FUNDAMENTALS |
BELIEFS A — Z |
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INSPIRATION |
ENCYCLOPEDIA |
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Agricultural Order The Zodiac man. Life Energy FundamentalsAgriculture introduced complex societies with thousands of inhabitants. It was a tremendous change of human life, bringing new needs as well as a new view of the world. Most of all, the agricultural world needed order. Cosmologies were formed to confirm the idea of a universe devoted to organization and strict order. Society was cyclic, as it had been before agriculture, but instead of daily cycles with little meaning reaching from dusk to dawn, elongated periods became the norm. The rhythm of the year became more important than that of the day. Life became the cycle of sow and harvest. Seed led to birth, which led to growth, then to withering. Death was the Reaper (see the image below). To a large extent, the pre-agricultural world was one of chaos. Little was known, less was controlled, and not much could be foretold about the very next moment. Agriculture introduced longtime planning, and the conviction that the future could be mastered. So, this also had to be true for human life, and the force behind it. Systems of cultivating and influencing the life force emerged, as did very intricate and complex ideas about its nature. The human body was like a field, in as much as it contained a great number of parts that needed to be kept in a certain order, a balance, or it would certainly deteriorate. The life force had to flow about, like irrigation, but with moderation, or it would damage its container. Through the era of agriculture, ideas and beliefs about a life force became increasingly complex. The life force became less of a hidden mystery, and more of a circumstance among many others in the world, needing to be considered, cultivated, and mapped. This can be seen very clearly in the many Medieval pictures of Zodiac Man, the human body divided according to the twelve Zodiac signs, like the illustration here. Each body part was governed by a Zodiac sign, deciding its state and fate. It is also evident in the Chinese tradition about the life energy qi flowing along a number of meridians (see the next page) in the body. Elaborate systems of stimulating and influencing this flow were developed, such as acupuncture, where needles are used for it. Everything in the world, including the life force, was to be controlled and furrowed.
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