Mandala: I Ching

When I was twelve, I went looking for a "Chinese Magic Book" and found the I Ching. Didn't figure out or understand what to do with it, so took it back. But then I checked it out again when I found a magazine article about how to toss coins to access the I Ching's oracle function.

I was fascinated, partly because the symbols and what they meant came from a completely different source than my Western history experience.

I've been consulting the I Ching during every life-change since then, with some interesting results. Asking the same sort of question twenty years apart can result in the exact same result.

Before I really knew anything about how to interpret, I tossed the coins (in the presence of three other people, my friends Cathy Danzeisen and Steph Holbein and Jim McManus)TEN times in a row - coming up with #29 - the chasm of an Abyss repeated -  in either the first or second position. The last time I tossed, it was the complete duplicate of the first - so I stopped.

I was in a life-changing choice, and the I Ching wanted to say that I had previously foreseen this situation and had already decided what I was going to do. I shouldn't change my mind now (remain aligned with my "true" nature." But I didn't know what exactly that meant and made the wrong decision to do something differently - with disastrous results. I left the support of my friends and situations I knew.

I think I'll be making some more images imcluding the I Ching, and possibly be revisiting more mandala shapes...