Tag: I Ching

One with the Universe

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn mysticism, writing4 Comments

While writing yesterday’s post about the I Ching, I thought of that long-ago phrase that was once very popular: “One with the Universe.” Unfortunately, “everyone” used that phase so extensively that it became trite and that didn’t matter because most people weren’t really applying it, they were just saying it.

Those of us who have studied Huna (Hawai’ian mysticism) see no difference between the universe and the Creator. Some Huna scholars put it this way: “There is nothing that’s not God.”

Whether you see all that is as a Huna mystic or as a member of a group with another approach to the “Cosmic,” it seems clear that if we are all doing our best to synchronize our lives with the universe–perhaps via the I Ching–we would not have the spectre of climate change hanging over our heads like the sword of Damocles. 

It’s a shame we have left the world in an apparently perilous condition for our children and our children’s children. This reminds me of those novels where a once proud family falls into ruin because the older generation didn’t manage the estate properly. We are not managing the World’s resources properly, evidence enough in my view that most of us are not one with the universe.

If you look up “one with the universe” in Google, for example, you’ll find multiple commentaries on how to synchronize your life, thinking, and work with the universe. The best of these tend to say that doing so will make a difference in ourselves and then in the state of the World. It’s easy to get discouraged and think, “okay, I’m doing my bit, but what difference can it possibly make?” the answer is always “More than you know.” When you think of the “six degrees of separation” concept, then it becomes clear that we aren’t all that far apart when we decide to act or change the way we think.

Many of us are fed up trying to get the “powers that be” to do something realistic about climate change. Not that we should stop trying. But we can increase the odds of success by synchronizing ourselves with the universe. Doing so is more powerful than all the letters we can write to government agencies. 

—Malcolm

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Aligning oneself with change with the ‘I Ching’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn magic, writing4 Comments

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

 

Why you can’t go home again

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

“You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood … back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame … back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting, but which are changing all the time – back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.” – Thomas Wolfe in You Can’t Go Home Again

You can’t go home again because the home you knew no longer exists. And even if it did, the you who lived there no longer exists.

I never go to reunions because everyone there is a stranger and so am I.

Home isn’t always a place, the place where you grew up, had a summer romance, first saw the world clearly, or experienced fear and pain that impacted what you have become but not who you were during those moments that call out to you years or decades after the fact.

Home for a writer is often his/her first novel. For me, home has always been The Sun Singer.  The novel has one sequel and I had long thought to write another. But I delayed doing that for various reasons. Last year I decided to commit to the project. But it didn’t work. I’m not who I was when I wrote The Sun Singer, nor is the location in which it was set, nor are a thousand other variables that shaped the book and myself when I wrote it. None of those things exist now except in my imperfect memory.

I like a comment from a favorite poet of mine Ada Limón from a May 16 interview in The Atlantic: “We want to grow as artists, as human beings; we want to have more access to the workings of the world. So every book process changes for me, because every book is a new way of looking at the world, and a new me: I’m different every time, though I’m bringing the older self—note I did not say wiser, but older—to the process.”

Not to change, would be stasis. . .as a person, a spouse, an author. We have fresh eyes always. New influences. Experiences that changed us a little or a lot. If I tried to go home, however, I defined that, I would be a stranger in a strange land. The Sun Singer and its sequel Sarabande are as they are (or were) but the “me” I am today didn’t write them.

Change, as the I Ching tells us, is the only constant in the universe. We are better off flowing with it than fighting against it. Nostalgia draws us toward the past, but that past is an illusion, and trying to go there represents a failure to live in the present moments all of which want to have their say in our lives and our work.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the contemporary fantasies “The Sun Singer” and “Sarabande.”

How many crutches do we need?

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life2 Comments

Aeon Trump Card. Thoth Deck

Some say that Tarot cards, I Ching hexagrams, thrown bones, and other methods of uncovering the future only tell us what we already know, showing us that we do not trust what we know or that it’s buried deep in our minds and needs to be remembered. So we have these crutches, then.

In general, I think many of us know what we should be doing, but put it off by leaning on various other crutches while we decide whether or not to do it. It’s as though the thing we know we should do seems risky and we need to make sure one way or another that it’s not as dangerous as it appears.

I Ching Hexagram 1

So we do research–books, websites, experts, college courses, etc.–all of which are good to a point but then, as we delay moving ahead, become more crutches. Spouses can become crutches, so too, siblings and parents and our next-door neighbors and colleagues and best friends. They don’t want us to change, leave town, become involved in a cause they’re less sure of, or even miss bowling night.

Most people who employ the usual crutches to “see” the future agree that the future is not fixed, but that it represents what will probably happen if nothing is done to alter it. I think that’s probably true, but add that I also think we’re creating that future knowingly or unknowingly. It’s better I think to realize we’re doing that rather than blundering ahead and then being “surprised” at what happens. Pretending that we don’t know we did it–created that future–is another crutch or, perhaps, a civilized form of plausible deniability.

