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Well, you know there is a saying 'one man's point is another man's quibble') All the venerable translators got this concept wrong. In Confucian (or any other) texts JIN does not mean to develop, it literally means 'to get rid, to exhaust, to run out of' nature. A total opposite to cultivation. But it is the root of all magic. That's all, hope not too contentious. If you would like a a detailed explication let me know.) A detailed explication would be interesting, that is why I asked. In my own looking at some of these passages I have already looked at the "exhaust, use up, empty" translations and find them suggestive in certain contexts and passages, but not in others. ZYD

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

I posted these elsewhere on the Dao Bums, I hope that they are useful: part of Tammon-Ten's (Vaiśravaṇa), The God of the North, Celestial Thunder Court.: In Daoist usage it would be Xuanwu, Mysterious Warior also known as Zhenwu, Perfect Warrior, and the Dark Emperor of the North. He is the patron or all Daoist martial arts, and Military Magic. Mount Wudang is his sacred mountain. The two handed mudras are not part of Gehong's original teachings, but were added from Buddhist sources at an early date and both Buddhists and Daoists use them. Jerry Alan Johnson has a discussion of them on pages 86 to 90 of Daoist Weather Magic and Feng Shui, which includes an illustration of the Thunder Court and the names of the important Thunder Marshals who are its principle spirits, as well as the six Jia spirits (These are also mentioned in detail in Saso's Teachings of Taoist Master Chuang and in other works by Jerry Alan Johnson) which it summons. It's transmission to Japan was probably through Buddhist sources, though no one knows for sure, there is a great deal of Daoist teachings (and Confucian too!) that came over to Japan from China. I don't know a lot about Japanese practice, but the idea that it is a legitimate Onmyodo and Shugendo practice makes a lot of sense to me. and The text is rough because the OCR software doesn't recognize Chinese characters and I don't really have time to clean it up, but this clearly shows Sugendo practice of the kuji-in and many other Daoist practices. The chapter as a whole is very informative, but obviously I cannot quote it at length. If I have time I will comment more. Edit: Connected the line containing "Rinpyótôsha cai chinretsu zalzen", which was divided. When you come across some nonsense letter combinations in the middle of text, that is the software trying to make sense of Chinese characters. ZYD

For some people mere lese magesty is enough to bring them out roaring like lions. Another form of "pain in the ass" that does not require anal rape to be a painful problem is a hemorrhoid. It is too bad that a person with an inflamed ego, did not apply some "preparation H" to herself before she decided to inflame the Dao Bums with her "witty" attempt at getting even: Possibly because this kind of magic constitutes about 90% of all magic practiced in places like Hong Kong?.. We live in an unfair society. "Getting even" sounds, well, not nice. But another way to put it is "getting back to the balanced state." Sounds nicer, eh? Technically it can be the same thing. You are wronged. You can turn the other cheek, will it restore the balance? Or will it make things a bit more "uneven?" Alternatively you can slap the cheek of the offender with the same force he applied to yours. Will it make things a bit more "even?" Many in Asia go with the second scenario. A Chinese friend of mine who traveled to a town in Hong Kong whose name I forget described a whole street of sorcerers (they like clustering specializations, there's streets of mattress makers and streets of computer assemblers and streets of sorcerers). There's hundreds of clients congregating there all day long in search of revenge. Employees wronged by bosses give the sorceress (most are female) the name, she writes it in a talismanic script on a piece of yellow paper, puts the paper on the ground, has the wronged party remove one of his shoes and pummels the name with the shoe, screaming and cursing. That sort of thing. He said he'd never been anywhere where the noise and screaming were on this level, and he's traveled the world. So, aside from the general "not nice" idea of the book's premise, what would your objections be to the procedures proposed? I was and always will be on the side of healing rather than getting even: Preventive medicine was my object in hiding Taomeow's original response. Funny how wit comes into play when we are talking TM, but when we talk jonesboy it is troll, bully, sodomite, rapist and abused. The double standards are quite amazing... People should be thinking about how they are being manipulated, used, and even abused for a misguided attempt at "getting even".

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

Thanks Taomeow, I could have hardly said it better myself, and yes it is absolutely a necessary clarification, but one which I did not have time to make today, but I have tried to make clear in my discussions on Western magic, and to a certain extent on Chinese magic. Though the misunderstanding of what "supernatural" originally meant, and the relation between supernatural in that sense and paranormal as a replacement for it, is not going to go away easily, nor is the prejudice agains magic, whether Chinese or Western, going to be easy to over come, but thanks again for your valiant effort to do so. ZYD

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.

I was just about to ask you to clarify your principle reason for asking about this system, and whether your concern with systems was principally that of Daoist magic, or other aspects. This answer does seem to indicate an interest in magic and some familiarity with modern Western magic. In this regard you might find my own posts on Dao Bums of interest since I have studied Chinese and Western magic extensively for decades, and they might be useful to you. Here is a search for mentions of magic in posts of mine: ZYD: posts mentioning magic There's about ten pages of posts, but it should give you some interesting food for thought.

I went to the site tinyatdragon.com and it confirmed what I thought, that it is: There was a great deal of activity related to his teacher, Mak Tin Si, and Chi in Nature, when I started on Dao Bums nine years ago. So searching under Mak Tin Si, and Chi in Nature would be the way to research this. I also seem to remember that this fellow, who seems to be in charge of teaching magic now, posted in the past year or so on Dao Bums to invite people to learn Daoist magic with him. I don't think he got much of a response, as really not many here are interested in Daoist magic to begin with, though there are a small number of Dao Bums that are. As a forum, the Dao Bums has no opinion about this group, we only post the opinions and experiences of our members about it. Our members opinions have varied, but if you follow the link in the post of mine that I quoted, you can get an overview, and more of our members may weigh in here about them. I did some research on their site when I first joined here, and as far as I can tell they do not represent a lineal descent from a specific school, but that the founders do represent some authentic aspects of Chinese magical tradition, and that they believe they were authorized in visions by the highest level of the Daoist Pantheon to teach. I would suggest a lot of "due diligence" in regard to any association with them, but that is my personal opinion as a person with a good familiarity with Daoist Ritual and magic, and should not be confused with any official position of the Dao Bums, even though I am a moderator here. As I have said the Dao Bums does not have an official position on this school. I hope other members who remember past interactions with this group will join in with the discussion. ZYD

I was a teenager in the sixties, but a "child of the sixties", no, most of the sixties swirled around me with little effect, a lot of it, I rejected as silly, and, in many ways what is usually remembered as the sixties was the last half of the sixties, not the first half, and I was already a very well defined person by the time the big changes were happening. All that the "occult revival" of the sixties did was allow me to be more open about my interests. I could point out to people Aleister Crowley's picture in the crowd of "friends" on the Sgt. Pepper's album cover because I had started reading him four years earlier, in the summer of '63, probably before any of the Beatles had. It's interesting that you knew Edward Peach, he was very approachable, and invited people to contact him. I spoke with him on the phone around 1980, when I was passing through San Francisco. His assistant answered the phone and put him right on, no questions asked, we had a nice talk, but I never went further than that. As far as I'm concerned words are symbols too, that they are aural ones rather than visual ones, makes little difference if you train in certain ways, but in general, most people will respond stronger to visual symbols than verbal ones because most people are "visual". If you realize, as I did early on, that the internal processing of words is linked with deep rooted images, which is how "words make sense to you", then you can use those words to stimulate strong reactions. I think that part of Peach's teaching was in some ways a reaction against the "affirmation" type teachings of Science of Mind, and his teaching was a little more in line with magic and its training methods, as they existed in the middle of the Twentieth Century, and thus in a sense, expanded the practice of magic as a creative and practical endeavor. It could even be argued that he is the "creator" of Creative Visualization as a part of magic, something for which I don't think he gets enough credit. In the rest of your post, you raise some interesting points, but I have already put more time into these responses than I should have, and I need to get back to my own projects. I hope that we will have time to discuss these things more another time. ZYD

