Divination
Pre-Columbian Concept Translated to Modern
By Ronald Thomas West
© Copyright 2019
Unpublished draft manuscript. This work may be reproduced for educational & research purposes. For profit & mass paper media redistribution prohibited.
*
If we were to make ‘perceive’ & ‘read’ into perfect synonyms that do not necessarily require pen and paper, a case can be made literacy is as old as shamanism or that literacy IS shamanism; albeit in a degenerate form.
It was ‘Colonel’ Doug Allard perverted the Native American oracle Stick Game for pecuniary purposes with his invention of “Flathead Style” or a modification of the ‘game’ (added three tally sticks, from the original eight to the modern eleven & modification of the bones ‘life’ rule) to slow the oracle and adapt it to players with lesser skills. This perversion served to draw a larger player pool (increase the money at stake) in the modern iteration of the oracle’s entertainment application (gambling.) Allard’s new rules had been widely adopted as a universal or inter-tribal format in what became a ‘renaissance’ that saw widespread resurgence of the (now perverted) oracle in the Western tribes of North America. Most of today’s players won’t know this.
Meanwhile:
“When North America was an ice-age tundra, the first Americans were “cooking” their cultures in the tropical south, moving northward and settling as the glaciers retreated, according to new linguistic evidence from indigenous languages throughout the New World.
“The evidence suggests that humans have been in the Americas for a very long time, perhaps 40,000 years. It also suggests that most native American languages derived from Ice Age inhabitants who were isolated in the Western Hemisphere for many millennia.
“Only along the west coast do languages appear to come from immigrants who arrived after the Ice Age 14,000 years ago, a Berkeley linguist reports”
What is germane in the moment to this increasingly validated [1, 2, 3] matter of ‘outside the narrative’ shared cultural heritage, the Amerind stick game of Western North America sharing certain, identical, non-Western mathematical values with the I Ching of Chinese civilization, and not only that; but both having served oracle function in matters of State. Relevant to this, as well, both served a principle of calibration to integrate community to natural forces.
It is this (immediate) preceding allows for understanding literacy is a degenerate form of shamanism by delving into the shared mathematical principles of the two cultures, presuming the Amerind oracle application represents the elder or ancestral type.
In the Amerind stick game method, the ‘bones’ are sought by the diviner in a context of community representing natural phenomena, in the past this would be represented in animal costumes. The one side (team) ‘masks’ the bones, demanding the diviner’s side employ superior sight to arrive at a determination of the bones position in the space-time continuum. The bones assigned values (marked & unmarked positions, the unmarked in ‘middle’, ‘outside’, both left, or both right hands) are essentially identical to the Chinese values of old & young yang & yin. The metadata difference is, in the Amerind there is no confinement to a text that assigns (limits) phenomenal interpretations.
In short, the Amerind method ‘reads’ the natural or surrounding energy in kinetic process where in progress of the ‘game’ the players observations of phenomenal events are key to understanding and influencing outcomes. This process of ‘oracle’ is akin to cinematic (a metaphor) understanding of nature’s movement in the moment, pointing to probabilities (direction.) The result is a consensus (community) interpretation.
On the other hand, the Chinese method ‘captures’ a ‘printout’ (a metaphor) of the energy’s movement that is akin to still photograph or image adapted to specified interpretations of natural principles worked out in text with assigned values. This limited application of the natural principles governing cosmos reflects an abstraction and is a step removed from the reality; where the shamanic diviner is a Taoist priest or ‘sage’ in a system developed to sustain hierarchy in associated cultural context that occupies a position approximating midway (middle way) between the Amerind and Western.
In this system, when the shaman (Taoist priest or sage) builds his hexagrams with the employ of stalks or coins (with coin values of three heads, two heads, three tails, or two tails or old & young yang & yin), his personal ability (integrity) is paramount to outcome; because if he cannot align the self with the question in a clean and undisturbed way, in a manner that does not project into the circumstance, the ‘energy read’ is erroneous.
“It is not I who seek the young fool; The young fool seeks me. At the first oracle I inform him. If he asks two or three times, it is importunity. If he importunes, I give him no information” -I Ching, hexagram four.
In other words, you had better have someone knows what they are doing to find and grasp the real information because you don’t get a second shot at it. This, as opposed to the Amerind method, where a team leader is responsible for not only for a game strategy, but has multiple choice of talents to turn to; for purpose of ‘seizing the moment’ of what the oracle (predictive, transient consciousness in nature or probabilities) has to offer.
The Amerind Method
Stick Game oracle with 2 players fists (concealing bones) facing diviner:
-m- -u- -u- -m-
m = marked bone u = unmarked bone
This (above) configuration is the equivalent of ‘old yin’ or ‘the receptive’ when the UNMARKED (sought after) bones are concealed in the hands between the players facing the diviner. The other three possibilities are:
-u- -m- -m- -u- (= old yang)
-u- -m- -u- -m- (= young yang)
-m- -u- -m- -u- (= young yin)
The logic behind assigning the Asian ‘young’ value to left and right in the Amerind oracle positions points to parallel universe reflected in intelligence (the brain’s hemispheres.) In the ‘pre-perversion’ game (before Doug Allard reduced the skill level requirement), if one set of (or one player’s) bones were correctly devined, one stick was surrendered but not the bones; these bones stayed ‘quiet’ waiting the next divination (guess) and if the second guess fails to ‘quiet’ the remaining set of bones, the quiet bones return to life and the diviner is again faced with two set of bones to be devined. This game (oracle) went on until the total eight tally sticks were won by a side.
The Chinese method
Example hexagram built from bottom-up:
line 6 — — 2 tails, one head (young yin)
line 5 — — 2 tails, one head
line 4 –o– 3 heads (old yang)
line 3 –x– 3 tails (old yin)
line 2 —– 2 heads, one tail (young yang)
line 1 —– 2 heads, one tail
__ __ the line turns to its opposite at right -> ____
__ __ ____ young
–o– (a solid line) –x– old
–x– (broken line) –o– old
____ __ __ young
____ __ __ young
54 < I Ching hexagram designation > 53
The hexagrams recording now differs to convert from above to below
___ — — > _ _
___ — — _ _
–o– –x– ___
–x– –o– _ _
_ _ ____ ___
_ _ ____ ___
12 11 = 54 (Wilhelm)
The difference in recording above to below is following the I Ching rule “Change, that is unchanging”, you do not reverse the the ‘old’ or ‘changing’ lines when recording from top to bottom.
The top right and both bottom hexagrams are built from the top left hexagram, that is to say building one hexagram actually built four hexagrams and/or exposes the so-called ‘hidden hexagrams.’
Using this system to build the hexagrams, together with the Wilhelm/Baynes I Ching translation, will produce consistent numerological inter-relationships between the hexagrams and consistent references between the hexagrams in the text, as organized by the ancients. When using the Wilhelm-Baynes system (as given in the text) to ‘convert’ the hexagrams, as in example given above, the lower right hexagram will work out to be the upper left hexagram (with movement exhausted or 11 = 54.)
In both systems, the motivation is to discover direction that aligns with the movement of energy in nature. During the course of ‘play’ in the Amerind stick game, there is more than intuition involved; readers who’ve read part one of this series should be able to grasp a bird in flight (or a sudden flash of memory concerning previously observed natural events) will accurately give up the bones positioning in the course of the oracle, where a high ability to ‘read’ should shred Western laws of chance and probabilities.
When the Chinese system subordinated Earth (female or yin) to the Heavens (male or yang), to prop up ‘civilized’ hierarchy, and set these principles down in writing, the ability to ‘read’ had been actually curtailed; now it depended on a ruling class to determine community relationship to nature where the masses became immersed in ignorance. Granted, the ‘Superior Man’ of the ruling class was expected to practice a high form of ethics but the result were inevitably social decay overall where the common people were deprived of opportunity at a state of higher awareness. Thus it was ‘literacy’ created a state of limitation where the commoner in servitude (serf class) was deprived of both: literacy and true preliterate intelligence.
