Blue Fox Shaman

We want you to start on your own journey.  Are you ready to take the first steps? We’re talking about Shamanic journeying, at least in the way that we practice it. For us, the starting place of each journey is an act of divination. More precisely, for Fox and I, the technique is astragalomancy, but that detail is unimportant at the moment. What we want to do is to start defining the symbols in our divinatory system, in the hope that, and to mix metaphors slightly, you’ll be able to follow the breadcrumbs we lay down so you won’t get lost in a dark wood. (We’re looking at you, Dante!)

Our first goal is to define the Eight Trigrams that combine to form the 64 Hexagrams of the I Ching. These also form the basis of our understanding of other divinatory systems, all of which we’ve made into a sort of stew. Not everybody likes stew; some of you may want your meat, potatoes and veggies separately. Eventually, we’ll share our insights on some other systems. But for now, we hope you’ll bear with us and do your best to pick up the trail.

Today, we’re going to talk about Mountain (艮 youngest son, “keeping still”). In our system, Mountain is self-control, self-determination, self-existence and the guarantor of the self’s continuation through planning and simulation. Tautologically, it is the constructor of self-identity. It’s the faculty of the “will”, the “Ego”. It is Captain Nemo. (Such a lovely joke, Jules! So sorry nobody knows enough Latin these days to get it.) For you Star Trek fans, it is Captain Picard.

To state this poetically, Mountain is the maker and wearer of the mask (persona), which it creates out of the elements of the sub-conscious. It is the actor, in every sense of that term. But for this trick to work, the one who dons the mask must forget their “true” identity, in order to proficiently, and convincingly, play the part.

(Why must they forget? Pity the Fool (Tarot card) who, having fallen into the chasm of existence, dares to look down. In the view of certain death they may catch a glimpse of fear itself and be transformed utterly. But I digress…)

The Eight Trigrams are all described as characters (youngest son, eldest daughter and so on) because this is a bridge to an older way of thinking–Animism–in exactly that sense that all things have a “spirit”. We define that vague concept (“spirit”) in very concrete terms–it is the human persona, the actor. Part of the job of a persona is to maintain the life pattern, or life story of the individual (as part of the self-replicating system that it is). But let us now also see a persona, a spirit, as the way a person is likely to act. In other words, given certain (inter)actions coming from me or someone or something else, what is that person’s typical way of responding? How often, and how carefully, do they make their bed in the morning?

Can you see how this analogical system (Animism) works? You can now deal with literally everything using the same metaphors that you use to deal with people in your tribe, and people outside your tribe. Simple. Easy. All you have to do is refine your knowledge of the spirit (persona, “characteristic mode of action”) of someone, or something, and mastery is yours. For you to obtain a desired result, you have a range of actions available: if you cannot, or should not, obtain some outcome by mere bodily force, you may have to offer something as compensation, or speak to this one’s superior to obtain it. In this system, sacrifice, and magic generally, are key ways of relating to the world. These methods assume everything is obtainable, if you know who to negotiate with, and how.

Our own system of thinking just changed out “spirits” for “machines”, that is, an assemblage of (knowable) parts whose behavior can (potentially) be predicted on the basis of those parts. Given a set of known (inter)actions with other things in its environment, this thing/machine will behave in a certain way. But the only real tool we have, ultimately, is bodily force. This way of thinking about, and relating to, the world has been very successful. Recently, however, it has run smack up against the idea of “emergent” behaviors which arise out of sufficiently complex systems. The really important understanding to come out of this collision is that, even if we were to completely map out and replicate (or simulate) such a system, we couldn’t necessarily predict its behavior exactly. This is because the system is capable of producing novelty (novel behaviors) under the influence of, and as adaptations to, changes in its environment.

To know the behavior of such a complex system exactly would require knowing, and calculating with, a very large portion indeed of its environment–a feat currently beyond even the best of our current crop of computers for even a moderately complex system. (For other humans, and the New York Stock Exchange, fuhgeddaboudit!) A map the same size as the territory it represents is unusable.

This has (or it should) make us step up to a higher level of abstraction. That is, we can, and indeed we must, choose our system of metaphorical calculi* on the basis of which one gives us the most predictive power over any given set of phenomena. If you can make the thought system work to correctly predict outcomes in a given domain, with statistically significant odds, then use it!

[* Calculi here also carries its orginal sense of those physical “pebbles” used in ancient voting systems. The implications are left as an exercise for the reader.]

