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"Extract the souls of all things" is a reference to what the alchemist referred to as sulphur, in Aristotle's terminology the form. The reason for using sulphur as a name is because when liquid it is red, but when solid it is yellow and the liquid extracts of gold were red as one can witness in the old fashioned red glass which received its color from gold used in its manufacture. The soul was the active agent and the alchemists extraction of the "active part" of a natural substance, whether animal, vegetable or mineral, is the distant ancestor to the modern pharmaceutical companies search for the "active ingredient" in traditional herbal remedies of which aspirin, from willow, and digitalis, from froxglove, are the models. "The miracles of the Sun" is probably a reference to the Emerald Tablet. "The Emperor" and "Kelly" is undoubtably a reference to the fate which Edward Kelly, skryer to John Dee, suffered at the hands of the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf the Second, who first knighted Kelly for the transmutation which he "demonstrated" at court and then imprisoned him for not following through with his promises of more. Kelly died from injuries suffered when he jumped at least two stories in a botched escape attempt. "Noble humour" is perhaps what GrandmasterP believes he is indulging by quoting at length from a play that, following the lead set by Chaucer in the Canon's Yeoman's tale, sets out to reveal the falsity of Hermetic Arts and the cons which accompany them. I only say this because in light of GrandmasterP's numerous negative comments about these subjects, his quoting of Johnson has the ring of the ironical. To continue themes from Johnson's work, in memory of a certain "Dapper" gentleman, I will append the following account from the autobiography of William Lilly, the famous 17th Century astrologer and by his own account magician: More of which may be found here: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15835 I have often wondered whether one reason why magic "doesn't work" is because most people who claim an interest in these matters, as much as they may seem to long for it and affirm otherwise, don't really believe in it and are so astonished when it actually does work that they recoil in terror leaving success to heartier souls. To Know, to Will, to Dare and to Keep Silent.

Good old Draja Mickaharic! I used to recommend his Spiritual Cleansing to my students. Of course my treatment of it was all within the context of the first book of Agrippa's Occult Philosophy. I've only read his early books from the 80's Spiritual Cleansing and A Century of Spells and that some time ago. Still the natural magic procedure which he recommends have more value than people would think. The natural world is full of magic.

OldGreen, thank you for your appreciation. Crowley has not been a major object of interest for several decades. He has some interesting things to say, but I came to the conclusion that the best of the Beast was assimilated by Regardie and well used in his works and adaptation of the teachings of the Golden Dawn. Based on my study of Crowley I would say that he never returned to following the original method of Abramelin, but instead chose to employ a version of an ancient invocation taken from the Harris papyrus and first used by him in print as "the preliminary invocation of the Goetia" in his publication of the first book of the Lemegaton in 1903. He subsequently wrote study of it which was titled Liber CCCLXV. On page 226 of Magick in Theory and Practice he describes if as the most potent invocation extant and used "by the Master himself in his attainment". He there refers the reader to the complete text and his analysis of it on page 265. Where it is made clear that the attainment in question was "the Knowledge and Conversation of his Holy Guardian Angel". Further in the commentary on page 274 in his commentary on Line 5 he makes a reference to the Neophyte ceremony of the Golden Dawn, "...the Hierophant is the perfected Osiris, who brings the candidate, the natural Osiris, to identify with himself.", to which I will return in a moment. Regarding his trip to China I read about it so long ago that I could not comment on it at this time. I might be more interested if I thought Crowley's attempts at Sino-Occidental synthesis was a worthwhile contribution. As it is I find it as sterile as a mule, the unnatural offspring of two otherwise very fruitful systems. The failure of which is made all the more ironic by his failure to recognize the inherent value of Western Geomancy and its applicability as a cross cultural bridge. In terms of traditional sources, no one makes as big a deal of the Guardian Angel as Abramelin, building a whole system around it. This could be because a significant subtext of the work is the notion of Religious conversion and the need to provide a procedure that can be used by any religion. This fact may indicate that the text itself may date from the late 16th Century when religious conversion was both figuratively and literally a burning issue. Aside from the spirit that I mentioned in my original post, the second section of the third book of the Lemegaton, the Pauline Art, has a procedure for contacting a zodiacal spirit ruling the degree of your rising sign. It can be found online here: http://www.esoterica...mon/paulina.htm The two Chapters that I cite from Agrippa can be found on the same site here: Book III, Chapter XXI: http://www.esoterica...pp3b.htm#chap21 Book III, Chapter XXII: http://www.esoterica...pp3b.htm#chap22 and contain some interesting information. If I have time I may post them and comment on them. The site itself is an excellent online resource. The Agrippa book that I mention both is and is not the one which you reference. The Agrippan text is worthwhile, the editor/commentator was not really up to the task. He comments copiously on irrelevancies such as the Paschal Taper (see note p. 572), but can't explain Occult Virtues, a fundamental and much understood aspect of traditional magic. He vaguely understands the importance of Plato to understanding Agrippa, but is blind to Aristotle. You have to know the material better than he does to know when to attend to or when to ignore his comments, but then you don't need his comments do you? When I was teaching Western Magic I emphasized an approach integrating Natural Magic, Astrological Magic and Ceremonial Magic in the Agrippan tradition. I did not emphasize the "Holy Guardian Angel" at all, though I did think about recommending the spirit Camael from the Grimoire of Armandel to some advanced students if they wanted to work with it. I never pursued the matter and eventually stopped teaching, largely because few people have any real vocation for magic and were wasting their time and mine. If you or anyone else is interested in knowing what approach I would use now you can read my posts here: http://thetaobums.co...gic#entry291148 Which begins a long series of posts where you will also learn about Occult Virtues among other interesting things. I would not recommend pursuing work with the "Holy Guardian Angel", for reasons that may be clearer after you read my posts, but if you or anyone else absolutely, positively wants to do that sort of thing I would recommend pursuing rituals of the type described in the Shin subsection of the Shin section of the Z2 documents of the Golden Dawn, the basic text of which can be found on pages 178-181 of Book Four of Regardie's The Golden Dawn. Regardie provides good example rituals on pages 248 to 265, the second one of which is an adaption of Crowley's "Bornless Invocation" in the format of the Golden Dawn Neophyte formula. Regrettable the more recent Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic does not deal with these ideas as well as the earlier work and is inferior in its treatment of one of the aspects of the Golden Dawn system which is, as far as I am concerned, the most interesting and valuable of the Golden Dawn's contributions to Western Esoteric knowledge. This brings us back, as I said I would, to Crowley's reference to the Neophyte Ritual. I hope that all this is helpful to you and anyone else who may read it. Edit: in reading the above for a quote in another post, I have noticed that I wrote ' . . . and much understood aspect of traditional magic . . .', where 'understood' should have been 'misunderstood'. I have corrected the text accordingly.