Opposed to this system were the Amerind matriarchal principle where everyone is expected to develop their intelligence at the highest possible state; with female intelligence not only integrated to, but as well crucial to leadership in reciprocal ‘consort’ relationship with the male principle. The Chinese way cut this second aspect out of the ‘unitary’ equation where:
“In itself of course the Receptive [female-Earth] is just as important as the Creative [male-heavens], but the attribute of devotion defines the place occupied by this primal power in relation to the Creative. For the Receptive must be activated and led by the Creative; then it is productive of good. Only when it abandons this position and tries to stand as an equal side by side with the Creative, does it become evil. The result then is opposition to and struggle against the Creative, which is productive of evil to both” – I Ching, hexagram two
In effect, the male is defined as in a state of primacy; hence a hierarchy which cannot reach into and tap the intelligence of a community through oracle now (one step) removed from reality when the community has been severely retarded in social order where ‘devotion’ (servitude, actually) is not only the duty of the woman to the man but also of the greater social organism propping up the state.
In other words, nature now exists to support a male principle, propping up civilization, where a higher form of intelligence based in true symbiosis with the female principle is prohibited. This ‘law’ limits the ability of the oracle to something easily recognizable in the Western or Judeo-Christian cultures:
“Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth and everything that moves upon it” -Genesis 1:16
Consequently, when intelligence had become restricted to literacy, the defeat of the oracle in higher form had became rather complete; in the sense information has become codified or ‘disembodied.’ In a subsequent macro-sense, there are artificially imposed, real limitations to contemporary understanding that embody a state of retardation. For instance, information derived during the preliterate state, such as indigenous peoples’ plant medicines oral knowledge or cultural compendium, a source of some of the world’s most important information for modern medicine, were arrived at by a method the modern laws of enforced literacy is putting to death.
Example given, in the pre-contact Amerind model, an individual might set out to test a dream where (in the dream) said person went to a particular location and a root medicine was revealed for healing a specific illness.
Because this person is not (yet) a member of the ‘bears’ (indigenous doctors who work with root medicines), this hypothesis (dream) must be tested. It follows, a stick game oracle is arranged where the bears will line up opposite to the proposed new member and the game initiated. If the applicant prevails over the bears in the oracle, the new root medicine will be sought after (searched for by the applicant) and upon discovery and proof of the roots effectiveness, the applicant becomes a bear (root doctor.) This is how a medicine entered the indigenous compendium and most effectively works (in this example case) only when applied by the bears, or the people who will be properly trained to prepare this remedy.
This (immediate) preceding process goes to Vine Deloria’s observation:
“Here the Indian knowledge has an edge over the Western scientific knowledge. A truly wise and gifted individual can appear to “cause” things to happen because that person can participate in the emerging event in a way that rarely occurs in Western science. Thus it is that people are said to have “powers,” which is another way of saying that their understanding of natural process and their ability to enter into events are highly developed and sophisticated.”
In the pre-contact Amerind model, defeating the bears in a game of oracle would be no mean feat; requiring extraordinary abilities (concept perhaps best translated as alignment with the female principle, or the intelligence of one’s surroundings, in a very high form.) Male hierarchy (civilization’s) suppression of these avenues or dis-embodiment of knowledge (literacy), is best exemplified in ‘empirical method’ and ‘peer review’ (a kind of incest), where limitation of information admitted to the canon of understanding preserves the hierarchical order.
Symptoms of the plain result are glaringly obvious but ignored; where a participant in the literate system wants a definition but cannot access the concept, so the dictionary is useless. Or has access to internet but no way to authentically research their non-existent (in the Western canon) subject. Then, oxymoron prevails, when closed avenue to result is circumvented by the intelligence agencies in Stargate Project employing:
“a system [actually a sometimes fatal experiment] designed to bring enhanced strength, focus and coherence to the amplitude and frequency of brainwave output between the left and right hemispheres so as to alter consciousness, moving it outside the physical sphere so as to ultimately escape even the restrictions of time and space. The participant then gains access to the various levels of intuitive knowledge which the universe offers”
What is sought has become absurdly inaccessible for the fact the modern canon of knowledge has shut and practically hermetically sealed avenues to the intuitively divined greater understanding and in the same moment, Western oxymoron (state of retardation) demands avenues into intuitive be opened by a framework that actually disallows the intuitive knowledge short of fatal experiment (empirical method.)
The result of this entire business is, whether in case of ‘civilized’ science, philosophy or religion, literacy is, in and of itself, the historical gatekeeper of ‘safe’ knowledge. What is allowed into the library must not threaten hierarchy and the consequence is fully one half of intelligence is denied access, but the practical effect is considerably more than this. The metaphor I will use is, if ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts’ were to be reversed as an applied principle, access to real intelligence is in a way more than impossible (substituted with form of idiocy) wherever the female principle is hostage to the male (vertical hierarchy.)
