How to Burn Incense Properly at Taoist Altar

 

How to burn incense properly at the Taoist altar? There is a lot of knowledge behind the whole incense burning art. First of all, why shall you burn incense? Many people just think that it is part of their routine to burn incense to an altar, but no one really understands what it is about and what they are actually doing.

Incense is nothing but a container, they are a medium for us to contain things. In the physical world, we Taoist say, that everything is just a container, meaning that you can put "things" into them as if they are all bottles and jars. What can you put into the incense? What did you put into it?  Incense itself is nothing but just some wood powder and sticks, it does not have any magical effect and does not do anything for you in terms of energy work... so why do we burn incense?

When you hold onto the incense, your hand touches and the energy of you transfer to the incense, and this "energy" is what we call the pre-heaven energy, which includes your intention, your heart-energy and such. These energies go into the incense and fill the incense up. After that, the incense is burnt and BAM, the magic happens.

When the physical body is destroyed, the no-physical part of it gets released, just like gas escaping from a balloon. When incense is burnt, the stuffings releases. Therefore, when you put the incense on the altar, your energy is released to the altar, and the altar absorbs it, so it is a form of "uploading" your energy into the altar every day, just like accumulating money daily for the future use.

At the end, you might want to see how I do my morning practice at the altar. So here goes a YouTube video again, showing you what's involved in my morning routine, which most people won't even realize how heavily loaded a Taoist cultivation is like when it comes to Taoist magic.

Looking back at the picture on the top, do you realize that the incense is not placed in the center of the pot?  Why so?  There is a reason behind it!  The pot is like a piece of land, and where you put the incense is like planting a tree or flower into the ground, and so where you plant this incense will change the incense's energy and its way of doing work for you. To understand this, you need to watch the lecture on the 5 directions...!  

How to burn incense properly? There is a lot of variations, and many ways to burn incense, but there is always a reason behind everything we do, such as incense burning. If you are burning incense and you do not know what is going on, then it is not proper. If you are burning incense and you know what you are doing. then that is at least properly done at the base level. Incense is not "food" for any spiritual beings, it is a tool for you to communicate with the altar, and to transfer things to the altar, etc. 

How often should a Taoist burn incense? Our article on the official blog already answered that!  A real Taoist must burn incense every day because the altar is being fed while you do so, how can you not feed your own baby every day?

 There is a lot to learn, and a lot of theories to understand, in order to really know how to decode everything in the art of incense burning. Even the way of how we hold the incense can vary in many ways. Get ordained today to start learning it yourself, and getting a real altar setup to experience the joy yourself.

FU Talisman Consecration in Taoism Magic

FU Talismans in Taoism is amazingly powerful, but it is never just a piece of paper with some scribbles. The FU itself is like a ticket to withdraw resources from somewhere, and do work for someone. You can have two FUs that look identical to each other, but they are consecrated differently and at the different altar, then the FU is already not the same. One FU draws resources from the bank, one draws resources from the playground, both are to do “exorcism”, but which one gives you money and not sand?

Taoist magic is not something most people can understand with their normal logic, because it’s very complex, and often secretively taught.  To understand Taoist magic properly, one must get ordained as a Taoist to learn it directly from a master, yet it is not easy to encounter a great master who is willing to teach and open enough to answer all your questions and clear up all your doubts. A lot of “masters” only kept their mouth shut, unlike how we teach here!  

Back to the FU talk!

FU Talisman requires a consecration ceremony, or what we call “chick fu” in Chinese. This ceremony is to bond the FU to a source and program it up, charge it up and activating it so the power can expose out of the FU and make it “go live”. A FU that is not chick'd/consecrated is like a cheque that is written but not signed, it cannot be used to withdraw anything from anywhere. 

After the consecration ceremony for the FU Talisman is done, the FU is then linked up with the altar of the Taoist master, and will draw resources from this altar from then on. When the FU is being used, it will expose the power “of this altar” only and not from anywhere.

The whole FU consecration ceremony can be as long as 1-2 hours depending on the amount of work done on the FU. Just like cooking, the fancy food can require a lot of time to cook, while scramble egg can be done in minutes, or even just 1minute in the microwave.  Well, yes, work is done, time is spent, and energy is of course gone too – but to where?  It’s all gone to the FU itself.

NEVER buy printed FUs or crappy FUs made in bulk, these FUs have no power and don’t even do anything for you except for giving you a decoration which you will not be proud to show to your friends. A real FU requires real energy, time and effort to make… and in this video we are showing here, you will know how much work is involved in the FU Talisman we offer on our Tin Yat Dragon website!

Statue Consecration for Taoism

Consecration of Taoist statue is very complex in Taoism, and it requires the practitioner to really know what they are doing in order to do it right. If statues are improperly consecrated by someone, it will have no magical power, but even worse is that it will have the risk of being invaded by evil entities, leading to many disastrous issues in the future.  Therefore, in our lineage, we take this very seriously and we want to show people how much work is required behind this ceremony by exposing it on YouTube. 

Those who want to learn Taoist magic from us, you can visit our website to get ordained and start learning anytime, but here let us explain the ceremony’s structure a bit!

To consecrate a Taoism statue – or any statue, here are the 5 major steps to do so:

1. Prepare the FU Talismans and stuffing for the statues

2. Inject the power source, the magic power, to the statue

3. Programming of the statue’s power and functions

4. Activating the statue and make the power expose

5. Empowering it and giving it a boost to start it off nicely

This is just a brief guideline to the ceremony, and it is more complex than you think!  Most videos online that show you the consecration ceremony are often poorly done or just roughly filmed for a few minutes and no one can really see what is going on. 

Don’t even trust wiki how, that page on statue consecration and setting up a Taoist altar is a joke!  If you consecrate the statue or altar like that, it will only lead to a cosmetic altar. The even worse scenario is that you don’t know what you are doing, and therefore, the altar is open for anything to hijack into the system, and you are off to the route of miserable.

Watch the video of our demonstration on this subject, don’t goof around and just either get ordained and learn it yourself, or have us do the work for you which can ensure you a safe and functional statue, and altar. Don’t risk yourself with these things, it’s not worth it!