I’m just coming to the end of the ‘omens’ section as I revise and enlarge ‘Words of Change’, my Yijing glossary. This involves testing out ideas by looking at every instance of each omen,*along with all the example readings I can find. Since I’m going into more detail this time around, I’ve been looking more at contexts and associations – for instance, how ‘danger’ quite often appears as ‘constancy, danger’, but sometimes as ‘danger, no mistake’ or even ‘danger, good fortune.’
So… you have a new course of action in mind, and you consult the oracle: ‘What about doing this?’
And the oracle says, ‘Danger.’
That’s a clear and helpful answer. This seems like the kind of thing that should be in the job description for oracles: warn the unsuspecting querent when they’re running into danger, so they can back off.
Only Yi may also say, ‘Danger, no mistake’ or ‘Danger, good fortune,’ and what are you to make of that?
35.6 for instance, has both:
First, what’s ‘danger’? The old forms of the character clearly show a hidden scorpion. It also has the early meaning of pain and illness (Richard Kunst suggests that’s illness that’s like being in bed with a scorpion), and the angry ghosts that cause illness.
The Dazhuan makes a connection between ‘danger’ and the plight of the Zhou people struggling with their more powerful opponent, the Shang. (Confusingly, the name of the last Shang king is also transcribed as ‘Zhou’.)
This makes clear why Wilhelm often translates ‘danger’ as ‘aware of danger’ when it’s coupled with a positive omen. (In 35.6. he has ‘to be conscious of danger brings good fortune.’) Whether you’re considering military perils or hidden scorpions, the most important thing is to be aware of where and what it is. (The same is true for disease demons, where the first task is to identify which ancestor is angry so they can be pacified.)
It’s natural that you’ll sometimes encounter dangerous circumstances even when your proposed action is ‘not a mistake’. A strong implication of ‘not a mistake’ is ‘there’s nothing wrong with this idea in principle.’ It may be the right thing to do; it may have the potential to yield real results – it just doesn’t go smoothly. Take 44.3, for instance -
I believe that refers*to Yu the Great, the Chinese flood hero, whose work is the supreme example of something worthwhile that’s also perilous. ‘Danger, no mistake’ is a time to weigh up risks against possible benefits, without losing sight of either. (One unfortunate response to these lines is to dismiss the danger – ‘Oh, now I’m aware there’s a risk I can go ahead anyway, it’ll be fine.’)
Another example, 38,4:
The dangerous element here (as in 24.3) is the emotion involved: loneliness and the yearning for connection. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with longing to ‘join together in trust’, nor that there’s necessarily anything wrong with the man or the relationship. It’s simply a moment to be aware of how that longing affects your choices, and how much you’re willing to sacrifice (zhi gua 41).
Danger is about immediate circumstances, which, in a way, is why it’s often associated with ‘constancy’. Danger requires you to be aware of what’s around you; constancy is being true to something within you – an insight, a commitment, sometimes (as with rams and rats) your own nature. It’s how you can endure and persevere despite encountering difficulties, and more often than not, in the Yijing, that’s a good capability to have. Only, sometimes, there’s a fine line between loyalty and bull-headedness, and you need to find a new balance between inner conviction and sensitivity to your surroundings. ‘Constancy, danger.’
When Yi says ‘danger, good fortune,’ at least it’s clear that it will be worthwhile to continue: you can survive this one. In practice, the good fortune seems to come with the increased ‘awareness of danger’ and willingness to take on present, personal responsibility. (The phrase comes in 18.1, 27.6, 35.6 and 37.3, and the assumption of responsibility is a theme in all four.)
So back to 35.6, and its long list of omen words -
‘Advancing with your horns.
Holding fast, use this to subjugate the city.
Danger, good fortune, not a mistake.
Constancy: shame.’
Advancing with the horns – with bullish determination. This is the basic ‘make hay while the sun shines’ mindset of Hexagram 35 taken to an extreme – ‘I’ll make this happen no matter what – chaaaaarrrrge!‘ This energy can well be applied to a specific, big task, like subjugating a city. It’s dangerous in all the ways that ‘no matter what’ mindset always is; it’s ‘good fortune’ because it can achieve something substantial that you might not accomplish any other way, and ‘not a mistake’ when the goal to which it’s applied is good in itself. But constancy – promoting this from a tactic to apply in a specific case, to a rule to live by or way of being – would be shameful.

