Mantak Chia - Inner Alchemy Astrology: Practical Techniques for Controlling Your Destiny

Acknowledgments

The authors extend our gratitude to the many generations of Taoist masters who have passed on their special lineage in the form of an unbroken oral transmission over thousands of years. We thank Taoist Master Yi Eng (One Cloud Hermit) for his openness in transmitting the formulas of Taoist Inner Alchemy.

We offer our eternal gratitude and love to our parents and teachers for their many gifts to us. Remembering them brings joy and satisfaction to our continued efforts in presenting the concepts and techniques of the Universal Healing Tao System; their contribution has been crucial.

We wish to thank the thousands of unknown men and women of the Taoist healing arts who developed many of the methods and ideas presented in this book. For their continuous personal encouragement, we wish to thank our fellow instructors, Taoists, students, astrology clients, families, and friends who have inspired the writing of this book by their eager desire to understand Inner Alchemy astrology.

Special thanks go to our Thai production teamHirunyathorn Punsan, Sopitnapa Promnon, Udon Jandee, and Suthisa Chaisamfor their work on the previous edition of this book, as well as many of the images.

Putting Inner Alchemy into Practice

The information presented in this book is based on the authors personal experiences and knowledge of Taoist astrology and Universal Healing Tao practices. The practices and chart reading described in this book have been used successfully for thousands of years by Taoists trained by personal instruction. However readers should not undertake the practices without receiving personal transmission and training from a certified instructor of the Universal Healing Tao. Certain practices, if done improperly, may cause injury or result in health problems. This book is intended to supplement individual training by the Universal Healing Tao and to serve as a reference guide. Anyone who undertakes these practices on the basis of this book alone does so entirely at his or her own risk.

The meditations, practices, and techniques of astrological interpretation described herein are not intended to be used as an alternative or substitute for professional medical treatment and care. If any readers are suffering from illnesses based on mental or emotional disorders, an appropriate professional health care practitioner or therapist should be consulted. Such problems should be corrected before you start Universal Healing Tao training.

Neither the Universal Healing Tao nor its staff and instructors nor Inner Traditions can be held responsible for the consequences of any practice or misuse of the information contained in this book. If the reader undertakes any exercise without strictly following the instructions, notes, and warnings, the responsibility must lie solely with the reader.

This book does not attempt to give any medical diagnosis, treatment, prescription, or remedial recommendation in relation to any human disease, ailment, suffering, or physical condition whatsoever.

Introduction

Taoist astrology and Chinese astrology are actually the same thing. Many disciplines of the Taoist arts are referred to as either Chinese or Taoist yet are identical. This is because early Taoist thought was mainly defined in China, and so many of the theories were justifiably Chinese at the time.

Chinese astrology defines the five-element makeup of a person using calculations based on the year, month, day, and time of birth. The place of birth has relevance as wellparticularly important is to know if daylight saving time was in use at the time of your birth, in which case the hour needs adjusting. Daylight saving time does not show where the natural place of the sun was, and it is solar time and solar year that are used.

Chinese astrology is also known as the Four Pillars of Destiny. The year, month, day, and time information form four pillars of information about your life, as defined by the universal energy at the time of birth. It is also called Ba Zi, which means eight characters, as each of these four pillars has two partsa heavenly stem and an earthly branchmaking eight characters. They are expressed in five-element terms.

Knowledge of your own five-element makeup can help you with your Supreme Inner Alchemy practices, or if you are an instructor, you can use astrological chart information with your students. Knowledge of their own element makeup will help them better understand the principles behind the meditations and the positive and negative emotions stored in their own organs. It will be an aid to achieving faster, more pertinent, and balanced results.

The Universal Healing Tao practices are based on Inner Alchemy, which means changing the balance of elements within yourself. These esoteric practices involve connecting yourself to the original element energies. Therefore, understanding the relative strengths of your own elements can make the practices more personally beneficial. Although your calculated birth (or natal) chart itself will not be changed by the practices, you can balance and strengthen elements within yourself and this can change your health and fate. Indeed, it is more difficult to read the chart of a long-practicing Taoist as he or she will have already corrected some element weaknesses through Inner Alchemy.

This book is written to accompany calculations from the Taoist or five-element astrology program on Mantak Chias website: www.universal-tao.com/InnerAlchemyAstrology . The first seven chapters describe how you can use the information from your free Inner Alchemy chart to understand your own five-element makeup and balance it using Inner Alchemy practices. The last three chapters continue with explanations on the dynamic, changing luck cycles and other further interpretations that can be paired with the full personal Inner Alchemy astrology chart also available from the website for a fee. Please note that appendix A contains useful reference tables from throughout the book. Once you have read the book and understand the basics of interpreting your birth chart, you can use this appendix for easy access while working on your own chart interpretations.

This book can also be used with accurate data from self-calculated charts or other Chinese astrology program charts. There are Universal Healing Tao instructors throughout the world who can teach the practices referred to in this book. (Consult www.universal-tao.com , the Universal Healing Tao website, for instructors in your country.) The art of Inner Alchemy astrology is also regularly taught by the authors.

Taoist Astrology

Taoist Supreme Inner Alchemy astrology and feng shui were conceived thousands of years ago from observations that early Taoists made about the constellations above us and how their positions correlated to people and their fates. The only data people had available came from looking at the sky. The astrological chart could then be plotted using the birth data of the person. This system has equivalents in the Indian Ayurvedic system and in the traditional Western system.

Common to both Western and Taoist astrology is a birth-data chart and luck periods, as they are called in Taoist astrology, which show changes of energy coming toward us as our planets rotate in the cosmos. This makes Taoist astrology a dynamic interpretational method, indicating ever-changing energy patterns. The Taoist Inner Alchemy philosophy also provides ways to change and improve upon the basic birth-chart energy, making Taoist astrology a fascinating interactive tool rather than a static prediction of ones life and fate. Therefore, the special quality of Taoist astrology is the facility to reinforce and harmonize the energies by using Supreme Inner Alchemy practices.