Across the imaginary distance of culture and borders, I honor your contribution to the Beginning Times.

~

A dying oak tree, its trunk split and branches breaking, does not in any way resemble an acorn.

The new beginning—despite growing directly out of the remains of the old—does not resemble what it replaces.

While it is imperative to recognize endings before they arrive, it is self-defeating to dwell on them:  Endings serve to direct our attention to the new beginning already starting to unfold.  The Book of Changes is not simply about the art of avoiding misfortune—its deeper intent is to instruct us in the art of arriving ahead of time at the meeting place of good fortune.

An acorn, bright and gleaming in the palm of a hand, does not in any way resemble the giant oak tree dominating the forest clearing hundreds of years later.  And this is a critical lesson of the I Ching—one of context and chance and perseverance.  For, the same acorn that falls in a level fertile field and grows to great height and prominence will grow stunted and gnarled should it fall among rocks on the crags of a cliff face.  The same acorn.

Everyone recognizes that the old is ending.  Everyone.  Worldwide.  The question of concern is, What kind of ground are we preparing for this seed of the new?

The ancients had an accurate sense of the length of time that the pendulum of change takes to swing out to its extreme and reverse the passions of human nature.  Across numerous cultures, the ancients accurately foresaw that this time, the historical epoch in which we are living, would be the turning point for civilization to realize the dream of a Golden Age of peace and prospering for all.

That these are The Beginning Times.

Among those prophesies is the Mayan calendar, whose 5,000-year Long Count of 13 baktuns comes to an end on the Winter Solstice of 2012.  Because the Mesoamerican calendar itself was not in use 5,000 years ago (it is perhaps 3,000 years old, imaginably 4,000 years old), it means that the Maya chose a symbolic starting date for their calendar that would end on a specific date.

A specific symbolic date. 

A date that would get our attention.

This accomplishment of the ancients, to accurately set their calendar to end on the Winter Solstice several thousand years in the future, is a testament to their care and concern for the future.  It is like a message in a bottle washing up on the shore of our island of the present, reminding us of the dreams that our common ancestors carried in their hearts for the coming generations.

It is a symbolic date, not one to be taken literally.  As the old saying goes, Don’t look at the finger pointing at the moon—look at the moon.  It is meant to get our attention, not to become the object of our attention.  As I have noted previously, the actual turning point began to first show itself in 1998.  The reversal of direction that the Mayan calendar points to is this space of time, wherein the old regime of conflict and competition withers and falls, collapsing under its own weight, no longer supported by the beliefs or actions of those it subjugates.  This reversal of direction is predictable because the seasons of human nature are knowable—it is not the direction of outer conditions that the 2012 date points to but, rather, the reversal of beliefs and values within human nature.  When the collective conscience of humanity can no longer be cowed into accepting the desecration of its own nature, then what emerges from the ashes of its old beliefs and values is a united humanity bent on no longer desecrating its relationship with nature and spirit.

Those who cannot believe that sudden and rapid change can, nearly overnight, reverse the course of whole nations simply do not understand the unconscious longings of the human heart.  The longer that people’s true desires are repressed by force and intimidation, the more sudden and more profound the reversal of beliefs and actions.  The dying giant is split and cracking—but what we need to focus on is finding the common ground within which to plant and nurture civilization’s new beginning.

2012 Metamorphosis

As I write here on my little hilltop in Southern Oregon, the Winter Solstice of 2010 has arrived.  It is an auspicious event because it is the first Winter Solstice in centuries to coincide with a lunar eclipse.  For those who have been trained to sense the Qi of the world, the extreme of yin is sinking to its utmost depths, just on the cusp of the turning point back toward yang.  At the apogee of the eclipse, the earth’s shadow moves on and the full moon’s light begins to wax again.  At the height of Winter’s cold and dark, Spring’s warmth and light is born.

A full season ago, on the Autumnal Equinox, I consulted the Oracle, asking this question:  What can humanity expect with the approach of 2012? In the Oracle’s answer, the events around the 2012 turning point predict a time of growing authoritarianism that, once transcended, will usher in a prolonged period of global reconciliation.

More specifically, it points to a crisis that we, as humanity, have confronted before and failed to resolve in a beneficial way for all.  With the approach of 2012, we have the opportunity to face that collective dilemma again.  Although the official reaction will reflexively try to repeat the same mistake as before, a groundswell of enlightened goodwill that transcends borders will unite people everywhere in a positive and constructive response—one that overrides the authoritarianism of religions and governments and sets in motion those metamorphic forces of nonviolence and noninterference that give rise to the harmonious and creative civilization our collective ancestors dreamed for us.

In my ongoing effort to expand on this message and present its ramifications as transparently as possible, I have executed the classic transformation of the reading’s hexagrams into their nuclear hexagrams.  This transformation produces a new pair of hexagrams that represent the underlying forces at work beneath the surface of events.  The hidden motivations, the unconscious currents, the dreams demanding expression.

The primary hexagram of the 2012 reading is #54 Repeating Test.  Its nuclear hexagram is #63 Awakening Self-Sufficiency.

This is interesting because this same hexagram appeared as the future outcome in my June 2009 reading as the answer to my question, At what crossroads does our global civilization stand now—and in what direction does good fortune lie?

For those not yet familiar with the Toltec spirit warrior, it is defined as a woman or man who trains to defeat their own enemy-within (which is in turn defined as their self-defeating habits of thought, emotion and memory).  We can see that there is a growing movement of individuals worldwide who have taken up such training—which appears under different names—in order to restore humaneness to our collective life.  It is this metamorphosis of individuals that is striking the spark to the kindling-nest so that the phoenix might arise more glorious from its ashes.

As a nuclear hexagram, #63 speaks to the unconscious desire to free ourselves from those baser instincts that divide us as a people from ourselves, nature and the sacred.  As its text illustrates, this hexagram seeks autonomy from that which trivializes human nature by seeking to restore its full creative power.  It is a nuclear hexagram that overcomes outer conflict by understanding that the instincts dividing us are universal to all people and, so, constitute the very source of our inevitable unity.

