I CHING’s HOUSE OF THE ABYSSMAL: WATER © 2015-9 Lili White

TO what are you paying attention? My mission is to create movies that feel, look & sound like dreamy psychic phenomena.

The I CHING (1000–750 BC) or Chinese Book of Changes, is a classic text, describing a system of cosmology and philosophy which set the heart of traditional cultural beliefs. As a “reflection of the universe in miniature” it is composed of 64 different yet archetypal forms of human energy processes called “hexagrams.”
          Engaging with an augury reveals a particular invisible, image-perception, that is non-the-less alive, acting in the empirical world, Humankind perceives its effects. To C.G.Jung, the I CHING demonstrated the reality of the psyche based on what he termed “the synchronistic principle” known to quantum physics. Rick Jarow’s paper, “The I CHING ITS STRUCTURE and MESSAGE,” states:
     “…What the I CHING offers… aligns with contemporary quantum physics and fractal geometry…is a way of processing time, not as an observable abstract quantity, but as a multi-leveled, cohesive reality intertwining both sameness and difference through patterns and sequencing that not only underlie history, but that tie the past and future through the analogical resonances operating through them, far beyond the boundaries of a separate human or even national or planetary egos.”

Each I CHING hexagram is composed of 2 trigrams. These are named after essences from Nature (example: “fire” is clarity or illumination) that describe an energy force. Each I CHING hexagram is assigned a specific number.

THE HOUSE OF WATER interprets 8 hexagrams using gestural performance derived from “authentic movement technique”.
This improvisational dance practice allows a type of free association of the body. Impressions from the unknown interior surface, validating a non-rational knowledge birthed through the body, rather than the thinking, parsing mind. This exploration of liminal space residing next to “consciousness,” eliminates logical explanations. The figures lose the “human” becoming something like a ghost or “personage” to frame the action that occurs in the film.

Hexagrams #29 & #36 from THE HOUSE OF WATER refer to the character of the heart. Its first pictogram is of an abyss, a pit, or a ravine. The element of water never loses its essential nature, it flows on and on and remains true to itself. It centers on the heart that can penetrate the meaning of all situations.

This house, known as the “abysmal” begins with #29 doubles the “water” trigram; as “water over water.” Its essence is “the principle of light enclosed in darkness” — “reason” combating obsession or emotion. You are vulnerable, but this danger needs to be addressed — it teaches one to be adaptable and not aggressive.

The second change, #60 LIMITATION, presents a concept of measurement. The new bottom trigram is Lake, a place where water is contained.

The third change in THE HOUSE of WATER, is #3 SPROUT. Global Climate issues, the abuse of the EARTH, fellowship and communication between humankind — #3 is water (clouds) over thunder. Thunder rises out of the ground in a great force. #3 is named “sprout”. Like a plant pushing through the dirt, once roots are established, growth continues. Its deeper interior energy also refers to a mountain sitting on the earth: keeping still while stripping away the old un-useable; yielding to the essential for a new time of growth. All beginnings are always very difficult.
      “The superior being brings order out of chaos.” The advice is that nothing should be undertaken, other than participating with inspiration and guidance during this crisis. Helpers are needed. Working together creates a communal network of support, for growth to continue and blossom.

Next, COMPLETION or #63 has water occurring over fire. Caution is the essence here, although everything seems to have reached completion. But, like water boiling over and putting out the flames beneath it, the competing balance between water and fire cannot be maintained: they act as equals and are forever unstable. Most interestingly, this is the only hexagram whose nuclear trigrams (that’s another story) form a reverse order, a criss-crossing energy where fire is placed over water. Water’s energy flows down, and fire’s follows up. The triangles from the costume echo this direction, and black and white are the colors of these 2 forms. The character manipulates this dynamic, as they take turns flipping and flopping back and forth thru eternity.

In #49 REVOLUTION colors are employedfor its 2 trigrams: green for lake and white for fire. The opposition between these 2 forces explode into a  change felt like in a “revolution.”  Its deeper interior energy is heaven (the kind of spirit that fills one up as blue); occurring over the penetrating energy found in wind or wood (the color brown) which spreads the idea through the air; where they grow and give birth to the new, something akin to plant life. The walker moves in this liminal space where  of Heaven & Earth meet, where different kinds of beings join together in beautiful display.

#55 is CITADEL or a CANOPY under heaven, but also ABUNDANCE and reaching the ZENITH which cannot be maintained. #55 is about expanded intelligence, portraying an energetic movement. This hexagram was pulled by King Wu who avenged his father King Wen, who wrote the I CHING’s philosophy while imprisoned by the Shang Dynasty leaders. He died in their prison.
King Wu inquired of the I CHING what action he should take while entering the mourning period for his father. It advised against staying still. At the time of King Wu’s inquiry, there was an eclipse and the pole stars were seen a noon. He entered the battlefield of war with his father’s coffin accompanying him and his troops. They defeated the SHANG.
In #55 “crossing the bridge” is engaging the enemy, and an offering of rice grain occurs before crossing over into victory.
And as no ZENITH can ever last, at the peak of its movement it tips over into the next hexagram #36 DARKNESS.

The most archaic Chinese glyph for #36, reads as “pelican calling”. The pelican was one of the sacred birds in China and anthropologists think perhaps this means the Chinese saw a bird in the moon, and there was also mention made of an eclipse that occurred thousand of years ago in China. Perhaps this “darkening of the light”, is like an eclipse where you couldn’t see the moon’s bird.   # 36 has undertones of separation, threat, danger and distress. Here earth is over fire:  It advises caution and being reserved: you are in danger, and you must hide your inner light. The fire is the heart. The personage guides the viewer, referencing the escape from slavery of Frederick Douglass, who later became a voice in the abolitionist movement.  The personage travels thru to the North; hiding along the way, hidden in the environment of water. It ends with New York City streets and the New York Historical Society’s plaque on the building at #36 Lispenard Street. I found this address via a synchronistic accident that connected a physical place in my search for a subject to use for #36.
The I Ching belongs to every person and knows no race… To ignore its offering pf this particular solution, is not something I would challenge with any enacting of a human ego. It is much bigger than that, encasing all inside its infinite network.

#7 COLLECTIVE FORCE takes the final place in the I CHING’s HOUSE of WATER. Water is the essential element all need to sustain life. Water reflects the world around it in its surface. The sea tides of water, influenced by the Moon, push and pull on the oceans, as well as inside humankind, delineated as emotions.
This film depicts an old alchemical saying, “As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul”. Just as the atom proved strikingly similar to a solar system, the I CHING shows the “universe in miniature”. Humans are a part of the planet, standing between earth and sky—all are interlocked together, influencing each other. #7 conveys a force like earth over water, which grounds that feeling known as the abysmal, whose character is dangerous. #7 places the “emotion” of water stored beneath a field that contains it, much like soil storing water to sustain plant growth.

In #7 COLLECTIVE FORCE, bending the aspect ratio re-frames the shots into a symbolic mimicking of “how one should see something.”
The film’s action shows a small boat with 1 person sailing on water or clouds, rather than being swept away in an abyss of  #29— where the House of Water began. .Before attempting to join in group fellowships, #7 advises to use the discipline and the strategy of a soldier to corral deep feeling or beliefs. Glitched footage of a garden’s surface meets public marches bent on a revolution for justice, and fair play; or expressing the cycle of life in the ritual actions of dancing around a May Pole on the first day of the month of May (aka BELTAIN, which falls halfway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice)