I had recommended in some posts about the same time as the above. These Texts can be purchased here: Order Chinese Energetic Medicine I have the earlier versions of the series which had a different title so I haven't seen or worked with these, but they should be like mine which are hundreds of pages each and packed with useful information, so at $80.00 a piece for the new ones, they are a good investment which could keep someone occupied for one to two years depending on their experience and starting point and lay a good foundation for future practice. I hope this information is helpful. ZYD

A lot of people think that they can just start doing the MCO and that is enough there is a warning about this at the end of Chapter Four: You need to go back to Chapter One: Sometimes an "outer method" of the MCO involving visualization is taught to still the mind, such visualization is not doing the MCO, the MCO cannot by "done" by such methods, it is something that arises naturally when one has reached a deep enough level of meditation and become aware of aspects of oneself of which one is ordinarily unconscious. Do whatever you have to do to sit and forget, if imagining empty water wheels helps, do that, but they are not the MCO. I hope this is helpful. ZYD

Hello Symph, welcome to the Dao Bums. You certainly picked an unusual, but interesting place for your third post. I hope I can give you some useful information. The book, or more exactly Three Books that are the subject of all this Jaw dropping amazing discussion is Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Henry Cornelius Agrippa who wrote it in the early Sixteenth Century. It is available from several sources, but you might find reading it online at Joseph Peterson's Twilight Grotto Esoteric Archive a better way to start reading it, just click right here since you can read it for free, and then you can decide if you want to invest in a printed book. Aside from that, given your Christian background and your efforts to free yourself from early conditioning related to it, you might find this Blog: Was Jesus a Magician? Both informative and inspiring. It is the Blog of Dr. Helen Ingram and is based on and an exposition of her PhD thesis, Dragging Down Heaven: Jesus as Magician and Manipulator of Spirits in the Gospels. I read the book that inspired it, Morton Smith's Jesus the Magician in the late Seventies and found it informative and very suggestive, but not completely convincing, it became one among many possible accounts of a possible historical Jesus, but Dr. Ingram's thesis is a much more convincing discussion and based on it I would say that the notion that Jesus, if there was a historical Jesus, was very likely a "magician" is far more likely than any of the other alternatives that I have read. I hope that the above is helpful to you. ZYD

Ric Ocasek, in past "perfect tense" now. One of his wittiest lyrics and a suitable tribute.

I wrote this review of it a lttle over two years ago: ZYD

A good starting premise. Part of the problem you are having is that you have insufficiently defined your goal and the nature of the elements, i.e. Buddhist Gods and the 'nondenominational "map"' with which you are working. There are many type of maps, and when Korzybski says "the map is not the territory, as he explains elsewhere he really means that "the model is not the cosmos", no matter how useful it might be for engineering purposes. As a teenager I paraphrased part Chapter One of the Dao De Jing this way, "the model that can be explicated is not the eternal model" and of any "final theory" it can truly be said, this too will pass. However this doesn't mean that a ""rigid system" is not useful, just as a stepping stone is only as useful as it is rigid, so as long as one is aware that any such model is only one of many possible ones and that one should try to understand their actual area of application and not get carried away with any particular one, it will probably be OK to use it as a stepping stone. My first model of the Tree of Life was as a "map of Creative Process", and as a useful model it has stood the test of time, but as a religion Buddhism is not about celebrating creation as Judaism is, but about how one can forever escape from it and its endless cycles of "Birth and Redeath". If Buddhist Gods had any place on the Tree it would be constantly repeating "No, don't go there" to descending "souls", and providing aid and comfort to those who, finding themselves in "God's Kingdom", i.e. Malkuth and realizing they are not at all happy with it find themselves, in the Immortal words of Tooter Turtle "Help me, Mr. Wizard, I don't want to be (Whatever Tooter had foolishly requested to be) any more!" (Tooter Turtle on Wikipedia). Fortunately Mr. Wizard is always there to liberate Tooter from the foolish life that in his ignorance he had wished for, and Mr. Wizard had this wonderful incantation "Drizzle, Drazzle, Drozzle, Drome; time for this one to come home." that liberated Tooter from the circumstance of his foolish wish and brought him home. I have used some Buddhist terminology in the above, to give a clue for the type model that you may find useful for placing Buddhist Gods on the Tree of Life, and that is, the Tree of Life as a map of Liberation and how any members of the Buddhist Pantheon might fit on it. With that in mind you might make some connections to the Tree of Life that are both less arbitrary and more consistent. In this regard Crowley's attributions of "the various meditations" might prove a useful starting point. I hope these suggestions are helpful. ZYD

