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The basis of left and right in Daoism is found in the Loshu square: East South West East North West The first thing that you need to realize about the above square is that direction wise the position of 'one" is North, thus "nine" is South, "three" is East and "Seven" is West. The Left and Right here is derived from the orientation of someone sitting in the North at "one" "and facing south toward "nine", thus East corresponds to left and West to right. This magic square is considered to be the cosmic pattern of the Earth, and is used everywhere from Feng Shui to the floor plan of Daoist Temples. The North is considered to be the direction of the sacred, and with "one", the origin of all, in the North, thus in the North is where the Cosmogenic Gods of Daoism are seated in Temples, facing South, their left sides toward the Eastern, Yang side of the Temple and their Right sides on the Western, Yin side of the Temple. There are a lot of other attributes to directions that add to this, but this is the basic pattern, and I don't have time for fuller discussion. I hope this is helpful. ZYD

Pardon me if I begin as I ended: and give the full quote from which you excise this: "Or, as it refers to above - " in magic it is preferable to use the Sidereal Zodiac."" Which in full read: "for purposes of working with the Arabic Lunar Mansions in magic it is preferable to use the Sidereal Zodiac" I am a stickler for detail, but it is exactly this sense of detail combined with external time constraints which makes the present discussion so frustrating for me and why I felt it necessary to point out the article again. It is about all that I have time for right now and the most useful thing that I could contribute under the overall circumstances. I have noted that you are concerned about Aboriginal star lore and constellations, but what they have to do with Zodiacs is an interesting question, one that has concerned me a lot in my studies in Chinese astrology: Chinese astrology has lots of interesting star lore and at least one of its astrologies, Zi wei dou shu, is pretty much completely a 'star' astrology, with no 'zodiac' involved at all. On the other hand the Chinese do have a well formed Zodiac, as pointed out above, which seems to have very little relation to Chinese stellar cosmology. How these systems relate and how star lore becomes 'astro-nomos' and 'astro-logos', in other words how the primary data of star lore is turned into systems of 'star classification' and 'star logic' is a complex and interesting study. Too many questions, too little time. they are more about the properties of a period of time and not about the properties of a subset of stars occupying a particular position in space: I emphasized this to point out time is as important as space and that astrology is as much about time cycles as geometry and especially in more traditional astrology, those cycles as discrete blocks of time tend to trump planetary positions in space. I prefer to view both space and time as discrete 'sections' of higher dimensional space/time and to interpret astrology as sacred information theory, or in the words of the fundamental metaphor for astrology that I worked out circa 1970, 'astrology is the body language of the Cosmic Mind'. I hope that you and Michael Sternbach, a most welcome new voice here on the Tao Bums, will continue to have a fruitful and interesting discussion. I have simply tried to add to it as best as I can for now.

As a general piece of information, the 'abyss' and 'crossing the abyss' have a very specific technical meaning in Modern Western Magic, particularly that derived from Aleister Crowley and his law of Thelema, or those teachings which are inspired by his work, but not specifically Thelemic. Here are too links which may help explain it better: The Abyss Qabalistic Interpretaion The Abyss Enochian Magic Interpretation Both of which basically derive from Aleister Crowley. Dark nights of the sould are more like the "mini abyss" which BaquaKickass mentions. She knows all this of course, she is just doing some rethinking. Always a good thing.

I have studied the Western and Chinese esoteric traditions for a long time, some idea about my studies and approach can be found in these two threads in my PPD: What, me teach? Ok, sure why not . . . Ritual Daoism's part in Chinese Magic and Alchemy Please fee free to post questions in either of these. I haven't read Brock Silver's book, and not knowing more, cannot address it directly. Stephen Bokenkamp's Early Daoist Scripture's, last section on "The Wondrous Scripture of the Upper Chapters on Limitless Salvation", were of enormous importance to my understanding of "Religious Daoism", which I prefer to call Ritual Daoism, in its deepest and most profound meaning. Among other things it provides a good liturgical map and practice for unifying Neo-Platonic Theurgy with Daoist Ritual and internal alchemy practice. I have hinted a little about this in one of my posts on Cornelius Agrippa's use of Aristotle's Four Causes by applying Aristotle's "unmoved mover" concept to explaining the Daoist concept of wuwei, nonaction: I will take one powerful application of these ideas and apply them to modeling Daoism, since many people here have an interest both in Daoism and Western Esoteric traditions, but first I want to point out that while these Aristotelian principles are used as explanatory principles in Agrippa, in Agrippa they have been thoroughly assimilated to a fundamentally Platonist worldview, a task first undertaken by those thinkers usually categorized as Middle Platonists, whose ideas were admirably synthesized and expounded by Plotinus and his successors. The whole discussion is too long to quote here, but you can follow the link to finish it. I don't have time to say much more now. ZYD

