Welcome back to this six-part video lecture series that will be your primer into Buddhist-Taoist
esotericism.
It is my hope that you'll see this series as an open invitation to learn more about
the occult traditions I practice and to find from it something that might deepen yours.
Before we get started, I'd like to apologize in advance about certain parts of this video
lecture that won't be accommodating for the visually impaired.
I will be making reference to charts and diagrams appearing on the screen.
So if you're listening to this talk as audio only, there will be a few parts that don't
make a lot of sense.
In this video lecture, we're going to discuss Taoist metaphysics, or at least give a broad
and beginner-level overview of the topic.
First, when I say "Metaphysics," what do I mean?
Well, I mean the study of what we're perceiving as reality through our mind and through the
physical matter around us, that we are interacting with.
Metaphysical study is concerned with Existence.
Why do you exist?
How are you existing?
It's theorizing about the origins of the universe.
It's the philosophical study of space and time.
It's the philosophy of identity.
Here, we're also considering fate versus free will.
It's also the conversation about morality.
We're also going to be concerning ourselves with the branches of metaphysics that account
for non-physical entities.
Do spirit realms exist?
If yes, what are those spirit realms?
This is also the consideration of magic.
And in today's chat, we'll examine how these questions are answered through a Taoist
framework.
Yes, this video will be heavy-handed in theory and philosophy, but you're going to need
it if you want to lay the groundwork for Taoist ritual magic.
How do you set up an altar?
How does pacing during Taoist ritual work?
How do you begin working with the Taoist and Buddhist pantheons of divinities?
How do you craft a sigil?
What's qi gong and how do you practice it?
How can you learn more about Traditional Chinese Medicine and mystical modalities of herbology?
How can you learn feng shui and Chinese geomancy?
Chinese astrology?
How do you make sense of correspondence tables?
This video will be laying the foundation for answering all of those questions.
To answer every one of those questions, I have to begin here.
When we're talking about the origins of the universe, or creation myth, there are
in fact several.
So instead of going on a mythology tangent, I'm going to strip away the story and talk
about the technicalities that the Chinese and Taoist creation myths have in common.
But there is one story we should probably tell and of course, there's a reason I think
you'll want to know it, and that's the story of Taiyi, the Supreme One, or the Great
Unity.
A term of endearment the Chinese might use is Lao Tian Ye, or Heavenly Father.
And bear in mind there are many different iterations of this tale.
In the beginning, there was a numinous void, which we deify and call the Supreme One.
The Supreme One used a Divine Ladle to create Heaven and Earth.
That Ladle is also referred to as Tian Men, or the Gates of Heaven.
The Supreme One spins the Divine Ladle perpetually and throughout the four seasons, beginning
with the spring equinox, when the contents of the ladle seem to spill forth most directly
onto the earth, creating and rejuvenating life, the Supreme One ladles out the life
forces to maintain and expand this universe.
We know this to be true, says our ancient philosophers and mystics, because we can see
the Big Dipper in our skies, turning through the equinoxes and solstices, and the positioning
of the Big Dipper in the skies on any given night tells you the season and the time.
This spinning and spinning of the Supreme One's Divine Ladle creates a notable pattern.
Now I already made reference to this in previous videos.
Who's caught on already?
It's the Spiral Dance of Creation.
Okay.
Now let's tell that same story again, shall we?
In the beginning there was the Tao, a numinous void.
Tao is the Unity and, Taoist sages caution, too difficult to understand, so, we use many
names and many faces to understand the Tao in its parts.
The Tao creates the One.
That one is Heaven.
Tao is Heaven.
The One creates the Two.
That Two is Earth.
The Two produce the Three, which by the way, simultaneously creates the Five, because five
changing phases encompass that Two to create the Three.
The Three is Man.
And here, don't just think humanity.
"Man" signifies everything we create.
Artificial intelligence, all forms of technology, all inventions and machinations born from
our human creativity.
That is why the Tao Te Ching says the Three produces the Myriad Things.