Image:  A great feathered serpent hatches out of the earth as if from an egg.  Its feathers are adorned with conch shells and it senses its surroundings with its bifurcated tongue.

Interpretation:  This hexagram represents the great forces released by the accumulated efforts of spirit warriors over the ages.  The feathered serpent symbolizes the collective intent and vision shared by spirit warriors in every time and every place.  That it hatches from the earth as if from an egg means that the community of spirit incubating within the material world emerges as a living, dynamic force of creation.  The conches adorning its feathers symbolize the call for all to join the community of spirit.  Its bifurcated tongue symbolizes the duality that is one.  That it uses its bifurcated tongue to sense its surroundings means that you are attuned to the universal presence of the masculine and feminine creative forces.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you align yourself with those whose only need is to bring benefit to their surroundings.

Action:  The spirit warrior reverses the flow of power, channeling it inside instead of outside:  by storing up power internally rather than expending it externally, we are able to both free ourselves of habits and gain control over our actions.  This inner autonomy also extricates us from social influences that strive to mold us into obedient marionettes even as it allows us to be more tolerant of the deeper motives of those social influences.  From the spirit warrior’s perspective, the original intent of religion is to awaken the higher soul to its potential freedom while purifying the lower soul of fear, greed, envy, and hate—just as the original intent of government is to awaken the higher soul to its responsibility to others while instilling in the lower soul the capacity for self-control.  From this perspective, the fact that religion and government acquire ulterior motives over time and begin to act in their own self-interest merely demonstrates that they are managed by human beings and must be viewed accordingly.  Similarly, the fact that all religions and governments strive to awaken the higher soul and purify the lower soul—even when they have forgotten how and why—simply demonstrates that the quest for metamorphosis is a universal and irresistible force.  Just as our inner autonomy releases us from the trap of depending on social influences for our sense of self, in other words, it also releases us from the trap of not seeing how those social influences contribute, however unintentionally, to the gradual unification of humanity.  Reversing the flow of power, we gain inner autonomy and, paradoxically, become one with the universal civilizing force.

Intent:  The wise become independent even from what they revere.  Like children who are grown up and independent of the parents they love and admire, spirit warriors take their place among the community of spiritual equals.  Because you use this lifetime to bring the most benefit to others, you incubate the higher soul that is preparing to hatch from the lower soul:  joining in the collective labor shared by spirit warriors in every time and every place, you contribute directly to both the fulfillment of humanity’s destiny and the creator’s vision.  Becoming part of the universal civilizing spirit, you contribute directly to the founding of a free and harmonious world of equals right here within this world.

Summary:  Only the body marks the passage of time—for the soul, there is only this everlasting moment of growing.  Let five rivers of energy come in through the senses, let them run together into a sea of growing power.  Do not expend it on petty thoughts, moods, or goals.  Send forth your rain clouds only to water the valuable.  Condense intent into actions that foster peace and prosperity for all.  Your success is inevitable.

The derived hexagram that appears in the 2012 reading is #2 Sensing Creation.  Its nuclear hexagram is #39 Reviving Tradition.  As the future outcome, #2 Sensing Creation is profoundly inspirational.  It presages a time of worldwide reconciliation and heartfelt collaboration towards an emerging vision of what civilization might become.

As its nuclear hexagram, #39 Reviving Tradition reminds us that our common ancestors lived closer to the time of creation than we do.  It shows that the underlying forces of #2 Sensing Creation are part of the emerging reversion to values and beliefs grounded in a more traditional—and meaningful—lifeway.  This could have evolved into a time in which the reversion to traditional values and beliefs led to greater conflict and confrontation, but the movement into #2 assures us that the mistakes we have made in the past will no longer be repeated.  This is because the general amnesty and forgiveness of past wrongs is based not upon the surface differences between traditions but, rather, upon their shared foundation in the sacredness of everything.

Image:  The ancient spirit of fire takes the form of a male warrior, who is made part of the land by the roots growing like veins through his body and the earth.  His arm is raised, greeting the long line of people in shadow that approach him.  Another line of people, their torches rekindled, depart in light.

Interpretation:  This hexagram depicts the ancestors’ inheritance passing from individual to individual and from generation to generation.  The ancient spirit of fire symbolizes the universal tradition of fire-making, whose timeless ritual unites all people in a common heritage.  The male warrior symbolizes the self-discipline and training needed to stand against greed, ambition, and materialism.  That he is made part of the land means that you find your spiritual home in the site of your own lifetime.  The long line of people in shadow is a symbol of those seeking to find their way back to a balanced and harmonious way of life.  The line of people departing with torches rekindled is a symbol of those who find the light of the ancestors inside their own hearts and carry it through the darkness of their own time.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you resist spiritual erosion the way a mountain of righteousness stands against the wind of corruption and the rain of meaninglessness.

Action:  The masculine half of the spirit warrior views everything as a buried treasure left behind by the spiritual ancestors for their descendants.  It is a time for holding fast to what lasts rather than getting distracted by the novel or overwhelmed by the fleeting.  Avoid participating in the fads and fashions of the day, seeking instead to uphold the values and world view of a more spiritual time.  This means, first and foremost, respecting and honoring all that is not human:  when matter is seen as devoid of spirit, then nature can be desecrated without a second thought; when one form of nature is seen as devoid of spirit, then all forms of life can be desecrated without a second thought; when one form of life is seen as devoid of spirit, then human beings can desecrate one another without a second thought.  For this reason, the spirit warrior sees the world as the divine homeland shared by the living and the dead and those not yet born.  Recognizing that meaningfulness is hidden from those who attack it, you look into the secret heart of things and see the One Spirit of creation everywhere you look.  Recognizing that meaningfulness is an open secret to all but the greedy, ambitious, and materialistic, you bury the treasure again in your own turn so that your descendants will find their secret heart.