Then Richard de Mille is the man you want to read. He actually did review what Castaneda checked out of the UCLA library and what books he read. Here is a short online post about him: Like the above author, I read The Teachings of Don Juan, very early, not later than 1970, and found it fascinating. At the time I had already been reading books yoga, hypnotism, Western Ceremonial magic, Daoism, Tibetan Buddhism, the list goes on, since I was ten or so, and practicing as much as a teenager could of such things in the 60s. For example, I started practicing yoga in the Summer of 1961 watching Richard Hittleman's "Yoga for Health" TV program. No one in my family was into this stuff, but for me it was physics and magic, that's what I wanted to do when I grew up. As for Castaneda I read him through the publishing of Tales of Power, I think it was, where if I recall correctly, he introduced Nagual, but completely broke from any traditional Shamanic model of it, and I think that is also when he talked about meeting Don Juan in Mexico City. Since this was getting far from my original interest in his writings, I stopped at that point, though I also thought that what he was opening up was interesting in its own way, I just preferred approaching it from other directions. I read Richard de Mille's book in the late 70s, and his criticisms of Castaneda rang true, it was disappointing, but at the same time made sense of Castaneda's work up to a point, but not as far as where he went after he stepped off the Shamen's path. After that I had more interesting, and to me relevant things to study. For example around 1976 I discovered what I call Ritual Daoism, the Daoist practices that unify Ritual and Internal Alchemy methods in Michael Saso's Taoism and the Rite of Cosmic Renewal, which opened up a whole new avenue for study and research, though it took some time before I could put it into practice. While I was writing the above, Jessup2 has posted again and though I was about finished with this, I can't help commenting on: I started reading Ophiel in the summer of 1968, what a character! Many "magicians" of my generation learned a lot from him, but are too stuck up to admit it. He was without a doubt the most influential practical occultists/magician of the late 20th Century. I have great sentimental attachment to him, far more than most other modern authors, just because he cared and it showed in his writings. Reading Ophiel was like reading letters from your cranky old uncle about how to practice magic, and some of the ideas in his books are way deeper than he gets credit for, and some of it is, well silly, but all in such a lovable way, that I just had to love him. Well, that is all I have time for now. ZYD

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 What would you recommend instead? Finding another hobby. Just a little joke to begin with, but seriously, magic is not something one should just fool around with, and few people have a real calling to it, or the necessary personal qualities to pursue it. In a sense it is rather like studying medicine, in some ways a more apt analogy than it sounds on the surface, some people have a sore toe and having heard that medicine will help enroll in medical school when all they really should do is visit a doctor and have their problem taken care of by a professional. Why does this person want to buy a book subtitled "the art of getting even"? I don't know, but basically if they think that they need to get even with someone, they should probably seek out someone who is a practitioner rather than trying to do it themselves. If they are lucky they will find a true practitioner, someone who can heal the whole situation bringing a true resolution to the matter, if they are not, well, horror stories are written about what happens if they are not. If someone wants to read about Daoist magic, this site has a lot of good information: Dr. Wilson Yong, Taoist Secret and one can get a certain degree of orientation in these matters by reading it. I can tell by this material that he has a lot of background and knowledge, however, I haven't read his books, but I am assured by a person familiar with him and his work, whose judgement I greatly respect, that he is both talented and legitimate. It is also possible to learn a great deal from the work of Professor Jerry Alan Johnson, who has written extensively on the subject, but his work is not oriented to beginners and while of great value is probably not a place for someone to start on these things. As an authority on medical Qigong his work starts from the position of healing, and his works on Daoist magic are basically an extension of that, which is what real magic should be all about anyway. You can read about him here: Temple of the Celestial Cloud I have reviewed a good book for beginners on Daoist talismanic magic here: The Tao of Craft by Benebel Wen I hope this is helpful ZYD