It may seem like "a coincidence", however it is neither accident nor synchronicity, but rather an example of how the forum works. You like one of my posts and the Forum lets me know. That you would like a post that is about obscure subjects to begin with, rather long and semi-technical and hidden in the bowls of "General Discussion" is worthy of note on my part, so I looked up your introductory post and saw that we had common interests. I even have an interest in Buddhist practices and read a translation of Naropa's Six Yogas in Garma C. C. Chang's version when I was thirteen or so, and many more since then. Actually Daoists would love your "Taoist medication", the whole point of Daoist self cultivation is to achieve optimal health and to cure the two diseases of senescence and mortality, and even in Western Alchemy the "philosopher's stone" was called "the medicine of metals" because it turned corruptible base metals such as lead, iron, and copper into incorruptible gold. As for the notion that "so much of this really hardcore Western esoteric tradion is hidden, lost", a lot of it is "hidden" in plain sight as I make clear in such posts as: Agrippa and Aristotle: the Aristotelian background of the Occult Philosophy Agrippa's Doctrine of Occult Virtues, a core concept examined and explained The so called "occult virtues" are only "hidden" from lazy occultists who wail and lament over the loss of things that they have never really gone looking for. It doesn't even occur to them that the whole philosophical framework which gives context and thus meaning to everything that Agrippa says is not some hidden "esoteric" doctrine that was lost for ever, but good old Plato and Aristotle and their Hellenistic successors. Any Renaissance schoolboy would have recognized where Agrippa was coming from, and the reason why is because Agrippa intended his work NOT to be an "esoteric revelation", but a powerful defense of magic, its theory and practice, as a careful reading of his prefatory letter addressed to the Abbot Trithemius makes clear, and thus it had to be in terms that any well educated person could understand and appreciate. I don't have time to write more now, and really don't want to get too far off topic. I hope you have found what I have written interesting. ZYD

I am assuming that by "Taoist medication (Golden Flower)" you mean The Secret of the Golden Flower and are apparently not familiar with: Taoist Yoga: Alchemy & Immortality (link to Amazon for convenience sake, get it where you can, search on the internet may lead to a PDF) I became familiar with this book back in 1971 and read and reread it several times. It became fundamental to my understanding of Daoist internal cultivation, and has guided all my thinking about the matter since then. There is a discussion of the possible relation between Dzogchen and these Daoist techniques here: Dzogchen Thogal: a Buddhist creative adaptation of a Daoist technique? Unfortunately the OP, Wells has deleted his posts, which mars the discussion but does not destroy it, and there are many interesting posts, including, I fancy, my own, which also open the subject up into a cross cultural discussion with my citations of both Agrippa and Plotinus. I hope these references are helpful to you. ZYD

I for one oppose the idea of a simplification, I don't have time now for a longer and more reasoned discussion, but I did come up with a simple image. Joni Micthell eloquently lamented the paving of paradise to put a parking lot, I have to ask if someday people will lament that the magical land of Earthsea was bulldozed into a swamp? That is how I think of Dao Bums as it is now, the magical land of Earthsea where the whole Wisdom of the World is kept and with some easy Island hoping can be found. Once those islands are gone, they will be almost impossible to replace. ZYD

You're welcome, I am glad that people are finding my interesting. This book by Professor Jerry Alan Johnson gives information on the Ritual Daoist development of folk magic into natural magic: Daoist Mineral, Plants & Animal Magic In the series of posts starting here: 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 I give a cross cultural comparison of Chinese and Western Philosophy which forms the cosmological basis of Natural Magic. These are actually some of my most important posts on Dao Bums since the flesh out a connection which I have mentioned for years, but never addressed in this detail. ZYD

