Tao Articles
Our baby Emerald’s Death & Rebirth
Topic: TaoNews
Author:
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June 18, 2014
My wife Jem and I are very happy to be parents of a healthy 5 month old Emerald was born at home, all 9 lbs and 22 inches of him. Near the end
Jem held him to her heart, and sang him back to life! Hearing a song
Super Tao Baby Emerald, now 5 months old. His first teaching was to show his parents he can freely cross the boundary between death and life, at will, like any high Taoist
Emerald’s T-shirt (by Steve Geisz- thanks!) has Inside Chi Flows Naturally:
1. 20 Fabulous TAO SUMMER RETREATS. LAST MINUTE SIGNUPS ARE ACCEPTED!
2. Prepare to capture the Summer Solstice energy with meditation or If you want help in creating your own ceremony, read this newsletter: https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?rm=mode2&articleid=59 3. Emerald’s full story and pics below! Resources for parents who want to consciously conceive a healthy child.
L: Emerald as Laughing Buddha – laughing at his private punchline to the Cosmic Joke? Center: Jem cultivates the Tao of Motherhood and the female alchemy built into that path. R: Emerald contemplates the shadow side of the destiny given to him by Heaven?
FEEL FREE TO HIT REPLY and RESPOND. I love hearing from you!
The These are the characteristics of what Zhuangzi calls the Perfected:
Dear Lovers of Conscious Conception and the Mystery Beyond Life and Death, Eight years ago, in 2006, a voice spoke to me while in deep meditation: “Will you be my Daddy?”
I was puzzled and confused. I had chosen not
2012 wedding atop Mt. Hua, and honeymoon rafting the Grand Canyon afterward me at oars….
I told the voice I’d be a father only if it found me the “right”
In 2011, after a three year quest, the “right” mother chose me. I knew
My wife Jem and I did not make her pregnancy or Emerald’s birth public
L: 38 weeks pregnant. R: 41 weeks
Why keep it private so long? Many Taoists believe until a child has
In some parts of China, male Taoist priests put on dresses and lady’s
L: Emerald’s
Contents:
Emerald’s Chinese Astrology & Native American Bloodline
Emerald was born on a Yang Fire Dog day (= element that controls the
L: Chief Ochinee (circled) was on the
Emerald has both Cheyenne and Cherokee blood. His middle name is
On Nov. 29, 1864, the U.S. cavalry betrayed this peace agreement at the Is there karmic work for Emerald and I to complete together on the issue of betrayal? Ochinee’s 15 year old daughter Amache escaped the massacre as she had
Our Family Path of Conscious Conception
Jem and I consciously conceived Emerald
We had initially called Emerald in during our honeymoon raft trip down the Grand Canyon in Septemer 2012. (see https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?rm=mode2&articleid=153
Then Emerald abruptly left. He later told
Eventually I asked Emerald to give me a What exactly is Conscious Conception?
I’d like to be clear that this kind of
For 64 days prior to the new conception
We suffused both sperm and egg with the
We believe the Way of Conscious 1) clear ancestral resistance as best we could,
2) hold a very pure, loving and wide-open
3) view conscious conception as the Anastasia: Conscious Conception & The Space of Love
If you want to further explore the idea
It’s about the origins of the original Megre cleverly blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction as he identifies a twofold purpose behind Conscious Conception:
1. Conscious Conception strengthens the 2. Conscious Conception populates the earth with embodied souls capable
Vladimir Megre the novelist claims he Emerald’s Moment of Conscious Conception
On the conception day in April 2013
L: Shou Xing, Chinese Longevity
I tracked the journey of my A-team of
It takes a whole village of sperm to
Bottom line: Jem got pregnant on our Did Emerald Intentionally Create His Death-Birth Drama?
Let’s revisit Emerald’s birth process in
The long labor process was exhausting
When the midwife wiggled Emerald’s The Thin LIne between Life and Death
Viewing Emerald’s lifeless body at his But Jem felt no fear at that moment. In her own words:
“I felt completely calm once he was in my arms, even silent and limp as
Jem’s sense of calm in singing Emerald
Jem had been singing to Emerald daily in
L: Hours-old Emerald, wondering Drawing the Veil between Death (Spirit) and Life (Body)
Emerald technically had a Near Death Emerald at birth was mostly still in a pre-natal state, which is But during the birthing process, I lost contact with Emerald. It was like a radio that suddenly went dead.
I believe that sometime during labor and
This Drawing of the Veil is an
“Returning to the Tao” is what drives all
After the Veil is drawn, we wake up in a Joyce Gayheart and issues of “Ancestral Completion”
Joyce Gayheart, my previous partner for 25 years, playing with a Panda on 2002 China Dream Trip.
Joyce Gayheart’s story is entwined with (see 2009 newsletter: On Loving the Death of My Wife – Shijie: Taoist Liberation from the Corpse: https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?rm=mode2&articleid=74. Related articles & Joyce’s amazing life story: https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/JoyceGayheart/.)
This heart transplant initiated an
Emerald’s birth was part of Joyce’s soul Desire for completion is what drives evolution, in all dimensions of existence.
Joyce was functionally an ancestor in my
Ironically, in creating a conscious
Joyce’s spirit had to accept this
I was atop Mt Changbai in China in
Joyce’s Spirit Body again visually It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Debate Over Taoist IN-jaculation of Sperm and Older Fathers
L: Emerald”s signature “Baby Power” fist salute is filled with high potency Qi. Center: Emerald thinks he is still part of his mother’s body, even though he’s now outside it. R:
For over 30 years I’d been re-cycling the essence of my sperm, rather than ejaculating it. I’d
Emerald demonstrated an ability to
One’s “chronological age” is irrelevant as a health marker – it’s your
One reader tried to warn me about science studies that suggested I was
What breaks DNA? Poor diet, poor exercise, smoking, drinking, drugs
I know many California neo-Tantrics pooh-pooh this idea, and just go
I believe our soul wants a strong body Pregnancy and Parenting as a Spiritual Path
I now understand more clearly the Secret Life of Babies, and why people
This secret life has to do with the amount of Original Breath, or Yuan
I notice that Emerald is slowly getting polarized, and each day
I watch Emerald shift from ecstatic laughter to tears in an instant. I Here’s a succinct statement of the spiritual importance that children bring to human life:
Children cultivate the vibration of This is a story that wil unfold more fully over the next 150 years….stay tuned. Emerald may found a 300 Club. 🙂
Best Pregnancy & Birthing books
The amount of literature facing prospective parents is bewildering. Here are my top 5 recommendations: 1. Brighton Baby: A Revolutionary Organic Approach to Having an Extraordinary Child. by Roy Dittman. 2012. 1030 pages. www.brightonbaby.com has hard and ebook versions. This is the most practical manual to get. I’d get the hard copy. A 2. Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering: A Doctor’s Guide to Natural Childbirth and Gentle Early Parenting Choices. by Sarah Buckley. 2009 Buckley is an OB/GYN who had four children by homebirth (rather than 3. Windows to the Womb: Revealing the Conscious Baby from Conception to Birth. by David Chamberlain. 2013 Read this book to get the latest science in clear layman’s language on 4. Any books by Michel Odent. French OB/GYN 5. Ideal Birth, by Sondra Ray. 1985. There are lots of other good books by very hip and smart mothers. I’m not claiming my list is complete.
20 Amazing Tao Summer Retreats
Healing Tao Summer Retreats June 21 – I invite you to visit my NEW summer retreats website, http://www.HealingTaoRetreats.com. It has lots of videos, and improved navigation.
Need help choosing between all the wonderful options? Contact our
Her toll free number in the USA is: 1-888-750-1773. If you use Verizon, In this year of the Green Yang Wood Horse, travel and taking retreats
I believe Healing Tao University is the biggest and best program of Tao
Mars Hill is only 20 minutes from Asheville, N.C., surrounded by the fabulous Blue Ridge Mountains. 2014 Summer Retreat Schedule at Mars Hill, NC Retreat tuition is only $495. for an entire week! + Tax deductible 501c3.