So, where are we heading with all this? Using “characters” (i.e. personalities, spirits even) as the basis of our divinatory system (I Ching, etc.) is perfectly appropriate to the use of that system in helping us predict the outcomes of our (inter)actions with those in our own tribe, and those outside our tribe. (So, if you were to ask us “Can you use the I Ching to foretell the future?” we would have to answer “We can predict outcomes, in certain human domains, with a fairly high degree of accuracy, given sufficient information regarding current conditions, yes.”) If we wish to extend its use to (what we think of as) purely physical phenomena, we can do that too. We just need to constantly refine the predictive power of our system in that domain, and continue to refine it, as best we can. We just need to know the spirits (personalities) involved and how they behave. (The spirit of smallpox does not pay attention when we shake a shaman’s rattle. But, if our car beaks down, we’re likely to summon the spirit of a tow-truck driver…the god Hermes hasn’t been answering our calls of late.)

One more piece is needed–what is the “divine” from which we wish to divine (ha! “gain information”)? We always divine the most favorable actions we can take to achieve a desired outcome, but we’ve left the source of this information undefined. Ultimately, you must discover this for yourself but, for a working hypothesis, we like Jung’s identification of it as the “Collective Unconscious”. Alas, too many people misunderstand this term.

We think what Jung didn’t say, or didn’t say loudly enough, was that our human cultures themselves function as self-replicating systems. They are based, ultimately, in the biological, self-replicating systems of each individual member, each of us. Our human cultures themselves are systems of sufficient complexity to demonstrate their own emergent behaviors. So, rather than attempting to predict what goes on in a society, or what any individual in that society is likely to do, by using a mechanistic model, we must use “systems thinking”, in this case, the metaphors of religion, of myth, and of story generally. Rather than an assemblage, a hodge-podge of artifacts, it works better to define the Collective Unconscious as a living theatre in which we play out the story we call our life. Therein, many actors play out one or more of several possible roles determined by the available masks and props, and the actions of the other players. All of us think of our individual “self” (Mountain) as the titular character of our own drama, even though some of the other actors arise out of the same physical substratum of our “body”. This may be what Jung intended by concepts such as the “Shadow”, the “Anima” and “Animus” and so on. If you have ever caught yourself acting or desiring in a way that you didn’t recognize, you’ve had a brush with some of these particular actors.

Now that we’ve caught you up on the basics, we’d like to take you out to the ball game. Let’s go view another type of drama, where characters with certain “characteristics” vie for a prize. Winner takes all? No, of course not! We’re civilized. Sports may be mock warfare but the mock aspect helps guarantee that those who lose today may improve their play, return to the field, and possibly win, tomorrow. Everybody has the opportunity to play and compete and, most importantly, to improve their game and the game itself. This analogy is a bit closer to “real life” than what we get in the theatre which is usually scripted down to the last detail. Plus, you have to realize that there’s no College Draft seeking to level out the teams as much as possible. Some are born with advantages or disadvantages that make all this unfair. Some who are doing well would do even better to remember that they had those advantages.

I made this abrupt turn into the stadium for two reasons: our modern society hews a bit closer to this analogy (business, also, is mock warfare), and a Paean is… well, to translate it into modern terms, it’s the Ancient Greek equivalent of the National Anthem. In other words, something we sing before the game to remind ourselves that ultimately, whatever team we’re on, we’re all part of something larger, and you shouldn’t go punch the fans of the other team, whether your team wins or loses.

Yes, well, there’s another reason. Fox chose ΠΑΙΩΝ (I Ching Hexagram 26. Great Nurturing [Mountain::Heaven], Tarot card Five of Wands) for today’s writing. Part of the intention is to introduce that Trigram “Mountain” as our inner team captain. You know, the one who’s ultimately responsible for the team’s identity, who gets the players to work together, to improve their game, and decide on the plays we’ll run to try to get the win. Maybe you don’t recognize the analogy because you thought you are just a lonely player. Let me let you in on a secret–you’re a team, and the quicker you recognize that, and begin to recognize and train the others on your team, the more you’ll start to win, or maybe decide to change the way you’re playing altogether.

We’ll be introducing you to the other characters on your team, and, by doing so, you’ll also get to know how the other teams play. (Thanks to being plugged into, and part of, the Collective Unconscious, you can be fairly certain of how the other teams operate, at least to the degree they play in the same league (culture) as you do. For teams in completely different leagues, you may need to study their culture a bit more.)

Play ball!