All Myriad Things are the blending and the synthesis of yin and yang.
Another word for Myriad Things is all Physical Matter.
The yin and yang nature of all Physical Matter can be expressed by the eight trigrams, which
we call the Ba Gua.
The Ba Gua eight trigrams are the building blocks of the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching,
which we find in the Book of Changes.
Now let's talk about how we arrive at the product of those 64 hexagrams, the I Ching.
The yin and yang is the binary nature of all physical matter.
In the I Ching, we represent yin with a broken line and yang with a solid line.
When you combine yin and yang to form physical matter, there are four possible patterns:
yin and yin, yin and yang, yang and yin, or yang and yang.
For naming purposes, we call that plenary yin, adjusting yin, adjusting yang, and plenary
yang respectively.
These pairs combine in formulas with the singularities to form eight trinities, or trigrams.
The binary yin and yang form the myriad things of physical matter, and to understand how
physical matter is formed, we express matter in eight trinities called the Ba Gua.
Up to this point folks, it's actually pretty simple math.
Now, remember the spiral dance of creation we've now talked about in every video of
this series up to this point?
Remember?
The spiral sequence is the formula and mythic theory for the creation of the universe?
The universe is expanding?
Ring a bell?
That spiral sequence of creation, reduced now to its numerology 1 through 9 activates
the eight trigrams those eight trinities, the Ba Gua, to create changes in this universe.
It's this spiral sequence that drives the one to become two, two to become three, and
so on from eight to sixty-four and if we think of the universe as a book, then these 64 hexagrams
are the leaves of pages in that Book of Changes.
These eight trigrams, produced from yin and yang nature are the elemental building blocks.
The Western metaphysical equivalent might be Fire, which correspond with the trigrams
Fire and Thunder Water, corresponding with Water and Wind, Air, corresponding with the
trigrams Heaven and Lake, and Earth, corresponding with the trigrams Earth and Mountain.
And in each of these eight trigrams is that trinitarian principle we talked about in Video
3.
Heaven, Earth, and Man embedded into every strand of binary code of life.
As above, so below, as within, so without, in all aspects there is this trinity, which
we call the Three Treasures, the San Bao.
The Three Treasures are often deified and come to symbolize the many trinities in Taoism
and even Chinese Buddhism.
Now recall earlier how we said the Tao made the One and then that One made the Two and
then that Two made the Three but to create the Three there had to be Five?
Yeah.
About that five.
That's the Five Phases of Change, which in a lot of English literature on Chinese
metaphysics, often draw the equivalent to Western elements, as in like Fire, Water,
Air, Earth, and Spirit, but it's going to make a lot more sense conceptually for you
to think of these as phases, not elements.
The eight trigrams were elements, building blocks.
Here, we're talking about states of change.
Movement.
Now remember the spiral sequence of creation?
Of course you do.
It activates the eight trigrams to create change, thus creating our universe, and thus
our universe is expanding.
That is the same driving force now expressed by the five phases.
It's this spiral sequence activating the eight trinities, the eight trigram elements
to move, to wax and wane, create and destroy through phases that in Taoist metaphysics
is expressed as Wood, Fire, Earth, Water, and Metal.
Understanding these five phases is arguably the most important foundational principle
to master for any Chinese occultist, mystic, or holistic healer.
I don't care if you're into acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine or qi gong
and feng shui or sorcery, witchcraft, and ritual magic.
Whether you're trying to set up an altar, whether you're doing astrology or trying
to predict the future with fortune-telling and divination, whether you're curating
a ceremonial ritual, all facets of Chinese mysticism, you'll need to know the five
phases.
Oh, and fun fact: what you see on screen is a photograph of an ancestor altar set up in
a tradition of the Taiwanese Hakka people, Ke Jia.
That means this stuff goes deep and goes wide, and by itself, understanding the five phases
probably takes a three hour video just to get started.
But let's try to give you a rough and general overview, shall we?
Let's begin with the changing phase Wood.