The actual date of the composition of the texts is not as important for understanding both Ficino and Agrippa, as rather the wrong dating that existed from the late Hellenistic period until the Seventeenth Century: After the year 1469, Ficino changed the order and placed Zoroaster first, linking him to the Magi who visited the infant Christ (Allen 1998, 1–49). Unphilosophical though such speculations might seem to modern readers, there are at least two ways in which Ficino's ancient theology manifested ties to what, in his era, could be considered part of philosophy. First, the model of “successions” (Latin “successiones”, Greek “diadochai”) would have been intuitively familiar to many thinkers. At its most emblematic in Diogenes Laertius's Lives of the Philosophers, the “succession” model posited the notion that a powerful initial figure, whose style of life and doctrines were considered exemplary, would have founded a “school” in which many others had followed. (The 1433 translation into Latin of Diogenes Laertius' Lives vaulted it onto Renaissance thinkers' desks; it had a significant predecessor in the Middle Ages in a series of Lives then attributed to Walter Burley, though see now Grignaschi). Second, and more powerfully, like medieval thinkers before him, Ficino saw “philosophy” and “theology” as linked domains, with philosophy as subordinate to theology (Marenbon 2000, esp. studies XII and XV). “Philosophers” could only be considered authentic lovers of wisdom if they graduated from disputatious word games, which Ficino thought were commonly taught as dialectic, to the source of ultimate truth. (The Ancient Theology, Emphasis mine, ZYD) To Ficino and Agrippa, as well as such Church Fathers as Lactantius, the Hermetic writings were ancient writings, from around the time of Moses. Further they were writings that seemed to indicate doctrines that were 'prophetical' of Christianity, thus the importance of the Hermetica to the early Church. They could be used both to give Christian doctrine more respectability and for conversion purposes. They were used this way by both Lactantius and Augustine. In this regard Lactantius was more positive about the Hermetica than Augustine. The whole issue is extremely complex, but again I don't want to get really caught up in explaining all of this, however, the upshot is that from antiquity to the Renaissance there was a scholarly, learned Roman Catholic tradition that was well disposed to Ancient Pagan Philosophy, it is this line which is represented by Ficino and Agrippa. It is this line, and it is not an insignificant one, to which Agrippa is appealing when he addresses himself 'to the learned'. It is this line which was represented by the two Medici Popes, Leo X and Clement VII, since the Medici's had been Ficino's patrons and between them controlled the Vatican for a lot of the early Sixteenth Century. The dating of the Hermetica in the early Seventeenth Century was to prove disastrous to this learned tradition in the Church, basically relegating it to the historical basement as the Roman Church reeled under assaults on its 'pagan errors' and devilish magic from its Protestant critics. As a curious side note to the above, Issac Casaubon, mentioned above for his dating of the Hermetica, was the Father of Meric Casaubon, who edited and published large portions of John Dee's diaries as the True and Faithful Relation, which was become part of the lore of Enochian Magic.

