This year, I taught myself at last to cast the I Ching, using three coins. This was a bucket-list item of many decades. Of course, Imagining myself a Rationalist, I do not officially believe in it, but I have noticed that its results are almost always curiously relevant to the question I asked it. The most scientific interpretaton one could put on this is that it serves as a catalyst or provocateur, enabling you to think more freely, and with less linearity, about your topic.
A month or so ago, the seventh or eighth time I cast, I finally asked the oracle about the future of American democracy. I cast hexagram 32, Heng, duration, with two changing lines, sixes, which produced hexagram 13, T'ung Jen, fellowship. I note that the names of both hexagrams are Luminous Words, probably a good sign.
Hexagram 32 tells me: “[H]ere we have union as an enduring condition”-- the Union as enduring? A Persistence Engine? “Perseverance furthers”. “Duration is...the self-contained and therefore self-renewing movement of an organized, firmly integrated whole, taking place in accordance with immutable laws and beginning anew at every ending”. p. 126 I Flash that this does not insist there will be no changes, hills and valleys, but seems to argue for an orderly progession, like the motion of “[h]eavenly bodies...in their fixed orbits”, or “the seasons of the year follow[ing] a fixed law of change and transformation”. “[T]he superior man stands firm”. p. 127
I had hits on one line, a 6 at the top: “Restlessness as an enduring condition brings misfortune”. Calm down! Your wounded heart can't stand the tumult. Strange to say, I felt a Click similar to the one I felt on the day, a year and a half after 9/11. that I realized I was no longer afraid.
Hexagram 13, T'ung Jen, fellowship, seems to be about Community, one of my all-time favorite things. “[C]larity is within and strength without—the character of a peaceful union of men, which in order to hold together, needs one yielding nature among many firm persons”. “It furthers one to cross the great water”. p. 56 “[T]he superior man organizes the clans/ And makes distinctions between things”. President Biden, whom I find myself liking better as time passes, is better at “organizing the clans”; the Republican Party, with its Chittering and infighting, is starting to seem Unbearably Light; and possibly the Trumpoid Object, like a leaping shark losing its momentum, is sinking back into the water. The “distinctions” also suggest that we need the better Ontologist, which Biden is. I Flash that we just might be trending towards the calmer, more patient figure, and less likely to elect the angry, jittery one. “If fellowship is to lead to order, there must be organization within diversity”. p. 57 I have just read that one does not attend to the meaning of the changing lines in the second hexagram-- the 6 does not become a 9 for that purpose, for example.
In the end, the oracle is ambiguous (as always): The Trumpoid Object may prevail as an outcome as natural as a change of seasons. What I take away is to “stand firm”, endure, hold on to community, and not to be afraid.
Indeed, I Flash that the two hexagrams may indeed Signal, not the outcome, but that which is within my control; my own mental state, perhaps the most powerful Instantiation of Wallace's Wager of my life (living as if I were an Optimist). I am spending every day defending people getting fired or charged administratively by universities for expressing support of Palestine. I rather adore the lawyers at my side, the clients, the team-Qualia and the energy and courage I feel, to keep on fighting. There is your Fellowship, and your Duration.