Sometimes people who have been drunk wake up and can’t believe they did the things sober people claim they did while they were drunk. Since they don’t remember it, they can claim in the middle of their hangovers that they’re not responsible for whatever happened. Do you suppose we might do this even when we’re not drunk?

I suspect so. Being drunk is a crutch, I think, as is going through life acting like we’re drunk even when we’re sober. I wonder: are we afraid to make commitments, to take this job rather than that job, adopt viewpoint ABC rather than viewpoint XZY? As long as we don’t commit, we probably feel free to make another choice later. Some people like keeping their options open, often until “outside forces” start eliminating those options.

A belief in fate is, perhaps, a large crutch. We say the cruel hand of fate caused whatever it caused or that life got in the way, believing that’s absolution. A comforting thought, but I don’t buy it. Who caused this “fate,” I want to ask?

We don’t need Tarot cards or coins/yarrow stalks and an I Ching book to tell us the answer because we already know.

–Malcolm

“Fate’s Arrows,” the latest novel in the Folk Magic Series, is on sale on Kindle today for only 99₵.

Today’s Tarot Reading: Everything’s going to hell in a handbasket

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn magic

Wikipedia photo

I’ll confess, I didn’t do this reading myself. I went out to tarot.com which is kind of a fun site and checked to see what my three-card free reading would be. I learned that the world’s leadership has collapsed and that I should stay alert.

Okay, I can stay alert.

I’ve had decks of tarot cards in my desk since I was in high school. I enjoy the symbolism a lot. The 78 cards cover almost all of life’s situations. When the cards appear to fail, the problem is usually the person reading the cards.

Readers must always recognize that the future isn’t engraved in stone. The cards indicate what will happen based on current conditions. You’ll find the same thing to be true if you use the I Ching, the book of changes, to ask questions about current conditions or the so-called future.

I’ve gotten rusty using either oracle because I discovered a long time ago that I can see the situation better through meditation than on relying on either the Tarot cards or on the I Ching’s hexagrams. In either case, the probable future related to your question always comes from you. The cards and hexagrams are crutches, so to speak. Perhaps “guides” is a better world.

When I was in high school, the country was gripped by one of those recurring new age fads in which folks were reading cards and the I Ching and trying to become one with the universe. As I’ve gotten older, oracles have become less important to me because I realize that I am creating the future events that I will soon experience in everyday life.

While I think oracles can provide a lot of guidance, it’s been helpful to me to leave them behind for the most part. I feel confident that I am on the right path. So I don’t need to keep checking my Tarot deck or my copy of the I Ching to see if I’m right. At some point, constant checking translates into uncertainty and doubt, and once we’re preoccupied with those feelings, we are going to hell in a handbasket.

I find that I’m usually aware of signs, the cries of birds and the appearance of clouds and winds and blowing leaves. I see this as no different than an inner-city dweller being streetwise to possible dangers around the corner or a farmer being aware of changes that might affect the sowing of seeds or the harvesting of crops. Some would say I’m superstitious. Possibly so.

When we become attuned to our environment, whether it’s a mountain town or a big-city suburb, we certainly know better where it’s safe to walk and where it’s not safe to walk. Yes, the Tarot cards can tell me that. But my thoughts are faster.

The whole shebang–whether you call it “the future” or “the big picture” comes down to trusting oneself. Conjure women used to say that if you have to keep checking on how your latest spell is proceeding, you’re signifying doubt

In Frank Hebert’s novel Dune, we were told that fear is the mind killer. That resonated with me when I read it back in 1965. It still does. I also think doubt is a mind killer because it counteracts the positive thoughts we have about a specific project or the future in general.

Symbols tend to resonate with us. Some say that’s like hitting one tuning fork with a mallet and having a nearby tuning fork make the same sound. Art impacts us. Stories impact us. So do “chance” meetings with others or odd changes in the weather or the pictures we find on a Tarot card deck. All that is like computer input. Consciously or subconsciously those symbols alert us to probabilities and help us find our way through the ever-shifting maze of life.

–Malcolm

My novel “Lena” continues on sale for 99 cents through October 5th.

 

 

 

 

Hoodoo Nuances: Rising and Falling Clock Hands

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn conjure2 Comments

“When both clock hands are rising, cast spells of a positive or uplifting nature; when both clock hands are falling, cast spells that are meant to cast off evil and keep enemies down. But you must not perform magic when one clock hand is rising and another is falling. For Example: if the time is 10:40 the hands are rising, if the time is 2:15 the hands are falling, if it’s 5:45 do not do any magic because the hands are doing both.”

– Moon Phases in Hoodoo Magic from the “Spiritual Illumination” blog.

