I Ching with Clarity

One of the strangest things about conversations with Yi is how immediately relatable most of its imagery is. Life is a journey; we walk our paths (Hexagram 24). We can be stressed and over-burdened to breaking point (Hexagram 28) - it's actually next-to impossible for us to talk or think about stress without using the same metaphor. We can stretch our imaginations a little to remember that, to the Yi's authors, horses are not only beautiful and fast, but the fastest things in the world and a vital military advantage. We may not know that tigers are guardians, or associated with the west, but we know about their teeth. So we can consult with this book written several millennia ago, in an unimaginably different culture, and more often than not, understand what it's saying.

Only… then there are the offerings.

Offerings in the Yijing

Even if you are reading Wilhelm/Baynes, there are plenty of them. 'One may use two small bowls for the sacrifice' in Hexagram 41; 'The neighbour in the east who slaughters an ox does not attain as much real happiness as the neighbour in the west with his small offering,' in 63.5, for instance.

And if you turn to one of the authors who sets out to reconstruct the original, Bronze Age meaning of the text - or someone like Karcher, who made these scholars' work accessible for modern divination - the offerings are everywhere. In Rutt's version, Hexagram 23 is flaying a ewe, Hexagram 31 is chopping up a human sacrifice, Hexagram 52 is 'cleaving' some unspecified victim joint by joint, there is blood gushing all over Hexagram 59, and every instance of 'truth and confidence' has turned into war captives, on their way to the sacrificial altar. The whole book starts to sound like a helpful manual for blood sacrifice.

Rutt intended his book as a scholarly translation, of course, not for use in divination. But Karcher, who certainly did write for modern diviners, translates heng ('success' in Wilhelm/Baynes) as, 'Make an offering and you will succeed.' What offering?

The idea of 'offerings' or 'sacrifice' seem to be what makes the oracle feel most remote from us, ancient and alien. We don't have feudal lords, but we do have networks of communication and helpers - we can understand their function and what fulfils that role for us. Most of us don't own cattle, but we all understand ownership, wealth and its attractions. Most of us don't make offerings… and there is no apparent modern equivalent to take their place.

So people look at 'make an offering and you will succeed' and wonder whether they literally need to start making offerings. Or read Stephen Field's translation of Hexagram 29 -
'There is a capture. Consider offering the heart in sacrifice. A trip will be rewarded.'
- and lament that they have already sacrificed their heart to this, and they've had enough!

Part of our problem here is the colloquial English meaning of 'sacrifice'. Consider…

'She sacrificed her family life for her career.'

or

'She sacrificed her career to support him.'

In either scenario, we understand that she suffered a loss, overall. A sacrifice - even if made for good reason - is something painful that makes you poorer.

This is not what offerings mean in the Yijing.

Offerings in ancient China

Offerings were of central importance to ancient China's rulers. Performing offerings and divinations, sustaining a living relationship with the spirits of his ancestors who would care for the people, might be the king's most important job. The calendar is defined by rituals.

The great feasts where the king would 'host' his ancestors were also festivals: the offering is cooked in the great ding vessel, the spirits are nourished by the fragrant steam, and people gather to enjoy the spirits' leftovers. This is what I imagine with Hexagram 45: the offering as a shared social experience, reinforcing the bonds (to one another, to place, to ancestors) that unite people.

There may not be a perfect modern analogue for this, but we can see a connection with our own gatherings, big or small - from sporting fixtures to Christmas dinner - where we participate in shared traditions and remember the dead.

This points to a vital role of offerings: they create connection and relationship - not least among people. There are even a couple of instances in the Yijing where an 'offering' can be interpreted as being made to another human being - 47.2.5, maybe 14.3. We can certainly use the concept of offerings that way in our own readings. Open-source software is a modern offering; so are those apples left out by the roadside just up the road from me, with a sign asking, 'Please take some.' We're all in this together, say the offerings; let's help one another.

