It’s a not-unfamiliar experience with readings: the oracle text of the hexagram says one thing, and then a moving line says something quite different. You probably know the basic principle: the moving line text takes precedence. It's the 'You Are Here' sign to the hexagram's overall scene-setting.

Still, it's worth going beyond that to wonder exactly why the line text is different. Here's a good example…

Hexagram 54 says,

‘Marrying maiden. To set out to bring order: pitfall.
No direction is fruitful.’

That's blunt and unambiguous: your plans, and especially your ideas to fix things and set them to rights, are not looking promising. But then comes line 1:

'Maiden marries as a younger sister.
Lame, can walk.
Setting out to bring order: good fortune.'

From 'setting out to bring order: pitfall' to exactly the opposite. How come?

Why pitfall?

To start with, why is bringing order such a bad idea originally, overall, for the Marrying Maiden?

'Setting out to bring order' translates zheng 征 - which means

• to go on a long journey
• to target something, march on it, go straight for it
• specifically, to launch a punitive military campaign. ('Order' might just mean, 'Everyone pays tribute to the king'.)

The Chinese character shows a foot on the road, so the idea of marching out is fundamental.

The marrying maiden is someone who's married off, probably as a second wife, and certainly not of her own initiative. She's in a position of weakness, and can't impose her idea of order on anything. Also, such marriages would be a way to forge alliances between clans, rendering military action unnecessary and counter-productive.

Why's line 1 different?

This all makes good sense - so what's so different in line 1?

I can think of four differences…

• It's the first line
• It's changing
• 'Younger sister'
• 'Lame, can walk'

Let's look at each in turn...

It's the first line

The first line of any hexagram has a sense of just entering its realm, just getting started, getting its feet under it. It doesn't enjoy authority, or an overview, and probably not much understanding either, but it can at least begin.

In a lot of hexagrams (26, 43, 63…), this first step is to slow down, to get control of one's momentum before setting a new direction. But as marrying maiden, when you're in a weak position to start with, the important thing is just to get underway somehow.

It's changing

…and as soon as an element changes in the Yi, it creates relationships with other elements that make their presence felt.

This is the bottom line of dui, the lake, changing to kan, depths and running water. So this change is rather like pulling the bathplug: it creates flow.

And this is the line where Marrying Maiden meets Hexagram 40, Release:

‘Release. The southwest is fruitful.
With no place to go,
To turn round and come back is good fortune.
With a direction to go,
Daybreak, good fortune.’

'The southwest is fruitful': it's a good direction for finding allies, or maybe creating marital alliances. Release brings an underling attitude of 'Let's see what we can do, let's see which paths might lead somewhere, and let's get underway' - all without tying ourselves in knots over what we wish we could do instead, or whether we're likely to fail horribly.

The poor little marrying maiden doesn't have much freedom overall, but she is at least free to do what she can, within the limits. 'Lame, can still walk.'

Bradford Hatcher had a different take on this 54-40 relationship, and talked about the freedom from striving:

'Freedom from all these demands might set her free from the hustle and leave her time to be just herself, enjoying her life as it is.'

Younger sister

This is the first difference in the text: the maiden marries (just as in the first two words of the Oracle) as a younger sister (or possibly with her younger sisters).

'Younger sister' is one Chinese word, di 娣. Its components are 'woman' and 'younger brother' - an element that Sears says originally meant 'sequence' or 'second'.

This points clearly to the junior wife, the woman who comes second in line. As the first line of dui, trigram of the youngest sister, that makes sense. By implication, the whole hexagram is about second wives, but this makes it absolutely explicit.

Hence tradition tells us that this line is about someone in a lowly position who serves with modesty and doesn't rock the boat. The Tuanzhuan says, 'If such a lame one can keep on treading, it shall mean good fortune, for it is to keep on giving support.' (RJ Lynn's translation). The junior wife supports the first wife and strengthens the family.

From this angle, she may be 'setting out to bring order', but in the sense that she's limping along with the rank and file, not leading the expedition.

Lame, can walk

The next new thing in the text: 'lame, can walk'. Richard Rutt didn’t attempt to piece this together:

'The sentence about the lame one who steps out is probably out of place and has nothing to do with the wedding story.'

It surely has something to do with zheng, though: 'treading' and 'marching out' are adjacent characters in the text, both with the 'footsteps' element 彳:

履 征

She can walk, so going on a journey is good fortune.

We might picture the junior wife limping off to her new home. But there may be more to it, as Hexagram 54 line 5 also alludes to to a particular 'younger sister', the Lady Shen who would become the mother of Wu, the Zhou heir and conqueror of the Shang. What if this line prefigures her rise, too?

Minford suggests that zheng here might be 'a figurative description of a marriage "expedition"' - he explains that the 'love is war' metaphor was present in early Chinese texts. Now there are extra layers of meaning: the Zhou, too, started out small and powerless, but marched on Shang successfully in the end. Maybe the protagonist of this line, despite her handicaps, can expect to wield power of her own in future. The traditional idea of success for the unassuming and modest might not tell the whole story.

Hexagram 10, line 3

One other angle on this line: 'Lame, can walk' is a direct quotation from Hexagram 10, line 3. It actually says 'lame, can tread' - the name of Hexagram 10. And 54.2 also quotes the same line. Together, these three lines make up a complete inner dui trigram:

'Maiden marries as a younger sister.
Lame, can walk.
Setting out to bring order: good fortune.'
‘With one eye, can see.
A hermit's constancy bears fruit.’

Hexagram 54, lines 1 and 2

'With one eye, can see.
Lame, can walk.
Treads on the tiger's tail:
It bites him. Pitfall.
Soldier acting as a great leader.'

Hexagram 10, line 3

If we look back from the Marrying Maiden to Treading, what could we learn from the comparison?

When it comes to following tigers - or reflecting all of (outer trigram) heaven - it won't work to hobble along with a limited field of vision. Inadequacy will be found out; 'good enough' isn't. But in Hexagram 54, marrying as the second wife, the lake reflecting (on) this sudden change (outer trigram thunder), just getting by is good enough. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly.

The situation in 54.1 is actually a perfect mirror image of 10.3. The soldier should be following, but tries to act as a great leader. The 'younger sister' is specifically the 'woman who follows' - but this younger sister may yet become the first wife.

(As for the hermit in 54.2, perhaps he's one of those Daoist sages who deliberately makes himself useless, avoiding political power. Or perhaps, as Field says, he's 'the man in the dark,' the imprisoned future King Wen - another one who starts at a disadvantage but wins in the end.)

And in real life?

I can think of a few of my own experiences with this reading that capture something about the line.

One was a reading about a broken molar - it had been filled badly, so it cracked, and then a great lump of enamel had fallen off, leaving exposed dentin. One week on, was it hardening, or was infection setting in? I asked what was happening with the tooth, and received 54.1. I 'set out to bring order' with my usual regimen; that was four years ago, and the tooth is still fine, provided I keep up the daily oil pulling.

Someone contacted me to ask for a full reading with weekly calls. I was happy to work for her, except that she was in Australia, so I'd have to start client work first thing in the morning, a time I'd normally have set aside for writing. Advice? 54.1. I reorganised things, read for her, and it went well. (I've had several readings describe the role of a diviner with Hexagram 54.)

And then there was the 54.1 reading about hiring a particular web designer. To clarify - not anyone I've worked with recently; this was long ago. I hired him despite this reading, which was not my best idea: onlineClarity came second to everything, and deadlines came and went while he ignored all my emails. In the end I tried emailing not to ask for a new date, but to set one unilaterally: I'd pay pro rata for whatever he'd completed by then. That got him moving - though there was still a lot of clear-up to do afterwards from things he'd messed up.

What do these three have in common? I was starting out at a disadvantage, handicapped in some way. The promised good fortune is going to take a lot of effort and probably sore feet; this line's situation isn't one you'd choose to get into, in an ideal world.

However - and this is where it differs from the general picture of Hexagram 54 - there is some power to be found or claimed here that you might not have imagined you had. In each of these readings, I seem to have had to break with my usual habits to access it: rewriting my mornings, or getting completely uncharacteristically assertive with the vanishing designer, or - horrors - giving up chocolate for a while. If little sister ties on her walking boots and limps out with determination, she can make this work.

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Pamela contributed a thoroughly unusual reading for episode 12 of the podcast...

She asked,

'What do I need to know about the snake?'

and Yi answered with Hexagram 8, Seeking Union, changing at lines 1, 3 and 5 to 36, Brightness Hiding:

Here's the snake in question (with thanks to Pamela for the photo):

- listen to the episode for the full story.

And here are three Chinese characters I mentioned during our conversation:

(Isn't that an interesting visual 'rhyme' between bi and yong?)

With its three moving lines, this reading's a bit longer than previous episodes. I hope you still enjoy it - let me know!

This was going to be a simple post

A worried client emailed me. He'd just been organising his journal, listing all his readings, and found there were a whole lot more on one topic than he'd thought. He said he was wondering if he'd become 'a bit of a Yi-aholic.'

What's a 'Yi-aholic'? Someone addicted to readings, someone who does too many readings - but how many are 'too many', and how would you know?

I had a clear, elegant answer to this question, I thought, so I emailed it to him. Then I thought I would write it up as a blog post, and give the post more 'meat' by consulting Yi on the question too. And that - predictably - is where my nice clear, simple post started to go sideways.

My idea: readings to avoid reality

A good sign that you're doing too many readings (I wrote to my client) is that you're using them to avoid reality. That's exactly the opposite of what readings are truly for, and yet it's uncomfortably easy to do.

The classic example is the woman who doesn't want to talk to him about their relationship, and asks Yi instead. How does he feel about me? How does he feel about the other woman? And then she follows up with more readings about her hurried interpretations of the first readings, and swiftly builds a whole castle in the air of subtle relationship analysis - all without any contact with him at all, as that contact could so easily demolish the whole edifice.

But there are other ways readings can depart from reality, too. There's consultation with Yi when there's a human expert available (a doctor, a lawyer, a financial adviser) who could give a clear, definite answer that's not open to interpretation. And there are readings when you already know what to do, you just don't much want to do it, so perhaps you (by which I mean I) start asking about optimal timing or something. Like I said, this kind of avoidance is uncomfortably easy.

Yi rearranges my ideas

So after outlining the above, I thought I'd cast a reading to give me more idea of how to recognise this reality-avoidance thing.

'What does unhealthy, excessive use of readings look like?'

There aren't any explicit assumptions in that question, but there was one great big assumption behind it: that I knew what 'Yi-aholism' was, and just needed more of a picture of how it manifests.

Yi did not oblige. Instead, it gave me Hexagram 19, Nearing, with lines 1 and 2 changing to 2, Earth:

'Influence nearing.
Constancy, good fortune.'
'Influence nearing, good fortune.
Nothing that does not bear fruit.'

Hexagram 19, lines 1 and 2

Whatever else that reading is, it is not a picture of anything unhealthy or excessive. Influence - connection, rapport, being moved by the oracle - is nearing; this is good fortune; nothing does not bear fruit.

'Nothing does not bear fruit' sounds like 'there is no such thing as an unhealthy reading,' or at least not in the realm I was imagining. They're all 'influence nearing' - all connection with the oracle.

On reflection… because this reading seemed to call for some of that… perhaps this is just human nature, that we need to draw near to an understanding through readings, find a way to relate to hard stuff, before we confront the bald reality. Understanding wells up and grows in its own time, and 'arrival at the eighth month means a pitfall' - there's no benefit to inducing it prematurely.

(Is there anything at all in my idea of 'readings to avoid reality'? I'm reluctant to let it go - but perhaps I should.)

