When we do Taoist magic, we stomp our feet after reciting spells, but many people wonder why we must do that. In this article, you will learn about the secrets of this magic with our Saam Law Tao wisdom. Please be warned that it would require you to read other blog posts to understand everything; it is very complex for a newbie like you!
Metaphysics and Human Body
As we have been explaining in the “Secret Behind the Moon” and “Qi Gong Mysterious and Misunderstanding” posts, our body has all the parts that resemble our “complete system,” which connects to the Yuen Sun, the local body, and the soul body or even the ghost altar etc. Read the linked articles if you don’t know what I mean!
Your head resembles the Yuen Sun, that’s simple; then it goes down the throat, through the whole body, which resembles the “space” between the Yuen Sun and the world here. The groin level is where the boundary between our world and space meets. Our legs resemble the in and out channels from the ghost altar and into this world.
The Left goes in, and the right goes out. We push things into the ghost altar when we stomp our left foot. We push things out of the ghost altar when we stomp the right foot. You can see this pattern in our FU symbols with the “rain ghost” symbol too.
The ghost altar acts like a satellite or station that sits above us, where we can connect to the preheaven source. It could be your Yuen Sun if you are not a Taoist. If you are a Taoist in our lineage, the Celestial Court is the source. Imagine the celestial court is like the resource data center, and your ghost altar is the server that gets the data from the data center and sends it to you in this world. If we want to talk to the gods in the court, we will stomp our left foot to send the message to the middle station so that it can project to them. Anything we need from the gods, we will stomp right foot to push the power from the ghost altar to where you are and out to the world we see.
Your hands are used when things reach this world, so we always stomp the foot before doing the magic with our hands. The hands are the in and out channels to the heart in your local preheaven energy body. Left-hand takes things into the heart, right-hand outputs from the heart.
After you have stomped the foot, it’s like things have beamed up to the sky level, or it has beamed down from the sky and landed on top of your head. You can then do things with it. We use the right hand to output the power and the left hand to take things in and send them back to the ghost altar for the gods, like scanning a file for the god to see. For example, during the chick fu ceremony, when we sanctify a fu, we would use the left-hand sword finger to project the spells to the FU, which sends the FU to the god for approval.
The hands and feet are naturally programmed to do this for yourself, to beam things to the ghost altar from the Yuen Sun. However, ordained Taoists don’t get their power from the Yuen Sun for doing magic; they use the celestial court as their power source. There is a very critical reason for that.
Your Yuen Sun has the resources to help you and help you with things in your life. However, it can only fuel one person or a few related to you because they also help you back in return. However, if you want to help people in public, such as what we do for the public, offering services like exorcism and so on, then your Yuen Sun would be exhausted in no time. You can read about my journey in the “Tin Yat” post; it is scary when you keep draining the Yuen Sun for other people with no relationship with you!
The celestial court was born for this purpose, to help more people in need and for everyone in the lineage to have a place to invest in and cultivate the powers we use. That way, no one uses their life resources to save others, which will not work in the long run. It’s like you have one apple tree at home, it can feed you, but if you feed four people with it, the fruit might not grow fast enough to replenish the need. If you feed a village with it, the tree will be left with only roots very soon. The village needs a farm, and people grow the trees and harvest together, making it much better for everyone. This is what a celestial court and a lineage/sect needed. Many Westerners don’t understand the concept and think lineage or sects are unnecessary for Taoism, all due to ignorance.
Rain Ghost Concept
Your ghost altar is where our atmosphere is, like the “space” boundary zone. Imagine your ghost altar is like a flying satellite; it can help you receive things from the source, such as your Yuen Sun or the celestial court, depending on what you want to use as the source.
We have a symbol in the FU language called the rain ghost symbol. Now you should know what it means. Rain-something means to bring over something from the celestial court or the Yuen Sun and park it in the cloud level, which allows us to wait to see when to use it later. It gives us the element, but it is parked above like some gifts flying to your house, and the helicopter is just in the sky, hovering and waiting to see when to land and deliver the box.
Ghost-leg-something is telling the ghost-altar or the ground emperor altar to help you push out power to a certain element and beam it to this world here, which affects reality.
For example, rain-SaamLawJoSiFuhead, you are calling Saam Law Jo Si to come over from the celestial court, which will stay in the “cloud level” and wait for us to use it later. Rain-whatever will bring in potentials, as we say, bring in the D1 elements so the D6 can have it; it can influence the soul level of things.
For example, a ghost-horse means for the ground emperor to kick out the power to us and give us the power of a horse, which is a metaphor for speed. It will be like d6 affecting d8; the soul energy makes things happen in reality. Anything ghost-whatever affects reality and creates physical results.