The 'authorized' biography of Johweh (pronounced joe-ee) is, as anyone familiar with the Documentary Hypothesis or the even more radical, Hellenistic Composition Hypothesis knows, fiction and thus not a good guide to Divine Nature, especially the Divine Nature of the soul. Real magic does not depend on 'egregores', but on self knowledge. The human soul is not merely coterminous with all space and time, but encompasses all possible space/time continuums as mere parts of itself. According to Platonic/Hermetic teachings the soul can know True Divinity by knowing itself, thus: The path of the Magician is to go from this: But if thou lockest up thy soul within thy body, and dost debase it, saying: I nothing know; I nothing can; I fear the sea; I cannot scale the sky; I know not who I was, who I shall be to this: Make, [then,] thyself to grow to the same stature as the Greatness which transcends all measure; leap forth from every body; transcend all Time; become Eternity; and [thus] shalt thou know God. Conceiving nothing is impossible unto thyself, think thyself deathless and able to know all. As one grows in ones apprehension of True Divinity, one can embody it in any name system one may wish and even create new ones to serve ones needs, for such names are merely tools which the magician uses. Those who fear any egregore will never know true magic, in so far as egregores are useful, they serve the magician, the magician does not serve them. Edit: Changed link for Hermetica quote from URL to 'Corpus Hermeticum XI'

I had originally thought of replying to this when it first appeared, but I did not have time to compose a satisfactory post, and now what I see are well meaning oversimplifications of "Religious Daoism", and not much clarity on its relationship to Chinese "Popular Religion", of which it is almost impossible to avoid oversimplifications on anything less than a book length scale. By the way for those interested in a book length scale, the classic text is Taoism and Chinese Religion by Henri Maspero, a book which since I bought it in the early 80s has been a great help, though having been basically written before the Second World War, is definitely not a guide to the developments in the second half of the Twentieth Century. I don't have time today to post at any length, but I believe that a good starting point is a quote from Professor Jerry Alan Johnson's Daoist Internal Alchemy Neigong & Weigong, p. 329, posing the hypothetical question, “If the main purpose of teaching a religious system is to bring people into the faith, why are the teachings of the Daoist Alchemical Texts so obscure, and the true teachings hidden from the public?” His answer is simple and direct, "The answer is simple, true Daoism is a Magical Tradition, and not a Religion." Obviously Professor Johnson has similar misgivings to the use of "religion" in relation to "Religious Daoism" as led me to my own preference as I noted here: Fundamentally the "Daoist Priest" is not a priest in any way that modern usage makes clear. A Daoshi is a "Scholar of the Way" and literally a "master of ceremonies", basically an initiated practitioner of a Magical Tradition that dates back around 2,000 years, and is a synthesis of the original Heavenly Master movement, with the developments of the Shangqing and Linbao schools under the umbrella term Zhengyi Daoism, which he practices both on behalf of the community of which he is part, and for the sake of his own self development, both as a magician and practitioner of internal alchemy. As I further noted, it was to this system that I was introduced when: and part of my intent in starting the thread in my PPD: Ritual Daoism's part in Chinese Magic and Alchemy was to address some of the types of issues that have been raised here, with a more specific intent to focus on Ritual Daoism, than the Popular Religion, but to try to explicate the two, and how they are intertwined, but distinct, and based on some of the previous responses it is important to emphasize that there are clear demarcations between Ritual Daoism and, not merely the Religious, but also the popular magical traditions of China, and specifically that these differences focus on the close integration of Ritual and Alchemical practices in Ritual Daoism as I pointed out above as the "Daoist system of ritual and meditative alchemy", which is a unique system which unifies neigong and weigong, in a profound way that superficial discussion or study of the relevant texts cannot possibly convey. I hope this is helpful. It is all I have to time post right now. Edit: I was rushed enough writing the above, and my browser was asking me to please close it for updates, so I posted the above and proceeded with the updates. I have made one change which was to change "a profound system" to "a unique system" in the last paragraph, because of the use of "profound" again later in the sentence.

Call on the spirits of wifi and ask them to improve your reception of other spirits. No I am not joking. In classical magical theory all of modern science can be reframed into a subdivision of the intersection between natural magic mathematical magic. You just drop the dogmatic materialism that is a holdover from the Seventeenth Century revival of Epicureanism and think of the phenomena the same way that Agrippa describes 'Occult Virtues' as deriving from 'formal causes' that are instantiated by the circuits in the hardware and the materials of which they are made. Just as there are spirits of plants and stones, there are spirits of bluetooth and wifi. Make peace with them. It could help your chest pains too.