Week 1 June 20 – 25, 2014 (Fri-Wed) + Summer Solstice Ceremony 1a. Medical & Spiritual Qigong Fundamentals 1-4 ? Michael Winn 1b. Chinese Yoga Tao-Yin + Inner Smile & Chi Self Massage ?Andrew McCart
Week 2 June 27 ? July 2, 2014 (Fri-Wed) 2a. Healing Love: Taoist Sexual Secrets – Michael Winn & Minke deVos 2b. Fusion 1 Emotional Alchemy + Iron Shirt 1 Rooting – Andrew McCart & Steven Sy 2c. How to Cultivate Creative Qi: Leonardo DaVinci Qigong – Michael Gelb
Week 3 July 4 – July 9, 2014 (Fri-Wed) 3a. Medical Qigong for Energy Healers ? Minke de Vos 3b. Fusion 2 & 3 – Macrocosmic Orbit + Iron Shirt Qigong 2 & 3 – Tendon and Bone Marrow Washing ? Andrew McCart 3c. Inner Sexual Alchemy (Lesser Kan & Li) ? Michael Winn
Week 4 July 11 – 16, 2014 (Fri-Wed) 4a. Chi Nei Tsang 1: Deep Organ Massage ? Jampa Stewart 4b. Sun-Moon Alchemy Greater Kan & Li: Healing Our Ancestors – Michael Winn 4c. Tai Chi Qigong #1 Rooting + #2 Fast Fighting Form – Steven Sy
Week 5 July18 ? 23, 2014 (Fri-Wed) 5a. Chi Nei Tsang 2: Open Wind Gates ? Jampa Stewart 5b. 9 Palace Bagua Zhang: Martial Art meets Mysticism & Magic – Frank Allen 5c. Northern Wu Taiji Quan: Final Refinement of Classical Taiji Quan – Tina Zhang 5d. Star Alchemy: Shaping Our Spiritual Destiny – Michael Winn ——————————————————————————————–
For more info, email info@healingtaoretreats.com or call our registrar
Our summer retreats are located in Mars Hill, at a cool but sunny 2500
I believe it is the biggest and best program of Tao Arts in the world,
The place is special, the courses are wonderful, and the folks who are
Tuition ($495 for a week). has not been raised for the 9th year in a Commuters welcome ($100. facility fee).
No-cost extended payment plans make it accessible to everyone. Give New Retreats & Short Summary of Teachers
NEW Retreats Offered this Summer
We’ve got a new teacher this year, famous author and creativity expert Michael Gelb.
In addition we have a new multi-level Tai Chi Qigong retreat with Steven Sy
Minke de Vos is one of the best Medical Qigong
Andrew McCart‘s Tao Yin (Chinese yoga) will open any
Jampa Stewart is one of the most advanced Chi Nei Frank Allen is revealing his “inner door” transmission of his teacher’s 9 Palace Bagua form.
Tina Zhang is a many time champion tai ji teacher who
Michael Winn is offering a deep integration of qigong Our Blue Ridge mountain setting is very special, the courses are The key thing is that retreat prices have been kept low – unchanged for the 9th year in a row!!! Tuition is still only $495 for a week. Wow! The live transmission is worth the extra travel cost. Commuters still welcome ($100. facility fee). They have the option of eating with the folks who are staying on campus.
Our low prices only possible because of generous subsidies from my Emerald’s Final Message to YOU
May You Each Consciously Conceive Your Highest Destiny, with Emerald’s Blessings! Jem & Michael Winn “Who takes Heaven as his ancestor, Virtue as his home, “The Tao is very close, but everyone looks far away. Register online for on Healing Tao University, the largest Tao (Dao) Arts & Sciences program in the Or visit http://www.HealingTaoUSA.com, to order books/videos/tapes from the Tao Home Visit http://www.Taichi-Enlightenment.com for a glimpse into the world’s most magical spiritual tai chi form. To get Michael Winn’s FREE 130 page ebook Way of the Inner Smile, with If you change your email address in the future and wish to stay on this Newsletter powered by www.ListPilot.com |
Healing Tao USA ?
4 Bostic Place ? Asheville, NC 28803 ? Tel. 888.999.0555 ? www.healingdaousa.com
Can an 8-Month old Infant Master Tai Chi?
Topic: TaoNews
Author:
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Laughing Baby Emerald (video):
What I'm Most Grateful For
Topic: TaoNews
Author: Michael Winn
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China: Short HIstory -Why it survived 2000 years when Roman Empire Failed
Topic: Daoist Scholars
Author: Kaiser Kuo,
Note: This article is not about any specific Taoist topic, but I feel it valuable for understanding the historical-cultural background in which Taoism flourished. Emperors of various dynasties often sought religious approval of Taoist and/or Buddhists to affirm their title as Son of Heaven, and thus cement their power. The mainstream Taoist and Buddhst sects in exchange received imperial funding to build temples, etc. and expand their own reach. Qigong and Neidan gong flourished despite these political fluctuations, as they were more attuned to the eternal cycles of Nature, not the tiny and erratic manmade political cycles of humans. – Michael Wiinn
Why did China survive for over 2000 years while the Roman empire did not?
by Kaiser Kuo, Sinologist
The question is not technically accurate. The idea of China may have survived for over 2000 years—arguably, even longer—but the Chinese empire welded together in 221 BC by the First Emperor of Qin (pronounced “Chin”, hence – China) didn’t by any means survive intact through this period.
From 220 AD, when the Han Dynasty formally collapsed, China was divided into three separate kingdoms, and through they were briefly unified in the late 3rd century, it wasn’t long before incursions from the Xiongnu, the Xianbei, and other nomadic- and semi-nomadic people carved out numerous kingdoms in North China while the South saw a rapid series of messy dynastic changes lasting until the late 6th century. These nomadic incursions that sparked this long Era of Division (known in China as the “Six Dynasties and 16 Kingdoms” or the “Southern and Northern Dynasties”) corresponds in many ways with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire under the pressure of the Vandals, the Alans, the Visigoths, and the Huns—the “crisis of classical civilization.”
The major difference was that China was reunited in the late 6th century by the Sui Dynasty, which briefly ruled a unified China from 589 to 618 AD, followed by the Tang Dynasty, which solidified rule and oversaw a period of prosperity until the mid-8th century. A bitter civil war tore the country apart again at that time, but Tang recovered, limping along until 907.
There followed yet another period of disunity, this one only spanning two generations; the “Five Dynasties and 10 Kingdoms” lasted until reunification once again under the Song dynasty in 960. Even after that, China rarely maintained real political integrity: The Khitan (Qidan) people from north of the Great Wall managed to carve out a substantial part of North China, including the city that is now Beijing, and held it through most of the 11th century and into the early 12th. They were superseded by the Jurchen (also Nuzhen) people from Manchuria, who conquered North China as far south as the Yangzi River. Throughout the 13th century, the Mongols made incursions into China, eventually conquering the entirety of the country by 1274 and incorporating it into their empire.
The restoration of ethnic Chinese rule under Ming from 1368 to 1644 was followed by China’s conquest by the Manchu Qing dynasty, but even then, its rule of China wasn’t complete throughout its three centuries in power: we see yet another period of political division during the mid-19th century, when the quasi-Christian Taiping Rebels took control of much of South China between 1851 and 1863. Finally, shortly following the end of the Qing and the founding of the Republic, there was another era of division from 1916-1928 under the “Warlord Period,” though even after 1928, when the Kuomintang (Nationalist) Party took control of the Lower Yangzi and ruled from Nanjing, it would be a great exaggeration to claim that China was in fact unified. Powerful warlords still controlled the north (Yan Xishan in Shanxi, Feng Yuxiang in Henan and Shaanxi, Zhang Xueliang in the Northeast) and control of the western provinces was in name only.
Through this all, though, it could be argued that an “idea” of China survived. Chinese historiography, even at a popular level, understood that there was a cyclical process at work: “The empire long united must divide; long divided, must unite” was the saying (合久必分，分久必合). Obviously, the idea of Rome long outlived the collapse of the (Western) Roman empire, too: Germanic kings styled themselves Holy Roman Emperors, after all. Byzantium kept the idea of a united Rome alive too before it fell before the onslaught of first Crusaders (in the early 13th century) and finally, Ottoman Turks in the mid-15th. Never, though, in that whole time were either the Greek-speaking East or the Latin West able to effectively reunite politically, and that’s ultimately why the idea of a Roman Empire didn’t enjoy the longevity—interrupted many times though it may have been—that China did.
An Addendum: It might be useful to address the question of China’s (supposed) linguistic unity as a factor in either its cohesion or its fissiparous nature. The languages spoken in different regions of China are not mere dialects: They don’t pass the test of mutual intelligibility to this day, and must be considered separate languages. A guanyu or “official speech” of the court—what we call Mandarin is the latest example—has existed through much of Imperial (and Republican, and Communist) history, but the extent to which it was known or practiced outside of the court and the bureaucracy in the provinces and prefects was always very limited.
To this day there are a huge number of variants of Chinese, each with many sub-variants that often are not mutually intelligible either; “Mandarin” is spoken in the North China Plain and in the three Northeastern provinces, and in the southwest (Sichuan, Yunnan) where Han settlement was relatively late; the Wu “dialect” is spoken in the lower Yangi; the Gan dialect (assume the word dialect to be in quotes!) mainly spoken in Jiangxi; the Min dialect in Fujian province (though with very strong subregional dialects-cum-languages); and Yue in Guangdong and surrounding areas. Many of these are rooted in the far, far distant past and suggest the limited nature of the empire’s cultural cohesiveness in even the times of greatest political unity. In times of fracture, the names given to geographically circumscribed dynasties or kingdoms by their various strongmen founders would often take the name of ancient feudal states or kingdoms from the Warring States period that flourished in a given geography in the distant past—arguably an indication that the separate identities of those states had survived in some cultural memory.
