Ancient Web: Spirit-Alembic Published Its Own 1998 Taoist Book Online

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

The homepage of Spirit-Alembic announces a mystical-science order, an online holistic adviser, a recipe directory, and one very practical form of alchemy: turning honey into mead.

Visit the Spirit-Alembic homepage.

The Maitreyan Order of Hsien Tao presents itself as a nonreligious mystical organization, with categories for Tao, magic, astrology, tantra, Kabbalah, lifestyle, and books. This is not a modern wellness storefront assembled from short posts. It is an extensive, opinionated personal publishing project, with the sort of enormous essays that webmasters once uploaded because nobody imposed a character limit.

Its most substantial surviving document is Westward-Singing Bird, a 1998 volume described as an interpretation of the Tao Te Ching and I Ching. The page credits Khiron, identified as Jerry C. Welch, as its writer and illustrator; Walter E. Harris III with calligraphy; and Erik Stackhouse with digital preparation. It offers the text for personal and academic reading while reserving commercial reproduction rights.

A complete worldview instead of a set of posts

The book is no straight translation. Its author calls the Tao Te Ching 'Thou Dei Jinn' and the I Ching 'Ye Jinn', arguing for connections among Taoist, Christian, Essene, and Western mystical traditions. These are the author's interpretations and historical or linguistic claims; their preservation here does not mean they represent established scholarship.

The text wanders through autobiography, meditations on the nature of God, word origins, and a sustained rereading of Chinese philosophical ideas. It is long enough to have internal jump links, introductory sections, and chapter-level material rather than the short structure of a blog entry.

A community portrait identifies people including Olwe, also named William P. Davis, and webmaster Pir, also named Erik Stackhouse. Their accounts mix everyday occupations, artistic interests, and private spiritual narratives. That mixture helps explain the site's character: the authors were building a household-sized intellectual world and publishing it in public.

Some interior links now fail, and there is no independent evidence here for supernatural claims. The web-historical fact is simpler and more durable. In 1998, a small group could put an entire illustrated religious-philosophical manuscript online, create its own navigation and terminology, and remain discoverable decades later.

Read the original 1998 online volume alongside the site's section index.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.