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Yi, the Act of Divination, and the Encounter with the Numinous

peters

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The reflections to follow are, in a way, an extension of my recent posts to the “Exploring Divination” forum, particularly 49.5 “The great man changes like a tiger...”: The Ultimate Aim of Yi with Respect to the Diviner?, What is the Nature of Yi as Encountered in Divination?, and the strangely neglected The Personality of Yi as Encountered in Divination (Collected Observations) [NB, the referenced ‘collected observations’ are not my own, but rather gathered from a broad canvassing of literature addressing the I Ching.] With that said, what follows does not require familiarity with those posts, although such familiarity may prove helpful.

We don’t know what Yi is, but if we minimally assume that it is something other and more than simply the mind working over and imputing meaning into a random signifier lacking inherent significance (à la Jack Balkin), then we have to acknowledge the utter remarkableness of the possibility of connection with whatever Yi is. Different individuals will have different orientations and attitudes to this basic issue – such is in the nature of things – but it is worth pausing and reflecting further upon it. We inhabit – or seem to inhabit – a world in which, if our outlook is secular, we stand naked and alone, in isolation from anything higher or spiritual, which is nothing but an idle fantasy. Contrariwise, if our outlook is religious, or even vaguely ‘spiritual’, then we might well turn to some conceived sense of a spiritual and greater ‘Other’, as in prayer, but the typical experience is that such a ‘turning’ is a one-way affair, our speaking to God and waiting on, but not hearing, the words of God speaking back. Whether such ‘grace’ of response is absent or whether we are simply insensible to its presence is a matter I will leave aside here.

Our encounter with Yi in the act of divination is different – radically so – from that just described. We speak – some query, some felt need – and something, we know not what, responds. Yi speaks back. We should sit with that recognition and not pass from it too quickly. It may represent the most remarkable, most astonishing, indeed most miraculous (or at the very least ‘quasi-miraculous’) thing that we will ever experience in this life. Mack Moore, a Yi diviner of long experience, expresses this when he writes:

To me, the I Ching is what all adherents of the monotheistic faiths long for when they pray: An answer to their prayers. Through the I Ching, I discovered that prayer need not be one-way communication.
[www.quora.com/What-does-the-I-Ching-offer-to-a-modern-Western-thinker]

The I Ching changed my entire worldview and life journey by enabling me to have two-way conversations with a higher power, which the book refers to as “the Sage”. Prayer need not be a solitary voice in the wilderness crying out without any real hope of receiving an answer. It need not be, yet for so many people, it is. That is so sad and needless.
[www.quora.com/How-has-the-I-Ching-helped-you-can-you-give-an-example/]

Now, perhaps Yi is one’s own daimon, perhaps it is some venerable, unknown spirit-intelligence, perhaps it is the resonant synchrony of the unus mundus. Whatever it is, we encounter it as at once other than and wiser than ourselves. As John Blofeld writes in the introductory section to his I Ching: A New Translation of the Ancient Chinese Text:

Like Jung, I have been struck by the extraordinary sensation aroused by my consultations of the book, the feeling that my question has been dealt with EXACTLY AS BY A LIVING BEING in full possession of even the unspoken facts involved in both the question and its answer. At first, this sensation comes near to being terrifying and, even now, I find myself inclined to handle and transport the book rather as if it had feelings capable of being outraged by disrespectful treatment! (p.25)

Remarking upon his first encounter with Yi, Blofeld writes:

…Then came the Communist revolution and my departure from China, perhaps forever. By a curious chance, the Wilhelm version found its way into the trunk containing the relatively small number of books I decided to carry away with me. It was not until I had been in Siam for something like ten years that a chance remark made me study the book with some care and try my hand at using it for divination. The very first time I did this, I was overawed to a degree that amounted to fright, so strong was the impression of having received an answer to my question from a living, breathing person. I have scarcely ever used it since without recovering something of that awe, though it soon came to be characterized by pleasurable excitement rather than by fear. Of course, I do not mean to assert that the white pages covered with black printer’s ink do in fact house a lively spiritual being. I have dwelt at some length on the astonishing effect they produce chiefly as a means of emphasizing how extraordinarily accurate and, so to speak, personal, are its answers in most cases. Yet, if I were asked to assert that the printed pages do not form the dwelling of a spiritual being or at least bring us into contact with one by some mysterious process, I think I should be about as hesitant as I am to assert the contrary. (pp.26-7)

