Accessing that space, in her view, is not to be taken lightly and actually involves a separate skill from interpreting the answer. She says she has known horary astrologers who can interpret the answer with a great deal of skill but who cannot effectively access the ’sacred moment’ by asking the question in the right way or in the right time with the requisite attention.

I think attention has a lot to do with this successful access and depends a great deal on the skill of the questioner in contacting that knowing inner space. Ritualistic behaviors are known to potentiate and support the conversation between the conscious and subconscious mind…that is why ritual is so important. I think that the ’space’ however, can be accessed without elaborate ritual but the attention that is paid to the query and the investment of meditative focus has much to do with the quality of the answer.

Coins, great for a hurry, yarrow, once a decade, too long and too hard to concentrate that long, the one in sixteen method, fantastic, the speed of a coin reading and even faster, with the same polarity of odds as explained by Wilhelm in the back of his I Ching translation. Or the computer, well, I’ve seen some shonky programs on the ‘net’ for the Ching. Some with no moving lines, so how do you know which one to read and how can they call it the book of change if they don’t even know the basic maths involved in most methods of consultation with the oracle.

I find the Javascript I Ching great. The next person might think it rubbish. My neighbours’ daughter had left her kids and gone to stay with some rough, druggie types on a sleezy side of town. The father came and visited me and wanted me to ask the I Ching for him what he must do to get his daughter back before the drugs totally mess her up, or she ends up in some serious criminal den with the associates she’d made. So I said, I’ll do it with the computer and using Javascript. Came out Lu 10 Stepping Carefully, changing into 42 I Increase. Quite obviously, the I was saying even with these rough crim types, nice manners and pleasantness will bring success and to eschew any form of violence or force. (Being an ex employee of the states prison system he would know people who as he said, would fix those guys right up) But the I Ching said not to do that and to concentrate on his higher self instead. Sure enough, three months before Christmas and with no questions asked, the daughter turns up with the kids to the delight of her father. And he’s a guy who says he doesn’t have any faith, beleif system and can’t see anything beyond, life is short and when you’re dead, you’re dead and buried.

So does it matter how the oracle was consulted if the answer recieved gave the right information and tactic to get his daughter back unscathed. And as it said virtually, she’s a big girl now, let her find her own way home.

Ironically he did say a few days later how convenient it is she arrives three months before Christmas when presents and feasting are prevalent.

I’m glad she’s back and he had the wisdom to let her go and find out for herself what a load of trash she was mixing in with and how now she is improving her social networks.

Nandalal

I formulate my question or sets of questions in my head, sometimes in my online journal, then proceed with doing a throw. Everytime there is a pertinent answer. Sometimes, actual words mirror directly back. Accuracy though, means nothing to me. It’s what i call a non-issue. The iChing is not a forecasting tool. It allows insight as to how a person may approach given situations. It is always up to us to use our free will to act, or not act upon information given. And, as we all know, even non-action is a form of action…taken further, non-action is oftimes the path of least resistance, also called non-forcing. So, let’s be clear on what it does, how it does it and what we do with it. I find more often than not there is a great deal of humour in the Hexagrams. That keeps things in perspective for me.

One last thought: …we can enter the forest in a multitude of ways…by car, by foot, by bike…we can enter at different times of the day or night, and we can enter at varying points. Whichever “way” we choose, we all have access. The forest is the unknown…we want to know the unknown. That’s one of those connundrums of the Way. We can enter the unknown through the iChing. It says, if you enter this way…it gives you a conclusion. If you enter that way, another conclusion.

Once we get to the place or point of what Nigel Richmond called, a glimpse of the obvious, we can become less fascinated with its workings and more in tune with our dealings. Afterall, most of us are wanting to know how to deal with our lives. At some point, it all falls on us to exercise our will no matter what hexagrams appear before us.

I ‘connect’ with my question most of all through the emotions, which make me ask. That works best when it is very direct. Asking without making a problem of the wording, no rituals, no time in between. Running to the book and throwing the coins (or hitting the keys), before anything else can calm me down.

I guess that is why the computer works best. Hit some keys and there it is. I have the San Shan software, which works great. Clarity’s does too. Not all do, so the way the answer is generated, is important too. What Steve made, sounds very good to me.

LiSe

In the next version of WICE I am implementing a persistent conversion tree

should say … a persistent conversation tree

I have meditated, washed the coins, kept the book and the coins wrapped in cloth, used spagetti instead of yarrow stalks, random number generators, spent hours concentrating of the question and answer, asked quick joke questions and just looked at the resulting hexagram without reading anything.

For me there are two paths to the same connection, the first is an intellectual one where you consult because your interested in the answer, and the second is an emotional one where you consult because your “concerned” about the answer.

In general I don’t think descent, properly seeded random number generators (RNG) are a problem when used with the I Ching, but there are alot of dodgy RNGs, and unseeded RNGs which just return the same sequence of numbers each time they are run, and that’s a bit of a problem, not to mention the unknown way in which they are used.

I have used RNGs in past I Ching programs but Windows I Ching Explorer (WICE) doesn’t use one because I just feel that they introduce an extra level of “indirection”. You will notice that with nearly every other I Ching program the line generation is linked to one event, either the mouse button down, mouse button up, key down or key up event. This single event simply calls some algorithm associated with a RNG in some way.

WICE uses both the mouse button down and up event. On mouse button down, WICE starts to “move” the “value” of the entity, ie. the bit, line, trigram, or hexagram through it’s allowable values ie. 2^1, 2^2, 2^3 and 2^6 in a user configurable pre-defined sequence. The mouse button up event stops the “movement” at whatever “value” it is at that time. This is analogous to how long a coin spins, for bit entities. WICE also has a user configurable variable which determines how quickly the entity value is changed, this is analogous to how fast a coin spins.

Prior to v3.0.6, WICE simply moved the line value between 0, 1, 2 and 3 which didn’t replicate the young / old line three coin toss ratio, however if you used all eighteen bits in a consultation WICE did achieve the correct three coin toss ratio. In v3.0.6 I have added a delay which keeps the line value on 1 or 2, ie. three time longer than on values 0 & 3, which means that when lines are moved in fast mode they do replicate three coin toss odds.

In the next version of WICE I am implementing a persistent conversion tree or threaded journal, and a formal consultation mode which will hopefully make the program usable for consulations.

Regards

Steve