Just a quick note to summarize, expand and correct a bit. The popularity of the concept of Guardian Angel in modern Neo-magic is due to Aleister Crowley. Crowley was dependent on his knowledge from Macregor-Mathers. Crowley's original attempt at the Abramelin operation was in 1900, not 1907 and its interruption was hardly mere organization matters with Mathers. It was in point of fact the "Great Schism" of the Golden Dawn which lead to the founding of the Stella Matutina and the continuance of the Golden Dawn as the Alpha et Omega. Delilo is using Crowley's The Vision and the Voice as a guide, the vision of the eighth "aethyr", just one of thirty, which is derived from the Golden Dawn's version of the Enochian Magic of John Dee, Edward Kelly and their Spiritual Interlocutors. Part of Crowley's experience with the 30 Aires was in London Circa 1898 and the rest was in the Sahara, circa 1909, where he and Victor Neuberg were doing odd and peculiar things. The link which provides to the Wikipedia article seems on my cursory examination to be a satisfactory introduction to the matter, however the notion of a Guardian Angel is hardly unique to Abremelin as Agrippa writes on the matter in Book III Chapters XXI and XXII of his Occult Philosophy. In the Grimoire of Armandel, also translated by Mathers, there is mention of a Spirit, Camael, who. "giveth unto you a perfect knowledge of your Genius, who will have the power to grant you everything that you shall demand of him." (P. 42). Seems a little easier than Abramelin's approach. The topic of Guadian Spirit was also an important one in Platonism, as according to Plato, Socrates professed to have one which guided him. The late middle Platonist Apulius of Madura, best know for his Metamorphoses or the Golden Ass, also wrote a work On the God of Socrates examining this in the light of Middle Platonic ideas. Porphyry in his life of Plotinus recounts the following in relation to an evocation of Plotinus' guardian spirit: "In fact Plotinus possessed by birth something more than is accorded to other men. An Egyptian priest who had arrived in Rome and, through some friend, had been presented to the philosopher, became desirous of displaying his powers to him, and he offered to evoke a visible manifestation of Plotinus' presiding spirit. Plotinus readily consented and the evocation was made in the Temple of Isis, the only place, they say, which the Egyptian could find pure in Rome. At the summons a Divinity appeared, not a being of the spirit-ranks, and the Egyptian exclaimed: 'You are singularly graced; the guiding-spirit within you is not of the lower degree but a God.' It was not possible, however, to interrogate or even to contemplate this God any further, for the priest's assistant, who had been holding the birds to prevent them flying away, strangled them, whether through jealousy or in terror. Thus Plotinus had for indwelling spirit a Being of the more divine degree, and he kept his own divine spirit unceasingly intent upon that inner presence. It was this preoccupation that led him to write his treatise upon Our Tutelary Spirit (Enneads Three, Treatise Four, ZYD), an essay in the explanation of the differences among spirit-guides." I hope these quick notes are helpful.

