For some 3,000 years, people have turned to the I Ching, the Book of Changes, to help them uncover the meaning of their experience, to bring their actions into harmony with their underlying purpose, and above all to build a foundation of confident awareness for their choices.
Down the millennia, as the I Ching tradition has grown richer and deeper, the things we consult about may have changed a little, but the moment of consultation is much the same. These are the times when you’re turning in circles, hemmed in and frustrated by all the things you can’t see or don’t understand. You can think it over (and over, and over); you can ‘journal’ it; you can gather opinions.
But how can you have confidence in choosing a way to go, if you can’t quite be sure of seeing where you are?
Only understand where you are now, and you rediscover your power to make changes. This is the heart of I Ching divination. Once you can truly see into the present moment, all its possibilities open out before you – and you are free to create your future.
What is the I Ching?
The I Ching (or Yijing) is an oracle book: it speaks to you. You can call on its help with any question you have: issues with relationships of all kinds, ways to attain your personal goals, the outcomes of different choices for a key decision. It grounds you in present reality, encourages you to grow, and nurtures your self-knowledge. When things aren’t working, it opens up a space for you to get ‘off the ride’, out of the rut, and choose your own direction. And above all, it’s a wide-open, free-flowing channel for truth.
For I Ching Beginners -
How do you want to get started?
There are two different ways most people first meet the I Ching. There’s,
‘I’m fascinated by this ancient book and I want to learn all about it,’
and there’s,
‘I need help now with this thing (so I’ll learn whatever I need to know to get help with The Thing).’
Learning about the I Ching, or learning from the I Ching?
In the end, these two ways aren’t actually different. It isn’t possible to do one without the other, and people end up wanting both: the ‘learn about Yi’ people draw on its help more as their knowledge grows; the ‘learn from Yi’ people find they want to know more, once they’ve got the help they need.
It has all you need to get started from scratch. Then if you’re familiar with the basics and want to develop your confidence in interpretation, have a look at the Foundations Course.
I hope you enjoy the site and find what you’re looking for here - do contact me with any comments or questions.
Clarity is my one-woman business providing I Ching courses, readings and community. (You can read more about me, and what I do, here.) It lets me spend my time doing the work I love, using my gifts to help you.
(Thank you.)
Warm wishes, Hilary”
From the blog
Talking with Yi is a conversation – and with regular readings, we develop a relationship with the oracle. We habitually talk about it as a person: ‘Yi’ rather than ‘the Yi’; something we can ‘get to know’ rather than just ‘learn’; something that speaks. (The roots of the word ‘oracle’ are in Latin orare, ‘to speak’. Oracles can talk.)
The reason Yi speaks is, of course, because it has words of its own. Tarot speaks through images; Yi speaks through the patterns we call hexagrams, but also in words, like we do. I think this leads to a different experience of divination: having a conversation with a person, versus applying a system. Yes, just as with tarot, there’s a system of symbols to learn and apply, and skills to develop – and beyond that, Yi also has something to say. Yes, there’s water above heaven (clouds in the sky, inner constancy in the face of outer uncertainty, and so on…) – and also, Yi says, ‘Wait, with truth and confidence…’
Consequently, a lot of good divination advice is also good relationship advice. Talk openly and often; be honest and straightforward. Let no topic be off-limits. Have boundaries: keep your autonomy, don’t become dependent on having Yi tell you what to do. And so on.
Also, of course, we are actually talking to a 3,000 year old book, or something that speaks through the book – and however we conceive of this speaker, it certainly can’t get bunions. Talking with Yi is also not like talking with a human being.
This has a lot of implications. Some of them make it rather like talking to an infinitely wise person, beyond ordinary human limitations: someone who can’t possibly misunderstand your question, but whose ideas of what constitute good or bad fortune might be quite different from your own. However, another is that you will tend to hear Yi speak in your own inner voice.
By ‘inner voice’ I mean both the tone of voice, and also the kind of thing it can say. If your own inner voice is hypercritical, or sarcastic, or sanguine, then your Yi will tend to sound like this, too. Yi is not your inner voice, of course, and it can and will shatter that illusion from time to time and sound unmistakably other. However, it remains true that it’s harder for a pessimist ever to hear Yi being optimistic, or a laid-back character to hear Yi being fiercely critical, or vice versa.
