First meeting

[uselesstree]

Hi folks

I thing it might be interesting to hear how people learned of/became involved with the I Ching.

I learned of it when I was 17 years old from a friend who had been introduced to the Ching by his mother.

For the first few years I didn't do any thing but read the hexagrams and lines and the various treateses to get some idea what it was all about.

Then I began devining with coins (I liked dimes, the way they felt in my hand). Eventually, after many years, I had a friend bring me back some Chinese coins with holes from asia (I wear these around my neck now to reming me of change and its laws.

About a year ago I began to try to study more deeply. The major part of this is to devine each morning looking for some lesson to guide me through my day and make sense of where my life is at any given time. Throughout the day, when I come to some issue I ask myself how this moment is addressed in today's reading. I have learned a lot through this process, not just about the Ching, but about the way the Tao is manifest in my life.

All this has been about 21 years worth of experience. Recently, I have made a careful and sometimes halting return to my spiritual roots in the Christian faith (I was reaised in the Lutheran church). I have found that the Ching has fit into this beautifully in that it explains God's laws clearly and therefore makes it easier to know what a "Christian" ought to do in the world. I think of Jusus as an accomplished master in harmony with the Tao and he is, for me, the the kind of human leader referred to in Wilhelm/Baynes translation of hex 45 where it says: "Where men are gathered together, religious forces are needed. But there must also be a human leader to act as the center of the group. In order to bring others together, this leader must first of all all be collected within himself".

I would love to hear about how others have experienced the Ching and how it fits into their lives.

Peace out
Frank

 

[candid]

Hi Frank,

I can understand how Yi would support your view of the Christian faith and doctrine. It did during a significant period of my life.

My best friend returned from a weekend in Vermont where he met someone who introduced him to the Ching, Wilhelm. This friend and I were seekers and this was something definitely found. Being band members as well as best friends, we searched the Yi scriptures daily, throwing the coins at every chance to catch synchronisity in the act, so to speak. *grin*

There are many parallels in both old and new testaments (as we gentiles refer) to the Ching's teachings. Each has an image of a Great Man. Each councils to forgo the weak and grow the strong in oneself.

I think that neither of us are speaking of conventional Christian views, which are always literal. And whether literal or symbolic, the spirit is fed anyway.

Enjoy your walk and walk in your joy.

 

[gene]

Wish I could remember how I first got involved with the I Ching. It think it was about 25 or 30 years ago when I first cast a hexagram. Wow! What happened? How time flies!

Gene

 

[binz]

hmm, I can't remember exactly when or how I first discovered I Ching. But it was roughly about 10 years ago and came from an interest in Taoism. I bought a book back then called I Ching; The Number One Success Formula and used it a couple of times back then but can't remember it being very useful. For each hex it took a page to prescriptively say what it meant, then added a sentence to say it might not mean that - not very inspiring, but it was an early step on a long path.

Over the years I have come closer to Tao and I guess Yi was waiting for when I was ready?

Anyway, last autumn came a big decision/change time in life and I rediscovered Yi Ching - and very importantly, found this group (at around this time I was discovering who I was, and also discovered that if all thoughts did not exist, and if nothing physical existed, then there is still something there! My current path is taking me on a learning/discovery journey of this '3rd aspect'). I dusted off my old I Ching and again it was not much help, but the translations I could now access via the web were, and Hilary's advice on various books led me to Karcher's which has been a very beneficial investment - I find it gives me an image and a 'feel' for where the path is.

So, in summary. I've about 6 months real experience divining with Yi, about 37 years experience with life, and I blend them with my intuition as I walk along the path.

Thanks to all of you for helping me (re)find Yi and for helping me see the path more clearly. Without this community I don't think I'd be with Yi now.

Binz

 

[louise]

Hi Frank, I remember very clearly first coming accross the I Ching. I was about 13 and was nosing around my hippie brothers bedroom, fascinated by all his hippy paraphanalia - joss sticks - pipes, indian bedspreads etc. It was 1973 and he'd returned from the Indian hippy trail. There was a copy of Wilhelm, lieing amongst his stuff and I was immediately fascinated by it and carried it off to my room and kept it, feeling like I'd made a great discovery. The fact that it didn't make alot of sense to me didn't worry me, I just knew I'd found something good -and almost something I recognised.
Over the years I have never really fully abandoned it - sometimes asking questions 10 times a day, sometimes not using it at all for months. Strangely though I have never taken a scholarly interest in its background and still have no idea what 'mutual gua' is and only ever consider the primary hexagram and changing lines, like Candid I never quite got why we need the nuclear hexagram.