That said, the imposition of a standard writing system in the 3rd century BC by the founding emperor of Qin (秦始皇) went far toward knitting together the country into a single polity. As serving in the civil service—office holding was the sine qua non for membership in the elite, and was the only real ladder for success in imperial China—required passing a grueling series of written exams focused on one’s knowledge of the Confucian canon, there was strong incentive to learn the orthodox writing system. This official written language proved a powerful force in the sinicization of conquest dynasties, none of whom ever successfully supplanted written Chinese as the dominant form of written communications.
The Great Wall: Several walls were being built as early as the 7th century BC; these, later joined together and made bigger and stronger, are now collectively referred to as the Great Wall. Especially famous is the wall built between 220–206 BC by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. Little of that wall remains. Since then, the Great Wall has on and off been rebuilt, maintained, and enhanced; the majority of the existing wall is from the Ming Dynasty (14th century).
Sexual Alchemy: Female Blue Water Snake Year 2013
Mythology of Serpent, East & West
Topic: Sex
Author: by Michael Winn
Jem welcomes the Year of the Blue Female Water Snake, infused with Fire of the Sun before it goes “into the Earth” for the night. At the boundary of the great Waters of change, she embodies Snake: ready to shed the skin of her old Self, and alchemically shape-shift her life into a new Timeline.
Dear Lovers of Snake Qi, the embodiment of Sexual Alchemy,
This Water Snake Year is going to bring up very deep issues that relate to our core sexual identity and the mythic “fall” of humanity into male and female bodies – the Adam & Eve & the biblical serpent story. Chinese myth has interesting parallels, and holds that the first humans, the brother-sister pair Fuxi and Nuwa, are part serpent. I’ve spent decades researching this topic, and my conclusion is that Humanity’s sexual split is at the root of most suffering on the planet today.
If you’re interested in grasping the potential spiritual power of your sexuality, you’ll find this newsletter worthy of your time. There’s a lot of disinformation in the culture that is best carefully dissolved.
Snake archetypally is very spiritual. It swallows its tail to flow its Qi (Chi) perpetually in a Microcosmic Orbit that integrates male and female energy. It wisely sheds its outer skin to allow inner forces to surface. Snakes both fascinate and terrify us with their sexual potency that, like a sudden erection, comes slithering out of the earth. Their bite can bring pain and poison, as well as wisdom and divinatory powers. Snake-charming cults exist worldwide.
Slip into your own snake skin before reading this letter. Consider viewing my wife Jem’s undulating Water Snake dance on Youtube.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPKCSOCPP_s
The video runs for 9 captivating minutes…the flow of a Water Snake cannot be rushed. Get into a quiet space where you can relax. Let go of your busy life. Let the native american flutes, viola, gurgling water and Grand Canyon stillness sink into your soul. Jem undulates like a water snake beside a stream that carved an incredible gorge called Matkatamiba.
Jem’s Water Snake Dance is really a powerful whole-body transmission. We reached this amazing water paradise by rafting down the Colorado river on our honeymoon last summer (photos of the trip are in Tao News archives). I’ve rafted it 41 times and “Matkat” is still my favorite. It’s widely considered the most beautiful side canyon in the entire Grand Canyon.
Note: I have many new readers this month, who may want to catch up on my 3 solstice letters, designed to help folks prepare for the huge planetary transition we’re in the middle of:
1.Mayans 2012: Does Galactic Alignment matter? https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?rm=mode2&articleid=157
2. Winter Solstice: How to Create a New Timeline? https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?rm=mode2&articleid=158
3. Galactic Orgasm: Did You Have One? https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?rm=mode2&articleid=160
Living Astrology vs. Symbolic Astrology
Unlike the media crowd, I didn’t post my Year of the Female Water Snake letter during the Lunar Chinese New Year Feb. 10, 2013. I preferred to wait and actually FEEL what the energy of this 2013 Snake Year is actually like, in this cycle of Time. An important part of the inner alchemy training I offer is Living Astrology. We talk to deep earth forces, planets & star beings, to get beyond the mental abstractions that astrologers offer as a kind of private language. Many people have trouble applying the symbol archetypes to their lives.
I’m interested in cultivating deep skill in evolving my Self, not merely skimming the surface for culturally interesting myths and symbols. These symbols are fascinating and potent, but unless symbols are digested fully into our body, the information is soon forgotten. Afterwards we’re stuck with our old Self. In ancient times, symbols and myths would penetrate into our right brain. In modern left-brain culture, the information overload has mostly become “garbage in, garbage out”. The symbols are not digested. The bowels of our brain are overloaded with too much merde.
Asians who use pictographic writing are right-brain dominant according to scientific studies. They can still feel the power of Animal cycles and the feng shui lines of Qi in the earth. This gives them a different kind of wisdom than we have in the West. One of my favorite “ancient” Chinese proverbs: Change yourself, before Change kicks you in the ass. This year it’s “innoculate yourself with Snake Qi, before it bites you unexpectedly”.
Taoist internal alchemy is the spiritual science of Change. It decodes Nature’s yin-yang and 5-phase operating system across multiple dimensions. It shows how they function inside our own body. Our body is sexed male or female, which makes sexual polarity the driving force in human alchemy.
Alchemy can give us a license to drive our own destiny, instead of having it driven for us. Do you want to stay a teenager all your life, begging your (cosmic) parents for a ride? We have the opportunity to speed up our growth – if we allow this Female Snake to change us, NOW. But how?
The first question to ask yourself: Did you feel the shift into Snake Year Qi? On the solar start date of the New Year, Feb. 4, 2013, I was out beside the ocean doing muliple qigong ceremonies to meet Ms. Water Snake for myself. I invited her to enter my body, to dance inside me, to align our destinies. She won’t do that unless you ASK. If we don’t ask, we risk sudden snake bite later in the Year.
I got a very clear answer: Snake Qi is similar to Dragon Qi, but stepped down inside the body. It’s more focused on the alchemical coupling of sexual polarities, easier to manage and communicate with than the high-flying, myth-making Dragon Qi. Snake Year’s job is to make sure that we personally execute and digest the changes from Dragon Year.
Jem’s response on the first day of the year of the Snake was one of relief. After doing her qigong and ASKing, she confided: “This Snake feels more comfortable for me. More intimate, more internal, more feminine than the dragon. But just as powerful — if not more so.”
Where Does this Female Water Snake Live?
When I ASKed for Ms. Snake to talk to me, it immediately raised the question: where does this Female Water Snake live? Where does she speak from? It’s the same answer for all 12 Chinese Animals. They are totem masks for the 12 Earthly Branches, meaning the Snake is the aspect of the Earth’s deep psyche that is leading the planetary team this year. She lives in Mother Earth’s Energy Body, which has 12 aspects (mirrored by 12 tectonic plates), just as our human body has 12 organ and bowel spirits, each with their own meridian. Consider Snake as one of Mother Earth’s 12 organs.
Western astrology looks at the sky, and the zodiac that changes signs monthly as the sun shifts position. Earth is not included as one of the influential planets – rather strange, since it’s the planet we live on. Chinese astrology is the opposite: earth-centered, and dominated by year long cycles. It assigns different animals to the hour, day, and month, but all Humans will have to live with this watery Snake Lady for an entire year.
The Snake is 6th in the cycle of 12 Animals, suggesting that like Virgo (6th sign in Western astrology), Snake is a gatekeeper for deep earth wisdom. We journey through all 12 signs to evolve our human soul. At the 6th sign the Journey goes underground, and we get initiated into Deep Earth Mysteries in both Chinese and Western astrology.
This 2013 Female Water Snake is the 30th year in the Chinese calendar’s 60 year cycle, its exact midpoint. That suggests a powerful tipping point in the collective consciousness, possibly a larger “astrological mid-life” crisis. In the western view, Water Snake Year might signify a critical final shift from age of Pisces to Aquarius.
L: Snake Year Official of the Animal Zodiac, 1500 year old Chinese ceramic. R: Snake has feminine soft outer skin, fiery male inside.
Snake Year: Excellent for Sexual – Spiritual Qi Cultivation
The Snake is an underground creature, but considered to be a fire creature. Where does it get its fire? The earth is filled with molten lava. So we have a fiery snake in a watery phase for an entire year, suggesting high volatility. In Taoist inner alchemy, the focus is on the coupling of primal water and primal fire.