Oh, no good reason. A phrase which I chose to spill over from double entendre into triple and quadruple, and as for gains they are mostly ill-gotten. At its absolute 'goodest', maybe they can become the equivalent of Dharma protectors, some of whom are very unsavory in their origins, but it is a bigger subject than I have time for now, though I will try to get back to it if I can. Right now I am just kind of having fun with it. You Pisces are all alike. From what I have found, many seem to think that they are stronger/better at getting things done since they are demons. I mean even when I tell folks some $10 incense would work just as well for their particular project (sometimes that really is the case): This is so totally true, but I would say rather you don't call on the unibomber to build a shed. Even the one he lived in was not much. There are so many beautiful and lovely ways to get what one wants through magic, but magic is also so much more than that. In most peoples eyes yes, but as I said above it so much more than that. traveling around the world just to pick up a few souvenirs: While buying them from the local equivalent of the mafia.

If we don't watch out people will even go back to the ever so chic French spelling, Goeçia. It will be the end of civilization as we know it. I don't necessarily object to ending civilization as we know it, but I don't think this is the way. Also about Vassago, Waite does say that 'he is by nature good' in The Book of Ceremonial Magic. He must have fallen in with some rowdy teddy boys and been arrested in a sweep. Though Waite does list two seals for him, one for white magic, maybe he has an evil twin. Maybe he only thinks he has one. Now about Bune . . . He is associated with wealth you know. Though the weird stuff about sepulchers would give me pause for thought.

My comparison and synthesis of Western and Chinese esoteric systems started in the early Seventies when I started comparing Western alchemy with Chinese alchemy in form of Charles Luk's Taoist Yoga. It has continued to be an interesting and fruitful endeavor in the forty years since then. If I thought this type of comparison was really meaningful I would come back with something to the effect that since Yesod was is the reproductive organ of the Microprosopus that it is perfect to represent the lower Dan in its function as the 'cauldron of jing', but I don't find such superficial comparisons either interesting or particularly meaningful. I don't find them interesting or meaningful because they take superficial resemblances and shuffle them around to make a pretty picture which people who like such things then oooh and aaah over. If that is what you want to do, save yourself some time and trouble and buy Yudelove's book. Get it here if you want: Yudelove's pretty picture book And if you really want to do some staggering superficial comparisons of your own, here is some real food for fantasy, I mean thought: (Image from To Become a Sage, Chapter One, University of Washington) The text and commentary on this can be found here: To Become a Sage, Chapter One, University of Washington Be forewarned the diagram, text and commentary is all by Confucians and can be harmful to the unexamined presuppositions of 'Taoists'. On the other hand if you really want to do something interesting and practical start with Western geomancy, a short introduction to which can be found here: Wikipedia on Geomancy and also here: Wikipedia on the Geomantic Figures Here are the Geomantic figures and one can see immediately why they might have relevance to the I Jing: (Illustration from Wikipedia on Geomancy) Hint: think Nuclear Trigrams, there is much more of course. Elsewhere on the Tao Bums I have noted: Most modern 'magickians' have not stepped outside the conceptual box created by Aleister Crowley of Geomancy being related only to the 'magic of earth', this is so wrong as to be laughable, if it did not trivialize an important and powerful system of magic. Simply learing about Geomancy and investigating it with a combination of analytic skill and creativity can reveal so much that it is amazing. Just as an example, what I learned about the art and science of magical binding from the study of geomancy was worth all the time and effort that I put into that study a thousand times over. Geomancy is one of the most interesting and fruitful ways of making a cultural bridge between Chines and Western systems. There are more, but I have said enough for today. Edit: I realized that I accidentally left out the third quote in the series at the top, it is in particular to this third quote that my comments about the 'reproductive organ of the Microprosopus' is directed and they make less sense without it.