Like Binz I've found this forum to be incredibly enlightening, learning more here than years alone with the books.

 

[pedro]

The first time, hu? Well, it was full moon, we were at the beach, a soft warm summer breeze caressed our naked bodies...... wait, Im mistaking 1st times

Ok, now really

I cant remember if someone told me about it (I had my share of weird friends) or I just bumped into it, but probably I just picked it up at a bookshop, cause I was always a bit of a bookstore geek.
But I remember coming home with it, and making my first question, something like "who am I?" or the likes. I remember getting Ta Yu (#14), and thinking "coool.... tell me more"
So I started asking all sorts of stuff, till after a dozen or so I got #4... I remember freezing as I read what seemed like the Yi talking directly to me... I though "wow... this [beep] is [beep]ing amazing!!!!!". If I had any doubts, I became a believer that moment (nowadays I think that is the main purpose of that particular text)
So I put down the book and must have left it unopened for a couple of weeks, just because of the chills down my spine

So, over the years I would go to it whenever I had a really important question (not that often, really), cause I knew it would always bring the matter to light. It never failed me, and I still think the best way to get precise answers is only ask when you really must

Only since last year or so, I started really asking myself how did it work (I alwasy knew the mind had something to do with it, but precisely what, was irrelevant), studying its structure, its history, reading all the wings (I thought there were far too many letters in it, besides it wasnt needed for the use I gave it), searching for other translations, browsing online, etc.

In a sense I think I turned to it on a more serious level cause I started to need it (in my quest), and indeed it has been shaping my mind in a way that I can certainly acknowledge. The Yi also opened my eyes to taoism and chinese philosophy (Binz, I went the other way round). I had alwasy been a yoga fan, and had copies of the tao te ching and li tao ch'un from that time, but I really didnt understand either by then, and wasnt really interested. So the Yi opened a lot of ways for me...

So I guess I have been using it as a need to, letting it take the lead, and although I gained a much deeper understandment of it recently, it has been there by my side all along (even when I didnt consult too often, I would always carry it around with me, thats why my wilhelm is basically falling appart, with loose pages and stains all over...)

 

[s_dandy]

Wow, you people are old :-}...with that said, hopefully you all can see the freshness of my journey with the Yi.
I first encountered the Yi Ging on April 20th,2001, before then unbeknowest to myself I had been living a very Taoistic life, going with the flow of the times. Before the encounter I was already pretty deep in Chinese philosophy and practice, utilizing the astrology, Feung Shui, and looking to take up Accupunture as a career; with the latter two arriving in my life around ages 22-23. During that time I had heard of the Yi, but never knew of its importance with my current journey.
One fine morning while visiting a friend in Asheville, North Carolina; I happened to look down at the floor and I noticed that my friend was supporting his child's crib with a black book.
to myself I wondered what book would be called on for such a duty? As I looked closer I began to make out Chinese Characters. Eager to learn something new I lunged at the book, and caaaarrrefully slid it out from under the crib to read the title: I Ching The book of Changes, (Stephen Karcher Version), for some reason I got excited; as if I found an old friend. As I read through the preface and first couple of chapters my whole body tingled. I couldnt sleep, trying to cram as much info as possible before it was time to return home to Georgia. I recall picking a random hexagram about a question "What should i do about my music?", and I remember the Yi telling me to focus more on my new direction; it was then that I was hooked. I felt the answer to the depth.
Since then I've divined with my stalks on various occasions, all of which had to be revised once I got help from this site :-]

P.S. Hope I didnt upset anyone with that "Old" thing at the beginning, waddya expect from a snotnose?

-Inhale, Exale...are we done?-

 

[lindsay]

Old? How about this: I threw coins for my first reading in 1963, using Wilhelm/Baynes and understanding very little. At the time I saw everything through Laozi-tinted glasses. I thought the I Ching was a kind of Tao-machine for figuring out which way the current was traveling so I could ?go with the flow?.

A couple of years later I found Legge, but the event that really changed my appreciation for the Yi was the publication of the first American edition of John Blofeld?s translation in 1968. Unlike earlier translators, Blofeld was primarily interested in practical divination, and knew how ordinary people in modern China used the Yi. Even so, the Yi remained mainly a curiosity for me, and I was pretty much through with it by 1970. There were more exciting (and easier) ways at hand to explore one?s consciousness.

Fast forward twenty years to the evening of September 4, 1991. I was on vacation at the beach, and I had a stack of used books I?d collected for leisure reading or immediate disposal. One of them was an obscure textbook called ?The Mysteries of Religion? by Stephen R. L. Clark, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool. I have no idea why I bought or decided to read this book, but after a few unexciting, academic chapters, Clark began to develop an extremely odd theory he called ?The Angel in the Book.?

