A Guide to the I Ching

A Guide to the I Ching is a work by Carol K. Anthony (1988).

Core claims

• Anthony transforms the I Ching from a divination manual into a depth-psychological instrument for ego dissolution, treating each hexagram as a mirror of inner attitude rather than a prediction of outer events — effectively performing the same operation on the oracle that Jung performed on alchemy.
• The book’s central therapeutic mechanism is what Anthony calls “disengagement” — a precise inner action that withdraws projected energy from situations and returns authority to what she names the “Creative,” making this one of the few Western guides to the I Ching that functions as a manual for active imagination conducted through coin-throws.
• Anthony’s concept of the ego as a “parasitic” self-image that gains power through the grammatical trick of claiming “I” constitutes an independent phenomenology of identification that parallels Buddhist anattā doctrine and Jungian shadow work without deriving from either.

Related questions

• How does Anthony’s concept of “disengagement” as empowering the Creative compare to Jung’s account of ego-surrender in his foreword to the Wilhelm/Baynes I Ching, and does her operational specificity resolve ambiguities Jung left open about the ego-Self relationship?
• In what ways does Anthony’s phenomenology of the ego as a “parasitic” identity-claimant converge with or diverge from Liu I-ming’s Taoist alchemical account of acquired temperament in Thomas Cleary’s translation of The Taoist I Ching?
• Could Anthony’s insistence that the I Ching “never moralizes” but instead activates the consulter’s own inner knowledge be read as a practical application of Edinger’s concept of the ego-Self axis, where the Self provides regulatory guidance without superego-like commands?

See also

• Library page: /library/myth-and-religion/anthony-guide-i-ching/

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