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Taoist Secrets Of Love
woman-worshipping cults of the Virgin Mary. China, whose culture was molded by a blend of Taoism and Confucianism, was spared this vicious cycle. The yin energy of the universe—personified by woman—was always viewed as necessary to its functioning and to the well-being of man. Even when the original Taoist teachings on the perfect balance between yin and yang fell into periods of decline after the Manchu reign in the Eighth Century A.D., women were not subjected to the same abuse seen in some other cultures. Chinese society became increasingly paternalistic and women were viewed as a kind of male property, but at least the general cultural sentiment favored treating this female "property" with respect. Many of the Taoist sexual manuals which survive today come from this period, and are somewhat lopsided in advising the aristocrats who read them on how to get healing yin energy from the woman. These manuals totally ignore how men can help to heal women with their powerful yang energy. They do correctly advise men to conserve their seed while suggesting that a man make love to as many as eleven concubines a night. The manuals are really medical textbooks, with a very cut-and-dried clinical approach to sex that treats it solely as a means to harmonizing one's health. Although these manuals fail to stress the higher path or teach meditative practces for exchanging energy with the women they do reflect the basic esoteric Taoist teachings that sex, when properly practiced can be incorporated into daily life with tremendous benefits to health. The Taoists may have one of the oldest esoteric traditions of cultivating sexual energy in the world, but they certainly were not alone. The idea for transforming sexual energy for spiritual purposes is well known in all the esoteric traditions of the world, both Eastern and Western, although generally it has been guarded as a great secret. Whether in Egypt, India, Tibet or Europe, the information that was revealed to the public was usually kept to a vague or abstract theoretical/theological level. A practical method to hold and transform the sex energy in the body was never taught to the public. The best place to begin a brief historical survey of this field is with Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus, the famous 16th century physician and alchemist extraordinaire. Paracelsus' credentials as a medical scientist are impeccable; more than 400 years ago he