This translates into the inner female and inner male halves of our soul. An alchemist will try to capture and stabilize the sexual volatility of this water & fire Snake year, and put it to spiritual work. In 2013 we have an opportunity to tap into this sexual tension to quicken our self-transformation.
A qigong form particularly well suited to culitvating Snake Energy is Swimming Dragon Qigong, originally from Mt. Hua (Flower Mtn.) where Jem and I got married last June on my China Dream Trip. It’s called a dragon, but it’s really a swimming serpent form — great for weight loss as well as circulating sexual Qi in deep channels. To encourage folks to practice this qigong in the Snake year, especially in the spring time when sexual energy is running high, I’m offering my DVD and Audios as a “Tao Cultivation Special” for my newsletter readers (see full offer below).
The main focus of these DVDs and Audio is essentially to convert our raw sexually polarized energy into a refined soul elixir. The bedroom love arts and medical-sexual healing benefits are major, but ultimately it is about restoring our natural human immortality (pre-Fall). This is totally different from the western quest to live physically forever. Spiritual immortality is the Taoist way of describing the crystallization of our soul so it can continue creating after death.
Are You a True Human Yet?
In the Taoist view, most humans never cultivate themselves deeply enough to become a “True Human” (zheng ren). Most humans are soul sparks that never quite ignite to realize their potential. These soul sparks after death are absorbed back into the collective and their content is recycled – but they lose their free will after death. The spiritual payoff of doing this kind of sexual-spiritual energy work while we’re still in a sexed body is huge. Integration of male-female halves of our soul are essential to preserving creative free will.
The Dictionary of Creation Myths says that worldwide, Serpents are almost always linked to the Great Goddess. Paradoxically snakes are a female symbol, yet are also a phallic symbol of earth fertility. The phallus comes from the Snake’s rising fire and sudden strike ability, both rather male traits. Snake bodies could be seen as an umbilical cord linked to the Great Mother, the smooth skin and writhing movement as part of her sensual nature. Only in paternalistic cultures that worship sky gods does the serpent become something dark to be feared and conquered, or demonized as evil (see my essay below on The Serpent in Genesis).
L: 1100 b.c. Zhou Dynasty image: Snake swallowing its tail, possible inspiration for famous Taoist Microcosmic Orbit meditation. R: modern serpent (dragon) version of Ourobouros, also a famous Greek image.
Snake myths are consistenly similar around the globe. In the oldest story ever written, the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh loses his power of immortality, stolen by a snake. The serpent was a widespread figure in the mythology of the Ancient Near East. Ouroboros is an ancient Greek symbol of a serpent eating its own tail that represents the perpetual cyclic renewal of life, the eternal return, and the cycle of life, death and rebirth, leading to immortality.
The Sumerian and Ouroboros serpent myths are akin to the Taoist view. Taoist Snake Tribes employ spiraling qigong which are considered amongst the most powerful of martial and spiritual arts. The most famous Taoist meditation – the Microcosmic Orbit – is the practical secret of the Ouroboros, the snake swallowing its tail to achieve immortality. It’s a symbol of the fire and water channels in the body flowing continuously into each other, in a kind of perpetual alchemical process.
The Wudang Orbit that I teach (in my Medical & Spiritual Qigong Fundamentals 2) is from a Taoist Snake Tribe. It requires gathering fire (spine) and water (chest) Qi, spiraling them together into a pearl, then alchemically cooking this Elixir until it crystallizes in our body’s neutral core channel. I explain how to invite a dragon in to supply the Qi, and have found that this year’s Water Snake Lady will also do the trick. To learn this practice, see: https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/ckf2.html
» Why Do We FEAR Snakes?
» SAVE $100. Sexual Vitality DVD: & Tao of Sex Audio
» Serpent in Genesis, Kundalini & Caduceus Double Snake
» Cultivate Your Qi: Tao Summer Retreats
» What happens when a Water Snake “STRIKES”?
» My Snake Year Resolution: Conscious Conception
» Lady White Snake Legend & Other Reptilians
» 8 Amazing Biological Facts about Snakes
» Famous Water Snake People: Chairman Mao
» Modern Adam & Eve in Taoist Garden of Eden
In China, the Snake is traditionally a kind of “baby dragon”. The dragon is mythic, often depicted as the parts of other animals combined. By contrast, the snake is real, it’s physically accessible. There are over 2000 species of snakes on the planet.
Studies suggest that one-third of the global population has a deep fear of these snakes. Ophidiophobia is one of the most common phobias known to man, along with spiders and heights. This is true even in Asia. Modern Hong Kong merchants complain that they cannot easily “cutify” the Snake to sell stuffed animals and other Snake Year paraphernalia. There is too much latent fear of snakes. This 2013 Snake Year is also unpopular because it has no “eyes”, meaning it starts after Feb. 4, 2013 and ends before Feb. 4, 2014. It’s considered a “blind snake” that is not around for the first day of spring. Many are getting married before or after this year.
I believe snake fear is actually a sexual fear of what the Snake embodies: a spiritual awakening in a sexed body. Snakes have a psycho-sexual, undulating kundalini force that can explode at any moment. Humans often repress a similar “rising serpent” force, that is internally sexual in nature.
I accidentally triggered a powerful kundalini awakening in 1978. It felt like a whole body orgasm, my testicles pulsating 24 hours a day, with sexual energy undulating up my spine like a snake. While searching global literature for explanations for my (then) bizarre condition, I found only one useful book: The Serpent Power, by Gopi Krishna. He explained this force was coiled like a serpent in the base of the spine. That led me to study Tantra and teach kundalini yoga for some years, until I graduated to Taoist internal alchemy, which offered safer management of my kundalini.
Freud correctly opined (and as a Taoist alchemist I would agree) that sexual repression is the deepest potential force for change in Humanity’s psyche. Sexual repression, alas, locks up the creative power of our psyche. Much of Freud’s work came from investigating female patients with hysteria — the sudden release of sexual repression. Men channel repressed sexuality into war and violence. It’s why gun control is tantamount to penis control in America — and thus unlikely to ever happen.
We fear our own repressed sexual energy as if it were a snake that wants to suddenly bite us. Our sexual energy wants to evolve us spiritually, but it needs a safe path. Taoist alchemy teaches us to manage our sexual energy BEFORE we start messing around with our psychic infrastructure and releasing the kundalini serpent force.
Snake medicinal wine as a sexual tonic is common in Asia.
This topic is too deep to cover in this newsletter. Please read my FAQs on Tao & Sexual Practice: https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/faq_taoist_sexual_practice.html
Or just get the homestudy course that updates the book I wrote with Mantak Chia 28 years ago (Taoists Secrets of Love: Cultivating Male Sexual Energy, or its female sequel, Healing Love Through the Tao: Cultivating Female Sexual Energy). Books, jade eggs, homestudy courses at: https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/sexualqigong.html
This is not just about having better sex, or medical sexology; it’s about the fundamental split in the male-female soul, the cosmology of how we got into this split state, that goes all the way back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
SEXUAL COSMOLOGY & QIGONG ARTICLES: If you want to go deeper into the connection between cultivating sexual Qi and spiritual development, consider reading some of my articles:
1. Sexual Qigong: Secret Tao Path to Completing our Human Identity https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/healinglove.html#slt (short read)
2. The Quest for Spiritual Orgasm: Daoist and Tantric Sexual Cultivation in the West https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?rm=mode2&articleid=35 (40 pages – long but good)
3. Transforming Sexual Energy with Water-and-Fire Alchemy: Book Chapter excerpt, “Daoist Body Cultivation” Livia Kohn, ed. https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?rm=mode2&articleid=103
1. DVD ORDER INFO: Sexual Vitality Qigong DVD. Full retail is $45. Special price for my readers is $29.95, plus s/h. Save $15! See detailed list of 26 Qigong Movements on this DVD below.
2. HOMESTUDY INFO: Healing Love/ Tao of Sex Audio courses are highly recommended as they go much deeper than the DVD, which is movement practice only. If you buy the DVD + the home study Audio, you receive 35% off retail. Save $54 to $100 !!!
1 DVD + 17 Audio CDs 23 hr (4 hrs. w/Joyce Gayheart on female practice): reg. $295. Special: $195. Save $100!
1 DVD + 7 Audio CD 9 hr (Michael only) reg. $154. Special: $99. Save $55!
For fuller description of these courses: https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/healinglove.html#nmb
Other Tao of Sex products (jade eggs, books): https://www.michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com/sexualqigong.html
TO ORDER Tao Cultivation Special savings, please email Jan, my office manager: info@michaelwinn.qlogictechnologies.com or call at 828-505-1444 (in USA toll free is 888-999-0555).