Well Taomeow I'm not completely disappointed in you. I didn't characterize you as an 'intelligent person with an interesting point of view' for nothing and you have certainly come up with an interesting reason for your statement that 'Western zodiac is originally derived from taoist astrology', whether it's a good reason or not remains to be seen, but first I would like to point out some similarities and differences between our approaches: We are both 'generalists', people who look at diverse areas and want to see 'the big picture' and as such the results of our research is only as good as our sources. I will note that as far as I am concerned someone with 'an ax to grind' is a scholar in name only and goes against what I would consider to be the real spirit of scholarship. They are, to harken back to an old saying, an ideologue in scholar's clothing. Rather than pursuing research to find 'the truth' they are simply looking for whatever will shore-up their their own prior commitments. Regrettably this is not a failing limited to 'scholars'. Myself, I only do research when I have a concrete problem to solve, thus, for example I researched Platonism in the late 70s (very reluctantly I might add, my first exposure to Plato in my late teens left me rolling on the floor with laughter!) in an effort to understand the larger context of Agrippa's works on Occult Philosophy and also based on an idea that occurred to me in 1976 that based on what little I did know about Plato, indicated that within a platonic context Agrippa's system of magic was a completely rational system following quit logically from what we might call, platonic first principles. I even jokingly began to refer to Agrippa's three books as a treatise on platonic engineering. Several years of research not only showed the value of such an approach, but to my own amazement the value of Plato. We are both concerned with whether the authors to whom we turn have done the work which we don't have time to do, but here is where we do part company, I don't find anything trivial about 'precise dates' and 'exact places' and spelling can also be important, though especially with Chinese studies the shift to Pinyin has made recognizing names, even those spelled correctly in 'old school' style something of a challenge. Sinologists aside, someone could hardly be blamed if at first glance they didn't recognize Sima Qian and Ssu Ma Ch'ien as the same person. I don't memorize anything because I don't have to memorize, for good or ill I have an excellent memory and find myself remembering far too much real trivia! However, dates and places and even names I view as important data points which may allow one to expand ones perspective by making connections which would be quit impossible without such information. Indeed James Burke's original 'Connections' is very similar to the way I investigate things and my facility with dates and places and yes, even names, has allowed me to make all sorts of interesting connections, some of which I thought worth pursuing and others not worth the time and effort for one reason or another. I don't know if either the 'scholar with an as to grind' or the 'jeopardy like victories' were intended to be aimed at me, I hope not, but since someone may have taken them that way I have chosen to address them. I have never played 'Trivial Pursuits',either literally or figuratively, and I don't go around showing off what I know, people who know me superficially have no idea what I am into and I'm not talking about the 'weird spooky stuff' either, but I don't go around boring people with talk about how Einstein's work on relativity is directly related to Maxwell's equations, or Xunzi's conflict with 'Mencius' and its origin in differing definitions of both 'nature' and 'human', such behavior would be worse than merely boring it would be pretentious and I try to avoid both. People who know me from work or social contacts think of me as a friendly and witty conversationalist and I am very popular exactly because I have nothing to prove. I very specifically did not join Mensa, even though I could have, just to avoid the type of boring and pretentious people who derive their sense of self worth from a largely meaningless number. On a personal level I am very secure and have nothing whatever 'to prove'. However, on a forum like this I feel it my duty to provide the most accurate information that I can and as necessary to support that information with details and analysis which some people might find boring. As for not 'doing homework for forums', I completely agree, but then I don't have to, because I already have done it, decades worth of it, for myself. I chose to share it with others who may be interested both because I am a generous person and also because I consider it my duty to do so. Looking at the above I see that it has gone on long enough, I had hoped to get to more specific details, but I will start them in another post. Since I have already pretty much decided what to say it should follow on this fairly quickly.

goldisheavy, The applicability of a formal system to life is seldom obvious and the magic square of 3 is a formal system. Among other things is has a formal analogy to the matrices used to solve linear equations, but I am sure that I am only pointing out the obvious to you. It is also unique among the families of 'magic squares' in being the only one with one member and if I recall correctly also being symmetrical in all transformations. Now symmetry is important, for example: 'Some of the most basic aspects of physics follow from looking at symmetries. The symmetry under translations in space implies the conservation of momentum, while symmetry under translation in time implies the conservation of energy. The relation between these conservation laws and the symmetry transformation is much more direct in quantum theory than it is is classical mechanics.' Peter Woit, Not Even Wrong, p. 36 and more interestingly: 'The SU(2) transformation properties of a particle have become known as a particle's spin. This term comes from the idea that one could think of a particle as a spinning particle, spinning on some axis and thus carrying some angular momentum. This idea is inherently inconsistent for a number of reasons. While the spin is a quantized version of the angular momentum, there is no well defined axis or speed of rotation. Spin is an inherently quantum-mechanical notion, one that fits in precisely with the representation theory of the symmetry group SU(2), but has no consistent interpretation terms of classical physics.' ibid. p. 46 In other words formal mathematical systems could be seen to determine such macro properties as why tops spin, and such necessary phenomena as the conservation of energy and motion. Particle spin even explains why we have 'matter' and 'energy'. The magic square of 3 could be just such a formal mathematical system whose importance was discovered 2000 plus years ago and whose area of applicability happens to be to spiritual cultivation and a description of humanity's spiritual potential. The applicability of such systems to life is determined by their 'fruitfulness' and generations of Daoist practice could be used as an argument that this system is very fruitful indeed. I leave your other questions for another time, but the most important one has been addressed.