And this is why, even though your relationship with the oracle is an absolutely individual one, and you are the only true authority on the answers you receive, it’s also good to share a reading with another person and listen to their response – because you get to hear the reading speak with a different voice. I’ve had a few I Ching chats with Change Circle members recently, and it seems to me that what I contribute is only partly familiarity and skill with the ‘system’ of how Yi makes meaning; it’s also how I make it possible for people to hear Yi differently. The same kind of thing happens in Clarity’s forums: ‘Here’s how I hear the reading,’ we say. ‘Does that resonate for you?’ And then, perhaps, comes that unmistakable sense of being spoken to.
I’m very, very pleased to announce the birth of
The Resonance Journal, version 2.0!
With this version, you can:
Print your entries
…which also means you can use your computer’s ‘print to pdf’ driver to share individual entries.
Protect your journal with a password
And adjust the size and font of all the text you see in the program (menus, entry lists and so on)
Hexagrams 41 and 42, Decreasing and Increasing, are an especially clear hexagram pair: the two of them together describe a single phenomenon, seen from two perspectives. There is a single flow of energy, life and abundance, and it moves as a cycle: ‘Decrease, Increase, the beginnings of abundance and decline.’ When you receive one of these hexagrams, you have to think of is as part of that whole.
This is the main distinction between the experiences of Decrease and Stripping Away, Hexagram 23. 41/42 are about active participation in the flow; 23 in its purest form is just a loss you undergo, as something is taken from you. Hexagram 41 also means having less, but with an underlying awareness that there is no net loss.
There are two good examples in this I Ching Community thread: letting a plane journey go and gaining an upgrade to the bullet train; acknowledging the reality of deteriorating eyesight and getting corrective lenses. The energy hasn’t been lost, but it has been transferred – for instance, from the natural lens to an external, artificial one. There is loss, and life goes on.
The counterbalancing gain is by no means always as clear as in these examples, but it’s always happening somewhere. If you’re experiencing loss, that would be because it is your time to have less, to give things up. The Tuanzhuan, Commentary on the Judgement, lays especial emphasis on timeliness:
‘”Two baskets” corresponds to the times. To decrease the strong and increase the weak has its time. Decrease and increase, to fill and to empty, should be linked with time and associated actions.’ (Wu Jing Nuan’s translation)
The role of 41/42 as a unit stands out when you see their position in the Vessel pattern of hexagrams. They stand opposite 11/12, the hexagrams from which they’re ‘created’ by the migration of a single line between trigrams – in Hexagram 41, when the inner trigram of 11 is ‘decreased’ by one yang line that moves to the sixth place. With this, it encloses three yin lines with three yang, and creates a ‘container’:
becomes
Here is the vessel, now cast, ready to use for pouring out or receiving:
The Oracle’s story
As so often with Yi’s longer texts, the oracle of Hexagram 41 is telling us a story…
‘Decreasing: there is truth and confidence. From the source, good fortune. Not a mistake, there can be constancy. Fruitful to have a direction to go. How to use this? Two gui vessels may be used for the offering.’
Fu opens the way
It all opens with ‘truth and confidence’, fu. From the Language of Change Yijing glossary:
“Fu can sometimes (11.3, 44.1) mean simply ‘what is true’ or ‘the true nature of this’. But more often, it means the quality of trust and being true which opens channels and creates an interface – a way or place of connection. Relationships of all kinds happen through fu; it’s the prerequisite for both inner and outer communication. In the Songs, it unites the king with heaven’s mandate, and unites the people with the king.
Fu in readings most often describes human relationships. At its simplest, this is just an undeniable connection between people. At its fullest, it creates mutual trust and rapport such that people can act with unanimity. It allows transmission (teaching and learning) and precludes any strategising or manipulation.
Fu is also the prerequisite for another kind of relationship: offerings, which must be made with sincerity and an undivided heart. Just as in relationships between people, truth and trust are the conduit through which connection flows – and it is always important to care for the conduit.
As an inner state, fu is truth to self, often experienced as self-belief and confidence. It arises as a motive energy and awareness that enables you to take decisions – to commit yourself without reserve. It is the opposite of anxiety, defensiveness and doubt, of second thoughts or ‘being in two minds’. Because it means openness, it can support exploration and learning – crossing the great river, or having a direction to go.”
For Decrease, fu comes first, because it is the key to a true offering. You have to be fully present, not in two minds about it. All the good omens that follow come from this: if there is fu, then there is an opening to the source, good fortune without mistake, constancy is possible and a direction to go gives good results.
From trust to action
How does all that flow from fu?
The next thing we need to know: this is not a mistake. I think this is an example of Yi using this phrase for reassurance: it might feel wrong, but it isn’t. We don’t like losing things and having less, so Yi guides us step by step towards understanding and full participation. With trust. Not wrong.
