Most Recent Posts
The last few months have been a fairly chaotic time here at Great Vessel. I’ve been teaching in the US for the past two months and the webmaster has been through a major computer meltdown. We seem to have sorted things out, so you can look forward to...
I was talking with someone the other day about methods of ‘Casting the Yi’
and they mentioned that they did not like using computer programs. In part I had
to agree that sitting quietly with my casting stones ( 16 Token Method )
gives a great...
52 Mountain or Bound is a very powerful image or symbol (a xiang or imaginal operation) of Stopping or bringing things to a still place. It the strongest possible injunction against "acting anything out." Rather, it is a crucial time when we have...
I have re-worked the 'Basics' article on Ideal and Shadow so that it reflects a new perspective that emerged from the divinatory work at the Vallecitos Retreat. We found this quite valuable and hope that you do too. The Article has been re-worked and...
The Total Yijing program has been written to run under Windows. However a
number of our users have informed us that they are happily running the Total
Yijing program on Mac computers. Specifically, they are running the Total Yijing
program...
This has been a very busy period for all of us here at Great Vessel and it shows little sign of letting up.Stephen has been touring the United States Teaching and leading the Vallecitos group in New Mexico. He returned to do the various things he does...
Somewhere in the Mawangdui (commentary) texts, “Confucius” is quoted as saying something like: “If you use the Yi for ‘fortune-telling’ it is right about half of the time. If you use it to find the De (actualizing-dao or “power and virtue”) of a situation,...
Stephen Karcher's new eBook Foundations of Change is now available. It opens the deep
foundations of the Way or Dao of the Classic of Change. It is a
companion volume which can be used with any translation of Yijing (I
Ching).
Foundations...
Amongst other things, the mythic images and sounds that make up an old divinatory tradition are called ji. They are hidden triggers or seed-syllables for the performative linguistic act of divination that exist at the liminal borderline between the...
Ancestors and the Personal Altar is a new article on our site.
Some years ago I began to read about early Chinese culture in order to better understand the values, beliefs and imagery found in the Yijing. In those days I learned a little factual material...
In his new article ‘The Furies and the Water Spirit Disorder’
Stephen Karcher takes us on two journeys, each represents cultural and personal stances which are deeply flawed and which are the cause of much suffering in our world.
First he brings...
Sources for the Decades is a new article just posted on our site.
In this article Stephen Karcher lays out the case that the King Wen sequence of hexagrams, which is the standard order found in the I Ching, is not a random sequence, but that it is highly...
In my previous post I sketched out two perspectives of the performative act of divination, the spiritual perspective and the Jungian perspective, two rivers flowing in one riverbed.
I suggested that if we as diviners move beyond using the text and...
As diviners we generally develop a deep personal resonance with the Yijing. Our methods and perspectives become complex and closely intertwined with our psychological, or spiritual, beliefs and values. It is as if we settle into our own spot on the hillsides...
This post from the Midaughter forum caught my heart and eye and Glen has been kind enough to give me permission to post it here.
He is an experienced diviner who has worked with the Yijing for many years. For me he has caught some of the essence...
We are all used to a number of models which explain the shape our lives.
There is the, Birth, Childhood, Adolescant Struggle, Young Adulthood, Mature Adulthood, Middle Age and Old age and Death, model.
On top of this we might have a career plan...
The main religious difference between us and the Chinese is that whereas our word “God” has no connotation of “Ancestor” the Chinese word Ti, which is roughly equivalent, was applied directly to the Dead. To sacrifice to the dead is Ti, no matter...
There are two vessels in the Yijing: 50:Jing (The Well) and the 48:Ding (The Bronze Sacrificial Vessel). The Well is the symbol of the Dao itself and the energy we draw on as well as a barometer for the ‘Who we are being’ in relation to it.The Ding or...
Announcing the first of our eBook series: The Shuogua. This previously unpublished translation by Stephen Karcher is a powerful tool for those who want to deepen their understanding of the hexagrams in the Yijing.
The Shuogua, or Eighth Wing of the...
The "screen memory" is a term stolen from psychology that describes a fictional construction of memory traces (usually traumatic) that compulsively or automatically intervenes to color and shape our experience of "what is there." It seeks to re-construct...
Stephen is making more time available to do Yijing consultations for others. I have had a number of these done for myself and have also seen him divine over a wide variety of things such as world issues, or those faced by organisations I have been involved...
Vallecitos Workshop RetreatJune 2007
The annual week-long Retreat at Vallecitos Mountain Refuge has become the center of Stephen Karcher’s calendar: “In over 30 years of teaching, I have never found a place or group more truly magical and transformative...
We have just posted Stephen’s 11th Reading. Soshin Dreschler sent us the results to his question “Where do you come from?”, which he addressed to the Yijing. His question was prompted by his reading about the Mawangdui Silk Texts
The cast oracle...
One of the great lessons the Yijing teaches is that of how to manage events through time. It encourages a thoughtful stance, patience and an eye for the distant effects of our actions.
Knowing how the current situation came about is every bit as...
We have been rather quiescent online for the last six months. However there has been a great deal of discussion and work going on in the background.
We shall announce quite a number of additions, publications and changes over the next few weeks.
...