![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
degringolade
Setting Sun in the lampost
I am noodling around with the idea that there might be something to the mostly discarded technologies used in trying to predict the future. We seem to currently have only two means that are considered socially acceptable (mathematics and economics) and it is my opinion that these have a pretty piss-poor track record (especially economics) and when you try to map the real world into mathematical models the results are looking increasingly dicey.
I have narrowed my recherches to three flavors: Astrology, Tarot, and I Ching/Tao Te Ching.
I don’t suppose that I will talk too much about the Chinese flavors here. The I Ching and the Tao Te Ching are not really a means to predict the future, but more a means to get you to think about other possibilities while you are trying to muddle through. I suppose that I value that honesty and limited scope the most of all. This was reinforced when I tried to apply it to my current experiment when I drew hexagram 52 (Keeping Still: Mountain)
䷳ Hexagram 52
KEEPING STILL. Keeping his back still
So that he no longer feels his body.
He goes into his courtyard
And does not see his people.
No blame.
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. The back is named because in the back are located all the nerve fibers that mediate movement. If the movement of these spinal nerves is brought to a standstill, the ego, with its restlessness, disappears as it were. When a man has thus become calm, he may turn to the outside world. He no longer sees in it the struggle and tumult of individual beings, and therefore he has 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.
THE IMAGE
Mountains standing close together:
The image of KEEPING STILL.
Thus the superior man
Does not permit his thoughts
To go beyond his situation.
So, I am taking the Chinese out of the current experiment and sticking with the Babylonian and the Medieval. I have been disappointed by the complete lack of rigor and agreed upon methodology used in astrology, but I will stick it out for a while. Tarot seems to have more agreement in concept and more resembles the I Ching in the way that things are broken down into concepts that can be defined and mixed to provide an odd sort of clarity.
I am just finishing up working on the post for the first “stack” of my five stack tarot spread. I’ll get on that right now.
an angelic warning
Date: 2026-02-20 08:58 pm (UTC)Angels in America: Perestroika by Tony Kushner, Act 2 scene 2, the Angel reveals God's last message to His creation: "STOP MOVING." (There is more to the message than that.)