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Just a quickie for those whom this issue still interests. I feel the correct ‘translation’ must surely be:
Hermetic/Yogic Taoist
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Fire Fire
Water Water
Earth Metal
Air Wood
Ether/Akasha EarthThis is based on the qualities of each element. Air in Hermetics is ‘warm and moist’, so is wood in HT. Earth in Hermetics is ‘cool and dry’, so is metal in HT. Ether/Akasha is the centre in Hermetics, so is earth in HT.
Best Jason
yudelove uses bardon for a different interpretation
http://forum.healingdao.com/philosophy/message/11999%5C
winn offers a different interpretation of air being metal that is transformed into gold
http://forum.healingdao.com/philosophy/message/11493/
(couldn’t find his state on western systems having gravity in more mental realm of akasha, while chines more body and earth grounding)1. why do you practice elements?
they enable transition from cognition on lower mental states of current languages
2. why practice elements?
body movement, remembering/projecting, touching body are means to cultivate body
to integrate it with environment
yet at some point effective societal working becomes limiting
3.
still i am still just observing a lot this not wanting to strain
elements are another way of ‘keysound’ release
the danger in such approach is closing the dan tien
eruption that is one way and weakens the empty space available for dan tien
if it does not shut it down, then it is okof course the flip side is (when no practising sound release)
pure stagnation when feeling of space and time slow down
but then this is simalar in definition to cauldron
unbroken cauldronI’ve beaten myself up over this for years now and still can’t get around it. Why is water more contracted than metal? Does it really mean ice, ie cold, ultimate crstalization, matter as frozen photons etc. That would mean that water in its flowing state requires fire by implication.
Also metal has been defined as a sea of electrons, which could link it to air. Our cells have a tiny rod of iron for electron metabolism and haemoglobin carries iron. I don’t think with the chinese system we are talking about solid, liquid, gas, and energy that the western systems correlate to somewhat. But, hey who knows?Dylan
These aren’t things to puzzle about but to experience after all. They are metaphorical names. Water is not a steady state of being fully contracted to me but the pure expression of ‘contractionosity’ :), the tendency to contract, to enform, and fire is its opposite, the tendency to move outward, or not even really a tendency – just ‘moving-outward-ness’.
Having said that, this ‘translation’ is purely intellectual on my part. I have no real experience of the taoist elements yet, and not nearly as much as I’d like of the Hermetic ones either. I seem to remember you saying you had experience of natural temperature adjustments taking place in your body with the seasons, so for sure your body is getting it! But the intellectual correspondence with properties of physical matter is extremely tenuous, really hard to speculate about; I do definitely see things in the structure of matter which might tend to remind me of the elements but not really direct illustrations. It’s all experiential, to grasp matter by direct experience is hard enough… 🙂
Not really a serious post of mine in other words.
In starting to get the feeling of the organ spirits that put me quite well in touch with the nature of the taoist elements, but until I get into later practices their interactions will escape me and it is their interactions that define them. Interestingly the western elements are entirely static in the way people use them. The Taoist model is very very subtle and beautiful in the way the elements produce and control one another.
Jason
Personally, guys, I think it is impossible to exactly translate one system to another. I think we ought to be using whatever system works for us for what it’s worth.
The way I see the water/metal thing, Dylan, is within the context of the cycle they are in:
Water, the beginning of the cycle, is the ocean from which things grow, Wood;
this growth expresses upward and outward and then fulfills itself, thus consuming itself as Fire;
Fire process produces the matter-ial called Earth
which is digested and then produces the result, the assimilated and refined product, Metal- Earth rarified.
This is then put into a further cycle. What has been created and perfected as Metal is now dissolved, thus Water process is born of Metal. And so on.Like Jason said, we talk of them sometimes as things when they are fluid processes- states always in transition to each other.
So I don’t think it’s about water being more contracted than metal. It seems so to the eye. But energetically, Water is Yin and Fire is Yang- Contraction/Expansion -and this represents a pulsing back and forth between the two polarities. Metal and Wood are this to, but “lesser”.
Alexander
AA: >>Personally, guys, I think it is impossible to exactly translate one system to another. I think we ought to be using whatever system works for us for what it’s worth.<<
… I shouldn't really have posted this in fact. 🙂
What bugs me particularly is how Bardon puts electric on the right and magnetic on the left…. . These things must’ve all developed over centuries in different locations. Still, four directions and a centre, derived from two basic ones that are hot and cold – that _is_ ubiquitous. Even the bloody vikings wrote about that. It’s just that after then, the complications begin…
J
I think that we, as groups, develop our methods according to our times and the lessons involved. Systems develop organically from the needs of the people, who they are at the time and where on earth. And, since we here now like to pinpoint everything “scientifically” and make it all fit together and be the same for every person all the time no matter what, we end up in intellectual trouble because the universe, like the human just dont run that way. There is such a huge mystery factor down here that nothing can be perfectly perfect. And that’s not necessary cause the map is not the territory. That’s what I think! -A
Thanks for the insights from both of you.
As to the vikings, their wizards and poets, not the rapers and pillagers, came up with profound concepts that parallel those of the Taoists.
In addition to Cosmic ICE and FIRE, they spoke of three steaming kettles(cauldrons) for brewing the mead of inspiration (Elixir), a world serpent biting its tail, and connected,via the god Thor, enemy/slayer/transmuter of the serpent, his girdle of strength and protective power called Megingard(Earth power), which sounds like a reference to the belt channels.Dylan
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