Intent:  Even though you feel out of step with the wounded spirit of the time, you are actively involved in healing it:  recognizing that its illness is meaninglessness, you feed it the medicine of meaningfulness day and night throughout your life.  Just as the fire of light and warmth must be fed wood and air to continue burning, the spirit of the time must be fed the joy and insights born of meaningfulness if it is to continue living:  without the tradition of meaningful consecration to feed it, the spirit of the time will eventually die and be replaced by that of meaningless desecration.  For this reason, the spirit warrior keeps alive the ancient tradition of training every thought and feeling to reflect the hidden sacredness of every moment.

Summary:  The more you put the world view of the ancients into practice, the more you have to offer others.  Be generous with what you have learned but do not stop learning:  just as people depend on a well for their water, the well depends on the invisible river below ground for its water.  Assume that you will understand matters better in the future and act with a corresponding degree of humility.

The 2012 reading, with all its associated meanings, reminds us to reject utterly the paranoiac heart-mind of this wounded age that would have us dwell in the irrational belief that unseen forces are conspiring to do us ill.  Rather, it reminds us to keep in mind the definition of the word Pronoia:  the irrational belief that unseen forces are conspiring to do us good.  It is irrational only in the sense that spirit warriors do not confine their efforts to the rational world.

It is two years exactly now until the Winter Solstice of 2012 arrives.  Priest-diviners everywhere are focusing the generative energy of their intent on plowing the field of the World Soul to receive the rain of spirit seeds already falling and taking root in the open heart of human nature.

~

Across the imaginary distance of culture and borders, I honor your contribution to the Beginning Times.

~

The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just received a Silver Award in the 2010 Nautilus Awards.  It recasts the I Ching in the symbology of the Native Americans of ancient Mexico and includes original illustrations interpreting each of the hexagrams.  Its subtitle, 64 Keys to Inspired Action in the New World hints at its focus on the ethics of the emerging world culture.

Click here to go to the main site to see sample chapters, reviews and the link to Larson Publications for ordering the book.

~

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The Oracle can speak to our lives from its timeless dwelling place because the timebound changes we encounter in the historical present follow certain invariable cyclic processes.  The Oracle and its body, the 64 hexagrams, do not change.  But the world of nature and civilization does, dragged into the black hole of ever-greater disorder by the gravity of entropy.  The Oracle speaks to us from outside time because it is the voice of the generative energy that continues to sustain the on-going creation of the universe around us—it speaks to us about the way to escape the trap of Fate because it is the voice of the loving-kindness of the one spirit nurturing the on-going birth of all creation.  It speaks to us because the one spirit taking form in all matter strives to awaken in matter, to continue its own limitless growth by calling us to join it at the further end of the road of Freedom.

It speaks to us, in other words, because it is calling itself home.

The Oracle and its body, the 64 hexagrams, do not change.  But its clothing does.  More than that—its clothing must change.  Because the Oracle must speak coherently to each Age, the interpretation of the hexagrams and their lines must change periodically in order to adapt to the evolving worldview of civilization.  The reasons for a new interpretation of the I Ching have all been laid out in the previous three posts and I point to those articles rather than repeating them here.

The received version of the I Ching is the King Wen version, which was originally called the Chou I, or Changes of Chou, as it was specifically identified with the emerging Chou Dynasty of the time.  Its order of the 64 hexagrams is attributed to the titular founder of that dynasty, who is said to have arranged the hexagrams in a progression of 32 pairs.  Although each pair is linked by a discernible relationship—generally that of the second being the inverted form of the first—the reasoning behind the sequence of the pairs remains a mystery.

Regardless of the actual origin of the hexagrams or the originator of the received sequence, what we do know is that this sequence cannot be divorced from the oracular nature of the I Ching.  Its more rational use as a book of wisdom, in other words, does little to disguise the mystery lying at the core of its use as an Oracle.  Lest anyone enter thinking that the art of divination is a rational affair, they ought be assured that it is, instead, a matter of engaging the numinous, the sacred, the supranatural, aspect of reality and so is essentially an act of mystical union with the One.

Of course, we draw an imaginary line here between matter and spirit in order to work with concepts existing only in our minds.  The non-dual nature of reality means that matter and form Itself are the numinous, sacred, supranatural Itself.  It is this absolute identification of matter and awareness that establishes the oracular communication:  our question, the coins, and the Oracle’s answer are all drops of water in the same sea of thinking matter.  How could there be any boundary between thought-drops and matter-drops in the single sea of spirit-matter?  It is this absolute merging of our awareness with all of creation that reflects the embodiment of spirit in all matter.  And it is this merging of self and world that allows us to dissolve the subject-object barrier between ourselves and the Oracle.

Comparing the New and Traditional  Sequences

Looking at the King Wen Sequence from a distance, we see an overall pattern of 32 pairs of hexagrams divided into two uneven parts.  Part One consists of 30 hexagrams that begins with the pair #1 The Creative (Heaven 0ver Heaven) and #2 The Receptive (Earth over Earth) and ends with the pair #29 The Abysmal (Water over Water) and #30 The Clinging (Fire over Fire).  Part Two consists of 34 hexagrams that begins with the pair #31 Influence (Lake over Mountain) and #32 Duration (Thunder over Wind) and ends with the pair #63 After Completion (Water over Fire) and #64 Before Completion (Fire over Water).

We know that the trigrams Fire and Water are delegates for Heaven and Earth, since they often represent the Sun and Moon, respectively.  So ending Part One with the doubling of the Water and Fire trigrams as a response to the doubling of the Heaven and Earth trigrams at the beginning of Part One makes good sense.  As does the final pair of hexagrams in Part Two (Water over Fire and Fire over Water), since this is the intermarrying of the two opposing trigrams rather than their doubling.  If the goal had been absolute consistency in this regard, then Part Two would have started with the symbolic counterparts to #1 The Creative and #2 The Receptive, namely #12 Standstill (Heaven over Earth) and #11 Peace (Earth over Heaven).  But such is not the case.  Part Two begins instead with a pair of hexagrams that use the intermarrying of the remaining four trigrams (Lake over Mountain and Thunder over Wind).  So where the beginning and end of Part One and the end of part Two are all marked by hexagrams comprised of the trigrams Heaven and Earth and Fire and Water, the beginning of Part Two is marked by hexagrams comprised of the other four trigrams:  #31 Influence is made up of the youngest daughter and youngest son (Lake over Mountain) and #32 Duration is made up of the eldest son and eldest daughter (Thunder over Wind).

There is a kind of symbolic structure to the traditional Sequence, in other words, that depends on the doubling and/or intermarrying of [1] trigrams specifically related to the first two (Heaven and Earth, thence their delegates, Fire and Water) and [2] trigrams expressing the familial relationships among the eight trigrams (Lake and Mountain, Thunder and Wind).  As has been often noted, Part One appears as the Upper Half of the hexagrams, representing cosmological forces at work, whereas Part Two appears as the Lower Half, representing the social and cultural forces at work.  Indeed, the traditional interpretation of #31 Influence (Lake over Mountain) and #32 Duration (Thunder over Wind) is that they represent the institutions of courtship and marriage, respectively.  The text of these two hexagrams not only refers to the “superior man” but the traditional interpretation, such as that found in the standard Wilhelm-Baynes translation, contains such parochial material as:  “During courtship the young man subordinates himself to the girl, but in marriage, which is represented by the coming together of the eldest son and the eldest daughter, the husband is the directing and moving force outside, while the wife, inside, is gentle and submissive.”

This emphasis on the well-known familial relationships between trigrams lies at the very heart of the King Wen Sequence.

Diagram 1: Family Relationships Among Trigrams

In other words, the first two hexagrams of the traditional King Wen Sequence are those symbolizing the father and the mother, which are considered the parents of the following 62 hexagrams.  This representation is due in large part to the fact that the father/heaven hexagram is comprised of six solid lines and the mother/earth hexagram of six broken lines, whereas the remaining 62 hexagrams are all made up of combinations of solid and broken lines.  The father/heaven and mother/earth hexagrams are the only two that exist as pure yang and pure yin forces, while the remaining 62 hexagrams exist as combinations of yang and yin energies.

This dependence on a paternalistic model of creation and change goes hand-in-hand with the top-down model of rulership to which the traditional I Ching has long contributed.  As part of the wisdom tradition of ancient China, the I Ching played a role in the instruction of rulers in the ongoing effort to create enlightened rulers, whose adherence to the Way would lead the nation into a time of peace and harmony and prosperity.  As the Oracle, moreover, the I Ching played a role in advising rulers in their decisions of statecraft.

As discussed in the previous three posts, this faith in the education of rulers has worldwide proven a disastrous failure and any continuing alliance between the I Ching and the ruling elite is unethical in the extreme.

We are a world of peers and neither governments nor churches are our parents.  No fellow human being stands above us to mediate between us and the infinite.  We are not children to be led.  We are, in fact, those most in touch with reality, possessing worldly wisdom and capable of determining our own destiny, whereas those pretending to rulership live in a shared hallucination of power far removed from the needs and dreams of those they would govern.

The old dynasty of rulers has come to an end and the new dynasty of peers has begun.  The Toltec I Ching reunites the ancient worldviews of the indigenous peoples of China and Mesoamerica by fusing the symbology of the Toltec culture to the I Ching of China, thereby reuniting the Eastern and Western Hemispheres of global consciousness.  The Toltec I Ching marries visual and written imagery to each  hexagram, thereby reuniting the Left and Right Hemispheres of the individual consciousness.  The Toltec I Ching, both in its role as a repository of wisdom and as the Oracle, allies itself with the emerging Dynasty and legitimizes it by reflecting its universal equality in a new Sequence and interpretation of the hexagrams.  The mechanics of this new Sequence are discussed here, which produces the following arrangement with its corresponding hexagrams in the King Wen Sequence—

Diagram 2: Toltec I Ching and King Wen Sequences

Viewing The Toltec I Ching Sequence from a distance, we can make our several principle features.  First of all, we note the beginning and ending pairs of the 64 hexagrams.  #1 Provoking Change (Thunder over Thunder) is paired with #2 Sensing Creation (Lake over Lake).

Here we see that the initiating force is something that has triggered or activated a change.  Its attribute is Shock or Surprise that motivates and inspires us to take up the challenge of transformation.  To quote from the text:

Image:  A male warrior dances with the storm, holding a lightning bolt in one hand and a feather in the other.  Where the lightning bolt forks, it takes the form of a serpent of fire, light, and energy.  The rattles around his ankles make thunder every time his feet strike the ground and his eyes are fixed on the sky above.

Interpretation:  This hexagram represents the great forces essential to creating a new beginning.  The male warrior symbolizes the way of testing and training human nature that increases its versatility and fortitude.  The lightning bolt symbolizes the focused application of action and intent that provokes dramatic change.  That it takes the form of a serpent of fire, light, and energy means that your vision is part of a living creative force whose movement shatters all that is cold, dark, and stagnant.  The dance symbolizes a personal ritual that connects you to creation’s underlying rhythm of movement and resistance.  Dancing with the sky, the storm, the lightning, means that you can sense the rhythmic force of love surrounding you as the feminine and masculine creative forces continue to create and sustain the spark of life within the night of matter.  Making thunder in the sky, making earthquakes in the land means that your actions trigger a great explosion of potential which, although it cannot be seen, sets in motion ramifications great enough to change what has come before.  Holding the feather means that you are rightly connected to the higher, celestial, forces of the sky, while holding the serpent means that you are rightly connected to the lower, terrestrial, forces of the earth.  Taken together, these symbols mean that your actions break up the inertia of the old and set in motion events that cannot yet be envisioned.

