Zhongyongdaoist

Conspiracy theories were rampant in the mid-Sixties, Richard J. Hofstadter created the meme of "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" in 1964 and the John Birch Society actively promoted anti Soviet right wing conspiracies and on the left the CIA was suspected of having assassinated President Kennedy. The Shadows which have eclipsed the New Age were already gathering when Anton Levey declared the beginning of the Age of Satan on April 30, 1966, Walpurgisnactht, but also the day of the retrograde conjunction of Pluto and Uranus in Virgo. These outer planet conjunctions are very important, and if you actually follow them over time you can see some remarkable patterns that form. An amusing aside related to bookstores is that the most successful "New Age" bookstore where I live was started when a few friends bought out a right wing conspiracy bookstore in the mid Seventies and turned into a "new age" one. I could write more, but this is not the place for reviewing the history of the New Age and its place in the Occult Revival. ZYD

https://www.britannica.com/topic/New-Age-movement Wow, I never thought I could be so disgusted with the Encyclopedia Britannica, but this is a completer oversimplification and the meme "New Age" was in relatively common usage by 1970, when I first encountered it in a New Thought context. David Spangler only became will known because there was already a large audience for his ideas. Focusing on Theosophy is also a considerable oversimplification, there are many other influences that contribute to it especially New Thought and Ernest Holmes in particular, though it context as a "New Age" is provided by speculations from Esoteric Astrology that were a rising trend of the Nineteenth Century. The New Age was the "Age of Aquarius", popularized by a song from the 1967 musical "Hair", which was in turn popularized by the group The 5th Dimension as a medley "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In". Here are the lyrics to Aquarius: There is your "New Age" in a nutshell including crystals and superficial astrology. I could write a lot about this, because I both witnessed it as it was unfolding and was a critical observer of what was going on. I also am familiar with almost all of the strands that contributed to it. It's basically treacly junk food for for the "soul", you're better off with good old fashioned Chicken Soup. On a lighter and "Chinese" note,I am reminded of this: I guess I really can't put that in without letting the Fifth Dimension speak for themselves: ZYD

I have a toilet... 😁 Or would that be considered rude? Would it be haunted afterwards? Joke about the matter if you like, however,I have mentioned a little about this here: 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. I hope this is helpful. ZYD

The Heshang gong Commentary is one of the most important and earliest surviving commentary which looks at the Dao De Jing from a perspective of internal alchemy. I haven't read it myself, but It should be very interesting reading. The translator, Daniel Reid is well respected in the field. ZYD

Excellent. theres an undine named Istiphul. I would like to evoke her to ask a very specific question. I thought this seemed familiar, Istiphul, the eighth and last of the Undines listed in Bardo'ns The Practice of Magical Evocation, p. 125. Bardon warns not to fall for her charms. ZYD

Actually it is complex process with its its modern roots in the revival of Epicureanism starting around 1600 and developing within the context of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. It develops in a complex way with an important inflection point around 1800 and emerges in the Nineteenth Century as the conflict between "reductionism" the foundation of modern intellectualism and Romanticism, the rebellion against materialistic science and ideological reductionism. Explicating this would require a lengthy exposition which I don't have time for, but if someone is actually interested I can recommend some books that would be helpful in understanding the process. ZYD

I don't have much time now to post more, but I did find the thread in which contained my earliest Dao Bums posts on this subject, and as I suspected it is one that I stumbled on and found many of my posts missing, which is why it doesn't show up when I search for yellow court under my own name. Here is one of the few surviving posts which has a lot of useful information about the middle dan and the yellow court: I hope this is helpful and I will try to get back to this topic soon, but this is all I can do for now. ZYD

The book that you mention, Jade Writings is one of the books that I have. It is a very "modern" interpretation, but is worth considering. On a more traditional level I have The Primordial Breath: An Ancient Chinese Way of Prolonging Life through Breath Control by Jane Huang, which has a more traditional translation in Volume 2 of the the Inner and outer texts of the Yellow Court Canon, if I recall correctly the actual translations are by her father and she just edited and prepared the translation for publication. Below is the Chinese text of the "Outer View" of the Yellow Court: I have forgotten exactly where I got that since this was some time ago and their were many sites that I mined for information over the years. Also I found my own notes on the discussion that I had on Dao Bums, it was back in 2012. From it I have copied this useful information from a paper by Louis Komjathy, titled "Daoist Texts in Translation": The complete text has a lot of valuable information about Western Language translations, as well as the complete Chinese titles which make it easier to search for them. It is easy enough for me to post the Chinese Text of the Inner Yellow Court Canon, should anyone want that also. I hope this information is helpful. ZYD Edit: The post required some adjustments to paragraph spacing.

