A reading of Tai Ji Men and the Tai Ji Men case based on the “transition studies” of French author Serge Raynaud de la Ferrière.
by Rita Santillan*
*A paper presented at the webinar “After the August 2 Taichung Decision on the Tai Ji Men Case: Can the Law Become a Tool of Violence?” co-organized by CESNUR and Human Rights Without Frontiers on August 22, 2024, United Nations International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief.
An article already published in Bitter Winter on August 24th, 2024.
Today is the United Nations International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief. There are different kinds of violence, and Tai Ji Men experienced administrative, legal, tax, and sometimes even physical violence. I am a scholar specialized in the thought of French master Serge Raynaud de la Ferrière (1916–1962). In this paper, I pay homage to the bravery of Tai Ji Men Shifu (Grand Master) and dizi (disciples) by reading their resilience to persecution through the lenses of Raynaud de la Ferrière’s scientific and philosophical perspectives on the history of humanity. I will also suggest that some of these ideas resonate with some of Tai Ji Men’s core teachings.
Table of Contents
The Transition: From the Age of Belief to the Age of Knowledge
Based on the astronomy of position, Raynaud de la Ferrière set out one of his most important studies. That is the precession of the equinox and the sociological and geochronological projections thereof. He confirmed the average value of the vernal point (equinox) shift of 72 years per ecliptic degree by verifying the sociological, psychological, and religious changes associated with the precessional ages.
The precession of equinox is one of the Earth’s three most important motions. It causes the celestial equator to cut the stationary ecliptic a little earlier each year, thus producing a very slow retrograde motion. It is like that of a spinning top. Although it is possible to get the top spinning in an absolutely vertical way, most of the time the top precesses so that the axis of the top describes a circle. The same principle applies to the Earth, due to the gravitational forces of the Sun and the Moon. In other words, the revolution of the Earth around the Sun is completed in about a year, and the same motion but backward—due to its precession—takes 25,920 years. There are thus two simultaneous parallel motions, one much faster than the other. Precession is an inexorable natural phenomenon.
From the full precession of 25,920 years emerges the precessional ages of an average 2,160 years. This is related to the energy zones that surround our solar system, of which there are twelve, just as there are twelve months each year and twelve signs. Raynaud de la Ferrière’s mathematical calculation for the equation of the equinoxes determined that on March 21, 1948, the vernal equinox intersected the ecliptic at 0o degree into the constellation of Aquarius to last 2,376 years. This marked the beginning of the New Precessional Age, with its Latin name of Aquarius, in Sanskrit “Kumbha.” He referred to this New Age as the “Age of Knowledge,” of true research, of collective search, of vertiginous speed, but also as the Age of Peace, the expected Golden Age.
The main idea is that in the history of humanity during each precessional Age, the “truth” manifests itself under different teachings and rites. Religious and social forms undergo profound transformations in their external features placing us under different evolutionary influences.
In the current Aquarian Age, Raynaud de la Ferrière’s saw in Uranus a key dimension. This means that Uranus, being the ruling planet of Aquarius, represents knowledge, high education, wide-ranging rapprochement, fraternity, organized communities, new experiences, and changes. It also represents science, meaning “the unlimited sense of knowledge.” Uranus is also associated with electricity, electronics, waves, technology, invention, originality, and is a source of inspiration that transcends personal ego and promotes universal consciousness. Hence it is deeply connected with esoteric studies and cosmobiology, universal brotherhood, honest and impersonal motives, the transference principle of subjectivity linked to objectivity, as well as the principle of transformation.
The Transition: From the Age of Belief to the Age of Knowledge
Each precessional age has well-defined characteristics and to pass from one age to another does not imply abrupt transformation. “[T]hese Great Periods are similar to the seasons in that their effect is not mathematically delimited, as astronomically spring begins every March 21, although from the beginning of this month there are already warm and bright days, and sometimes after this date it can still snow and freeze,” Raynaud de la Ferrière wrote. The metaphor is apt in explaining transition.
Transition periods from the fall of one age (civilization) and the rise of another often represent the most crucial times in human history. They are marked by chaos and confusion. They are like the end of “a” world but not the end of “the” world. The previous transitional period, 2000 years ago was also a tough and difficult time to endure. Beneath the glittering decay of classical culture, a new world was slowly and inexorably taking form. The Greek view of the cosmos as something “eternal” was replaced by the Judeo-Christian perception of the cosmos as something “created.” It was a radical transformation.
David Ferriz (1921–1992) was one of Raynaud de la Ferrière’s key disciples and the pioneer of the study of the transitional precessional periods. He argued that, apart from earlier sporadic transitional episodes, it was in the 20th century that the transition was triggered and reached its peak. He outlined comparative tables to distinguish some features of the previous Age of Pisces (Belief) and the current Age of Aquarius (Knowledge) to identify the characteristics of the transition. For instance, see below a few of the basic characteristics selected at random. Each comparative line could be observed with its respective characteristics and psycho-social transcendence.
| Typical characteristics of the Age of Pisces (AD1 to 1948) | Typical characteristics of the Age of Aquarius (1948 to 4324) |
| Age of Belief | Age of Knowledge and True Research |
| Ignorance under faith | Faith guided by knowledge |
| Separation, Segregation | Unification, Integration |
| Conservative predominance | Renewing predominance |
| Supposition and legend | Investigation and epistemology |
| Fear of bad things: credulity | Prevision of error: criteria |
| Radicalism | Pluralism |
| Religious (holy) wars | Religious unity |
| Antagonism between science and religion, religion and philosophy, and science and art | Rapprochement between science and religion, religion and philosophy, and science and art |
| Persecution and religious separatism | Ecumenism and mystical unity |
One can easily discern the undeniable progress of the Age of Knowledge (Aquarius) and also a tendency to resist change and/or an overlap of values. Some old values (Pisces) are being reinforced by using new structures (e.g., the use of social media to promote war or exalt fantasies leading nowhere). And some Aquarian values have been immersed in and saturated with Piscean characteristics.
