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Oh dear, oh dear. Another one – someone explaining how the Yijing is not just an oracle, but
‘so much more than that’. I do wish people would not say this without pausing for a
moment to contemplate what an oracle is.
A variation on this ‘just an oracle’ idea (…I think this post is going to become an all-purpose
rant…) is that since divination is so self-evidently shallow, the wise ancients couldn’t
possibly have been interested in it. So it’s said or implied that the Yi isn’t really an oracle, or
at all events not merely for divination.
Well… brief review of the history… the Yi was written as an oracle. Texts were joined with
hexagrams because hexagrams are something you can cast – something that directly
emerges from the quality of the time and embodies it.
I believe this is why people have been fascinated with the book for the past few millennia:
not so much because of any ancient concepts it contains as because a cast hexagram, or the
relationship and tension between two hexagrams, has this power to describe and embody
present truth. (And because of this it has a unique power to breathe life into concepts we
come up with long after it was originally written – not least the pairing of yin and yang.)
Yi, the oracle called Change, is still doing what it has been doing for 3,000 years or so:
helping people to see reality. It helps ordinary people to see and think differently as they
navigate their ordinary lives.
My most recent reading is a pretty good example of that. For a while now, I’ve been trying
to build some relationships with other bloggers and practitioners online. I’ve been
searching out people to follow and trying to think of something worthwhile to say in
response to their posts, and I haven’t really created any momentum at all. So I asked Yi for
advice, and received hexagram 1, line 3:
From this I can glean a couple of practical hints: work harder, and be on the alert later in
the day (which makes sense, because nightfall for me is prime working hours for the
American people I want to connect with). It also completely reverses my whole idea of
what this is about: following and trying to respond is the stuff of hexagram 2 – Earth, the
Receptive – and I’ve received hexagram 1, the Creative. Create, create!
So here I am this morning writing a post instead of searching for a place to comment… and
you might be thinking that when writing a rant about the non-trivial nature of divination, I
could have found a better reading to use as illustration. Well, yes… and no.
This is not the obviously life-changing kind of reading. Most readings most people do are
not. They just allow us to understand ourselves and one another a little better, to see things
from another point of view, to notice the current of things so we can spend a little less
effort struggling against it, to liberate a little more of our potential. We might end up
choosing a better car or having a more skillful conversation with a colleague.
And Yi is also really helpful when I need to rethink my approach to social media.
This is not an easy gulf to bridge, between the greatness of the Yi and the trivia of readings.
Only… if I divine about trivia, does that make divination trivial?
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.
https://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/answers/2012/01/03/just-an-oracle/