Oct 21 25
Two of Pentacles (reversed)
22. Grace
52. Keeping Still (Mountain)
These first few lines are the general aphoristic returns for the week. They are raw and uninterpreted; there to use how you’d like. (The specific readings follow.)
Question from “O.F.F.”: Is the new subculture non-digital? Or is there even a non-digital subculture? Or any actual digital resistance. One that isn’t luddite or retrograde but transcendentally grossed out by the web (their own participation in it) and its absolute corporate structure? (And its growing “real word” avatars/automata/husks.) Is there a group or gathering place that sees the transcendentally perfect surveillance but neither finds comfort in cozy dogmatized speculations about conspiracies nor instantly dogmatizes new, wholly self centered (bad faith, wildly counterfactual) utopias? An intelligent resistant community which sees the web’s complete operant-reward-loop-algorithmic behaviorist-conditioning and despises the idea of picking sides knowing it benefits monocultures and not individuals? Where are the deep misusers? We see primarily masses of superficially contrasted “lifestyle” people who seem only happy to be spoon fed their allies and enemies, by this ad-tech panopticon.
Oracle reply: Neither the I Ching nor tarot can answer directly about the specific names of institutions or groups. But there is a response to what is perceived as the spirit of your question.
You must reduce down to a more essential way of living. Quit playing with these discontented ideas, don’t lose them, but back them up with your own committed behavior so as to “no longer see in it (the world) the struggle and tumult of individual beings, and...” so as to develop “that true peace of mind which is needed for understanding the great laws of the universe and for acting in harmony with them.” Because it says “whoever acts from these deep levels makes no mistakes.”
Complete Reading:
This week we pulled the Two of Pentacles (reversed). “Enforced gaiety” and “simulated enjoyment”. What about your playing has become synthetic, rote, and ultimately lame? Dimension/knowledge comes from the interplay of differences, not endless sameness. Maybe take a break from endless play into a phase of working...
Our first hexagram this week is #22, Grace. An overemphasis on form is bad — like style over substance or the body over the mind (vanity over depth). Another way — balance, or rather a healthy (a realistic) interplay of the short and long term is wanted. “…at the highest stage of development all ornament is discarded… Perfect grace consists not in exterior ornamentation of the substance, but in the simple fitness of its form.”
There was one change of which the specific note is: it is not graceful to seek the easy way under false pretenses.
Our second hexagram, the one that suggests how best to meet the challenges (or the changes) is #52, Keeping Still (Mountain). This “hexagram turns upon the problem of achieving a quiet heart. It is very difficult to bring quiet to the heart. While Buddhism strives for rest through an ebbing away of all movement in nirvana, the Book of Changes (The I Ching) holds that rest is merely a state of polarity that always posits movement as its complement.” “True quiet means keeping still when the time has come to keep still, and going forward when the time has come to go forward. In this way rest and movement are in agreement with the demands of the time, and thus there is light in life.”
“The hexagram signifies the end and the beginning of all movement... When a person has thus become calm, they may turn to the outside world. They no longer see in it the struggle and tumult of individual beings, and therefore they have that true peace of mind which is needed for understanding the great laws of the universe and for acting in harmony with them. Whoever acts from these deep levels makes no mistakes.”
- Dimension/knowledge come from the interplay of differences, not endless sameness.
- It is neither graceful nor healthy to seek the easy way under false pretenses.
- “When a person has thus become calm, they may turn to the outside world. They no longer see in it the struggle and tumult of individual beings, and therefore they have that true peace of mind which is needed for understanding the great laws of the universe and for acting in harmony with them. Whoever acts from these deep levels makes no mistakes.”
Question from “O.F.F.”: Is the new subculture non-digital? Or is there even a non-digital subculture? Or any actual digital resistance. One that isn’t luddite or retrograde but transcendentally grossed out by the web (their own participation in it) and its absolute corporate structure? (And its growing “real word” avatars/automata/husks.) Is there a group or gathering place that sees the transcendentally perfect surveillance but neither finds comfort in cozy dogmatized speculations about conspiracies nor instantly dogmatizes new, wholly self centered (bad faith, wildly counterfactual) utopias? An intelligent resistant community which sees the web’s complete operant-reward-loop-algorithmic behaviorist-conditioning and despises the idea of picking sides knowing it benefits monocultures and not individuals? Where are the deep misusers? We see primarily masses of superficially contrasted “lifestyle” people who seem only happy to be spoon fed their allies and enemies, by this ad-tech panopticon.
Oracle reply: Neither the I Ching nor tarot can answer directly about the specific names of institutions or groups. But there is a response to what is perceived as the spirit of your question.
You must reduce down to a more essential way of living. Quit playing with these discontented ideas, don’t lose them, but back them up with your own committed behavior so as to “no longer see in it (the world) the struggle and tumult of individual beings, and...” so as to develop “that true peace of mind which is needed for understanding the great laws of the universe and for acting in harmony with them.” Because it says “whoever acts from these deep levels makes no mistakes.”
Complete Reading:
This week we pulled the Two of Pentacles (reversed). “Enforced gaiety” and “simulated enjoyment”. What about your playing has become synthetic, rote, and ultimately lame? Dimension/knowledge comes from the interplay of differences, not endless sameness. Maybe take a break from endless play into a phase of working...
Our first hexagram this week is #22, Grace. An overemphasis on form is bad — like style over substance or the body over the mind (vanity over depth). Another way — balance, or rather a healthy (a realistic) interplay of the short and long term is wanted. “…at the highest stage of development all ornament is discarded… Perfect grace consists not in exterior ornamentation of the substance, but in the simple fitness of its form.”
There was one change of which the specific note is: it is not graceful to seek the easy way under false pretenses.
Our second hexagram, the one that suggests how best to meet the challenges (or the changes) is #52, Keeping Still (Mountain). This “hexagram turns upon the problem of achieving a quiet heart. It is very difficult to bring quiet to the heart. While Buddhism strives for rest through an ebbing away of all movement in nirvana, the Book of Changes (The I Ching) holds that rest is merely a state of polarity that always posits movement as its complement.” “True quiet means keeping still when the time has come to keep still, and going forward when the time has come to go forward. In this way rest and movement are in agreement with the demands of the time, and thus there is light in life.”
“The hexagram signifies the end and the beginning of all movement... When a person has thus become calm, they may turn to the outside world. They no longer see in it the struggle and tumult of individual beings, and therefore they have that true peace of mind which is needed for understanding the great laws of the universe and for acting in harmony with them. Whoever acts from these deep levels makes no mistakes.”