In my experience, just about everything worth doing carries a certain degree of danger. A walk in the fields may result in a rattlesnake bite. Ha! Going to sleep even resulted in six scorpion stings, and one in bed before that, were all innocent on my part. Innocence is no guarantee of avoiding danger and misfortune. Teaching and learning, as in 29, is all about danger.

Also, to borrow from a Lofting precept, the intentional exaggerations in various hex and lines are to reach within a wide area of experience and emotion, and most things aren't as seriously dangerous as it sounds, and some are just the opposite. Keeps us on our toes, for sure.

Yesterday I received a new/old guitar amp via UPS, and curiosity led me to try and peek at the result and satisfaction with it. 3 once, with one line being line 6 - boohooo, bloody tears - and 18 twice. Well, I was surprised the thing even turned on with those readings. But in actually, the early difficulties were inserting the vacuum power tubes which came separately packaged (an easy fix or task), and now sourcing a ground loop when running my pedal board through it and using the gain channel - probably a result of an inadequate power supply to the pedals, even when all are tru-bypass and switched off. Plugging directly into the amp was quiet as a kitten even when on full gain. So the 18 really had nothing to do with the amp itself, other than preliminary prepping, but with operating it through power-sucking, non-dedicated power supply lines. Though it could use a good cleaning up, which it also got. When asking about the noisy loop, trying to avoid the expense of a high quality power supply, I received 5uc. After awhile I discovered a spare power supply, which I ran to the most power sucking pedal. I'll find out today if that solved the difficulty and what's been spoiled. I supposed the only real danger was if I accidentally stuck my hand into the opened chassis and touched a charged large capacitor, which can hold deadly charges even after the amp has been turned off for a long time. I remained conscious of that danger. So it was quite a dramatic picture of an overall satisfying purchase, but there's still 18 to be done on a related problem, but not with the amp itself. But not nearly as dramatic as Yi made it sound. I think Yi was playing with my head more than a bit.

Like life itself, Yi's answers can be overestimated and underestimated. Personally, it's the latter that I've found to be the most dangerous. Who would have thought entering an empty city would have meant being thrown into a county jail for near 5 days before being discharged without a single charge? The line changes to 7, and the psychopath (a PTSD patient) was a discharged Marine, who was lying in wait for me, mistaking me for the enemies that he was still at war with in his disturbed head. Didn't see that one coming. The key is careful choices, not scary omens.

Ah - Clarity's resident scorpion expert . I imagine you'd agree that knowing where they are makes a difference...

Yes, the whole question of 'what kind & degree of danger?' or 'what kind of misfortune?' is an interesting one. Would probably make another blog post, if I knew what to write.

Didn't someone here once tell the story of an open (questionless) reading getting some alarming-sounding lines in 47 - and finding he couldn't get out of his parking space? Readings with questions and contexts are easier - there has to be a limit to how much blood you can shed over guitar amp, doesn't there? (Though it can't hurt to be cautious about exactly what is electrified... which, come to think of it, would be a nice example of Yi's use of 'danger' - did you get 18.1?)

Didn't someone here once tell the story of an open (questionless) reading getting some alarming-sounding lines in 47 - and finding he couldn't get out of his parking space?

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You are thinking of the famous Knot who wrote of this in the 47uc thread

I've told this story here before, but might as well put it in the official unchanging thread: the first time I ever got 47uc,when I was just learning the yi, what Trojina writes above was the case. I was doing castings about things I had no emotional attachment to, the better to learn, so I asked about lunch that day and got 47uc. So of course I DID get emotional, it sounds so awful--will I go to prison etc etc?

I went down to the parking lot with trepidation . . . and found my car was blocked in by a fire truck. I actually sat on the curb and laughed. There were even officials wearing red! After about ten minutes my car was freed. It was a great lesson for me.