I have studied and practiced Chinese magic and Ritual Daoism for years, and some years ago I ordered the kindle version of this, and even at $10.00 it is a total waste of money. You're not even going to find the type of material in this book that the other two posters are afraid that you would get into a lot of trouble with, that's how lame it is. ZYD

Lest someone think that an 'electro-temple' is some stunning innovation of chaos magic, the following quote should be edifying. It is from the second printing of Emma Harginge Britten's Ghost Land, first published in 1875 or 76. After describing the most remarkable visionary experiences, the subject of these 'Autobiographical Sketches' reveals the actual physical form of the temple: The account is perhaps partly or wholly fictive and the visions grandly elaborated, but it shows that the notion of 'electro-magic' is hardly a recent phenomena. Though certainly an innovation from the time of Agrippa's Three Books, it is neatly assimilated under the rubric of Natural and Mathematical Philosophy, with especially as we get more in the direction of radionics, whether in its medical or magical context. Naturally neo-magical theorists such as Donald Tyson would dismiss the whole business as a woeful crutch for for magus wannabes who do not possess the necessary will power and imagination. Only time and practice will tell.

I didn't miss your point Jeff, I was addressing where Jesus may have gotten these "higher doctrines", and how they may have related to the Old Testament. Most people in general and especially around here have just about no idea what Greek philosophy or Plato is about and its connection with Hellenistic Spirituality and I have to say that the connection came as quit a surprise to me, as I have noted elsewhere on the Dao Bums. I had read about and studied Western Magic, Qabalah, Tibetan Buddhism, Daoism and qigong for fifteen or so years before, in an effort to understand aspects of the Western tradition, I seriously turned my attention to Plato and the Platonists, so that I read these things with different eyes than the scholars whose works I was reading. It would take too much time to recount both the reasons why I undertook this study and how much that it changed my attitude about a lot of things, but I will address at least some of how this affects the way that Hellenized Jews viewed what we not call "the Old Testament" In my discussion of Jewish adaptations of Plato I mentioned Philo of Alexandria, and he is very important as a contemporary of all of the founders of Christianity, because of the possible influence of thinking like his on their own thought and action. As moderns we tend to view the "Old Testament" in a certain way, and mostly thanks to the Protestant Reformation most of us tend to view it as something to be interpreted literally. This is not how Hellenized Jews thought of it, they had no problems with doing the same type of thing to the Torah as Greeks routinely did to their mythology, they interpreted it as allegories of higher spiritual realities and not as something to be taken literally. In short they did everything thy could to read Plato and Aristotle into the Torah to get something that they could be proud of, out of it. Here are some excerpts from the Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy's article on Philo: The one category of enlightened people is able to comprehend God through a vision beyond the physical universe. It is as though they advanced on a heavenly ladder and conjectured the existence of God through an inference (Praem. 40). The other category apprehends him through himself, as light is seen by light. For God gave man such a perception "as should prove to him that God exists, and not to show him what God is." Philo believes that even the existence of God "cannot possibly be contemplated by any other being; because, in fact, it is not possible for God to be comprehended by any being but himself " (Praem. 39-40). Philo adds, "Only men who have raised themselves upward from below, so as, through the contemplation of his works, to form a conjectural conception of the Creator by a probable train of reasoning" (Praem. 43) are holy, and are his servants. Next Philo explains how such men have an impression of God's existence as revealed by God himself, by the similitude of the sun (Mut. 4-6) a concept which he borrowed from Plato. As light is seen in consequence of its own presence so, "In the same manner God, being his own light, is perceived by himself alone, nothing and no other being co-operating with or assisting him, a being at all able to contribute to pure comprehension of his existence; But these men have arrived at the real truth, who form their ideas of God from God, of light from light" (Praem. 45-46). As Plato and Philo had done, Plotinus later used this image of the sun. Thus the Logos, eternally created (begotten), is an expression of the immanent powers of God, and at the same time, it emanates into everything in the world. (Emphasis mine, ZYD) Here we see important ideas and images that appear in both orthodox and Gnostic thought, such as the Logos, Trinity, light etc., and this is hardly an single icicle from the tip of the iceberg. I hope that these rather long excerpts are helpful. ZYD Edit: Changed paragraph spacing.

