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The I Ching within Second Life

  
 
w1rebaby
19:54 / 13.05.07
Hello.

Well, to start with, I have changed my name; I spend most of my time in Second Life these days and have a particular persona there. I don't think this will really bother anyone on these boards. Symptoms are likely to be limited to an increased tendency towards verbosity and cod-Victorianisms. It isn't fatal.

Anyway, that aside: one of the projects I have been working on within SL recently has been an automated oracle which delivers I Ching readings. Let me preface this by saying that I certainly started out with no particular knowledge of the I Ching or divination generally - I was informed by Taras Balderdash, who is the Prelate of the Avatars of Change in SL and far more knowledgeable about this stuff than I.

The basis of the system is that it takes random numbers from a web source which is actually properly random, rather than pseudo-random, to generate six individual lines. There is a further process involved which means finding the Nanjing Line, and comparing that to changing lines within the hexagram, and at the end of that an appropriate piece of commentary is produced and delivered to the donor. (All proceeds of this go to charitable causes.)

I'm not quite sure how much detail to go into, but I can certainly do so if required, with the proviso that I may not be expert in exactly why. What I am interested in here is really:

(a) Does this sort of thing seem, well, silly to you? Can you see anything wrong with the basic idea of doing this within SL? And if so, why?

(b) Are there any obvious issues which you see here that would be important? As I said I would be happy to go into the details of what I am doing if need be, or go into my own experiences whilst testing and developing.

Or, well, any other comments that anyone has. I am quite proud of this system, actually - I think that given the requirements it fulfils them very well, at least to the best of my abilities. Without Barbelith in my past I would likely have shrugged the whole thing off as a load of nonsense.
 
 
illmatic
21:09 / 13.05.07
Does this sort of thing seem, well, silly to you?

No. Well, on one level, the whole concept of spending lots of one's time in a virtual space seems silly to me, but um, what have I been doing here for the last 5 years? I don't really understand Second Life, so perhaps you could expand a little bit on why you do it? What do you get out of it? In my limited understanding, it replicates what's going on in the real world, right? If so, then I see no reason, in theory why you shouldn't incorporate divination systems.

There have been online divinations every since there's been the internet, pretty much, replicating Tarot, I Ching, Runes, or whathaveyou, and this just seems to me an extension of the same process.

Personally, I prefer to practice divination as a real life thing. I find doing it online a bit too "easy" - no real study required, no learning interpretations or meanings, no physical action beyond pressing a key - a bit too "disposable" though - having said that others may simply want advice rather than becoming involved with the I Ching in the way I have. Much in the way that someone might visit a tarot reader or psychic.

Can you see anything wrong with the basic idea of doing this within SL? And if so, why?

One thing I'm curious about is this - and here I'm showing my ignorance of the Second Life - what is the purpose of offering up these divinations? Is it a) so people can find out more about what's happening to them in SL? Or is it so people can ask questions about what's happening in their real lives?

One final point - traditionally, if one casts the I Ching, you toss the stalks or coins and derive ones number. You have four choices of number (6,7, 8, 9) indicating a position along two axis - these being unbroken/broken, unchanging/changing. You repeat this six times, building up your six line figure, your hexagram, from which you derive your answer. You therefore one has the possibility of getting up to six changing lines per casting. Most online I Chings I've seem seem to limit this to one or two. How do you deal with this?

Also, what is your source text for the commentary - the quality of translation varies hugely, from philosophical profundity to brainless New Age tripe. I have four (which sounds relatively restrained to judge from the comments on I Ching forums heads) any and all of which I might refer to in a divination. Which one(s) are you drawing on?
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
21:15 / 13.05.07
ex-Fridge, I can't really help you much because I don't play SL and don't really use the I Ching, but I just wanted to say well done. Hundreds of people talk about using video games for magical or divinatory purposes, but I know only one or two who're actually putting this kind of thing into practice. Do keep us posted--I'm fascinated to hear how this develops.
 
 
w1rebaby
21:42 / 13.05.07
what is the purpose of offering up these divinations? Is it a) so people can find out more about what's happening to them in SL? Or is it so people can ask questions about what's happening in their real lives?

I would have to say here that I think people are looking for things generally, across their whole life - so, for both SL and RL questions. It's hard for me to say as I've not really talked to the people who are taking readings, but both sets of experiences are "real". I'd imagine that a lot of people ask for answers relating to SL because they happen to be there at the time.

One final point - traditionally, if one casts the I Ching, you toss the stalks or coins and derive ones number. You have four choices of number (6,7, 8, 9) indicating a position along two axis - these being unbroken/broken, unchanging/changing. You repeat this six times, building up your six line figure, your hexagram, from which you derive your answer. You therefore one has the possibility of getting up to six changing lines per casting. Most online I Chings I've seem seem to limit this to one or two. How do you deal with this?