Yi's idea: readings to shoot fish

So if 'reality avoidance' isn't a good description of the problem, what is? Because I think we know there are healthier and less healthy ways to engage with the oracle; we recognise the unhealthy ways when we see them (especially in other people, naturally).

Time for another reading. The question sounds very similar, but the mindset behind it was different: realising I don't get this after all.

'How can we know when there's a problem with readings - what are the signs?'

And Yi answered this one with Hexagram 48, the Well - so often its choice to talk about itself - changing at line 2 to 39, Limping:

'In the well's depths they shoot fish.
The jug is cracked and leaking.'

Oh.

Shooting fish in the well - a reading with immediate utility, looking for an answer I can use, right now. This isn't about watering the growing crops, it's about tonight's supper. I choose my target, focus and shoot. I'll get exactly what I aimed at, if I get anything. (And incidentally, accidentally, my shooting might just crack the jug I'd need to draw water.)

Think of the other way of approaching the Well: lowering the jug until the water flows in and fills it. It could not be more different.

What are the signs of a problem with readings, then? They could be a string of readings that are nothing but 'How can I achieve x?' and 'What if I try approach y to achieving x?' Lots of readings hemmed in by assumptions that I know what I'm aiming for, and can see all the choices available. Even if I got a perfectly clear, usable answer to each reading - a fish with every arrow - I'd still have to keep on coming back again and again, for lack of any deeper understanding.

(Not avoiding reality, exactly - just remaining ignominiously unaware of all of it except for one measly fish.)

Postscript…

I'm pretty sure this reading is talking to me personally, about what misuse and overuse of the oracle looks like when I do it. (I'm trying to escape that, at the moment, by returning to weekly open readings: just asking for guidance and letting Yi set the agenda, for a change.)

I've shared this reading anyway because it's so clear and eloquent, but the answer might well be different for you. If (and only if!) you're concerned about your own reading habits, don't take my word for anything, but ask Yi instead. A more open question, like 'Please show me a picture of my consulting habits,' could be good.

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This is episode 11 of the I Ching with Clarity podcast, featuring another listener's reading.

Sarah asked,

"How can I better convey my authentic and true self with others?"

and Yi replied with Hexagram 45, Gathering, changing at lines 4,5 and 6 to 23, Stripping Away -

It's a deep, rich reading, profoundly reassuring.

As we were talking about 45.5 -

'Gathering together has a position.
No mistake.
No trust at all.
From the source, ever-flowing constancy.
Regrets vanish.'

Hexagram 45, line 5

- I showed Sarah this page of ancient forms of the character yong, 'perpetual, ever-flowing', which shows a human figure flowing with the river currents. The story it reminded me of was this one, from Zhuangzi.

Enjoy the reading! And if you'd like a free podcast reading yourself, you're very welcome to apply here.

This is by way of a follow-up to my 'Dispersing Nourishment' reading. I thought I'd share as it's another reading that shows how Yi helps with the small stuff, and on multiple levels. Besides, I appreciate the eloquence of the trigrams in this one.

Background, reading…

My joints ache - not a lot, but more than they used to, especially in the mornings, and especially over the past year. I know the basics I need to do about this (move more, eat more turmeric and less sugar, lose weight), so this reading wasn't about that. Instead, I was thinking about the symbolism of this, with its 'no, you're not free to move' message.

So my question was,

'How to change this? Not so much what to do, as how to be? What inner change will help?'

Yi answered with Hexagram 60, Measuring, changing at line 2 to Hexagram 3, Sprouting.

The central idea of jie, Measuring, is the way bamboo divides itself into regular sections. And Sprouting is associated with the new seedling breaking through the soil. So with the two together (my usual first step of looking at the primary-relating framework), I can imagine the bamboo growing, sprouting again from the root. New stems, new joints - time for some new measures?

Out of the gate

There's plenty more to be said about those two hexagrams, of course, but I mostly wanted to share this reading for its very apt moving line:

‘Not going out of the gate from the courtyard.
Pitfall.’