Offerings made to the spirits of nature or ancestors say very much the same thing. If you make a sacrifice to the mountain spirits, you are expressing your confidence that they will respond. I don't think you would imagine that you were making yourself poorer.

My modern prejudices are telling me that if you expect something in return for your offering, this somehow cheapens it. But I think my modern prejudices are missing the point. An offering isn't purely transactional, quid pro quo; it's shared. You are sharing your meal with the winds and mountains - or the winds and mountains are sharing their meal with you. If anything, the offering is a celebration of how you are part of a single ecosystem of mutual support.

Only someone wholly immersed in the circulating flow of energy, giving and receiving, could make this kind of offering. And being part of this cycle of goodwill, that circulates through offerings, rain and harvest, is not optional. If the crops fail, you can't step outside the cycle and order a supermarket delivery instead.

Ancient offerings, modern readings

So… a few 'offerings' in readings will be obvious in the context (cooking a meal, giving a concert…). For the many that aren't obvious, it might help to think of an offering as a way of nourishing, investing in and (re-)creating a relationship.

We can think of it in terms of human relationship to start with. Love is a verb. How much can you give? How fully and wholeheartedly will you participate?

Or to put it another way - what are you prepared to spend? Spending our resources for someone or something - time, energy, attention, not just money - is an offering. You might make offerings for your creative work, or for your children - not as an abstract decision, but in your daily actions.

“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run …”

Henry David Thoreau

I also think it's important that an offering is a ritual. As a ritual, it may or may not involve incense and candles, but it certainly involves attention. So when a reading invites me to make an offering, I need to become conscious and deliberate about what I'm giving and how that works: what does it create, what is it part of? (How does it 'create success'?) Whatever I'm doing can become more intentional. There's more than one way of cooking supper.

The Book of Rites says,

“Sacrifice is not a thing coming to a man from without; it issues from within him, and has its birth in his heart. When the heart is deeply moved, expression is given to it by ceremonies; and hence, only men of ability and virtues can give complete expression to the idea of sacrifices.”

Liji, the Book of Rites, Legge translation.

It's also interesting to reflect on how divination and offerings were originally part of the same ceremony. People would often divine to ask what would be a fitting offering. With an expanded idea of an offering as conscious spending, deliberately nourishing relationship… many of our readings now might be doing the same. We're still asking what to do, what to bring, how to participate… what to offer.

I Ching Community discussion

Chinese tigers

Tigers have been prowling through Chinese thought and folklore for many thousands of years. Their meaning is interesting: not just wildness and danger, though of course they might eat you, but also courage and protection against evil - from the wild boar that would eat your crops, and also from demons and evil spirits. Lindqvist writes,

'There are a great many tales about tigers, or rather tigresses, saving people from evil forces and giving their milk to abandoned infants, much like the story of Romulus and Remus and the she-wolf of Rome.'

Small children wore caps or shoes depicting tigers for protection; warriors had tigers on their shields. They also adopted tiger shields and skins to share in the tiger's power and ferocity: 'tiger' was a term of respect for military leaders. And there is the mysterious motif of Chinese bronzes, showing a human figure, quite peaceful, in the tiger's mouth. As far as I'm aware, no-one knows what these represent. The best guess is that they have shamanic significance - passing through the tiger's mouth into a new realm.

Yijing tigers

The tiger appears in three places in the Yijing. First in Hexagram 10 -

'Treading a tiger's tail.
It does not bite people.
Creating success.'

and also in its third and fourth lines:

'With one eye, can see.
Lame, can still walk.
Treads on the tiger's tail:
It bites him. Pitfall.
Soldier acting as a great leader.'
'Treading the tiger's tail.
Pleading, pleading,
Good fortune in the end.'

Then towards the centre of the whole book, in Hexagram 27, line 4:

'Unbalanced nourishment,
Good fortune.
Tiger watches, glares and glares.
Chases and chases his desires.
No mistake.'

