THE HEXAGRAM
The Visionary Roots of The Kamlak Center

Hexagram 18/Ku    

Study this hexagram carefully.  It is your work.  It is the work of the earth.


THE VISIONARY WORK OF THE KAMLAK CENTER

The logo for The Kamlak Center is Hexagram 18 from The I Ching, or Book of Changes. My husband Istvan received this hexagram from our son Pisti a few months after Pisti was killed in an automobile accident. After our son’s death, Istvan and I experienced a powerful shift in consciousness that made it possible for us to experience other dimensions of reality. I explain this painful and yet joyful process in The Miracle of Death. During one of the visions Istvan experienced with our son Pisti, Istvan was given this hexagram as a symbol for our work as well as for the work of the earth. “Study this hexagram carefully,” Pisti told his Dad. “It is your work. It is the work of the earth.”

In this vision, Pisti confirmed my earlier visionary experience that the Jackal/Anubis was also a symbol for the work of our time. “He is a symbol of the time,” Pisti told Istvan, “because he transforms everything that has decayed into new life.” Pisti then said that the Jackal is called “The Opener of the Way” because it is this inner process that opens us to unlimited creativity. When Pisti said, “The Opener of the Way,” the scene in Istvan’s vision immediately changed. Istvan and Pisti were sitting on the top of a mountain overlooking the ocean. Pisti put his arm around Istvan and pointed straight ahead. “Dad,” he said, “do you see the horizon? Even that is not the limit.”

Through my own visions I had come to realize that the image of the Jackal/Anubis was the visual surface of a field of consciousness that was committed to a powerful process of healing. This process involved the conscious distillation of the darkest aspects of human experience into the highest forms of illumination. My son called individuals working in this field “The Jackal Healers.”

My years of working with symbolic language had taught me that the image always reflects its essence and function and that the history of an image should always be taken into consideration. This particular image has an extensive history in Egyptian mythology (which I discuss in Becoming Anubis: An Answer to the Corruption of Our Time, to be released in 2012). As far as the essence and function of the symbol are concerned, I was struck by two extremely important factors: (1) the jackal sees as well in the darkness as in the light, and (2) the jackal eats decayed food and transforms it into life within its own body. It is this “Anubis Process” that constructs the bridge between the darkest aspects of human experience and the highest forms of consciousness.

As soon as the vision in which Istvan received the hexagram from Pisti was over, Istvan asked me if I had The I Ching. I ran into my study to look for it. Istvan knew very little more about this book than that it existed and that one could throw coins and receive a hexagram in answer to a question. It had been years since either of us had worked with the book. When I returned with The I Ching, I looked in the back pages to find the right hexagram. I was so stunned by the hexagram that I had to show it to Istvan rather than read it to him. We looked at the page together:

18.    Ku/Work on What Has Been Spoiled [Decay]

The Chinese character ku represents a bowl in whose contents worms are breeding.  This means decay. It has come about because the gentle indifference of the lower trigram has come together with the rigid inertia of the upper, and the result is stagnation. Since this implies guilt, the conditions embody a demand for removal of the cause.  Hence the meaning of the hexagram is not simply “what has been spoiled” but “work on what has been spoiled.”

THE JUDGMENT
WORK ON WHAT HAS BEEN SPOILED

Has supreme success.
It furthers one to cross the great water….

As Istvan and I stared at this hexagram, we experienced a powerful healing field of consciousness. We had experienced this before in our visions since Pisti’s death, but we simply had no words to describe it. Yet Istvan’s first response is helpful: “I never experienced respect like this. It has a completely new meaning for me. I respected myself and everyone and everything else to such a degree that the whole world was sacred.”

Although Istvan had not thrown the coins but had received the hexagram from Pisti in a vision, it was clear to us that the inner psychic condition of our species and the outer constellation of world events in our time had drawn this hexagram and the Jackal/Anubis image into materialization. Each was a reflection of our present condition as well as an answer to the corruption of our time.

A positive outcome depends upon a conscious choice to work in harmony with the principles of change and transformation reflected in both the Anubis Process and the 18th Hexagram.

I knew very well that the KEY to this process of healing is an understanding of the Mystery of Death. Western culture and now most of the earth have lost the ancient knowledge that “There is Nothing but Life.” We have fallen into a worldview that is materialistic, fearful, depressed, addicted, and violent. By confronting the Mystery of Death, we can be initiated into the fullness of life. This knowledge is the foundation for all healing. It is the foundation for our work on that which has decayed.

Thus The Kamlak Center was created by Kimberly Saavedra, Director.

Merchants of Light: The Consciousness That Is Changing the World, winner of the Nautilus Silver Book Award and The Scientific & Medical Network 2019 Book Prize, was published in September 2019.  The Miracle of Death: There Is Nothing But Life was published in 2003.  

—Betty J. Kovacs, Ph.D.