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Knot is also famous for 44 and the jump lead story

Oops, sorry Knot. At least you are famous.

Not sure if it's fame so much as my tendency to tell the same stories over and over!

Oh no...you tell the story but once or twice but soon it is on the lips of the multitude

.....well the multitude here at Clarity anyway

35.6 means that you should go ahead to spread your sphere of influence to the border areas. The process is dangerous(because you need to work hard), but as a result you will have good fortune. In fact, the translation of "Advancing with your horns" is not so correct.

That's interesting - how would you translate 晉其角 ?

I would say that in many instances the word is more like caution than danger, although translating it as danger is fine. When you hear an alarm going off and a recorded voice intoning: 'DANGER! DANGER!' your reaction is...caution, but outwardly the phenomenon is danger. That is particularly true in the Great Treatise passage. Acknowledging the danger and taking steps to prevent danger from turning into disaster allows the superior person to 'ride the wave of the changes', finding an optimum course. I am reminded of Analects 6:19:

The Master said, "Man is born for uprightness. If a man lose his uprightness, and yet live, his escape from death is the effect of mere good fortune."

I translate it into "Move forward to the border areas", "角" means "corner" or "border areas" here.
In fact, as for Chinese, I Ching is also hard to understand sometimes, because it was written in classical Chinese so we have to translate it into vernacular Chinese. That's why there are still some discussions about this book today.
If you are interesting in the translation in Chinese, you could use a Chinese-English dictionary, such as:
http://www.nciku.com/

hilary said:

That's interesting - how would you translate 晉其角 ?

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Well, I was half way through writing a reply on how there are no instances in the literature on the meaning you cite for the period when I found that there is indeed a citation in the Hanyu Da Cidian:

Meaning 11: 隅, 角落。

《易·晋》
上九, 晉其角。

孔颖达 疏
‘晉其角’者, 西南隅也。

I am not, however 100% in agreement with Kong Ying Da on this interpretation of the sentence. All the rest of the literature, including two spots in the Book of Songs, indicate that this is horns. Those sources and the Hanyu Da Cidian agree on horns for Gua 34 and 44.

So that's an interesting finding, but I would have to see more citations from pre-Han literature before I buy into that translation.

An excellent source is the Chinese Text Project, where you can find 48 instances of the phrase 其角 in the pre-Han body of texts.

xuesongyu said:

I translate it into "Move forward to the border areas", "角" means "corner" or "border areas" here.
In fact, as for Chinese, I Ching is also hard to understand sometimes, because it was written in classical Chinese so we have to translate it into vernacular Chinese. That's why there are still some discussions about this book today.
If you are interesting in the translation in Chinese, you could use a Chinese-English dictionary, such as:
http://www.nciku.com/

Click to expand...

Hello My friend:
Thanks for your reply for my comments.

Even in China, many scholars have different views on the translations of I Ching. That's why I wrote a book to translate the full text of I Ching by myself.
In fact, in some hexagrams, the six lines of a hexagram stand for six stages of development of a thing, Line 1 corresponds to the initial stage, while line 6 corresponds to the final stage. And in other hexagrams, the six lines of a hexagram may also stand for six different positions or situations. For example, in Hexagram 35(晉), line 6 corresponds to the remote areas which are far away from home.
You can also find the same cases in other Hexagrams, in Hexagram 13, the six lines also describe the situations from the near to the distant.

Hello My friend:
Thanks for your reply for my comments.

Even in China, many scholars have different views on the translations of I Ching. That's why I wrote a book to translate the full text of I Ching by myself.
In fact, in some hexagrams, the six lines of a hexagram stand for six stages of development of a thing, Line 1 corresponds to the initial stage, while line 6 corresponds to the final stage. And in other hexagrams, the six lines of a hexagram may also stand for six different positions or situations. For example, in Hexagram 35(晉), line 6 corresponds to the remote areas which are far away from home.
You can also find the same cases in other Hexagrams, in Hexagram 13, the six lines also describe the situations from the near to the distant.