Puck

Fortune Telling 000

The arrangement and interpretations of the I Ching’s hexagrams can be attributed to the astute analysis of human nature in many contexts by many contributors over many years. It’s much more difficult to account for the uncanny accuracy, reasonableness, and wisdom of the I Ching’s answers to one’s questions. That, at least, has been my experience.

The I Ching is the ancient Chinese book that accreted around a series of 64 hexagrams. A hexagram, in turn, is an arrangement of six lines. Each line is either solid or broken. Here are the first two hexagrams, the Creative and the Receptive:

         

Hexagrams are formed by chance action (e.g., the rolling of three coins, and taking combinations of heads and tails for either a solid or broken line) from the bottom up. The lines are taken to represent a temporal sequence, the unfolding of change over time.

Lines themselves can change, and a changing line is indicated by chance action, as in the roll of three heads (a changing broken or yin line) or three tails (a changing solid or yang line). In the above example, if one tossed a set of three coins six times—once for each line in the Creative—and each roll came up three tails, each line would change into its opposite. The result would be two hexagrams: hexagram one, the Creative, would change to hexagram two, the Receptive.

The odds against a six-in-a-row coin toss are astronomical. But, then, what are the odds in favor of receiving a response that strikes one as both wise and a propos to the question?

Questions. Where do they come from? You, me, worrying the hems of our lives; John Cage, wondering what it really means to compose; and anybody, really, who engages in the act of breasting change with a story of self in mind. To put the previous question another way, What are the odds of a story emerging from apparently unconnected facts, experiences or observations?

As with most fortune telling systems, the odds favor making sense—if you can accept enigmatic replies as sense. For me, the difference between the I Ching and, say, the tarot (which has much sexier images), is perceptual: the I Ching responds in poetry, the tarot in cliché. One enlightens me, the other makes me vomit. It’s not the tarot’s fault; it’s cultural chance. The Romany, vectors of prognostication by chance action of card dealing, eschewed written language until relatively recent times (and then a palette of languages pattern Romany texts, rather than a national language); the Chinese, just as ancient, famously co-pioneered written language. The Romany poetry of the tarot is, at best, confined to a small group of disrespected people while the written texts of the Chinese have become venerated for their wisdom and verisimilitude.

History 001

The I Ching is one of the oldest continuously read and written about books on the planet. The modern view, based on archeological evidence, is that the book was first compiled around 800 B.C. By then, the use of the hexagrams had gone from attempting to influence the gods to attempting to gain penetrative insight into the courses of events that ebb and flow around us. From a purely mimetic fetish (cracks in oracle bones and shells) embedded in a bio- and political-regional oral tradition, the hexagrams became written and trans-regional nodes of interpretation, based specifically on the Dao or way of virtue (of which more soon).

The Book of Changes, as it’s often called in English, or simply the Changes, caught on in Europe thanks in part to Leibniz, the German mathematician and philosopher. He was intrigued by the arrangement of the 64 hexagrams (which came to his attention through deeply circuitous and context-stripping paths), and recognized that they formed a binary sequence that could be used for computation. Like everything else he wrote, Leibniz’s comments on the hexagrams (he seems not to have been aware of the I Ching, the fortune-telling computer formed by the arrangements of hexagrams he perused) are hard to penetrate, which is likely why Newton beat him to fame for the invention of the calculus.

In the 1960s, when all things Asian found themselves groovy, the I Ching began a new life. New “pop” translations began to be published to compete with the two older, standard translations.

Of the available translations, renderings and versions available now, only a few are notable. James Legge’s mid-nineteenth-century translation is horrible, but it remains in print. It’s choked off and blocked by its overgrowth of Romanticism.

The standard, and still the best, translation in English is the Wilhelm/Baynes version. Richard Wilhelm lived in China for many years (as did his son, Helmut, who was also an I Ching scholar, and a fine one). His translation of the Changes into German was followed by the fine rendering into English by Cary Baynes.

Richard John Lynn’s translation of the second-century Wang Bi’s interpretation of the I Ching is deeply informative, but the poetry of Wilhem/Baynes is completely lacking. In English, the enigmatic potential of poetry is needed, even if the original is prosaic (which, anyway, it isn’t; much of the original Chinese is as opaque as it is in any other language; life, after all, is a mystery). In my reading of Lynn’s translation, Wang Bi’s interpretive contribution was mostly by way of reiteration and mundane paraphrase, as if he were breaking ground for the future of the self-help best seller.

R.L. Wing has produced an I Ching Workbook that I’ve used for a long time. Each page presents an interpretation (based on and inspired by Wing’s reading of Wilhelm/Baynes) of the hexagram faced with a page of line readings with a column of white space for notes. This is useful over the long term, as patterns of change are a fact of individual lives, gathered communities, and nations of many stripes. Knowledge of them, obviously, contributes to knowledge of both self and others.

