Relighting the Cauldron: Embracing Nature Spirituality in Our Modern World by Wendy Van Allen

Author:Wendy Van Allen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: relighting the cauldron;relight the cauldron;wendy van allen;wendy van allan;green spirituality;green witchcraft;nature work;ancestor work;nature spirituality;green living;green living in a modern world;climate crisis;pagan;paganism;witch;witchcraft
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD.
Published: 2023-01-27T17:23:15+00:00

Tending the Flame

Taoism

Rev. Dr. Diane Rooney is an interspiritual minister, a professional acupuncturist, and a practicing Taoist. She teaches Eastern Taoist philosophy and Qigong. Here, she discusses Taoism as an ancient, Indigenous tradition from China, rooted in Earth energy for balance and healing:

Taoism is one of the original Indigenous traditions, dating back so far that they don’t even really have a date because this predates writing, so anywhere from 4,000 to 5,000 BCE to 10,000 BCE—that’s how long it has been around. The roots go back to the Wu people, who were the shamans at the time who saw Nature being not only the water, the air, the earth, the dirt, the animals, but also cosmology, the stars, the planets, and their movements. They did not separate themselves from nature; they saw themselves as part of it. They reasoned that what they saw outside of themselves had to also be inside. So, they followed the cycles of the cosmos and the cycles of the Earth’s seasons as an example to follow the cycles within oneself, to become one with, and by becoming one with, one remains healthy.

I have been practicing my career as Taoism, my vocation, because I’m an acupuncturist, a Chinese medicine practitioner, and that falls under the umbrella of Taoism because we look at the body as whole, as the Tao, as a perfect harmony of Yin and Yang. When somebody comes into my office and there is something that’s off, their Yin and Yang are imbalanced, so my job is to find out where in them the cycles of Nature are off, and then I balance the cycles with the meridians and with the needles at the acupuncture points to bring back the balance of Yin and Yang, to bring them closer to Tao.

Taoism is a philosophy. It later became a religion, but that was much later. It was originally a philosophy and a way of being, and it slowly started to become a religion with temples and things like that, but basically it got pushed to the background because the Chinese wanted to establish Confucianism. After that, the temples started popping up, and Tao became more of a religion with ritual, but really in the ancient philosophy there is nobody you give reverence to because you are the Tao. As a religion, it’s communal. You go to the temple, you make offerings to the cauldron, you either put fruit down or you burn something. It’s an offering to the spirits; you feed the hungry ghosts all that stuff before you enter the temple and share your reverence to different archetypes. So that’s communal, but it’s not necessary. I practice alone; it’s not about the group. It’s about one’s individual connection to the cycles of Nature.

Tai Chi is part of Taoism. It started with the teacher; he was watching a cobra and a crane fighting each other, and he was mesmerized by their movements. They were both so graceful. He was so mesmerized, and neither of them lost; they separated.

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