The Original I Ching Oracle
Rudolf Ritsema and Shantena Augusto Sabbadini
The Original I Ching Oracle: The Pure and Complete Texts with Concordance
Watkins Publishing, London, 2005
ISBN: 1-84293-149-0
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The Original I Ching Oracle is the ultimate product of fifty years of I Ching studies by Rudolf Ritsema and of ten years of experiential I Ching work in the Eranos Round Table Sessions. This translation has been conducted on the classic Palace Edition of the I Ching published by the emperor Kang Xi in 1715, of which Rudolf Ritsema owns a rare copy. The innovative translation method renders each Chinese ideogram always by the same “core-word” and amplifies it by an associated “field of meaning,”, allowing the Western reader to access the full imaginal wealth and subtlety of these texts without being confined by the specific interpretation chosen by a translator. This approach moreover makes a concordance to the oracular texts possible for the first time in a Western language.
The Original I Ching Oracle invites the reader to “roll and turn the words in his or her own heart,” as the Chinese say – to become an active participant, a co-creator of an imaginal journey in which a deeper wisdom may be accessed and a natural re-arrangement of a life situation may take place. Thus the oracle becomes a tool for self-knowledge, a “mirror of the present” and a support for conscious action (which is the most powerful form of magic!).