Nothing transforms things so much as the ting. Therefore follows the idea of a ‘cauldron.’ The ting was cast of bronze, with three legs and two carrying rings on each side. Like most cauldrons, it served as a ritual vessel where sacrifices were made, things were cooked. And Universe pulled in.
It’s the 100th day. 100 days of everyday, getting up at 3.30 am and waiting and then writing. 100 days of faith in action. 100 days of being on the Verge, not knowing and yet trusting. 100 days of being the bridge. Today is also 8th day of my favourite Month. 8 because it has been consistently doing the rounds of my psyche and November, well because its my birthday month of course. 100 also has another significance. It has 1 and 0. Yeah!! binary. But also 1 is the number of new beginnings and 0 represents the divine forces. Here there are two. Like the two Bhardawaj’s I saw yesterday.
And so, I know, I have been on this journey, not alone. Along with the Universe, I also had many many friends who have loved, supported encourages me. And their prayers that have held me. And I feel full of gratitude.
This morning, I had a very anticipatory, nervous, excited energy. I could feel the verge. Inside every part of me. over last 4 months, the other thing that I have been learning, delving, practicing is the I-Ching.
So today, I decided to ask her. I threw the coins and got I-Ching 50. At first I laughed at the juxtaposition of 100 and 50. Just visually. My first instinct was, how it was an Equal Effort. 50-50. The Universe and Me. What are the chances of 100 and 50 and the coincidence of their messages. Wow!! I am impressed Universe.
“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it’s a feather bed.”
Terrance Mckenna
I-Ching 50 – The Ding, the Cauldron.
A Bit about I-Ching
The I Ching or Yi Jing usually translated as Book of Changes is an ancient Chinese divination. The core of the I Ching is a Zhou divination text called the Changes of Zhou.
The basic unit of the Zhou is the hexagram, a figure composed of 6 stacked horizontal lines. Each line is either broken(yin) or unbroken(yang). The received text of the Zhou contains all 64 possible hexagrams, along with the hexagram’s, a short hexagram statement and description.
The Trigrams and the 8 Forces of Nature
When grouped into threes, yin and yang now have eight possible combinations. In their wisdom, the ancient sages used these categories to symbolize the 8 primeval forces of nature. When grouped into sixes, yin and yang have 64 possible combinations.
Because the I Ching was brought to the attention of the modern West “by mystics, philosophers, and those interested in metaphysics,” Terence McKenna, the ethnobotanist and author says, “it wasn’t immediately grasped that a philosophy of this sort could be a mathematical formalism. If we’re talking about a medium that ‘comes and goes’ then we’re talking about a wave-mechanical phenomenon.”
I Ching is created from keen observation of The Nature in the Universe. The Yin and Yang duality correlates with the Matter-Non matter duality in Quantum Mechanics. The Trigram correlates with the codon in DNA/RNA. The four phenomena correlate with the four chemicals in DNA. The 64 Hexagrams correlate with the 64 Codons in DNA/RNA. The primary 64 trigrams correlate with the 64 codon rings
So there, that is how Myth, Mysticism, Maths and Metaphysics meet.
Back to the Cauldron. I-Ching 50
The Symbol: Above wood there is Fire: Vessel-The two trigrams are Wind and Fire.
This marks a New Beginning. The Vessels Contains and Transforms.
Statement: Fire rises from wood and clarity rises from subtle inward receptivity. This is a cooking place. The place for transmutations (from the book I-Ching Walking your path- Hilary Barrett)
Reading: This hexagram symbolizes a rich cauldron of vitality and nourishment. It is an indication of supreme good fortune in love and in life. The cauldron is a container for your hopes, dreams, and prayers. It is like a spiritual vessel that stores and then carries your dreams to fruition.
Wow!! that already felt so deeply familiar and new at the same time. The “Cauldron” had such a rich mixed imagery.
More about the Cauldron
The Cauldron is where the actual change is taking place so the message can be: ‘give it time, something is still cooking. The Cauldron is a complete rebirth and reconnection with your life path.
The Cauldron asks you to approach the invisible with a sense of reverence and sacrifice. The work you do ‘in here’ will be powerfully reflected into events ‘out there.’ This is how you can become the master of your present existence.
