So my easily distracted brain turned to happier times where I played around with my antique yarrow sticks. Well, actually popsicle sticks colored appropriately with a black magic marker. And they weren’t craft store popsicle sticks, I got to eat some of the popsicles, too. Win!!
Anything in the realm of fortune telling and divination leads to similar pathways of gematria. The text is considered somewhat of a holy book. It’s spiritual instead of directly religious. So it’s the kind of thing that can be associated with selling magic healing crystals and cheap amulets. Which then get consumed by wellness industry grifters when anti-vaxx content gets grift magnetized.
The traditional way the I Ching operates has the fortune seeker, armed with some disposable income, approach an expert I Ching reader. The yarrow sticks are thrown, arranged, and that yields a character that is cross indexed to text. And just like an inevitable narrative for both teams in an NFL game, that text is incredibly vague.
The person looking for divine inspiration already has an idea of what they are seeking. And even if the sticks yield something only remotely close to the question, confirmation bias is satisfied. The seeker pays the expert. Everyone is happy. Even without popsicles being involved. And if it’s too vague for the seeker to even begin to associate something. Pay the expert for their expert interpretation. Everyone is happy, although still no popsicles.
The I Ching adds a layer of illusional mathematical superiority to predicting a winner between two teams playing on Monday Night Football. The sticks can yield 64 different answers. Casting the sticks, the seeker is likely thinking towards the future. Should I take that new job? Should I get married? Should I really pay this grifter or try to sneak out when his back is turned? Should I buy the grape popsicles? Then they sit back, and cross their fingers. Please be Joy. Please be Joy. Please be Joy. And when the disappointment comes up that it’s something like Cauldron. Well, that’s got to be more sincere than losing a coin flip, right? Of course the odds are against any single one in 64 chance appearing.
Gematria is all about covering up failed predictions. And people are on to Zach’s not being any better than a coin flip, slightly improved by his emphasizing the narratives for the favorite to beat the underdog. We need an I Ching reading for every NFL team at the start of preseason. That will draw in some of the spiritual gematria crowd that’s tired that the world didn’t end yesterday like it was supposed to.
Team A - Cauldron. That’s a climate change narrative!
Team B - Pushing Upward. They aren’t going to win the Super Bowl, but what a rebuilding year this will be.
Team C - Standstill. That’s a narrative for a tie somewhere during the season.
Team D - Conflict. Terrell Owens is coming out of retirement and ruining the locker room chemistry!
Etc….
But how to pull it off when this requires keeping with the narrative at the preseason start of the I Ching selection? Sock puppets and cult leader charisma. And waiting until the game is over to emphasize the contradictory narrative. I don’t see Zach sullying his hands with directly doing the yarrow stick through. Just have an apparently overzealous loyal follower say, here’s what I did. Then as the season progresses, emphasize the hits, ignore the misses, reinterpret as needed. Cauldron - team is on a hot streak. Cauldron - quarterback had heatstroke in practice. Cauldron - Player X had a college coach named Boyle. Cauldron - A trolled “called in”, which sounds like cauldron. Cauldron - popsicles banned by team nutritionist, they melt and make the locker room floor sticky.
Don’t let your Dunning-Kruger take control and assume that people aren’t gullible enough to believe something like this could happen. The year that the Zodiac was the Tiger was classic vague association gibberish. And that part of paying when you figured out the vague answer yourself versus paying for needing the expert to interpret it for you. Zach has that down to a fine art. It’s called Patreon. Pay me when I’m right. Pay me when I’m wrong. Everyone’s happy, especially those with extra money for popsicles.
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