Alternative Astrology:
The 256 Concepts (An I Ching substitute)

When looking at the system from an astrological perspective, fifteen steps seems to be about the right "granularity". When thinking about an I Ching clone or Tarot deck based on the system, more detail needs to be added.

There are 256 concepts in this scheme, making it suitable for binary generation using yarrow stalks, coins or a computer. There are fifteen sequences corresponding to the steps above, each containing eight pairs of concepts plus the 'Capital' concept for that sequence. Finally, there is one card representing the Unknown. The tables below shows the individual concepts embodied in the sequences.

The system might be compared to the runes, for each of the five elements is represented by three groups each containing eight items; however, the triplicity which divides the groups bears little relation to the 'aettirs' or families of runes. It would seem much more applicable to assign the runes of Freyja's aettir to 'Feeling'; of Heimdall's, to 'Doing' and 'Having'; and of Tiwaz's, to 'Thinking' and 'Being'.

It would have been neat to link the Trigrams of the I Ching to the eight items in each sequence. This, too, seems to be stretching things too far to be useful, though it is a particularly attractive idea, and if anyone should come up with a sensible way of doing so I would be interested.

It is a shame that these tables could not be represented somehow in a three-dimensional form, because the ordering of concepts within the sequences is not random and the system is only apparent when an item of one sequence is compared with the corresponding items of the other sequences connected with the same element. For instance, looking at the 'ones' of the 'Doing' sequences, 'Energy' in Power becomes 'Progress' in Enterprise and finally 'Completion' in Idealism. A similar problem manifests when presenting correspondences — see section V.

Generation

Being

Resolution