And finally, triumphantly, in the fifth line of Hexagram 49, Radical Change:

'Great person transforms like a tiger.
Even before the augury, there is truth and confidence.'

Introducing the tiger: Hexagram 10

The oldest representation of a Chinese tiger is in a burial, where the body is flanked by figures outlined in shells: a dragon to the east, a tiger to the west.

This is at least 5,000 years old - and the positions of dragon and tiger to east and west are those known to feng shui tradition. Tigers are the counterpart of dragons, part of the binary of earth and heaven, female and male, that eventually became yin and yang.

The Yi begins with the flight of the dragon through Hexagram 1. Then Hexagram 2 (where the dragons also show up in line 6) says,

'Fruitful in the south and west, gaining partners.
In the east and north, losing partners.'

Each point of the compass has its corresponding trigram in the Later Heaven Bagua (which, confusingly, is the oldest arrangement):

The east and north, where you lose partners, are zhen and kan, the constituent trigrams of the very next hexagram, 3, Sprouting. The south is li, fire, which appears for the first time in Hexagram 13, People in Harmony - gaining partners! And west is dui, lake, which appears for the first time in Hexagram 10.

So the tiger appears in the west, just as it did in the Neolithic burial. It stands opposite the dragon of Hexagram 1, just as it has always done, and we have travelled all the way across from Hexagram 3 to reach it. And… could we gain it as a partner?

'Treading a tiger's tail.
It does not bite people.
Creating success.'

You know I like to ask the most simple-minded questions I can come up with about hexagrams and readings (and I can come up with some really simple minded ones!). For instance, why would anyone want to tread on, or near, a tiger's tail? If it bites, you're cat food. Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to go quickly and quietly in the opposite direction?

The combination of those tiger associations - courage, protection, balance for dragon-powers - with reading experience helps to answer the question. People want to get closer to the tiger so they can share in its power and vitality. I've seen this refer to experiences from asking the boss for a raise to visiting a sacred place full of spiritual power. It's about connecting with power, not just as pure idea or inspiration, but here in the real world. So we dance with something that might swallow us whole; we need to Tread with care, to observe the correct rituals -

'Things are tamed, and then there are the rituals. And so Treading follows.'

Sometimes, too, Hexagram 10 can simply be a warning that there is a tiger much closer than you thought: a big, fierce spirit, something you really shouldn't tread on by mistake.

That comes through especially in the two moving lines with the tiger - lines 3 and 4, what's known as the 'human position' in a hexagram - its awkward centre, where we try to bridge the gulf between heaven and earth, ideal and implementation, and don't always manage it. Changing together, these two lines look back to paired hexagram 9, Small Tending. That's a time for careful, small-scale cultivation, preparing the ground, becoming ready to receive the Mandate of Heaven, but not ready yet.

Treading's Small Tending:

'With one eye, can see.
Lame, can still walk.
Treads on the tiger's tail:
It bites him. Pitfall.
Soldier acting as a great leader.'
'Treading the tiger's tail.
Pleading, pleading,
Good fortune in the end.'

Both lines need to be careful: the very first thing to know about the tiger is that this could eat you. It looks like there are two ways this could go: will you be bitten, or blessed? The difference between the two has a lot to do with their zhi gua, the hexagram each line changes to.

Line 3 is not up to the tiger's challenge, though it imagines differently. The 'small image' commentary on the line says,

'"The one-eyed may still see" but not well enough to achieve clarity. "The lame may still tread" but not well enough to keep up. The misfortune of being bitten here is due to one's being unsuited for the position involved. "A warrior tries to pass himself off as a great sovereign" because his will knows nothing but hardness and strength.'

(R.J. Lynn's translation)

This line changes to Hexagram 1 - it has altogether too much dragon energy. It's full of beautiful ideas, but lacks the capacity to live with them, embody them, in practice, and is about to get a nasty reality check.

Line 4 is just beginning to create a better relationship with the tiger, 'pleading and pleading', and this could be the beginning of good fortune (which is coming 'in the end', not right away). There is a powerful, fierce spirit here - maybe protective, certainly not rational. Sometimes it's someone else's, sometimes it belongs to the questioner; either way, it needs approaching with extreme care, and with complete presence of mind.

That presence of mind is found in the relating hexagram for the line: 61, Inner Truth. 'Pleading, pleading' is the voice of inner truth: present, wholly connected between heaven and earth, trusting, vulnerable.

Through the tiger's mouth: Hexagram 27

The tiger's next appearance - and the one that's most powerfully reminiscent of those mysterious bronzes - is in the fourth line of Hexagram 27, Nourishment or Jaws:

'Unbalanced nourishment,
Good fortune.
Tiger watches, glares and glares.
Chases and chases its desires.
No mistake.'

This line changes to Hexagram 21. Who could be better at Biting Through than the tiger? Scott Davis looked back to the fan yao, 21.4 changing to 27, and suggested the 'dried bony meat' of that line is being fed to the tiger, swallowed by the Jaws. For him, this is part of the transformation of boy to young man, passing through the tiger's mouth in initiation.

Also, the line change here creates the trigram li, which represents fire, light and vision, for the tiger 'watching, glaring, glaring'.

This is nourishment that's 'unbalanced' - toppling over, overthrown. It seems quite odd that this should mean 'good fortune': isn't balance and harmony the goal? But the tiger is not looking for balance; it's 'chasing, chasing its desires'. The components of this Chinese word 逐 zhu, chasing, show a foot on the road after a pig - the tiger's desires aren't ambiguous or complicated.

The glaring, chasing tiger means good fortune, not something we should stop, second-guess or try to moderate. The hunger of Hexagram 27 joins with the resolve of Hexagram 21: know what you want, go after what you need, bite through the obstacles. There's more to life than balance.

You can see that a transformation is underway here, compared with the propitiatory caution of Hexagram 10. The natural way to respond to this line, I've always found, is to start to identify with the tiger, experience the intensity of your own desires and be less afraid of them. Good fortune; no mistake.

Becoming the tiger: Hexagram 49

The tiger's appeared at a third line (bad news) and two fourth lines (better…), and now emerges at a fifth line, the place of autonomy and choice:

'Great person transforms like a tiger.
Even before the augury, there is truth and confidence.'

Here as in Hexagram 10, it's in the western, lake trigram - but now in its central line, and the transformation is complete. This tiger is not an external force that might devour you; the great person is making a tiger change of their own.

What exactly is happening here? Tradition says this one is showing their leadership quality, revealing the moral authority to bring about change. Lynn quotes Kong Yingda:

'Such a one may adjust the ways of former kings and establish laws on his own initiative. There is with him such beauty in the manifestation of culture that it scintillates and commands attention. In this he resembles a tiger changing [into its rich, luxuriant winter coat], whose patterns shine forth with great brilliance.'

The great person has fu, truth and confidence, before the augury - the same fu that fed into 10.4 from its connection to Hexagram 61. For us this is two concepts: being confident/trusting, and being trusted/ inspiring confidence. Bradford Hatcher evokes both: 'The tiger does not need to seek out the oracle to ask about his timing… he does not need to worry if others will believe him.' But the Chinese fu is a single idea: complete connection to spirit, bringing the Mandate of Heaven frictionlessly down to earth and into practice, inspiring confidence all the way along.

This line changes to Hexagram 55, Abundance, Feng, where heavenly signs communicate the Mandate, and the leader must act with decision. Hexagram 55 is formed of the trigrams of thunder and fire, initiative and insight - as is Hexagram 21, created by the change of 27.4. (And 49's trigrams? Fire and lake: south and west, where you gain partners.)

This quality of fu also reminds me of the man in the tiger's mouth from the bronzes, both confiding and confident. The great person starts to look like a shaman, putting on the tiger's essence with its skin (Hexagram 49's name also means skinning) and travelling through to another world. (The trigram dui also means opening, creating a way through.)