Fortune Telling 101

I’ve consulted the I Ching on and off for about ten years. It’s a decision-making tool, one that adheres to the way of the Dao, a rigorously moral path the precepts of which are articulated in a sequence of paradoxes in another ancient Chinese book, the Dao de Jing. I dipped into Legge’s atrocious translation of the I Ching as a teenager and, of course, was not impressed.

Decades later, one morning late in 1998, my friend and (former?) lover Susan Birkeland (dead; breast cancer; November, 2006) was consulting her Wing workbook, scribbling notes and angels in her journal while cross-referencing her Wilhem/Baynes, as we sat drinking strong coffee in a Mission District cafe. I’m pretty sure Susie saved my life when she explained what she was doing, and why: “It’s therapy, babe.” I know she introduced me to scripture that has since that day inspired and guided me, even when I put it down for years. (But then, the I Ching always said one of my issues was faith.)

The I Ching is deeply conservative even when it advocates revolution. Ko, Revolution, hexagram 49, is “a last resort” after all other peaceful means of change have been tried. When justice is not served by other means, violence is just. So conservative is the I Ching that I sometimes abhor it: The Marry Maiden (hexagram 54), for instance, suggests that “peaceful means” include selling one’s daughter to avoid war or to otherwise manage relationships. War, after all, is politics by other means, and the political is never least personal.

For me, interpreting the responses to questions the I Ching gives is always an act of creativity. Which is a polite way of saying I’m always in the dark as to what I’m being told.

Except when I’m not. The beauty of poetry is always the burst of illumination; that’s what makes poetry addictive and worth pursuing. I’ve spent a lot of time, in other words, learning to narrate to myself the consequences of bad decisions and tough breaks.

The real question, though, is the question. What does one appropriately, sustainably, profitably ask the I Ching?

History 110

How do we ask the I Ching about the changes we’re going through in order to get the greatest insight into a situation? I have no clear, simple answer to that, but from what I’ve read and experienced, there are a couple rules of thumb to keep in mind and heart.

In my experience, the main thing the I Ching informs me about is myself. This seems to be the consensus in the writings of serious and sincere writers about the I Ching. Any expectation of an externalized and precise delineation of what is to come will be foiled by the Changes’ demand that we examine self through the prism of the many.

I think it was Louis Pasteur who said “chance favors the well-prepared mind.” This little gnomic utterance precisely captures for me the utility of the Book of Changes. It’s not that I need to know that event X will be followed by Y and Z; any pretension to such precision is, in my opinion, charlatanism. Life is far too interdependently complex to predict what is going to happen with any certainty. Rather, the I Ching shows us what might happen, and indicates what we need to do, in terms of spiritual readiness, in order to be best prepared for inevitable change.

As I mentioned, the I Ching adheres to the way of the Dao. (The Dao, or Daoism, refers, depending on who you talk to, either or both an ancient Chinese folk religion or a philosophy that is much more widely embraced in the West than in China.) Simply put, the way of the Dao is the way of virtue.

Win or lose, all life’s changes can be met honorably by following the way of virtue. Indeed, I suspect that the Changes would just as soon have us quit asking questions of the Book and ask them of ourselves. Trying to make a decision about something? Then ask yourself, What is the most just path through this situation? What is the path of innocence (that is, we must ask ourselves about our motivations and agendas)? What is the path of constancy (that is, is there a path available that allows us to remain faithful to family, friends, community and self)? Sincerity, resonance, leadership and generosity are also, in my opinion, paths of virtue. (You’ll find these virtues, using various terminology, in both the Wilhem/Baynes version and the Lynn translation.)

The virtues are simple and, however they are enumerated, every culture has a set (and a set of corresponding vices). Reality, however, is deeply nuanced; the paths of the Dao are like the roots proliferating in a wildly healthy ecosystem: plants and fungi form rhizomes, communities where individuality blends undetectably into multiplicity.

Sometimes a vice is a virtue, and vice versa. Constancy, for instance, is clearly a virtue for a married couple—unless or until the marriage becomes destructive. The I Ching can be very helpful in situations where cultural expectations (e.g., the longevity of monogamous relationships) butt up against individual or community well being (e.g., the need to preserve, to be constant to one’s self in order to continue along the way).

The reason I said Susie Birkeland saved my life was because the year before I’d ended a long (for me) relationship; the same month, my brother died by drowning in the middle of a desert. I was certain that I’d broken up with my one true love, even though the day I was driving away (and even before) I knew that was a crock of romantic bullshit, that I was getting myself free, even if at the time, and for years afterward, I didn’t know what “free” meant. The culturally bound stories we tell ourselves about how we should live, love and die are great, but they need to be grounded in particular contexts; they are not principles. That’s a truth Susie reminded me of as we sat drinking coffee and she working on her readings.

Nevertheless, for many years after the breakup and death I was a rudderless wreck. I invented a thousand stories to explain that brutal love-and-brother-death month in ’97, asked the I Ching a thousand questions, and got pretty much the same answer: time will heal. Remain calm. Hide your light under a bushel. In other words, don’t inflict your pain on others, and when it’s time for your light to shine again, it will, and without effort.

