Romance and the I Ching
Love and sex.
No doubt the I Ching can talk to these, but there's a certain ponderousness about it, a certain absence of lightning.
It is, in the most perjorative sense of the word, literary.
(One of life's normal ironies. You are more comfortable talking about the uncertainties and joys of flirting and dating when you are older, married and safely away from them. )
I remember reading about an I Ching maven completely boring a charming woman at a party to death while he laboriously cast a reading and sorted out what it meant. She sort of drifted off.
The lesson I take from this is that modern divination either needs to be in a tranquil setting, or it needs to be really, really quick.
By tranquil read: not in the throes of a romantic whatever...
I have this student who looks like a rock star. He acts like a pretty normal and goofy kid around his teachers, but when there are sexually relevant girls, the rock star vibe comes out. He starts posing for crine out loud.
This dude doesn't need to tell girls their fortunes. He's got Svengali eyes with magic sparks coming from them, and that works for him.
Vibes.
No, I'm thinking more astrology and Tarot cards. My offhand sense is that they are sexier than the I Ching. That the superficial vibe of I Ching has to do with the will to power rather than a sex vibe. (I'm just riffing about superficial appearances here.)
Speed and fluency.
TCB and the coin oracle might be the ticket. I don't know. It's certainly quicker, and the entries aren't so mazy.
I'm starting to get feedback about TCB, and some people are saying it actually is a pretty good I Ching for use. Nothing could gratify me more, but (and I know this sounds like a vast lie) -- that wasn't really the goal.
The goal was to come up with an interpretation that was sort of plodding and painstakingly correct, to display the Zhou Conquest narrative material, and then to see if a useable oracle would pop up as a side effect. (Or an "emergent propery," if you like.)
(For most of the writing process, I figured I was unearthing an oracle that only an empire builder from 1000 BC could love.)
Courtship and marriage appear as figures all through the I Ching.
Love and Marriage as figures for war.
But.
If I pose a question about love, then war becomes a figure for courtship.
An assault on the castle, and so forth. Are we pleased with that? Nothing could be more ordinary. Soldiers and cavaliers have made such figures since time out of mind.
A bit of swashbuckling, then, gentlemen? Perhaps so.
Time will tell if TCB is, shall we say, comfortable, with matters love and sex. (Nothing could have been more banal if I had labored to make it so; nothing could be a more pleasing lagniappe.)
No doubt the I Ching can talk to these, but there's a certain ponderousness about it, a certain absence of lightning.
It is, in the most perjorative sense of the word, literary.
(One of life's normal ironies. You are more comfortable talking about the uncertainties and joys of flirting and dating when you are older, married and safely away from them. )
I remember reading about an I Ching maven completely boring a charming woman at a party to death while he laboriously cast a reading and sorted out what it meant. She sort of drifted off.
The lesson I take from this is that modern divination either needs to be in a tranquil setting, or it needs to be really, really quick.
By tranquil read: not in the throes of a romantic whatever...
I have this student who looks like a rock star. He acts like a pretty normal and goofy kid around his teachers, but when there are sexually relevant girls, the rock star vibe comes out. He starts posing for crine out loud.
This dude doesn't need to tell girls their fortunes. He's got Svengali eyes with magic sparks coming from them, and that works for him.
Vibes.
No, I'm thinking more astrology and Tarot cards. My offhand sense is that they are sexier than the I Ching. That the superficial vibe of I Ching has to do with the will to power rather than a sex vibe. (I'm just riffing about superficial appearances here.)
Speed and fluency.
TCB and the coin oracle might be the ticket. I don't know. It's certainly quicker, and the entries aren't so mazy.
I'm starting to get feedback about TCB, and some people are saying it actually is a pretty good I Ching for use. Nothing could gratify me more, but (and I know this sounds like a vast lie) -- that wasn't really the goal.
The goal was to come up with an interpretation that was sort of plodding and painstakingly correct, to display the Zhou Conquest narrative material, and then to see if a useable oracle would pop up as a side effect. (Or an "emergent propery," if you like.)
(For most of the writing process, I figured I was unearthing an oracle that only an empire builder from 1000 BC could love.)
Courtship and marriage appear as figures all through the I Ching.
Love and Marriage as figures for war.
But.
If I pose a question about love, then war becomes a figure for courtship.
An assault on the castle, and so forth. Are we pleased with that? Nothing could be more ordinary. Soldiers and cavaliers have made such figures since time out of mind.
A bit of swashbuckling, then, gentlemen? Perhaps so.
Time will tell if TCB is, shall we say, comfortable, with matters love and sex. (Nothing could have been more banal if I had labored to make it so; nothing could be a more pleasing lagniappe.)
posted by Freeman Crouch at 7:17 AM
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