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Chinese elements and blog categories

12:31 / 29.08.02

I've been thinking about categorising things recently, in the context of a lot of things but partly spurred by the whole "what is the head shop / what are forums for anyway?" thing going on here.

My blog has a category function but I'm a bit sick of the ones that I have set up. They're pretty pedestrian - "personal", "politics", "geek" etc. I've decided to try other forms of subdivision, in this case, by Chinese elements. (With an extra "penguins" category.)

I don't actually know that much about the system though. I've done some rather minor research (notes on this whole thing here) but I was wondering whether any of you smart barbetypes had any thoughts on the matter, about how the usual sort of posts that go in blogs might fit in... or, for that matter, into other systems. Better ones?

14:57 / 29.08.02

It'd be tricky. The five elements (and there's a Magick thread on it - probably has "bagua or ba gua" in the title) refer to stages of motion or development.

Wood expands, Fire is maximum expansion. It collapses into Earth, which contracts into Metal.
Metal is maximum contraction, "melting" into Water, which fuels Wood....

Metal is almost all Yin, Fire is almost all Yang, Earth is balanced between the two.
Metal would be actionless contemplation, Fire would be thoughtless action. Hmm.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

14:59 / 29.08.02

The union of the two being Tai Chi, or near as dammit. Cool.

18:40 / 29.08.02

Here's a thred onBagua & the 5 elements.

Should cover alot of what you're asking.

here's some more:
magickal martial arts
The NEW "Magical arts... Martial arts. Two great tastes that taste great together"

20:17 / 29.08.02

Thanks. I reckoned that, if I was going to go for a new categorising thing, I might as well stretch my mind a bit and go for something with a good philosophical basis to it... it will be interesting trying to get an intuitive feel that allows me to categorise things properly. Should learn something by the process.

Better than going for, I dunno, categories based on characters from the Muppet Show.

*thinks*

actually, that would be cool