Time of Change.

Most of my life -- well, since I was seventeen, anyway -- which is almost "most of my life" and certainly "most of it" for what I was conscious of it -- at times of Change I've always gone back to my dog-eared Wilhelm Translation of the I Ching and thrown the coins, built up a hexagram, and read through the Judgment, Image, and relevant Lines to see what this remarkable book has to randomly offer on where I am at any given time.

I've never, ever shared with anyone what came up, but what the hell -- since having a blog seems to mean that I have no secrets, here's what I came up with this time:

No. 22 -- 賁 -- Pi: Grace

becoming

No. 27 -- 頤 -- I: The Corners of the Mouth (Providing Nourishment)

and I'll be damned if it wasn't dead-on appropriate to my current situation. Briefly, for anyone who's unfamiliar with how it works: the third, unbroken Yang line (the "nine in the third place") in the first hexagram is the important one, being the one that changes, but the resulting, broken Yin line in the same place in the second hexagram is not taken into account at all in reading the second, since it *isn't* a six, but effectively, an eight.

Here's what I get from it -- again, briefly. Small undertakings require grace, which isn't such a force in the universe to suffice for great undertakings. Grace deals with "clearing up current affairs", but not with "deciding controversial issues".

Thus the earlier trigram relates directly to my leaving Foxes, which I dare admit I managed with considerable grace -- rather unusually for a bar, where people changing jobs often results in bad blood, bruised egos, burned bridges, and the like. Momentous as it seems for me right now, this change is really a small one -- ultimately, for all I say about my job being my identity, all I'm doing is changing how I make my money, which is (literally) how I nourish myself, an idea that figures centrally in the resulting second hexagram. Wilhelm's commentary on the first hexagram's nine in the third place reads, in part:

One is under the spell of grace and the mellow mood induced by wine. This grace can adorn, but it can also swamp us. Hence the warning not to sink into convivial indolence but to remain constant in perseverance. Good fortune depends on this.

The second hexagram, as I read it, regards self-care as the foundation for service to the community at large and stresses again the importance of perseverence. The Judgment reads, in part:

Pay heed to the providing of nourishment
And to what a man seeks
To fill his own mouth with.

In other words: the purpose of my having a job is to be able to take care of my own damn self. Not to get money to blow on thirteen martinis, even if I *don't* work in a bar.

The Image for the second trigram reads, again in part:

Thus the superior man is careful of his words
And temperate in eating and drinking.

Thus relating to the mouth, not only what goes into it, but what comes out of it -- this blog, for instance!

The lines for the second trigram (1) give me a swift kick in the butt for whining at the I Ching about letting my magic tortoise go (i.e., leaving Foxes), then (2) remind me not to get distracted, line three gets skipped, then (4) has me "turning to the summit for provision of nourishment" which "brings good fortune", while my "spying about with sharp eyes like a tiger with insatiable craving" brings "no blame". That's easily my favourite line -- the text itself *and* commentary. Line five reminds me of my limitations, while line six promises success in great endeavours just so long as those limitations remain in my own awareness.

It's always been like that. It's not fortunetelling -- not astrology -- doesn't pretend to tell me when I should go out to parties or stay home or who I should sleep with -- but it does invariably give me an idea where I am and what I need to follow through on and what I need to let drop by the wayside. Serves as a tool for me in gaining clarity on any given situation. It's always given me a fresh perspective on where I stand at any given moment in relation to the universe and sort of always starts me delving ever-deeper into things Chinese, internal-external relations, directions of motion, and so on.

The more I've read over the years the more I've come to understand -- when I read through the whole damn book the first time around it was just because I was interested in Joseph Cambell and Carl Jung and stuff like that. I surely didn't *understand* it. I still don't. But the metaphors are more familiar to me now, the semantic clusters around ideographs relating to "moistness" or "mouth" for instance have clearer mappings in my mind and always seem to *mean* something when they come up!

So yeah, perhaps I am a superstitious bastard, but what the hell's the harm in that? I love this book. It doesn't tell me what to do, but does lend clarity to my life as I live it -- and even if I am just playing games with my own mind in saying that, then what's the harm in it? It surely beats the empty "what now" and "a part of me is dead" feeling I had last night.