Daoist religious meditation/ritual is all based on a simple diagram of nine squares, with the numbers 1 through 9 arranged in it so that added horizontally, vertically, or on the diagonals always add up to 15. This is the simplest of a large family of mathematical objects known as magic squares. This is the basis of the famous Ho t'u diagram, many Tao Bums may know it as the basis of Nine Star Astrology, and in the West it is known as the the magic square of Saturn, part of a family of magic squares of from 9 to 81 squares associated with each of the Planets. This square becomes a means of organizing the primary symbols of Chinese Cosmology, such as the Five Elements, the Eight Trigrams, and the Nine Stars. In Daoist ritual it is combined with the Twelve Earthly Branches to give the basic plan of the ritual Dan (Tan) and is also the basis for the Mudras that the Daoist initiate makes with his left had and uses as part of his ritual and meditation. In these meditations Heaven, Earth and Man are united, for the five elements exist not only in the world around one, but in ones body as the five yin organs, in the earth as the five Directions and the Heavens as the five Planets. These five aspects of the elements are personified by the Emperors of the Five Directions. These Emperors are given a place within each of the Five Yin Organs as well as a space in the Dan, thus indicating the fundamental relation of similarity between man and the cosmos. The Three Pure Ones are the personification of jing, qi and shen and are to be found both within the Lower, Middle and Upper Dan of the initiate, but also along the North Wall of the Dan. Even the Ling Bao True Writs which are the talismanic basis of the meditation/ritual are planted in the cross quarters of Northeast, Southeast, etc. where the four earthly branches that correspond to earth, the Ox, the Dragon, the Ram and the Dog are to be found. This is in part what I refer to as the systematic basis of Daoist rituals and it is very precise. There is more to this systematic aspect but that gives an idea. When I first read about this in Michael Saso's Taoism and the Rite of Cosmic Renewal back around 1976 I was completely fascinated by it and saw ways that it might be integrated with another similar structure to which I had been giving much thought, the Temple patterns of the Golden Dawn initiatory system. They seemed to complement each other nicely since the Golden Dawn system is based on an East/West pattern and the Daoist system a North/South one. In any case such thoughts became the basis of my efforts to integrate Chinese and Western esoteric systems. For those not familiar with it the Golden Dawn was a group formed in the late 19th century, its best know members being the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, and the occultist Aleister Crowley. In one form or another it pretty much dominated the whole of the 20th century esoteric revival in the English speaking world, though Madame Blavatsky's Theosophical Society was to have a huge influence on a more popular level, making karma and reincarnation notions practically taken for granted by the 'new age movement'. See Charles Luk Taoist Yoga, p. 4, '...the wondrous light of (essential) nature which is symbolized by a circle which Confucius called virtuous perfection (jen); the Book of Change calls it the ultimateless (wu chi), the Buddha perfect knowledge (yuan ming), and the Taoists the elixir of immortality or spiritual light; which all point to the prenatal One True Vitality.' Qabalah is a huge subject some of which is very systematic and some of it not, but I was particularly referring to the Tree of Life as understood by the occultists of the Golden Dawn, of course their version has its roots in the Sepher ha Yetzirah, the Book of Formation which goes back to Hellenistic times.

A good observation Spectrum. There is a strong crossover here, because advanced martial artists were sometimes taught Dao Wu, what Saso calls 'Military Magic' in his The Teachings of Taoist Master Chuang. Military Magic consists of several interlocking disciplines including exorcism, magical attack and defense between fellow practitioners, and also the use of powerful spirits to influence the outcomes of military campaigns and battles. It's a good thing that you brought this up because it has helped me focus on how to develop the next few installments of my account of the development of the concept of 'demons'. I hope to get back to posting later today or tomorrow. I am trying to get as much done before next Monday (when I will start to be very busy), as I can. I may even be able to finish it. What was a particular help was thinking about 'Military Magic' in China and Europe. As Idries Shah pointed out in his Oriental Magic, there are some striking similarities, however, there are also some fundamental differences.

