The Great Vessel Blog : Yijing

Hexagram 10

webmaster@greatvessel.com — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:56:00 GMT

Here is something which really worked for me. Hillary Barratt found something in Hexagram 10 which brings it alive in a most interesting way. Please do take a look .

Kevin

I Ching - Working with Trigrams

webmaster@greatvessel.com — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:32:00 GMT

Looking over the wall I see that there are some interesting developments at www.onlineclarity.com.

There is now a paid for member’s area there where some quite exciting work is taking place. The first task they have set for themselves is to explore the Shuogua. In particular looking at trigram imagery. and the way trigrams combine to form dynamic images within hexagrams. Quite different perspectives are being brought together.

There is also an Wiki I Ching Commentary which is already well developed and which, it is intended, will build and take shape as work progresses.

The membership contains both very experienced folk as well as beginners. It is a very co-operative space and Membership is also really quite affordable.

I think what excites me about this group is that there are wide ranging views and skill levels, yet they seem to have started a collaborative fertile place to share and learn.

Definitely worth checking out.

Kevin

Total Yijing V2.3 – I Ching Explorer and Casting Program

webmaster@greatvessel.com — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 19:21:00 GMT

After months of recoding, bending, sawing and hammering Pete has finally made the Total Yijing application Vista compliant.

Anyone upgrading to it will be able to import their old readings from previous versions.

As before it will run on Mac OS with a suitable Microsoft compatibility application such as Bootcamp or others (Get good Mac advice for your machine here please).

This version has an updated text with a few extras – Stephen Karcher is always working over the text in the light of developments and from his experience of teaching the I Ching.

I find the text to be more friendly and accessible. It has come a long way since ‘Total I Ching’ was published.

We get emails from people who say they don’t like using a computer programs for the I Ching. We looked at making it into an eBook and quickly realised that it was easier to read and explore the I Ching using the program. This is better!

Additionally each hexagram has a ‘Notes’ page where folk can add as many observations and notes as they wish.

For amphibians only: Yes you can use your preferred casting method and then add the result into the program for interpretation and safe keeping.

And of course there is a free 15 day trial.

Look, this application has only had one careful elderly driver.

– OK?

Just take it for a drive while I go and get some tea. I do hate promotions – but if I didn’t tell you?....

Chuckling and very happy about this development.

Kevin

G.V. I Ching Links page has been updated

webmaster@greatvessel.com — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 22:22:00 GMT

I have just updated the I Ching links page on our site. It has been expanded with ‘new to here’ links as well as updates to some of the sites which were already listed.

I have tried to select only those sites which I think speak with some deeper sense of the I Ching from their perspective. There must be many omissions so if you feel there is a site which would merit inclusion please let me know.

Academic and mathematicians’ sites are deliberately left under represented. This is because we are primarily interested in divination and the field of I Ching studies is massive. Hopefully the I Ching web links sites and directories will make up this shortfall.

At last I have got around to looking properly at the maths behind Terence McKenna’s Time Wave Zero theory. I have always felt uncomfortable about the subjectivity of the historical events he fits into it. They seem a little too Western-centric. Additionally there is little allowance for the Butterfly Principle of Chaos theory fame, where something seemingly insignificant changes the world. Now I find that there is a considerable body of mathematicians who believe the maths underpinning it is flawed too.

OK, OK, I know I should'nt get so uptight about it, but I can't bear to read yet another glib blog listing a dozen proofs that 2012 is upon us and the I Ching is one of the models which substantiates this. Check the link.

Hmm... Where was I? Oh yes, I hope you find some new and interesting stuff in the new links page!

Kevin

Answers from Yijing and the De of the Inquirer

wandering.sages@greatvessel.com — Thu, 03 May 2007 07:51:00 GMT

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, it is right all of the time.”

If we take this to heart, it turns our questions about whether the Yi’s answers are “right” or “wrong”, whether they satisfy us or not, back on themselves. It points not at the “accuracy” of the Change in predicting the future but at the quality of our De, our motivation in asking the questions, the integrity of our desire for a particular outcome and our willingness to submit to the “judgment of the Others”.

