p. 71

a halo will surround his head, all

p. 72

his body will emit supernatural light and will be as incandescent as the sun and the moon." (MT, p. 69)

"he can hide in the sun, in the moon, or in the stars." (MT, p. 250)

p. 72

"An-ch>i Sheng ... obtained the power of invisibility and ascended to heaven after having lived in the Lo-fu Mountain of Kwangtung province eating only water-rush stalks".

{cf. the bullrushes of Mos^eh, who likewise ascended to heaven}

"And the second-century B. C. E. alchemist Liu An was renowned for having prepared an elixir that not only allowed him to ascend to heaven, but also his poultry and dogs when they licked the vial he dropped into the courtyard upon his sudden takeoff." {psychedelic drugs affect animals}

p. 73

"Emperor Shun ... learned from the two daughters of Emperor Yao, Nu: Ying and O Huang, how to fly and creep like a dragon."

p. 72

I can bestride the hoary crane and soar above the nine degrees of heaven."

p. 73

"The famous emperor Chi reached the heavenly immortals by ascending to them on a winged horse, or according to another version on the back of a long-bearded dragon capable of carrying seventy people at once." (PA, p. 18)

"K>u Yu:an (332-295 B.C.E.) wrote an allegorical poem about flying over the Kun-lun Mountains in a chariot carried by dragons and preceded by Wang-shu, the charioteer of the moon." (PA, pp. 14-7)

"a flying chariot (fei-ch>e) during the reign of the emperor Ch>eng T>ang (eighteenth century B.C.E.) ... was built instead by the tribe of the Chi-

p. 74

kung, known from other testimonies to consist of single-armed, three-eyed people riding striped horses." (PA, p. 19)

"the seventeenth Giuseppe Desa of Coppertino is held by the Catholic Church to be the patron of aviation." {Actually. levitation is a praeternatural power having no relation to mechanical aviation!}

[cf. the levitator Home (supra, p. 24)]

"Many such occurrences were collected in the Record of Researches after Spirits (Shen-shen chi) by a certain Yu Pao, whose brother experienced temporary death for several days, during which he "had witnessed all sorts of things relating to kuei and shen in the heavens and on earth." (RSCh, pp. 126-7)

"A Posterior Record of Researches on Spirits (Shen-shen hou-chi) ... explains one case of bilocation by describing the free soul of a person as a perfect duplicate thereof."

"Skillful magicians are said to be able to extract ... from their bodies ... the souls of beautiful women, who then have no recollection of the occurrence , ... in a dream." (RSCh, pp. 100-2)

"A twelfth-century story reports that a young man called Chien-pu and also Shun-yu was "able to emit his own shen" and thus obtain information on things going on elsewhere." (RSCh, pp. 103-4)

"A case of ... animation of a body of the deceased by the soul of a different person is reported by Chang Tu, a ninth century officer, in his Records of the Manifest Apartment (Sun-shih chi).

{This is likewise an Ajivika practice.}

The General Description of Strange Things (I-wen tsung lu) ... ascribes to a kuei the capacity of sneaking into a fresh corpse in order to come back to life."

"In Singapore, female tang-chi specialized in otherworldly journeys for "soul raising" (khan-bo^ng) or necromancy. Soul raisers sought out the help of Kuan-yin to guide them through the spirit world. During every se’ance they reenacted a sort of new Divine Comedy, talking with spirits in hell, imitating their voices, ... continuing until they found the ghost they were looking for."

"A special female tang-chi is in charge of the oracle of the Little God in Chiali. The bride-to-be, the ghost of a girl who has died in childhood, requests a wedding ... by appearing in the dream of someone in her family ... . It is the job of the medium ... to assist the family in the marriage. ... The wedding actually takes place and looks like a real wedding, except for the fact that, when she appears from the taxi {rickashaw}, the bride is a dummy two and a half feet tall, dressed like a dead person in three layers of clothing".

"Not unlike the early sixteenth-century German magician Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim, ... the standard Taoist operations concerning stars ... include conjuration, installation of stars in one’s body, and walking on stars. The last one ... is particularly interesting : the stars of the constellation of the Dipper take the adept through the three gates of the nine heavens, where he shows each keeper a talisman and says the keeper’s name; the keeper then lets him enter. The adept comes to the golden gate, the gate of paradise, where his talisman is checked by the guardians of the four poles, who let him pass after consultation with the emperor of the golden gate. Having reached the heaven Yu Ch>ing, where there is no spatial direction, he eventually enters a paradise , in the middle of which grows a jade tree with golden branches, surrounded by dragons. [MT, p. 308]

The closest Western analogue to this is the so-called "Mithra liturgy," a magical Hellenistic text in which the stars help the adept in his heavenly ascent". [infra, p. 207 " "the Mithra liturgy" ..., describing the otherworldly journey of the initiate after death beyond the sphere of the fixed stars, as far as the throne of the Supreme god who sets in motion the stars of the Big Dipper."]

p. 82

To extend the invitations, the high priest relies on messenger gods.

p. 83

the clerks mounted on the flying dragons – all the gods of transmission.

The priest is transformed into a cosmic being

whose __

is __

head

a cloud of ink,

hair

scattered stars,

nose

a mountain, and

teeth

like a forest of swords.

"the six masters and four saints ... leave the golden gate behind them and descend to earth in a chariot of cloud carried by a team of cranes." (TRChS, p. 78)

"fragrance ascends to heaven, taking the form of celestial seals and drawing to the altar the

p. 84

immortals seated on colored clouds, "all the generals and marshals of outer space." (TRChS, p. 80)

"Two documents written in red ink assure that the gate of heaven is open and the "stellar winds" are favorable. The priest prepares for the "unicorn walk," ... so that he can meet the potentates of heaven. ... . ... the priest is sending to heaven the "red infant," an energy from his lower abdomen, through the stars of the Dipper to a "silent audience before the Supreme Emperor."" (TRChS, p. 83)

accompanied by powerful gonging and drumming, the potentates of the four

p. 85

tea is presented to the Master of Jade Purity".

Visualize the __

as __

red inkstone

sun

dish of water

moon

paper

golden strips

brush

green dragon

visualize yourself entering the Three Terraces and the Big Dipper."

... hymns are ... sung on increasingly higher tones" (TRChS, p. 197).

There, at the center of hell, he performs a powerful exorcism to release the soul of the deceased and, summoning the "divine soldiers of the Five Camps," he smashes ... a paper fortress. The family of the deceased help in the destruction." (TRChS, pp. 216-28)