The Unseen Hand: Medicine from Antiquity
A Gathering of Physicians Artists and Scribes.
The Songs of Creation
Remembrance of the sacred purpose of Life
"The human heart is the heart of the universe." Book of Rites
Maine Retreats 2016
3 Alchemical Odes from Antiquity
Sheepscot Hollow ~ Whitefield, Maine
Laura Clarke Stelmok
(BA, M.Ac, NCCA Dipl. Ac)
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Spring
A 7-Day Retreat Heaven
Song of the 12 Points Shining Bright as the Starry Sky
and Able to Heal All the Many Diseases
An Emphasis on the Skill "To See"
TIME
Begins Friday 5 pm * Ends Friday 10 pm
REGISTRATION & TUITION
The Far Shores of Love
Living the Song of the 12 Points of the Starry Skies will break the curse, heal the disease, sever the attachment holding the wayfarer to the past or future. From the maze of one's mind and this world, through the veils of light and dark, the Song sings the forgotten promise of the soul's union with God.
The Song is reflected from heart to heart, from Guide to the heart of the sincere servant. To be bound in Love and released. This Song, able to heal all disease, is given as the immediate and direct will of Heaven to light the soul's path home.
"See, the bliss and the joy which this Bridegroom brings in His coming are fathomless and incommensurable, for He Himself is that bliss and joy. And therefore, the eyes with which the spirit contemplates and gazes upon its Bridegroom are so widely dilated that they will never again be closed. For the gazing and contemplation of the spirit remain eternally fixed on the hidden revelation of God, and the comprehension of the spirit is so widely dilated for the coming of the Bridegroom that the spirit itself has become the wideness which it apprehends. And so God is apprehended and seen with God ; in this all our blessedness resides."
The Blessed John of Ruysbroeck (1293-1381)
Spiritual power, unlike temporal power, is given in service, never for oneself. The Song itself warns "To the unscrupulous do not pass this on, the unfaithful have only restless talk." Students are trained and prepared over years to give themselves to this Song. The Love demands discipline and devotion from beginning to end. The resonance of the Song arrives in the Heart, like the sun at dawn, and initiates both practitioner and patient. Like a serum of truth it dissolves, even shatters illusion, and therefore disease, "Like hot water on snow." Through the veils of this world, the wayfarer is remembered.
As the title of this Song promises it is 'Able to Heal all the many Diseases'. It is renown for working with Gu Syndromes, worms, and it is our work to reach effectively into the severe parasitic diseases of our time, body and mind, including the materialism that is devastating our planet. The alchemical fire that is built within the movement of this Song requires commitment and endurance to face oneself in the presence of the group and the love which this Tradition guards. The individual training of practitioners is rigorous and happens one on one in on-going relationship with Laura during and after the retreat. The light of this Song calls especially to those who are listening, watching, waiting, often alone, working for the seeds, the consciousness which is not yet here.
"With support use the rule of support; with severance, use the rule of severance. All 360 holes do not escape these 12 strange charms; healing a disease is like magic; A torrent whirling as wind-driven snow, the Northern Dipper sends down its true workings. The Golden Lock teaches us to snap it open. One truly clever can pass this on; the unfaithful have only restless talk."
The 12 Points Shining Bright as the Starry Sky and Able to Heall all the Many Diseases
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To be alive to magic is to be alive to the hidden potential of life. Life has a substance that can allow the unexpected to happen. When we participate directly with this
hidden substance, we can weave patterns of magic into the fabric of creation. L. Vaughan Lee
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Summer
A 7-Day Retreat
Earth
Song of the 7 Dragons (Internal and External)
An Emphasis on the Skill "To Hear"
TIME
Begins Saturday 12 noon * Ends Saturday 3 pm
REGISTRATION & TUITION
The Resurrection of Life
The Song of the 7 Dragons is essential for our time. We have forgotten the roots of life and the reciprocal relationship between the divinity of Earth and ourselves. We have forgotten our own sacred purpose. Because of this there is not only an ecological crisis but a crisis in the soul of humanity and the soul of the earth.
The Song of the 7 Dragons arrives from The Beginning, the power and precision of the fire of genesis, the first word of life. Preserved and distilled into a 7/14 point protocol by the Taoist tradition of acupuncture, this Song restores the movement of life at the very root of an individual. The Song of the 7 Dragons restores right relationship of the spirits and the essences, of spring to autumn, of summer to winter, of potential to authenticity. As the river carries the water from the mountain to the sea, the Song of the 7 Dragons carries the current, the intelligence of the inter-related weave of life on Earth. As the migration pathways of the geese are in the original design of the Earth and the goose, this Song governs the manifestation of the original pattern of life given to each person. It is used in the tradition of medicine to intervene when the essential pattern of life has been damaged, lost or arrested. When the spirits, like the birds, cannot communicate freely, life as we know it can no longer exist. The human being becomes a robot, at the mercy of forces beyond his/her agency or even belief. The Song of the 7 Dragons is a song of resurrection, resuscitating the faith of the practitioner as the life of the patient is returned.
