A while ago - as participants in our weekly Well Gatherings will know - I asked Yi what to write about on this blog, and received Hexagram 37, People in the Home, changing at lines 1, 2, 5 and 6 to 46, Pushing Upward. It's a rich reading that works on a lot of layers, and one of those is the idea of writing about how we create a 'family' relationship with Yi - bringing it inside the home, letting it become 'part of the furniture' of everyday life.

So here are some thoughts prompted by line 1:

Setting boundaries to create a home

'With barriers, there is a home. Regrets vanish.'

Hexagram 37, line 1

Barriers create a home. The Chinese word for 'barriers', xian, shows wood between two doors, suggesting that you're barring the entry. It's a very simple concept: a home has an inside and an outside, created by the barrier between them.

This reminds me of the importance of setting boundaries for your readings - drawing a line around them, knowing what belongs inside and what doesn't. Within that boundary, you can be at home. As LiSe puts it, 'Whatever happens, you will never be lost in a big hostile world.'

Any regrets, I think, would be about all the things you left outside. There can be lots of second-guessing around this, 'fear of missing out', or just a faintly guilty worry that perhaps you should be asking about something else - maybe something bigger. But within the home space you've created, this will pass.

Bradford Hatcher's comments on this line are worth reading:

'This might seem to ignore several sources of warmth, to lack in affection, or to curb spontaneous feeling. There are mistakes and regrets. But this gives each household member a firm patch of ground to stand on, and much can be done on a patch of firm ground. Even an unlimited branch must pick a direction to grow in. Rules are only a place to begin.'

Bradford Hatcher, Book of Changes

I especially appreciate that last point - rules are only a place to begin. For that reason, I reckon it's a good idea to revisit one's reading rules - at least those that are more like habits - from time to time. After all, the nuclear hexagram of 37 is 64, Not Yet Across. The Home, at its heart, is always being rebuilt.

What kind of barriers, or boundaries, or rules?

In other words... when do you consult, and why and how, and what will or won't you ask about? This is a personal question, so all I can do is tell you about the barriers that safeguard my own relationship with Yi.

• I try only to cast readings that will make a difference for me. (Unless, that is, I'm just playing .)
• I don't ask 'mind-reading' questions unless they're in support of an existing relationship, and I'm as sure as I can be that the other person would want me to know.

(And then I have rules about what I will and won't get involved in when reading for others - but that's a different issue, outside the Home.)

Really, these barriers draw a circle around what's my business, making a home for readings. Some readings, like questions about politics or global issues, naturally fall on the outside. Not that there's anything wrong (in my book) with those readings on the outside - done out of sheer curiosity, hoping to learn something about Yi in the process. It's just that, for the most part, I live on the inside.

Here are the last half-dozen readings in my journal -

• What needs doing?
• What about trying oils?
• What if I buy x?
• How to deal with exhaustion and demotivation?
• Prognosis? [asking about a family member in hospital]
• How can I be supportive now?

The 'prognosis' reading was outside my usual walls. After all, even if I knew beyond any doubt exactly what was going to happen (which is not how this works...), what difference would it make now? None that I can see.

And as it turns out, this reading was the least helpful of the lot: it simply showed me the risks, factors and possibilities I already knew about. So I had second thoughts, went back inside my four walls with Yi, and asked how to be supportive. That helped.

Every article and every commercial email nowadays says something about 'these challenging times' or 'these uncertain times'. And of course, we know an oracle for that: Yi is made for challenging, uncertain, bewildering times when none of our normal responses or resources is helping.

Talking with Yi lately, and seeing other people's readings in the I Ching Community, I'm reminded that while this may be our first pandemic, it isn't Yi's. I actually find it obscurely comforting that Yi has such a store of clear, apt language to describe our experience now.

There's been plenty of Hexagram 51, unsurprisingly, lots of Hexagram 59 to describe what's happening to everyone's plans, some Hexagram 5 for advice ('the noble one eats, drinks and relaxes with music'!)... and then there's Hexagram 20 on hand washing (though 20.2 - 'peeping through the crack in the door' - was maybe a bit too apt for comfort), 29.4 about the need to isolate, 55.6 about people's reluctance to go 'back to normal' after lockdown, and so on.

