Art is the medium of cosmic evolution throughout the universe. Our mission is to transform our planet Earth into a work of art.”

José Argüelles , from the video

Related posts:

1. In Memory of José Argüelles: Celebrating Earth Day

•  “I Ching Record Book” free eBook

This is a free printable PDF book for recording your I Ching Questions. I will post a longer description as soon as I post it for downloading.

•   Podcasts

I’m in the process of learning how to make a Podcast with plans to begin with a series of discussions with Dr. Katya Walter, author of “The Tao of Chaos.” We will have conversations about I Ching and DNA.

I previously posted a link to a video conversation between Dr. Walter and Paul O’Brian that was made for O’Brian’s I Ching program which can be viewed on Dr. Katya Walter’s blog.

I also wrote here about Katya Walter’s free eBooks in this earlier post.

•  Review “Divination – Sacred Tools for Reading the Mind of God”

I’m reading Paul O’Brian’s book, “Divination – Sacred Tools for Reading the Mind of God” and will post a review soon. Meanwhile, you can check out the book on Amazon before my review.

•  I Ching Meditations, Hexagram 13

Hexagram 13 image

I’m working on this one.

Related posts:

1. Notes on the development of Hexagram 11, Peace
2. Changing I Ching Meditations Blog Format
3. History of my Art for Ching Meditations

Here is a review on YouTube.

Related posts:

1. I Ching Generator Available for all platforms plus iPod and iPhone
2. I Ching Meditations News Notes
3. George Harrison of The Beatles Used the I Ching to Inspire

Yesterday I posted a video by Richard C Hoagland about the findings of Hexagon shapes on the North Pole of Saturn. I signed off wondering what other people think about this discovery, especially if they had any ideas in connection to I Ching. So far I am not eliciting any speculation or interest in this subject. However, the idea of Hexagons which are mathematical measurements found in gases on Saturn is a mind bending concept for me to contemplate.

Another perplexing idea is now sitting in my head. If you listened to the tape on yesterday’s post, you will hear where Hoagland is talking about the power, significance and mystery of 19.5 degrees. He explains that on every planet in our solar system a major disturbance occurs 19.5 degrees north or south of its equator.

The video also discusses how this number 19.5 in the bible symbolizes faith, grace and hope. I don’t know where that is but will take his word for it.

The number of 19 degrees struck a cord with me. My birth day is 19 degrees Leo. I looked up my astrological birth chart in several places and got several different but very close answers. One chart reading said that it was 19.39 degrees, another 19.34 and another 19.5. Bingo! I wasn’t born at 19.5 degrees north or south of the equator. But I was born at 19.5 degrees within the sign of Leo. So what? You might ask. I’m just saying that is a synchronicity for me. I have no clue if it has meaning. The more I delve into this subject the more I am pulled in. HELP!

And yet another note about Hexagons, me and the I Ching. Anyone who knows me or reads this blog knows how deeply involved I am with the I Ching over a very long period of time. In 2003 I did a portrait of myself embedded in Hexagons.  No wonder I found this information so fascinating. Am I living in some kind of Hexagon vortex?

Related posts:

1. Cassini Spacecraft Discovered Hexagon Shape on Saturn’s North Pole

Has anyone seen “The Red Book?” I would love to know your thoughts on it.

Related posts:

1. Carl Jung’s Secret Red Book to be Published
2. Changes for I Ching Record Book
3. I Ching Record Book

“When I first put the White Album on, the 
song that really stood out for me was this one. Because of the 
emotion in the lyric and in the musicianship, that emotional build to 
it, it touched a chord. It’s quite an unusual chorus, if it is a 
chorus ­ a rock anthem in a classical sense, especially the way it 
ends up with those solos, but I think it would sound brilliant on an 
acoustic guitar, because it could be a lullaby love song.

“It wasn’t until five years ago when I went to the George Harrison 
memorial concert at the Albert Hall that I revisited the song and 
took on board the whole concept of it. George was the one who came 
back from India with the spiritual awakening and carried it through 
to the rest of his life, whereas the others came back with the 
postcards. The lyric was arrived at by using the I Ching; he opened a 
random book and the first phrase he picked out was, ‘gently weeps’; 
so he based it around that. Apparently, there was another verse to 
the song that was edited out which George poignantly wrote about Paul 
and John, and how he thought they should get their heads banged together!”

Related posts:

1. John Cage – Music of Changes and I Ching

One of my favorite Leo’s is Carl Jung whose birthday is today. He was born on July 26, 1875, died June 6, 1961.

When I first attempted to understand the I Ching I had come across several versions and couldn’t really get into it until I read Jung’s forward in the now classic I Ching interpretation published in 1950 by Princeton University Press.

I can’t image anyone reading this page who does not know who Carl Jung is and his contribution to furthering the I Ching in the Western world. You can read more about Jung on the Wikipedia site.

It was Richard Wilhem whose translation of the I Ching from the chinese which many people feel is still the best interpretation. He was born on May 10, 1873, Tübingen, Germany and died on March 2, 1930. I didn’t realize that Wilhelm was so close in age to Jung and that must have been a most rewarding relationship – two pioneers of the mind and soul who could understand each other.

Jung coined the word Synchronicity as an “acausal connecting principle“, which is what one is engaged in by consulting the I Ching.

There are many videos on YouTube of Jung. I include a short one here on “Death is Not The End.”