Action:  The masculine half of the spirit warrior guides the movement and energy of the unseen forces, stirring them up and then setting them in motion, calling them forth and then directing them against places where benefit is dammed up and unable to follow its natural course……

~

Its paired hexagram, Sensing Creation, accompanies it as a profound immersion in and heartfelt appreciation of the wonder of existence.  Its attribute is Joy or Appreciation that sensitizes us to the underlying perfection of creation.

To quote from the text:

Image:  A female warrior is naked, immersed in water and surrounded by flowers.  A wellspring of water rises from between her hands.  The water drops are drawn as beads of jade in order to portray the precious nature of that which sustains life.

Interpretation:  This hexagram represents the great courage essential to creating a meaningful life.  The female warrior symbolizes the way of nurturing and encouraging human nature that increases its sensitivity and loving-kindness.  Being naked means that nothing stands between you and the world.  Being immersed in water means that you plunge whole-heartedly into the spirit of that which nurtures all.  Being surrounded by flowers means that you perceive the perfection of the world as it truly is:  each moment blossoms perfect and whole, then passes like a fading flower—each perfection born into the world must die.  The wellspring of water symbolizes the inexhaustible source of courage that allows you to use your awareness of mortality to more profoundly experience the joy and sorrow inherent within every encounter.  In this sense, the flowers and the water signify not only the wisdom attained through experience, but the aesthetic sensibilities to be moved by a beauty and truth not always apparent to others.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you open your spirit to the overwhelming perfection of the world and share your vision with all you touch.

Action:  The feminine half of the spirit warrior collects the movement and energy of the unseen forces, calming them and bringing them together in harmony, making a place for them to gather strength and then making that source of benefit open and available to all……

From the very beginning of the Sequence, then, we see that the parent-child relationship of the King Wen Sequence has been replaced not by another creator-couple but, rather, by the archetypal human responses to times of new beginnings.  Something has triggered a time of crisis and #1 Provoking Change responds by trying to increase the potential for all concerned to benefit, to which #2 Sensing Creation responds by establishing an atmosphere of widespread relief and reconciliation.

Similarly, there is not any talk of the “superior man”.  Every man, woman and child is considered a spirit warrior to be honored and respected for their facing the inevitability of death.  That both male warriors and female warriors have within them a masculine and feminine half is likewise considered self-evident and a key element in each individual’s process of self-realization.

~

Turning to the last two hexagrams in the Sequence, we find #63 Self-Sufficiency (Wind over Mountain) and #64 Safeguarding Life (Mountain over Wind).  Rather than the artificial structure of the King Wen Sequence with its final pair intermarrying the Fire and Water trigrams, we find ourselves approaching the end of an organic sequence in which social forces (#63) finally coalesce to achieve a harmonious self-sufficiency that (#64) ultimately cannot be sustained and threatens to extinguish the very lifeway that is most treasured.

The attribute of #63 is Peaceful Adaptation.  To quote from the text:

Image:  A great feathered serpent hatches out of the earth as if from an egg.  Its feathers are adorned with conch shells and it senses its surroundings with its bifurcated tongue.

Interpretation:  This hexagram represents the great forces released by the accumulated efforts of spirit warriors over the ages.  The feathered serpent symbolizes the collective intent and vision shared by spirit warriors in every time and every place.  That it hatches from the earth as if from an egg means that the community of spirit incubating within the material world emerges as a living, dynamic force of creation.  The conches adorning its feathers symbolize the call for all to join the community of spirit.  Its bifurcated tongue symbolizes the duality that is one.  That it uses its bifurcated tongue to sense its surroundings means that you are attuned to the universal presence of the masculine and feminine creative forces.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you align yourself with those whose only need is to bring benefit to their surroundings.

Action:  The spirit warrior reverses the flow of power, channeling it inside instead of outside:  by storing up power internally rather than expending it externally, we are able to both free ourselves of habits and gain control over our actions……

~

The attribute of #64 is Obstructed Adaptation.  To quote from the text:

Image:  A male warrior holds the funeral bundle of his child, preparing to place it in its burial site.  His face reflects the shock, anguish, and horror that fills his heart.

Interpretation:  This hexagram depicts the inevitable result of carelessness and irreverence.  The male warrior symbolizes the versatility and fortitude that are at the core of outer nurturing.  That he prepares to place the funeral bundle of his child in its burial site means that strength cannot accomplish afterwards what nurturing can accomplish beforehand.  That his face and heart are filled with shock, anguish, and horror means that he is in the grips of the most terrible truth:  that which we most cherish cannot be replaced.  Taken together, these symbols mean that you avoid causing suffering by honoring and nurturing all that your spirit touches.

Action:  The masculine half of the spirit warrior draws back from the brink before it is too late.  It is not a time for pursuing desires and ambitions:  those who cannot temper their strength run the risk of losing a source of that strength……

~

No Conclusion

As with all organic processes, every ending begets a new beginning, so it comes as no surprise that #64 Safe-Guarding Life is itself the crisis that sets in motion #1 Provoking Change and, thereby, another round of the Cycle of Fate.

When the Oracle answers our questions with a hexagram that includes one or more lines changing to a new hexagram, it is providing us with a way to leap out of the Cycle of Fate and create our lives outside the entropic law of increasing disorder and disintegration.  When we receive an answer without any line changes, however, then it means that we are temporarily held fast in the Cycle of Fate and should see ourselves as eventually moving into the next hexagram in the Sequence.

Of old, it has been said that if we quiet our heart-mind then we will transform it into a lodging-place for the One.

As the speaking of the One, the Oracle rushes in to fill the vacuum created by our question.

Standing at the border of the known and the unknown, we step out of our familiar worldview of self-and-other duality and into the longed-for unitary experience of the eternal return.

May we all transcend the Law of Fate and create the Golden Age of Humanity in the nearest possible present time.

~

The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just received a Silver Award in the 2010 Nautilus Awards.  It recasts the I Ching in the symbology of the Native Americans of ancient Mexico and includes original illustrations interpreting each of the hexagrams.  Its subtitle, 64 Keys to Inspired Action in the New World hints at its focus on the ethics of the emerging world culture.

