What kind of thing is the I Ching?

There's two theories, and which you tend toward may be a measure of the kind of person you are and the kind of reader you are.

One theory is that the I Ching is simply an ancient book, or a series of books, that have served communities and markets and users of various stripes, in completely different ways, whose recieved text more or less stabilized some 2800 years ago, and which has accumulated a vast critical apparatus that has with time become fossilized as part of its bones.

The other theory is that the I Ching is an infinite book, a perpetually moving target, a sort of divinity of which anything may, sooner or later, be reasonably said.

A kind of Rorschach test for both the reader and the would-be translator.

This latter has elements of truth, of course.

But to feel that the text is capable of taking on any form whatsoever completely destroys one's enthusiasm for digging deeply into the text.

I mean, why bother trying to crack a nut if the nut is a collection of vague underdetermined associative chains, and not a nut to be cracked at all?

Yet among other things, the I Ching is exactly this.

It can be played with in a superficial way, and that can be rewarding for a lifetime. The surface brilliance makes me imagine a collage of ancient pieces of broken wood and glass. Or perhaps a musical instrument covered with such a collage of ancient fragments.

And I hope too that you understand that I mean no condemnation by the word superficial.

Surfaces are important!

It is a musical instrument that has been played, often played against for many centuries by readers, sometimes by readers of genius.

Sometimes in fabulous misreadings: arrogant performances of genius, or simply vast mistakes, or perhaps -- creatively salvaging an ancient text that a political change in climate has rendered toxic and unbreathable?

The book as a sort of wasteland, dead ashes of many empires that had run their course.

But (and I steal Wittgenstein's strong image, here) -- with spirits hovering over the ashes.

I believe these remarks recover some of my first feelings from reading Wilhelm-Bayes, the main English language I Ching, and then Wang Bi/Richard Lynn's version.

Here is where I think the I Ching-as-Rorschach-test idea is wrong:

There is a strong distinction to be made in interpreting the I Ching.

The user may apply it to anything. That's what it is for: it is for the infinitely free play of interpretation.

The would-be maker of an I Ching translation is vastly more constrained.

There are realities: textual, historical, cultural, mythic, folkloric -- there to be dealt with.

And communities of strong readers.

Any number of interpretive games might be played, but they have to be played explicitly and with a degree of rigor.

For example, Wilhelm's approach might be called anthropological. He preserved the traditional viewpoint of a group of superb informants in the 1910s-20s, from the point of view of a westerner completely immersed in, and deeply in love with, Chinese culture.

But the archaeology that underpins the Modern School didn't exist. Does that make Wilhelm's book bad? Does the new interpretation diminish his book's importance? Hell, no. Obviously not.

Wilhelm's book sells something on the order of ten copies a week on Amazon.

I hope that one of the side effects of my little book is to bring more readers to Wilhelm as well.

My book is a very different kind of critter, however.

More of that another time.