Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – Genealogy Research through I Ching

Leave it to Randy Seaver of GeneaMusings to come up with another fascinating project to keep us busy and out of trouble on Saturday night. This week’s mission: 

• Go to http://IChingOnline.net and ask a question relating to your genealogy research. You can "throw the coins virtually" or "throw the coins by hand." You have to click the "throw" button six times, then click on "Read."
• Report the question you asked and the answer you received, in the form of the Cast Hexagram (which explains the situation you are now in, or what has gone before), to your readers.
• Does the answer make any sense to you? How do you interpret the answer?

I have NO experience with I Ching so here goes! 

My question: Will I ever find the parents of Ellender Vickers?

I throw the I Ching coins (virtually) and receive Cast Hexagram 56 – The Wanderer:

The first part of the Cast Hexagram says: 

Lu/The Wanderer

Fire on the Mountain, catastrophic to man, a passing annoyance to the Mountain:

The Superior Person waits for wisdom and clarity before exacting Justice, then lets no

protest sway him.

Find satisfaction in small gains.

To move constantly forward is good fortune to a Wanderer.

The second part, the Situation Analysis, reads:

You are a stranger to this situation.

It is your attraction to the exotic that has led you here, but you will move on to a new

vista when this one has lost its mystique.

Because much of this environment is foreign to you, you must exercise only the best

judgement.

You don’t know the custom here, and it’s too easy to cross a line you don’t know is there.

Because you are the foreigner in this setting, you have no history to acquit you.

Watch, listen, study, contemplate, then step lightly but decisively on.

The way I see it, the I Ching is telling me I don’t know the answer to my question (duh), but when I find it, I’ll move on to the next question (right). I take the part about the foreign environment to mean (correctly) that I don’t know much about the South in the early to mid-1800s. So I guess I will take the advice in the last line and spend my time (more wisely) following the steps required to meet the Genealogical Proof Standard!

Or maybe I’ll call a genealogy psychic or tarot card reader! (Just kidding!)

© 2011 Denise Spurlock, Ancestral Trees Research