When that spiral sequence of Tao, of force, is passionate, idealistic, demanding—I know,
this is a little different from how Westerners might understand the Aristotelian four elements—visionary,
and pioneering, we call that state of change resulting from such expression of the Tao
as Wood.
Now over on the left we have a map that depicts the cycle of creation, how physical matter
is produced.
On the right is a map of the cycle of destruction, or how physical matter is broken down and
destroyed.
Wood supports and helps to create a change that will be expressed as the phase Fire.
But Wood is used to overthrow, defeat, and subdue Earth.
That's the cycle of destruction you see on the right.
Fire is expansion, increase, advancement, to push toward abundance and fortuity.
If Wood was creativity because it sparks concept, then Fire is creativity because it is the
drive pushing concept into action and influence.
In the West, the Eastern concept of Fire gets confused with the Western concept of Fire,
and you'll hear it getting attributed with passion.
Fire here is more like intensity than passion.
Wood is the passion you need to initiate, to start anything.
I hope that makes sense.
Fire supports, strengthens Earth, but subdues and destroys Metal.
Earth is stability, traditions, institutions, and contemplation.
It supports Metal but destroys Water.
Yes, for those well-versed in Western elemental dignities, this is a lot like Eastern elemental
dignities.
Metal, which in terms of color correspondences, is often associated with white, is discipline,
analysis, logic, rationalism, but interestingly, culturally it's also associated with intuition
and psychic connection.
See culturally, we see logic and intuition as two sides of the same coin, as possessing
an inherent equivalence with each other.
Whereas culturally in the West, logic and intuition are treated as mutually exclusive.
You're either logical or you're intuitive, you can't be both.
In Chinese metaphysics, to be logical requires intuition, and to be intuitive requires logical
thought.
Metal strengthens and supports, or amplifies Water, but it subdues and destroys Wood.
Water, which we associate color wise to black or blue, is wisdom, yes it's also intuition,
but a different facet of intuition—it's intuition born of wisdom rather than intuition
born of logic, and yes, Eastern metaphysics would subdivide, categorize, and talk about
different defined expressions of intuition.
One of the most difficult aspects of conveying Taoist metaphysics are the cultural translations.
Quick example.
In English, love is love.
You love your friend.
You love your mother.
You love your wife.
You love your cats.
You love baseball.
In Chinese, every single one of those ideas or expressions of love uses a totally different
word.
Etymologically, each of those words in Chinese, each separate expression of love, is rooted
in different emotions and concepts.
So love isn't just love.
Likewise, intuition isn't just intuition.
Metal represents rationalized intuition that produces technology and science.
Water represents feeling, interpersonal, empathic intuition that produces wisdom and diplomacy.
Wood is passion, but it's the passion for initiating a new project, for undertaking
creation.
Fire is also passion, but it's passion for taking things to the next level, the passion
for expansion and outreach.
Where were we?
Right.
Water.
So Water supports and fortifies Wood, but it destroys and defeats Fire.
The five phases represent the skeletal system of a comprehensive and rather complex universe
of metaphysical correspondences.
You as an individual encompass all five states of change, but at different proportions, maybe
you're Wood-dominant or Fire-dominant.
So almost all forms of fortune-telling and divination require a baseline understanding
of these five phases.
Political regimes, dynasties, governments, generalizations about regional cultures, all
aspects of eras in time and space can be expressed, are expressed, by the five phases.
Every single event of change in this universe, no matter how massive and large-scale or how
small, down to every minutia is represented by these five phases, but they are not elements
the way the eight trigrams of the Ba Gua are.
They're proclivities, predictive of how someone or something is more likely to act,
act being the keyword there because it implies change, states of change.
So in Taoist sorcery, you'd want to align every detail and step of your ritual work
to the Wu Xing forces you're trying to harness.
The more perfected your alignment of energies to the specific phases, the stronger and more
potent your power.
Your hand mudras in ritual magic are chosen based on five phase correspondences because
each one of your fingers correspond with one of the five phases.
