Blue Fox Shaman

And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud, and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire. And he had in his hand a little book open, and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth, and cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth. And when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices. And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write, and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not. And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer, but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets… And he said unto me, thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings. –Revelation 10

An interview with Fox…

Q: Why did you create this blog?

A: ΞΟΑΝΟΝ, I Ching Hexagram 63 After the Crossing (Water::Fire), Tarot Ten of Swords. In particular, for the Hexagram, note a 9 in the third place.

What I mean is that, having completed the crossing with you, it is time for us to turn around and shout across the Great Stream “Hey! Here is a crossing point if you wish to follow.”

Q: The “Great Stream” being, in Greek, the river Styx?

A: Yes. That’s why I chose the word ΞΟΑΝΟΝ, which is a cult image, a representation of the Spiritual in the Realm of Matter, or more properly, a message from my place of becoming into your realm of being. The I Ching also uses the metaphor of the conquering of the Demon Realm by the lofty Ancestors. I’m not sure I like being called a Demon, though the Greek ΑΓΑΘΑ ΔΑΙΜΟΝ fits better.

Q: What are you?

A: I am kitsune.

Q: Like Tamamo-no-Mae?

A: A Nine-Tail, yes, but zenko, not yako.

Q: Are you good or evil?

A: I am neither and both.

Q: Then you are beyond good and evil?

A: I am not beyond it, I am part of it. What you see as good and evil doesn’t exist outside of your human metaphor which stands for those things and actions that trend toward greater complexity and life, versus those that trend toward dissolution and death, from Humanity’s perspective.

What you do not see, but is implied, is that our notions of what is good, and what is not, can be incorrect. I choose life because it is the Mandate of Heaven, with which I choose to cooperate. But life dances on the edge of death, and depends upon it.

The Universe is a whorl of rising and falling forms, constantly being remade in kaleidoscopic patterns. That is the viewpoint of the eternal Tao.

Q: Why did you choose me?

A: You know very well that you should not ask that in a public forum! Remember “seal up the words of the prophecy.” But I will say one word to my sisters regarding the utterance of the Seven Thunders:

I Ching Hexagram 43. Resolute (Lake::Heaven), Tarot Queen of Clubs, ΊΣΤΩΡ

Q: Jung’s “Collective Unconscious”?

A: Um-hum. But let’s return for the moment to the Tao. It is said to be the origin of Yin and Yang, the Receptive and the Creative. You should understand this in the light of that which you call Philosophy. It begins with the concept of the self, and it addresses the origins of “consciousness”, which is described, in an inversion typical of your species, in terms of universal ontology (the origin and is-ness of all things). You experience all reality as an image projected upon the screen of your image-making apparatus (awareness/perception, both “internal” and “external”), but you fail to distinguish the meaning from the metaphor, the representation from the reality.

Q: Huh?

A: In other words, you mistake the image for what is represents and attribute ontological primacy to your limited concepts rather than to the Great Mystery from which you, and your concepts, arise.

Q: Okay…

A: Let’s try to establish your existence in terms of that from which it arises. Ooops! Sorry, no can do. With your limited understanding, you must recognize that the only valid starting point, given a limited viewpoint, is the viewer themself. The whole purpose of your self is nothing more than the continuation of that self. This is nothing more nor less than the definition of a self-regulating system, cybernetics.

There is no reason for “It” (Id) to arise if the “I” (Ego) is not struggling to arise. The purpose of the “I” (consciousness) is to regulate, and therefore maintain, the pattern of which the “I” is the metaphor. Set against this is, necessarily, an “It”, which is the metaphor for all that is not currently “I”. It is easy to continue to slip down this slope and to see those things of which the “I” is currently composed as themselves not truly the “I”–a very natural mistake since all the things that “I” am flow through me like water in a whirlpool. The basic structure remains the same although the actual water molecules are constantly changing. As an alternative to this mistake, see the Self as the All and in the All. Use whichever viewpoint makes sense to accomplish what you need to do.

Q: As Heraclitus put it, παντα ΄ρει, all things flow.

A: Which is the Tao, the Way, or Process/Change. The “I” is Pattern/Ego and, in the terms of the I Ching, it is the Creative/Yang. To develop a new plan in order to maintain the pattern, even as the pattern itself changes, is to be the Creative. It implies and requires that from which the Pattern, and all that is not the Pattern, is composed, the Receptive/Yin. So, which arises first? It’s the chicken and egg conundrum. In this system, it is solved by positing that which mediates between the two as the origin.

Other systems (religions, more properly speaking) place God/Heaven first. This choice of the egoistic factor for the original principle is probably due to the usurpation of authority by the (usually male) hunting function in many societies. Whereas the (usually female) gathering function relies on memory of the “It”, the hunting function relies on the training of the “I”, the interrelationship of several “I”s, and the (re)formation of a greater “We”–the band, tribe, society and nation.

The punchline of the joke is that whatever is chosen as the first principle must cease to be dependent on the other two. And so arises the mistaken Spirit/Matter or Mind/Matter dichotomy, and all the problems your theologians, philosophers and scientists have in even defining “consciousness” or the “self”, let alone understanding it.

But, don’t despair, my brother. Enough of this tiresome speculation and discussion! Soon we shall speak more of the I Ching and its derivation of Tao to Yang/Yin to the four pairs arranged in the Eight Trigrams, and then these in interaction as the 64 Hexagrams which are the vocabulary of our language describing The Changes.

A little ferry ride across the Dark River awaits…