Subscribe or unsubscribe here

Answers


Clarity's I Ching Newsletter: Issue 21

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." Mahatma Gandhi

This issue:


Introduction and news

Dear Subscriber,
If you haven't visited the site since last month's issue, please drop in and let me know what you think of the new design!

It features a clear division of the site into I Ching readings (paid and free), practical I Ching, I Ching resources and of course the I Ching Community. It's as intuitive and helpful as I could make it, and I hope you'll enjoy moving around the site and find content you'd never known was there! I'll also try to keep up a steady stream of new content for you - I have plenty of ideas still to come...

About the newsletter
You may remember I asked last issue how you'd feel about receiving a shorter newsletter twice monthly rather than the current mammoth email once a month. The response suggested that twice monthly was good - so this newsletter is a little more manageable than the last one, and your next issue will be coming at the beginning of October.

What will be in it? That's largely up to you. Here are some ideas of mine, old and new: please respond to whichever interests you most.

  • DIY corner, same as usual. Please send in your questions, especially the one you think is far too basic to ask. That always means there are about 500 other people trying to pluck up courage to ask it…
  • Hexagram of the month. Sometimes there is one hexagram that comes up again and again, in readings for many different people, in a short space of time. If there's one that's haunting you, or just puzzling you, write in and nominate it!
  • Crossed lines. A short section on a hexagram line that's subject to a range of differing interpretations from the different translators. Again, nominations welcome!
  • Letters to the Editor. Please write in and voice your ideas on the I Ching and divination in general.
  • Book reviews. Please feel free to nominate an I Ching book I should review, or send in your own comments. My room is filling up with the books I buy to review - help me to limit it to the good ones!
  • Surveys - occasionally, as and when we have a good idea for one…
  • I Ching readings. Up to once a month, I'll include a complete, free I Ching reading for a subscriber. If you have a question, please send it in! As with ordinary orders, please include some background information, and do consult the I Ching for yourself and send me its answer if you like. If you'd prefer to remain anonymous in the newsletter, just say so.
  • Occasional articles… guest articles… any other good ideas anyone suggests…

So let me know what you'd like to receive. It's your inbox, and your newsletter, so you decide what should go in them both!

Looking forward to hearing from you,
Hilary

Back to table of contents


DIY Corner: Understanding the Past

Of course, the conventional idea of divination is that it's about foretelling the future - when what we most often need, and what the I Ching gives us in great depth, is insight into our present. But very, very often, a vital part of that is understanding the past, and what brought us here. It's all part of knowing not only 'what', but 'how' and 'why'.

If understanding and moving on from the past is the most important thing for you, you'll probably do best to ask about that directly, with questions like 'How did this happen?' or 'What can I learn from the past year?' However, there are also many insights to be gleaned from the order of the hexagrams themselves.

King Wen's Sequence

The order of the hexagrams in the I Ching we know is honoured as 'King Wen's Sequence' after the ancient Zhou leader. This doesn't necessarily mean that Wen himself created it, but it is a mark of respect indicating the sequence's great antiquity and depths of meaning.

If you have a fairly complete I Ching translation (see the I Ching bookstore's translations shelf) then you will already know of the Sequence of Hexagrams, or Xugua - the earliest description we have of the internal logic of the sequence. In most translations, you'll find the relevant phrases from the Xugua reproduced with every hexagram - apart from the first two. All that can be said of those is that 'Heaven and Earth exist'; if there is something they arose from, then there is certainly nothing that can be written about it.

The Xugua seems to be intended as a quick memory prompt for an early diviner who already had an intimate grasp of the hexagrams' meaning. Some of his ideas are lost to us - but it is still a powerful springboard for our own thoughts on the why of our situation. I find the translation in Stephen Karcher's I Ching with concordance to be the most stimulating: it conveys the powerful sense of connection between the hexagrams.

The Sequence in Divination

(Please note - these brief examples come from imagination and experience, but never from customers' readings.)
Imagine yourself in the early stages of a new relationship. At first, you were delighted with your new friend's perfect consideration and the way he or she seemed to share all your ideas and interests, but now he/she doesn't seem the same. You ask the I Ching what's happening, and receive, of all things, Hexagram 23, which Wilhelm actually translates as 'Splitting Apart'. Not good - and yet you felt so completely compatible! Where is the sense in this?

To save newsletter space, this article continues online

Back to table of contents

Comments on this article?
DIY questions of your own?
Please write!

Book News

S.J. Marshall's terrific book of I Ching history and interpretation is now available in a paperback version in the US and Canada (but still only as a hardback in the UK). If you haven't already, now would be a good time to look at this one: it's a genuinely exciting read and could make a great difference to the way you read the I Ching. You can read my original review here.

Carol Anthony has just announced the release of her latest I Ching, entitled I Ching, the Oracle of the Cosmic Way. At her website, you can pre-order it and get a modest reduction in the shipping prices, and also read an extract. Very interesting!

Original book reviews coming in future issues, I promise!

Back to table of contents

Like I said, please do send in your own book recommendations!

Links to explore

At the I Ching Community:

Fortune cookies and instinct
Hexagram 19 contradiction?
Talking/listening to the dead
Finding the right translation

You are very welcome to join in, or just to browse.

And further afield:

One I Ching site: http://iching.sourceforge.net/index.html, offering I Ching programs for Sharp Zaurus PDA and for the KDE (please don't ask me what either of those is). The programmer also has plans for an online 'free and random exchange of users thoughts' - a sort of glorified and much higher-tech version of my own I Ching resources site (at http://www.ichingresources.co.uk). It sounds very promising...

A couple of satisfying sites on the runes:
The Anglo Saxon Rune Poem in modern English. A scholarly approach with respect for divination - what more could anyone ask for? You can use the rune poem translation for your own divinations: there's a very imaginative sample divination given.

This is just one of the links from http://www.irminsul.org/ru/ru.html. This looks like an absolutely terrific range of links: runelore, history and archaeology, rune casting programs, rune fonts. And unlike so many of the web's promising-looking link collections, this one was updated just a few months ago, and the majority of the links still work. One to bookmark for my next holiday, I think.

And finally, www.religioustolerance.org
I've only had time for a brief browse, but this looks to be an excellent site.

Back to table of contents


Share your favourite links!


I Ching services

I provide personal I Ching readings from £25. All readings are completely private and unconditionally guaranteed.
Clarity's I Ching correspondence course is available for £22.50 for the self-study version, or £137 for the full course including personal tuition, with the same unconditional guarantee.


Newsletter information

(Personal unsubscribe links omitted for online version.)

To subscribe:
If you received this issue from a friend and would like to subscribe for yourself, please use this form:

Your first name: 
Your email: 
Format: 

Contact details:
Clarity,
P.O.Box 255,
Witney D.O.,
OX29 6WH
United Kingdom
(+44)(0)1993 881984

hilary@onlineClarity.co.uk
http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk


Site search:
Search onlineClarity for: