Oh THAT accent
Using the I Ching
- Thread starter Argonia
- Start date
Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
My mate had a band called I-Ching Mafia. I thought he'd finally become famous when I read the title 
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
He'd have made it if he'd just called it ker-ching mafiaMy mate had a band called I-Ching Mafia. I thought he'd finally become famous when I read the title
JimW
支那暗杀团
Was looking for that Waley essay I mentioned and there's scans and a pdf of it here: Yijing Dao - Archive of Yijing-related scans from Chinese and other sources Looks like there was quite a bit more to it than I recall as well.
ETA and it looks like the bloke who runs that site wrote his own book on the Yi Jing and he's made the e version free Yijing Dao ~ The Mandate of Heaven: Hidden History in the Book of Changes Shall be giving that a peruse.
ETA and it looks like the bloke who runs that site wrote his own book on the Yi Jing and he's made the e version free Yijing Dao ~ The Mandate of Heaven: Hidden History in the Book of Changes Shall be giving that a peruse.
Argonia
Happy go licky
My mate had a band called I-Ching Mafia. I thought he'd finally become famous when I read the title
There's nothing to hear at Soundcloud unfortunately
i-ching mafia
Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
Have a look at the followers for the harmonica player,
Argonia
Happy go licky
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
That's him.
TruXta
tired
I've heard a lot of good things about the book and his take on the Yijing from acquaintances with serious interests that way. The dude himself seems a bit up his own arse (and still pally with Hakim Bey, aka Pedo Lamborn Wilson), but that's kind of an occupational hazard as far as the occult scene goes.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Well, you don't, but that's only because he ripped off my Ruddy Yurts bootleg 8-track.you never see him and existentialist in the same place at the same time
ska invita
back on the other side
I went through a little phase of it...its an amazing thing tbh...havent for years though....dont really feel the need to anymore, above all else. But even without a 'question' on your mind, just thinking about the 64 hexagrams and the system that binds them is getting into a pretty amazing piece of art.
There are lots of different translations and it can be a very different experience reading the different accounts (ive 'read' 3 different ones - one of which just had little poems in, whereas the others had a long page of text)
IIRC the real ancient-school way you would learn the hexagrams and come to your own understanding.
I think anyone who sees it as some kind of ouija board experience is clearly deluding themselves - you can pick a page or a hexagram at random it always make a good read (depending on the author I guess). The concepts are interesting in themselves and their packaging up into a system of lines is high art/design. I guess the 6 throws just make you get into thinking about the make up of it all that little bit deeper, if youre so inclined, and know what each line and its place means.
Anyhow, ive been reading a bit of philip k dick recently, and just read a couple of old interviews with him, one of which from 1974 had this in it (below). I like what he says about fusing the ethical and the practical.
I dont think he was in the best state of mind in this era tbh - post a recent suicide attempt according to the interview
VERTEX: Do you use the I Ching as a plotting device in your work?
DICK: Once. I used it in The Man in the High Castle because a number of characters used it. In each case when they asked a question, I threw the coins and wrote the hexagram lines they got. That governed the direction of the book. Like in the end when Juliana Frink is deciding whether or not to tell Hawthorne Abensen that he is the target of assassins, the answer indicated that she should. Now if it had said not to tell him, I would have had her not go there. But I would not do that in any other book.
VERTEX: What is the importance of the I Ching in your own life?
DICK: Well, the I Ching gives advice beyond the particular, advice that transcends the immediate situation. The answers have an universal quality. For instance: “The mighty are humbled and the humbled are raised.” If you use the I Ching long enough and continually enough, it will begin to change and shape you as a person. It will make you into a Taoist, whether or not you have ever heard the word, whether or not you want to be.
VERTEX: Doesn’t Taoism fuse the ethical and the practical?
DICK: This is the greatest achievement of Taoism, over all other philosophies and religions.
VERTEX: But in our culture the two are pitted against one another.
DICK: This always shows up. Should I do the right thing or the expediate thing? I find a wallet on the street. Should I keep it? That’s the practical thing to do, right? Or should I give it back to the person? That’s the ethical thing. Taoism has a shrewdness. There’s no heaven in our sense of the word, no world besides this world. Practical conduct and ethical conduct do not conflict, but actually reinforce each other, which is almost impossible to think of in our society.
VERTEX: How does it work?
DICK: Well, in our society a person might frequently have to choose between what he thinks is practical and what is ethical. He might choose the practical, and as a result he disintegrates as a human being. Taoism combines the two so that these polarizations rarely occur, and if possible never occur. It is an attempt to teach you a way of behavior that will cause such tragic schisms not to come to the surface. I’ve been using the I Ching since 1961, and this is what I use it for, to show me a way of conduct in a certain situation. Now first of all it will analyze the situation for you more accurately than you have. It may be different than what you think. Then it will give you the advice. And through these lines a torturous, complicated path emerges through which the person escapes the tragedy of matrydom and the tragedy of selling out. He finds the great sense of Taoism, the middle way. I turn to it when I have that kind of conflict.
VERTEX: What if a person should come to a situation in which the ethical and the practical cannot be fused under any circumstances?
DICK: One thing that I have never gotten out of my head is that sometimes the effort of the whole Taoist thing to combine the two does not always work. At this point the line says, “Praise, no blame.” Those are code words to indicate what you should do and the commentary says that the highest thing for a person to do would be to lay down his life rather than to do something which was unethical. And I kinda think that this is right. There never can be a system of thought that can reconcile those two all the time. And Taoism takes that into account, in one line out of over three thousand.
There are lots of different translations and it can be a very different experience reading the different accounts (ive 'read' 3 different ones - one of which just had little poems in, whereas the others had a long page of text)
IIRC the real ancient-school way you would learn the hexagrams and come to your own understanding.
I think anyone who sees it as some kind of ouija board experience is clearly deluding themselves - you can pick a page or a hexagram at random it always make a good read (depending on the author I guess). The concepts are interesting in themselves and their packaging up into a system of lines is high art/design. I guess the 6 throws just make you get into thinking about the make up of it all that little bit deeper, if youre so inclined, and know what each line and its place means.
Anyhow, ive been reading a bit of philip k dick recently, and just read a couple of old interviews with him, one of which from 1974 had this in it (below). I like what he says about fusing the ethical and the practical.
I dont think he was in the best state of mind in this era tbh - post a recent suicide attempt according to the interview
VERTEX: Do you use the I Ching as a plotting device in your work?
DICK: Once. I used it in The Man in the High Castle because a number of characters used it. In each case when they asked a question, I threw the coins and wrote the hexagram lines they got. That governed the direction of the book. Like in the end when Juliana Frink is deciding whether or not to tell Hawthorne Abensen that he is the target of assassins, the answer indicated that she should. Now if it had said not to tell him, I would have had her not go there. But I would not do that in any other book.
VERTEX: What is the importance of the I Ching in your own life?
DICK: Well, the I Ching gives advice beyond the particular, advice that transcends the immediate situation. The answers have an universal quality. For instance: “The mighty are humbled and the humbled are raised.” If you use the I Ching long enough and continually enough, it will begin to change and shape you as a person. It will make you into a Taoist, whether or not you have ever heard the word, whether or not you want to be.
VERTEX: Doesn’t Taoism fuse the ethical and the practical?
DICK: This is the greatest achievement of Taoism, over all other philosophies and religions.
VERTEX: But in our culture the two are pitted against one another.
DICK: This always shows up. Should I do the right thing or the expediate thing? I find a wallet on the street. Should I keep it? That’s the practical thing to do, right? Or should I give it back to the person? That’s the ethical thing. Taoism has a shrewdness. There’s no heaven in our sense of the word, no world besides this world. Practical conduct and ethical conduct do not conflict, but actually reinforce each other, which is almost impossible to think of in our society.
VERTEX: How does it work?
DICK: Well, in our society a person might frequently have to choose between what he thinks is practical and what is ethical. He might choose the practical, and as a result he disintegrates as a human being. Taoism combines the two so that these polarizations rarely occur, and if possible never occur. It is an attempt to teach you a way of behavior that will cause such tragic schisms not to come to the surface. I’ve been using the I Ching since 1961, and this is what I use it for, to show me a way of conduct in a certain situation. Now first of all it will analyze the situation for you more accurately than you have. It may be different than what you think. Then it will give you the advice. And through these lines a torturous, complicated path emerges through which the person escapes the tragedy of matrydom and the tragedy of selling out. He finds the great sense of Taoism, the middle way. I turn to it when I have that kind of conflict.
VERTEX: What if a person should come to a situation in which the ethical and the practical cannot be fused under any circumstances?
DICK: One thing that I have never gotten out of my head is that sometimes the effort of the whole Taoist thing to combine the two does not always work. At this point the line says, “Praise, no blame.” Those are code words to indicate what you should do and the commentary says that the highest thing for a person to do would be to lay down his life rather than to do something which was unethical. And I kinda think that this is right. There never can be a system of thought that can reconcile those two all the time. And Taoism takes that into account, in one line out of over three thousand.
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