Notes on my new practice of conducting I Ching readings.
I started my exploration of I Ching by reading the pocket edition translated by Thomas Cleary. Even though I did not enjoy Cleary’s prose and most of these ancient allusions were utterly impenetrable, reading the basic text without commentary was a great introduction to the structure of the book.
That said, I did not conduct readings until my copy of the John Minford translation arrived in the mail, which has an extensive commentary to shed light for personal readings. Minford made a quirky choice to toss in a few Latin phrases in the readings, which I find atmospheric (but is certainly a YMMV preference).
The first readings were sparse because I was asking indeterminate questions. However, I’ve been stumbling into better insight, due to increasing familiarity and learning to ask sharper questions. As with much in life, the most important step for obtaining a useful answer is finding the right question. Hopefully this practice will continue to be more insightful as I improve at this skill.
None of the answers are earth shattering – I am usually reminded of well trod aphorisms that I’ve said many times – but the applications are sometimes unique and novel. For better or worse, I suspect this practice may be an exercise in self confirmation bias. To be sacrilegious for a moment, the base text of the I Ching is an impenetrable word salad (at least for a beginner), so there is an obvious danger of reading what one wants. One ought to consider the warnings of S. J. Marshall and remember dire lessons of history when someone overly-enthusiastically embrace the ambiguous pronouncements of the Delphic Oracle.
I jot notes of all my readings in a notebook. If past experience with sketchbooks are an indication, I won’t ever refer these old notes in the future but the most important aspect of writing things down is that it focuses the mind at the moment.
That said, I did come across an interesting coincidence between a consecutive readings the other day. It’s both easy to dismiss as just chance, but the animal spirit inside of me still wants to put special significance on the moment.
A week after after starting this ritual, I added two extra steps to each session. After the I Ching reading, I read a section of the Dao De Jing. I’m just marching through it front to back, jotting a couple notes along the way, and I plan on rotating through various books of wisdom (such as the Analects or Art of War) with this practice. Finally, I close with writing down a Chinese proverb from the ABC Dictionary of Chinese Proverbs, (referenced via an addon in Pleco). This last step gives me a chance to write and read a little (non-archaic) Chinese, and I think an earthy aphorism is a necessary benediction after drinking the heady stuff of the other two books.
The other day, I researched the yarrow stalk method of divination (a much longer process than throwing three-coins six times method). In the process I found out that I had been calculating my coin throwing incorrectly. It was a minor error since overall probabilities were still consistent, but the actual results were “incorrect”. However, I had been getting good insight for the past couple weeks. This early error is a good reminder that divination is a self-conducted mind game. The key is to allow chance put fresh unexpected input into your brain. I suspect you could practice bibliomancy and just flip the book open at random.
I scoured the backyard for twigs and got 50 sticks and have found that I quite enjoy this method of divination. It is a considerably longer route to getting an answer, but noticeably more pleasurable. It seems that sometimes the answer just comes from spending 20 minutes with the question doing a relatively mindless counting task. And for a guy who is as fidgety as me, this is likely the closest I’ll get to a meditative practice.
The internet has a habit of transmogrifying a passing interest into the only thing in the world. Everybody’s into it now! I’ve joined the I Ching Reddit as well as the OnlineClarity forums, both of which have users who carry themselves with a discomfiting certainty that I recognize from my teenage years as a Reformed Baptist.
S. J. Marshall’s excellent Biroco.com and Bradford Hatcher’s Hermetica.info are also quite self assured, but they are both comprehensive resources with recommendations from folks seem who really know what they are talking about. Finding these websites spurred me to record these notes. This is a post is a marker of how I started the practice, since I suspect things may shift under his influence.
A less dogmatic and much more sympathetic take on the I Ching is this lovely essay by Will Buckingham. I might just pick up his book inspired by the I Ching, as well as Calvino’s Castle of Crossed Destinies (any excuse for a Calvino is a good one).
With only a couple months, I’ve barely started this practice compared to these illustrious students. I’m still on the fresh, exciting part of the learning curve, where new insights are gleaned every few days. I’m curious when the dip will hit, and whether I will drop this like many of my other dustbin hobbies. Ultimately, that’s a problem for another day. At the moment, my intended next steps are:
- Keep up the practice.
- Incorporate S. J. Marshall’s method of interpreting changing lines.
- Play more with the Yarrow Stalk Method.
- Print copies of the Nigel Richardson books for use during readings. Also, get a copy of the Wilhelm-Baynes Translation with its Neo Confucian background and Richard Lynn’s Translation with Wang Bi’s (Neo Taoist) commentary.
- Learn to memorize the hexagrams. I’ve been using a set of flashcards that I assembled on Quizlet.
- Read Minford, Lynn, and Wilhelm-Baynes cover to cover (separately from the readings).
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