Sean Regarding Chaos Magick, if you do two searches: Chaos Magick and alt-right and Chaos Magick and the political left You'll find enough connections between Chaos Magic and right wing politics, in particular his anointing as an avatar of Kek, the Egyptian Frog god of "chaos", Kek: Trump and Kek to make your stomach queasy and hopefully dampen your enthusiasm for what what is both philosophically and in terms of technical procedure a very limited and incoherent system of magic. As far as "Wicca" and "folk magic" goes, unless your interest is in primitivism for primitivism's sake, there are more philosophically rigorous and technically powerful means of practicing folk magic which was assimilated into the development of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy during the Hellenistic period as what was later called Natural Magic, which I will return to in a moment. First I would like to address the question of religious paganism in a Philosophical context and I can do no better than cite the discussions of the Greek Pantheon in Philosophic terms from this site: Cosmic Principle: The One and this interesting extended cosmological model: Cosmology an exposition of the Great Chain of Being, a spiritual model I have cited in my discussion of Agrippa's Doctrine of Occult Virtues, a core concept examined and explained, specifically here: And it is this cosmological model which raises "folk magic" from a collection of the proverbial "old wive's tales" into part of a rational model of magical action and practice. As far as the religious aspects of "Wicca" goes, I have no real interest in any pagan pantheon except the Ritual Daoist pantheon because it was designed by fangshi for fangshi and such ideas and practices became the basis of Ritual Daoism and its application to internal cultivation. Here is a short discussion of my background in Ritual Daoism from my PPD, my apology to non Dao Bums who cannot follow the link to a members only part of Dao Bums: This is already a longish post, so I will end it here. I hope that you find it interesting and stimulating. ZYD

Anarchism shows up in the oddest places: Following the link in the quote leads to an interesting discussion, That really puts Plato's Republic in context, not that my own exposition of Plato isn't interesting. ZYD

5 - Seek first to understand, then to be understood: This type of empathic listening is also basic to real Confucianism, which is not to be confused with the caricatures of popular Taoism. It is possible to be open to someone and not vulnerable. The "Doctrine of the Mean", Zhongyong, talks about dealing with people from ones own center, open, but effectively invulnerable. Of course real Daoists can do this too. ZYD

This is a large subject and should not be idly dismissed, it is neither vague nor is it simply a "new-age" idea. This book: Synchronicity the Bridge Between Mind and Matter by F. David Peat Which I read some time ago is a good introduction to the concepts, and their long history, though apparently the author also wrote a later sequel: Synchronicity: The marriage of matter and psyche Which I have not read, but according to the blurb: Would seem to be an expanded and updated version and may be a better read. The main thing is to avoid thinking "At times it feels as though I am alone" and realize that we are all, each and every one of us much more than we seem to be. ZYD

Don's Modern Magick has a lot to recommend it, among other things, (My apologies to nonmembers who cannot read this and other references to a members only section of the Dao Bums.): So in the teaching system that I am working out, I use it as a textbook, however, in the curriculum I am working out: for reason too complex to enter into here, but which are somewhat examined in the discussion referred to. in the following quote I give a short outline of the early levels of my teaching: but the early energy work will be Western and oriented to ritual uses: this refers to my use of Don's book up to Chapter Eight. The second level of study will expand ritual practice into astrological magic and starting to focus on understanding and using Golden Dawn teachings as a basis for practicing Deity Yoga: and after Chapter Eight the second level would introduce the more advanced Golden Dawn Ritual techniques with an emphasis on Deity Yoga, as a preparation for the higher levels. the third level, their extension into Chinese magic and meditation, a practice which the Chinese call "Transforming into a god to rectify Qi": Of course the Chinese don't really call it that, they call it, 变神内炼, biàn shén nèi liàn, which roughly translates as, "Transforming into a god to rectify Qi". Once one has made satisfactory progress in these practices, one can think about calling up spirits, but one shouldn't be in a hurry about this type of thing. ZYD

Welcome to the Dao Bums Get yourself a copy of Betty Edwards: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain Start working with her exercises and then switch over to drawing pictures of the Tarot cards. This will increase your visualization skill and teach you how to draw. ZYD

One of the things to remember about Women in these matters if not just whether they were involved, but whether they wrote about it and were published. It is only the ones published about whom we know a significant amount. One of the most important of the late Nineteenth Century was: Anna Kingsford She was very prolific, well known and influential among the founders of the Golden Dawn. We know most about those who were published, but women were still breaking into the field of writing in the Nineteenth Century, so the number of well known women involved is relatively small, but the number of women involved would have been much larger. There were important women authors in spiritualism,, Theosophy and Christian Science and its descendants also. ZYD

Moderator Notice Here is an appropriate answer for you: Dao Bums policies mean that moderators should not be sassed, nor their time, one of their most important "resources", wasted, arguing with members about staff suggestions or actions, if you have a complaint your recourse is to contact the Admin, dawei. If you do not desist from harassing Kar3n, I will suspend you for three days myself. This is an official notice, do not sass me about it. Zhongyongdaoist, Concierge

I am sorry to be so long in replying to this, but the last week was very busy and this is the firs time that I can really put in the time for a thoughtful response. The most important book that I read was this one: I read it back in late November of 2000. It was only the second book that I had read on Confucianism. I realized about this time that I had spent decades studying Daosim very deeply and even Buddhism to some depth, but that I knew little about Confucianism except for commonly held ideas about it, but was otherwise embarrassingly ignorant of an important part of Chinese society and history and that I needed to rectify that in order to have a clearer idea of the historical and social context of the other two religious/philosophical movements. I decided that I would rectify that and read Arthur Waley's edition of Confucius' Analects, and while I found nothing that really excited me, I found it less of a put off than I thought it would be. However, reading Tu Weiming's book was a complete reframe, and I realized that everything that most people thought about Confucianism was wrong, that it had a long held and deeply developed spiritual aspect of which most people had no idea whatsoever and I came out of that reading with a deep respect for Mencius, the Zhonyong and the Daxue, and many other aspects of Confucianism, as well as what I was to call "the mystery of Confucius", the mystery of why someone whose only surviving work was The Analects could have inspired someone like Mencius, and been such a deep and powerful influence on Chinese culture and history. I like to solve mysteries and while I still cannot give a satisfactory answer to the question of why Confucius was so influential, I did learn to respect and value the Confucian tradition as a valuable and viable spiritual tradition in and of itself and which complimented Daoism in a positive way, and also gave me a more practical framework for living in the world than I had before. I have been looking into the group which Aetherous mentions here: and so far they seem to be both honorable and useful. On their site they have some links to these works: The first is a simple and readable text of The Analects which can be searched though online or down loaded as a PDF file: Stone Chimes: A modern English adaptation of The Analects of Confucius, searchable by book, topic, or person. The second is a good readable translation of the Daxue and Zhongyong based on the authors years of teaching them on a college level: The Great Learning & The Doctrine of the Mean: An online teaching translation by Robert Eno. The next three are links to The Chinese Text Projects site where the Chinese Text is alternated with the translations of Legge, which while dated are satisfactory. Mengzi: A Chinese & English version of Mencius. Liji: A Chinese & English version of The Book of Rites. Xiao Jing: A Chinese & English version of The Classic of Filiality. Finally this one: Yangzi Fayan: In Chinese & English. is translated by Jeffrey Bullock. My comments in this post are useful: and include a link to my post in a thread on Confucian qigong which describe the more spiritual of Confucianism. I hope that this is useful. ZYD

thanks for some review... this topic is of interest to me but I can't flesh out enough respect for the Confucian point of view. I did catch the "Song" era aspect and the three teachings which always leaves me suspect... like a modernization of the relationship or explanation. But I appreciate your comments on the topic. (Emphasis mine, ZYD) Well, the relationship between Daoism, Confucianism and Buddhism is definitely complex, but they do have enough similarities, especially as Buddhism became naturalized to Chinese culture, that connection is not as forced as it may seem, especially with the changes that took place in Confucianism starting around the end of the first millennium, with the revival of Mencian Confucianism and the rejection of Xunzi's version of Confucianism which had dominated Confucianism from the late Han on. As I pointed out in my quotes from Mencius above: Mystical elements in teachings of Mencius Mencian Confucianism has a much more mystical aspect to it and commonality with Daoism than Xunzi's version did. As I have argued elsewhere (in the above referenced posts on Confucian qigong), there are many echoes of the Neiye in Mencius, these were noted in the Thirties of the last Century by Arthur Waley in the introduction to his translation of the Dao De Jing, The Way and its Power. The resultant movement, usually called Neo-Confucianism has much more in common with both Daoism and Buddhism and makes a much better third party to the proposed "unity" of these three schools of thought. This is also made easier by the idea which Daoist had been promoting for some time that Buddhism was what Laozi taught the "barbarians" in India after he "journeyed to the West", and was thus really inspired by Laozi anyway. This particularly text is a similar argument in the direction of the dependency of Confucianism on revelations from Laozi which Confucius, being a sage himself, understood and took to heart. If you could be a little clearer about what you mean by "the Confucian point of view", perhaps I could help clarify the matter some. ZYD