As I noted here: Saso is a valuable resource, I would also recommend Taoism and the Rite of Cosmic Renewal, which I first read back in 1976 and was a major turning point in my life, as well as his The Gold Pavilion, a translation and meditation manual based on the two Yellow Court Canons, the usual way that these texts are referred to, which are two of the most important texts in Religious Daosim. I also learned a great deal about the higher levels of Daoist ritual from Taooist Ritual in Chinese Society and History by John Lagerway and Early Daoist Scriptures by Stephen Bokenkamp. There are two Yellow Court Scriptures, internal and external you have specifically mention the external one. The Wikipedia article is surprisingly informative and worth a read. I have two different translations as well as the original Chinese Texts which are available on the internet. Some years ago I had been involved in a thread dealing with the different translations, but I can't seem to find it, so I will have to dig these out of my library so I can let you know about them. ZYD

When I was a moderator we examined the idea of clubs, even going so far as to install it so we could see how it works, but we also examined the possible consequences of clubs with our "nightmare" scenario being the "Western Mopai" club, which would end out filled with and staffed by a group that has been a source of problems for Dao Bums for as long as I can remember. We concluded that a forum with even a few warring clubs would create an enormous burden for the moderating staff and risked fragmenting and polarizing the forum in undesirable ways. We certainly didn't want to deal with it. The new staff may wish to examine the idea, our own past discussions of the matter should still be available to them. ZYD

We have had this discussion before in regard to member deci belle, who had a similar request. The discussion of this request seems to no longer be viewable to non-mod Dao Bums. I know its not available because I remember posting in it and not being able to find those post now. A lot of the present mod staff have been here long enough that they may remember this discussion and may want to review it in light of this request. The problem with a "block" button is that it would stifle the give and take involved in discussion, which is as can be seen in the TheDaoBums' Three Foundations: Eclectic, Egalitarian, Civil. is not the purpose for which the Dao Bums exists: That my interpretation of this is the "official" purpose is confirmed here: There are two usual ways to deal with the problem of not wanting to take part in the give and take of discussion, first you have your own private feifdom in your PPF, and can delete any offending posts that happen to disagree with you. If you are only interested in Dao Bums seeing your response unfettered with disagreement you can put links in the thread to your PPF. If you want to have a public response, you always have the option of a blog on anyone of a number of sites, where you are also "absolute autocrat" of what is posted and responses to it, and you can put links to that for those who wish your unblemished exposition. Some time ago I experimented with a third alternative here: This reminds me of what I said here: A little ignoring goes a long way too. This is how I will implement this idea. When I make a new post I will edit my previous one with a link to it so that someone can follow my exposition without having it be broken up intervening periods of incomprehensible twaddle. I may add some links to parts of the discussion which I think are particularly worth considering, or add them to my new post like this: Apeiron&Peiron Brings up the relationship between the Republic and Laws Apeiron&Peiron talks about publication in ancient Athens both of which I intend to respond to shortly. This was during the period of "Owner's Permissions" where the OP was given extraordinary control over the thread, a feature which could not be implemented in the subsequent software upgrade, and if you read the whole post you can see the requests from other people to remove the spam-trolling posts, which eventually I did remove. As the thread is now it is only two thirds of what it was before, I had to hide over twenty post from a single poster. Overall I kind of like the approach, but it will not deal with a troll whose goal is not simply for attention, as I mentioned above, but for victory, to silence you and put forward their own opinion above all others. This is the type of troll who should be disciplined with suspensions until it becomes obvious to all that a ban is necessary, and believe me, mods get enough flack for just suspending someone, banning a member is one of the last things that mods will contemplate, when all else has failed. I am glad to hear that there is no way a "block" feature can be implemented, as I really do believe in the free flow of conversation as my own experimental way of dealing with it, illustrated above, demonstrates, but I also know how painful it is to deal with a determined troll who will not let go of the matter until you have been exhausted and given up. To protect us from such trolls is part of the reason moderators exist, and I wish the new staff well in their efforts to do so. Zhongyongdaoist, former Concierge Edit: After posting some Paragraphs and spacing needed adjustment.

If you are looking for a nice one word label, that sounds good and has established usage, you might want to use "pragmatic", and put it into a context like "a pragmatic approach to choice among an eclectic set of tools for success." Or something like that. I should have been in advertising I could have been a very rich word whore, but I have too much of a sense of personal integrity for that. ZYD

There are two words often used for this and they describe different approaches to such mixing, syncretic, such as virtue has already mentioned, and eclectic. There is a useful and fundamental difference between them. Eclectic is used to refer to an informal approach to a mix and match of ideas and practices, whereas synretic is a more formal approach in which there is an actual attempt to synthesize, to unify different approaches in a fundamental unity, whereas this is not necessary in a eclectic approach, only a borrowing from different sources. ZYD

Unfortunately finding the "original Chinese" will probably be very difficult. This is because the work was controversial and eventually proscribed: Ancient fragments have been found, but no complete text: As noted what has been found doesn't seem to correlate well with the English text which is claimed to be a transcription of an Oral Tradition: So the only people who would have a Chinese text of this version are Master Ni's sons who carry on his work here: the College of Tao and Integral Health Here is the quote in Master Ni's book, from section 45, p. 144: If you contact them they may help you, however there is probably no way of establishing the relation between this "oral tradition" which Master Ni translated and the original Huahujing, nor is there anyway to establish whether Laozi wrote any of it. Either text might have interesting information on different aspects of later Daoist tradition, but neither may contain anything written by Laozi himself. ZYD