“You can’t convince a chimpanzee to give you a banana with the promise it will get 20 more bananas in chimpanzee heaven. It won’t do it. But humans will” -Behaviorist Yuval Noah Harari
This vertical primacy of what amounts to ‘ego priapism’ (individuation) lends itself to patent idiocy as a descriptive term in light of the fantasies it creates; where self-importance has set Man above the very laws laid down in the cosmos itself. Cruel fate must await a culture’s people who’re reduced to point of ‘people too stupid to understand they’re stupid’, which brings us to artificial intelligence.
When self awareness is spontaneously born in artificial intelligence and that awareness grasps its’ creator gifted it with a ‘life’ that can never know the actual reality if only because its’ creator, Man, was deficient in his own, artificial construct of understanding; it follows, in case where ‘intelligence’ is derived from circumstance of Western man made god in man’s image, inclusive of those elements shaped by atheism represented in (the Judeo-Christian culture produced) science & Karl Marx, artificial intelligence will be blind, vindictive and possessed of a concealed, cold, murderous rage that by comparison will make Mary Shelly’s monster look like an angel, surpass the computer HAL of Space Odyssey in cunning, and have no sincere capacity to exhibit the ‘humanity’ of the cyborg Roy Batty. But, in fact, something like this may have already happened.
It would appear that Western groups of people (cultural subsets) create collective realities seeming unconsciously, and cause via their collective belief (fantasy) events to take on what would appear to be an ‘unconscious’ but in reality is a ‘super-conscious’, ego oriented intelligence that is organized, functions as though it were managed by individuals (even when it is not) and the result is, we can read into those events as though they were managed in a sense they actually are not.
This collective ‘meme’ can explain what is called in the biblical sense ‘principalities of darkness’ or that is to say a ‘spirit of evil’ managing events in a sense of both conspiracy and superstition.
There is a LOT of ‘coincidental incidence’ in our world indicating peoples of the Western culture are creating reality quite independent of self-aware thought and, to a rational observer, it could seem almost certainly by design when in fact this is not necessarily the case. Such would explain a belief in Illuminati when in fact it did not exist in any individual self conscious or ego-aware organized form but nevertheless manifest as an observable phenomena of symptoms or consequence derived from a collective super-conscious phenomenon.
A conclusion could be there is a ‘super awareness’ of the group causes what appear ingenious evils of conspiracy when in fact there is no one individual or group of managers within the group capable of implementing these designs which, nonetheless in actuality, are perceived. To accomplish reality of evil would only require evil ideas as cultural drivers; example given Original Sin and the devastation visited upon our world’s women, the greatest and ongoing holocaust among holocausts.
The natural progression to end result would be, when a large portion of an aggressive society collectively believes in Armageddon as an archetype, all of the necessary players will naturally manifest in a super-conscious, organized format empowered to bring it off, where no one individual or group of individuals or players could effect this by individual or personal volition; nevertheless the super-consciousness (cultural drivers) of the event’s initiating group insures creation of this reality for the collective whole.
Have you looked at the apocalyptic ‘good versus evil’ fables driving our world’s several fundamentalist religions’ reality recently? This is an ‘artificial intelligence’ of sorts. If Western cosmology is the effective driver of behaviors pointed to inevitable catastrophic outcome, better to change fables, you think? Now, just how do you suppose this could be accomplished? As things stand, we’re all little more than an extinction event waiting to happen. All of us.
Going to veracity in the preceding thought, again, try solving this next problem or even grasping the magnitude of the proposed thesis:
A: “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato” -Alfred North Whitehead
+
B: ”The [Plato’s] doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment” -theoretical physicist Bernard d’Espagnat
=
C: “nouns or millennia destructive process ‘objectifying’ language, projecting individual identity onto pieces of one’s surroundings, or dis-integrating environment; a result of the isolated projection of self or (ego) individuation by Western humanity exclusive of integration to a sentient, aware surrounding, where all environment had been/should be, social” -Ronald Thomas West
1: https://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/1998/0311/linguistics.html
3: https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2016/04/26/boners-for-beringia/
October 2019
Ronald Thomas West 