The basic lines are gathered randomly - actually, there are two methods depending on whether the online randomisation resource is available or not. If it is, there is one way of counting, which I've been told is more appropriate to the historical counting of cracks in tortoise shells (okay, I really am not knowledgeable here, I have to rely on expert advice) and the other, if that fails, uses numbers generated for coin tosses. Basically, mechanistically speaking, there is a slightly different distribution.

Either way, six lines are produced with numbers from six to nine as you say. I work out the upper and lower trigrams based on these and keep a record of which lines are changing, as well as identifying the complete hexagram. After that, I work out something called the Nanjing Line, which helps determined the text that should be shown from that reading, in correspondence with the number of changing lines that exist.

Also, what is your source text for the commentary - the quality of translation varies hugely, from philosophical profundity to brainless New Age tripe. I have four (which sounds relatively restrained to judge from the comments on I Ching forums heads) any and all of which I might refer to in a divination. Which one(s) are you drawing on?

The Oracle that I am building relies on texts which have been produced by people within the Avatars of Change group here. There are some specific SL-related interpretations, but they're not restricted by it.
 
 
w1rebaby
21:49 / 13.05.07
ex-Fridge, I can't really help you much because I don't play SL and don't really use the I Ching, but I just wanted to say well done. Hundreds of people talk about using video games for magical or divinatory purposes, but I know only one or two who're actually putting this kind of thing into practice. Do keep us posted--I'm fascinated to hear how this develops.

Well, ta A call went out for someone to work on this project - I had some connection with the group previously, and thought that it would be something worthwhile to work on. Since starting I have learnt a lot. It isn't something that I have much prior experience with personally, but I am working with people who do.

As soon as it is launched publicly I will link to it here. It is already being used to a certain extent, but as yet people can't just go to the oracles and get themselves a personal reading - that shouldn't be too long coming.

I'll point the Prelate toward this particular thread, in case he wishes to contribute, though, well, registration being what it is....
 
 
illmatic
22:57 / 13.05.07
something called the Nanjing Line, which helps determined the text that should be shown from that reading, in correspondence with the number of changing lines that exist

I don't use the Nanjing line - I'm not even sure what it is, off to Google for it in a second - not that I therefore think this is something *wrong* - but it just brings to mind to me how much varied material there is available about the I Ching. It's a text that has been continuously rewritten and commented upon over the last few thousands of years, and used in a variety of different ways. I think your version just fits in with this trend.
 
 
illmatic
23:01 / 13.05.07
Actually, a minute's googling shows me that the Najing Line rules are about narrrowing down multiple changing lines to one - I actually do use a version of this. Ha!

Fridge, you could always get your friend to post comments through you via PM if there's a delay in membership. Possibly this will make him marvel at Barbelith's primitiveness.
 
 
*
02:11 / 14.05.07
This does sound like a neat idea. I keep meaning to go back, because there are a lot of really cool projects going on in Second Life. It's just, you know, First Life.
 
 
grant
15:25 / 14.05.07
I'm not on Second Life, and have never even looked at it, but this does seem fascinating. What's the interface like?
 
 
nyarlathotep's shoe horn
17:48 / 14.05.07
crap if you don't have a decent enough video-card

=(

(recently signed up to SL, which will likely drag into my TL or FL or FL)
 
 
grant
19:36 / 14.05.07
Well, I meant more how would a gameplayer interact with the I Ching.
 
 
w1rebaby
21:37 / 14.05.07
Oh, you mean in-world? Well, at the moment, there are objects around which are Avatarian Oracles. You approach one and pay it a donation (the default is less than ten cents) and it begins the process. The details of the casting are said over the general chat channel, so you get the names of the upper and lower trigrams and the hexagram itself and perhaps some more detail - this isn't finalised - and then you are given a notecard with the appropriate reading on it. (Notecards are text document objects, which can be saved and read.)

At the same time there is a little visual flash - the hexagram itself appears above the oracle object, spinning around slowly - but at the moment it doesn't do anything else, as I've been concentrating on the mechanism rather than the details. The oracle object could really look like anything. At the moment, the oracles for the existing system are set in gardens and so on owned by the Avatars of Change group, so surrounded by appropriate items rather than just out in the middle of nowhere. I'm not sure whether there's a central directory of their locations anywhere.
 
 
grant
01:35 / 15.05.07
Will the Avatars of Change, like, hang around the sites to offer interpretations? Or is it an automated process over a chat channel? Because on its own without any background, the I Ching is more confusing than most divination systems. At least it was for me... (Oh, and someone should tell the dude who you linked to upstream that the pinyin for "classic book" is jing, not zhing.)

