The Sleeping King ䷙: A Comic

A Comic

A comic Kristin Middleton and I made in 2020 on Hexagram 26 of the I Ching.

Commentary

When I initially wrote this comic I had just watched Excalibur, and was struck anew by King Arthur, I had pondered the Wasteland a great deal in high school, but was thinking about it again, in relation to the I Ching.

I was also struck by something which has become a large part in my vast personal mythologies, the archetype of the Sleeping King, for Arthur is not dead, but lays sleeping in a mountain. A version of this story is told well here.

The Sleeping King

This scene from Neil Gaiman’s Books of the Magic inspired me a lot when I initially read it, along with another name which has become part of my lexicon the “Synchronicity Freeway”.

Early into my obsession with the I Ching, and right around the time we had written the comic, Kristin and I spent time with her family in the Catskills.

The mountains there effected me deeply, as well as one of my favorite tales set in the Catkills, Rip Van Winkle, who is himself a funny form of this archetype.

Hexagram 26

This Hexagram depicts a Mountain with Heaven inside it.

In the Judgment this phrase appears:

日新其德

(Day new his virtue)

Traditionally: a daily renewal of his virtue

The connection to Ezra Pound’s Make it New is clear:

Tching prayed on the mountain and
              wrote MAKE IT NEW
on his bath tub
               Day by day make it new
cut underbrush,
pile the logs
keep it growing.

“Beside these characters, Pound had printed 新日日新, the characters king Tang 湯 of the Shang had inscribed on his washbasin in the seventeenth century BCE, and which make up the phrase Victorian sinologist and translator James Legge rendered as "If you can one day renovate yourself, do so from day to day. Yea, let there be daily renovation."

Reminded of this, it's easy to see that Pound was himself doing what he exhorted his readers to do: "cut underbrush, / pile the logs / keep it growing" are the "ideogrammic" components he saw in the character 新, "new": "an axe" 斤, "logs" 木 and "growth" 立. Pound not only renovated—updated—made new—Legge's translation, he also hacked out a new understanding of the Chinese language and from it a new method for composing poetry.”

From www.asiancha.com/content/view/1631/423/

Crowley writes on this Hexagram “Only through daily self renewal can a man keep at the height of his powers.”

The Sleeping Mountain King Made New

The renewal of power is the great dream of the Sleeping King archetype. The hope, and faith that the greatest heroes of the past will return in the future and “save the day”.

And that energies that lay dormant in the unconscious can be made new and change our lives.

This archetype goes at least as far back as Plutarch in the 1st century AD, who in “the Silence of Oracles” writes (on Britain)

The natives have a story that in one of these Cronus has been confined by Zeus, but that he, having a son for a gaoler, is left sovereign lord of those islands and of the sea, which they call the Gulf of Cronus. . . . Cronus himself sleeps within a deep cave, resting on rock which looks like gold, this sleep being devised for him by Zeus in place of chains. Birds fly in at the topmost rock, and bear him ambrosia.

The stories out of England and European folklore that surround this motif are many, and are worth reading into.

End

As I’ve been working seriously on the I Ching, this old comic of mine had come to mind, and I thought it good to share along with some of my thoughts.

Brief Aside

In the story “The Sleeping Warriors” I found a bit of a parallel with Hexagram 2 ䷁:

He also told him that the distinguished person they had seen was Arthur, and the others his warriors; and they lay there asleep with their arms ready at hand for the dawn of that day when the Black Eagle and the Golden Eagle should go to war, the loud clamor of which would make the earth tremble so much, that the bell would ring loudly, and the warriors awake, take up their arms, and destroy all the enemies of the Cymry, who afterwards should repossess the Island of Britain, re-establish their own king and government at Caerlleon, and be governed with justice, and blessed with peace so long as the world endures.

Compare with line 6 of ䷁

龍戰于野

其血玄黃

Dragons fighting in the field. Their blood is black and yellow.