We are in luck -
- I've been learning the Tao for over 30 years - the Tao is not in competition with any religion - the Tao is everything and filled with the secrets of what we would call in Christian religion, mystics - I meet monthly with a group who study the Tao and in our group are a couple of Chinese Doctorate students attending UT and Sunday a Taoist Monk from Taiwan visited for the day - where I did not ask these questions in particular the reading material is answering some of our questions reading this book.
First and I think important is for us to know is the word luck that we associate with a hap hazard bit of superstition where as in Taoism luck can be described as a system, like our postal system that transfers one thing to another.
There are many symbols in Taoism like for instance the Dragon - which is not suggesting a real dragon or that anyone like in the stories of Knights slayed a dragon - the dragon is simply the essence (like the Tao), that goes in a line and many followers in that unit, going into another place to give birth to new things there. Like food - many kinds that will nourish the body however, usually described as the sperm in mass entering and then giving the place a potential of birth, of the baby.
In Taoism, very important is Yuen Sun, such as the Yuen Sun of our life, or even the altar as a Yuen Sun. A Yuen Sun will be the resource pool, where all the things are, and where things started from.
The physical body is the container in this world that contains the soul inside, and you are responsible for acting things out, doing it, and at the end, showing yourself by physical action. When you see, hear, smell, you will absorb the light and energy back to your mind, and your mind will connect with your Yuen Sun again and “teach” your Yuen Sun how to adjust itself according to your life here.
If your Yuen Sun cannot deliver its package to you, because of some issue with the soul or other factors such as “luck stealing magic” and such, then you are going to be having “bad luck”.
You and your Yuen Sun, which is the soul in dimension 6. In order to passes through dimension 6, you have to open up the dimension 5, which is actually the “doorway” or "gate" to your soul here. In dimension 5, there is a lot of forces pushing downward because energy keeps flowing from 1 to 2 to 3 and downward to 9. In order to “open the gate” going backward in the stream, it’s hard and there is a lot of resistance force, just like trying to swim upstream in a river or walking backward in an escalator. But it’s not impossible.
An outsized number is not an accurate number - it shows the difficulty or the wonderment like the 100 Schools of Thought which mean uncountable bits of wisdom. And so we can safely assume 26 is an outside number for 6 that shows the difficulty if you allow luck stealing magic by doing some of the traditional activities that could prompt luck stealing.
Remember Taoism is the first religion of China long before Confucius much less Buddhism - goes back at least 8000 years before Christ and the traditions and precepts are basic to China with the only change in religion as basic to society happening because of Mao. Most Taoist practices were altered during the time of Genghis Khan, who appointed Chang-chun overseer of all religions in China, and the Dragon Gate sect thus played a critical role in the conservation of the Han Chinese culture.
First of all, Taoist Magic, is magic that draws power from the Tao. The normal Tao of a human being is their own Yuen Sun and so the ordinary Taoist is often drawing energy out of their own Yuen Sun, pulling resources from their pre-heaven body to the post-heaven body, unleashing the potentials to reality. While this idea is great, it does have an issue like using your credit card to pay off things before you have the actual money.
Well, life is not always fair, because there are these thieves and bullies around, using all sorts of secretive and invisible methods to steal our luck, and loots away the success that we worked hard to achieve. Stealing is bad, but have you thought of people not successful in stealing and they start to destroy things that they are not able to have? Some burglars tried to break into a house and they failed to find the cash they wanted, then they will throw things around, destroy your furniture and “give you a lesson”. This kind of things will happen in the physical world which is like the energy of luck stealing.
There are in Taoism five methods of stealing luck - remember luck is not as we understand luck but a pathway of sorts - A form of magic that does the luck stealing can be doing one or even all five at once, depending on their magic knowledge and methods.
Luck stealing can be done with magic of all sorts, but it can also be done by people who are not intended to do so, yet their mind’s greediness plus the evil spirits that were tapped to them will make it happen, and this is especially commonly seen with the “prayers type” of people in the society. Some people don’t know about magic, and they just believe in some religious paths that promote a lot of “praying” for whatever they want to happen or say to their “gods”. That, of course, includes most of their “venting” and complaining about life.
“Why should this person have all the success, it should be mine, why it’s so not fair?”
When they start complaining and venting out all these things, which can even be done in their subconscious level, their “praying” can be tapped by other spiritual things, including evil spirits trying to find some fun in the air. How cool is it to “pretend god”? These spirits will then help them fulfill their requests the “tricky way” in exchange for their joy and loot.
Prayer will not protect you - prayer is like sending messages through the internet without a security program installed, and hackers will tap in for their own whatever reasons. In order to protect yourself from all these things mentioned above, including all kinds of luck stealing, and energy vampires, you must build up your power for protecting yourself and be able to build walls around yourself that will shield you from the contamination and intrusions.
The protection most often suggested is to learn the laws of magic which are essentially the various laws of divination (I ching) and behavior listed in the book over well over 2000 precepts that include treatment of the earth, when to use the wheel, when to make choices that involve money or the body or flowers etc. When I shared earlier how many of the Asians I worked with when choosing their home referred to a large book and knew certain rules that I soon learned, most of you associated the practices with Feng Shui which is something else again, that is related to the wheel of life and how to bring luck to the various aspects of life sectioned off on that (physical) wheel that is built on a compass - each room holds various aspects of family life. However, all these practices are connected and part of the magic that will be useful to protect someone from luck stealing.
Most of the luck stealing is a retaliation by someone's jealousy of your wealth, station in life, circumstances of your life, you relationship to those with whom you prefer to be the apple of their eye. Which can account for a mother-in-law who is jealous of her son's wife or a husband who feels the lack of attention from the wife because of the birth of a child - for very serious luck stealing there is a ceremony performed that has to do with distancing in which your name is changed and everything about you is changed including birth date and legal records.
In China the tiger is thought in terms of both awe and admiration: its prowess, its ferocity, its beauty, and the harmony of the opposites. Tigers kill evil men and protect good men however, an earth symbol that is the equal rival of the Chinese dragon which is associated with the Emperor of China
All to say, the mother's concern for the luck of their children is far more than minimizing it to how we look at magic - it is the basis of their religious belief and the words have deeper meaning than we in the west associate meaning to these words. These mother's are frantic trying to protect their children from luck stealers like if our children did not understand that a vehicle could kill if they fall off their bike while riding in the street only this had little to do with safety and more to do with leaving yourself open to have your luck stolen.
