This continues a series I started here about a Library I Ching, in which I take a book I own and open it randomly to two passages with a question in mind, as if using the I Ching, and see what wisdom is to be found as one passage changes into the other. Like that first post, I’ll share an image of one of the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching, one that somewhat relates to the question I’m asking the library version.

The passages are chosen completely randomly, eyes closed. The choice of book will fit the mood and question at the time. Will I share the question? Well, no — but maybe that will allow the reader to draw his or her own reflections on the excerpts.

This time around I chose Frank Herbert’s Dune. I chose Dune because of recent thoughts about the concept of the Voice in the book, and the reality of it in our own world when people apply certain tones to their voices.

First cast:

Jessica, pulled into the end of the troop by eager hands, hemmed around by jostling bodies, suppressed a moment of panic. She had recognized fragments of the ritual, identified the shards of Chakobsa and Bhotani-jib in the words, and she knew the wild violence that could explode out of these seemingly simple moments.

Jan-jan-jan, she thought. Go-go-go.

Second cast:

Jessica sensed rather than saw the knife hidden in a fold of the man’s robe. She permitted herself one bitter regret that she and Paul had no shields.

‘Do you also speak?’ the man asked.

Hexagram 12, meaning "Obstruction"

Commentary (added Aug. 29)

It seemed a commentary was needed on this entry to fill it out (though nothing about the Library I Ching should be taken too seriously).

It’s interesting that both passages are about the same character and juxtapose together as if they are in the same scene, though they are taken from different sections of the book.

Often the I Ching will advise whether a course of action is auspicious or inauspicious. In the first excerpt we have a drive to action (“Go-go-go“) in the face of danger, but what it changes to seems a caution against rash decision: there is a hidden knife and our characters are unprotected (“no shields”).

We also have hints about the Voice, with caution about what words can lead to with “shards of Chakobsa and Bhotani-jib” and in the question of the last line.

Conclusion? Beware a hidden knife of words.