Click here to go to the main site to see sample chapters, reviews and the link to Larson Publications for ordering the book.

~

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The Unity of all things dwells in an undifferentiated state of living potential.  Neither awake nor asleep nor dreaming, it is the shining awareness everywhere present, the fount of time and eternity.  It is still and silent, utterly at peace and filled with harmony.

The Unity of all things produces a secondary world of birth and death when its living potential is activated by the intention of its parts.  This is unavoidable, since the harmony of the Whole could not be perfect if it denied in any way the natural creative impulse of its parts.  The unitary nature of the living potential produces a single field of intentions, so that no intention exists in isolation but, rather, enters the universe of intentions, where it becomes part of the vast interconnectedness of cause-and-effect.

The living potential bifurcates its generative energy along a line of further-dividing dualities:  the 1 becomes 2, the 2 become 4, the 4 become 8, and so on.  These numbers represent the ways in which generative energy distributes intention throughout the phenomenal world.  They are entities in the sense that they are comprised of intentional parts and comprise an intention of their own as a part of a larger whole:  the 8 trigrams is an entity that both contains all 8 of its trigrams and extends the intention of the 4 bigrams. The 4 bigrams double the original duality of solid and broken lines, producing two pairs of dualities.  The 8 trigrams double the duality of the 4 bigrams, producing four pairs of dualities.  This process continues until the 64 hexagrams produce 32 pairs of dualities. None of these entities, however, actually precedes another:  they all exist simultaneously and symbolize the multiple points of view required of human perception to appreciate its environment and respond to it successfully.

Diagram 1: Emanations of Duality Arising from the Process of Doubling

This cosmological process is perceptual in nature because it cannot be divorced from human perception—it represents the identification of human nature with the whole of the universe.  Because our perception arises from the same process as the rest of creation, we perceive the unfolding of the cosmos by perceiving the unfolding of our own perception.  That unfolding comes in a series of emanations coincident with the vast undifferentiated One.  Awareness stirs within the stillness of the Unity of all things, its creative urge producing a division in the unity.  Now there are two.  Thus is born Number.  Which produces Symbol:  in the case of Two, it is the Duality of complementary feeling-tones of Autonomy and Love, for the movement out of the unity requires independence of spirit even as it establishes the relationship with the Whole.  From Symbol comes Name:  in this case, yang and yin, masculine and feminine, heaven and earth, creative and receptive, movement and stillness, and so on.  With names, things enter into the universe of all other names and the ensuing relationships they form produce an intricate web of Meaning that explores all the possible distributions of generative energy within civilization.

The cosmological process whereby the material universe gives body to the spiritual Unity of all things, in other words, is mirrored in the process whereby civilization gives body to the original undifferentiated perception of human nature.  In both cases, it is the cosmological unfolding of ever-dividing dualities that creates a relational order and structure to the world of phenomena and experience—an order and structure resulting in the natural tendency of all things toward increased disorder and decay.

The unfolding of the Many out of the One, then, is the Way of Fate, where all things and relations between things forever spontaneously changes in the direction of greater disintegration.

And it is the return of the Many into the One that is the Way of Freedom.

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Reversing the Course of Fate

The return of the Many into the One is an ancient formula symbolizing the spiritual transformation we undergo when we cultivate our present self to the point where we spontaneously re-experience our original undamaged nature.  This return to our true self as it exists before and after social conditioning is likewise called uniting heaven and earth.  It comes about because we train ourselves to stop viewing the inner and outer world as pairs of dualities (like good and bad, right and wrong, self and other) and develop greater sensitivity to the Unity of all things.  This is commonly referred to as the mystical experience arising from the reunion of subject and object:  it points at the profound metamorphosis we undergo when there is no longer any distance between us and the universe nor is there any boundary between our individual mind and the one mind.  This is called reversing the outflow of generative energy and has long been associated with the real person, or sage, whose enlightened nature has been reclaimed.

As noted in the previous two posts, the Way of Fate is the entropic process carrying all things and the relationships between things ever further into disorder.  From the perceptual cosmology, this is the result of the initial division of the Unity of all things and its subsequent doublings into further dualities.

The Way of Fate is the realm of birth and death.  Everything that enters this realm must progressively deteriorate and die.  This is the first and greatest of the perceptual dualities.  From it arise all the other dualities comprising the law of Fate governing the lives of so many.

Running counter to the Way of Fate is the circulation of generative energy.  This is the flow of the subliminal force that gives life to life.  From the perspective of spirit, generative energy is matter.  From the perspective of matter, generative energy is spirit.  From the perspective of entropy, generative energy is information.  From the perspective of life, generative energy is mind.  It circulates among all things, entering all the dualities in order to hold them together in the Unity of all things.  It is the subliminal force that can postpone the arrival of Fate indefinitely.

The true person, the sage, the enlightened person, have long been those who cultivated this generative energy of the universal return within themselves and others.

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The Oracle of Freedom

Uniting heaven and earth is an act that happens within the human being.  It occurs within us in the present mind-moment when we stand at the center of the compass and open our heart-mind to the ever-present Unity of all things.  We bring the one spirit of heaven and the one body of earth back together within ourselves every time we re-experience the nonduality of reality.  Reuniting the one spirit and the one body in a conscious act is an act of conception that gives birth to a timeless intention—fueled by the generative energy of the return of the Many into the One, it reverses the course of Fate by spontaneously and immediately returning to the Act of Creation.  Such experiences not only benefit those who undergo them but spill out into the world of intentions, contributing to the metamorphosis of civilization itself.

There are many traditions of self-transformation whose goal is the mystical experience of nonduality.  Our complete metamorphosis into a true person that constantly stands at the center of the compass takes many years of genuine insights and sincere cultivation.  Standing at the center point of nonduality, voluntarily collapsing the distinction between subject and object, voluntarily letting go of all boundaries between my self and the One—this is the method and the goal of self-realization practices.  It is not a practice undertaken lightly nor attained effortlessly.  It is the Path of Freedom in every sense and those who keep it underfoot their whole life are still too few.