Hexagram 60, line 2

That one got a wry smile - it's far too literal for comfort. Yi wasn't really accepting the tidy inner/outer distinction I'd tried to make with my question. The Dispersing flood of pandemic-related changes (no shopping, no orchestras, and volunteering confined to Zoom) meant I'd barely been outside our front gate in over a year.

Inner and outer, lake and stream

I adopted 'out of the gate' as a guiding inner principle - learning new 'cello pieces, reading different books, studying new things. That’s all good, but it's surprised me how big a difference it makes literally to head out of the gate, get on the bike and creak and rattle away.

On another level, I feel this reading's talking about free circulation between those inner and outer worlds I'd attempted to separate with my question. After all, the inner and outer trigrams of Hexagram 60 are both made of water, which means it doesn't divide neatly into two separate realms in the same way as - for instance - 38 (fire above the lake) or 41 (mountain above the lake): it's one continuous substance.

I think the Image authors were picturing a flow from inner reserves (of de, character) out into action -

'Above the lake is the stream. Measuring.
A noble one crafts number and measure,
Reflecting on character in action.'

My moving line is just at the water-surface of that inner lake: filling up, ready to flow (through the gate!) into the outer stream. And as it changes, it reveals the thunder trigram behind it in Hexagram 3: lake with latent thunder, lake in motion, with a need to move. Water in the lake may be still and contained, but it still remembers how to flow.

(This is the kind of trigram imagery I enjoy - animation, relationships, meanings changing with each new combination - and teach in the Foundations Class. If you've ever found trigrams and their long lists of attributes a bit dry, I can recommend it.)

And finally…

When I came back to this reading, I realised it was a sequel to my 59-27 from the beginning of the pandemic. Not only is 60 the paired hexagram of 59 -

but 60.2 is the paired line of 59.5:

Open up all your granaries, yes, and all your stores of knowledge and/or lentils - but opening doesn't stop there.

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This is an embarrassingly 'first world problems' kind of reading, but happily Yi doesn't judge - and it was tremendously helpful at the time, so I thought it would be a good one to share.

The background

How were things for you in March 2020? Round here, they were just getting weirpd, and my husband had become too worried about infection for either of us to enter any shop at all, not even the amazing little farm shop where I normally bought fresh vegetables.

This might not have bothered me had supermarket deliveries been available, but they were at capacity providing for the very elderly and vulnerable. Somehow I had to put food on the table - and preferably without creating any more stress.

It seems ridiculous with hindsight, but at the time I was really worried about this. Suddenly my tried-and-trusted, familiar ways of doing things were gone, and I genuinely had no idea how I was going to get hold of things like vegetables, or fresh milk.

Hence the anxious question: 'How can I manage this?'

Yi's answer: Hexagram 59, changing at lines 1, 2 and 5 to 27

Primary and relating hexagram

When a reading has moving lines, I always like to start by getting a feel for how its two hexagrams work together. I find this sets the scene and context for the whole reading. In Yijing Foundations, I compare it to a tent frame: it lends structure to the whole and shows you where everything goes. Also, reading the two hexagram names together can give you a very useful, memorable summary of the reading.

How to cope with this? Dispersing Nourishment. One of the first things I wrote in my journal was 'Disperse your hunger.' (I do enjoy my food!)

59, Dispersing, was obviously what had happened to my weekly routine: I'd cycle to the farm shop on Friday mornings, and the supermarket on Friday afternoons after volunteering. This kept us in fresh food, and had the added benefit of giving me some much-needed exercise, as I creaked and rattled my way along with panniers full of shopping. Now all that had been swept away down the river.

From my journal:

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

My habits need to go downstream. I need to stop trying to hang on to my usual sources of nutrition and my usual enjoyment of food. Release it, let it dissolve and evaporate.

…Dispersed Nourishment. Where do I find that sense of being supported and nourished by the world when I can´t have fresh food from the shops? Disperse, look for it elsewhere, from more diverse sources. The garden, the woods, the ´cello, Yi.

