You will recall from Chapter 6 that ‘the lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither speaks nor conceals, but gives signs’ (Heraclitus). Only the priests at Delphi could decode the messages from the oracle; the ancient Chinese, on the other hand, developed a more widely accessible oracle using a ‘code’ published in the I Ching or ‘Book of Changes.’
The I Ching includes many layers of text, interpretation and commentary, but its basic framework is a system of 64 signs, called hexagrams because they consist of six lines. Each line can be either whole or divided, so the basic ‘alphabet’ of the system is binary; since each ‘word’ is made of six ‘letters’ arranged vertically, the number of possible ‘words’ is 26 = 64. For a more detailed reading, each hexagram can be considered as an ordered pair of trigrams, and each line can take on more specific meaning in its context. To consult this oracle is to first pose a question about a given situation, and then determine which of the 64 hexagrams answers the question when applied to the situation. The determination process bypasses conscious control by introducing a random element (or, as some would prefer to say, by allowing divine or cosmic forces to determine the result).
The fact that the sign obtained can be read as relevant to the question (to any well-formed question) implies that the code ‘carves’ the universe of possible situations into 64 types. Since 64 is a very small number of pieces to carve the whole world into, we could refer to them as archetypes. Any of these archetypal situations could be actualized (or replicated, as Peirce might say) in an indefinitely large number of specific instances, and an archetype can be read into almost any situation. By focussing on one archetype and crossing it with the actual situation indicated by the question, we can derive a pragmatically useful comment on the situation in ordinary (and vague) language, perhaps with some help from the Chinese text of the I Ching. The advantage of this for the questioner is that it brings a new perspective to the problem that she could not have anticipated, but which is guaranteed relevant by the ubiquity of the 64 archetypal situations. There is no need to posit anything mysterious or supernatural going on here, though it may help the reader of the oracle to take it as a revelation, just as it may help the reader of any text to believe that it communicates the intention of its author.
The same technique of carving up the universe of discourse into a relatively small number of archetypal parts also operates in astrology with its signs of the zodiac, the Tarot deck with its correspondences to the ‘paths’ of the Kabbalistic ‘Tree of Life,’ and so on. In each case, the ability to read highly generic forms into complicated matters – or to lift the archetypal out of the mundane – can induce a feeling of equanimity while simplifying the decision-making process. Of course the results are not testable in the scientific sense, because one’s personal intentions are inseparable from the ‘experimental’ situation. And of course these methods can be abused; but then so can more “scientific” methods.
In this context, let’s try a reading of the Heraclitus fragment: ‘the lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither speaks nor conceals, but gives signs.’ For the Delphic oracle to ‘speak’ could mean that it offers a statement at the level of articulation which is normal for natural human languages. To ‘conceal’ could be to intend a statement at that level of articulation, but to encrypt it into a code which only the priest can decode back into human language. But Heraclitus says that the ‘lord’ does neither of these things, but rather produces a sign (whose meaning is highly indeterminate). Any interpretation or ‘translation’ of that sign into more precise language clarifies its pragmatic meaning, but loses the vagueness which makes the oracular language archetypal. Consequently a vast number of more or less valid statements can be generated by the interpretive process.
Heraclitus was and is famous for the seemingly cryptic quality of his own statements, an effect enhanced by the fragmentary nature of his works as we now have them. His intent in the fragment quoted above may have been ‘to justify his own oracular and obscure style’ (Kirk and Raven 1957, 212). But this style is common to many scriptural texts, such as the Tao Te Ching or the Gospel of Thomas; the seedlike quality that renders them inexhaustible is precisely their vagueness.
The Tao is elusive and intangible.
Oh, it is intangible and elusive, and yet within is image.
Oh, it is intangible and elusive, and yet within is form.
Oh, it is dim and dark, and yet within is essence.— Tao Te Ching 21 (Feng/English)