But it is not the only way of uniting heaven and earth.

There are many, equally old, traditions of divination whose goal is to make the voice of the one spirit accessible to the one body.  Across cultures and the millennia, the tradition of priest-diviners has arisen to give voice to the ancient Oracle guiding humanity away from the cliff edge of self-destruction and back toward the Living Monument of self-creation.  It is a tradition based on the recognition that our self-awareness works according to the same laws as the rest of creation:  our spirit speaks most directly and powerfully to our body in our dreams, just as the one spirit speaks most directly and powerfully to the one body in its symbols.  Long considered the first language, symbols speak with a directness and power that words cannot—laden with complex layers of meaning and emotional associations, they appear all-at-once, spatially, rather than in the linear, temporal, string of words of conscious language.

Divination, then, is the art of translating the symbols of the Oracle.  It is the human awareness breaking through the barrier of subject and object, voluntarily merging self with the one spirit, re-coupling the primal duality of spirit and matter.  It is the spontaneous and immediate act of uniting heaven and earth.  It is not necessary for the diviner to consciously strive to effect such a union—the act of divination collapses the subject-object duality by its very nature.

Engaging the Oracle automatically entails stepping back into the Unity of all things.  We cannot seek an answer from the Oracle and hold ourselves separate from the one spirit, we cannot receive the Oracle’s answer and hold ourselves separate from the one body.  To open ourselves to the invisible realm of unity underlying this world of the senses is to lose the ego-self and step into the oceanic dreamtime of nonduality:  this is called becoming the site of the return of the Many into the One.  As has long been said of the I Ching, inquiring of the Oracle is not a matter of any special knowledge or skill— the divinatory act activates a mysterious conjunction of dualities solely by the power of the questioner’s sincerity.

The Oracle is the speaking of the generative energy that circulates between the beginning and end of time, between the Act of Creation and the Act of Completion.  It circulates in the same way that the ocean’s water evaporates, forms clouds that are carried by the wind to the land where it falls as rain that accumulates in streams and rivers in order to flow back into the sea.  It is an all-at-once-ness circulation that is spatial and not a linear progression of time.  It is the flow of the unchanging life-that-gives-life behind the flow of perceptible change.  To life, generative energy is the unborn mind that moves at will backward and forward between the beginning and the end of time:  it is unborn because it does not ever enter the realm of birth and death and so stands forever outside the realm of Fate—it can move at will between end and beginning because it is the circulation itself.

The 64 hexagrams constitute the map of Fate.  They show the 64 possible mixtures of yang and yin generative energy that produce the world of phenomena.  They show the pitfalls and traps everything and everyone faces in the realm of birth and death.  They show the vast archetypal landscape of entropic change driving all changing phenomena.

Engaging the Oracle activates the creative intent of the living moment, revealing the way to transcend Fate and create a lifetime of good fortune.  Circulating among the lines of the hexagrams, the generative energy calls us to follow the way of freedom in every sense.

Diagram 2: Clockwise Circulation of the Four Bigrams

The Oracle speaks to us by selecting from the 64 possible hexagrams just those that represent the present situation we face and how it is developing into the coming situation.  In doing so, it points out the choices we have if we are to keep the path of freedom beneath our feet.

The Toltec I Ching is the newest iteration of the Oracle’s speaking.  By recasting the I Ching in the symbology of the Native Americans of ancient Mexico, its interpretative material gives a new voice to the emerging Dynasty of the Open Secret.  By marrying the two great cosmovisions of the indigenous civilizations of China and Mexico, it unites the East and West hemispheres for today’s global civilization.  By interpreting each hexagram with both original illustrations and written material, it unites the right and left hemispheres of the brain for today’s global consciousness.

I cannot distance myself from the I Ching anymore than you.  Those who haven’t yet internalized the I Ching may think the above considerations to be mere abstractions but those who know that the 8 trigrams are their own sense organs have already discovered that the 4 bigrams are the opening and closing of the Gate of Good Fortune.  May benefit pour out of you to cover heaven and earth.

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Next:  Reading the Map of Fate

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The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just received a Silver Award in the 2010 Nautilus Awards.  It recasts the I Ching in the symbology of the Native Americans of ancient Mexico and includes original illustrations interpreting each of the hexagrams.  Its subtitle, 64 Keys to Inspired Action in the New World hints at its focus on the ethics of the emerging world culture.

Click here to go to the main site to see sample chapters, reviews and the link to Larson Publications for ordering the book.

~

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The old Dynasty of nationalism, aggression and self-interest is overturned now by time.  In its place, like billions of seeds fallen on the fertile plain of history, the first signs of the new age of enlightened peers reveal the emerging change to all.  Like the light from a distant nova that takes years to reach us, the effects of this spiritual revolution are already on their way.

We have entered the Dynasty of the Open Secret.  Founded in seclusion by a group of priest-diviners on the Summer Solstice of 1998, it will be celebrated worldwide on the Winter Solstice of 2012 and usher in changes that will carry us all into the Golden Age of Humanity.

As discussed in the previous post, we follow here an ages-old tradition of legitimizing the new Dynasty by introducing a new version of the I Ching that more accurately reflects the vision and ethics of our age while still maintaining the shamanically-charged power of the Oracle.  As explained there, it is the periodically revised Sequence of the 64 hexagrams—the mysterious order into which its 32 pairs of hexagrams are arranged—that renews cyclic time and restores humaneness to the social order.

This new version of the Oracle is based on a new arrangement of the hexagrams named for its Dynasty:  The Open Secret Sequence.

Diagram 1: Trigrammic Substitution between Fu Shi, King Wen, and Open Secret Maps

In the diagram above, the Fu Shi, or Earlier Heaven, arrangement occupies the centermost circle, while the King Wen, or Later Heaven, arrangement occupies the second circle.  Even though the Fu Shi is considered the Primal Arrangement of the eight elemental forces of change that manifest this world, research indicates that it may have actually been discovered many centuries after the King Wen.  The Fu Shi arrangement may in fact be related to the work of the great diviner Shao Yung, whose work inspired Leibniz to marvel that the binary code had been discovered in China long before his own discovery.

