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