Qigong and Animism

The modern paradigm of Qigong, at least how it’s been popularly imported into the West, is mostly based around an energetic model of the universe. It’s appealing to more pragmatic, scientifically minded people who are turned off by worldviews involving numerous deities and “other worldy realms” that sound too fantastical to have any basis in reality. The idea that a subtle, immaterial energy is pulsing through channels in your energetic body and that you can work with this energy in various ways is not quite as strange or daunting as some fantastical dark ritual like interacting with spirits. But what if this Qi is not quite as cold and mechanical a substance as the energetic model often treats it? What if Qi itself is alive and sentient? And what if the different patterns and shapes that Chi can take on represent distinct, living personalities in the energetic fabric of our bodies and the universe? And what if we, just for the hell of it, were to name each of the different shapes of energy we experience in our lives?

This thought experiment shows how the energetic model can blend with a more theistic model that seems so far out many people. The kind of ritual work involving deities. Spiritual magick. It’s not far out at all actually. At least no more so than communicating back and forth with a voice in your head everyday that you falsely assume is your Self.

Here’s a scenario. Let’s say you have a friend, Kyla, and she is doing some intense breath work. She notices this powerful energy starting to pulse in her perineum. As she experiences this energy on deeper levels, she notices it has what she considers a feminine quality. Suddenly she finds herself almost compelled to name this energy. She calls the energy “Shakti”. One night, deep in meditation she has a very clear image in her mind of a beautiful woman dancing for her. She knows it is Shakti and Shakti says “I love you Kyla”. She has been touched. Afterward she goes on to approach this pulsing energy in her perineum with respect. She treats this “energetic shape” as if it were a real being with consciousness and emotion, instead of just an inanimate, soulless form of bioelectricity that she can flip on and off and push and pull through her body at her whim. Uh oh. Kyla has started down the ominously dark, ludicrous, evil path of insane Harry Potter spiritual magick.

In this scenario Kyla simply took an energetic pattern she was having an experience with, and named it in order to deepen her experience into a relationship with a living form of energy. It’s in no way different to the shang qing Taoist belief of living, intelligent spirits inhabiting the organs. And there is a lot of merit to this approach. Humans are social creatures before conceptual ones. Language probably evolved first as a means of communicating with the tribe before it became internalized as a way of telling stories in our heads and creating selves and egos. We are probably hardwired more for sophisticated communication with sentient beings than we are for abstract thought because we have doing the former much longer. Moving chi through the body definitely has power. But it can quickly get co-opted and become an intellectual process. That’s why the Chinese systems put so much emphasis on movement. To get us out of a potentially over-intellectualized alchemy.

There is much power in the belief that you can communicate with almost anything in your life as if it were a living god. Much more of the brain, body and emotions are drawn into the interaction. And of course more power means a greater risk of giant success or giant failure. This is a deep deep way to draw yourself into the divine though. And many many spiritual paths utilize it, giving people something human/animalesque they can communicate with.

All legitimate spiritual paths involving deities start out with these personal experiences of configurations of energy that are then named and treated as real. In our example, Kyla has named a god. If she were to go on to teach other people, and were to tell them about Shakti and hopefully show them how to get in touch with the same energy that she has named such, then a religion of shared experience and worship begins to form. And a Shakti archetype is also being carved deeper into the stream of reality, into the Mind of God, perhaps resonating more powerfully then when just Kyla stumbled across her. More and more life is being breathed into Shakti as an independent form.

Pretty cool stuff. Of course this is all just my wild speculation that I am making an interesting story out of. On the surface it can seem like many of the more obvious wackos are drawn to what is openly called magick nowadays. And I’m sure we could wax on and on about stereotypes relating what temperaments are drawn to which type of path, what their character flaws might likely be, what they might do that is “just too far out”. It’s fun, but I think it’s hard to really accurately judge a whole paradigm based on just a handful of self-described magickians who’ve had some imbalances. Even poor Jesus got a little crazy sometimes. Like that one time he broke out that whip and just started thrashing on dudes selling crap in the temple.