Clark?s idea is that every book has a life independent of its author, a sort of spirit or angel that brings itself into being by selecting an author through the creative process, and then lives on by morphing itself in the minds of its readers. In this sense, a book like the I Ching (Clark cites the Yi as an example) is an actual living being, and the Oracle is as real an existence as you or I. If this is true (and Clark thinks it is), then it is very likely the Yi possesses powers of perception and analysis unfamiliar and unavailable to us except through divination.

OK, this sounds boring, but it shot through my brain like a bolt of lightning. Here was a professional philosopher rationally arguing in support of divination with original arguments I had never heard before. Not just phony divination (?it?s all in your head, my dear?), but real, honest, external results from another order of reality.

From that September evening until now I have been studying the Yi solely for the purpose of understanding divination. I?ve made a lot of mistakes, and taken many blind alleys ? but the road goes on, and I?m as ready to move forward as ever.

And you guys, each and every one of you, are my teachers. Thank you.

Lindsay

 

[kts]

I came across 'The Book of Change' in a bookshop in the early 1980s, not knowing what it was, despite working in a library with a section full of the I Ching. I was looking for something to help me 'change', whatever I meant by that. I discovered it wasn't like anything I'd come across before, but was soon completely hooked.
Has it helped me 'change'? Others will have to be the judge of that. I do know I'm only now beginning to appreciate its lessons (another (relative) oldie - 53 in a couple of weeks - still getting Hexagram 4 an awful lot!).

 

[gene]

Wow, Lindsay, you are old! I mean old! First throw in 63? I was still in high school then. Didn't know x from y. And the I Ching, I had never heard of it. Why you must be 56. Hmmm, come to think of it, that's how old I am too. Kts, 53? Why you are just a youngster. But then there is old, and there is also old souls. I suppose we all fit into that latter category. Yeah, you gotta be our age to appreciate life. And the older we get...well, didn't Confucius say he wished he had another 50 years to study the I Ching? I'll take a hundred and fifty thank you, in fact, why stop there? With modern advances in medicine, maybe we all will live to a thousand, by then we will begin to learn to appreciate the gems in the book of changes. Begin being the operative word there.

Gene

 

[kts]

For anyone interested in the relationship between use of I Ching and Christianity - I'm currently reading a book called 'Embracing Change - postmodern interpretations of the I Ching from a Chrstian perspective' by Jing Young LEE. It's really an exposition of I Ching for Christians, to persuade them that I Ching isn't as incompatible with their faith as they might think. I've had a variety of reactions from Christians, clerical and lay, to whom I've talked in the past about I Ching - from the 'I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole' reaction from a 'born-again' colleague at work who had a former interest in Wicca, to a disappointing incomprehension from some clergy. I wanted to say "But don't you see, this is real!", but perhaps my presentation was at fault too.

 

[louise]

The reward for the most novel way of discovering the I Ching must go to the very young Dandy ! Finding it under a sleeping baby's crib ! There has to be something symbolic going on there doesn't there ?

 

[gene]

Well, Kts, whether at fault or not...Some people are not ready. There are so many variations of Christianity it is not even funny. The more mystical side of Christianity would have no problem with the I Ching at all, or Tarot cards, or whatever. The Catholic church, in the early days, did whatever it could to stamp out the more mystical side of Christianity, and whatever it couldn't do by sword or by torture, it did by perverting the meaning of the scriptures, and substituting any lines of any verses it found might not support their view. Sorry to anyone out there who is Catholic. I am not anti Catholic person, but I know too much about the Church. When rewriting the scriptures wasn't enough, they simply told the people don't read the scriptures, because only the priests can interpret it correctly. So you ended up with a massive population that simply did business as normal on Monday through Friday, on Saturday they went out and got sloshed or whatever, then on Sunday, they wouldn't dare miss church, the bishops are watching, why, they would just go in and say a few hail mary's, the priests would absolve them of their sins, and they could live their life any old darn way they desired, long as they didn't look at a Tarot card, and just confess it to the priest on Sunday morning. This same attitude about the Tarot Cards and I Ching or whatever, filtered down into the protestant churches when they became functional. There is however, a significant body of Christian mystics who are growing that have no qualms whatsoever about the use of divination. There is also a significant body of Christianity that has no quarrel with Buddhism, Taoism, or Animism, whatever, but they aren't out there, in your face type religions.