That's why the mudra you see on screen right now, index and third finger together, directed
outward, is used in ritual magic for creation, to assert power, and to harness Wood and Fire,
Jupiter and Mars.
If you watched my Tinkering Bell episode on Thunder Rites, or Chinese thunder magic, you'll
recall this hand mudra where your middle finger is directed outward, the middle finger corresponding
with Fire and Mars, the potent state of change you'd want to harness in something like
Thunder Rites.
These five phases also correspond with different parts of your body, your physiology.
So it's also used in Chinese medicine, modalities of holistic healing, acupuncture, acupressure,
the movements and gestures in qi gong, and the way you concentrate your mind in meditation.
It's used in diagnosis, inner alchemy, and also the cycle of destruction is used in modalities
of Taoist sorcery like poison magic, also covered in a previous Tinkering Bell episode.
How you set your intentions during meditation for improving physical health, mental wellness,
or even in spell-crafting and ceremonial magic is programmed based on the Wu Xing.
By the way, if you're all like, Whoa, Benebell, you are going through these reference tables
way too fast.
Guys, it's in my book.
Just get the goddamn book.
The five phases are the five laws of creation and destruction.
They give the occultist the formulas for all forms of creation and destruction.
You need physical matter to create or destroy, so back to our periodic table of elements,
the eight trigrams.
You activate the eight trigrams through the spiral sequence, which now reveals to us numerology,
the numbers 1 through 9 in that activation force, telling us numbers, math, numerology
is the current that runs through all things.
When that He Tu spiral sequence, corresponding with the Early Heaven formation of the Ba
Gua is activated by a force, that spiral sequence will transform the Early Heaven Ba Gua to
the Later Heaven formation of the Ba Gua.
This is the magician's Ba Gua.
And in that re-arrangement, these nine numbers in the spiral sequence form the Lo Shu magic
square.
This magic square is the everything for a Chinese occultist.
There is nothing that you will do that you won't do with the magic square, whether
you realize it or not, whether you're conscious of it or not.
It's just better to be conscious of it, so you have more control over your craft.
Over on the left is the He Tu spiral sequence, or Exoteric Taoism, the natural order of the
universe.
Over on the right is Esoteric Taoism, is Man exerting control over the order of Heaven
and Earth, yin and yang.
So the natural order is the Early Heaven arrangement of the Ba Gua and Man exerting control and
knowledge over that order is the Later Heaven arrangement of the Ba Gua.
The Early Heaven Ba Gua is the wisdom and knowledge of how to live in harmony with nature,
how to yield to your destiny.
The Later Heaven Ba Gua is the wisdom and knowledge of how to take control over nature,
change nature per your will, and how to change your destiny.
If the Early Heaven Ba Gua is Fate, then the Later Heaven Ba Gua is Free Will.
That Later Heaven Ba Gua you see on the right, is the rearrangement of the spiral sequence
or how Man changes Heaven and Earth, changes the natural order of the universe, for better
and for worse, as represented by numerology.
And that numerological rearrangement forms the Lo Shu magic square.
Western ceremonial magicians and occultists will even be familiar with this magic square.
All right, now on the screen you're looking at the Early Heaven Ba Gua arrangement of
the eight trigrams.
The inner arrangement I've just produced on the screen is the Later Heaven Ba Gua.
The Later Heaven Ba Gua, or eight trinities, moved into this arrangement by that spiral
sequence force of nature, the Tao, becomes the Lo Shu magic square.
The Lo Shu Magic Square is, in theoretical metaphysics, a map of everything.
Heaven is subdivided into nine heavens.
(Hence the Lady of the Ninth Heaven.)
Earth, too, or so it was believed in ancient times, was subdivided into nine regions, and
China in its native tongue is called Zhong Guo, which means Middle Kingdom.
Because, you know, we're the center of the world.
The ancient Chinese believed that their country was the center of the Earth, hence the namesake.
Love it.
And then, since Heaven is subdivided into nine kingdoms and Earth is subdivided into
nine kingdoms, it only makes sense that Hell is subdivided into nine kingdoms.