Now, according to my friend Scott Davis (whose work I am paraphrasing in the following) the development of both writing and high divination in old China was conceived as a foray into the future, a “narrated risk”. The vocation of the diviner was as at least as much to create the future as it was simply to foresee it. The mission was to confront the future, to capture its emerging signs and to manifest the “royal intelligence” (for the King was the first diviner) in permanent form. This involved configuring the projects of present activities in such a way that they risk the encounter with significant events in the future, creating “meaningful coincidences” or synchronistic fields by casting the outlook on the future in terms that are amenable to confirmation (or not) by turns of events in the outcome. It narrates the outcome (success or failure) in terms of what was agreed to be risked. And one of its main concerns seems to center on the “license to become an ancestor.”

Technically, this effort might be called the cognitive analysis of metaphor, metaphorical coherence, and complex coherences across metaphors. Unlike simile or equation, metaphor doesn’t operate on the basis of similarity – it creates similarities, takes the risk, and this risk involves locating the De or “actualizing-dao” in the metaphorical field. It selects for experiences that involve both risk and the feedback the world and the ancestors offer.

This kind of metaphorical “gambling” sets our intelligence out in a temporal field of not-yet-existent events as conveyed by no-longer-living ancestors. Its specialized symbols (xiang) are like transducers of the intelligence of these ancestors. It moves backwards and forwards in time, involves previous divinations, observed ritual attitude, moral character, dreams, visits from ghosts and other coincidental events that accompanied past episodes as omens and turned out to be correct – the risk is whether or not they will here and if so, in what manner.

The “risk” in this kind of narrative is directly connected to the stance, integrity and De of the Inquirer; it documents the operation (or not) of what was called bao - return or reciprocal action. If the narrative features of the outcome match (dang) the narrative features of the omens, the coincidence counts as a divinatory achievement. If they do not, it points at a failure of the perception of the De of the situation.

In its origins, this kind of divination was a gesture of wagering the present to the future based on the De of the Inquirer (the King). It exposed all action to the risk of divinatory narrative and awaited the future to adjudicate the outcome. The xiang involved in the reading were not “mere symbols”, but real things in the world – “operators”. “No coincidence, no make book,” an old literary maxim says. Without coincidence between the desire and the outcome through the xiang, there is no divinatory narrative. The Inquirer’s wager has failed through insufficient De. We need to look somewhere else for the “meaning.”

This “looking elsewhere” sets the action in terms of the moral/ritual imperfections of the “losers” and the subtle insights and moral/ritual integrity of the “heroes”. The narration dissolves human events into a multiplicity of signifying features in which the actors risk producing the structural features that “correspond to” unfavorable outcomes through lack of ritual integrity or risk not being capable of matching (dang) the structural features correctly to produce a satisfactory narrative, again in terms of a lack of De or actualizing power, the power to perceive the “real” connections. This re-forms the divinatory narrative in terms of the working (or not working) of bao.

The purpose of the symbolic narrative was to sensitize people to the manifold points of significance that crackle around human action like an electric field, with the potential to connect somewhere with future structure and become a story. Once an action is performed it has a life of its own, takes on its own volitions much in the way the notes on a scale want to return to the tonic note in a musical system. Called bao, these dynamic moments of behavior constitute its risks. They await the coincidences that will reveal the pattern of the character (De) of the agents who initiated them.

The main element of risk here is how the “world tells our story back to us” (or not). Configured in a progressive-regressive time frame, it is concerned with the “justice” of the closure of the structural openings the question and the reading have opened. Ritually reflected, this “justice” involves us directly in the realm of the Tiger and our own Gu or inner corruption. It foregrounds a quality of “blame” that is not attached to a random scapegoat, a broken taboo or a dysfunctional system, but to the De of the Inquirer.

Now, the most characteristic feature of this divinatory world view is ritualism, the priority of formality over finality, of De over fortune-telling. This would ask us to reflect our dissatisfaction with the Yi’s answers back onto our stance and integrity as Inquirer. It has been my experience that the Yi seldom gives a “wrong answer”, though the answer might not be what we would like it to be. If the answer is “inaccurate”, it is probably pointing at a disconnection between the pattern of our desire and the actual situation. It is time to look at what we were asking for and why. It is time to see the distance between the De of the King as Inquirer and our own inner motivations. If the answer is “confusing”, perhaps it is a very accurate reflection of our own inner confusion. It may be a reflection of a lack of bao or reciprocal action between our “inner base” and the “judgment of the Others”, a cloud of confusion that surrounds us and cuts us off.