In the wild, you know, that's something like the way it's done. Some dude with a bunch of yarrow sticks, hanging out on a street corner. I've read some things that talk about the time it takes to create a hexagram being an important part of the process -- one line at a time.

Now that I think of it, I wonder if you could create that sense of time by having each line sort of announce itself as it appears... like, say I'm a guy who comes up to an oracle site and I toss my dime in the well (or whatever). The computer picks hexagram 33, but I don't know that yet. What I see is:

1. Something happens (rumbling, smoke, bright light, surroundings fade, whatever), and then the bottom line appears and says "six at the beginning - a tail in retreat. This is dangerous."

2. A beat, then the next line, "six in the second place - he holds him tightly with yellow oxhide."

3. Then the next line, "nine in the third place - a halted retreat is nerve-wracking and dangerous. To retain servants brings good fortune."

4. Then it pauses and puts the three lines together to one side and announces the trigram:
"Gen: The mountain" which would sort of hover there while the next three lines announce themselves one by one (5, 6, 7), then as a trigram (8).

9. Then the two trigrams stick themselves together and announce the name of the hexagram, along with the judgement & image commentary.

10. Then the line announcements would fade away except for whatever's the changing line.

11. And then that would change to the changed hexagram - not line by line, but only as a whole hexagram, with the pertinent line commentary from that hexagram appearing.


Maybe this is too bulky (to code) and/or boring (to sit through). But it seems like it'd slightly condense the experience while still spreading it out over a few minutes (probably closer to 1:30 or so) in something resembling a traditional consultation.
 
 
*
14:57 / 15.05.07
Thinking as a user experiencing that in SL, I think it would rock—at least the first ten or twelve times I did it. After that it might feel more cumbersome. I think the anticipation might be increased for someone who knows the hexagrams, because instead of just sitting there waiting, they would be thinking "will it be this? or that? or it could be—no, it's that. Shit."
 
 
*
14:58 / 15.05.07
I'd really be interested in scripting something like this for a system I'm familiar with, i.e. ogham. I'd have to learn to script, though.
 
 
w1rebaby
15:58 / 15.05.07
There wouldn't be any actual people around in general - there are something like 30 different locations dotted around the Grid, and it would be a bit much work to have them covered for all time zones. I expect there would be some monks in the main locations, but it's really supposed to be an automatic system. (The Avatars of Change do "manual" readings and special ceremonies and so on as well as far as I recall, mind you, this isn't it.)

That process sounds doable, actually, and it might be best to slow it down a little - while it's not actually instant at the moment, the actual casting bit is quite rapid. One problem I have is that I am quite reliant on being provided with data, though. There is a huge amount of it obviously and I don't have the whole book to access, and as well as that the Avatars have their own preferred translations, sometimes put into an SL context, which I'm not really qualified to do. I have access to two-hundred-and-something individual reading cards, painstakingly entered, and lists of hexagram names, but meanings for individual lines I don't think I would be able to read out.

I'm trying to finish some work off quickly so I can go home so I'll just post this now, but I'll go into it later on.
 
 
w1rebaby
16:41 / 15.05.07
@id: I'd certainly be interested in helping there. I don't know anything about ogham though.
 
 
grant
16:53 / 15.05.07
Hooray for doable!

There is a huge amount of it obviously and I don't have the whole book to access, and as well as that the Avatars have their own preferred translations

Which translations? There are only a couple that most people use -- and the Wilhelm/Baynes is generally agreed to be the authoritative one (and is in the public domain).

I have access to two-hundred-and-something individual reading cards, painstakingly entered, and lists of hexagram names, but meanings for individual lines I don't think I would be able to read out.

I'm a little lost with this -- I think I'd need to know how SL actually works for this to make sense to me. Oh, do you mean "display" by "read out"?

Hmm.
 
 
w1rebaby
21:53 / 15.05.07
Which translations? There are only a couple that most people use -- and the Wilhelm/Baynes is generally agreed to be the authoritative one (and is in the public domain).

I'm not entirely sure of the details I'm afraid... I think that some of them are reworked to be more appropriate for SL, but the precise source I couldn't really tell you about. As mostly just the engineer here I submit to the judgement of others on that; I don't really have any expertise or experience in picking and choosing. I have a copy of the Wilhelm/Baynes from when I was doing research and that seems pretty close.

I'm a little lost with this -- I think I'd need to know how SL actually works for this to make sense to me. Oh, do you mean "display" by "read out"?

Yes... there are four main ways of displaying text to someone in SL. Firstly, you can give them a notecard, as mentioned above. Notecards can hold pretty much any amount of text and can be saved and passed around between objects and avatars, but it's not possible to create them dynamically (well, okay, not with in-world scripting... let's just say not practical without a modified client).

