How to Learn the Yijing Gig?

[maremaria]

Thank you Nancy for your warm comments and sorry for the inconvenience. There are still some practical matters I have to take care re my blog.
You can either IM me or go to any blog at bloggers to see the equivelant translation of the text.

Maria

 

[fkegan]

Yi hexagrams as repertory theater players

The original post about the Yi oracles using the same words over and over reminded me of comments about how actors aren't much as artists since they just say the same words written in their scripts over and over again in every performance.

Actors point to their scripts as just background structure that builds an infrastructure over which they get to create fresh through their artistry anew with each performance. The words or scripts are just one element like the costumes, sets, characters, and staging that go into a full theater performance--It is the total artistry of the production that the audience appreciates.

With the Yi, the performance is staged in your mind, so just reading the words misses just about everything vital and important about the Yijing Gig. It is equivalent to reading Waite's book of Tarot commentary without looking at the actual cards or spreading them out in any pattern.

The wonder of the Yi is that it uses the same set of 64 hexagrams to answer any and all questions. The trick is that you only read some of the words for each answer and they have an uncanny ability to exactly describe, explain and advise about an in-depth answer to YOUR exact question from YOUR particular perspective.

There are a vast number of books on the Yi, so if you need lots and lots of different words those are available as well. In exact response to your question, 'how to learn the Yijing Gig?' One starts by framing your question which is like choosing an initial Tarot card to base a Tarot reading upon. You might as well start a journal and write your question down for learning purposes along with whatever remarks you care to journal about your question and/or the real life situation it arose from. Then you can use your books or whatever to cast an oracle and interpret it. Then journal your remarks upon the oracle and its interpretation. Then cast your Tarot for the same question and leave room in your journal for your later thoughts and reactions as things play themselves out.

As for my personal history with the Yi, I was shown a copy of the Wilhelm by a friend who was an early pioneer in the applied mathematics days of computer science (1969 at Brown University). He took me through casting the oracle and showed me the passages in Wilhelm to read. However, at that point my Yi adventure differed from yours apparently, I did not read a set of words on a printed page (though objectively that was what I could be seen to do) I heard some metaphysical sage considering my question and speaking his answer directly to me.

My experience in the world of the Yijing Gig, in your phrase, has taken many turns in the almost 40 years since then, including casting oracles incessantly, feeling addicted to casting oracles, understanding the inner workings of casting oracles (including first limiting myself to only casting with yarrow stalks until I learned to cast oracles as fast that way as by throwing coins), finding Wilhelm commentary literally exact, finding Oracle results incomprehensible, etc.

In 1973 I met Gia-Fu Feng at a Taoist meditation weekend, and went off to visit his Stillpoint Foundation for a few days' lesson in Taoist Non-Action. The next summer I returned and we translated the I Ching from his American Taoist perspective. Then I went off to law school taking 5 weeks vacation in Europe instead of mid-terms exams my second year.

On that vacation, I was explaining the Yijing to an astrologer friend in Belgium, when I realized that the meaning of the hexagrams was exactly contained in the details of the structure of the hexagrams. The hexagram is a graphic, gestalt symbolism of the 6- stages of changes with each stage either focus or background.

This new perspective made all the words in Yi commentary to be seen by me as costumes and reviews of these hexagram as repertory actors. The 6-line figures are line drawings of these actors performing the scenario conjured up by your casting an oracle of your question. The words are just the printed script they use to piece together your unique oracle presentation. Just reading scripts, especially those that are based upon drama much older and more exotic than Elizabethan Shakespeare, will not say much to you.

It takes a live performance where you find yourself intrigued by the subject matter or the personal style of some of the actors or how their scenario hits what matters to you before you will find anything interesting in the Yi. One begins learning the Yijing Gig by casting the oracle about personal questions you NEED answered and watching the drama unfold as they relate to you.

Some folks meet the Oracle of the Yi and join the repertory company as booking agent setting up venues for the Yi actors to stage their shows in their minds or on their websites. You chose to ask on this site how these antique scripts of Yijing commentary can be considered powerful drama that can hold an audience in these times and in your appreciation.

At that level your question, in relation to the Tarot, let me suggest that you need to flesh out and costume your Yi oracles so you can recognize them in terms of your Tarot card pictures. By the bye, if you get a copy of the Pamela Coleman Smith painted deck (Waite-Rider) you can find great meaning in just looking at the cards. Although they are always and all ways the same printed images, you can see different bits highlighted in response to different Tarot spreads.

The words of the Yi commentaries have a similar power of local variation and personal appeal in the context of your personal oracles. The two requirements either way are that you must cast an actual oracle based upon your personal question---and--you must actually need an answer that works for you.

Start your journey with your own oracle cast. If words still make no sense to you, then
come back to the shared readings forum on this web site when you have an actual oracle you have cast for an answer you need but cannot quite accept or understand.

Good luck upon the Trail,

Frank