This kind of De or ritual integrity was seen as the studied form upon which one should model all types of action, the real base of divination. It is called Li, reason or pattern, cognate with Li rites and rituals and Li, footwear and to step (as in 24.1). When we embark on a divination we are potentially stepping in the ancestor’s footsteps. The whole purpose is to step in their Way, not to try to make them wear our shoes.

Stephen

Yijing Companion - 'Foundations of Change' by Stephen Karcher

wandering.sages@greatvessel.com — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 17:05:00 GMT

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 of Change begins by orienting the modern reader to areas that are essential to a deeper comprehension of the meaning and wisdom of Yijing. These include:

The development of Yijing in its original historical and cultural context.
An in depth discussion of key rituals and beliefs which echo throughout the Yijing and which add a profound texture and meaning to the text which otherwise might simply appear to be descriptive poetic metaphor.
A clear explanation of the psychological and spiritual stance of the early Chinese which is assumed throughout the Yijing. By adopting this stance the modern reader is able to move beyond Yijing as a system of thought to embrace the realm of dynamic imagery which we enter as we put a question put to the Yi, re-creating the meanings and understandings which comprise our entrance to its Way or Dao.
Part II of the book is a step by step explanation of the Tools or techniques that Stephen uses in his work with the Yijing. It includes descriptions of the different components of a reading and the way they can be used, offering explanations of the hexagram as Pairs, the different types of Pairs and the different sorts of change they represent, the use of Transforming Lines and Crosslines, and much more.

Part III looks at the process of consulting Change. It explores key words used throughout the text, explaining their deeper meanings and the way they describe the core processes of Change. It discusses the processes we enter into when using Yijing and the ways in which they inform us. Finally it describes the mechanics of casting the oracle and drawing up the matrix of hexagrams that compose a reading.

Part IV details casting techniques – getting an answer.

Part V is a step by step walkthrough of a reading. Each part of the reading is systematically approached using the Tools from the previous section.

This book is the product of over 35 years professional study and use of the Yi. It draws on wide reading about old Chinese culture from many sources both ancient and modern. By moving beyond the usual description of historical fact and modern methods for using Yijing it offers a depth, perspective and a stance which a diviner can use to enter into their own authentic dialogue with Change.

Kevin

Ancestor Worship in the Modern World

webmaster@greatvessel.com — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 13:21:00 GMT

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.

Sources for the Decades

wandering.sages@greatvessel.com — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 20:10:00 GMT

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

wandering.sages@greatvessel.com — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 16:22:00 GMT

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 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

Later note 10th Aug 2008 - Finally I have got back to this interesting area - Look at the Aug 2008 Divination posts for more.

Weaving the Canvas - The Act of Divination I

wandering.sages@greatvessel.com — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 14:08:00 GMT

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

Nesting of Images by Glenroy Wolfson

wandering.sages@greatvessel.com — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 19:50:00 GMT

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 of the sort of relationship that can be developed with the Yi and the way it comes alive and informs our perceptions. A thoughtful and evocative piece. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

Kevin

"When consulting with the I-Ching the echo comes to us off of the I-Ching; coming back to us from us. It is our stance, our mind-frame, our emotional environment, our optical time-span, our "wanting to know" that colors the response, because the I-Ching is the echo - allowing us to see from where we have asked the question and in the answer we are reflected back to ourselves. But it is not though an obscure echo, for without that echo coming back from its encounter with the I-Ching, it might as well be our echo from the city buildings or the Swiss Alps, or the mirror on the wall.