Since you quoted me I thought I would add a little context to that quote. Your original question was 'What have you learned Constitutes a Demon?' The question that began this thread. I stated that I could give a historical account and said it might be a long and involved process. I then asked you what you wanted, which in the context was basically a question about what you wanted for an answer to your question about demons, would you like a historical answer. You didn't answer immediately, but both Stigweard and Rain expressed interest so I proceeded. When I said that I was willing to go the distance for you I meant it within the context of providing that historical answer, which I anticipated would require some amount of my time which I was willing to give to you and to the Tao Bums if people were interested. I was surprised at how much time this project and some other topics I chose to post on have taken. Since I find myself with some leisure on my hands I have been able to keep up with the demands and address some other issues such as your own particular case. All I can say now is that after this upcoming week I will probably be forced to cut down on my posts, and may not be able to resume them in the manner that I have been. Regrettably I am not a "'junzi' (gentleman in this case) of leisure" and must return to doing the things that pay the rent and keep food on the table. You do strike me as a person with potential who is having difficulties, but there are several young people who have posted, about whom I also feel concern. I am not sure how I can really help you in particular or others in this forum under my present circumstance, but believe me I am thinking about it. I created Inner Sage Tao in order to help people establish harmony and balance in their lives, and created my site innersagetao.net to spread information about the system, however my work schedule and other things have made it extremely difficult to put the time into the project that it deserves and I almost took it down at the end of November 2008. Less than two weeks ago (somehow it seems much longer) I stumbled on The Tao Bums and decided I would join to see if I could find the inspiration to continue. I have never joined a forum like this before, but The Tao Bums seemed a little different, so I decided to go ahead and join. In the short time I have been posting and reading others post that general impression has remained, that this really is a forum that is worth participating in. I just have not figured out how or in what way I will be able to do so. I am saying all of this because I want you to understand that if I cannot continue as I have been, it is not something that I want to do, but something which I may have to do. So regarding your wish to 'understand all the different types of explanations you offered', I may not be able to do more than finish out my original offer of giving an account of the historical development of the concept of 'demon'. That's not how I wish to leave the matter, but it may come to that. I have been looking at the resources that The Tao Bums provides and thinking about ways that my knowledge could be available to many people and in particular you, because I like the name which you chose for yourself and I think it is more meaningful than you originally thought when you chose it. It is sometimes odd how these coincidences work out isn't it? Am I correct in assuming that by Red Tiger you mean 1986 the year of the Fire Tiger? This is good because while I always envisioned you in your early 20s, I was a bit concerned that I might be dealing with someone under 18 and I wasn't sure what I would do in that circumstance. Also it is interesting because I began associating you with my favorite Fire Dog demon (well half-demon anyway) Inuyasha. I might have been picking up your fire and associating it with Inuyasha's red kimono. I was born in the month of the Fire Dog and found Inuyasha quite by chance in the episode in which the bandit Onigumo creates Naraku by what I can only characterize as a black magic version of the Tibetan Buddhist Chod Rite, fascinating stuff for an anime! I found myself almost unwillingly drawn into the story, I assume because of some hidden connection resulting from being born in the month of the Fire Dog. As I said at the beginning of this paragraph, it is sometimes odd how these coincidences work out. As always I wish you the best. I hope to get back to my postings on 'demons' shortly, and to work out a way that I can make my knowledge available to you and others on the forum in a more effective manner.

Hello Stigweard, Sorry to be so long in getting back to you Stigweard, but as I note to White Tiger I have been very busy. I did most of my work on this reply, and the previous one to Rain, offline, and more time went into them then would appear from the 'rapid fire' postings here would indicate. I have as usual tried to post 'thoughtful' responses in several senses of the word. By now I am sure that you have read my post on the three worms, which I did from the perspective of traditional Chinese views about them. As I mentioned I liked your idea about 'psychodiverticuli' when I came across it in the Magic thread it has lots of interesting connotative connections that are suggestive. That said, the Chinese perspective is that these are part of the body/qi field, and do not 'gain purchase' into the body, though the notion that the body/qi field with all its curious faults, such as hunger and disease and death, and of course the three worms, gains purchase within a consciousness that 'has been distorted away from its pristine nature' is rather interesting. It seems that you are rather talking about things which could be considered parasitic and opportunistic and could be viewed as entering the body/qi field because of flaws in its defensive qi. Kind of like qi parasites, is this more like what you mean? Another interesting belief similar to the three worms is the seven po souls, these again are part of the body/qi field though way more active than the three worms. They are considered to be able to leave the body and run around at night hooting it up with 'real' demons, which they will sometimes bring back in the hope that they will kill the body, because when the body is dead the po souls are free. Since the po souls are part of the body/qi field they also cannot be exorcised, but rather there are a number of Daoist practices designed to 'ground' (as in, 'Whao dude, my parents were so angry about be being out til four in the morning last night, that I am like grounded, dude, grounded for like six months!') them so that they aren't running around wasting ones qi, or, in a worst case scenario wasting ones jing in a nocturnal emission, after a wild night with some slutty fox spirit. In both of these cases one is quite literally dealing with 'personal' 'demons' as would necessarily be the case for any worldview that was as firmly based on the microcosm/macrocosm correspondence model as Daoism is, but this model also necessarily argues for the existence of demons that would be the macrocosmic counterparts of these internal ones. What one believes about these things depends largely on what one has learned in childhood, which become the unexamined presuppositions of ones adult worldview. The tenacity with which people will hold onto and defend these views, usually without the slightest willingness to even question them for a moment, is one of the reasons why in my posts on the historical development of the concept of demons I have attempted to refrained even from speculating about the ontological status of 'demons'. At the level of defending such fundamental preconceptions, often without even realizing what it is that people are doing, people usually just end out in a ridiculous and 'unmanly' name calling match. You can see it here among the Tao Bums, though it is not as bad here, as elsewhere on the internet, and of course it is pandemic to human society at large. In any case, I hope to shortly be able to return to my posts about the historical development of the concept of 'demon'