Again with all due respect Jeff, your example: Is simply a literary context, and not the type of historical context that Cheshire Cat is saying is the necessary background. The big question here is "Why didn't a group of high minded pious Jews of the period stone this demon obsessed carpenter to death as a false prophet, like the Law says they should?", who listened to him, and who took his words seriously and who would have protected him from the angry mob? Cheshire Cat has his own answers, and which are probably that Jesus was a Zealot, and that he was protected by a gang of "Apostle thugs" who would be only to happy to kill anyone in the audience who disagreed with them. My own answer is that assuming that any of this actually happened and in many ways that is a big assumption, that he had a very sympathetic audience of "God Fearers" and Hellenizing Jews who would have been only to happy to listen to some nice young itinerant preacher speaking Greek Philosophy, which the Greeks had stolen from the Jews anyway, or at least that is what they believed, in terms which had been made as Kosher sounding as they could be by a line thinkers including Aristobolus and the older and very prolific contemporary of any conceivable historical Jesus, the Apostles and Paul, Philo of Alexandria. I have posted a little bit about this milieu in my posts on the religious background of the Renaissance Neoplatonist and author on magic Cornelius Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy here: Agrippa Book One Introduction (The Relevant posts are mostly on the first and second page, but the whole thread is short and worth a read.) The upshot of which is that a tendency to synthesis Platonic and and Jewish thought existed possibly as early as the Third Century B.C.E. in Ptolemaic Egypt, and that it continues into the Patristic period starting with Justin Martyr, the first of the Church fathers, and running through such Church Fathers as Lactantius and Marius Victorinus, the teacher of St .Augustine. Finally two things, it should be remembered that Joseph and Mary were supposed to have fled to Egypt with the baby Jesus in order to avoid Herod's slaughter of the innocents and if all of this interesting stuff was going on in Alexandria, there would have been no need for Jesus to go off to India for instruction from Hindus or Buddhists would there? For those people who find the notion of Plato and the Gospels farfetched, I did post about the possible use of Plato's Gorgias in the "Sermon on the Mount" here: Plato's Gorgias in Matthew If you think finding Plato in the Gospel's is simply my own odd and eccentric hobby, you should find yourself a copy of: Plato and the Christians by Adam Fox, Philosophical Library, 1957 On the title page the author is listed as Archdeacon of Wesminster, a title of some significance in the Anglican Church. In this book he takes almost every commonplace among Christian thought that originates somewhere in the New Testament and traces it to some interesting section of Plato's dialogs. There on p. 131 you will find under the heading, "Love your Enemies", a correlation of Matthew 5.43-45 with Plato's Republic 335B-E. Finally for the sake of brevity I have had to engage in some real oversimplification, nonetheless I hope the above is helpful. ZYD Edit: Minor spelling and paragraph spacing.

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.

Hello Nungali, To start to address one aspect of your post: ]Maybe you need ‘magic memory theatre’ (see my last post in What is Mind) ? Which I did and here is my response, which I repeat here for the benefit of those who may find any of this interesting: At the bottom of the Wikipedia article is a reference to The Art of Memory by Frances Yates, which is the classic study of the art of memory, a practice that goes back to ancient Greek rhetoric. I read this book almost 40 years ago, you can read it now if you want: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/art-of-memory-frances-a-yates/1116994498?ean=9780226950013 A book which Tao Bums may find interesting is The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci by Jonathan D. Spence, which is about the first Jesuit missionary to enter China. It provides fascinating insight into Chinese society circa 1600 and is a good discussion of the art of memory itself. As an example the Jesuit mission was so well funded with silver that the Chinese were convinced that the Jesuits must have been master alchemists, a misconception which Ricci, a master of the Jesuit equivalent of 'skillful means' was only to happy to leave in place. It really is a good read: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-memory-palace-of-matteo-ricci-jonathan-d-spence/1001834798?ean=9780140080988 I do have actually have an excellent memory, big enough to hold all sorts of pertinent data, for years if need be, and a wonderful tendency to forget the irrelevant. After decades of study there is a lot to remember and it is not all about magic and stuff, but about all sorts of things which eventually help to fill in the big picture. So I really never was attracted to the idea of a memory palace and never worked with it, though, if I started teaching again I would certainly employ the concept with students. By the way, the above is an excellent example of nested quotes and how you can pull them off of different threads and assemble them into lovely posts. More to come.

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

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.

