Studying western history and philosophy we learn that the 1500’s were considered to be the “Age of enlightenment or the Renaissance”. Chinese experienced two similar periods The Early Han in 200BC to 200AD, and the Song Dynasty in 960–1279AD. The I Ching took literally thousands of years of evolution when man’s relationship with nature matured into people seeing themselves as simply “one of the ten thousand things”.
The I Ching
This effort to write one hundred stories, entries was inspired by a time of intellectual ferment in the early Han dynasty, during what is known as the Warring States Period that was called “let a hundred flowers bloom” when competing thoughts and writing flourished. The flow of writing was intense for me now and I completed the I Ching, and a closing chapter called “Keeping to the lower Clouds” …. one hundred entries in one hundred days. While I was writing this, I was studying to become a Master Gardener in Massachusetts where I lived at the time. Staying in the flow with your intentions became the symmetry going forward. Always asking okay, what is the next step.
Prologue to Finding My Own Tortoise Shell
Thoughts and ideas crystallizing over time. Standing only as symbols for all to follow.
Ancient traditions of the shaman who brought forth the proper way long before those present could begin to comprehend their true meaning. Oracle bones of tortoise shells to be collected and cherished as telling the wave of the future of the things to come and knowing all that will be.
Finding patterns and rendering judgments to be followed. Knowing the way of dragons and keeping them abreast of my progress as the everlasting goal. The ultimate objective simply to follow the signposts along the way to immortality. Each situation chasing beginnings and endings with the elements in charge. Their task simply to take turns coming to the forefront.
The I Ching following the true course of events. Establishing patterns and finding appropriate endings that must be followed. Reminding all that everything has origins and endings only to be repeated and again. Understanding the true paradox found only in yang and yin.
The sixty-four stories that follow represent my own oracle. Each my own representation of the true meaning of the I Ching. As with when I was a small child growing up on the farm finding and keeping tortoise shells simply because they were there to be found. In retrospect, I now know my purpose was simply to keep them safe and to honor them for a cause I could not then appreciate or understand. Except to begin to know dragons even then.
(An original composition written upon the completion of the Chinese classic the I Ching to be used as the beginning or “Prologue” prior to the sixty-four entries to follow 3/31/94).
The I Ching became what amounted to foretelling future events by understanding past and present circumstances, and possible outcomes. The I Ching navigated by gaining an appreciation for what we would call having an institutional memory considering pasts events. Reading the imprints on a tortoise shell, or counting sticks, with environmental circumstances what is to occur becomes predictable. Only those considered to have a direct line to universal truth and cause and effect could do this.
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