Suba wrote:As to working with the Chinese Pentagram, what configuration did you use and what was your experience? I agree it is not the same, in that, they have a five elemental system, even so, I would love to here about your experiences. Was it different than your Golden Dawn experience? I know one of their configurations has Wood – Air at the top, Earth bottom right, water top left, fire top right, and metal bottom left. This fits with the heavier elements being on the bottom and the lightest elements on top: (air/wood) being the lightest. And of course, just like air feeding fire, so does wood.
With the Wu Xing, the position on the pentagram is entirely irrelevant. You can place them anywhere on the points, as long as you place them in a certain
cycle. That is their nature, cyclic and interdependent aspects of nature that are constantly reacting to each other in different ways. The pentagram representation of them is more of a modern accident than a traditional teaching. The symbol is useful to demonstrate their relationships though, since you can just draw lines and reveal a lot of information in a single picture.
As for experience, well, yeah, it's entirely different from Western experience. GD or otherwise. They are not the same forces as the Greek Roots, and trying to build a correspondence between them is a mistake. They are different energies, viewed and used in different ways. For starters, there is no hierarchy between them like Hermetics tries to create for the West. Their nature has nothing to do with density, or which element is superior to another, or things like that. Ideally, and in nature, they are five equal forces that have unequal reactions when put together in certain ways.
The configuration I use is the traditional one, which is a series of Cycles. The most important is the Creation Cycle, which usually starts with Wood. This isn't Air, but actual Wood, or "Plant Life." Everything is dependent upon Plant Life, on the initial and general spark of Life, and nothing else would exist without it. We all eat plants or fruit, and even if you eat only meat, what do you think the animals ate? That's why Wood is the start of the Creation Cycle.
And when you move from there, you get Fire. This is because without Wood, you cannot build a Fire. You can have as much Air as you want, and you can even combust the air if you do it a certain way, but without fuel, some Wood of some kind, you will have no sustained
Fire. The existence of Fire is absolutely dependent on Wood.
Then, after Fire has run its course and the Wood has burned, you have Ash left behind. Dust, dirt. This is the Earth, from which all things grow. From the Earth, we get Metal. All you have to do is dig a little to find
some kind of Metal, and we know there are many kinds. When you sit out Metal in certain natural circumstances, you can observe Condensation, moisture accumulating on its surface. Thus, the Ancient Chinese observed, Metal creates Water, which as we all know is one of the most important forces for life in the universe, and so we get back to Wood - because Water feeds plant life, and thus Wood grows.
This is the Creation Cycle: Wood makes Fire, Fire makes Earth, Earth makes Metal, Metal makes Water, and Water makes Wood. It's an endless cycle, but there is more than one of these Cycles, because these five forces have more than one relationship. There is also the Destruction, or the "Controlling" Cycle, and more than one of those actually. The most common one is this: Wood destroys Earth, because too much plant life consumes all the nutrients in the soil, and thus the Earth is weakened; Fire destroys Metal, because, well, Metal melts; Earth destroys Water, because it sucks up the rain; Metal destroys Wood, and we've all seen an axe or a chainsaw; and Water destroys Fire. Then there are the Exaggeration and Insulting Cycles.
The conclusion of these Daoist observations is that, ideally, the Five Phases (Wu Xing) should be in complete harmony with each other, and therefore great things can happen. If even one force is out of balance, the whole cycle falls out of balance.
For example, suppose that someone has excess Fire energy. This extra Fire will cause several problems. First, Wood will be weakened, because it is the fuel for Fire. Too much Fire means that it is consuming all the Wood to grow strong. Second, too much Fire also means that there will be extra Earth, because the Fire is burning everything up and thus leaving behind more ash. Then, of course, Fire destroys Metal, so all of the Metal Energy will be greatly weakened. And lastly, because there is extra Earth as a result of the excess Fire, Water is also weakened. When there is less Water, then there is a weaker Wood, which means it falls into even more trouble than it's already in because of the excess Fire.
One little imbalance, a little extra Fire, causes a chain reaction that throws the whole system off balance, which is a disharmony that in turn causes a disease. This is why the Chinese don't view the Wu Xing in hierarchical ways like Westerners try to, and why the practice of Elemental Magic in the East revolves almost entirely around developing a perfect harmony between these energies. It's completely different from the standard Western train of thought, whether you're GD or a Bardonite or whatever.
As for the other things you said, I agree that there's no reason to argue. As long as you understand that my points are not rooted in cosmological beliefs, they're from personal experience and direct observation of the basic forces moving and interacting both internally and externally. I'm just a man with opinions, of course. But my opinions are based on how I directly experience the things I am talking about.
Just
one thing, though, which the chemist in me can't stop.
Suba wrote:There are different ways to look at it. I prefer the really simple and easy way of looking at things. From the perspective of clarity, which of the elements is easier to see through? I propose air, fire, water, and then earth?
Going by visibility, sure, but given the weaknesses of human senses I'm not sure that's a wise measure. Certainly not an objective one.
The simple and easy way of looking at it is, for me, the traditional way, which is based on which is actually more subtle in
measurable ways and not which is less visible. Going by that measure, a blind man would be quite confused. And going by my own experience, physical fire is
measurably lighter than air:
"For most “everyday” fires, the density of the gas in the flame will be about 1/4 the density of air. So, since air (at sea level) weighs about 1.3 kg per cubic meter (1.3 grams per liter), fire weighs about 0.3 kg per cubic meter." -
Link.
As above, so below, hm? [gz]
~:Shin:~