The Great Vessel Blog

Yijing Companion - 'Foundations of Change' by Stephen Karcher

Opening the Inner Thesaurus or Sounds as Eggs

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 oral and the written. Each of these ji triggers a return to, transformation within and emergence from the fertile chaos or linguistic whirlpool that exists in what chaos theory calls the water of the synapses.

This is the diviner’s place and moment and its force lies beyond the reach of our usual discourse on language. Reading and voicing the Ji is not a hermeneutical task; they are a knock on the door, a sign of presence belonging to something “other”, a context or field with its own identity and its own things to say. Its purpose is “not just to learn something, but to experience something and be set right.”

In traditional Chinese thought the perception of Ji brings an intuitive sense of differences (trace and deferral) based on Lei “natural category”, correlations of pattern that occur not by wilful analogy but because their elements are “of the same kind.” These categories are presided over by an omen animal called the Small Fox, a sort of dream-animal both male and female. The “traces” of the ji (actually related to the “klang” or phonetic associations characteristic of “primitive languages,” primary process and the working of dreams) act in the Xin or Heart-Mind to awaken patterns of a world of analogies linking cosmic, human, moral and supernatural that simply “rise up”.

The diviner was the medium for this living world’s coming-to-be. Stirred by the seed-syllables, “wind-tossed and fluttering,” the diviner’s heart-mind is moved through endless associations, forgetting itself in the wanderings. He or she sings out what they see and hear, sketching the animate spirit as they are rolled round and round with the courses of things. From this “wandering” the Bright Omens arise, the “hole that reveals the (w)hole)”.

In modern terms the context for all this is what we call an intertext that “already-always” contains the energy through which we learn to see the past not as a linear progression of fixed moments but as an endless series of re-creative fiction-making opportunities. In the continuing evolution of the Chinese language I would suggest that the system of seed syllables and “radicals” collected in the Han potentially represents such a system. Though sinologically and academically scandalous in the extreme, I would further suggest that if we “wander” through this system rather than attempting to analyze it historically or intellectually, it can open the on-going Inner Thesaurus of Change “as an endless series of re-creative fiction-making opportunities” at the boundary of the oral and the written.

Seen in this way, the system becomes a network of reciprocal intelligibility in which the content of each myth comes to consist more and more of other myths. Its resists total enclosure by any external constraint, guaranteeing the continuity of culture while at the same time inviting and triggering (ji) its transformation. As a continuing dialogue linking the mythical and the mimetic, it opens a shifting and ambiguous landscape where “the Real becomes Not-real when the Unreal’s Real” - the instantaneous movement that characterizes intertextual communication.

See:

Stephen Owen, Traditional Chinese Poetry and Poetics: Omen of the World, Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.

Jing Wang, The Story of Stone: Intertexuality, Ancient Chinese Stone Lore and the Stone Symbolism in Dream of the Red Chamber, Water Margin, and the Journey to the West, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1992.

Stephen

Ancestor Worship in the Modern World

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 about Ancestor Worship with the thought that the knowledge would help, but that of course it is a bit of “What they did then” and that I would have to work with it as a metaphor.

In my day job, in mental health, I work with a lot of displaced or estranged people. Some are displaced in that they may have come to the UK as refugees from very different cultures or who are parted from the culture and people who make up their feeling of home. Those who are estranged have lost the roots of their identity. An example of estranged people might be some of those British people who made the long ancestral journey by way of slavery, freedom and later a second migration. Some groups of these peoples are now doing a lot of work to reclaim their roots. This is an act of reclaiming identity, of rebuilding a foundation of the self with which to withstand the tugging winds of high speed western culture where every marketing campaign tries to redefine us by the image of the car we drive, the clothes we wear or some other fashionable commodity. Of course its more than just about marketing, there are many such winds blowing at us. Stephen Karcher wrote about the need for roots in The Furies and the Water Spirit Disorder . The part of this article which addresses the Water Spirit Disorder explores the act of reclaiming our place in the community in which we live and the community of ancestors from whence we came.

Ancestors and the Personal Altar takes a look at Ancestor Worship in ancient China. It may be read as spiritual fact, or as an expression of working with those Jungian archetypes which we hold within us, and its centrality to our use of the Yijing. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we all need to build an Ancestor Altar on which to make offerings, though that act does fix (heng) the process in our hearts. For many of us it might mean recognising the hardships and struggles that our earlier relatives and their community made to continue the line. Perhaps to feel deep sadness at the trials they underwent, gratitude that they struggled through or wonder at some of the things they created, discovered or thought. Seeing ourselves in this light is to see ourselves as part of a long succession, or as the current holder of the torch in a long line of creative thrust. Seeing ourselves like this is to reclaim the anchor of who we really are and from whence we came. It is to be, ‘not alone’, it is also to feel the gravity of our responsibility to those who come after.

Hillary Barrett wrote a beautiful piece about her own experiences of loosing her mother. She entered into a dialogue with herself and the image of her mother at the ‘altar’ of her mothers old home. The process enabled her to re-form part of her identity, claiming the strength and abilities she needed. This, for me, is one very good example of how the idea of Ancestor Worship might be expressed in our modern world.

Kevin

Dedicated to Hillary and her mother.

The Furies and the Water Spirit Disorder

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 together modern Western imagery with that of the ancient Mediterranean world, Buddhism and the Yijing to take the reader to the heart of darkness which pervades our culture in modern times. He explains how we wilfully found this path and then followed it. With equal care and detail he uses text and imagery from the Yijing to show a possible route back to a wholeness.

