The Original I Ching Oracle: The Pure and Complete Texts with Concordance by Rudolf Ritsema

by Shantena Augusto Sabbadini

The book is brand new and will be shipped from US.

Genres: Divination

Hardcover

First published March 10, 2005

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is by far the most comprehensive version available of the I Ching. For new users, and veterans, you'll find everything you'll ever need to know about the Book Of Changes in this version. Love it. Use it everyday.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change

Rudolf Ritsema & Stephen Karcher. Shaftesbury: Element Books, 1994, hardback, 816 pages.


This is an unprecedented book. It is not so much a translation of the I Ching as a halfway house between the ideograms and a Chinese dictionary. After a stilted makeshift translation of each phrase, the components of it are isolated in turn in the order in which they appear in the same 1715 text used by Richard Wilhelm, transliterated according to Wade-Giles, then the range of possible meanings is simply listed. All Neo-Confucian commentary is excluded, only the divinatory texts are retained.

It is called a translation but is more like a translator's crib-sheet. The pictorial content of each ideogram is outlined, although the ideograms themselves are not reproduced, apart from the hexagram names as decoration, which, annoyingly, overprint the text. The book also includes the first English I Ching concordance, made possible by ensuring each ideogram is translated throughout by the same key word, printed in bold to distinguish it from the additional meanings.
If in a future edition the ideograms of the text were to be included, this book would serve as an excellent I Ching dictionary. As it is, Ritsema and Karcher wish it to be seen as an I Ching to consult in its own right, and propose a radical reassessment of how the Book of Change should be used. So it must be reviewed accordingly.

Frankly, a simple glossary of lexical meanings is too fragmented a form to be evocative of imagery to the extent an eloquent turn of phrase is. Ritsema and Karcher argue the form is quite deliberate and represents a step forward in translating the I Ching. They claim that by excluding all a priori assumptions about what the text means, refusing to choose a slant to put on it, and simply supplying the bits without comment, this allow one's own insight to be freshly minted from raw materials without first being pre-digested by, say, a Neo-Confucian outlook. It's a school of thought that shares no similar qualms, however, about placing this very notion of philological cleansing firmly into the psychoanalytical framework of the Jungian Eranos Foundation, of which both Ritsema and Karcher are pre-eminent dignitaries.

Studying the introductory case notes, I was impressed by the way the analyst was able to beat a path through the psyche of the client by using the 'oracular core' of the I Ching as a 'psychological tool'. But attempting to do this on my own I found in situ decipherment too dawdling a process for intuition to take hold; sheer stultification found me first, and I turned to Wilhelm for relief. I have a lot of time for Neo-Confucianism.

Despite this initial bad reaction, I have found the book of use outside of actual consultation for, as it were, 'reading between the lines' of the divinatory text, much as Ezra Pound translated. On occasion images have indeed formed that enabled me to see something of the original power of these cryptic pronouncements when freed of the way one has got used to seeing them. It is a process much like the construction of Dada poetry, or William S Burroughs' 'cut-up' technique, a method of literary skrying, hence true divination. It is certainly possible to discover unexpected connections by carrying juxtapositional shifts of words through the mind, sifting sand, until one gets the flash of a striking image. From this point of view, it is a book that repays time spent with it. But I doubt it is realistic to expect people to go through this rigmarole when they turn to the I Ching for counsel in a state of distress.

Down the ages, placing the accent solely on divination has traditionally been seen by scholar-philosophers of the I Ching as losing the intent of the sages. This is why the Neo-Confucian commentary material exists in the first place, to elucidate this point through ethical imperative. Divination imagery alone does not necessarily make this clear, one can easily stray off into an area better described as clairvoyance.

It should not be forgotten that it is the Neo-Confucian commentary that is responsible for the I Ching attaining a reputation as a Book of Wisdom rather than a grimoire of archaic imagery spells, potent though they are to effect change. Divination, devoid of the self-developmental angle, as it tends to be, was regarded as 'forgetting the root but preserving the branch'. In this respect, it remains to be seen whether grafting the I Ching's 'oracular core' onto a rootstock of depth psychology will take and flourish as a hybrid with its own ethic, or wither through future neglect. For all Neo-Confucianism is an a priori assumption of meaning, it has at least stood the test of time.

Ed's note – The above work is out-of-print, but a revised edition is available under the authorship of Rudolf Ritsema and Shantena Augusto Sabbadini.

[Mustafa Al-Laylah · Rating 5 out of 5]

While definitely NOT a beginner's translation of the Pristine Yi, it is in my opinion one of the most thorough. If you want to scrutinize all of the possible nuanced meanings of each of the characters in each of the Trigrams and Hexagrams, then this is your book.

Currently, I have begun to work on a New Aeon/Thelemic translation and have relied heavily on this book with additional help from Richard Wilhelm's translation of the text with its various "wings", and also on the Princeton University Press' "Understanding the I Ching" - all of which I highly recommend.

[Nikolas Alixopulos · Rating 5 out of 5]

This, alongside "The Art Of War" and the "Tao Te Ching", is a useful living text that will always be by my side. What I like about this particular edition is how in depth the commentary and notes are. For me,this is essential as a lot can be lost in translation for someone not familiar with the historical background and cultural customs from which this mysterious book arose. Highly recommended.

[Sidhartha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably the most important contribution of translating I Ching after Wilhelm's great work.
The book is very different from Wilhelm's version. You cannot actually read it. You can only use it.

[Tom Stockman · Rating 5 out of 5]

wowwww throw the wilhelm/baynes for a while before you get into this this is for like some yarrow stick type motherfuckers