It's Six Yogas of Naropa. I first read this as a teenager in Garma C. C. Chang's translation, there are more modern translations available. This is largely a work on dream yoga, but has some consideration of consciousness transference when one is dying and using it to reanimate a corpse. in terms of Daoist technique's Professor Jerry Alan Johnson's books on Daoist magic have some interesting information. This is an interesting sounding project, but it is definitely advanced work, but the training that would have to be done would be worthwhile in itself. ZYD

as a person who has read both a lot of Plato and the Neoplatonists and also Peter Kingsley Have you read his actual Ph.D? I am not prone to making idle or unsupportable claims, of course I have read Ancient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic, his Phd thesis, and two other books, Reality and In the Dark Places of Wisdom. I have also read all the Platonic dialogues, except The Laws, of which I have read sections. How many of the Platonic dialogues have you read? serious deep level of mind control res ipsa loquitur A point which is not really satifactorally addressed by: Of course expertise in the PreSocratics requires expertise on Socratic philosophy Of course it doesn't, it requires only enough familiarity to be able to convincingly quote from and comment on secondary sources and their opinions about Plato. Socratic philosophy which is from Plato Plato learned from Socrates, how can Socratic philosophy be from Plato? Xenophon, Euclid of Megara and others made claims to represent Socratic philosophy, but I am sure you know all about that, it must have just slipped your mind for a moment. Maybe you want to provide some evidence of your claim against Kingsley being superficial? Please go back to what I said: Kingsley's critique of Plato is superficial and based on misunderstandings First of all I found many interesting and deeply researched ideas on the Pre-Socrates, but I found his criticism of Plato to be superficial and biased. It is Kingsley's critique of Plato which I found superficial, not his discussion of the Pre-Socratics. Maybe you want to provide some evidence of your claim against Kingsley being superficial I am not going to go back through his whole book to find examples of misunderstanding. I have chosen one since I think it will prove exemplary, but since it will require a somewhat longer discussion, added to this already long post, I will postpone it (yes a pun of sorts was intended) for another time. It is on page 80 of Ancient Philosophy, Mystery and Magic and is part of discussion of myth and logos. The core is "...the positive certainty arrived at by reasoned arguement.", but this will require a little time of which I have already spent more than I care to on this matter. My discussion will appear in a few days. I suspect that most people who are impressed by Kingsly's, or for that matter Derrida's critique have not read much Plato, nor thought deeply about what little they have read I will close for now by asking again, how many of Plato's dialogues have you actually read?

I am sorry that I don't have much time to contribute to this thread now, but I will try to address a few issues quickly. I have been interested in the application of mathematics to mysticism and magic since I was a teenager in the late sixties. Thinking about Godel's Theorem was one of the reasons I decided to accept the Daodejing as a fundamental text. At the time I found Ouspensky's Tertium Organum very useful, at least in the early parts where he outlines the analogies between two dimensional space and three dimensional space and how the can help us to understand four dimensional space. I didn't find the rest as interesting from the mathematical perspective. With all due respect to pythagoreanfulllotus, as a person who has read both a lot of Plato and the Neoplatonists and also Peter Kingsley, I have to say that Kingsley's critique of Plato is superficial and based on misunderstandings of what Plato is really talking about. I suspect that most people who are impressed by Kingsly's, or for that matter Derrida's critique have not read much Plato, nor thought deeply about what little they have read. In the late seventies I embarked on a major study of the Platonic tradition, solely because I considered its important to understanding Western Magic as represented in Agrippa. My Previous experience with Plato left me with a negative impression, but after several years of study I came to the conclusion that aside from historical value of understanding the worldview of Agrippa, there was considerable value to Plato himself and the school of thought that derives from him. Among other things, unless you actually have read the dialogues, Plotinus will seem nothing but a confused, rambling geezer who can't make up his mind, but once you have some background in Aristotle, the Stoics and yes, Plato, it becomes clear that he is recounting and then refuting the positions of other schools and then defending and explicating the doctrines which are implied by the dialogues. I wish that I had more time to address these issues now, but I don't, maybe another time. ZYD

