I posed a question to a group of friends this morning, and Hildegunn of the Turks Turbans (not a euphemism) suggested I do some divination to help sort myself out, so I did. I tried a bit of I Ching. There are several ways to practice I Ching, but not having stumbled across a patch of yarrow on one of my foraging expeditions, I used three coins. They can be any old coins, but one source said that using coins with a significance can help with the divination, so I raided my change jars and found an Australian 10¢, a New Zealand 50¢, a Japanese 10¥. That was a good trip.
I Ching is an ancient form of Chinese divination that relies on a system of yin lines (broken) and yang lines (unbroken), changing lines, 64 hexagrams each representing a different answer, heads, tails and six tosses. It didn’t help that the book I started working from had different values attached to the heads and tails giving me completely different hexagrams to my other sources. So I abandoned that and went online.
My tossing technique for the first two questions was rattling the coins between my palms and then expelling them onto a table. Each throw has a value attached to it depending on how the coins fall. This is then translated into a line of the hexagram, and when all six have been completed, the resulting hexagram can be read. And given there are 64 possible outcomes, I was pleasantly comforted by the I Ching answers returned.
For my final question, I gave myself up to the I Ching to give me a general steer on my life. To mix things up a bit, I thumb flicked each coin off my forefinger. And again the resulting answer felt surprisingly pertinent. Which I know is the point, but I still got a tingle reading the answers and consequently my consternation has decreased slightly. There are a couple of helpful I Ching sites in the Resources below if you want to have a go. And if you use an autogenerated coin toss, it’s even easier. Plus they’ll explain the whole shebang much better than I’ve done.
So from I Ching to I Scream. Ice cream. From yesterday. Which I may or may not have had for elevenses this morning. It was crunchy. I’ve never actually had an ice cream that made a noise before. When I took it out of the freezer, it was so hard my spoon bent. I was under the impression that adding vodka would give it a soft scoop effect. But like my pestle pies, I had to saw through it. I’m guessing my lacklustre whisking caused this crispiness. Nevertheless it was gorgeous. And once my teeth stop aching, I might just go back for thirds.
Resources
Struthers, J. (2007) The Psychic’s Bible, London, Octopus Publishing Group Ltd
What did the coins say?
* taps nose *
It sounds like you had perfected your tossing technique by the end of the session
I was very good to begin with…