greetings:

my name is laura and I'm new to this site. i've been reading some of the messages and i find the topics particularly facinating: especially the suggestions about handling multiple moving lines.

well i have a bit of an issue here (or maybe not) that i thought i'd like to get some input from you all. i am leaving for europe in about two weeks and it dawned on me to get a reading from the i ching. so i asked the i ching what was the best course of action for me to take regarding this trip to europe. i received the following:

5 - Waiting

moving lines: 4,5

34 - Power of the Great

This reading kind of freaked me out (to coin a very old but somewhat useful vernacular).

Anyone have any input on this?

thanks,

laura

Hi Laura and welcome.

Two possibilities come to my mind. One, cancel the trip and wait. The 4th line would freak me out too, given the state of affairs these days. Or, it could simply be addressing apprehension you may feel about the trip. This latter might explain 34. Then, 34 may also be relating to something powerful and potentially dangerous.

I can not in good conscience advise you to take the trip. I don't mean to sound paranoid, but that moving line in the 4th place would give me serious reservations about going as planned. I hope I'm wrong.

What does your intuition tell you about your reading? Were you experiencing any kind of panic or negative emotions when you threw it? Anything at all that stands out about your state of mind?

Candid

Hi Laura,

One can sometimes get a doctor to state that one is temporarily unable to fly. That way, you wouldn't necessarily lose the money, but can sometimes put off the flight for as long as a year. Depends on the exact details of your airline/booking co., but I would investigate.

IMHO, if it were me, I would consider the world political climate, the price one puts on their own life, how sincerely you feel about the Yi, etc.

Namaste,
Leonard

I agree that line 4 is not a calming one to get in the circumstances... (That's UK English for 'totally freaked out', by the way.) Just wondering, though...

'Waiting in blood. Get out from your cave.' This sounds to me more like a problem with where you wait, or the emotions with which you wait. It's hard to equate waiting (for a change to come to you) with getting on a plane out of the country.

Also, what about line 5?

So I think a different interpretation is possible. I'm not at all sure what I'd do, though, apart from ask again.

I'd second Hilary's council.

Dear Laura,
I'm sorry this is out-of-date. Hilary said elsewhere 'Long live divergences of opinion '. I agree! Here's my divergent opinion on your consultation:

According to my small book, the Judgment of Hex 5; Waiting (Hsu) says: 'With sincerity, there will be brilliant success. With firmness there will be good fortune; and it will be advantageous to cross the great stream'. I read this as a cryptic way of saying: 'If you match the energy flows of the Dao, there will be brilliant success. For any moving Yang lines, there will be good fortune. It will be advantageous to go take the next step, or in your example, go travelling.

The Image of Hex 5 says: 'Clouds ascending to Heaven. The wise man eats and drinks, feasts and enjoys himself as if there were nothing else to employ him'. To help me, I read 'wise man' as a personification of 'wisdom'. And hence, that the Image & Lines of this particular hexagram are giving wisdom on eating, drinking, feasting etc... in other words giving wisdom on 'having fun'. My technique is then to try to somehow decode the phrases of the lines by inserting this 'cipher key' into the lines wherever the image word is mentioned. For this hex that means replacing 'waiting' with 'having fun'. (NB. This isn't an acknowledged technique as far as I know. This approach simply occurred to me one time as I was studying a hex. I wondered, since the Duke of Chou had developed both the Image and the Lines, if there might not be a closer correspondence. I have no idea if it has been explored.)

Thus, your moving line 4 would become: 'One is having fun in the place of blood. But one will get out of the cavern'. It's still cryptic, but might this be read as 'You are having inappropriate fun. But you will leave this behind'?

Equally, your moving line 5 would become: 'One is having fun amidst the trappings of a feast. Through firmness and correctness there will be good fortune'. That certainly sounds appropriate. I haven't begun to decipher the intent behind 'firmness and correctness' when they appear in the lines. (I can't spot any pattern. They appear all over the place). However, here Line 5 is indeed firm (Yang) and correct (Yang in the fifth place), so here I'd guess that your energy is in harmony with the Dao and you'll have good fortune.

All in all, if I'd answered at the time, I'd have said that this consultation was an auspicious one for your travel!

Hi Marcos

I might put it this way, one is having fun even though they are waiting in blood. The whole context implies among other things, not letting the depressing situation get the best of you. The last line shows that by not worrying about the situation, that is, not giving it energy, for what we focus on, we energize, we find the help we need at the last moment. #5 has an ounce of the idea of actual help from others or from more heavenly sources, while #9 has a connotation of natural events eventually come around, including the positive.

Gene