Gene

 

[s_dandy]

Sometimes I wonder about that myself Louise. A book so important, holding up a babies crib. I tried to be smart, thinking that since the owner had it on the floor getting all dirty like that, maybe he'd let me take it home for a year. I went to the library that same day and did some searches
on this new found trasure chest. I found Erics I-Ching box, or somethin' like that; and asked if the guy would let me borrow his book. I think (but I'm not sure) I got Jaws/Chewing(I'm at work and cant remember the Karcher # for that hexagram), but either way I do remember the answer rang to the tune of #*@#$
(insert four letter word)NO! I asked the guy and sure enough he clung to that book like a glass of water in the desert. Heck I dont blame him, I'd have said the same thing. Of course at the time I did not realize how important this book is.
Oh yeah, do you all think that its possible that the Yi can amplify sensitivity to energy? Sometime later, after aquiring my own copy; I was reviewing the section on the Universal Time Cycle while standing in my hallway. While I read I happened to look up to my left, I stopped cold with suppressed fear as I saw what appeard to be a figure moving down the hall to my bedroom, I even flattened myself against the wall to let it float on by. I had never expierenced anything like that during the first year of living there, so why now I thought. Strange, hokey, or just an overworked imagination? I even meditated on it.
As far as Christians understanding the Yi and Tao, I have a buddy I'm working with. He is trying to see through the veil that religion somtimes drapes over people. I have given him a copy os Simple Taoism to read at his leisure before letting him se my copy of the Tao Te Ching. He wants to know of other things that deal with spirituality and philosophy so I help as I can. You guys and gals have helped as well, I actually printed the Magical Thinking posts and let him read those, still waiting for feedback.
Thanks All

-"If the wind blew me in the right direction; would I care....I would"-

 

[uselesstree]

Hi again

Wow, great stories, fun to share. Thanx Kts for the book recomendation.

My interest in the ching grew along with my interest in Taoism which was insighted by the author Alan Watts (some of you probably read a few of his books).

As far as the "church" goes. It is difficult to talk to some Christians about the Ching but then it is difficult to talk to a lot of Pagans about Jesus too so there is a lot of stiff-mindedness to go around.

I like the way LiSe translates hex #56 (which I have carved into my walking staff). She talks about the laws of God being the same everywhere and it is olny man's laws that vary. When one knows God's law they can speak different languages. I thing Jesus would like that, talking to fisherman about fishing, to farmers about farming and so on.

Any way, its nice to have this little space to see one another.

Peace
Frank

 

[lenardthefast]

Heard it mentioned in the sixties occasionally, and there were many references made to using it by Ken Kesey and other writers whom I enjoyed, but, I was too interested in the Tarot at the time.

About 6 years ago I was delivering two jade tables to a residential building site and had an opportunity to see it being used by the carpentry contractor(only in California could this have happened).

Told a friend about my experience and he bought my first book for me. It was a simple book, based on Wilhelm's translation, I forget the author's name. About a year later, I bought my first Wilhelm, and, as they say, "the rest is history".

Although I originally was interested primarily in the divination aspects, that rapidly changed into reading the book more as "a manual for right living'. Have been using it in that way ever since. Have never found anything in its pages with which I disagree on a morality basis.

And so it goes...

Namaste,
Leonard

 

[candid]

Frank, I agree, it is nice to have this little space to see one another.

My take is, neither Christians nor Pagans have it wired altogether. The space between them is where its at anyway. Define it, and its gone. We can hop on the bus of something going "somewhere", but we learn that there is no finish line. There is no there. Its here, now. If it ain?t here, now, it ain?t there either. When we go, we take what we?ve become on the journey. If we take religion, we?ll see religious realms; heavens and hells. If we take science, we will see the intricacies of the Universe. If we take intellect, we?ll have the profoundest of mysteries to sort through. Is there a right path among these? Or a wrong one?

Candid

 

[binz]

regarding this talk of how old people are


what is age?
age, like time, is relative and irrelevant
we are infinitely younger than existence
we are infinitely older than this moment

this single lifetime is insignificant
in the eternity of the infinite universe

this single moment is large enough
to contain everything that exists


KTS, happy bday for a couple of weeks time. Coincidentaly it's mine soon too, and i used to share a house with someone who had the same birthday (and same year) as me and am now at work, sitting next to someone who has the same birthday (different year)

Binz

 

[kts]

Binz,
Thanks for the birthday greetings, and happy birthday for yours when it comes along.

 

[uselesstree]

My bday is on the 24 of may, same as Dylan (he was a big user of the Ching back in the day so I hear). I'll be 38. I like getting older. I think age is funny; when you are 10, five years is half your life, when you are fourty, five years is an eighth so the older you get the less real weight any amount of calendar time seems to have.

