[Opinion] I Ching Suggestions: Innovation or Just Plain Nuts?

[Xenophon]

(or "Yi Jing" for the up-to-date.) Of the various methods of "divination," the I Ching has proved most useful to me. Recently I was reading "NAOS" re: creating one's own Tarot deck and it occurred to me. Couldn't one do a deck of the 64 Hexagrams? One highly personalized and appropriately illustrated?

On the one hand, I am chary of this. Working up a 6-line hexagram seems an integral part of consulting I Ching. Picking a card seems like cheating.

On the other, going through the creative process of illustration would seem to infuse a great deal of oneself in the product. Plus one would still have to derive which line to pay attention to. (For a slightly heruclean labor, one could do an additional 6 cards, one for each line of each hex, I suppose. A total of what? 448 cards---all to be kept properly indexed, too.)

An alternative would be to do multiple card readings for different aspects of a situation (similar to multi-card Tarot spreads.)

Any thoughts? (Yeah, yeah---beyond, "Dude, you need a g.f.!"

Post automatically merged: Jan 29, 2024

"Herculean," not "heruclean." (Is the latter a word? As in the TV commercial, "Yes, Mrs. Cleaver, your wash is clean...But is it HERU-CLEAN?")

 

[Yazata]

One of the decks I used to use a lot is the Enochian skrying tarot. What's supercool about this is that it both sides of the cards are printed, with an entirely different deck on each side.
The non-Enochian side is based on the Tattva's and each (or most) of these has a corresponding I-Ching hexagram attributed to it in the accompanying book. So, yes, it can be done.

 

[stalkinghyena]

Picking a card seems like cheating.

I tried a dice method to save time, even narrowing down the selection to one line in a hexagram. It old me: "Coming joyousness. Misfortune."
Taking note of Wilhelm's interpretation, I realized it was telling me not to get compulsive with this technique like I have often done with Tarot cards.

 

[Xingtian]

A key part of the Yijing is the moving lines. These texts are the most specific part of the oracle. The Confucian sticks and coins methods can produce 0-6 moving lines. Many more popular Yijing consultation methods will generate a single moving line, such as the Plum Blossom method which is popular in China but is largely ignored in Western Yijing literature. If one wants a quick way to consult with minimal ritual I would say you could use three dice- two 8-sided dice, different colors (one for the bottom trigram, one for the top trigram) and then a 6-sided die for the moving line. This might be what @stalkinghyena means.

 

[Romolo]

Working up a 6-line hexagram seems an integral part of consulting I Ching. Picking a card seems like cheating.

I agree. The haptics of taking the sticks & putting them down, seeing the image being formed in slow pareidolia. It’s like a poem in 4D.

All depends on your esthetic sensibilities.

 

[Xingtian]

For those interested in a simplified yarrow-stalk method (which will produce exactly one moving line) here is

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developed in Japan:

After the sticks are divided, one stick from the right-hand group is placed between the ring and little fingers of the left hand. The left-hand group is counted off by eight until fewer than eight remain. The remainder (including the one between the fingers) determines a trigram as illustrated to the right. Repeat this process to complete a hexagram, then determine one changing line by dividing the sticks and counting off by six.

 

[Roma]

I use coins.

I put my attention to the twin cosmic intelligences at the center of the yin-yang cycle and hold the question.

I shake the coins until I feel an urge to throw them. I might have to wait up to a minute for the signal

I keep those coins separately only for that purpose

 

[BloodOfBakula]

(or "Yi Jing" for the up-to-date.) Of the various methods of "divination," the I Ching has proved most useful to me. Recently I was reading "NAOS" re: creating one's own Tarot deck and it occurred to me. Couldn't one do a deck of the 64 Hexagrams? One highly personalized and appropriately illustrated?

On the one hand, I am chary of this. Working up a 6-line hexagram seems an integral part of consulting I Ching. Picking a card seems like cheating.

On the other, going through the creative process of illustration would seem to infuse a great deal of oneself in the product. Plus one would still have to derive which line to pay attention to. (For a slightly heruclean labor, one could do an additional 6 cards, one for each line of each hex, I suppose. A total of what? 448 cards---all to be kept properly indexed, too.)

An alternative would be to do multiple card readings for different aspects of a situation (similar to multi-card Tarot spreads.)

Any thoughts? (Yeah, yeah---beyond, "Dude, you need a g.f.!"

Post automatically merged: Jan 29, 2024

"Herculean," not "heruclean." (Is the latter a word? As in the TV commercial, "Yes, Mrs. Cleaver, your wash is clean...But is it HERU-CLEAN?")

The only answer that matters, is the one you'll discover when you embark on this endeavor.

 

[Xenophon]

The only answer that matters, is the one you'll discover when you embark on this endeavor.

True. Most of the answers herein are interesting, especially the one about haptics of the lines. Still, I'm going to give my way a try and see what develops. Not anytime soon. I started illustrating the hexagrams this morning. One card takes about an hour, even with my crude artwork. But reading and pondering the hex takes about half a day before ideas really emerge. I may post some of my drawings. (Or, for a suitable sum of crypto, I promise not to inflict my art on innocent bystanders.)

 

[pixel_fortune]

Couldn't one do a deck of the 64 Hexagrams

Heaps of these exist, you can look on eBay or Amazon or whenever. Not personalised though!

I think there would be value in drawing images to illustrate what the hexagrams mean to you, regardless of whether you used the resulting images as a divination deck

You would get so much out of the process, and especially get a better handle on ones you've previously found harder to interpret.

The advantage of saying "I'm making a deck" rather than "I'm doing some illustrations" is it would be obvious the project wasn't completed if you hadn't done all 64 (because it would be unusable) and that would force you to work with the trickier ones you might otherwise be tempted to avoid

 

[Xenophon]

Heaps of these exist, you can look on eBay or Amazon or whenever. Not personalised though!

I think there would be value in drawing images to illustrate what the hexagrams mean to you, regardless of whether you used the resulting images as a divination deck

You would get so much out of the process, and especially get a better handle on ones you've previously found harder to interpret.

The advantage of saying "I'm making a deck" rather than "I'm doing some illustrations" is it would be obvious the project wasn't completed if you hadn't done all 64 (because it would be unusable) and that would force you to work with the trickier ones you might otherwise be tempted to avoid

OK, I'm swabbing (or at least drawing) the deck. I'm not into buying anything I can jerry-rig by myself.