Still, despite all this, I've been finding it strangely hard to know what to ask. On the one hand, what I felt I wanted to know couldn't be clearer: when will this end? But there are a couple of problems with that...

In the first place, the traditional Yijing isn't one for giving dates: normally, you might ask how things would develop within a named timeframe, or - the option I prefer - how you'll recognise the time for x to happen. (Here's a reading along those lines about when this'll be over - nicely demonstrating the problem, I think.)

And secondly, I normally prefer to ask with the intention that my reading will change something. Unless I'm just playing, this feels to me like the way I express basic respect for the oracle: if I seek an answer from you, that's because I'm willing and ready to change my actions, approach or mindset in response. And obviously, when this ends is not something I can change.

So... I needed to do some digging to find a true question, and I'd recommend this to anyone who's grappling with the same awkward desire for Yi to make the uncertainty go away. (Not how it works...) What helped me was dogged persistence filling in the blank in, 'I need to know this so I can...'.

I found it was always 'I need to know so I'll have a better way to approach or think about x' (things like food supply, or online relationships). Once I'd realised, 'Ah - once I get clear about that, I'll be able to calm down,' I knew what to ask - and, yes, the readings made a difference.

Let me make an attempt to sum that up in a usable sort of format...

As the Dazhuan says, 'Those who composed Yi knew suffering and sorrow.' The oracle was made for times like these; it will help. And giving some thought to what we ask will make its help stronger and more readily available.

• Ask yourself first, what difference do I want this reading to make?
• Before you ask, try filling in the blank in, 'I need to know this so I can…'.
• Or turn that around, and look for the places where you could breathe more freely if only you knew how to approach them, or just had some idea of what you were doing!
• See if this shows you a much simpler, more direct question you can ask. (Like 'How can I manage my energy?' or 'How can I help reduce tension inside these four walls?')

🤗

It seems like a good time to provide another way for people to connect and help one another with/through Yijing readings. So I'll be hosting 'Well Gatherings' - an hour of chat and sharing readings - via Zoom each Monday for the next month or so.

Who it's for

Normally, meetings like this are just for Change Circle members, but these are for everyone in Change Circle or WikiWing. That way we limit it to people who are genuinely interested in the Yi (probably a good idea in these days of 'Zoombombing') but cost won't be a barrier. If you'd like to join but are short of funds, just sign up for WikiWing and I'll email you the link on the day.

When

Mondays at 6pm UK time, starting next week on April 6th. Click here to see what that is in your own timezone. I don't know how long the calls will continue for, but at least until the end of April.

Where

Zoom video chat. A month ago I'd have needed to explain what that is... probably not so much now, right? I've been using it for classes since before they were famous; it works beautifully and is nice and easy to use.

I'll email the room link to WikiWing and Change Circle members each Monday.

To share a reading

(Only if you're definitely coming to the next call, please!)

See this forum thread for what to post, and add a link!

These are called 'Well Gatherings' because of Yi's answer when I asked, 'What about this idea?' - Hexagram 48 line 6, changing to 57:

'The well gathers,
Don't cover it.
There is truth and confidence,
Good fortune from the source.'

Hexagram 48, line 6

Hexagram 12 is called Pi 否 - Blocked, Standstill, Stasis, Negation. It encapsulates the experience of being denied and stymied. The noble one's constancy bears no fruit: despite your best, most creative efforts, it just isn't happening.

The Sequence into this one is (as so often) quite enigmatic:

'Things cannot end with flowing together, and so Blocked follows.'

Hexagram 12, Xugua

Yes, but why can't things end with flowing together? Hexagram 11, Flow, with everything in sync and working smoothly, seems like a perfectly balanced, sustainable state of affairs. Why should it be superseded by this hampering and frustration?

I've always had the feeling the answer to this lay somewhere in the nuclear hexagram of 12: 53, Gradual Development, with its Image of the tree on the mountain, growing immensely slowly. Could being blocked and slowed down this way somehow make for stronger growth?

In his lovely book, The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben explains how a sapling just a few yards high, one that looks to be ten years old at most, could actually be over eighty.

This is because the parent tree, in whose shade it grows, is absorbing about 97% of the available sunlight with its dense canopy of leaves. The tiny trickle of light remaining isn't enough for the sapling to grow; it can only survive.