We face the challenge of creating new structures, new jurisdictions, new laws, new systems, methods to fit our new reality. How can this be done if there is no clear vision for the future? The transition needs to be consolidated efficiently, otherwise it will be unnecessarily protracted. We face the challenge of creating new structures, new jurisdictions, new systems, methods to fit our new reality. How can this be done if there is no clear vision for the future? The transition needs to be consolidated efficiently, otherwise it will be unnecessarily protracted.
The Tai Ji Men Case
I started getting familiar with the Tai Ji Men case in by participating in the yearly international CESNUR conferences. I also met Tai Ji Men dizi in other conferences, including recently in North Macedonia. I related the flagrant violence to human rights Tai Ji Men suffer with the difficulties of the precessional transition. However, what mostly attracted my attention was the beauty of the method (rooted in the wisdom of Tao) they used to build their resilience against such arbitrariness and violence. In his extensive writings about the Age of Knowledge, Raynaud de la Ferrière discusses some aspects related to the wisdom of ancient Chinese culture that resonates with Tai Ji Men’s resilient attitude. I will briefly mention a few:
1. In 1959, he commented on “Chinese Gets a Latin Alphabet,” an article by Chou You-Kwang published by UNESCO. Here, the author discussed the first steps on the change on the China’s written language from a set of ideograms to a simplified one in which the words are “spelled out” in letters denoting sounds. Raynaud de la Ferrière observed that over the course of the ages Far Eastern philosophy experienced minor transformations only. It probably did not suffer the great psychological revolutions as in the West. Then, a thorough writing transformation would undoubtedly mark a departure from spiritual values. The new mode of expressions on a par with the understanding of other Western scripts would also show a distancing from ancestral conceptions.
2. He acknowledged Confucianism and Taoism as the two great currents that have succeeded in the history of China, probably both holding a form of “naturalism” as a common source. One was more practical (but not more materialistic) than the other. He wrote, “Perhaps I would not dare to state that Confucianism follows an exoteric doctrine while Taoism follows an esoteric method.” Confucianism, he believed , moderates the desires to integrate into the world. Taoism represents the current of mystery with its concern on medicine, diet, esotericism, the search for the philosopher’ stone. This current finds its mystical and metaphysical expressions in the teachings of Lao Tse. Esoteric Taoism also inspires the ancient menpai of Tai Ji Men.
3. Tai Ji Men promotes martial arts including Kung Fu techniques. Interestingly, Raynaud de la Ferrière related the traditional yoga system with the Kung Fu that was practiced by Chinese initiates. He wrote: “The Chinese initiates also practice a Yoga system under the name of Koung-Fou, which is a kind of medicinal gymnastics consisting of various attitudes (like the asanas of Hindus) with modification or breathing rhythm (like the pranayama of the yogis of India and Tibet). Koung-Fou was overall popularized as a very ancient Chinese therapy to combat a number of illnesses (similar to Hatha Yoga). The practice of Koung-Fou makes it possible to attain the symbolic ‘Tien-Chan’ like the Kailas of Tibet. Tien-Chan is the Chinese sacred mountain, the enchanted gardens of the Tartars, the same as the Asgard of the Scandinavians.”
4. Raynaud de la Ferrière also identified the current Age as an “Age of Peace.” He set peace as a Principle for this Age. He said: “The world must understand that it is only by solving the problem of an individual that an era of harmony may be established, but it must be done outside those frameworks of politics or government that have been tried till now.” Indeed, the three principles he established for the new Age are Tolerance, Truth and Peace (in the same order). Tai Ji Men as well promotes world peace as one of its main goals, and dizi visit the whole world to promote a culture of love and peace and affirm truth.
Conclusion
The sociological, religious, and geographical changes triggered by the precessional transition are of real interest, especially for historical research. Transition studies requires extensive multidisciplinary examination of all applicable areas adding to the various methods the cosmic factor. Precessional transition can be likened to the development of any natural system. These tend to evolve gradually within a given state before entering a period of transition, which is often chaotic and turbulent, and finally emerging in a new qualitatively transformed state.
Tai Ji Men still endures the hardships of the precessional transition period. The Tai Ji Men case shows to the world that some transcendental values and resilience in front of violence are necessary to build a wiser world.
In the midst of the confusion and violence, the previous Age of Belief is gradually receding—at the cost of major problems and paradoxes, as if the legacy of 2,000 years were temporarily imposing itself through intermediate and worsening crises.
We face the challenge of creating new structures, new jurisdictions, new laws, new systems, methods to fit our new reality. How can this be done if there is no clear vision for the future? The transition needs to be consolidated efficiently, otherwise it will be unnecessarily protracted.
Raynaud de la Ferrière stated that the most important event in this Age would be the “discovery of the transcendental man”. Tai Ji Men affirms the values of the transcendental man by spreading spirituality, love, and peace, and by resisting violence by affirming truth.