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

You have two big things working against you here, one from the Chinese side and one from the English, then there are the small ones. First of all for your Chinese you are giving what looks like unaccented Pinyin and they could mean many things, second of all from the English, you are talking about concepts which in some senses do not translate well, theurgic being one of them. Here is a place where you can play around with these ideas: MDBG online Chinese-English dictionary I use it all of the time, but I usually have a better idea of what I am looking for than you seem to do. For example "wu", this is usually shamanism or witchcraft, at best sorcery, and would have nothing to do with anything theurgic. If you enter magic you get a lot of words that include the character for "mo", which can mean devil or magic, and is more used for sorcery and "black" magic than for theurgy. The Chinese "shengong" can be translated as "god cultivation", and could be used to mean "white magic" and might do as a translation for Theurgy, but the closest thing to a Theurgists in practice would be a Daoshi, or Daoist Priest, such as Daoist Master Chuang, about whom you say you are reading in your introductory post. When you mention Jen as "accumulation of Merit", it seems like you may be using the old school Cantonese for the Pinyin "Ren", usually translated as humaneness or benevolence, but "accumulation of merit" also sounds more Buddhist, and "Jen" could mean any one of several things. I am just posting to let you know that answering your question may not be easy, even for someone fluent in Chinese. Just as background, I have a long term familiarity with the theory and practice, of the Western esoteric tradition, and a fair to good knowledge of Chinese Esoteric traditions, but my Chinese language is nearly nonexistent. I don't have much time to post today which is why I haven't posted characters for any of the words I mentioned above, but if you are interested in more information about what is available in English I can give you some advice. ZYD

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.

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

two dark wisps of smoke like things that sometime take shape around my bathroom area: This doesn't surprise me as bathrooms have long been considered trouble spots because of their connections with and to the underworld and decay, indeed in the large urban areas in which most of us live the only naturally occurring nature spirits are what, since I read this in the late 60s: I have called "sewer snoids". When the energy is bad, these guys will come up and cause problems, indeed sometimes they are specifically called upon to cause problems, or can show up when magic has been poorly performed and gone awry. To get back to exorcism, here is just some of my further advice: I want to first introduce two fundamental concepts that are useful to understanding the practices I am about to explain. These are practices of Natural Magic as it was traditionally called in the West and these things are very much misunderstood by the modern person when they first approach them. Natural Magic deals with the properties of natural things, such as herbs and stones that can be used for magical purposes and the fact that Professor Johnson has a whole book in his Daoist Magic series, Daoist Mineral, Plant and Animal Magic shows that it is important in Daoist Magic also. The first of these concepts is: 理, lǐ: texture / grain (of wood) / inner essence / intrinsic order / reason / logic / truth / science / natural science (esp. physics) / to manage / to pay attention to / to run (affairs) / to handle / to put in order / to tidy up and this corresponds to the Western concept of “Form”, and is the basis for the possible usefulness of natural preparations in magic. I will explain more of this in another post, for now I want to get to the recommended procedure which involves the use of the lǐ, or inner essences of salt, vinegar, lemon and sandalwood. The easiest way to use these is to add a little vinegar, salt, lemon oil and sandalwood oil to purified or preferably spring water, and then starting as I specified before, reciting the first invocation to the Heavenly Lord Taiyi and the Golden Light Invocation and follow it with this: Heavenly Lord Taiyi who rescues from distress, Bless, Heal and Protect me, Help me to realize my Heavenly Nature, To transform my Earthly Existence. Bless this liquid made from precious natural treasures, Unify and bring together into an effective treasure The inner essences of Water, Vinegar, Salt, Lemon and Sandalwood Into an efficacious tool of cleansing and purification. With Vinegar dissolve all evil aggregates, With water carry away all evil phantoms, With Salt keep the forces of corruption far away, With Lemon spread light and happiness to fill my house With Sandalwood establish a firm base for happiness and success, Let my home be as much like your Eastern Paradise, As can be realized here on Earth, That I may realize the fullness of my human potential. In happiness peace and quiet. Repeating it over your soon to be magic water several times until it feels strongly “charged”. This is a process of making something Magically Efficacious, or as the Chinese say: 灵, líng: quick / alert / efficacious / effective / to come true / spirit / departed soul / coffin Something being spiritually effective, or ling, is the difference between an effective tool of exorcism and salad dressing, though it is also possible to make magically efficacious salad dressing. Notice that in the invocation above I have emphasized both of today's Daoist magic vocabulary words and one use, efficacious treasure, or líng bǎo is an important concept about which I will have more to say. This magically effective liquid can be sprinkled around the house, used to wipe off surfaces and even as an ingredient to bath water to clear up ones own aura. If you don't have sandalwood or lemon oil laying around then ground sandalwood and lemon peel can be used by making a tea of them. First you bring water to a boil, then turn to a simmer and add the sandalwood an let it simmer for not more than a minute, turn off the heat and add lemon zest or shavings from the skin of a lemon, dried lemon peel will also do, but you don't want to boil it otherwise the lemon scent will be boiled off, and you want that. Then add this to a mixture of water, salt and vinegar. I should be noted that only a small amount of vinegar is needed, no more than a tablespoon per gallon of water, because what is needed is the power of the inner essence, and not concentrated acetic acid, which could of course damage things, so for magical uses, a little goes a long way. I hope that these instructions are clear enough and I will expand upon them if necessary. ZYD Edit: I realized after I had posted this that I left salt out of the invocation and it is important. As it is written this is not material that I habitually use, but is based on sound principles and if followed, should produce good results, such as those I have seen time and time again.

