Hellenistic Five Point Shen Balancing
"All that is Divine Executes the Act of it's quality. It's quality is the expression of it's essential Being." ` Pontius "Providence"
"Everything is becoming; this becoming is the principle." `Heraclitus
The Ancient Greek mathematician, Pythagoras discerned that reality has a numerical basis, a model we still utilize today as the foundation of Western scientific culture. Pythagoras believed that numbers have functional attributes and qualities of personality. For Pythagoras the number five was a special favorite and contained within it the qualities of the goddess Aphrodite and the essence of the phenomena Love. (1) For this reason the pentagrams historically been held in high esteem by this ancient genius as well as many early christians who symbolized the Christ not by the cross as the church, but with the Star (*)
The pentagram, according to Pythagoras behaves as a circuit that joins the masculine aspect of the number three with the feminine aspects of the number two. When this circuit is completed a phenomena akin to the “Morphic Field” proposed by Cambridge University biochemist Rupert Sheldrake are generated and reinforced. In Sheldrake’s theory bioelectric fields are generated by all forms of life and vary depending on an individual lifeforms health. These morphic fields are commonly referred to as auras in humans, and are viewed amongst other things as an integral aspect of the immune system.
In the ancient Indian spiritual/medical system; the Ayurveda, the four classical elements are used to describe various temperaments of health and dietary lifestyle(2). In addition to earth, air, water and fire was a fifth element known as ether or akasha. According to texts on Ayurveda, ether was product of balancing the four elements. It then acts as a bioelectric field that helps to maintain health and vitality. This bioelectric field is ignited and sustained by the emotion Love while being maintained by Belief and Faith, the principle functions of the heart and behaves in the same manner as the unifying principles ( of non-romantic Love ) found within the Christian faith.
When applied medically the Pentagram is utilized by modern Traditional Chinese Medicine in the Wu Xing. The Wu xing is a five component conceptual schema that many traditional Chinese fields used to explain a wide array of phenomena including; physical and mental disease and individual temperament of a patient and that patient’s pathology (3). Although the methodology is different the ancient west had their own methodology of utilizing the pentagram for medicinal reasons know as the Pentagrammaton(4) The Pentagrammaton is born of egyptian Hermeticism, and acts as the key to the alchemical riddle of the sphinx. By combining the four denser elements in a specific order and volume a fifth state of matter is produced, just in the same way that the four combinations of beast in the sphinx combine to form a fifth beast, the Chimera. By following the Wu Xing as the map of the terrain the TCM practitioner can assist the patient towards that most important of all l'amore, Self Love.
With self love the TCM patient can invest within themselves the affection and attention that popular culture dictates we should endow upon others, most popularly in the form of romantic love. To better understand how the empirical fallacy of romantic love robs the patient of this most important aspect of healthcare we must return again to ancient Greece to the preSocratic philosopher Empodecles and his theory of Love and Strife.
Empedocles( 490-430 BC) held that the four base elements are not self moving, but rather that they were contained and regulated by the polarizing aspect of Love and Hate (Strife). To Empedocles love was the goddess Aphrodite and hate the god Ares, the harmonized aspects of Love attracted the four elements to each other while the individuality of Ares repelled the elements and scattered harmony (5).
By ways of a better understanding of Love can the TCM practitioner fully access health and healing. From Shakespeare (6) to Aleister Crowley (7), the pop music of today, love is identified as an intoxicant with a fickle and limited shelf life. A true understanding of l’amore is required to work with love in a medicinal sense and while a variety of love can be transmuted into self love understanding where love is spent in vain or simply inappropriately is of critical importance.
A TCM patient from Chicago who patronizes that cities local NFL team; the Chicago Bears is directed via hashtag to #believeinmonsters a social marketing campaign that plays on the Bear’s nickname “the monsters of the Midway”. Belief in this capacity is the central mechanic in communicating to the heart and eliciting a pseudo-religious response from the NFL patron. Belief itself is of paramount importance to all advertising not just sports organizations, but specifically here Western style sports compartmentalize and are fueled by Belief and Faith. The NFL fan is made to adhere to ritual and other rights and behaviors that help to define the local flavor of that sport’s culture as a condition of acceptance or at the very least acknowledgement.
Were that individual to direct that Love and belief inward they would find their health improved in proportion to their #beliefinmonsters. A clear example of this system at work can be found on any given Sunday as fans rally to their hero’s in stadiums and at home allowing love of team to act as a solvent. Generating a unifying field or what an unwitting color commentator might mistakenly call; an electrifying atmosphere.
This invisible communal atmosphere has recently been observed by scientist from the Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience at Denmark's Aarhus University (8) during an experiment involving monitoring the heart rates of relatives in a spanish village as their loved ones partook in the villages annual fire walking event. The scientist involved found that during times of stress, relatives and loved ones’ heart beats synchronized. This synchronization supported by the synchronization of oscillators (mechanical or electrical devices that perform based on oscillation; a periodic fluctuation between two things based on changes in energy). Internalizing this atmosphere via; yoga, meditation, Stoic practices, or any other habit forming Belief based practices including Psychonautics, the patient is filled with a newfound sense of hope and well being. Applied to psychosomatic ills, general fatigue and Shen related mental health disorders, the patient has available to them an elixir of vitality that results from the five elements balanced within the patient. This prescription placebo effect allows the TCM practitioner and patient an otherwise unavailable dimension of healthcare.
The TCM practitioner would use the pentagrammaton model when treating psychological conditions that accompany shen disorders from schizophrenia to bipolar disorders. The logic behind the pentagrammaton model is that the fifth state is a state and act of Becoming. A state of the patient advocating for themselves. Or and as the US Army correctly advertises by their use of the pentagrammaton when they encourage potential enlistees to; be all that you can be. In becoming the TCM patient is encouraged to actively advocate for their own health and well- being. That avocation is the act of love that fuels the process of defining their beliefs about themselves, and how those beliefs dictate their healthcare tomorrow.
Adenndum: Clearly this is where the citation page should be, but it's not. Let's grapple with that a moment. If anyone really wants these citation and notifies me of such I promise I will hunt them down with all the wrath of Hell behind me. If not. maybe we can agree that Ithey're probably accurate. Love.
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