Beyond TCM. The Daoist Magical Healing Tradition. By Jason Read
In this article I plan to explore other avenues of healing in the wonderfully diverse world of Daoism. The popular western approach to the Taoist healing arts has been quite limited until recently with improved access to traditional teachers and academics increasingly translating previously unknown texts. If I mention the words “Chinese Healing” the usual image is one of acupuncture needles, massage (tui na), cupping therapy, herbal medicine and moxibustion. Of course these are all wonderful methods which are generally categorised as Traditional Chinese Medicine. These methods are indeed employed throughout the Far East, yet it is only a fraction of the picture. Why this is so is perhaps because they are the most acceptable to the occidental way of thinking. It is the easiest for the western mindset to grasp and graft on spurious and often ill fitting scientific theories as to why they work. They are easily rationalised. Despite these modern attempts to put TCM in the scientific model there is an esoteric foundation that represents the real basis of not only TCM but other arts of healing you may have only touched upon or simply never heard of. I am not here to try and convince you that this world is real or relevant to your own work, only that it exists and that you at least temporarily, with an open mind, read this article. With that caveat out the way, let’s crack on. To understand the roots of the Chinese healing arts we have to cast our minds back thousands of years, before there was Daoism. Let us go to one of the Southern Provinces, say, Sichuan. We see a shaman, a Wu yi, dressed in colourful robes billowing in the
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winds in an explosion of reds, blues and yellows. A steady bell rings in a hypnotic pulse as the shaman steps in the pattern of the Big Dipper, she is literally chanting love songs to attract the attention of the Lord. The Lord suddenly appears as in trance she is whisked to a world of incredible beauty, a world apparently in the stars, purple mists of numinous power swirl in veils. The Lord answers her questions about the illness infecting her village. … It is from this shamanic scenario that Chinese healing is rooted. The above flight of fancy is not my imagination but is based on The Nine Songs of Qu Yuan. From Shamanism emerged various ideas about the magical body. In dreams and trances the Wu Yi became aware of energy. All of nature was empowered by the great Cosmic Breath. … Qi, and Spring 2020 — Page 15