The I-Ching is not a neutral tool with no consciousness - for the minute it encounters our voice it comes alive. It's life is a responsive life - its coming to life is in its encounter - it is a relational tool. It's wisdom catches ours and reframes it from its Empathy with the Tao. In so doing it finds the interference patterns of our mis-stepping from the Tao - our opposition to "what is." The Way of the Tao as the I-Ching is generating images of our correspondences or lack of correspondences with that very Way which is the echo, but the echo reflects both the Way as it is, and our mis-stepping from the Way - and it is this mixture (hologram) that is the Hexagram Images and the lines and their energy dynamic. This complex makes new eyes for us to see ourselves . It asks that our intuition open its doors to sense in its feeling/knowledge where we stand and where we are and where we may choose to go or not go, to act or not act, to continue or not continue.

More than this, because it is this visual echo (Hexagrams) with the added verbal texts and commentary texts - our lives become a commentary text that is being written as we continue to encounter and act on, or not act on, this echo. With our own kept records of our encounter with this echo, and our own internalization of this echo in the lives we live, we become a new commentary text, and those who observe and are effected by our lives see a visual echo of the I-Ching as a living entity in us. We then are not in one sense just scripts from the conditions of life, but become scriptures of life marking the values or errors of those very conditions.

When our sensitivity becomes refined through the impact of the echo, we begin to see nested images. There are questions that give an echo from close by - our myopia bringing myopic responses; but always a little beyond that horizon of our limitation. Other times we ask from a broader landscape and are returned an encompassing image. To become aware of the scope of our questioning and the echo, and noting those image that reflect the narrow mind, and those that reflect the broad mind, then allows us to nest images in a hierarchy of meaning. To take the "local" echoes from the narrow and emotionally constricted questions and set them inside of the open and objective meditative and peaceful questions with their echoes, can give us a nested picture of the way we have allowed our own attachments to the inferior man to overshadow an answer awaiting our expansion. This expansion is always hinted at in the wisdom of the sage-entity informing the echo to lead us beyond ourselves.

In our growing relationship with the I-Ching we will become an expansion of ourselves and less a caricature or ourselves. We will see and hear an echo of who we were before we were born into the conditioned.

Nested images of our own limitations and parodies reveal the multilayered masks we wear as faces to the world and even to ourselves. Pointed images of the armor we wear against the flow of the Tao allows us to see into the melting of the ice and the deliverance out of the nests we have made and into the source of the echoes which we see and hear.

The I-Ching springs instantly to life from its dormant state the moment we ask for an encounter. With it we become a new image and a new text. Each day there is a new life and a new image and a new text. The more consistent we become as followers of the Way, the more consistent will become our image and our text. To become re-made in the image of the Tao we become perfectly consistent with the time of each moment and perfectly spontaneous with the demands of each action. Within the change there is no change at all. Then the echo always has the same voice.

Nested images then become the points from which we learn to fly."

Glenroy Wolfson

New Jersey USA

(First posted on Midaughter - A Yijing Forum)

Seeing Through Time

wandering.sages@greatvessel.com — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 20:55:00 GMT

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 important to our life’s lessons as knowing where we are headed.

Consider this example: I have a problem and want to solve it. The Yijing tells me to go and see the 'Great Sage' and he will tell me what I need to know and thus I will be able to solve the problem and take one more step along my path.

There is a technique which puts this into a greater perspective. Now my reading tells me that this problem grew out of a particular situation. Its the same reading so I still need to go and see the ‘Great Sage’ and that this will give me the missing key to solve the problem and that all of this is so that I can go on and address another task which is…

This greater perspective adds substantial depth and insight into our path, purpose and actions.

I have just posted a new article on this, its called Time Cycles. It explains the use of Seasonal Hexagrams. This is the oldest process model of divinatory time. Its alluded to in the magic formula Yuan Heng Li Zhen.

This model was developed by Stephen Karcher out discussions with Mary Powell who did considerable work in this area.

Essentially all hexagrams may be arranged in groups of 4 around a common Core Theme (nuclear hexagram). By considering the cast hexagram (primary hexagram) in this cyclical context a new time dynamic is revealed.

Instead of a reading merely describing the time and a potential direction of change it now gives a deeper history and the steps required to fulfill a longer term development of which the primary and relating hexagrams might only be a part.

This technique is simple to work out, but like all perspectives its importance in a given reading may vary.

Next week Stephen will post another of his readings series where this approach yelds some very interesting insights.

