Three Levels

Any time that I finish writing anything, I always run accross facts, rituals, quotes or ideas that I wish I could go back and include. After I finished Protection and Reversal Magick, my friend Nemesius taught me about the "Beating of the Bounds" tradition, which I spoke about in this new book. This time right after I turned in the final manuscript, a psychologist friend of mine came back with a dozen suggestions for how to make that influencing chapter better. I will have to include that stuff in the online class, once that launches.

Today, while reading "The Way of Qigong" by Kenneth S Cohen, I came accross a great footnote that illustrates my point about the Three Levels perfectly. In the old days Chinese priests used to not only do Qigung excercises and related energy work to heal, but also danced, drummed, and prayed. These days while most Chinese embrace Chi healing, they consider prayer to be un-scientific. In the book Cohen muses that Chinese healers will soon be shocked as the western research into the effectiveness of prayer in healing slowly gets translated into Chinese.

While Qigung itself works on all three levels within the body, indeed Jing, Qi, and Shen are an excellent example of the levels themselves, the technique largely rests upon the energetic practices of level 2 supported by the material breathing and excercise of level 3. While meditation, certainly a practive belonging to level 1, is used, it is not as stressed. Prayer gets largely marginalized not because it doesnt work, but because it doesnt fit the model easily. Thus the danger of models.