So at once I think of 'Heaven and earth do not interact' in the Image, and the young plant that can't see the sky and liberate its full potential for growth. Here's a perfect picture of being Blocked and unable to make progress.

But then comes the eye-opening information. This comprehensive shading and 'blocking' by the parent tree is actually known as upbringing. It makes for robust, sturdy saplings, because they form tiny woody cells with very little air. The small cell size makes them more flexible, less likely to break in storms; the density makes them more resistant to fungal infection and better able to heal wounds from browsing deer.

Trees - like those in artificial plantations - that grow freely in full light from the start have a much shorter life-expectancy.

And this is why trees, at least, need Hexagram 12.

Divination means we're connected. It demonstrates that there's no such thing as 'isolation': the cosmos has 100% uptime. You can toss three coins six times, any time, to experience its absolute connectivity.

Yi's connection works, as it always has, through imagery. It doesn't just talk (though it certainly does that, too): it shows. Imagery is how rapport with the oracle happens - how we experience our answer rather than just 'interpreting' it. I think it's to do with feeling seen and recognised.

I planned this Sunday's 'Connecting with Imagery' workshop back when connection and 'feeling seen' seemed relatively commonplace. I'm particularly glad, now, to be running it.

An example

Clarity is continuing with 'business as usual', more or less, since it all happens online anyway. (I am so grateful for the advances in technology that make this feasible. Anyone who remembers the first Clarity webinars in 2005 will know what I mean!)

But the local club for stroke survivors, where I took over as leader this past January, is naturally not experiencing 'business as usual', since our members are generally over 70 and in less-than-perfect health. We're closed down for the duration... however long that is.

At our last in-person meeting, I suggested we could meet via Zoom video chat, and was met with a resounding dearth of enthusiasm and cries of 'I'm not that techie.' But since now there's a requirement for months of social isolation, I reckon I should go ahead and do my best to make this happen for people.

I've asked Yi how best to continue - how to lead and help the Club through coronavirus season.

Yi answered with Hexagram 22, Beauty, changing at lines 4 and 5 to 13, People in Harmony.

It's a lovely reading that I'll be drawing on for months to come, but for now, since this post's about the gifts of imagery, lets focus in on just one...

'Beautiful like pure white,
Like a soaring white horse.
Not a robber, but a marital ally.'

Hexagram 22, line 4

A soaring white horse?

Now, I'd say I know what this line 'means' in general, but I was very far from seeing what it was telling me here, so I started in with the Really Obvious Questions. (Much more on these on Sunday!)

What's a horse?

A big, strong animal, bigger and stronger than you, that will help you move things, allow you to travel further and faster, treasured for its speed, power and beauty. Handling one without getting kicked and bitten is a tricky, skilled job.

And a white one?

Perhaps an especially beautiful horse, valued for show and formal occasions? Like a wedding, of course. This one seems to be part of a procession to fetch the bride, so it's meant to be particularly showy and attractive: all part of the display the groom puts on to demonstrate that he's 'Not a robber, but a marital ally.'

What's a robber?

Someone who harms you, steals from you. An outlaw, outside the law, someone who has no place in your world.

And a marital ally?

A friend, someone bound to you, who makes you more secure because you have more connections. (You could call on your allies for help in times of famine, for instance.)

What stands out for me: the line's about how someone or something comes swooping in, giving absolutely clear, unmistakable signs that it is here to help and not a threat.

And so I think one white horse here is the video technology that will help us to stay connected. People do tend to be afraid that technology is some kind of robber, a young lout out to steal their dignity or worse. Time for me to get out the curry comb and start plaiting the mane, I think.

I sent encouraging emails, did some phoning round to ensure help was available where needed, and also spent Wednesday morning making a couple of 'how to access Club via Zoom' videos. And 6 out of 10 members showed up to our first video meeting, including one who's never so much as used email before. I think we can chalk this up as a success.

(Now for a website and some kind of group chat...)

The world may look quite broken at the moment, but Yi's fine. The Well wells. Do come on Sunday if you can. (If we have too many people to fit in the room, I'll try to set up a livestream to Youtube.)