3. HEALING LOVE RETREAT INFO: June 28 to July 3, 2013 in Asheville, N.C. The Sexual Vitality Qigong DVD or Tao of Sex Audio CD are a great start. But if you really want to go deep, and get hands on help from two Senior Instructors with over 55 years experience between them, attend the Taoist Sexual Secrets/Healing Love summer retreat taught by Michael Winn and Minke de Vos: http://www.healingtaoretreats.com/cgi-bin/prod_list.pl?rpage=DM13-2A
Or Contact: Julia Considine, Retreats Registrar. info@healingtaoretreats.com 828-575-3825
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Taoist Secrets of Sex Homestudy Audio Testimonial:
I Got Profound Healing of Sexual Relation Issues from Your Tapes
Dear Michael,
Thank you with all my Heart for your beautiful Taoist work. I experienced profound healing listening to your weekend recordings of “Healing Love” tapes.
The healing was particularly poignant to me because your audio course had for a few years contained a somewhat painful “charge” for me. Your course given to my boyfriend Bill by Jane, his erstwhile lover — someone with whom, from what I perceived, Bill had maintained a deeper love and greater emotional intimacy than he seemed capable or willing to bring to his relationship with me. Until about a year ago, anything that represented Bill and Jane’s deep connection triggered in me irritation or pissiness (at best), or resentment, anger, jealousy and hurtful sadness (at worst).
I had thought I had resolved all of that, and that I was finally at peace with the whole Jane dynamic. That is, until I recently found your course in a drawer after Bill moved out a few months ago. Up welled some of the same feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, envy, jealousy. Not comfortable things to confront for someone who likes to consider herself pretty spiritual evolved! 🙂 Especially when I thought I had healed these types of feelings where Jane and Bill were concerned. But there it was, plain as day — another unhealed layer.
Rather than throw away your recordings (my first impulse), send them back to Jane unheard (my second impulse), or even send them back to Bill unheard (my third impulse), I decided to give them a listen before mailing them off to Bill. Part of me maintained the fantasy that I would listen to them and then feel superior — “Oh, I already know all of this from my many years of deep pranayam practice based on principles of Kundalini yoga and tantra, with Rudi’s double breathing technique, from my own inner work through years of celibacy, from my own Tantric tutelage and practices, through my work with Master Zhou, through being a tantrika before I even knew what that word meant, etc. etc. etc.”
The small mind ego just jumped right on board, spinning out an elaborate and detailed fantasy of arrogant dismissal. And then I breathed deeply again, drew all of this into my dantian, burned it up and allowed it to quiet my mind, open my heart, open my third eye and crown, and allow myself a chance to learn or receive something.
Only after I committed to listening openly and without judgment did I pop the first tape in — and I then was able to begin to receive fully the healing energy that came through, so softly, sweetly. I was bathed in a beautiful healing blanket, inspiring me to go further with my QiGong explorations . . . and reminding me that as I return to doing these practices deeply in loving myself, only that same unconditional love, support and Love Essence will come forward to meet me, too. In all relationships — including the next one to which I choose to bring the priceless flower gift of my Divine Goddess Sexuality.
Thank you for the inspiration of your work, and for inspiring me further on my own inner path working with the profound energies that help us integrate spirit and body and energy fully.
Light and love, Kathleen, California
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DVD INFO: Sexual Vitality Qigong by Michael Winn
It took me many years to gather these qigong sexercises from various Taoist masters I’ve met around the world. Some I had to create myself, to get the exact Qi-building effect I wanted. You won’t find other DVDs on this topic, as it is a rather rare and specialized study not commonly available. List of the 26 “Sexercises” on this DVD:
A. Top 3 Sexual Energy Building Qigong forms
- Left & Right Kidney Pumping, a.k.a. Deep Earth Pulsing.
- Cosmic Swimming Dragon
(spiral pink sexual chi around sun, moon, stars). - Sexual Marriage of Heaven & Earth
(Audio course integrates Empty Force Breathing, not taught on video)
B. Fire & Water Qigong Ceremony
(Facing South for Heart & North for Kidney Harmony)
C. Lying Sexual Qigong forms
- pelvic rocking and circling sacrum
- psoas release
- belly and groin massage (with laughing practice also)
- inhale outer universe into dantian; exhale inner body universe to mingmen
D. Sitting & Kneeling Sexual Qigong
- Rubbing kidneys according to Taoist numerology
- Rubbing ears to stimulate kidneys
- Stroke inside leg/kidney meridians; slap kidney-1 point
- Hands over ears, with kidney rotations
- Knee walking
- Kneel with pelvic lifting & pumping
E. Standing Sexual Qigong to Circulate Kidney Chi
- Walking Knee lifts
- Knee slapping on Bladder-40 point
- Arm and leg swings to open psoas
- Grab ankles, breathe into kidney meridian
- Breathe testicle/ovary pink chi to heart, eyes
F. Standing Lung – Kidney Sexual Qigong
- Arms/palms open lungs; close fists over mingmen, kidney sound.
- short arm swings, movement originates from pelvis.
- large arm scoops: activates lung meridian to expand kidney chi.
- Fast out-of-sync circles with palms scooping chi into kidneys.
- Waist circling with hands on kidneys.
- Belt channel circling, palms gather chi around waist.
G. Sexual Qigong to Concentrate Kidney Chi in Dantian
- Slow moving Chi Ball front-back, left-right, up-down.
Before we get into Adam and Eve, let’s consider the serpent element in China’s creation myth. Parallels with other near Eastern myths, such as the Biblical flood and Genesis creation myths, are clear. Serpents are found in ancient Egyptian culture as well.
L: Fuxi and Nuwa as first humans, brother-sister with serpent legs in caduceus pattern. Found in China’s western desert, Xinjiang. R: All Egyptian pharoahs wore a serpent uraeus on their crown, derived from a female goddess.
According to ancient Chinese legend, the land was swept by a great flood and only Fu Xi and his sister Nuwa survived. They retired to Kunlun Mountain, where they prayed for a sign. The Ruler of Heaven approved their union and the siblings set about procreating the human race. In order to speed up the process, Fu Xi and Nüwa used clay to create human figures, using divine power to make the clay figures come alive.
The Genesis 3 Bible serpent myth is widely misunderstood by Christian fundamentalists. They see serpents as the Devil for tempting Adam and Eve to eat forbidden fruit from the Tree of Self-Knowledge, thus causing humanity’s fall into mortality. Adam is from the root Hebrew word Adamus, or earth, signifying Humanity. Eve means Life. The Bible says they were “of one flesh”.
It’s not really being paternalistic here — Eve coming out of the rib of Adam is just a poetic way to show their unity. Humanity and Life wanted to understand their sexual nature, and so they bit into the apple of sexuality that gave them divine self-knowledge. This is really just a parable about Humanity shifting from an androgynous (merged male-female) “astral” body into separated male and female physical bodies on earth that can die.
Genesis is just another version of the Fall, common to most ancient cultural myths. In Taoism, the “fall” from a Golden Age is the shift from Early Heaven to Later Heaven. But during this 2013 Snake Year, let’s get the story right, and not let unconscious cultural-religious programming about snakes in the Bible control us.
Genesis 1 is written by a priest describing the Primal Creator myth, the first seven days of creation. A clean, simple cosmology story. Scholars agree that Genesis 2-4 is written by a different priest, focused on human relationships with secondary aspects of God (lesser creator god/desses) that manage creation.
Humanity’s decision to divide into male and female bodies is NOT the fault of an evil Serpent. What’s interesting about Genesis is that the Serpent CAN TALK to Adam and Eve, and is assuring them that self-knowledge is a good thing. This serpent is the only animal in the Old Testament that can talk!
This ability to talk suggests the Snake in the Garden of Eden was a Snake Immortal (possibly an androgynous pre-human in snake form) with deep wisdom and a connection to God/dess. The serpent is not an outside evil force. We’re just eavesdropping on a struggle between the second tier creator gods-goddesses who were re-writing the DNA programs of Humanity. Some wanted humans to become physical, others opposed it.
Even more fantastical, Genesis predicts the children of the Serpent and the children of Adam and Eve will be bitter enemies forever. Is this Biblical support for modern super-conspiracy theorist David Ickes, who holds that alien reptilians are secretly shape-shifting into human form? That the serpents are finally getting their Biblically predicted revenge, by posing as leading politicians and bankers to control Humanity? (note: I accept there are many ET species, including reptilians, but don’t believe they can control human destiny nor do I accept Ickes paranoid vision. The serpent got her way in the Garden of Eden, why should she be angry?)
Here’s my short re-write of Genesis:
Adam-Eve, or integrated (androgynous) Humanity-Life, wanted to evolve their free will and claim their god/dess hood within physicality. In Genesis 3 Yahweh is trying to stop Adam-Eve from using their free-will to choose male and female physical bodies, which would make them mortal. Yahweh has an argument with a wise serpent speaking on behalf of Mother Earth, and Yahweh loses. If Yahweh had won, we Humans would not exist today.