Thank you Rain, I remember that you and Stigwead were the first to encourage me in my posts to clarify the nature of the concept of 'demon', and I appreciate it. I do try to be very clear and concise, believe me it is not easy. I am very much a perfectionist and between rummaging through the old attic, and then deciding what absolutely needs to be said and what can be left out and then summarizing it in a few paragraphs and then getting the writing just right, well it's a lot of work. It may take someone less than a minute to read my posts, but the prep time is more like six hours. Aside from the fact that it doesn't matter what the early Zoroastrians were into, it only matters what the people living in the Hellenistic period believed, rightly or wrongly, they were into, what you are saying sounds somewhat anachronistic for such an early time period, and I am somewhat suspicious of it. Generally speaking the ancients had no problem with thinking in terms of 'entities' rather than 'energies', that's more of a modern problem, where heaven forbid that anyone might wish to thought of as an animist, much less the dreaded theist! Moderns find it easier to talk about 'energies', but the ancients just didn't seem to have that hang-up. So unless you can be a little more concrete about the sources that give you this impression, so that I could examine them, there isn't much I can do except share my skepticism about the sources to which you are referring. If you don't have time to go back and find this, I can certainly understand. I don't have the time to do so myself, and I need to finish up these posts so that I can have a little time for my own recent area of interest, group theory and symmetry and their relation to quantum mechanics. A funny thing happened to me on the way to Abraxas.... I read Plato. This came about because I was looking for the roots of Qabalah in the Hellenistic period and started to study Gnosticism. In the midst of reading Elaine Pagel's The Gnostic Gospels, an odd question occurred to me, what is the difference between the Qabalistic Adam Kadmon, the Gnostic Anthropos and the Platonic 'idea' of man? In order to understand how odd this was you would have to realize that my earliest exposure to Plato as a senior in High School left me with a very negative impression. So for me to be asking such a question was unusual to say the least. When I dug into the matter I found that I had been quite mistaken, there was an enormous value to Plato, especially as his ideas were to develop and be explicated during the Hellenistic period. It turned out that Plato and to a lesser extent Aristotle was part of the whole background of Gnosticism and that once you knew enough about Plato and Aristotle you could see the inspiration for many Gnostic themes and ideas. Kurt Rudolph in his Gnosis pretty much characterizes Gnosticism as popular Platonism, but I had already come to that conclusion before I read his book. So about Abraxas? Abraxas is a mythological embodiment of certain ideas, however the name is used by different sects with somewhat different ideas, so he turns out to be a slippery character. Modern Occultists have worked with with the name and Carl Jung also seemed to have an interest, but Abraxas really doesn't interest me that much, any more than most mythological figures do, because of their inherent slipperiness. One of the things I like about the Daoist religious system is that, at least on certain levels it is very systematic, and it is systematic on a fundamental level, whereas in the West the pagan Pantheons are a mess and any attempt to systematize them results in very arbitrary reconstructions of the Deities nature so that it will fit into the new structure. As I studied Qabalah its systematic structure became something that I really valued, but Gnostic 'revelations' seemed too scattered and incoherent. Thus Qabalah would remain with me long after I lost any real interest in Gnosticism. I even worked out a 'Platonic' Qabalah long before David Godwin published his Light in Extension. I would rather spend my time explicating something like the relation between Plato and Plotinus, and how different notions of the soul affect Iamblichus concept of Theurgy (The Hellenistic equivalent of Ceremonial Magic), than speculating about Gnostic mythology. Sorry I can't be of much help with Abraxas.

