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What does this mean to you, when the translation says "Sacrifice" or "Let a sacrifice be conducted", etc ?
Another possibility is that divination ceremonies were concluded with ritual meals or snacks. Communion, if you will. The sacrifice involved having the querent supply food and drink to a select group, picking up the bill as was his due. This was a way of ‘fixing’ the oracle.
In a way, having a party is a kind of modern sacrifice. Somebody supplies all the goodies so others can enjoy themselves and celebrate the occasion. Well, that’s the theory. Gifts are also sacrifices. We give gifts to symbolize our gratitude, our esteem, our love, our regard.
Clearly something more is required when the oracle speaks to you, connects with your life - if only an expression of thanks for the communication. I’ve felt that way. Sometimes it seems we spend too much time thinking about preparing for and executing the act of divination. What happens afterward is also important. The oracle gives you a gift. What is your response?
Perhaps it is 享 xiăng.
I do not doubt there is something in our thinking and our living that parallels everything expressed in the Yi. You and I could live in the Bronze Age if somehow we found ourselves transported back in time. It might not be easy, but man (and woman) hasn’t changed much in the past few thousand years. Their experience is not fundamentally different from our experience.
What would it mean if we read “sacrifice” wherever Wilhelm and others read “success”?
“Sacrifice: The offering up of something to a deity in the hope that some kind of connection will be established between the sacrificer (and possibly their community) and the sacred. Sacrifice can be done for the following reasons: i) the belief that the gods literally needed sustenance; ii) the belief that it establishes communion between the deity and worshippers; iii) as a gift to supplement prayers of petition; iv) to pacify divine anger; v) to ward off evil spirits; vi) to seal a contract with the deity; vii) to offer homage or praise to the deity; viii) as an act to remove pollution and assist achieving purification.” (pp. 92-93)
It is true we cannot go back and think like Chinese diviners 3000 years ago.
But if we are going to use their book, if the Yi is to have any authentic meaning, perhaps we should consider how to understand ancient sacrificial notions in present-day terms. This is a problem that interests me a great deal.
For me, the difficulty is finding the key. The key that unlocks the Yi into my own life in the 21st century.
Luis/Sparhawk - I want to thank you for all the wonderful things you've posted here on Clarity. Your efforts are often greeted with stony silence, but I assure you there is at least one grateful fan out here in cyberspace.
For you - with your love of the strange - and for cat-lovers everywhere, I offer this interesting article:
http://sunzi1.lib.hku.hk/hkjo/view/44/4401532.pdf
So what is my sacrifice for? Who benefits, and why?
When the Yi calls for sacrifice, all those hengs or xiangs are part of the reading itself, part of the oracle’s answer to your question.
One part of the answer involves giving a sacrifice.
This is not a question of giving up something to get a result (a successful divination) – you already have your result, and now you are being asked to make a sacrifice.
So my question is what is the nature of the sacrifice the Yi is asking for?
Going back to some of the African religions based on Yoruba traditions, just as a reference, the belief is, as I understand it, that there must be reciprocity between the querent and the different Orishas. We come to them for help and advise and we must give something in return, not as "payment" per se but as way to keep some sort of cosmological "balance." In Santería, for example, which is an Afro-Cuban religion with Yoruba roots, the Babalao (Priest), even if he's your blood brother, if he is divining for you, you must give him something in return, even if it just one dollar. Not to mention that results of the divination may call for offerings to different Orishas. Those can be in the form of animal sacrifices (usually pigeons, chickens or goats), fruit offerings or special prayers. All of that is supposed to keep universal balance.
The message within the popular adage, "there are no free lunches," is very much a living tradition in many cultures. I believe this is also the case of ancient Chinese traditions.
I think the sacrifice of animals and humans was a huge distortion of an earlier truth which demanded a sacrifice of the personality needs and desires.
Does the I Ching have those same alchemical principles of sacrifice?
So, I guess it's pretty hopeless.
Going back to some of the African religions based on Yoruba traditions, just as a reference, the belief is, as I understand it, that there must be reciprocity between the querent and the different Orishas. We come to them for help and advise and we must give something in return, not as "payment" per se but as way to keep some sort of cosmological "balance." In Santería, for example, which is an Afro-Cuban religion with Yoruba roots, the Babalao (Priest), even if he's your blood brother, if he is divining for you, you must give him something in return, even if it just one dollar. Not to mention that results of the divination may call for offerings to different Orishas. Those can be in the form of animal sacrifices (usually pigeons, chickens or goats), fruit offerings or special prayers. All of that is supposed to keep universal balance.
The message within the popular adage, "there are no free lunches," is very much a living tradition in many cultures. I believe this is also the case of ancient Chinese traditions.
Actually, I don't think it's a distortion. It's just that at the early stages of anything, including human culture of course, things are terribly *physical*. Think of the development of a human - what develops first? The body in the womb, right? And even with the development of the mind through the years as the child grows, what sort of thoughts and emotions develop first? Body-based thoughts and feelings, right? And which comes to maturity first, the body or the mind? The body, right? So, it seems that we develop stuff, including sacrifice, on a physical level before we move on to the mental level. After that comes the spiritual...
By all means. And this is where the Yi gets really exciting, because of two things. First, it works as an oracle nowadays, thousands of years after it was devised, because it operates via a rich collection of archetypes expressed SYMBOLICALLY. That richness of symbology is what makes is so useful to us, and so usable by us. And secondly (and this really astounds me) I'm absolutely convinced, as you seem to be, that the Yi is a sort of secret manual of spiritual transformation - you call it 'alchemical'. I call it secret, not because the knowledge is hidden somewhere, but because it just isn't available to you until you know yourself well enough to start to recognize what the Yi's talking about in terms of working on your own transformation. A couple of days ago, I drew 59.4 - I mean, if ever there was an image of leaving the physical stuff and the mental preoccupations behind and going upstairs to the level of the spiritual, that's it. And the more I work with the Yi, and the more I familiarize myself with myself, the more I see this dimension to the Yi in every hexagram and in every line.
i've noticed.
after getting in trouble, turning red in the face and stewing for an hour or so, she will come out with cookies and candies to the grownup who has disciplined her. if the grownup takes the candy or cookie, all her symptoms disappear. poof. gone. if the grownup does NOT take the cookie or candy, she gets really sick for days.
sometimes i think sacrifice can sometimes be like this?
In the end, I believe the whole issue of "sacrifice," in every semantic meaning, is something very subjective. However, I do believe in what I exposed above about some sort of "cosmic reciprocity".
Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).