Afterword

Like I said, sometimes Yi speaks in imagery, and occasionally it simply speaks. Back on March 11th - you know, about six months ago... - the official advice was still to keep social groups running as usual, but I wasn't so sure, and asked Yi for advice. The answer included the following:

'Dispersing blood.
Leave, go out and far away.
Not a mistake.'

Hexagram 59, line 6

So yes, we closed.

Then this morning I happened to look back at the reading I cast in December 2019, asking for guidance for running the club in the year ahead. And that included this line:

'Negotiating opening, not yet at rest.
Containing the affliction brings rejoicing.'

Hexagram 58, line 4

That word I translated as 'affliction' means literally disease. 介疾, set boundaries to the disease, and there will be rejoicing.

I've mentioned this before, and no doubt will again... the question you ask the Yi matters.

It's important to understand that this isn't about choosing the right wording for your question. The words really don't matter. 'Argh - help!' can be a perfectly-formed question for the Oracle, leading to a perfectly helpful conversation, provided you know what you're asking.

This is why, when I read for people, I like to spend time talking with them - and, more important, listening to them: partly so I can understand what they're asking, partly so I can help them clarify that for themselves.

And this is why the second module of the Yijing Foundations Class, after we've recapped the essentials like translation, journal and how to cast a hexagram, is all about question choice. (It builds on the section about questions in the beginners' course.) Then comes connecting with the answer, and then the essentials of structure.

What do I mean, 'know what you're asking'? That's probably easiest to explain with an example (an imaginary one) of someone who doesn't know.

Let's visit her inner monologue:

'This relationship doesn't seem to be going anywhere - everyone says I should just move on, he's not worth it - I suppose they're probably right, but... - I feel as if circumstances are dividing us - we don't get to see one another - it would be different if we moved in together, wouldn't it? - if only I knew what he really felt - I want to do a reading...'

Imagine she does a reading about her relationship, and receives Hexagram 59, Dispersing.

'Dispersing, creating success.
With the king's presence, there is a temple.
Fruitful to cross the great river,
Constancy bears fruit.'

Hexagram 59, Dispersing

Our imaginary querent is familiar with the Yijing; she knows Dispersing has to do with ice melting, and floods, and the wind blowing over the surface of the water and turning it to water vapour. She has a clear sense of the 'energy pattern' of Hexagram 59: evaporation and scattering.

She can imagine herself as the king in the temple, finding the connection that flows through dispersing. And she knows that 'crossing the great river' implies a commitment, probably something irreversible.

So... would that commitment be moving in with him, or leaving him?

Is this advice to disperse the relationship, make it less close?

Is it saying, 'You're right, the relationship is being damaged by distance, it's dispersing, and so you should cross the great river and move in together, and that really would make all the difference?'

Is it predicting that the relationship will, in fact, disperse, no matter what she does?

Or could it be responding to her wondering about what's going on in his head, and describing how his attention is scattered and not at all focussed on the relationship? (After all, 59 is the opposite hexagram to 55: it’s not inclined to step up and take decisions.)

In short - she can do everything right: get inside the imagery, study text and trigrams, even reflect on related hexagrams, and she still won't know what this reading is telling her, because she didn't know what she was asking for in the first place.

The reading's like one of those mystery photographs you sometimes find on your camera, one you took by mistake without pointing the camera at anything: it shows someone's foot, and some floor, and you have no idea where you were or what this is.

Or - if you can remember map-reading in the days before satnav - she's trying to read a map with no landmarks in view and no compass. She doesn't know how to relate to it or where to start.

To avoid this blurry mess, all she needed to do was decide - before casting - what she wanted the reading to show her. She could ask for a picture of what's happening, or for what best to do - in other words, for a picture of herself following the best path. Or she could ask for a picture from a possible future: 'What if we moved in together?' or 'What if I let him go?'

And in each case, she'd know which way the 'camera' of the Oracle was pointing, and hence what was in the picture she was looking at. You can imagine how she might experience 'Dispersing' as an answer to each of these questions in turn.

So there's a simple picture of why the question's important. But there's more to question choice than just clarity or confusion - there's the deeper issue of the intent of your reading, and the ways you can deepen and expand your relationship with Yi by questioning your question habits. More on this in module 2 of Yijing Foundations...