Excellent post OldGreen. In my early twenties I worked on a system of self analysis based on one's astrological chart. It was part of my early exploration of astrological magic, which I approached through images drawn, literally and figuratively from ones chart. They were literally drawn because this was one of my first forays into art and magic and of course figuratively because the idea drew (there is that literal and figurative and again!) on the long standing Western tradition of creating images based on the symbolism of ones chart. The images were to be used much like tarot cards have been, as doorways for visionary exploration, in this case of oneself. Like the tarot the language of astrology is richer than Bardon's elemental analysis, but because of the elemental attributes of the signs and planets could be related to that also, so that one could use Bardon as a starting point. What I particularly like about your suggestions is the use of the tarot as an Oracle and not as a mere fortunetelling tool. Long ago I made a distinction between an Oracle and fortunetelling. The distinction arose because of my thinking about the difference between the Tarot and the Yi Jing. Generally speaking the Tarot is used to forecast future events, but the Yi Jing provides advice for behaving in a way that will produce good results, it is advice based upon an analysis of a core structure of the Cosmos with a view to "proper" behavior, but "proper" behavior in this sense always means behavior that produces good results. Your suggestion lifts the Tarot up to this level and also because of the astrological attributes of the Tarot cards it could also be used in conjunction with an astrological chart, a possibility which, like virtue may have its own rewards. However, after all of my years of study, practice and reflection, I think that one of the most valuable exercises in self-knowledge is the systematic analysis of ones beliefs. Most people confuse opinion/beliefs with knowledge. Every schoolboy and girl "knows", that Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo. This "knowledge" however is just a belief, very likely what Plato would call a "true" belief, but a belief nonetheless. The same is true about beliefs about science, Buddhism, the Dao and even what a lot of people, especially here on the Tao Bums, believe to most sacrosanct, ones own experience, because to say, "I have experienced it, therefore it is true", tells us a lot about one's beliefs about the veracity of one's experiences, but nothing about the truth of the experience itself, while asserting an infallibility that would make the Pope blush.

I am a little pressed for time, but will attempt to address some of the issues raised. The Western tradition is not responsible for the type of idiots attracted to it. Regrettably for these types of people there is no "magical thinking" in Magic, just hard work, study and discipline. When I was teaching, my public lectures attracted much more intelligent students then the average, still I stopped teaching magic because of general mentality of the "aspirant". A better title for your original thread might have been "Stupidity in potential students of the the Western Tradition?". With all due respect Viator, Crowley is a poor choice in the sense that he does not represent the "tradition”, he may be the most influential person on the magical revival of the 20th century, but he is an example of East/West syncretism, not the tradition. By his own account his introduction to mental discipline was from an experience with the famed mountain climber Oscar Eckenstein, and he continued his studies with Allen Bennett, his mentor in the Golden Dawn, after Bennett had decamped to Ceylon and converted to Buddhism. The Hindu/Buddhist type of mental discipline which Crowley learned is not the same as what would have been emphasized in the Western Tradition, since the Indian traditions take as their starting point a position similar to that of Parmenides, usually refered to as "mind only" or the atomism of Democritus, usually called "the doctrine of aggregates". In the West these were superceded by the Platonic Contemplative tradition originally described in Plato's Symposium as the “ascent to the Vision of the Beautiful”. The idea of which is to turn the mind to the source “ideas” which are the generative principles both of our mental experience and of the world which we experience through sense. The result is a transformative experience which connects us a co-creators with the creative power behind the Cosmos. I could cite a lot of passages from Agrippa, the late Platonists and the Hermetica to support this, but I don't have time now. On a practical level one should investigate the “art of memory” a technique that was used by rhetoricians in the Hellenistic period to remember the topics of speeches, but since magical invocations and conjurations can be conceived of as a type of as a type of Rhetoric, and by the way, Plato makes the reverse comparison, seeing rhetoric as a type of spell or enchantment, the ancient practitioners would have been sure to adopt such techniques. The chief tool of the Art of Memory, the memory palace, had a big revival in the Renaissance among Hermetic and Neo-Platonic thinkers. The most famous of which was probably Giordano Bruno. For an interesting read see Frances Yates, The Art of Memory. I also found Jonathan Spence's study of Matteo Ricci, the first Jesuit missionary to enter China, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, a fascinating read in itself, as well as a good discussion of the theory and practice of memory palaces, though much indebted to Yates. My own “Feng Shui Meditation” which I developed for Inner Sage Tao, is just a memory palace based on the feng shui compass. I hope this information is interesting and useful.