Terence McKenna: I Ching, Habit and Novelty – 3/7
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In 1971 Terence and Dennis Mckenna took a trip to Columbia to try to explore the landscape made evident by the psychedelic experience more fully and came back with information about Time and the I Ching. This journey is explored in the book, True Hallucinations. Though often thought of as a simple divination tool, Mckenna called the I Ching one of the “oldest structured abstractions known.” I Ching symbols have been found scratched on the 6000 year old shoulder bone of a sheep. Official record of it appears in the 7th or 8th century BCE. The Tarim Basin, from whence the I Ching hailed, was a pre-Han civilization. It is the classic home of shamanism and has very little to do with what many people think of as Chinese cosmology. The I Ching is translated as The Book of Changes. Terence Mckenna decided the I Ching was the book of Time. Since Time is change, this makes perfect sense. Through years of research and mathematical analysis he deduced that the I Ching is an ancient shamanic understanding of Time as made up of individual units with separate and distinct qualities. Time is composed of discrete units of energy with discernable differences. Therefore it follows that certain Times would be more or less auspicious for certain activities. Terence believed the I Ching is to Time what the periodic table is to elements. Most probably the creators of the I Ching understood Time the way western science has come to understand matter. As Western science broke matter down into …
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