If rain-ghost combined, such as rain-ghost-exorcise-evils, then it means you are telling the power from the celestial court to come to the ground emperor place and the world here to help you exorcise evils. This will be like actual work to be done, which summons the power from both the court and the ground emperor department (which can also be your Yuen Sun and ghost altar).
The ghost-leg symbol can also help you “store things” too. It depends on the “mark” where we tick the leg to “kick” or to “store and contain.” A little marking will tell the ground emperor that this is to be remembered and stored or executed.
There is also a small marking on the rain-cloud head to mark the five elements style of power from the court. If the two little strikes in the rain character are like a zig-zag, it is a lightning symbol which means “fire” element, something to be done and executed for real. Sometimes we have water heads with rain “droplet” form; it depends on the tiny change in marking, which will change the message for the court to understand what we want from the gods.
You might be very confused, but it’s okay. You will know what I mean when you ordain and learn in the lineage. The programming language and codes of Taoist magic are very sophisticated and all interrelated to the deep metaphysics knowledge, which takes years to learn. This is another reason why I laugh at those people who travel to China and come back in a month or two, then call themselves a master with a certificate in their hand. What can you learn with this kind of route? Nothing but just fame.
Stepping Magic
Another bonus for everyone who reads up to this point! The stepping magic 步罡踏斗 (Bu Gong Ta Dew). You might see some Taoists do it during a ceremony, where they lay out a special carpet with some special designs, then they will step around the carpet like dancing as they chant and sing.
Everyone can do this if the source is your Yuen Sun. Remember that your physical body can command the preheaven elements? The two legs are the “ghost legs,” which connect to the ghost altar. When you step around, you are aligning your ghost altar to whatever you want so that it can align itself with connecting to something in another place. It’s like a big satellite dish with an antenna poking up to the sky; you must align it by aiming at something and beaming the signal to that subject.
Try this yourself, and you will master it in a few minutes. Let’s try to soul travel and put magic on something in another place; we are using the Yuen Sun as the source, so you can do it even if you are not a disciple here.
Let’s say you are at home, sitting in front of your computer. Get up and stand up; ensure you have space to move around and not crash into anything dangerous. Close your eyes and focus on yourself.
Think of your office or car or anything that is not locally accessible. Then try to symbolically walk around to a certain location of that car or office like you are in a VR game. After doing so, you aligned your ghost altar to this subject and aimed well. Put your palms together at heart and then call your Yuen Sun by saying “oh my god! (or yuen sun)” then stomp the left foot, and then place the palms to the object you see now (in the visual) and say “HA~!” while you deploy the power with your palm to the subject, stomp the right foot 3x. Now you have empowered the object with your Yuen Sun’s power already.
This is how to easily access the Yuen Sun’s power and deploy it into anything you want to help. The stepping part is to align with the subject.
Now you understand the concept, but how do you align yourself to the celestial court, a certain god, or a certain “space” such as the ghost world? You need to have a code for that. Do you know about the dancing pads? Imagine you have a pad on the floor; you can create a code for a subject and keep using that stepping pattern as a code to reach that subject. As long as your faith is there, the “spiritual embryo” will be born, and hence it will grow in power and work better and better as you keep doing it.
In the lineage, our cultivated codes are encrypted and secured; you can use what we have and access the gods, the court, and so on. It allows quick access to align the antenna to the different powers so you can connect to that subject easily. Without stepping, you can still do it; it might sometimes not work well because your antenna might be pointing in the wrong direction while the court is at your back. However, to do the stepping magic, you would need the “pad,” the special consecrated carpet that sets the codes on the floor. Stepping without the carpet allows you only to control the alignment of your ghost altar because that is personal. If you want to set the alignment for your altar’s “ghost altar,” which we call the Yuen Ling Taan 玄靈壇 (Xuan Nieong Taan), then you need to have the carpet.
There are many codes, such as the seven-star, bagwa, nine-star, etc. They are all special codes used in the lineage system to represent something in the preheaven. There are also some stepping codes for specific gods too. However, to be able to do them, the disciple must have a strong altar built, at least in the Tin Ting stage, and it must be done with the cloud shoes and the special carpet (罡單 Gong Darn). The word Gong already means “alignment.” It’s not something a newbie would learn, but I could teach newbies how to do stepping magic using their Yuen Sun and ghost altar; that is not a secret!
Ordain now to learn more! This is the place for knowledge and wisdom, as you can tell from the micro-portion of our FU lesson teachings above! Learning magic is fun if you are serious about it and have the right mindset to learn!