The 'tiger transformation' in readings is an the experience of being filled with ferocious courage and confidence, becoming your own oracle. I've received this line a couple of times when I asked what I could give someone by reading for them, and always understood it as a good sign.

Yet it's also one of those profoundly, startlingly morally neutral lines. As your tiger-self, you are the ruler of your own destiny, clear and single-minded (just as much as 27.4); your influence shines out as bright as your stripes. The tiger goes his own way, and never has to consider anything or anyone else.

A story?

I think I can see the outline of a story here - one of clarifying the relationship of dragon and tiger, creative spirit and a courage to act that responds to it, like the lake reflecting heaven in Hexagram 10. This relationship flows through fu: centred connection, truth, trust and confidence, the open channel through which spirit and inspiration can flow through into action.

Hexagram 10 begins to open the connection, with cautious treading, rituals to learn, alignment to create. Just drawing directly on the ideals and inspirations of dragon-mind - 10.3 changing to 1 - is not enough; we need Inner Truth and open-hearted pleading.

Then comes the central passage through the Jaws of Hexagram 27, where receiving line 4 encourages you to look inside yourself for the tiger.

And finally the tiger transformation at the peak of Radical Change - where the only tiger present is the great person - putting on the tiger as a new self and creating the right relationship of heaven and earth.

I Ching Community discussion

That's something I asked Yi recently, and it answered with Hexagram 23, Stripping Away, changing at lines 1 and 6 to 24, Returning -

I think this is a lovely, fascinating, satisfying reading, so I'm sharing a few thoughts on it with you for this episode of the podcast. I hope you enjoy it!

(If you'd like to have a free reading on the podcast, you're very welcome to book one here.)

An update…

Just after publishing this episode, I was sorting through some foraged chestnuts when I found the one whose photograph you can see above. I didn't roast it; I'm going to take it with me on my next foraging walk to the local woods and tuck it into the leaf litter.

Would you like some help developing a relaxed, confident relationship with the Yijing? Something robust, so you know you can turn to the oracle and get the message you need to hear in the moment?

We have a class for that 😉 . Places in the Yijing Foundations Class are available now - you can sign up here - and we start on September 21st. That's quite soon, so if you're interested please peruse the page, ask me whatever you need to know, and jump in if you'd like to join us.

The essentials in brief:

• live Zoom classes on Sundays at 7pm in the UK, which you can check in your own timezone here, through to the end of the year.
• call recordings and a private class forum to ensure you can still participate to the full when you have to miss the odd Sunday.
• the Yijing Foundations Course - pdf, audio and video formats, covering all the essentials from finding your question through connecting with ancient imagery to making sense of multiple moving lines.

For more information please see the Class page!

I have more ways to explore how the text of the reading paints a picture that could speak to my question. I ask bolder questions with less fear. I have more fun. Also, I've loved hearing experiences, thoughts, and ideas from fellow classmates, and I really appreciate all the thought and story and humor and wisdom you bring to the class!"

(from Megan Sukys, who took Foundations last time.)

Brian asked,

"Why am I compelled to leave my job and join Greenpeace?"

and Yi responded with Hexagram 18, 'Work on what has been spoiled' in the Wilhelm/Baynes translation he was consulting.

This was in 1982: we’re revisiting the reading and learning from it, 43 years on.

Things we mention...

The 'entangled pair' - both inverse and complementary - of hexagrams 17 and 18:

And the nuclear story of Hexagram 18, passing through hexagrams 28, 54 and 27, which you can build from all its component trigrams:

And not least the I Ching Foundations Class - starting soon, see www.onlineClarity.co.uk/class !

Robbers show up a few times in the Yijing. In 4.6 you're advised to ward off robbers, not act like one; in 5.3 and 40.3 you're in danger of inviting them; in 53.3, once again, it's useful to ward them off. There are also three lines (3.2, 22.4, 38.6) where you need to realise that you're looking at potential marital allies and not robbers at all.