The Beloved gave me some dust from the back yard.
Why are you so fragrant, oh dust?
I am a dust people tread upon.
But I partake of the fragrance of the courtyard of a saint.
It is not me, I am just ordinary dust.
So if people praise you, you must say you were just near a flower,
But you are just an ordinary dust and it is all due to his lotus feet.
Persian poem
Possession is a disorder in the relationship of the spirits, both at the individual level and in the Earth Herself. The song restores the relationship between Heaven, Earth and Human one person at a time. At the hand of this Song, the lame walk and the blind see. It is a song of Love, in which the name of every point and line of creation is known. It is the light that remembers one's purpose, the ground from which one is grown. As rain brings green to the desert, this song returns the light of God to life. This song works with the movement of the stars, the sun and moon, the birds, and the oceans inside of each human being. The revelation that each individual human being is the microcosm of the whole is given back.
When the central axis of life is interrupted, at best, completely severed at worst sanity is lost. The spontaneous movement of the spirits no longer conduct life. Too big, too small, the agency of Love fades from all of life. The ancient magic of the Earth and this Her first Song restores presence, integrity, honor. To look into the eyes of someone whose mind has become an asylum and be able to say, ' I will walk with you and we will walk out.' To be able to extend into such chaos comes from living with this protocol. In time, it will teach you to be a human being, what you have forgotten, your place in this world, and something of the deep mystery of incarnation. It will restore your own central axis as a practitioner.
Some questions frequently asked by acupuncture practitioners:
Can you talk about the points for the ID's and ED's and the
functions of each? How exactly are they all tied together?
What is possession from a chinese medical point of view? From a western spiritual /psychoanalytic point of view? How do you accurately diagnose the need for such a treatment and likewise how do you know when it has cleared?
How does the relationship with the physician work with the protocol, the Song?
Can you talk a bit about how this might cover up the ability to distinguish CF?
Why exactly is this?
Do you communicate with the person that their life is going to be altered? What is your responsibility to this?
We began to talk ethics when we started the conversation, and I'd like to hear more about that. Ethics and safety and vast unknown questions.
Can a possession keep someone alive? When do you say "no" to doing this treatment?
Can you diagnose the difference in origin of the xie qi? From internal, external or miscellaneous causes of disease?
For a video of Laura's Introductory Teachings about this song
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"Pollination of a Queen is exclusively by appointment."
From "The Queen of Trees", documentary film about the Sycamore Fig Tree
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Autumn
A Meditation Retreat
Song of the 13 Ghost Points
 An Emphasis on the Skill "To Feel"
DATE
September 28-October 2, 2016
TIME
Begins Wednesday 5 pm * Ends Sunday 5 pm
Alchemy: The Transformation of Darkness
This is a meditation retreat. Silence will be the ground of our learning and our work. There will be teaching and deep presence inside the Song of the 13 Ghost Points. Rather than a clinical context for our work with this Song, we will gather in the ancient tradition of spiritual retreat.
We come together in the way of servants of truth sharing time, prayer, and a living tradition of transmission and companionship. The group has no religious affiliation; it is open to all.
For the physician, The Song of the 13 Ghost Points is a discipline, a path of purification. If the physician of the 7 Dragons were visioned as a master of the movement of life, the weather above and the soil below, the physician of the 13 ghost points is the surgeon able to reach the human error, the lock on the hidden door, the treasure that lies lost inside the struggle of life.
The practitioner and the patient are, over time, reduced, revealed, carved from the battle of life. This medicine requires 100% faith, and is a guarded domain of the miraculous. How a life is lost and found, covered and then revealed. This Song enters the compulsions for survival, our lower natures, the insatiable appetites, distortions, corruptions that arise through fear, harm, the misuse of free will. The Song of the 13 is a descent into the unknown, unremembered underworld of the human mind, where the atrocities of error reside and the light within the darkness is hidden.
The Song of the 13 is for those physicians, artists, human beings who are bound to the task of facing the darkness in themselves and their time.
This Song marks a road of surrender. The surrender required to be a true human being. The physician is trained so that the needle roots into the darkness beyond the reach of one's senses. Cynicism is surgically removed. Excitation and Desire defeated. Terror in the face of our human misuse of power is transformed into awe before the power of the One, the Light of 10,000 suns. The seeker is re-absorbed to the Source: 13 points, 13 stages, 13 distinct and utterly differentiated levels of consciousness.
The Song of the 13 Ghost Points is an apprenticeship in and of itself, a relationship with the teacher that reveals through time the light within the darkness of the heart, the prayer in the heart of life itself. For those willing and able to face the level of illness in themselves, in our time, the chaos and terror at the end of an era.
This Song will free a person from the grip of illness, terror, ignorance.
With the precision of a brain surgeon or a priestess of old, the physician, artist can enter an ancestral line and the patterns of illness and trauma that we are born into. The Song of the 13 Ghost Points responds to deep and chronic structures of mental illness. This Song has the capacity to work directly with the individual soul, the relationship of the spiritual and animal soul (hun and po).