(I notice that in the time I have been working on this post White Tiger has replied both to my previous post and to Stigweard's. Thank you White Tiger for your thoughtful consideration of both of our posts, it shows that we are not wasting our time. I will just post what I had already written as it was before I noticed your responses. As I noted at the end of this post I hope that this is helpful to you. ZYD.) Thank you Stigweard for your own interesting observations. When I perused the Magic thread I noticed the post with 'psychodiverticuli' in it and thought it an interesting and useful concept. You see White Tiger, others are concerned about you too, and as I promised here are some observations on the problem of the 'three worms'. The body naturally produces jing, qi and shen. It is an intricate process involving all of the organs and each of them contributes to the total process in different ways. The the total complex that describes this whole process is called 'san jiao' or the three burners. It is these three burners that become the basis of the three dan of internal cultivation, where the natural process is stepped up and and refined by meditation. The 'three worms' may be thought of as the potential for this process to go wrong. They are imbeded in the system as it were and are part of the mortality of the body. The san jiao are complex systems that as we age become more and more out of balance, and start to interfere with each other. They can also get out of balance because of disease, wrong thinking, wrong training practices and things like that. When I said you were like a 12 cylinder racing engine that was badly out of tune, it is a reference to this type of complex process. Think of an engine with its electrical system, its cooling system and the energy creating system with all of its intricate parts that keep gasoline flowing into the cylinders in the proper amounts at the right time. Tuning keeps the engine working quietly and smoothly. The ordinary person is like a four cylinder engine, there are people who are like six and eight cylinder engines. Imagine the noise of 12 cylinders going bad! Yikes, this is not a happy thought. There is much more to this, but that gives you enough to understand the basics. The 'three worm' are so much a part of human physiology that you cannot simply exorcise them, traditionally they were 'killed'. The notion that they live on grains is one of the stranger misapplications of the law of causation. Long, long ago, someone noticed that everyone ate the five grains, and that everyone died. It's the grains they said and then told everyone else and a curious belief was born, which survives to this day. Traditionally Daoists might take elixirs made from mineral concoctions, which may have killed the worms, but often killed the person who drank them, this became known as 'Liberation by the Corpse', but who is to say that those people who supposedly died from such concoctions may not even now be residents of the Land of the Way? Daoists were also told to avoid the grains and go into the hills to search for the sacred mushroom of immortality and live on herbs, not very practical in these times. The 'lower worm' may interfere with the functioning that produces jing, but more ordinarily it simply wastes one's jing potential on sexual excess. One interesting example of the jiao interfering with each other is when the liver is overly hot, and sexual activity becomes a means of venting the liver's excess heat. Many a 'manly man' who believes that he has a real stud's sex drive, simply has an over heated liver and they are dispersing their kidney energy quite literally down and out like an engine with a leaky radiator. These people are filling the coffers of the makers of Viagra and things like that, if not now then surely later, but Chinese herbal tonics for kidney yang, yin and jing work much better and rebuild the bodies jing and qi. In woman this type of liver problem manifests as difficult menses with profuse bleeding. The 'middle worm' will interfere with chi production, or waste it as the lower worm wastes jing. On this level emotions matter and reading between the lines from what you have said this would seem to be why you have 'middle worm' problems. It sounds to me that you are nice to people, you try to please your teachers by working hard and when they do not respond 'correctly', in other words just the way that you want them to respond, you become sullen and angry and go out and work out your anger in martial arts practice. Here your problem with false yin and yang creates a pattern that disperses and wastes your qi. Again it may also be a problem with an overheated liver, because people with overheated livers usually have hair-trigger tempers. If the heat becomes stagnant, they will be sullen, this is the fire scorching the liver. Since lungs are metal and should control the liver, then there are two things that naturally suggest themselves, righteous action and breathing exercises such as the six healing sounds to breath out liver heat. I will return to this later, after I have quickly discussed the 'third worm'. The 'third worm' causes problems with shen, which might be called 'consciousness potential', as long as one remembers that it is as misleading as calling qi 'energy' (much less 'bio-energy'!). In this case there may be insufficient qi to make shen for a variety of reasons, including that nasty second worm! However, in many ways it is wrong thinking that causes problems on this level. Many people deplete their jing and qi in the pursuit of pleasures believing such to be good in themselves and the only thing in life that matters, such people live lives not much different than animals and at death they are delivered to the 'Yellow Springs' by these two big dudes with animals heads, all the while half protesting, half wondering 'What did I do wrong! What did I do wrong?' Such people are greatly to be pitied. Their whole lives they had animal heads and they didn't even know it, and now it is too late. Now they are simply among their own kind. Here is where wrong thinking betrays you. A great sage once said we must be 'good for goodness sake' (yes, I know it's from a cheesy Christmas song, I won't even dignify it with the word carol, but as Whichcote said replying to Tuckney 'Truth is Truth, whosoever hath spoken itt' and no I didn't misspell 'itt', this is just 17th century English), we must also be nice for niceness sake. In any dealing with people you only have control over what you do and if you get angry because people are not nice back to you, is it because your niceness was not 'true' niceness, but a ploy to get a certain response from them? Do you regard 'do unto others, as you would have them do unto you', whether said by Jesus or by Mencius as some sort of magical formula or other type of manipulative strategy that will compel people to be nice to you? This is neither wise, the virtue of the liver, nor righteous the virtue of the lungs, and it is also false yin, of which I have already spoken. You are being like the 'meek and humble' Uriah Heep of David Copperfield, whose example I mentioned in the previous post, not a budding young sage. In all situations, without using guile or violence, the only person over whose actions you have any control is your own. When you can be 'nice for niceness sake', without any consideration of how other people respond to you, this is righteous action and you will be on the path of virtue. Eventually you will find that virtue is not only its own reward but the key to unlocking everything else, including wu wei which you say you are having so much difficulty with. Wu wei works well for sages and others on that level, in the mundane world by people not sufficiently advanced, it is not as effective as good manners and empathy, practiced with righteous intent, in other words for their own sake. I can hear people cringing at the word righteous, but to simply say 'right' intent is not strong enough, like true and false yin and yang, there is also true and false righteousness. Real righteousness is the flood-like qi of Mencius 2A2, which fills the whole space between Heaven and Earth, its root is right motivation, but the much abused English word righteousness is the only thing that does it justice. Readjusting your thinking and doing exercises such as the six healing sounds will help in time. If you have severe problems with liver fire blazing, herbs and acupuncture or massage can be applied to good effect by a knowledgeable practitioner. The book Between Heaven and Earth by Harriet Beinfield and Efrem Korngold is a good introduction to TCM and includes questionnaires for evaluating your own situation. I have been heartily recommending it for years. It is only a beginning, but a beginning is better than nothing. I hope that this is helpful to you, and again in complete sincerity, I wish you well.