All these instances use the same word for 'robbers': 寇 kou. It's a broader word than any English equivalent: not just robbers, but all those who take what they want by force: bandits, brigands, invaders, and outlaws and trouble-makers of all kinds. Ancient versions of the character are written with a hand holding a stick, meaning 'to strike', and someone's head, all under a roof. Robbers attack you in your home.

And in readings? I've been lucky enough so far not to encounter a completely literal interpretation of these lines. But it is always clear what robbers do: they take away what's yours (or what you thought was yours, like a promotion or relationship). Some robbers are other people; some - a lot of them - are psychological forces, stealing away confidence, security, autonomy, energy…

Inviting robbers

In 5.3 and 40.3, the robbers might not be here yet: they're being invited. The lines are quite explicit about this: waiting in the mud, or shouldering a burden while riding in a carriage, 'invite robbers'. The verb zhi, 'invite', also means to incite, provoke, bring about, summon… all pretty clear… so what are we doing, and how can we not do it?

5.3 zhi 60

'Waiting in the mud
Invites the arrival of robbers.'

I've written about this line a couple of times before: about waiting in mud, and about 60 as relating hexagram, exploring the question of how and why we're asking for trouble at this line. We're stuck: the word for 'bog' or 'mud' also means obstinacy, being opinionated, being infatuated, blocking up, and gluing.

As for Hexagram 60, I think this says the line's dealing with issues of Measure. You might need more Measure - better boundaries, clearer limits - or you might need to commit yourself to this river crossing, not get bogged down in rationalisations. Lots more on this in the earlier post.

We wait trustingly for what we need to come to us ('If I stare at this screen for long enough, I'll become productive' or 'If I put my life on hold and trust him to resolve his emotional issues, he'll leave his wife for me') and it gets harder and harder to move. But what kind of trouble are we asking for, exactly?

If we wait here long enough, the robbers that show up may be people ready to take advantage, or just to race past us and ahead, claiming something (like a promotion) we thought was in the bag. Or we may simply find that the passage of time, entropy and decay steals away our energy.

It's worth noticing that the robbers are lurking around line 3 - here and in Hexagrams 40 and 53, while in Hexagram 4, they're in the third line of the upper trigram. Why might that be?

Line 3's just coming to the threshold between inner and outer worlds, where you and your ideas are about to meet reality for the first time. (Lines 3 can have a teenaged feel to them: idealistic, pushing the boundaries, not wholly realistic.) So perhaps there's an element here of, 'Welcome to the real world, where people may attack you and take things you thought you owned. It's a lot bigger than you thought.'

And more generally - robbers come from the outside - they invade. As we approach the margins, start thinking about going outside, we get closer to the dangers out there. This is no place to make yourself vulnerable.

40.3 zhi 32

'Shouldering a burden while also riding in a carriage
Invites the arrival of bandits.
Constancy, shame.'

Again - making yourself vulnerable, asking for trouble. But… how, exactly?

Wilhelm says this is an upstart: a common man who 'tries to take his ease in comfortable surroundings that do not suit his nature'. I think it's both subtler and simpler than that - funnier, too. This one's comfortably ensconced in the carriage, yet still shouldering his burden, as if he hasn't quite understood that he's free to put it down.

That ties in with the relating hexagram for this line, 32, Lasting: conditions have changed (40, Release) but his own nature endures (32), and so does the baggage-carrying habit.

This is one of the lines that's described in depth in the Dazhuan, the Great Treatise - tradition says by Confucius, Stephen Karcher said by an unnamed master diviner. I like Karcher's idea better, as I think these comments do have the ring of someone extemporising with a querent, perhaps emphasising a relevant aspect of the line. Here's what they have to say about 40.3, in Rutt's translation:

"Carrying a pack is common folk's work; chariots are noblemen's vehicles.
If a common man takes over a nobleman's vehicle, thieves will be tempted to steal it from him.
If superiors are slack and inferiors unruly, thieves will plan to attack.
Careless opulence tempts thieves, as artful make-up excites lust."