If you visualize a floor plan to correspond with the Lo Shu magic square, where the top
edge of the square you see on screen is south, the bottom is north, left is east, and right
is west, then you can activate and harness the metaphysical correspondences for the nine
sectors with the way you step around that floor plan.
Specifically, in ritual or ceremony.
The way you pace around a ritual space, the ground, based on the Lo Shu magic square,
is kind of like, I don't know, dialing a specific phone number to reach a specific
divinity or spirit.
Anyway, that's called Pacing the Lo Shu.
If you think of ritual as a form of activation mechanism, then the way you move your body
around a room, keyed to the Lo Shu magic square, in theory, is a very specific formula of activation
for certain energies.
There are also astrological correspondences to the Lo Shu magic square, specifically,
the Sacred Seven, sun, which you see at the center there, moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars,
Jupiter, and Saturn, and then the lunar nodes, the north node in the bottom right corner
and the south node in the top right.
In Chinese astrology, the lunar nodes are collectively referred to as the Celestial
Dragon.
What might look to the uninitiated as Taoist priests and priestesses dancing around in
trance is probably them engaged in a very specific pattern of pacing, either the Lo
Shu or the Big Dipper.
Why the Big Dipper?
You remember that Creation Story I told you earlier, yeah?
Since the magic square can in metaphysical theory be used to activate combinations of
Ba Gua trigrams in ways that activate the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching, a Chinese ceremonial
magician controls the 64 facets of the universe through the activation of the hexagrams in
ritual magic, using the Lo Shu nine sectors.
When you study feng shui, you're going to be familiar with the magic square because
it's what you use for reference to determine how auspicious a piece of land is and how
to arrange the furnishings inside your home.
My website has a whole section that covers feng shui basics if you're interested.
I'll provide a link in the video description box.
The eight trigrams are perhaps the closest theoretical concept to the four fixed states
of Western alchemy.
They're the binaries that form trinities that are the core building blocks of life.
They represent the collection of formulas that the binary code of yin and yang can produce
in totality to create physical matter by harnessing the five phases of change, or destroy physical
matter in our universe through the cycle of destruction.
These eight trigrams often get personified and deified as the Eight Immortals.
In the subsequent slides, I'll show you which trigrams connect to which Immortal.
It's a common practice among Taoist ceremonial magicians to have a set of eight ritual tools,
each dedicated to one of the Immortals, each intended to harness the powers of one of the
eight trigrams.
But I'm getting ahead of myself again.
We'll talk ritual tools and your altar in a later episode.
Likewise, each one of these eight immortals is linked to a, shall we say, chakra, or energetic
hub point inside the body that you can strengthen through inner alchemy.
Any one of the Eight Immortals can be petitioned in accordance to what it is you seek.
Zhang Guo Lao, for instance, is the patron immortal of occultists, alchemists, and necromancers
as he himself was said to be a fangshi, which gets translated to "methods master."
Basically, a Methods Master is an occultist or mystic, a magus, exorcist, necromancer,
alchemist, diviner, and someone skilled in all the arts and methods of thaumaturgy.
Zhang Guo Lao is linked to the trigram Mountain.
An iconic ritual tool linked to Zhang Guo Lao is the temple block, or a wooden percussion
instrument carved into an abstract shape of a fish.
This, by the way, is an example of blending Taoism and Buddhism, as the temple block comes
from Mahayana Buddhism.
The trigram Heaven, Qián, is the creative force, assertion, the Divine Yang.
The trigram Lake, Duì, is about preservation, nurture, and receptivity.
It's the fertile womb.
The trigram Fire, Lí, is about radiance, clarity, progress, illumination, and Giving
Light.
Thunder Zhèn, is the force of the catalyst, an impetus, stimulation, excitement, and revolution.
It's about inciting movement and division.
Wind Xùn, is the assimilation, gentle thought, influence, persuasion, investment, flexibility,
and adaptability.
Water Kǎn, is the unseen, the Lunar Force, and represents that which is occulted from
the physical senses.