Thanks for your continued interest Stigweard. I am afraid that if I go over to the Magic thread that I may really start frothing at the mouth. As it happens I opened a can of worms here and I intend to deal with every wiggly little one before I am done. Maybe later I will wonder over to Magic, but frankly I am more interested in other things, such as the Neiye and the other Xin Shu texts of the Guanzi and their possible relation to the material in Charles Luk's Taoist Yoga.

I agree with Scotty. Most of communication is body language and voice, a small percentage, less than 10%, is actual words and their content. If you want to connect better with people do a search under The Magic of Rapport by Jerry Richardson. Apparently this is out of print, but Barnes and Noble has some online connections at good prices, you might also try addall.com. Get this book, seriously put it into practice and in a few weeks to a couple of months you will be thanking me. Really.

Dear Stigweard and Rain, thank you for your words of encouragement. Looking back on what I wrote previously, I think that there is actually a good opportunity to make a useful cross-cultural comparison before I continue into the Hellenistic period and bring this back to Chinese theory which is what most of the people here are concerned with. In Harold Roth's translation and commentary on the Nieye (Original Tao: Inward Training, Columbia University Press, 1999) he has a discussion of vocabulary that is very interesting. It starts on p. 41 in a subsection titled, aptly enough, 'Technical Terminology'. For our purposes his discussion of shen is most interesting. On p. 43 Roth says that the translation of shen '... as "numen/numinous" (noun/adjective) instead of "spirit/spiritual" has several advantages: 1. it retains the sense of an other power superceding the individual will that Graham's "daemonic" has, but none of the former term's malign connotation in common English usage...'. Roth then references Graham's Chuang Tzu: The Seven Inner Chapters, p. 35 n. 72, for Graham's reasoning in regard to translating shen as 'daemonic', 'daemon' being the Latin version of the Greek 'daimon'. If I recall correctly, Graham also uses daemonic in his Disputers of the Tao (a truly wonderful book, well worth the read). Now from the perspective of what I said in my previous post Graham is quite correct to use 'daemon', if he means it in its sense as Plato does, but most people are not going to judge it that way because of the connotative baggage that the word has, which Roth rightly points out. Using the terminology which I investigated previously, a good term for shen would be agathodaimon, but I am all with Roth in rendering it as numen/numinous for reason which I will develop in my next post. That of course leaves gui to be rendered by cacodaimon. Now remember what I said in my previous post, talk about good spirits and bad spirits arose because people wanted to explain why bad things happen to good people, and good things to bad. Whether one likes this explanation or not and wants to give another one is up to individual judgment, there are other explanations and we are investigating this one to see what it can tell us about the concept of 'demon', whether one chooses to believe in such beings or not, these ideas arise from people trying to make sense of their lives, and they arise in ancient China as well as in the West and for roughly the same reasons, though there are some cultural differences that also arise. So to summarize the historical and cross-cultural discussion so far, shen can be rendered as agathodaimon, people look to shen for inspiration, for accurate guidance and protection from life's downs such as accident and disease and the furtherance of life's ups such as health and prosperity, gui can be translated as cacodaimon and people expect disease, misfortune and generally speaking a bummer of a time from them. Gui might protect bad people and even help them achieve what are conventionally considered to be good ends and miscreants might even turn to gui for the furtherance of their own unworthy ends, something which could give us a working definition of what is usually called 'black magic'.

Yes another overly funny, strange person has registered with The Tao Bums. I am sure many of you will live to regret this day least of all me. I came across you bums doing a search on Thunder Magic. That in itself should tell you how odd I am. I have many years of study, practice, reflection, etc. on Daoism in its spiritual/philosophical/religious dimensions behind me. I combine it with a long term interest in the Western Esoteric traditions such as Magic, Qabalah, Platonism as it shades into Neo-Platonism, Astrology (Western and Chinese), Esoteric Mathematics, etc. Back in the Eighties I jokingly, but rather accurately, summarized my studies as Cornelius Agrippa meets the Golden Dawn in Medieval China. That said, how do you like me so far? Donald