That certainly suggests the 'upstart' idea, but - again - I think there's more to it. After all, ancient China actually valued meritocracy more highly than inherited entitlements: there are many legendary stories of common people being raised to high office, over the heads of those who were merely high-born, because of their wisdom and virtue. So I think this is less about getting above your allotted station, and more to do with not being capable of fulfilling your responsibilities or realising the potential in your situation. Hence the diviner's next example, about the careless ruler, who was probably born to his position. What does he have in common with the poor man in the carriage? Only that he's unfit for his role.

This mismatch seems to be key. If the king is not fit to govern, the country is weakened and invaders will take advantage. A lottery winner may soon be parted from their wealth. A company will attract hostile takeover bids if would-be investors think it's undervalued because its assets could be better used. The one in charge (of the carriage, the country, the wealth, the company…) is not really in charge - they don't fully comprehend what they have, sotheir grip on it is insecure.

What kind of robbers does this attract? Invaders, hostile takeovers, scammers… all are possible, of course. But my own (obviously limited and incomplete) experience of this line so far has been of robbers that were a latent potential within the situation, brought out by a desire to shoulder far too much responsibility.

So I've had this line when I was being cared for as if by divine providence, or just carried along in a situation I couldn't control at all (someone else was driving the carriage!), yet still trying to take on responsibility for the outcome - so that every twist and turn became another robber, preying on my peace of mind.

And I've seen it describe the stress and strife created within a small group when work they would happily have got done by themselves was micromanaged to the n-th degree. Again - you can't carry all this, you don't need to, it will work better if you don't try, and if you keep on trying anyway you can expect chaos and loss.

So I was happy to find that Dobro in the I Ching Community had formed a similar idea of the line - that the point is to 'recognise what's doing the carrying here'. 'The line images,' he wrote, 'for instance, somebody thinking they have agency and exercising that agency when actually there's a deeper force that does a better job of it if you just let it.'

Warding off robbers

In 4.6 and 53.3, it's not enough to avoid inviting robbers: we need to ward them off. The word used here is 禦 yu, which means to defend against, prevent, repel an attack, secure an area… and a sacrifice made to petition an ancestor or spirit to avert disaster. The signific (most meaningful) component of the character is 示 shi, which originally meant an ancestral spirit-tablet.

This is a clear opposite of 'inviting' robbers, but with added overtones of a ritual warding-off. It's interesting that this word occurs each time at the top line of gen, mountain, which can be imagined as a protective covering - at least until it changes and opens…

Advice to ward off robbers seems quite similar to a warning against inviting them, but in practice the difference seems to be that these robbers are already present. Things have already gone wrong - there is already violence or loss, and perhaps there's a temptation to cut our losses and stop trying. But no: it's fruitful to ward off robbers.

4.6 zhi 7

'Striking the ignoramus.
Fruitless to act as a robber,
Fruitful to ward off robbers.'

This is our introduction to robbers - their first appearance in the book. So it's interesting that we begin with a clear choice: join them, or defend against them. Robbers are not just what comes from the outside: you could act like one yourself.

Why would anyone 'strike the ignoramus'? By line 6, the feeling is, you should be leaving the hexagram behind - and 6th lines can often play the role of sage or mentor. So it makes sense that this line feels like it's time to leave ignorance behind. Some students can't be told and must be shown.

Also, 4.6 changes to Hexagram 7, the Army, with its single-pointed focus on fixing the problem and making progress. (And the name of Hexagram 7 also means a master or teacher.) That infuses the line with a drive to sort this out now, ensure ignorance won't get in the way of progress.