The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: / He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: / He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name'sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, / I will fear no evil:
For thou art with me; / Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;
Thou annointest my head with oil; My cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.
23rd Psalm
These ancient protocols (Songs) are handed teacher to teacher through time. How they pass is one of the great mysteries of life. They are alive. One cannot read a book to use/work with them. Like prayer, they simultaneously treat the patient and train the practitioner. They work inside of the relationship between practitioner and patient, teacher and student.
The Taoist tradition would say that this relationship is the first relationship, the first arena of yin yang. In some traditions it is said to be the only real relationship possible as a human being, for it is through this relationship that Reality may be experienced.
Summit of Mount Washington * The Song of the 13 Ghost Points * Autumn 2014For a video of Laura's Introductory Teachings about this song 
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Again, to place our trust in Life Herself.
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REGISTRATION & TUITION/PAYMENT
CEU's offered for each retreat.
Registration
1. Please email Noah: The Unseen Hand no less than 2 weeks prior to the Workshop if you plan to participate. Unless you are hearing about us for the 1st time or are suddenly able to attend.
2. A non-refundable deposit of $100 is required upon registration, to secure your participation in the Gathering. Please respect this deadline as we purchase food and supplies well before the workshop begins. Click Here to pay this deposit on-line.
Student Discounts are for those matriculated in formal training programs.
Tuition
Spring and Summer (7 Day Intensive) * $650.00 each Student Discount, when needed * $450
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Fall (5 Day Intensive) * $450.00 Student Discount, when needed * $300
* The 3 Seasons * Tuition Discount Rate for Whole Year * $1500 * (paid in full by March 15th)
Student Discount, when needed * $1100 * (paid in full by March 15th)
Room and Board 7 Day Intensives * $350.00 5 Day Intensives * $250.00
The 2016 "Everything Pass" To be paid in full by March 15th
Tuition for all curriculum in 2016 of The Unseen Hand. This includes tuition for all clinical work (Maine and Vermont), The 3 Lights Project (GreenLight Lantern and Streetlamp), and the 3 Retreats for The Songs of Creation.
Tuition: $5600/year (Paid in full by March 15, 2016)
Room and Board is to be paid either in a lump sum ($1500 for year) or separately at the time of each retreat.
Payment On-Line
1. All payment for Tuition and R&B fees are to be made on-line through our website before arrival at the retreat. If you are unable to use our on-line services we accept checks and cash.
2. Any decision about payment plans is to be made before registration. (Refer to the left hand column of the payment page on our website.) 3. All participants will pay for room and board. One fee. There are no partial food
plans. Payment plans and financial assistance are for tuition only.
4. Please contact Noah if you do not have the means to pay on-line and/or special
financial arrangements are necessary. We remain present to the economic challenges of our lives.
The Tradition remains available to All who seek its Guidance.
CEU's
1. CEU'S (10-12/day) issued by the State of Maine are available for the 3 Retreats for the Songs of Creation. Please let Noah know beforehand if you will be needing a CEU Certificate.
2. Each participant is responsible for filling out the daily forms with name, address, license number and number of hours. Certificates cannot be made without this.
3. Clinical Observation Hours are also available for Acupuncture Students.
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Immortal Sisters: Secret Teachings of Taoist Women
The record of contributions of women to Chinese civilization goes back even further than Huang Di, to the legend of a certain female tribal leader of high antiquity who is said to have "patched the sky with five-colored stones" at some remote time when the pristine completeness of human life and harmony with nature had been lost.
...The doctrine of the "five forces" or "five elements" that figures so prominently in Chinese thought is at least mythically associated with a prehistoric shamaness who was at one time instrumental in restoring the balance and sanity of her people when they had gone mad--lost their original mental coherence-and were on the brink of destruction.
...Those who have attained spiritual immortality but cannot as yet live in heaven number in the thousands. Some of them take care of rivers and lakes, some of them manage the hidden government, some are in charge of mountains. They work to benefit ten thousand generations, to rid the earth of what is harmful, to heal the sick and eliminate problems, acting mercifully toward the troubled and uplifting the fallen, rescuing the weak and helpless. Their hidden works are carried out in secret, their virtuous deeds are practiced covertly. Such is their range that they cannot be encompassed in one generalization. But the spiritual immortals do not take pride in themselves, and are wary of becoming known to the public; therefore worldly people do not get to hear about them.
Introduction pp.x-Translated and edited by Thomas Cleary
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NOTICE OF NONDISCRIMINATORY POLICY :
The Unseen Hand: Medicine from Antiquity does not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender expression, age, physical or mental ability, or marital status in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, tuition assistance programs and other school administered programs as well as appointments to the board of directors, administration, faculty and staff.
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"A skilled artisan leaves no traces. She enters the water without making a ripple."
The skilled appear to have no abilities, the wise appear to be ignorant. Her influence is generally attributed to the course of nature.
Chan Buddhist expression
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