Friday, October 12, 2007

On the importance of I Ching hexagram 50: Ting "The Caldron"

Hexagram number 50 of the I Ching, or Book of Changes: Ting, the Caldron

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The Judgement for hexagram 50 in book one, the text of the I Ching reads:

"The Caldron. Supreme good fortune. Success."

The exposition of the Judgement of the Caldron reads:

"While the Well (hexagram 48) relates to the social foundation of our life, and this foundation is likened to the water that serves to nourish growing wood, the present hexagram refers to the cultural superstructure of society. Here it is the wood that serves as nourishment for the flame, the spirit. All that is visible must grow beyond itself, extend into the realm of the invisible. Thereby it recieves its true consecration and clarity and takes the firm root in the cosmic order.

"Here we see civilization as it reaches its culmination in religion. The ting serves in offering sacrifice to the divine. But the truly divine does not manifest itself apart from man. The supreme revelation of God appears in prophets and holy men. To venerate them is true veneration of God. The will of God, as revealed through them, should be accepted in humility; this brings inner enlightenment and true understanding to the world, and this leads to great good fortune and success."

We are all sparks of the divine flame, all knots in Indra's infinite and all inclusive Net. We are all manifestations of the Source, all cameras set up at different angles to maximize the possible perspective. In this time the batteries, the spiritual life, in our cameras are either loosing power, or in very bad cases leaking battery acid. Most of the hegemonic religions have lost touch with the spiritual reality in both the East and the West.

Look at the day and age we live in; there is the internet which connects all people and thoughts with access to it like neurons. Electricity powers cities, we take photographs of and send probes into the deepest reaches of space in hopes of witnessing the instant when Sophia first Concieved. We have even put humans on the Moon, the most mundane of the celestial objects. This is the first baby step of humanity's future and branching out into space exploration and civilization. We should not think of the 1969 trip to the moon as Columbus's trip to the new world. It is more like the first successful long sea voyage and return a few tribal people would make and return from. We also have the power to split the atom. This power can either destroy us or perpetuate us infinitely. The spiritual and religious hegemonies of the day due to their centuries of intermingling with the state in a less than benevolent manner support another MAD (mutually assured destruction) system - this time not based on economics as during the Cold War but "religion" (Basically the Secular/Judeo-Christian-Hindu "West" flanking a rising militant Islam spanning from Northwest Africa to Pakistan and China with a large sphere in the far East as an independent third party. The Indian section of the West is an independent sphere, but really by default on the side of the West due to its geographical rivalry with China and partition with Pakistan in 1947 during the Saturn/Pluto conjunction in Leo over Hindu/Islamic differences. Is this how we are going to choose to act out the truly divine which manifests in humanity? Through the lower urgers of destruction, through the raging chaotic vortex without the insight of the Balancing Eye?

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