Secondly both scripted objects and avatars can say things over the standard chat channel, or send instant messages (IMs from objects appear as chat but just aren't audible to anyone else). The string to be said can be constructed dynamically, so this is what is generally used by objects wanting to communicate with residents. There are also functions within LSL, the scripting language, to get strings from all sorts of places - reading them from notecards, grabbing them off the net via HTTP requests... the latter is how I would probably wish to get hold of the descriptions of individual lines, assuming I could somewhere find a suitable, parsable document. I can go into the details of how this would work if you want but it would probably be a bit dull

Thirdly, one can set floating text to appear over an object. This is limited to, um, 128 characters I think, and I try not to use it too much as it spoils the look of objects in general to have luminous words floating over them. This can be done dynamically in the same way as the chat in #2. It's also persistent, as anyone passing by can see the text until you turn it off or change it.

And fourthly one can have a texture on an object with words on it and have people read that. This isn't practical dynamically except for static signs - there is a way to display individual letters but it is wasteful and very limited as to the length of text that can really be used, unless one has a whole huge area to play with. These oracles are on quite small plots and that wouldn't be very suitable. It's good for signs which aren't going to change, though, and like floating text it is persistent.

At the moment the oracles use a combination of #1 (to deliver judgements) #2 (for the individual details of individual readings - trigrams, hexagrams, acknowledgements of payment and so on) and #3 (messages can be set from a central server as to the suggested donation, for instance, and some very brief instructions). Right now the oracle clients look like small cubes made of greenish riveted metal, with a glowing diagram of elements on the top - that is really just what I was using during development, they could look like anything in practice, though if 30 of them are going to be placed around the grid I don't imagine they'll be customised for every location.

Avatarian Oracle basic appearance

That's one that I just placed on the boards of my workshop. Hm, the way that floating text appears seems to have changed in today's update *groan*
 
 
grant
03:15 / 16.05.07
grabbing them off the net via HTTP requests... the latter is how I would probably wish to get hold of the descriptions of individual lines, assuming I could somewhere find a suitable, parsable document

I bet you could create one by ganking the pages off Eclectic Energies or somewhere else and converting them to text pages somewhere safe. What constitutes a "parsable document"?

I wouldn't mind spending an hour or two doing something by hand -- it would be an excuse to read through the hexagrams in a different way.

Right now the oracle clients look like small cubes made of greenish riveted metal, with a glowing diagram of elements on the top - that is really just what I was using during development,

Very pretty.

You might get other ideas from dwelling on bi disks, which (as far as we know) were representations of a connection between heaven and earth.

If nothing else, they're also pretty. I don't know of any explicit connection between them and the I Ching -- so I guess they'd be too Chinesey.
 
 
grant
03:28 / 16.05.07
Heh -- although this cong has attracted some I Ching speculation...and funnily enough, looks quite a bit like the Oracle you've already designed.

Funny how things work out.




More on this last one here:
Although it might formally derive from ornaments such as tubular pearls or bracelets it was nevertheless intended for ritual use. Such pieces have most often been discovered along with jade bi discs representing Earth and Heaven. The cong itself was not merely a talisman but an efficient means of communicating with higher forces and of warding off evil powers. Its use was related to a clearly defined social context, that of the Shaman.

And en fron-say.

By the way, "c" in pinyin is pronounced "ts".
 
 
w1rebaby
17:57 / 16.05.07
Wow - I bet I can use the side of that first cong straight away... if not for this then for something else. And I'll have a look at some more of those in general.

Yes, I could scrape the texts for the individual lines from web pages with a little Perl script, and then store them up in a database somewhere... actually, that might be a useful general resource for people other than myself. I'll have a think about that.
 
 
w1rebaby
18:06 / 16.05.07
Cong
 
 
grant
19:34 / 16.05.07
You did that in 9 minutes????

SAMURAI!

Gosh, it's pretty!
 
 
grant
19:40 / 16.05.07
By the way, I've read something somewhere about people possibly using bi or cong to speak through, talking directly to Heaven -- like megaphones for the Other World.
 
 
w1rebaby
12:29 / 17.05.07
Well, I admit I'd already grabbed the texture when I wrote the first reply... but it's pretty straightforward when it's a square anyway, and that's a good straight photo.
 
 
w1rebaby
18:30 / 17.05.07
Oh dear, though, there seems to be something of an issue with the Avatars Of Change now... some extraordinary internal strife relating to whether Muslims should be allowed in. So I may not be able to show people this working across the Grid after all. However, anyone who cares to visit SL should certainly drop me a line if they wish to take a look.
 
  
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