When gen, mountain, is the outer trigram, it can have the feel of a protective covering - and meng, the name of this hexagram, also means 'covered' vision. So as the solid upper line of gen changes and opens, the student's vision might be cleared, but they also become more exposed. Ignorance is no longer protected; it has consequences. (This is the one instance where robbers are a problem at line 6, not line 3 - but it has that same 'welcome to the real world' feeling.)

So it might be time to strike the ignoramus. Traditional interpreters were perfectly comfortable with the idea of corporal punishment, of course, within limits. We might think of a martial arts master who needs to show an over-confident student the weaknesses in their defence - how would they do that? Or more generally, of any teacher who sets out to puncture their student's bubble so they realise how much they don't know.

At this point, it would be easy for the teacher to act like a robber. The martial arts master could take advantage of their own skills and the student's ignorance to inflict serious injury; any teacher is well-placed to make their student feel defenceless and exposed, and steal away their confidence.

And, of course, we don't need a teacher for this; we can do it to ourselves with self-criticism. 'You still can't do it, after all this time? You're an idiot. You'll never get it.' The robber is inside the home and clobbering you with a big stick. This never made anyone less ignorant.

It can still pay to be forceful, though, in warding off robbers. Wang Bi (as quoted by RJ Lynn) says,

"Juvenile Ignorance wishes to be alleviated, and Top Yang itself wishes to strike at it and drive it away. As this meets the wishes of those above and those below [all the yin lines], none fails to comply. If one were to provide protection for them, then all would attach themselves to him, but to try to take them over by force would make them all rebel. Thus the text says, 'It is not fitting to engage in harassment; it is fitting to guard against harassment.'"

Everything about this hexagram wants to learn, to end ignorance; provide protection, make it safe, and everything/ everyone will support you. Hence the commentary on the line, 'those above and those below will all comply.'

It's not so hard to apply this to individual psychology. If success proves my intelligence and failure would prove I'm an idiot, I'd better not try anything where I might fail. But if you can drive off those robbers, make it possible for me to learn without the fear of loss - that could bear fruit.

53.3 zhi 20

'The wild geese gradually progress to the high plateau.
The husband marches out and does not return,
The wife is pregnant, but does not raise the child.
Pitfall.
Fruitful to resist robbers.'

Here's another line at the top of the mountain trigram, feeling exposed and vulnerable out on this high, windswept plain. That protectively-covering yang line is opening, the home is left undefended by the husband's absence, and the child is not nurtured, perhaps not even carried to term. It's not that either spouse is a robber - he didn't ask to be conscripted, after all - but their marital agreement is already breaking down, they are already suffering loss… the robbers won't be far away.

Then again, Wang Bi's version is far more scurrilous:

"The husband has set forth but does not return and takes delight in a licentious relationship. As such, the wife here also cannot maintain her constancy. It is not her own husband who gets her with child, so she does not raise it."

My experiences with this line have never been quite so exciting - they just seem to involve abandoned responsibilities. A community left without a leader, 'abandonware' software left without a developer, relationships where one partner isn't present or available - that kind of thing.

Hexagram 20, Seeing, sets the context: it can be both the issue, when people are too distanced, washing their hands of the daily work needed to keep things going, and also what's needed, to see both the robbers creeping up to the fence, and the positive potential in the situation that's still worth defending against them.

What will these robbers steal, if they get in? Whatever has been left abandoned, unheld or undefended: bullies take over in the community power vacuum; incompatibilities and hacks make abandonware unusable; neglected relationships become insecure (maybe Wang Bi had a point?). Unchallenged, the robbers steal away stability, security, and any chance to rebuild.

Robbers in readings

Things you might look out for, questions you might ask, when Yi warns of robbers…

• what could you lose?
• where are you vulnerable?
• where (or who or what) are the robbers?

And if you're in danger of inviting robbers, what are you doing to make yourself more vulnerable, and how can you stop? There could still be time to get out of the bog, put down the burden, or just get out of the carriage and slow down. Or if it's fruitful to ward off robbers, how can you restore a sense of safety?

I Ching Community discussion