Did five tai chi sets this morning. It’s still warm enough here in central-southern New England that I was able to do my first set out on the lawn under the maple tree. Then I came inside, and did four in the living room, surrounded by presents and boxes. These four faced the four directions of druidry.
I felt it was important, this morning, to do one tai chi form outside, under heaven or sky, on the longest night of the year; but my bare feet got cold after just one iteration, so I came back inside after the first one.
John Michael Greer has a new column out on The Well of Galabes, outlining the core triad of occultism — magic, alchemy, and astrology. His prior column, a plea for occult philosophy, affected me strongly. I am sure he’ll get to this as a part of magic, but I feel that the martial arts — the movement and body-management part of occultism — is a relatively-recent addition to the occult tradition. As such, it doesn’t really belong to the occult tradition yet in the same way that magic and alchemy and astrology do, although maybe I’ll play a part in changing that (and as an aside, I’m kind of mad at WordPress for breaking the search-and-link function that allowed me to search my own content and put in links easily). One could argue that it’s a subset of alchemy. That’s kind of how I think of it — a body-aware alchemy, or a kinesthetic alchemy.
Most of all, though, I’m aware that it’s now the most consistent part of my spiritual practice. Some days I write about druidry and meditate. Some days I meditate and do druidry without writing about them. But I always do tai chi and write about it. Currently.