Thanks dawei, I have skimmed the paper and downloaded it for a more detailed study, though basically it seems to be about the historical development of a particular type of popular Daoist "scripture" which apparently has roots in the Song, and possibly a little earlier, which intends to explain the common Chinese belief in a: This work deals with a fictional, you could call it mythic if you wanted, account of an encounter between Loazi and Confucius, in which Laozi instructs Confucius and Confucius understands and receives the teachings. In this work, unlike the satirical caricatures which make up most, but as I pointed out in Confucius was a Sage: Testimony of a Hostile Witness not all of the depictions of Confucius in Zhuangzi's writings, Confucius is depicted like Laozi as a divine being who descended from heaven to incarnate on earth and perform a spiritual mission, and it is positive views of Confucius such as this which are the basis of the unity of the three teachings which was a fairly common belief from the Song period on. The work discussed focuses on the matter from a Daoist point of view and builds on literary references that go back to Warring States and Han times. From a perspective of the history and development of these types of ideas it is an interesting paper which raises many interesting points, but not in a way which people without a significant historical background are likely to find useful or interesting in and of themselves. At least that is what it looks like after a very quick skim, thanks again for the reference. ZYD

You're certainly welcome lifeforce, I hope that other people can benefit from these and my other posts also. ZYD

I can understand that, neither Mencius nor the Analects are written in a style that I like, but in Mencius there are these remarkable quotes that are largely about very mystical subjects, as I wrote about in my posts in a thread on Confucian Qi gong: Two quotes from Mencius in particular awakened my interest in Mencius. This first one is this: I have quoted the Chinese Text form Muller's site and a translation from D. C. Lau because Muller's rendering "All things are prepared within me", while a possible translation of 备 (bèi) is not as clear as one might wish. Comments from people whose Classical Chinese is good are welcome. All the ten thousand things are there in me: This is about as clear a statement of the Microcosm/Macrocosm relationship as one might wish. This primciple existed in the West as 'All is in All' from antiquity to the 'Scientific Revolution'. It has recently re-emerged as the self-similarity of fractal mathematics and and as the 'holographic principle' in modern physics. To find this so clearly stated in a Confucian text was very unexpected and was an important part of my revaluation of Confucianism as a profound source of fundamentally mystical doctrine. I am true to myself: Another important aspect of this text is the introduction of the concept 诚 (chéng), a word usually rendered as sincere or sincerity and above as true in the translation above. The Zhongyong has to principle teachings, one on 'zhong' which I have referred to here: And the other is on chéng which is one of the most fundamental and profound concepts in Classical Confucianism and the subject a large section of the Zhongyong with which I will deal in subsequent posts. To draw this to a close, I will post the other quote from Mencius, which was also a great surprise to me: To discover that Mencius viewed the end of Confucian self-cultivation as becoming a 'shen' or 'god' was quit a revelation, but this passage in Mencius is only part of the picture. How it relates to the teachings of the Zhongyong on chéng (诚) will be the subject of future posts. For now, I think I have given everyone plenty to think about. The rest of my posts in that thread are worth reading, so you or anyone else might wish to follow the links to the original and take a look at them. The place of Confucius as the "founder" of Confucianism is an interesting topic, and the relationship between Mencius and Xunzi is interesting too, while I believe that on certain fundamental points Mencius must be given precedence, there is a lot that is both interesting and valuable in Xunzi. If I have time I may return to examine these and other topics. ZYD