Digital Spirits in Religion and Media by Alvin Eng Hui Lim

Author:Alvin Eng Hui Lim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-08-13T00:00:00+00:00

The short length of the phrases provides a vagueness that allows any interpreter to decode it based on the context he or she is in. Encoded into the hexagrams are values meant to be interpreted. In the next line, which explains the meaning of each line, the values are further elaborated with short phrases. These phrases used to provide guidelines such as how to govern the country (in its historical context that would refer to Zhou and its war with Shan) and establish close links with neighbouring countries.

In a basic interaction between gods’ hexagrams and spirit mediums, a spirit medium follows the hexagrams and lines when they perform their rituals. Hexagrams play an important role in rituals, and this is the second difference between the two systems of binary numbers. A different order of hexagrams will create different divinations and any given order prompts the user to interpret the hexagrams according to the given signs. The accompanying meanings of the hexagrams and lines are guidelines and the hexagrams can be placed together in different permutations that then give us different ‘values.’ The key point is to understand them as symbols; as such, they are often open to interpretation and repetition. Because these symbols are so open ended yet so rich and specific in meaning, they have been used for fortune telling, feng shui, weather forecasting, determining what one should do on a particular day, etc.

Hexagrammic symbols operate as codes. I view the binaries of Yin and Yang as depositories of data. To access the data, one must understand the combination of codes and order them into a meaningful discourse. The combination of binaries determines what the data can do. By selecting a particular combination of symbols, in computer terms, these hexagrams work as depositories of information that can be retrieved and reused within a lunar year. Similarly, when we store our digital data as binaries of 1 and 0 in hard discs, photographs on Instagram and documents in cloud storage software, they are all counted in bytes or bits and it is the various combinations of bytes and bits and the permutations that reproduce the data for a digital interface. The Yi Jing writes,

是故，易有太极，是生两仪，两仪生四象，四象生八卦，八卦定 吉凶，吉凶生大业。[In (the system of) the Yi there is the Grand Terminus, which produced the two elementary Forms. Those two Forms produced the four emblematic Symbols, which again produced the eight Trigrams. The eight trigrams served to determine the good and evil (issues of events).]

(Legge 1882)

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