It's uncertainty and that which you can only experience, but not perceive.
Mountain Gěn, is challenge, knowledge attained through experience, it's discipline, meditation,
and completion.
Finally, we've got Earth, Kūn, which is the Divine Yin, the material world, receiving
direction, yielding, and submission to Heaven.
Sure, that was probably a ton of information that blinked right by you on screen, but I
figure you'll be able to replay the video as many times as you need to pause and take
notes.
All the correspondences you've been gawking at, listed out on screen for the eight trigrams?
You work with those trigram correspondences when spell-crafting, designing your sigils
or Fu talismans, visualization and intention setting, pathworking these trigrams, how you
direct your focus, Qi energy during meditation or qi gong, timing your rituals, even deciding
where you perform ritual, I mean all of it.
Through the magic square, the Chinese occultist controls the eight elements, the eight building
blocks of life, by tuning in to the five state of change dictated by the formulaic cycles
of creation or destruction, activated by the spiral sequence codified by numerology, which
is the Tao that gives pulse to the ever expanding universe, which ultimately, is nothing more
than binary code where the Two is the One.
That One, is Tao, which religious Taoists personify as Di, or Divinity, the One Divine
of many names and many faces.
Is Taoism a polytheistic religion or monotheistic?
That's…well, it depends.
Fundamentally, it's monotheistic, because there's only the Tao, the Supreme One.
We personify and deify the Tao to better understand it as humans.
That's because the concept of Unity, according to the Tao Te Ching and other Taoist texts,
is too hard to understand.
So we, as humans, can only understand the Unity, the Tao, in parts.
But all parts equal the whole.
Thunder is the Tao, but to better focus our comprehension on the concept of Thunder, not
just its physical, scientific properties, but also the unseen energy it generates, the
occult power of Thunder, we might work with a personification or deification of Thunder,
and maybe that's Lei Gong, the Thunder God.
Mercy and Compassion are the Tao, but again, to better focus your study, your cultivation
and your awareness of Mercy and Compassion, you work with Kuan Yin.
That, to be sure, is a Taoist perspective of a Buddhist bodhisattva.
In religious, exoteric Buddhism, that opinion isn't going to fly.
Kuan Yin is going to be understood a lot more literally.
This is why I find the common Western bifurcation of Chinese Taoism into "philosophical Taoism"
versus "religious Taoism" problematic.
There's certainly the religious Taoism where deities in the Taoist and Buddhist pantheons
are construed as literal, physical realities, as in like a sky god literally up in heaven
running around somewhere throwing thunderbolts, you know, that kind of thing.
But that's exoteric or a lay person's approach to Taoism.
Esoteric Taoism would invite the occult practitioner to understand these concepts as energy that
all source back to the Tao.
And that seems a little more philosophical than religious, so is it so-called "philosophical
Taoism" according to the Western bifurcation model?
I don't think so, I mean, not exactly, because there are still religious elements to esoteric
Taoism, in that, ya know, Taoist occultists believe in magic and are dancing around in
circles doing ritual while burning incense and ringing ceremonial bells.
Now let's address morality.
This is going to be the toughest one.
If you're going to be objective and level-headed about it, then you have to acknowledge that
among those who identify as Taoist, as Chinese occultists practicing a modality of Taoist
mysticism, moral codes run the whole gamut.
So it's a little different from religions with, like, you know, commandments and it's
even going to be very different from religious Buddhism where you have core moral tenets
centered around karma and the Eightfold Path.
In a lot of religions, there's some baseline text or even culturally agreed upon code of
conduct with which you can make determinations of whether something would be deemed moral
or immoral by that religion.
Or at the very least, religious scholars can have an enthusiastic debate about it.
With Taoism, it's a little different.
Morality is something created by Man.
And all facets of Man, Man's benevolence and Man's malevolence, are the Tao.
And that's kind of like the end of the discussion.
Specific lineages and traditions of Taoist religious practice, on the other hand, sure,
have pretty strict, well-delineated moral codes.
