The I Ching – Research & Practice

The “I Ching”, also known as “The Book of Changes”, is probably the most ancient Chinese divination text.

Traditionally, the “I Ching” is used for a Chinese form of cleromancy in which 6 coins are cast, or bundles of 50 yarrow stalks are manipulated, to produce sets of six apparently random numbers ranging from 6 to 9. Each number corresponds to a line. Each of the 64 possible sets corresponds to a hexagram. Each hexagram corresponds to an image or prophecy.

I discovered this book about 20 years ago. At first, it was a ludic late-night ritual I would do with friends to foresee whether a crush would call or if we’d pass an exam. As I matured, my fascination in the book grew and my knowledge deepened (although it’s incredibly complex to fully understand it!).

I often use the book as a mean for introspection, to take distance from a certain situation, to shift my perspective, to connect with my unconscious self.

The psychological dimension of this text was not my idea. A man who accompanied me for the best part of Unit 2 was also very interested in I Ching…

Carl Jung practiced the oracle for about 30 years before writing his introduction to the English version of the book, seeing it as a tool to explore the unconscious.

He used it with patients during his psychoanalytic sessions. And when asked how this book manages to give us such inspired answers, he answered:

“...A certain curious principle that I have termed synchronicity, a concept that formulates a point of view diametrically opposed to that of causality. Since the latter is a merely statistical truth and not absolute, it is a sort of working hypothesis of how events evolve one out of another, whereas synchronicity takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance. […] The Chinese mind, as I see it at work in the I Ching, seems to be exclusively preoccupied with the chance aspect of events. What we call coincidence seems to be the chief concern of this peculiar mind, and what we worship as causality passes almost unnoticed.

This concept greatly resonates with my "Hierophany" works.

Again, Jung: "The ancient Chinese mind contemplates the cosmos in a way comparable to that of the modern physicist, who cannot deny that his model of the world is a decidedly psychophysical structure. The psychophisical event includes the observer just as much as the reality underlying the I Ching comprises subjective, i.e., psychic conditions in the totality of the momentary situation.

(source: https://www.carl-jung.net/iching.html) 

For centuries emperors and peasants, scholars and unlearned alike have sought to understand the timeless wisdom and eerie divinations of the I Ching. Their symbolic, ritualistic, cultural significance is huge. And still equally enigmatic.

I wanted to explore their significance in my practice, with my own materials and methods. Psychologically, as a tool to reveal facets of my unconscious.

I started from the beginning and made an experiment to reproduce hexagram n.1 Ch’ien, The Creative”.

In the I Ching, Ch’ien is composed of six whole, unbroken lines. It represents pure creative force—the primal energy of heaven.

More about this hexagram here.

Here is the image I made:

Using incense sticks and photographic paper, I attempted to "draw" the six unbroken lines. But even in this simple, controlled action, fire refused to be fully controlled. Some lines burned cleanly. Others fragmented, blistered, revealed an unexpected oracle.

As if the burning became an instance of synchronicity itself.

Notes:

• I think there is more to I Ching in relation to my research and practice. I need to find out what

• The unplanned fragmentation of the lines mirrors the impossibility of fully controlling the unconscious and our life.

• The process is alive: a negotiation between intention and accident.

• Deepen the concept of synchronicity in my practice