 

[heylise]

I met the Yi in 1965. Oooold too! A young hippy actress from Amsterdam had left the place where I was going to live, leaving the Yi behind, and the first answer I got was 18. A big blow, I didn?t like that at all, but also knew it was very true.
The copy (Wilhelm) was an intriguing one, two books in a box, with yarrow stalks. I did not understand 9-10th of it, and that annoyed me, because I felt there was much more than I had access to.

Then the collected works of Jung came along and I absorbed them. Next astrology, and I went deep into that too. Chinese astrology (Louise, if you are a rat (?), things will be better starting in June. Rat sounds awful, but I like them. Skillful survivors), and a big interest in patterns.

When I came across the Sabian Symbols, I combined the Yi with astrology, and that explained some of all those things that stayed out of my reach until then. But the real revelation came when I got the book by Ritsema and Karcher. A word for word translation with concordance. I realized that it was possible to see for yourself what the Chinese text actually said. So I bought a Chinese-English dictionary and started searching for all those characters. The first one took me a whole day.

To make an I Ching book by myself was what I wanted, but how??? I put a globe at the foot of my bed and turned it around every night. Three times, from Europe to America to China and to Europe again. THAT was what I really wanted.
The next BIG thing was a computer, the last thing which could have been possible in a life like mine. I said I needed it for bookkeeping, but my real aim was what it made possible with the Yi. And now I turn form Europe to America to China ?

Thanks to the computer I found the oracle bones characters. The oldest known Chinese script. I think the Yi has been made in that time. Maybe all or part of it has been written down or changed much later, but the original base must be extremely old. Especially the hexagram names. Finding out their meanings is like jumping into mythology. They keep expanding. This week I found the hexagram names of the GuiCang, one of the three ancient Yi?s, older than the Yi we know (the third one is the LianShan, the oldest one).

Happy, happy,
LiSe

 

[louise]

LiSe, I am a rat and now looking forward to June

 

[suzy]

Around 5 years ago, I was going through a very sad, lonely time after breaking up with my long-time partner and fiance. One of the gifts of a time like that is that you become psychologically free to explore all kinds of thoughts and feelings that are normally not part of your mental furniture. In my case, I found myself reading up on magic, paganism, divination, and so forth. I'd never taken such things seriously, tending more towards traditional Western philosophy and religion. Anyway, most of what I read was very silly, but I was intrigued by the fact that a number of seemingly quite rational people actually believed that the I Ching was a useful tool. What could produce such an illusion, I wondered? So I went to the bookstore and bought an I Ching book. Not knowing much of anything about what to look for, I chose a translation by Frits Blok. It was packaged as a set with little sticks that you throw to get the hexagram. I valiantly struggled to use it and make sense of it, but it was hopeless. Lines like "The calves are at rest. The calf only needs to follow but it radiates discontent as it cannot help the third line, which will not bend to listen to it...." left me absolutely flummoxed. Looking at it now I can understand better where Blok is coming from, but for a beginner it was utterly opaque. I had NO clue what was going on. So I gave up.

For a couple of years I pretty much ignored the I Ching. My failure to "get" it, though, continued to nag at me. Was I just being dim? If Carl Jung could "get" it, why couldn't I? One day, browsing in the bookstore, I came across another packaged I Ching set, this one featuring Tarot -like cards and a translation by Richard Gill. It was the cards that appealed to me -- I thought, "oh, maybe pictures will help me figure out what on earth the hexagrams are about!" As it turns out, the cards were superfluous -- I've hardly ever even glanced at them. It was Gill's translation that provided the key I needed. Suddenly it all made sense -- the hexagram meanings, the individual line readings. It was wonderful. I started using the I Ching on a regular basis and haven't stopped yet. My little copy of Gill's book is now in tatters, held together with a rubber band. Other translations have joined it on my shelf, but Gill is still my favorite.

 

[django]

Hi all
I see there is some discussion on the Opposition between Christianity and the I Ching
on this thread,but perhaps if we use Jung's conception of the collective unconscious we see at this depth there is no opposition. If I could quote from M.L.Von Franz's On Divination and synchronicity
.... There is a village in the Swiss canton of Uri where church and cemetery are on the other side of a little river, so for a funeral they have to carry the coffin over the bridge to the church and cemetery. A dry mud path leads towards the bridge, in good weather it has cracks, and all the village people still look at the cracks nowadays as they follow the coffin, and by them can tell who will be the next, by looking at the chaotic patterns in the dry mud.

Now, pray tell what is the difference between these solid stoic Swiss Christians and the Shang Sorcerers.They both "read" cracks to fortell the future whether it be be bones or mud
the method is the same.