The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is symbolized by the caduceus, two serpents (male and female) entwined around the staff of the Prime Creator God. It is exactly what Mother Earth’s energy body looks like: an axis between North and South Pole, with a spiral geo-magnetic helix flowing around it that is well documented by scientists.
L: caduceus image of kundalini rising, two male-female currents around a third neutral core.
R: DNA double-helix is living caduceus in every one of our cells. Its axis is an invisible 3rd force.
The significance of the staff/core channel within the Caduceus: Free will and the sexual power of procreation can only come from the Primary Creator god of Love and Harmony. Yahweh is the jealous second-tier (local) God of the old Testament and Genesis 3. Scholars say Yahweh was a Divine Warrior God to the Canaanites who 600 years later got upgraded to cosmic rulership over all Gods. He was always angry, vengeful, and bloodthirsty. He pushed ignorant humans (who confused him with Prime Creator God) into killing their enemies in God’s Name. This is possibly Lucifer in disguise. Yahweh-Lucifer was influenced by Dark Forces (from outside this Cosmos) that want to sabotage the human experiment.
Yahweh was trying to stop Adam and Eve from realizing their soul’s Highest Destiny, which was to bring Prime Creator’s love and harmony into the physical plane. Humanity’s destiny was to bring personal love (stepped down from field of impersonal divine love) into physicality. Splitting the human soul into male and female was definitely a risky experiment, and created a lot of suffering. It is ultimately an evolutionary triumph that will redeem all the suffering caused by the separation (Fall), when more split humans are able to restore their original (androgynous) immortality.
Every religion has its own version of salvation. Christians call this process “redemption”, but most seem to be waiting around for it to happen from on High, rather than individually creating it. Taoists view the self-cultivation of our sexual energy into immortal self-realization as the highest destiny or virtue (de) of any human.
Eve in Garden of Eden, having heart-to-heart talk with Wise Serpent. Original Photo: ©Adam
In my interpretation, the fantastical talking Serpent in the Garden of Eden is an aspect of Mother Earth that supports Humanity in cultivating a higher level of free will and self-knowledge. Mother Earth is willing to be the root of that Tree of Good and Evil..
Fundamentalists (and their second tier Yahweh-Lucifer God) are pissed off that the Mother Earth-Serpent won, and have been laying a heavy Original Sin guilt trip on humans ever since. They try to split modern men and women by paternalistically blaming Eve for convincing Adam to bite into the forbidden fruit. They are bitter losers who have created a lot of self-destructive religious beliefs. They have put out tons of unfair bad PR for snakes (and dragons), supported widespread sexual repression resulting in woman-hating (the Inquisition was 90% sexual torture of women; Salem witch trials), body-hating (sex is bad) and planet-earth hating (polluting technologies).
So let’s hear it for the Female Water Snake, an aspect of the Great Earth Mother who wants to help us evolve! Even Jesus recognized Snake virtue: Jesus exhorted his disciples, “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves” (Matthew 10:16). Moses turned his staff into a serpent to prove his power. Both clear acknowledgements of Snake wisdom and power.
I’ve recounted the details of this Genesis talking snake so that Westerners can compare it to Chinese fantastical tales of another talking, shape-shifting snake (see section on White Snake Lady).
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Need help deciding which retreat is right for you, or understanding all the jr, sr, foreigner, reviewer, multiple retreat discounts? Contact: Julia Considine, Retreats Registrar. info@healingtaoretreats.com 828-575-3825 Select Retreat Code to Register. (Removable later) |
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| Retreat Code (Price) |
Retreat Title Select Title to view detailed information about the Retreat |
Dates | Instructor(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Healing Tao Summer Retreat Week 1 | |||
| DM13-1A ($495.00) |
Medical & Spiritual Qigong: Fundamentals 1-4 Certification Course |
June 21 – June 26, 2013 | Michael Winn |
| DM13-1B ($495.00) |
Rejuvenation Qigong + Fusion 2 &3 + Primordial Qigong | June 21 – June 26, 2013 | David Twicken |
| DM13-1C ($495.00) |
Medical Qigong for Energy Healers | June 21 – June 26, 2013 | Minke de Vos |
| Weekend | |||
| DM13-1A-W ($295.00) |
Qigong Fundamentals: Levels 1 & 2 Weekend | June 21 – June 23, 2013 | Michael Winn |
| Healing Tao Summer Retreat Week 2 | |||
| DM13-2A ($495.00) |
Healing Love: Taoist Sexual Secrets | June 28 – July 03, 2013 | Michael Winn Minke de Vos |
| DM13-2B ($495.00) |
Fusion of Five Elements 1 & 2 + Iron Shirt 1 Rooting Emotional Alchemy |
June 28 – July 03, 2013 | Marie Favorito |
| Weekend | |||
| DM13-2C-W ($295.00) |
Chinese Medical & Spiritual Astrology + 5 Elements Qigong |
June 28 – June 30, 2013 | David Twicken |
| Healing Tao Summer Retreat Week 3 | |||
| DM13-3A ($495.00) |
Tao Qigong Basics & Sexual Energy Yoga | July 05 – July 10, 2013 | Minke de Vos |
| DM13-3B ($495.00) |
Healing Chi Transmission (Buddha Palm) + Healthy Tendons (Iron Shirt 2) |
July 05 – July 10, 2013 | Marie Favorito |
| DM13-3C ($495.00) |
Inner Sexual Alchemy: Lesser Kan & Li (Water & Fire) Get Pregnant with your Inner Sage |
July 05 – July 10, 2013 | Michael Winn |
| Healing Tao Summer Retreat Week 4 | |||
| DM13-4A ($495.00) |
Chi Nei Tsang 1: Deep Organ Massage Practitioner Certification |
July 11 – July 16, 2013 | Jampa Stewart |
| DM13-4B ($495.00) |
Chinese Yoga / Tao-Yin | July 11 – July 16, 2013 | Andrew McCart |
| DM13-4C ($495.00) |
Planetary Soul Alchemy: Greatest Kan & Li | July 11 – July 16, 2013 | Michael Winn |
| Healing Tao Summer Retreat Week 5 | |||
| DM13-5A ($495.00) |
Chi Nei Tsang 2 & 3: Opening the Wind Gates | July 17 – July 22, 2013 | Jampa Stewart |
| DM13-5B ($495.00) |
Legacy Form: Taiji + Wu Xing + Bagua Zhang | July 17 – July 22, 2013 | Frank Allen |
| DM13-5C ($495.00) |
Classical Northern Wu Style Taiji | July 17 – July 22, 2013 | Tina Zhang |
| DM13-5D ($495.00) |
Heaven & Earth Alchemy | July 17 – July 22, 2013 | Michael Winn |
Lots of Chinese soothsayers are offering up the classic profile: Water Snake is very internal, wise, and contemplative, but is prone to jealousy. Those born in the Year of the Snake are said to desire material wealth. They are also vibrant, creative, enchanting, introspective, refined and kind, all qualities absent from the reptile’s reputation.
Timing is key to understanding the 2013 Snake. Consider the collective psychic power invested in the Milky Way’s Galactic Dark Rift during Winter Solstice 2012. Has that Super Yang Male Water Dragon energy been spent yet? Not at all. There was a big silent THUD immediately after the much hyped Solstice – until the Snake Year slithered in with a bang.
The psychological human snake qualities may be true, but early omens say WATCH OUT! This Water Snake has real FORCE in it, and can strike suddenly, without warning. Water is the symbol for DANGER, it’s the untamed force of Nature as floods and hurricanes. Alchemical reactions between water & fire can be quite volatile in certain astrological periods. Is 2013, with its Snake Fire mating a Water Year, a time when the collective culture is ready to shed its old skin?
The lunar Snake New Year was on Feb. 10. On Feb. 11, the Pope resigned, for the first time in 600 years — a huge unexpected shock as one of the planet’s largest religions suddenly shed its old skin.
On Feb. 15, there was a double planetary whammy. A large meteor DA-14 had a “close encounter” with striking the earth, passing as close as the moon. The same day another meteor exploded over Russia, shattering 3000 windows and flattening up to 100,000 trees.
Alchemical reactions between yin & yang can be quite volatile in certain astrological periods. Is 2013, with Snake Fire mating a Water Year, one of those?
The previous meteoric explosion in Siberia in 1908 flattened 80 MILLION trees: its shock waves felt like a trigger to a century of incredible change. Why is Russia so significant in the global psyche? It is the meeting place of east and west, Asia and Europe. So it’s a good proxy to send a shockwave into humanity.
