“When you get a figure, a hexagram, what it really is is like a mask. And you put it on and move and dance in that spirit and something happens: you experience significance.”
This is from Stephen Karcher’s radio interview with Caroline Casey on her Visionary Activist Show. (Visit that page for introduction and archives, or click here to stream the recording directly.
I’ll be listening to this one repeatedly (if you look at the url to stream the mp3 you may be able to reconstruct the url to type in to download it). Stephen talks through a reading for the show, engaging with the divination not as a way of navigating through problems, reaching a decision, choosing an attitude, etc, but as a way of thinking and landscape to explore, and as a springboard for cultural commentary. Very different, absolutely alive, and a great insight into a unique way of divining.
I like the example of the mask. I am an actor, and I have worked with mask. I will look at the mask, stare at it and attempt to get a sense of how the mask affects me physically, emotionally, psychologically–spiritually. I begin to incorporate the mask into my being so as to communicate the character of the mask truthfully through myself. Can I look at divination/the Hexagram in a similiar way?
Well, maybe Stephen Karcher’s I Ching readings are masks, but not mine. I use my own one-sentence information units for hexagram meanings as well as moving lines. It is a system that I have been working on for years, and that I have done limitless divinations about. It is now in finished form. Whenever I do a divination about anything at all, the I Ching answers I get are crystal clear and straight to the point.
Maybe Karcher would do better using my I Ching instead of his own.
Or, maybe Karcher is just trying to sound clever and deep. Betwen the two, I prefer the limitless depths of my I Ching, thank you.
I like your idea and its simplicity and I would like to use it. Is there any chance that I can get a copy of it?
Thanks for your consideration.
Phil