I asked question after question about women I met, either in passing ( the eye-catch on the San Francisco Muni was a favorite source of inquiry, inspired in part by the “Missed Connections” classifieds in the SF Bay Guardian) or in some closer capacity (work, for instance). I thought the love of (another, a different) woman would be a magic bullet. Attraction has that effect on me but, as the third line reading of Inner Truth, hexagram 61, says, “Hi finds a comrade. / Now he beats the drum, now he stops. / Now he sobs, now he sings.” In other words, love for love’s sake makes of us a yo-yo, waxing enthusiasm until we wane into depression. The I Ching is clear: this is neither good nor bad, it is a personal choice.

From 1998 until I quit asking in 2002, the Changes was clear: you’re radioactive, so don’t mess with those girls. Did I listen?

Not really. I rebounded, semi-aware of the harm as I went with the rapids of the flow and regretful in the humiliating awareness of the turbulent wake, bleeding all over friends, family and lovers careened into along the way. And in direct defiance of the I Ching in 2002, I teamed up with a kind, beautiful, smart woman, G. In 2008, I left her, too, preferring to be on my own.

What questions was I asking the I Ching and what led me to such behavior?

Fortune Telling 111

In my attempts to fathom the sometimes nearly intolerable pathos, numinous moments, and sexual ecstasies of my life, I’ve been guided by a few simply shapes; the first is two dimensional, the second is, more appropriately for the I Ching, the omen of time, four dimensional.

The Arc: “What does the future hold for X and me?” I’ve learned that it is safer to start with something very general. The I Ching has severely ridiculed and reprimanded me for asking such questions as “Will X and I become lovers?” (Until recently, I mean.) So cautious have I become, after defying the way for so long, that I first quiz myself: Do I really want the answer? If I can stand to ask the most general of questions, I then sometimes try to drill down in search of more specific advice.

The Arrow (of penetration): “How shall I proceed with X?” I want to know how to act. Should I be bold, follow, lead? (I’m too bold, or brash, or awkwardly gregarious, too often without being direct; the I Ching is always telling me to chill: “hide your light under a bushel,” as Baynes captures it in his lovely and often King Jamesian rendering.)

Those have been my two guiding questions. This pair continues to guide me since I started asking again in late 2007. “X” could be anything; frequently, the name of a woman, but also a collaborative team (I could care less about sports), a situation, a potential job, a geographic move (probably to hook up with a woman or maybe a grad school I can’t afford or couldn’t anyway get a visa to attend).

These are also fairly timid questions, reticent questions, cautious questions. The last thing I’d like my reader to do is assume I presume to give advice. No, I only want to set a comparative context because the I Ching is not, as is often said (and as the article in Wikipedia currently claims) “the universe in miniature.” There’s nothing miniature about the Changes; the readings are as manifold as the thing itself; the interpretive territory of the answer is as large as the imagination of the question. The I Ching solves the mapmaker’s problem with poetry; through compression and interpretive unpacking the map is as expansive and detailed as the landscape thus mapped.

What brought me back to consulting the I Ching was an experiment in using it to write creatively. A la John Cage (an unlistenable hero), I wanted to let the hexagrams guide a narrative. After all, the I Ching perfectly captures the range of human experience, in a way that is at once both gnomic and expansive. The I Ching, I found, finds this an insulting waste of time, and discourages it even while providing exciting twists and turns. I tend to personify anything that moves me, but I find this ancient book a sexy beast.

A monster, if fact. How to reconcile, if we read historically, The Marrying Maiden (hexagram 54) with anything but sexual slavery, princess diplomacy, and otherwise pimping pussy for peace and power? The I Ching always considers the personal to be political, and sexual politics is a powerful undercurrent in the Book. The Marrying Maiden is, traditionally, the image of one who stands beneath and is powerless except for the favor of “the superior man” (a phrase that recurs constantly in Wilhem/Bayhnes) based on, presumably (enigmatically, context-dependently), a certain (sexual) attraction.

The political undercurrent of The Marrying Maiden, though, is defiant, insisting on the right to wait for the right time, and this is probably more in keeping with the Dao than not. Initiation, after all, is not a matter of specific age (first menarche, say) than of a sophisticated psychological assessment of spiritual readiness for transformation. Exceptions must always be made in the face of context. Carpe diem, they said in Latin: be prepared to seize the day.

But let the day come to you, not the other way around. The I Ching is an uncanny crapshoot, and like the Dao De Ching it is enigmatic and paradoxical. The ways of virtue and change are intertwined, that much is clear.

And that’s what the I Ching tells me. There comes a point where an infatuation gives way to constancy; even unrequited: perseverance may be rewarded. Perseverance may also be just plain stupid, at times. We don’t know what the future might bring; all we can do is prepare ourselves for the best we’re capable of being.

After all is said and done, nature bats last and chance favors a well-prepared mind (and body, I’m finally learning).

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