The act of divination is a liminal event in which we stand at a threshold. Our question and subsequent handling of the yarrow stalks or casting of the coins is our placing ourselves upon that threshold. The outcome of the casting is the ‘speaking’ of something just beyond that threshold that reaches to us and is recognized. What we encounter, which we call Yi, is marked by a sense of the numinous [from the Latin numen (“god,” “spirit,” or “divine”)]. Beyond that I will not venture to claim, but if one were to add the ‘sacred’ or ‘holy’, I would offer no argument. Indeed, Blofeld’s description of his encounters with Yi recall the mystical term mysterium tremendum et fascinans, made famous by Rudolph Otto in his classic study, The Idea of the Holy.

Of course, such an exalted, disturbing encounter will hardly characterize everyone’s relationship with Yi. I recall Hilary saying somewhere in a recorded commentary that her relationship with Yi was “as comfortable as an old armchair.” It is quite possible, perhaps inevitable with time and length of experience, to get quite ‘cozy’ with Yi. There is nothing wrong with that, and yet the utter remarkableness of the relationship, of its very possibility, remains. Perhaps a metaphor is in order: a prince has come visiting, a high noble in the land, and you, recognizing his station and your own, are overawed at first and astonished to be in his presence. Nevertheless, he is approachable and a friendship develops. You become more comfortable with him and keep company with him more and more. Eventually, the two of you become close companions and good friends. And yet, in the middle of all this coziness, is the quietly persistent recognition that the one you are on such intimate terms with is none other than a prince of the realm.

At the very beginning of his paper, “Re-Enchanting the Mind: Oracles, Reading, Myth, and Mantics,” Stephen Karcher states “The primary purpose of the act of divination is, I believe, not prediction or problem-solving but to weave a spell, to re-enchant the mind, luring it into the realm of the Others and opening a place for them in our imagination and perception.” This is a critical point, one I have seen too little acknowledgment of in this site’s forums. I would state the basic matter slightly differently than Karcher has above: Consulting Yi is not just a matter of asking questions and receiving counsel, but more basically, that of establishing and renewing connection – connection to the numinous, to spirit, to whatever we may call it that is larger, more real, than our bounded material frame. Here, let me quote Allan W. Anderson, the remarkable academician who had such a close relationship with Yi, one he fostered also in his many students: “…the oracular function of the I Ching…is for those of us who have learned to consult it as an Oracle nothing short of a ‘grace’.” [Allan W. Anderson, Reflections on the I Ching, p.47]

As moderns, by consequence of the era we temporally inhabit, our fundamental birthright and inheritance is that of spiritual alienation. This is well recognized. The great sociologist Max Weber wrote of ‘disenchantment’ to characterize the condition:

In social science, disenchantment (Ger: Entzauberung) is the cultural rationalization and devaluation of religion apparent in modern society. The term was borrowed from Friedrich Schiller by Max Weber to describe the character of modernized, bureaucratic, secularized Western society, where scientific understanding is more highly valued than belief, and where processes are oriented toward rational goals, as opposed to traditional society, where for Weber, “the world remains a great enchanted garden”.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disenchantment]

Many other writers and thinkers have addressed our basic condition similarly. Karcher, in his writings, refers to it in broadly similar terms as “the water-spirit disorder”. Viewed from this lens, we may understand the basic condition of modernity – and we moderns within it – as a sickness, a dis-ease. The consequences of this condition are readily apparent: disconnection, anomie, an encroaching sense of meaningless and nihilistic despair. Sometimes we are sensible to our condition, sometimes less so. Some, of course, suffer from it more than others, and these not necessarily those who appear to suffer most. As a point of reference, Philip Larkin, the noted modern British poet and one possessed of a thoroughgoing secular outlook, nevertheless found himself haunted by the loss of his – and his society’s – sense of the sacred, as he expressed in his poem “Church Going”, which ends with the well-known lines:

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

In this view, a foremost reason to consult Yi – to engage in the liminal act of divination that somehow, mysteriously, places us before the numinous – is as an act of personal healing, a healing gained through the reestablishment of connection with something higher, wiser and perhaps more holy than our own hemmed-in, conscious, egoic identities. It is here one can appreciate the practice, often daily, of the open or ‘questionless’ query. Ron Masa and Debbie Hart, who have taught web courses on the I Ching, recommend such a practice – in addition to specific queries – having followed it themselves for decades. In a charming post to this forum, “A Visit with My Old Friend,” ‘Relgie’ similarly comments:

I first started visiting the I Ching over 30 years ago and then I had many questions. Over the years, as long as I was clear, I received wonderful advice. Sometimes, when impatient, I would receive stern advice which indicating I needed more clarity of mind rather than advice on what action to take...Now, I have learned from the I Ching to take “correct action” without casting the oracle, but, occasionally as today, I do cast the oracle only to visit as an old friend who does not need advice but only company. If you are interested in this it is simple, instead of holding a question in your mind you keep your mind empty. Meditate first, and then retain the state of no-mind as best as you can as you cast all six lines. Consider this, it has always been rewarding for me and has allowed me to develop a personal friendship in the I Ching.
[www.onlineclarity.co.uk/friends/index.php?threads/a-visit-with-my-old-friend.26834/]

One does not always have a question to pose to Yi, but may nevertheless carry a desire, a need, to nurture the connection, to partake in companionship with its presence and spirit. With that said, it can often be difficult to interpret such castings, as the defining boundaries of a particular question are not present to help specify and resolve the metaphoric meanings of the oracular text. Perhaps one need not be too concerned in extracting guidance from the received cast, but rather may hold it more lightly, as if hearing the sound of a familiar voice and drawing comfort from it, even if one does not catch all the words.

In relation to these reflections, one might recall the two foremost hexagram symbols for Yi: The Well and the Sacred Vessel (ding). The first, drawing up vital sustenance from the depths; the second, the ritual means of sharing the sacred meal with the ancestors and spirits.

Let me conclude by quoting from three posts of Hilary’s, which in their way touch upon a similar sensibility to that expressed above:

Here is what I have found still more powerful in readings than the help and insight they offer: the immediate experience of connection, of being part of the whole. You ask a question, you do something wholly random… and suddenly, something is speaking directly to you. You find you are seen and acknowledged; you might burst into laughter or tears in response. There’s a sense of wonder and belonging at the same time. Just an oracle.
[www.onlineclarity.co.uk/answers/2012/01/03/just-an-oracle/]

And it’s important because the quality and power of attention you bring to the reading does make a difference to the answer. Divination isn’t a machine, where answers emerge just as fast as you can cram questions into the slot. (In fact if you think about what we’re really doing when we divine, what we’re really asking for and fully expecting to happen, it’s a breathtakingly, jaw-droppingly amazing moment.) It’s a conversation and a meeting – and like any other conversation, it works better when you’re present for it.
[www.onlineclarity.co.uk/answers/2009/02/01/why-open-space-for-change/]

There is fu – that quality of trust and being true which opens channels and creates an interface, a way or place of connection. Without it, there’s no relationship, no reading; with it, on your own day, with right timing (certainly a need Yi meets!), you have access to ‘creating success from the source, constancy bears fruit’: the four numinous Chinese words that open the whole book, and evoke the power of the creative process. Change can happen; things can be unmade and remade; the energy is available for this. And if you can bring about real change in the present, you have no reason to dwell in regret.
[www.onlineclarity.co.uk/answers/2012/06/14/the-basic-human-need-that-yi-answers/]
 
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