Let’s look to the past (thanks, wikipedia!) for clues. What Snake-like events happened in the 20th century’s only water snake year, 1953?
– The US exploded the first hydrogen bomb, giving it powerful surprise strike force. Hydrogen is the main component of water, H2O.
– Watson & Crick discovered the double helix structure of DNA, revealing that the deepest secret power in our biology matched precisely the famous archetype of a double serpent caduceus.
– The first transsexual surgery: a watershed event for humanity, the literal shedding of our old skin of having a fixed sexual identity. Adam can now become Eve, fulfilling the Biblical proclamation that they “were of one flesh”. More on that below.
– Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay become the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest. This is conquering a hidden zone, and snow as frozen water element. Water Snakes are profiled in China as one of the most determined and ambitious signs, lying in hiding until they choose to reveal themselves.
– Over 6000 people are killed by floods & rains in Europe and Asia, tens of thousands injured; a typical Water Snake natural strike.
– Hugh Hefner published the first issue of Playboy magazine, featuring centerfold nude Marilyn Monroe. It sold out immediately, launching a whole genre of seductive magazines. Snakes are considered irresistibly seductive – a tradition that goes back to the Serpent in Genesis tempting Eve to take the first bite of the forbidden fruit.
– Aldous Huxley tries mescaline, a psychedelic hallucinogen. His book “The Doors of Perception” breaks open a new interior horizon to exploration, previously reserved for shamans.
– REM sleep is first discovered. This is mankind penetrating into the Snake’s magical underworld realm.
– I have 4 brothers and 2 sisters. My brother Steven, born in 1953, is a poster child Chinese Water Snake. Charming, wily, and full of hidden ambitions, he’s found eventual success against all odds and early failures. We called him boo-boo when he was young….but never underestimate a Snake person. It took him 10 years to graduate from college, but he was just carefully slithering around to survey the territory.
He’s reinvented himself many times, and each time after shedding his old skin, always becomes financially successful. Deeply spiritual, his devotion to Indian guru Meher Baba so antagonized me (as an overly intellectual college student) that I decided to investigate Eastern spirituality more deeply to see why he had gone astray. While reading one of his books, I fell into a mid-afternoon trance. I had a fully lucid vision – I walked the gang plank of a ship, fell into the ocean, and discovered that I could breathe blissfully underwater. A classic Water Snake initiation. 40 years later, we’re still working it out – his inner snake is curious about Taoist inner alchemy…. 🙂
Other Snake Years with “sudden strike” or “shedding skin” traits:
1905: wood snake year: 100,000 Russian soldiers die in 3 days in Russo-Japanese War, changing the course of East-West history.
1917: fire snake year: WW1 turning point battles.
1929: earth snake year with stock market crash, depression.
1941: metal snake year when Pearl Harbour erupted.
1989: wood snake year when Berlin Wall fell, major shedding of skin for Soviet empire. There is a buzz in China every Snake Year since 1989, when tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square over the bodies of protesting students and workers.
2001: metal snake year with September 11 as surprise strike using metal planes as weapons. There is credible speculation this attack was planned by the Chinese military, using Pakistani intelligence and Moslems to execute their strategy of “murder by borrowed sword”. The Chinese were admitted to the World Trade Organization on Sept. 13, two days later. This may have been a classic snake war tactic – strike when least expected, from hidden vantage point. The message sent to US military intelligence: you’re bigger than us, but we have snake strategies that can defeat you.
2013: water snake year when ?????? ?????? ???????
Double spiral Ourobouros, sign of conscious coupling of male and female.
What am I doing to shed my old skin, to manifeset my “new Snake year resolutions”?
I’m radically re-doing my website. It will be much easier to navigate, more spacious and less overwhelming. I will be introducing a shorter weekly blog (concession to the generation that has been force-fed a sound bite diet, and suffer from ADHD, but still have souls worthy of alchemical cultivation….more videos for them :).
China Dream Trip 2010 at Temple of Heaven, Beijing. My full scale version will be adapted for retreat use, set in the mountains of North Carolina.
I’m asking the billionaire who owns 200 acres of land next to me to donate it to my non-profit as the seed for a Taoist Temple of Heaven and Earth retreat center. I have sources of funding that may be coming in the next two years in any case. If you want to have a powerful place to meditate in an inter-dimensional portal, please support this request in your meditation.
More importantly, I’m hoping to bite into that same apple Adam ate in the Garden of Eden, and explore the power of sexuality as divine power of creation. Adam and Eve did not get kicked out of the Garden because they sinned; it says right in the bible that it was because they ate the fruit of self-knowledge. I want to taste that fruit.
We’re planning to invite Emerald, the female child spirit who has been hovering patiently for many years, to co-consciously conceive herself. We asked, but she told us she didn’t want to come in riding a Male Yang Black Water Dragon. Her spirit was hopefully hitching a ride on that emerald dodecahedron crystal bursting out of the earth at Solstice.
Waiting a bit for Emerald is fine with us. It’s more time to get our ancestors and her future guide-immortals into alignment, so Emerald will have a clearer destiny. We’re ASKing for the Change we want to create. It won’t be a surprise if we get a totally telepathic baby Water Snake kicking our parental butts. Or maybe a headstrong Wood Horse the following year. The timing cannot be controlled.
I’m more concerned about having the right guardians show up. I’ve invited Lao Tzu (needs no introduction), Isis (female immortal from sinking Atlantis who migrated to Egypt), and Doumu (Taoist Primordial Star Mother) to watch over her cradle. I know Emerald is my next spiritual teacher….Jem is more focused on whether I’m ready to Change diapers. It’s all about Change…at all levels. 🙂
It seems that planet Earth is also ready to have its diapers changed. It’s made a bit of a mess and has been wallowing in it for some time, crying for Change, and lying there helplessly waiting for SOMEONE to clean up the tail end of the Piscean Age. Will Aquarius clean up its diapers? We can hope so, but the reality is that we have to grow up and change our own diapers.
Snakes often appear in myth, religion, legend, or tales as fantastic beings unlike any possible real snake, often having a mix of snake with other body parts, such as having a human head, or magical shape-shifting abilities.
One famous snake able to transform back and forth between snake and human form was Lady White Snake in the Legend of the White Snake. Other snakes or snakelike beings sometimes include deities, such as Fuxi (creator of I Ching) and Nüwa (first human). Sometimes Fuxi and Nuwa are described as snakes with human heads and sometimes as humans with dragon or serpent tails.
Chinese folklore and zodiac traditions acknowledge snakes as seducers and charmers throughout history, and are held in a mix of fear and admiration by the masses. There is a common (likely male-dominated) perception that Wu Zetian, the only female empress in Chinese history, thrust herself into power using serpent qualities. The parallels between the story of Lady White Snake and Wu Zetian are easy to draw.
Legend of Lady White Snake
source: Wikipedia (edited by me)
Madame White Snake was a Chinese oral legend long before it was re-popularized in Chinese operas, films and TV series. The earliest fiction story was in the Ming Dynasty (600 years ago), titled The White Maiden Locked for Eternity in the Leifeng Pagoda.
Lu Dongbin, one of the Eight Immortals and the patron of internal alchemy, disguises himself as a man selling riceballs at the Broken Bridge near West Lake in Hangzhou. A boy Xu Xian buys some, not knowing they are actually immortal pills. He does not feel hungry for the next three days and is so puzzled that he goes back to ask the seller. Lü Dongbin laughs and carries Xu Xian to the bridge and flips him upside down, causing Xu to vomit out the pills into the lake.
There is a white snake spirit in the lake, who was practising Taoist magical arts in the hope of becoming an immortal after centuries of training and cultivation. The white snake eats the pills vomited out by Xu Xian and she gains 500 years worth of magic powers. The white snake is grateful to Xu Xian and their fates became intertwined.
A tortoise spirit also training inside the lake becomes very jealous of the white snake. One day, white snake sees a beggar on the bridge with a green snake who wants to dig out the snake’s gall and sell it. The white snake transforms into a woman and buys the green snake from the beggar, saving the green snake’s life. The green snake is grateful to the white snake and she regards the white snake as an older sister.
18 years later, the white and green snakes transform themselves into two young women, called Bai Suzhen and Xiaoqing. They travel to Hangzhou and meet Xu Xian at the Broken Bridge. Xu lends them his umbrella because it is raining. Xu Xian and Bai Suzhen gradually fall in love with each other and are eventually married. They open a medicine shop there.
Meantime, the tortoise spirit has accumulated enough powers to take human form, and he transforms into a Buddhist monk called Fahai. Fahai is still angry with Bai Suzhen and he plots to break up her relationship with Xu Xian. He approaches Xu Xian and tells Xu to let his wife drink realgar wine. Bai Suzhen unsuspectingly reveals her true form as a large white snake after drinking the wine and Xu Xian dies of shock after seeing that his wife is not human. Bai Suzhen and Xiaoqing travel to Mount Emei, where they brave danger to steal a magical herb that restores Xu Xian to life.