Some espouse veganism or vegetarianism, adhere quite closely to Buddhist moral codes, and
will advocate non-harm.
Others are into animal sacrifice and capturing or imprisoning hungry ghosts, turning spirits
into slaves.
There is absolutely the feature in Taoist morality that's all about making sure you
live in harmony with nature.
And I'd personally love to leave it at that.
But here's the thing.
You can't discount the factions of Taoist esoteric practice that, you know, don't
necessarily advocate non-harm, who advocate self-centered, self-interested practice, and
accruing power for personal gain.
You can't say that's not Taoist.
Whether I like it or not, it is.
It most certainly is Taoism, or at the very least, a facet of Taoism.
Now let's mix a little history and politics, shall we?
There are branches of Taoist mysticism that are a little more violent, a far ideological
cry from the philosophical Taoism you think you know, who very much advocate an eye for
an eye.
You can't say that's not Taoist.
It's not my path, but it's a path.
That, too, is part of the Tao.
So certain factions, and don't expect me to name names by the way, certain factions
work with demons, hell beings, believe in a mystical practice of siphoning the good
karma of others to use for yourself, forms of psychic vampirism, and like I said, believe
an eye for an eye.
You can't erase these groups from Taoist canon or nice-wash them.
In fact, historically, they've often been the underdog vigilante groups spearheading
rebellions against authoritarian regimes, Western imperialism, foreign invaders, and
who, when pushed, will rise up to defend the Chinese people.
But because they don't conform to a palatable moral code, their contributions do often get
erased from history, or downplayed.
I think it's also the notoriety of these branches of Taoist sorcery that sometimes
give Taoist sorcery a bad name.
So then because Taoist practice encompasses so many different and dissenting points of
view, being human, within Taoist magical traditions, there is historically a lot of in-fighting.
The takeaway I hope to impart to you, though, is that Taoist metaphysics does hold space
for conflicting moral and ethical codes.
It's the human capacity that chooses not to hold space for that.
But, it's worth noting that in Taoist philosophy, there are certainly principles of consequences
that get espoused.
So, for instance, Taoist teachings do say that if you try too hard to control others,
to in effect micromanage or attempt to take possession of others, the reaction will be
to act in deceptive, cunning ways against you.
One way to look at that principle in terms of magical codes is if you try too hard to
exert control over the will of others through supernatural means, the energy and power of
magic itself might act out in deceptive, cunning ways you hadn't anticipated.
Now if you release control, let people and nature be free, and you don't micromanage
or dictate over others, don't try to take possession, then their reaction will be honesty,
integrity, and consideration.
So by not trying too hard to control something to make it go your way, letting go of control
might be exactly what nudges events to go exactly your way.
In divinatory terms, Fate is easier to predict than Free Will.
Laozi and Zhuangzi taught that true words are not beautiful, beautiful words are not
true.
That which is the Tao cannot be named, and yet all that we give names to is the Tao.
Those who are loving do not argue, those who argue are not loving.
These features of Taoist philosophy, I think, are going to be more familiar to you as "Taoist."
If you want to harness the Tao in a way aligned with Heaven, then you have to be of benefit
to others and you cannot do harm.
To be a sage of the Tao, you have to be supportive, not contentious.
Are these Taoist moral codes?
Maybe.
To me, Taoist tenets are more like logical syllogisms.
It never says you have to do anything.
It just says, well, A is B, C is A, therefore C is B. You go do whatever you think you have
to do, but just be aware of the consequences.
To sum up, a characteristic of Taoism—I think—is it's like a mirror.
No matter who you are, how you think, or what you believe, you can look at Taoism and see
a reflection back of your own identity.
Chin
In Video 5, we'll delve a bit more into the Taoist pantheon of gods and goddesses,
nature spirits, demons, and so on.
For someone who wants to set up a home altar, how do you get started on that?
What are the basics of Chinese occult ritual practice?
What's the premise behind ancestor veneration and how would you get started?
All the videos in the series so far are building up to addressing those inquiries.
So stay tuned.
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