In some traditions and interpretations, the Cauldrons symbolize not only the Goddess but also represent the womb. Cauldrons are often sold in “metaphysical” stores and may have various symbols of power inscribed on them.
Cauldrons also bring up the image of a Witch. Thanks to the fairy tales, but also history.
I-Ching while saying what it says, also open up to your own experience and sensing. Which is what is so beautiful about it.
The witch and cauldron touched something raw. I am aware that it is opening at this very juncture. And also painful.
I have had to live with this most of my life or lives. Some friends jokingly call me witch. And I don’t ask which one. Anymore.
But years ago I used to have dreams about being burnt at stake. And I can sometimes feel the heat in my palms. That my life has been mystical and full of “strange” things is true. But so is everyone elses. I just happen to notice it, and trust it more.
But I have felt as if, all my life, I had to keep this under wraps, or explain it or justify it. And in a way give my power away. Or hide it.
In the last one week, I have had two random instances when people I did not know, just asked me if I had something to do with god. One was a street person who applied henna on my hand. I was so taken aback. The timing and frequency of all this has only increased in the last few months. I do feel its time for me not hide this, power, anymore. I do sense and intuit many things. And many things do come to pass, more or less in the exact way I saw them. But it takes a minimum of 3-4 years for people to see it, if at all.
As a child I used to literally talk to Sai baba. I did not think of him as god or anything. He would also talk back.
So real was this, I remember once when I must have been 6 , my aunt had to pay someone money, urgently since he was leaving for the airport, and they forgot the number combination of the briefcase bag. There was this frenzy at home. I was sitting on my tree swing and watching all this grown up crazy. My younger aunt suddenly came to me and said, “ask Saibaba for the number” , I did. He told me a 4 digit number. Which was the exact code. It seemed a big deal for everyone, but in my world, It was the same as asking for it from anybody else.
There have been many such instances since, and even now continue to. Last week, somebody asked me, how could you hold the Owl in your hand like that, were you not scared.
“We have lost touch with chaos because it is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, the ego. The ego’s existence is defined in terms of control. The endless modeling process that the ego carries out is an effort to fight the absence of closure. The ego wants closure. It wants a complete explanation.”
— Rupert Sheldrake, Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, Chaos, Creativity, and Cosmic Consciousness
There was a certain, distance I felt after that. Awe. Fear. Maybe. What we don’t know as our own experience we fear.
It never occurred to me to be scared of it. They looked at the picture and then looked at me, and had the same look as my aunt.
You are a witch a sorceress – has also ben hurled at me as an accusation in anger. I have found myself contracting in those moments. And perhaps that is the lesson and message of the I-Ching today – not to contract and hide. I learnt later, Sorceress, is one who is in touch with the Source. Which of course made sense
If birds come to me, if insects don’t bite, If the Sun flirts, if the wind talks, If god idols show up, If dreams are prophetic. So be it. I am done hiding.
Last year at the onset of the first pandemic. I had a Dream. I have shared this particular dream with a few people.
In the first Part the dream showed two women piercing my brow in the center. And then applying a red paste to heal it. In second part, my husband and I are lying on the beach in the afternoon, and there are hundreds of other people also basking in the sun. Suddenly as I open my eyes I see a giant wall of water risen all the way up. I think to my self , oh my god, We are not going to able to outrun this. It’s huge. So I decide to turn on my stomach so that when the water hits, I can still hold on to something, the earth.
I tell others to also do the same, turn on their stomach, But no one listens to me. I turn and hold on to the earth , close my eyes and remember saying “I surrender”. And now just wait.
After what feels like a long time, I feel water splash on my back. But not at all with the force I anticipated. I tentatively open my eyes. And look around. On me, the wave broke with the intensity of a bucket full of water. But on everyone else it’s hit like a giant wave does. Everyone is drowned or stuck in the sand.
I push myself up, since I am now on my fours and go to my husband. He is also stuck in the sand, unconscious. I have to slap him and few others repeatedly to wake them up. And I tell them, “Wake up we have to go the second wave is coming”.
Somehow I manage to pull a couple of them up, as we walk off the beach. Just as we are at the edge, I turn around and see, the second wave has come. But it does not break. It stays suspended as a large tube of water along the beach. I am fascinated and curious, as I continue to see. From inside the sea floor three men walk out into the tube of water. Three very tall men in grey silver suits, each carrying a briefcase. I recently found the Sumerian carved on the Pyramids carrying a briefcases exactly like in my dreams. They were half fish-half humans.
