Article Index

 

 

You will find a great variety of articles and guides on our site, from short topical guides and how-to-do-it instructions to articles that look at I Ching, divination and culture in depth. We also offer e-books and consultation programs.

Mediating Sites

 

This is a brief description of some of the technical tools we can use to tease out the ritual significance of the special mediating sites located in the Change, sites of “intense mediating and ritual activity that connects the primary powers to personal life”.

 

Technically, the hexagrams in each of the four Pairs that act as mediating sites (11:12, 17:18, 53:54 and 63:64) change into each other through both rotation and through conversion. Rotation is the “norm” in the hexagram pairs, reflecting gradual, cumulative personal change (hua). Conversion or bian, represents a kind of quantum change in categories that characterizes the great primary Engines of Change (1:2, 27:28, 29:30 and 61:62). The four mediating sites bring these disparate qualities together. They form an interconnected series of shamanic “operators” that seek to connect us personally to the great processes of cultural change enacted in high ritual.

 

All the Mediating Sites are part of the same Nuclear Family, the family with 63:64, the paradoxical Burning Water as its core. They all center on this theme and are all intricately interconnected: The Nuclear Figures of 11:12 and 17:18 are 53:54; the Nuclear Figures of 53:54 and 63:64 are 63:64. This interconnection represents a kind of “work” that acts from 63:64 Burning Water to “pull up” and orient the whole series of mediating sites.

 

Double Line Changes are a way of looking at a the synchronistic connections in a Pair. All of these Double Line Changes (1 and 6, 2 and 5, 3 and 4) connect the inner and outer trigrams and thus the inner and outer worlds in a “synchronistic” fashion. In the four Mediating Sites, these Double Lines Changes or signs of synchronistic interconnection, all produce the produce the other three Sites in an intricate web. In the case of our Pair 53:54:

 

Changes at Limits (lines 1 and 6) in 53:54 produce 63:64
Changes at Centers (lines 2 and 5) in 53:54 produce 17:18
Changes at Thresholds (lines 3 and 4) in 53:54 produce 11:12

 

The Eight Trigrams seen as Eight Spirit Helpers are the locus of “shamanic” and ritual power. Exchanging or shifting the upper trigrams and the lower trigrams in a given Pair can give us an image of the goals of that Pair in Ritual space. This sort of trigram shift connects each of the Mediating Sites to a specific Engine of Change that can be said to “power” it:  

 

53:54 The Great Marriages that Change the Time is connected to and powered by 61:62 The Opened Heart and the Flying Bird, the expression of a life fully lived as a message that can cross the Burning Water to inspire a new generation.  

 

Further, we can combine the upper trigrams and the lower trigrams respectively of a Pair to find its central ritual concerns. If we combine the trigrams this way in the central  Pairs in the series of mediating sites (17:18 Following the Spirit to Renovate Corruption in Parental and Ancestral Images and 53:54 The Great Marriages that Change the Time) we can see the central concern of the whole series, a description of its inner ritual place and power. 

 

If we combine the upper trigrams of 17:18 (Dui Joyous Dancer and Gen Mountain) in their two possible modes of interaction they produce the figures 41 Diminishing and the Sacrifice and 31 Conjoining; if we combine the lower trigrams of 17:18 (Zhen Shake and Sun Lady of Fates) in this way they produce the paired figures 42 Augmenting and the Blessing and 32 Enduring or Fixing the Omen.

 

If we combine the upper trigrams of 53:54 (Sun Lady of Fates and Zhen Shake) in their two possible modes of interaction they produce the figures 42 Augmenting and the Blessing and 32 Enduring or Fixing the Omen; if we combine the lower trigrams of 53:54 (Dui Joyous Dancer and Gen Mountain) inh this way they produce the paired figures 42 Augmenting and the Blessing and 32 Enduring or Fixing the Omen.

 

This reveals that the interconnection of 41:42 The Sacrifice and the Blessing that Results and 31:32 Conjoining and Enduring characterizes the inner ritual place and power of the Mediating Sites. Further, through the individual changes of their center lines (2 and 5, 5 and 2) both of these central Pairs (17:18 Following the Spirit to Renovate Corruption in Parental and Ancestral Images and 53:54 The Great Marriages that Change the Time) connect with, draw on and focus the four shamanic powers: the Intermediaries (57 the Lady of Fates who finds the hidden sickness and couples the beings with their fates and 58 the Joyous Dancer who gives the spirit voice in the human community) and the Operators (51 the Rouser and Exorcist who begins all cycles and 52 the Sacrificer and Boundary who ends all cycles).

 

Using these technical interconnections, we can say that the “working” of the all important Rang Ritual of “giving a Way” (41:42) is the central process of the sites. It is offered as the way in which we can fix an omen given by the spirits so that it might endure in the heart and serve as a guide on the voyage of life (31:32). This is the very heart of the ritual process embodied in the mediating sites that “connect the individual to the great processes of cultural change.” It acts through the four shamanic operatives to open the Way to and for the Burning Water, the paradoxical prima materia, to enter and influence our lives. The interiorisation of this Burning Water as the Fire-Water or Kan-Li Axis it represents is both goal and stuff of the central transformational process of the great Matrix of Change.