After coming back to life, Xu Xian still maintains his love for Bai Suzhen despite knowing her true identity. Fahai tries to separate them again so he captures Xu Xian and imprisons him in Jinshan Temple. Bai Suzhen and Xiaoqing fight with Fahai to rescue Xu Xian, and Bai uses her powers to flood the temple, drowning many innocent people in the process as well. However, Bai Suzhen’s powers are limited because she is already pregnant with Xu Xian’s child so she fails to save her husband. Xu Xian later manages to escape from Jinshan Temple and he reunites with his wife in Hangzhou, where Bai Suzhen gives birth to their son, Xu Mengjiao. Fahai soon tracks them down and he defeats Bai Suzhen and imprisons her in Leifeng Pagoda.
20 years later, Xu Mengjiao tops the imperial examination and returns home in glory to visit his parents. At the same time, Xiaoqing, who escaped when Bai Suzhen was captured by Fahai, goes to Jinshan Temple to confront Fahai and succeeds in defeating him. Bai Suzhen is freed from Leifeng Pagoda and reunites with her husband and son, while Fahai flees and hides inside the stomach of a crab.
There is a saying that a crab’s internal fat is orange because it resembles the colour of Fahai’s buddhist robe. This is a subtle dig at Buddhism by the more powerful Taoist magical powers, embodied in the snake ladies.
I like snakes. I love handling their sensuous skin, love wrestling with their powerful coiling energy. I have a snake in my hour pillar of my Chinese chart, so it may bias me. I feel if folks knew more about snakes, they wouldn’t be so afraid. They rarely attack anyone unless provoked or injured. I used to catch rattlesnakes in the Grand Canyon (if they were in my camp). We’d grab them behind the head and toss them into the river. They would swim with their heads almost a foot up in the air above the water.
I found out a lot of fascinating info about snakes which I think is useful for reducing fear of them. I extracted much of this from: www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories
1. Snakes’ paired organs, like kidneys, are front-and-back rather than side-by-side. The heart is adjustable, allowing it to move around in the absence of a diaphragm. This protects it from getting squished when large one-piece meals are ingested and squeezed tightly through the body-long esophagus. Pythons have been known to eat crocodiles. In a recent Florida case, the snake’s belly burst open after eating only half a crocodile.
If you ate a whole sheep, your belly would feel bloated, and some organs squished.
2. Snakes sniff with their tongues and are deaf.
Snakes are known to hiss and flicker their forked tongue about. Hebrew for snake, nahash, means ‘the whisperer”. Why all the drama? Snakes smell by using their split tongue to collect airborne particles and then pass them to olfactory organs in the mouth. The two parts of the tongue gives the creatures a somewhat directional sense of smell and taste. By keeping their tongues constantly flicking about, they are able to sample chemicals in the air, ground and water and use them to determine the presence of prey or predators nearby.
3. Snakes are sensitive
Snakes have acute vibration sensitivity.They have no ears, are totally deaf, and rely on vibration only. The slithering part of the belly can detect even the faintest vibrations in the air and on the ground, allowing the reptile to sense the approach of other animals. Meanwhile, pit vipers, pythons and some boas have infrared-sensitive receptors in grooves along their snouts, which enable them to sense the radiated heat of any nearby warm-blooded animals.
4. They eat what they can fit
Snakes are exclusively carnivorous, eating everything from small lizards, other snakes, small mammals, birds, eggs, fish, snails or insects all the way up to larger mammals like jaguars and deer. Because snakes eat their prey in one big gulp, the size of the snake determines the size of the animal it can consume. A younger python may start with lizards or mice, moving up to small deer and antelopes as the snake increases in age and size. Snakes have more than 200 teeth, which they do not use to chew, since they point backwards, but bite and grip their prey securely. Snakes do not chew their food and have a very flexible lower jaw allowing them to open their mouths wide enough to swallow their prey whole, even if it is larger in diameter than the snake itself.
Python swallowing a deer whole.
5. They range from 4 inches to 30 feet
Most snakes are relatively small creatures, about 3 feet in length. Although extinct Titanoboa cerrejonensis snakes were almost 40 to 50 feet in length; the longest snake now, the reticulated python, measures 30 feet. At the other end of the ruler, the smallest snake is cutie-pie Leptotyphlops carlae, a wee 4 inches long.
6. The heaviest snakes can reach 550 pounds
South America’s green anaconda can grow to more than 29 feet in length and reach a weight of 550 pounds! But they only live 30 years, as far as we know.
Green anaconda in Souith America.
7. Snakes can Fly!
There are five species of venomous, tree-dwelling snakes that can fly. Found in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, they’re technically more gliders than fliers since they use the speed of free fall and the contortions of their bodies to catch air and create lift. Experts note that flying snakes soar with even more agility than their mammalian counterparts, flying squirrels.
It gets its snaky self to the end of a branch and hangs in the shape of a J, before propelling itself from the branch with the lower half of its body. It then contorts into an S form and flattens its body to twice its normal width, creating a concavity that traps air. By undulating back and forth, the snake can actually make turns
8. How do Snakes move?
Snakes move by relaxing and contracting muscles lengthwise along the body. Sidewinding is a specialized form of motion that allows a snake to travel with speed and relatively little expenditure of energy along loose desert sand. The snake lifts a loop of its body from the surface, using its head and tail. The loop is moved sideways and then back to the ground. This creates the typical series of unconnected parallel tracks.
Serpent art by Joan Pancoe (talented psychic-astrologer in NYC)
Two of the most famous Water Snake people were Chairman Mao Tse-tung, who helped China shed its skin, and Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, an explosive strike force. One of my readers in the UK, Brian Lowry (martha1950@hotmail.com) sent me his SnakeYear description of some other famous snake people, which I will share here (abbreviated):
Snakes often seem quiet and deep in thought or daydream. Water snakes go deeper even more so as water is the element of withdrawing inwards. They say Lincoln had the ‘deeps’ and he was a snake. This tends to generate an aura of mystery, a definitive fascination about them. They make the best of themselves and like good quality clothes, books, art, food, music, wine. They are very cultured.
Picasso and James Joyce were snakes. It is regarded as a compliment in Japan to be called a snake. They also have a love of learning and a thirst for knowledge. They think things through for a long time before making a decision, and because of their wisdom, self control and security, they make great negotiators and leaders of a team. The paired snake Caduceus was once an ancient symbol of negotiation as well as healing.
Snakes are interested in people, especially if they can learn something new, and you can become their next best friend, as they find out everything about you, yet are quite secretive about their own affairs. Snakes have charisma but would never flirt around much. If the opportunity arose, then yes, they might seduce you, if that’s what they wanted to do. With charm and good looks, the snake has no need to impress. They would hate to be thought of as a flamboyant or ostentatious person — just wish to be viewed in a favourable light.
Bin Laden and George Bush were both born on metal snake days…in Chinese astrology there is no such thing as coincidence.
Every sign has its karmic ups and downs and sometimes the deeps can get bad too. If you should be foolish enough to cross them, the snake would never ever get mad or lose their temper in front of you but someday, one day, they do get even. Some things are never forgotten nor forgiven.
Also water snakes can sometimes take contemplation to extremes and spend whole days in their heads. They are not so good at taking or asking for advice. The advice for them always has to come from inside. Darwin was a classic snake waiting years and years before releasing the Origin of Species because he knew it was a controversial time bomb of transformation and renewal.
Snake has a strange, sneaky energy that creeps right down deep into the subconscious. So what you can end up with is a transformation, a healing. We can see the root cause of our habits and behaviour. We can see the reasons for things.
The sudden shock factor shows up frequently. Abraham Lincoln, John F Kennedy, Martin Luther King were all snakes, and all died of firepower. Stalin died of a massive heart attack in the last water snake year of ’53 causing a new beginning in Russia.
The snake’s inner fire can make things edgy health-wise and we should be paying attention to anything to do with preventing heart disease, high blood pressure, and strokes. Because of the water element we need to look after kidneys, bladder and anything to do with reproductive organs. 1953 had a very bad ‘flu pandemic.
Jem and I coiled up in our Garden of Eden, grateful that Adam and Eve each took a bite of the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. We’re savoring the Good, the Tao of Love. Photo: Charlie Stevens
Loving the watery female Spirit of the Sexy Snake,
Michael Winn
“Who takes Heaven as his ancestor, Virtue as his home,
the Tao as his door, and who becomes change — is a
Sage.” — Chuang Tzu, Inner Chapters
“The Tao is very close, but everyone looks far away.
Life is very simple, but everyone seeks difficulty.”
— Taoist Sage, 200 B.C
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