Kevin

Crossline Omens - New Article

wandering.sages@greatvessel.com — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 22:29:00 GMT

When we put a question to the I Ching the response is, to a large degree, like shining a flashlight on the landscape of Change in which we are situated. The primary, or cast, hexagram represents our situation just as a map shows us the landscape around us. It is the changing line(s) which actually contain the advice, omen, or prognostication.

A changing line, if there is one, is like a pathway through the landscape described by the primary hexagram. It most often has an oracular charge such as, “the way is open” or “this is not a mistake”. The text of the changing lines advise on particular courses of action and their likely outcomes.

Some years ago Stephen Karcher noticed that if the transforming lines were combined with the tradition of fan yao then a circle of changes would be described that went beyond the relating hexagram. It effectively extended the oracular message.

Seeing that these paths were textually coherent he applied them to old readings where the changes and outcomes were known. He found that they gave astonishingly accurate detail, not just about where the changes were leading, but that they accurately mapped the steps through which the changes proceeded.

I have been using this method for some years now and it has consistently given accurate and detailed descriptions which far surpass the simple ‘changing line to relating hexagram’ technique.

For a fuller explanation of Crossline Omens click here.

Flying - Predicting the Future

wandering.sages@greatvessel.com — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 17:33:00 GMT

The other day I again I heard the assertion that the Yijing cannot predict the future. This was from someone who had been studying it for a number of years and who also seemed to have a good knowledge of various Eastern philosophies. When asked, “Have you ever tried?” They replied that they hadn’t because they knew it could not.

My usual response to people who say this sort of thing is, “try it and see what happens.” It seems to me that this is a reasonable test for folk who eschew divination whilst advocating the firm ground of scientific fact. It is like someone looking at an aircraft for the first time and asking, “Does it really fly like a bird?” Well the simple answer is, “get in and try it, see what happens.” Maybe some folk are worried that one of the Ten Wings will drop off.

I don’t think the Yijing is about predicting the future as such, just like a plane does not fly like a bird. But it does do other things, perhaps more remarkable things... Based on my own experience I will assume three things in order to explore this:

That people have some facility to understand more than is perceived by thinking about words or events. For brevity I shall call this deep intuitive understanding.
That there is a font of information, knowledge and understanding, which is generally just beyond our perception.
That using the Yijing is a process which links our intuitive understanding to this ‘font’.

These would seem to be the minimum three assumptions for divination to be able to work fully. In practice it does not matter that the “font of information, knowledge and understanding” might be a God for some, the spirit of the Yi for others or, for others still, merely their own knowing soul.

Without the first assumption, that we have an intuitive understanding, the act of divination becomes severely reduced. Many people use the Yijing this way and they report getting ‘good results’. It would appear that they cast the oracle, read the text and gain a cognitive understanding of their situation and their choices within it and perhaps also an intuitive sense of its aptness. I have done many readings for people who think this way and there is nothing wrong with it per se. One such person, whom I read for from time to time, told me that it was very helpful and that the Yi gave him a deeper understanding of the issues at hand, more sensitivity to other perspectives and a dose of good ‘Eastern Wisdom’ on which to reflect. This person is definitely meeting the ‘flying’ criteria. Additionally he is not looking for a fixed prediction which might curtail his thinking, but seeks choices linked to 'oracle indicated potentials' and ways of doing what is best. This seems all well and good.

What really turns the Yijing into something extraordinary; something more than a look up book with added wisdom, is the use of Xiang and of deep intuitive understanding. I have continued here in the hope that you will give your views and experiences.

Who is Kuan Yin? - And drinking tea in Wales

wandering.sages@greatvessel.com — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 09:58:00 GMT

I will be away on holiday, up in the Welsh mountains, for a week. Meanwhile I have posted two articles. The first is Entering the Ghost River – The World of Change. Amogst other things the article explores the way pairs of hexagrams interconnect. The other article is Behind the Red Door. It explores some of the nature and background of the Goddess Kuan Yin and the Chinese oracle associated with her. I enjoyed this article a lot! All I have to do now is pack a weeks supply of my favourite tea and then to try and not get lost.