They look at the scene of hundreds of dead people on the beach and then they look straight at me. In that one moment I felt at home. I felt as if these were my people. I also felt they were asking me to do something, and I have no idea what. I also knew, me and the people who walked out with me were going to be ok.
This dream. Has come to pass over the last 19 months. The second wave hit. And some months ago, my friend Savvy was down with COVID, and one night she could not breathe, she told me she remembered the turn on your stomach and surrender from the dream and did just that. And we were both amazed.
This relationship with the Invisible has been a real lived everyday reality. One that I have struggled in trying to explain to the people who matter. But not much success. I can see and tell what is going to happen, But because it is so bizarre, I am sometimes accused of negative intentions.
Growing up, because of my name, Joen, which means “God’s Gift”, some personality traits and my Tom boy status, my school friends would call me “Joan of Arc”. Often the connotation was, oh you are ready to fight. Which was true, If I didn’t see something that was right, I have fought. But because of the way this label was hurled I have had an unconscious resistance to knowing anything about Joan of Arc – until a couple of months ago when I started to read about her. And I began to realize why I may not have wanted to know.
Joan of Arc was born in 1412, in Domremy, Duchy of Bar, Kingdom of France. She is considered to be a hero in France. Her courage and bravado played a pivotal part in leading the French Army to victory over the British in the Lancastrian Phase of the Hundred Years War.
She testified that she experienced visions in 1425 at the age of 13, when she was in her father’s garden saw visions of figures she identified as Saint Michael, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, who told her to drive out the English and take the Dauphin to Reims for his consecration. She said she cried when they left, as they were so beautiful. All she wanted was for Charles, the disinherited son, to be the rightful King and Freedom. She went on to act on her visions. Got the victory with only a White flag, was captured and burnt at stake for wearing mens clothes and heresy. Years later the church realised they had made a mistake and later canonised her.
All of this felt oddly familiar.
Maybe we will be burnt at the stake of our own ignorance and inability or unwillingness to see, to listen . And perhaps this is the symbol of the Cauldron. All kinds of potions and gold was made in these Vessels, but none without the willingness to stay in the Heat. I know I have not fully owned or embraced the Joan of Arc inside me and perhaps that is the message
“The cost of sanity in this society, is a certain level of alienation”
― Terence Mckenna
Perhaps we are more divine than what we have the courage to admit. Perhaps the invisible realm if not so invisible after all.
“Our religious beliefs separate heaven and earth, this life and after life, visible and invisible. How to bridge this chasm. How to transport the unseen into seen and the seen into unseen”, asks James Hillman, a psychotherapist, in his book Souls Code.
Maybe that is my job now. To create this Cauldron. These rituals, these vessels in which the heat happens in order to transform.
Following up on the Gene Key 50 – the Cosmic Order. The corresponding code in my body. My DNA strand feels like it is opening, in response to the fire.
Perhaps we need to really pay more attention to our dreams and the thriving living realm all around us. We are so absent and caught up in our own stories and the reruns of the same movie, that this beautiful ever changing magical word around us becomes static. And we miss it. And then suffer and struggle. When all the while just beyond the veil the universe is waiting to help. To reach out. Sometimes in the form of a person, a message, a butterfly, a call or even an Owl.
Maybe it’s time we remember our own connection to “The Source” and Embrace our own Sorcerer-ness.
Today, I whole heartedly embrace the Joan of Arc in me. And honour the messages and pray for courage and clarity.
We don’t have to do all this alone. We don’t need to glorify, “independence”. We are all interconnected, not just human beings but everything. In time and space and beyond. Imagine how would we live if we lived from this place. Where magic was not stuff from the books. The quantum realms don’t really separate time like we do. So one can learn or be, anything in no time. “It takes time is a myth”.
I cried when I heard the Gene key 50 – Cosmic Order. Within me is the Inherent Code for Personal and global harmony. And I am letting the universe activate it. The tears are ones of gratitude and of cleansing clarity.
You are a divine being. You matter, you count. You come from realms of unimaginable power and light, and you will return to those realms.”
― Terence McKenna
Maybe that is gift of the I-Ching 50. For everyone who is reading this.
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