The Great Vessel Blog

A great read - Some of the Yijing's foundation ideas explained

We have posted a new article and its a stunning read! Skip the title - When I read the title to a friend over the ‘phone they started making ‘mnnnyng’ type noises and began hitting their head on the wall. Such a shame it is brilliant read!

Such immortal lines as, “Now, Daoists tend to see the great importance we ascribe to death as a rather silly misunderstanding…”

It is based on “The Great Treatise” the 5th and 6th Wings of the Yijing. Because this treatise is not structured by hexagram it is often left out of English translations as it cannot be apportioned under each hexagram like many of the other wings. However in China this work is traditionally seen one of the deep fonts of spiritual wisdom and learning. It sits alongside the Dao De Jing in importance.

The Great Treatise is a guide on how to work with the Yijing. It includes instruction about the nature of life and change. Quite simply, it is a soul touching work. In this article Stephen unpacks some of the central ideas in a vivid and highly readable manner.

By the Way – Stephen Karcher’s "Ta Chuan – The Great Treatise" is still available in the shops – It is a full translation with commentary. I cannot say it enough – We all cary a deep knowing and The Great Treatise gives that voice. It also explains some of the key terrain on which the Yijing is founded.

The Yijing speaks quiet wisdom amidst the furore of looming war

These days I watch the news with increasing consternation. The melting ice caps seem to be enjoying peek time entertainment viewing whilst the UK parliament seems more concerned with throwing metaphorical tomatoes across the House at each other. The US, with UK support, appear intent on cleaning up terrorism even if it does end up with the Middle East unifying in a great Jihad. Time and again I ask myself, ‘What can, and should,  I do about this?” So Stephen’s 4th Great Vessel Reading came as a timely surprise.

Shortly after 911 he was leading a group of therapists and activists in a workshop at the Jungian Centre in Los Angeles (USA). They were discussing 911 and what they should do. It became heated with calls for patriotism and counter demands for activism. Amidst this charged polarisation it was agreed that Stephen would ask the Yijing. The result is our current reading. For me this is a thought provoking response, Yijing wisdom at its best. I have started a thread here (Readings Panel Reading 4) and would encourage folk to respond. Why? Well, we did another more up to date reading. At the time we were all sitting together in a small flat in London (UK). Stephen had completed the casting to shocked silence. Eventually someone said, “We can’t publish that… we just can’t.” So please read this one first, give us your thoughts and tell us whether you want to hear more.

Last chance to book for the Vallecitos course!

The Vallecitos Mountain Refuge is hosting a training course by Stephen Karcher.

It is situated high in the beautiful New Mexico Mountains (U.S.A.). The course will include teaching, individual readings and ritual work, providing instruction for the immediate use of the I Ching in all life situations.

A central idea in the course is that of working with the Yijing as a turbulent mirror into which we peer and which reflects both the time and our inner world. This is the course for those who want to develop their Yijing divination abilities in a supportive group, in a beautiful place and with an extraordinary teacher. More Details can be found here.

If you want to attend you will need to book before April! I think they have a lot of fun too (Grinning).

The truth of divination is in our hearts not the book

There is a tendency for us Yijing users to be a little traditional in how we use the oracle. For those of us who were teethed on Wilhelm and Baynes: This is sometimes referred to the scholars method. There are other ways to use the Yijing. There is the Mei Hua Xin Yi method otherwise known as the Plum Blossom method, the Imperial Yijing and many others. The early Chinese prodded and poked at the Yi to try and explore its depths. They developed many approaches. Here in the West we have a tendency to look for truth by analysis. We tend to ask exactly what King Wen meant by this or Duke Zhou by that. Well first of all the text was written in glyphs each with poly meanings, secondly it was written in a mythical and cultural context where the reader might be expected to know a lot of associated mythology, history and folk tales to which the text might allude and lastly it got altered quite a lot through history. So unless you are an academic exploring a very defined area we might as well bottle the wind when it comes to precision and meaning.

I notice those who use the Tarot tend to be quite exploratory. Their cards are lexicons of symbolic meanings and they develop different layouts and add and remove symbols in different packs, prodding and exploring in order to develop different symbol sets to reveal the truths of their divination. The different areas of the Yijing’s text areas are just such symbol sets laid out in words. More than once I have found that I have been using what I later found to be a ‘poor translation’ of a part of the Yi only to decide to stay with it because it was so evocative, and because it worked for me.

Divining with the Yi is not divining from a book. It is divination oriented toward that set of images which will stir in our heart's mind after we have looked up the meaning in a particular book or books. In other words, I believe that when we divine the Yi ‘sees us coming’.

Caroline Casey talks with Sallie Ann Glassman and Stephen Karcher

Appearing on Thursday 2nd March on the Visionary Activist Radio Show on radio stations on the west coast of America, see the above link for times and frequencies. The link to listen to this show online will be posted here on Friday.

Caroline is a leading American astrologer. Her radio show is an experiment in broadcasting which seeks to look at topical events in terms of divination, myth and symbols. Sallie has trained in Voodoo in both the Haiti and the New Orleans traditions. Voodoo is not the evil art that Hollywood portrays, but is the religion, divination and medicine which grew out of the pain of slavery and the meeting of ancient West African religions and Christianity. Sally is the author of ‘Voodoo Traditions’ and the co- author of “Voodoo Tarot’.

This should be an interesting discussion. One of the themes of this show is ‘Syncretisation’, the combining of different teachings and beliefs. So we can look forward to a rich discussion by proxy between Astrology, Tarot, Voodoo and the Yijing.

Stephen has already worked with Rachel Pollack a leading Tarot practitioner. They each used their connections to enable the Yijing and the Tarot to talk to each other with very interesting results. During this work both the Tarot and the Yijing said that they want to talk together in order to find voices that meet the needs of our time, more syncretisation.

Sally appeared on last weeks Visionary Activist show. She lives in New Orleans and talks about Voodoo and the trials and hopes of New Orleans from a Voodoo perspective you can listen to it here.