changes – Malcolm's Round Table

I no longer remember what led me to the Book of Changes known as the I Ching. Most likely it was something Carl Jung wrote. He was a friend of sinologist Richard Wilhelm (1873-1930) who brought to the western mind the first translation of the I Ching, a work that so impressed Jung that he wrote a forward to it. I believe it was first translated into English in 1951 and, of all the translations, some say it is still the best.

According to Princeton University Press, “The I Ching, or Book of Changes, a common source for both Confucianist and Taoist philosophy, is one of the first efforts of the human mind to place itself within the universe. It has exerted a living influence in China for 3,000 years, and interest in it has been rapidly spreading in the West.”

The universe, we suspect, is always in a state of flux, sometimes favoring things we may consider doing and sometimes not. The I Ching when used as an oracle shows us whether or not conditions are right for our plans just as a weather report tells us whether today is a good day to put out to sea. Most sailors wouldn’t begin a sea voyage in a hurricane. Likewise, when considering conditions with the I Ching, those with a Taoist perspective wouldn’t begin a project on a day when doing so goes against the universal flow.

In his foreword to the Wilhem edition, Jung said, “For more than thirty years I have interested myself in this oracle technique, or method of exploring the unconscious, for it has seemed to me of uncommon significance. I was already fairly familiar with the I Ching when I first met Wilhelm in the early nineteen twenties; he confirmed for me then what I already knew, and taught me many things more.”

As an oracle, used for divination or for meditation, The I Ching is–so to speak–like a wise and all-knowing companion on one’s life’s journey. I probably started using the I Ching in high school and, basically, found that when I used it often, life just seemed to go more smoothly. I still have my original copy, though I’ve supplemented it with Rudolph Ritsema and Stephen Karcher’s I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change [The First Complete Translation with Concordance].

The publisher’s description said, “We need the book when we stand at a crossroad of the soul.” I agree. The book’s answers to a flippant question are often like getting one’s hands slapped So, don’t ask it where you left your car keys or if you’re going to “get lucky” on your date tonight.

In this 1995 edition, the authors write, “The I Ching is a diviner’s manual or active sourcebook for what C. G. Jung called the archetypal forces. It organizes the play of these forces into images so that an individual reading becomes possible. . . These forces represent the flow of life and the experience of its meaning, its way or tao.”

Consistent use of the I Ching slowly changes an individual view of and approach to life. This benefit cannot be overstated.

I believe that most of our problems come from the arrogance of living outside the universe, a belief the I Ching would caution the seeker against.

–Malcolm

This blog has been staggering along for awhile like a sailor trying to find his way back to the ship after a night on the town in a foreign port. (Been there, done that.)

When I started Malcolm’s Round Table, I was thinking of King Arthur (indirectly in my family tree) and the Knights of the Round Table. Not that I would admit that I was looking for the Holy Grail. I had no idea what I was going to say or that I’d end up saying it for some 1,050 posts about everything from writing to Glacier National Park, to the USS Ranger to the Florida locations for some of my recent stories.

Somehow along the road, 26,250 of you stopped by for some 83,252 visits. And, according to the WordPress gurus, the busiest time has been Thursday at 2 p.m. This tells me you guys are logging on at work after drinking your lunch.

Seriously, were you trying to stay awake or were you looking for the Holy Grail? (And, were you successful in either quest?) Truth be told, I bring to this blog and to most of my fiction the premise that every one of us is on a hero’s journey in search of that moment and/or that insight that transforms us into the individual we were destined to become if we allowed it to happen.

In my novel The Sun Singer, I explore the hero’s journey from a masculine perspective. In Sarabande, I look at the journey from a feminine perspective. A recent article on Brain Pickings called “If Librarians Were Honest” caught my attention because it’s based on the premise that “If librarians were honest, they would say, No one spends time here without being changed…”

Vision of the Holy Grail at the Round Table.

Hero’s and Heroine’s journeys change us, often in spectacular ways under dangerous circumstances. Libraries can also change us. Potentially, every book, article, and post we read will change us a little or a lot. We never quite know at the beginning of a journey or a book, just who we will be at the end of it.

So, it’s a glorious risk, right?

Perhaps I should have posted this yesterday on my birthday because each of your visits is a gift. It’s a gift of your time, just as reading The Sun Singer, Sarabande, and Conjure Woman’s Cat is a gift of your time. Perhaps you felt different when you finished some of the posts and some of my stories.

Or, perhaps you were changed in imperceptible ways. If you’re also a writer, you will know that you not only change as you read but also as you write. I’m slightly different than I was when I wrote, “This blog has been staggering along for awhile like a sailor trying to find his way back to the ship after a nigh on the town” at the beginning of this post.

We don’t often notice the smallest changes in ourselves because movies and books lead us to believe that when we find the Holy Grail, we’ll find it all at once rather than little by little. Perhaps we need a magic mirror that shows us, not how we’ve aged over time, but how we’ve changed.

If we did, I think we’d not only be surprised by the results, but we’d all feel a lot better about ourselves. At any rate, that’s why I write and that’s why I’m happy that 26,250 of you have stopped by to read.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the 1950s-era novella “Conjure Woman’s Cat” about a conjure woman who fights back against the KKK with folk magic.

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Malcolm's Round Table

Tag: changes

Aligning oneself with change with the ‘I Ching’

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