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.

The works of Professor Jerry Alan Johnson offer plenty of information on the subject: Buying guide to the Medical Qigong and Daoist Magic Books This is however a complex area and one does need a certain level of skill to approach the matter, including the ability to distinguish between poltergeist phenomena derived from actual nature spirits and artificial elementals, and other sources that can contribute to such phenomena. If you don't have the necessary background performing some sort of Daoist ritual can be anything from a waste of time to a prelude to disaster. I don't have time right now to enter into more concrete details, but Daoist methods usual involve the use of the Loshu as a fundamental diagram, and may involve the invocation deities ranging from the local God of the Soil, to the Heavenly Lord Puhua and the Dark Emperor of the North. On these levels you get into Nine Star magic and the Thunder Spirits, and you don't want to mess with this without a whole lot of background. ZYD

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

I first read Crowley, the Dao De Jing and the Yijing as a teenager in the Sixties. In the meantime I have studied and practiced things that Crowley simply did not have access to. He is pretty much useless for Daoism, his strongest work on Eastern traditions is in the area of Hindu/Buddhist ideas, especially Theravadan Buddhism through his association with Alan Bennett. He introduced yoga type training to Western magic, but his sex magic teaching are not "tantric" in the sense of originating in real Tantric literature, but probably derive from the teachings of Paschal Beverly Randolph, by way of the Ordo Templi Orientis. Bearing in mind the vast development in literature and resources on Eastern traditions that has emerged even since I was a teenager, there is precious little reason to turn to him for guidance in anything other than his own adaptations of Western magic, and personally based on my own experience and study of decades, I don't recommend that either.

My understanding is that eclipses are generally not viewed as positive in Chinese Astrology, just as they are viewed as potentially bad in Western Astrology. Professor Jerry Alan Johnson says in one of his books on Daoist Magic that while eclipses are used a lot for Chinese "black" magic, practitioners of Chinese white magic don't do magic during eclipse periods at all. I could find the reference if anyone is interested. I found this interesting because it mirrors the traditional Western magical attitude. While I have not looked at this eclipse in detail from the view of mundane astrology, I have been rather concerned about its possible effects on the U.S., among other things the eclipse conjuncts President Trump's ascendant degree and eclipses were associated with averse effects on government and heads of state. As I recall the break up of the Soviet Union happened under a difficult eclipse pattern that started six months before, so it wasn't as complete a surprise to me as it was to just about everyone else.