Related posts:

1. Carl Jung’s Secret Red Book to be Published
2. More on Carl Jung’s “The Red Book”
3. The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity

Merce Cunningham 1957

Merce Cunningham is turning 90 this week. In a previous post I wrote about the musician, John Cage and his use of the I Ching in his work. I didn’t mention that John Cage was the romantic and artistic partner of Merce Cunningham who also incorporated the use of I Ching into his art form of dance.

The following is a recent video of Merce Cunningham talking about his work from, Monday’s With Merce. He mentions a time when Helen Keller came to his studio. Take a listen.

Here some excerpts from a longer article in Wikipedia:

“John Cage and I became interested in the use of chance in the 50′s. There were a number of things, I think, that came about that time about chance. I think one of the very primary things that happened then was the publication of the “I Ching,” the Chinese book of changes, in which you, from which you, can cast your fortune: the hexagrams.

Cage took it to work, as, in his way of making compositions then; and he used the idea of the 64—the number of the hexagrams, 64—to say that you had 64, for example, sounds; then you could cast, by chance, to find which sound first appeared, cast again, to say which sound came second, cast again, so that it’s done by, in that sense, chance operations—the continuity. Instead of finding out what you think should follow—say a particular sound—what did the I Ching suggest.

Well, I took this also for dance.

I was working on a title called, “Untitled Solo,” and I had made—this was chance, using the chance operations—a series of movements written on scraps of paper for the legs and the arms, the head, all different. And it was done not to the music but with the music of Christian Wolff.

—Merce Cunningham, Merce Cunningham: A lifetime of Dance, 2000

Merce Cunningham (born April 16, 1919 in Centralia, Washington, United States) is an American dancer and choreographer.

Cunningham was born in Centralia, Washington, and received his first formal dance and theater training at the Cornish School (now Cornish College of the Arts) in Seattle. From 1939 to 1945, he was a soloist in the company of Martha Graham. He presented his first New York solo concert in April 1944 with John Cage, who became his romantic partner until Cage’s death in 1992. . . .

. . . Cunningham has worked extensively in film and video, first in collaboration with Charles Atlas and later with Elliot Caplan. In 1999 the collaboration with Atlas was resumed with the production of the documentary Merce Cunningham: A Lifetime of Dance. In 2004-2005 they collaborated again on a new piece presented in two versions, Views on Camera and Views on Video. . .

. . . Cunningham’s interest in contemporary technology has led him to work with the computer program DanceForms, which he has used in making all his dances since Trackers (1991). In 1997 he began work in motion capture with Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar of Riverbed Media to develop the decor for BIPED, with music by Gavin Bryars, first performed in 1999 at Zellerbach Hall, University of California at Berkeley. Another major work, Interscape, first given in 2000, reunited Cunningham with his early collaborator Robert Rauschenberg, who designed both décor and costumes for the dance, which has music by Cage.

Related posts:

1. John Cage – Music of Changes and I Ching

“… A refusal of psychology and  history … He was concerned with chance and open experience.”

I am in awe of people who can make music. I would liked to have been able to talk to John Cage about his experience when he used the I Ching in his music. creating process.  I always find the process of creating as relevant as the product.

“Music of Changes is a piece for solo piano by John Cage. Composed in 1951 for David Tudor, it was the first instrumental aleatoric piece Cage completed. The process of composition involved applying decisions made using the I Ching, a Chinese oracle book, to large charts of sounds, durations, dynamics, tempi and density. . .

. . . Music of Changes was the second fully aleatoric work Cage composed (the first is Imaginary Landscape No. 4, completed in April 1951), and the first instrumental aleatoric work by him. He was still using Magic Square-kind charts to introduce chance into composition, when, in early 1951, Christian Wolff presented Cage with a copy of the I Ching (Wolff’s father published a translation of the book at around the same time). This Chinese classic text is a symbol system used to identify order in chance events. For Cage it became a perfect tool to create chance-controlled compositions: he would “ask” the book questions about various aspects of the composition at hand, and use the answers to compose. In effect, the vast majority of pieces Cage completed after 1951 were created using the I Ching.

. . . The title of Music of Changes is derived from the title sometimes given to the I Ching, “Book of Changes.” Cage set to work on the piece almost immediately after receiving the book.

. . . Music of Changes comprises four “books” of music. Cage used a heavily modified version of his chart system (previously used in Concerto for prepared piano). Every chart for Music of Changes is 64 by 64 cells, to facilitate working with the I Ching which has a total of 64 hexagrams. The I Ching is first consulted about which sound event to choose from a sounds chart, then a similar procedure is applied to durations and dynamics charts. Thus, a short segment of music is composed. Silences are obtained from the sounds charts: these only contain sounds in the odd-numbered cells. To introduce new material, all charts alternate between mobile and immobile states (the alteration governed by the I Ching as well); in the latter the chart remains unchanged, but in the former, once a particular cell is used, its contents is immediately replaced by something new.”

“John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer. A pioneer of chance music, electronic music and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde and, in the opinion of many, the most influential American composer of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage’s romantic partner for the most of their lives.”

The entire article on John Cage can be found on Wikipedia.

A note of personal interest in coincidence. John Cage died on my birthday, August 12th, as did William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) an English poet, painter and printmaker.

Related posts:

1. Merce Cunningham at 90: Dance and I Ching
2. George Harrison of The Beatles Used the I Ching to Inspire
3. I Ching Prescriptions: Choosing Change

Related posts:

1. Carl Jung, Synchronicity and I Ching