The Fu Shi arrangement is a static one that pairs the trigrams across from one another—the trigram Heaven, made of all solid lines, for instance, is paired with its opposite-complement, Earth, made of all broken lines.  By contrast, the King Wen arrangement, which delineates a dynamic process of growth and decay, is read in a clockwise circular manner:  Beginning with Thunder (Shock, Movement) in the East of the second circle and ending with Mountain (Stillness, Death) in the North-East, each of the trigrams spurs the next in the cycle of organic development in the lives of societies, organizations, ideologies, relationships, and individuals.  The Fu Shi, then, is thought of as the eternally paired dualities whose harmonious balance gives rise to the King Wen arrangement of the invisible forces giving rise in turn to the phenomenal world of change.

Tradition has it that the trigrams of the Fu Shi arrangement shine through those of the King Wen.  In other words, trigrams occupying the same compass point overlay one another, illuminating different aspects of the same sacred metaphor for the archetypal change that manifests in every life.  They share the same space of time and are enriched by their association with their shared compass points.

Diagram 2: The Spatialization Of Time

Diagram 2 shows how the temporal flux of the seasons and the day are superimposed on the four cardinal directions of space.  In this way, the developmental cycle of beginning, expanding, contracting, and return is mapped onto East, South, West, and North, respectively.  The eight compass points of the map of change are, then, the archetypal placeholders that charge their associated trigrams with oracular power, since it is the compass points themselves that comprise the real-world ordering principle of the flow of time.

While it is the shamanically-charged Sequence of 64 hexagrams that legitimizes a new Dynasty, in other words, it is the theurgic mapping of the trigrams onto the eight compass points that legitimizes that new Sequence.  That ritual act, which produced the Open Secret arrangement of the trigrams, was performed by a group of priest-diviners at the kairotic moment of noon on the Summer Solstice of 1998.

Returning to Diagram 1 now, we see that its outermost circle is occupied by the Open Secret arrangement of the trigrams.  Whereas the Fu Shi arrangement is static and the King Wen moves in a circular clockwise manner to show the natural unfolding of phenomena, the Open Secret arrangement is read in a circular counter-clockwise direction to show the way of reversing the universal natural tendency toward disorder.

Because the past Dynasty was founded on the inevitability of entropy in social institutions and human relations, it is called the Dynasty of Fate.  It has been ruled by those who accept such inevitable disintegration and benefit from it.  Using their influence to exacerbate the natural trend toward disorder, they have made the fate of perpetual decline the common dwelling place of the governed.  By “decline” is meant the descent of civilization into ever darker regions of the collective human psyche:  ever-shifting wars, church-and-state sponsored hatred of other peoples, creation of urban centers that assure alienation from nature, unjustifiable disparity of standard of living, worldwide poverty and contamination of water sources, self-destructive degradation of the environment and animal habitat, governmental misuse of technology and media to to cow its populace into accepting increasingly authoritarian forms of control, and so on.  By tradition, this was called by the priest-diviners weeping for the fate-driven herd.  And it was called by the sages crying out against waste of life.

In contrast, the newly-emerging Dynasty of the Open Secret is founded on the principle of the conservation of life.  It recognizes the equality of all life and acts accordingly.  It honors human life, animal life, and plant life, transforming the present civilization into one in which human beings wrench loose from the iron grip of Fate and make of this world a paradise for all life.  This, the priest-diviners say, is what the Oracle has foreseen.

Fate is the destructive physical force of disorder in the universe and must be struggled against if we are not to fall irrevocably into ruin.  This is called by the sages protecting the flickering flame from the void of night.  And it is called by the priest-diviners feeding the bonfire that will outlast the dark.

For while Fate is the gravity that forever pulls us downwards and darkwards, the Oracle is flight upwards and lightwards:  Whereas Fate embodies the certainty of ongoing deterioration, the Oracle embodies the acausal nature of meaningful coincidence.  It is in this way that the Oracle interrupts the predetermined course of Fate by identifying those kairotic moments—those crucial turning points appointed by a higher order of cause-and-effect—in which darkness might be converted to light.

What is the mechanism by which the hexagrams are charged with that oracular power?

The Open Secret Sequence of the 64 hexagrams is derived directly from the King Wen Sequence by substituting the Open Secret arrangement of the trigrams for those of the King Wen arrangement.  In other words, the trigrams in the outermost circle of Diagram 1 are substituted for those in the second circle.  In this way, the magically-charged order of the 32 pairs of hexagrams underlying the King Wen Sequence is maintained in the Open Secret Sequence.

But as explained in the previous post, the legitimizing of the new Dynasty requires more than a new Sequence of hexagrams—it also requires a new interpretation of the hexagrams that reflects the vision and values of the emerging Dynasty.  It requires, in other words, establishing a new voice for the Oracle.

The Toltec I Ching is the first speaking of that voice.  Based on the Open Secret Sequence of the hexagrams, it uses the symbology of the ancient indigenous peoples of the Americas to give voice to the sacredness of all life upon which the new Dynasty is founded.

The following diagram compares the order and names of the hexagrams in The Toltec I Ching and the traditional King Wen version—

Diagram 3: Transposing Between Toltec I Ching and King Wen Sequences

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Next Week:  The Oracle and the War Against Fate

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The Toltec I Ching, by Martha Ramirez-Oropeza and William Douglas Horden has just received a Silver Award in the 2010 Nautilus Awards.  It recasts the I Ching in the symbology of the Native Americans of ancient Mexico and includes original illustrations interpreting each of the hexagrams.  Its subtitle, 64 Keys to Inspired Action in the New World hints at its focus on the ethics of the emerging world culture.

Click here to go to the main site to see sample chapters, reviews and the link to Larson Publications for ordering the book.

~

Bookmark It

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