Yes, this is why I find it so distressing. I´m not going to be lacking calories, but I´m going to miss out on the frying pan full of orange, green and purple which tells me my health is supported, the earth loves me, I belong. Vegetables from Worton have been a key way I get that input. This is the 27 hunger at work.

(Journal entry, March 2020)

In other words, 27 as relating was comically-obviously about food, but it wasn't just about food - it's the need for balance and stability in 27, and all kinds of nourishment.

Moving lines

Then inside that framework, the moving lines…

'Rescuing with a horse's strength,
Good fortune.'

'Dispersing, flee to your support.
Regrets vanish.'

'Dispersing sweat, his great proclamation.
Dispersing the king's residence / granaries
No mistake.'

Hexagram 59, lines 1, 2 and 5

Line 5 was the first one I could recognise clearly:

ROFL!
Actually literally laughing out loud at that. Getting to the bottom of the king´s freezer & using up the venison stewing steak that´s been there since 2016 (or 15).

(It was 2015. Emptying our freezer was an archaeological expedition.)

Then I began to realise that all three lines were - amongst other things - step-by-step, calming guidance to keeping us fed.

'Rescuing with a horse's strength,
Good fortune.'

59, line 1

Deliveries! Supermarkets didn't, but the local butcher did, and after a week or two I found a small local firm that would do milk and vegetables. Having carrots, no less, arriving on our doorstep really did feel like a visit from a rescuing horse.

'Dispersing, flee to your support.
Regrets vanish.'

59, line 2

I realised this meant finding other ways to get in touch with my sense of nature-as-support - but I only learned gradually how many there were.

The day after the reading, I cycled up the road to see if eggs were still on sale at the farm gate. (They were!) And on the way, by someone's front gate, I spotted a cardboard box - like people use in autumn to share their windfall apples. This one was full of sprigs of sage:

What a delight. From the journal:

Sage. As in 'Cur moriatur homo, cui salvia crescit in horto?' and as in smudging, and the best tea for throat infections. Magical.

I took a sprig, with profound gratitude. After a day or so, I thought to put it in water, in the hopes it might last longer that way.

I also headed out into our garden, which contained exactly no useful vegetables, but in those early spring days did have…

• nettles
• ground elder
• yellow archangel
• cleavers
• willowherb
• primroses, violets, violet leaves, hawthorn buds, the first shoots of marjoram and the occasional dandelion to make salad.

…all of which were perfectly edible. Heading into the garden for a morning forage became a new routine. And I found that the ancient puy lentils lurking in the back of the pantry would still sprout.

As for

'Dispersing sweat, his great proclamation.
Dispersing the king's residence/ granaries
No mistake.'

59 line 5

I excavated all the way to the bottom of the freezer, which turned out to contain enough meat and fish to keep us going for at least a week, supplemented by some beans and rice from the depths of the pantry.

After ten days or so, the rescuing horses arrived with fresh food - and if I'd had the sense to take the lines in order, I might have arranged that rather sooner. But in any case, all was well.

In conclusion…

After the moving lines, I naturally circled back to the primary-relating framework - something I normally do, as it often looks different. It did this time.

From the journal:

The difference now: I feel absolutely provided for; no need to go hungry at all. Dispersing/ scattering the appetites = disperse among all the options, broaden your focus. We are sitting in the middle of plenty, even this early in the year.

Things I learned…

Dispersed nourishment comes from everywhere, and is all the more robust for that. Instead of feeding us with a settled routine, I found myself drawing on all sorts of odd bit of knowledge I'd picked up over the years: how to sprout seeds, how to forage, how to cook dried beans, how to make kefir.

There's more support in line 2 than you knew, if you only take a step back and See. (59.2 zhi 20.)

A whole new appreciation for supermarkets! (I'm back to them now, post-vaccination).

And… when you put a sage sprig in water, it grows roots. You can pot it on and plant it out, and then look what happens…

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