He then takes us out on to the plain of the ‘wandering rootless’ and shows how this too is a path all too easily found by the way we have structured our culture. Again he uses text from the Yijing and other sources to offer us a personal and cultural path back to our hearts sanity.

The article ends with an excursus into both the psychology involved in relating to the Yijing as a divinatory system and those processes necessary to make our readings effective in our lives. In part he uses a reading where the Yi itself is brought in as a guide to this process. As always the Yijing has some very interesting things to say.

I found this article rich with a knowing and very informative.

Kevin

Sources for the Decades

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 organised. He shows that it is a rational sequence which reflects the stages of life we all pass through from birth to our death. This is in addition to the usual imagery found in the text for each hexagram.

Stephen has been working on this idea for many years and we already have a short introductory article here as well as a brief article about applying them in readings here.

He says of this article:

“The Decades model the ideal shape of the Symbolic Life. Each tells of a birth, death and re-birth process that enables us to Accumulate De, the actualizing power that lets an individual connect his or her own identity to the Ancestral foundation of life. Each recreates the shape and dynamic of the sacred or ritual cosmos at a different Stage of Life. The movement through a Decade or sequence of ten hexagrams can be simultaneously imagined as a personal experience; as a progressive reorganization of the intelligence and the nervous system; as a step in the evolution of culture; and as an experience of the creatio continua, the continuous creation of life and spirit."

In addition to this he begins his article by describing the I Ching’s symbolic landscape as well as the core ritual moments which are acted out within it. This part of the article is gold dust in itself.

I have used this decade model in readings for both myself and for others. It is particularly useful when the questioner is undertaking a major remodelling of their life or is struggling with a deep inner world crisis. Additionally it has great value as a framework to understanding the dynamic relations within the I Ching. It provides much food for thought for those trying to fathom the King Wen sequence.

Kevin

Painting the Canvas – The Act of Divination II

I suggested that if we as diviners move beyond using the text and images in the Yijing as simply prescriptive, or as narrowly descriptive, then the imagery is able to circulate within us informing our deeper selves of the dynamics within us and of the time or moment around us. It can then conjoin our inner world with that of our outer world, or for some our inner world is brought into tune with the Dao or our divine purpose (Ming).
 
I would like to offer a metaphor for what occurs when we divine. The specific reading we obtain might be seen as a dynamic template which matches the ‘moment’. That ‘moment’ encompasses both our inner potentials and the outer world in which we live. When we contemplate this template we enter into a dynamic process of shifting around our potentials, and perceptions, to get a match with the template. We use the template to make a congruence between ourselves and the moment in which we find ourselves. We do this to the best of our ability and to our own satisfaction using whatever we, as individuals, have at our disposal in terms of potentials, perceptions and opportunities.

Seen like this divination is an act of creation, or recreation, of both ourselves and the world in which we live. It provides the canvas on which we paint.

In my next piece I will look at the way in which images need to circulate and the pathways which we can offer to them.

Kevin

Weaving the Canvas - The Act of Divination I

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 surrounding the ecologically rich valley called Yi. We all see the same things, but from the perspective of our different positions. So for me the sheep is in front of the tree and perhaps to you on the other side, it is behind it and of course you may be much more concerned with some other valley feature which for me is less interesting. What follows are the broad brushstrokes of two of the slopes where diviners might be found.

One perspective is that when we perform the act of divination we are making an opening across our liminal threshold into our fertile unconscious. Here we can experience the images moving around, resolving their dynamics until we perceive an understanding of the moment. This is often referred to as the ‘Jungian’ perspective of how the Yijing works. We enter that inner landscape rich with dynamic archetypal images which the moment of divination has illuminated through our imaginal apprehension of the images generated by the Yijing.

Another broad perspective is that of the spiritual or psychic belief set. Here the act of divination makes an opening through to the Yi spirit, the spirit of the ancestors, or to whatever other cosmological perspective works for us as individual diviners. For this group the ‘hand that writes on the wall’ gives us text references in the Yijing and through reading those texts we come to understand its message.

There is a group of diviners on both of these hillsides which are worth a brief mention here. For many of us the Yijing is a text rooted in a foreign culture with images and stories which relate to other places far away in distance and time. Understanding as much of that culture as we can gives us a better depth and appreciation of the words and their possible meanings. However pushing this to the point where we reduce a piece of text to a single meaning is as pointless as trying to reduce an image rich line of poetry to a single descriptive point. Such a reduction makes the Yijing oracle prescriptive with overly fixed sets of values and meanings, cognitive sets of ‘this is’ and ‘this is not’. I have to accept that this approach might suit those of us who prefer the security of setting ourselves into prescriptive projections which define our choices and paths more tightly. Freedom of choice and imagination can be unsettling and letting images circulate within our minds can leave us confused about what really is and what really is not.

It appears to me that the two broad approaches of the spiritual and the Jungian, are so closely parallel that the difference in appreciation and outcome is of little matter. One locates the knowing in the Spirit of the Yi flowing through the informative text into our spirit mind and then finally into our perceiving mind. This person might be seeking to keep their actions within the flow of the Dao, or be seeking to find the best paths through the potentials of the time. The other sites the knowing in our unconscious which is illuminated by the text and images of the Yijing. These are then appreciated by our imaginal mind before being grasped by our perceiving mind. This person might be seeking to work with their own potentials within the time or to find the path back to them through divination as an act of healing.

This is perhaps a case of two rivers with different sources flowing in the same river bed.

For me this is the canvas of divination. In my next piece I will sketch out a perspective of divination as a creative act.

Kevin