Years ago when more people were conscious of moon phases, rising and falling tides, solstices and equinoxes, and the flow of the seasons, farmers, fishermen and others who depended on nature for their livelihood, referred to their almanacs to that they were planting, harvesting, and fishing by the signs. For example, as the Natural Events Almanac mentions by way of introduction, “Planting by the signs is a fairly straight forward operation. You plant aboveground crops (lettuce, peas, tomatoes, etc.) when the moon is waxing (growing) from New to Full Moon. Underground crops (beets, radishes carrots, potatoes, etc.) are planted when the moon is waning from Full to New Moon. However, true gardening by the signs is a bit more complicated.”

While the I Ching (book of changes) seems fairly remote from hoodoo, it emphasizes aligning ones life and choices with the natural flow of change, the direction the universe is heading at the moment you ask the oracle a question.   The idea here, which is deeply understood by conjurers, works (for spells, gathering/planing herbs, collecting rain water) and by old farmers and fishermen is that success is more likely when you go with the flow rather than against it.

Taking note of the hands of a traditional clock–which I suspect some day soon people will no longer know how to read–fine-tunes one’s work with the flow of time hour by hour. Like planting and fishing, some work is best done under waxing (growing) moments and some is best done under waning moments.

Conjurers base their practices on what works for them. To some extent this is intuitive inasmuch as you can, with practice, feel the moon’s changes without looking out the window, sense high tides and low tides without referring to a tidal clock, and understand the hours without looking at the positions of the sun and moon–or the hands on your clock.

The “old-time” conjurer woman who posts at Spiritual Illumination believes that “the three most important timing considerations in hoodoo are the day of the week, the time of day, and the time of the moon. Of less importance (generally) are the positions of the planets and the day of the year.” This is a personal preference and differs from person to person.

As a writer, I like conjuring nuances because they add depth to my series of folk magic novels. Personal experience has shown me that notions about time, moon and tides are not superstition because–let us say–that if one works with oracles like the I Ching, the Kabbalist’s Tree of Life, Tarot Cards, and meditation, the flow of time and space and energy become very evident when it comes to their impact on what we are doing. So, it’s not surprising that hoodoo practitioners are very conscious of the benefits of going with the flow.

In some ways, our attitudes about life are a form of conjure in that consciously or subconsciously, our minds are creating the future. What works for the hoodoo practitioner works for all of us.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the hoodoo/crime novels “Conjure Woman’s Cat” and “Eulalie and Washerwoman.”

 

 

Tarot cards after all these years

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn magic4 Comments

“Tarot reading is an excellent way to learn more about one’s self, have a closer look at your inner self or to examine your very own intentions and ambitions.”

– Raven’s Tarot Site

I’ve been tinkering with the I Ching and the Tarot since I was in high school. I don’t do readings for other people. In fact, most people don’t know that I know anything about these divination systems because once they know, they walk on the other side of the street whenever they see you.

knightofswordsI was happy that C. LaVielle contributed a Tarot and storytelling guest post on January 11th because she focused one of the reasons I like both the I Ching and the Tarot: understanding the characters in my stories.

Like Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, both the I Ching and the Tarot present ways of looking at the world. The Tarot, of course, is closely linked to the Tree of Life of the Kabbalists.  The future isn’t fixed. At least I don’t think it is. So I don’t use any of these ways of looking at the world for predicting the future. In fact, they tell me what I know that I don’t know that I know. That is to say, they tell me what the unconscious part of me knows to be true even though the conscious part of me hasn’t figured it out yet.

My sun sign is Leo and the card representing me in the Tarot is the Knight of Swords (called King of Swords in most decks). This is why the URL for this site includes “knight of swords.” When I do Tarot readings for myself, the knight is me. When I do readings about novels I’m writing, the knight is always the logic of the story, cruel at times, to be sure, but nonetheless the fiery part of air as the card is described.

As a character in one of my novels said, he doesn’t want to see the future because that would spoil the surprise. It would also impact what he (or any of us) choose to do right now. Our power is always in the now. I see that, but the characters in my stories don’t always notice it. Plus, seeing the future would give us the false idea the whole shebang out there is engraved in stone when, actually, nothing except epitaphs are engraved in stone.

As a knight of swords, I’m a trickster (among other things), so that means I’m always stirring things up. That’s one reason I write fiction–to stir things up. That’s also why I like my Tarot deck: it shows me that even when I don’t consciously know I’m doing it, I’m stirring things up–and creating ideas that I let other people carry out to completion after I’ve wandered off to something new.

I see this as the author’s first duty–sowing seeds, suggesting things that bother people while making them think, suggesting that things aren’t what they appear to be, telling people that whatever goes bump in the night is real, finding the story inside everything that happens.

It’s one hell of a thing to do, but somebody’s got to do it. Fortunately, my Tarot deck “advises me” when it’s time to step back before the mob shows up on my door step.

–Malcolm