This allows constancy. ‘Allows’, ke 可, originally has to do with speaking or singing, words of assent. Someone/ something says ‘this can happen’ – in other words, the action is in harmony with the time. The same word is used at the end of the Oracle: ‘two gui vessels may be [ke 可] used’. It allows constancy, which is also (in the earliest meaning of the word) divination: perceiving truth, seeing what the time calls for, and loyally following through.
Then, having a direction to go bears fruit. This gives me a sense of reaching out towards the future – deliberately stretching your awareness beyond the immediate experience of loss and into the reasons why. To make an offering, you need a sense of purpose.
‘How to use this?‘
In the middle of the oracle text, a voice asking questions. Again, I think this is Yi acknowledging that giving things up is hard. The very presence of a question and answer session in the middle of the oracle suggests thoughtfulness. (Also, look at the prerequisite for Decrease in the first line text: ‘considering decreasing it,’ conscious deliberation.)
‘How to use this?’ is very much the question you are asking and Yi is answering with this hexagram. It seems to me to lie somewhere between ‘How can I use this time?’ – a respectful enquiry about being in harmony with the time – and ‘What use is this sacrifice, what is it good for?’ with an implied ‘How can I possibly do this?’ and a hint of ‘Why should I?’
‘How to use this?’ ‘Two gui vessels may be used.’
The verb ‘use’ is the same; this is a direct answer to the question. With this dialogue, awareness that was stretched towards future times and distant places contracts back to the present moment. How to participate in the larger whole? By staying at your own size.
Gui vessels are not necessarily mere baskets – the word does originally mean a bamboo basket, but by Shang and Zhou times was a kind of bronze vessel. However, it was used for offerings of grain, so the message is the same: this is not a casual or trivial offering, but it is also not a vast state occasion with oxen and sheep (and maybe prisoners of war) sacrificed in their hundreds. It’s proportionate and manageable; you do not need to make exaggerated dramatic gestures of self-sacrifice.
Letting go and lightening up
In fact, Hexagram 41 can encourage us to take our sacrifices more lightly. It follows from Hexagram 40, Release:
‘Letting things take their course necessarily has occasion to let go. And so Decrease follows.’
After untying the knots of obligation, after the relief of the thunderstorm, after letting go of the uphill struggle, then Decrease.
The Dazhuan, Great Treatise, agrees:
‘Decrease is the renewal of de. Heaviness before, lightness afterwards. Keeping harm at a distance.’
Becoming lighter in this way can mean becoming much less attached to the conviction that ‘I have to Do Something!’ and investing what you need to give up with less significance. Maybe you don’t need to solve everything, just give what you can. (I’ve been greatly consoled by this hexagram in situations where I had no idea how to help.)
Decrease can renew your de, your strength and energy, perhaps just because you cease to imagine that you have to control things you can’t, in fact, control. You become less attached to making things happen a certain way, and hence less vulnerable when they don’t.
The Image: reflective presence
The Image has more to say about how to handle the emotions of Decrease:
‘Below the mountain is the lake. Decreasing. A noble one curbs anger and restrains desires.’
I’ve always liked this Image for its realism in what it doesn’t say: ‘A noble one is perfectly free of anger and feels no desire.’ The noble one, we can assume, also doesn’t like giving things up – but he will put a mountain-sized lid on his reactions and keep them in check.
And… maybe the mountain creates the lake: it forms a vessel to contain the water and prevent it from draining away. Perhaps the noble one is creating a state of deep reflection instead of getting carried away on a torrent of emotions – and perhaps anger and desire need to be checked just because they would carry you away from what’s present and real.
The Sequence – as it often does – points to a deeper significance. The lake gathered under the mountain in Hexagram 41 will become the outer trigram in hexagrams 43, 45, 47 and 49. It seems as though Hexagram 41’s Offering has deepened this capacity to communicate and share, that will lead all the way from Deciding to Radical Change.
A few years ago now, I first noticed the Vessel Casting pattern in the Sequence, and got tremendously excited about it. For the past couple of months, I’ve been developing those ideas and their application in readings for Part 5 of ‘Exploring the Sequence’, which Change Circle members can find here. For this post, I won’t try to discuss the themes and significance and use of it all – that’s in Part 5 – I just want to point to the patterns and wave my arms around excitedly…
In brief… Vessels are made by casting them from moulds that form their reverse image.
The ‘reverse image’ of Hexagram 50, the Vessel, is Hexagram 3, its complement. And every hexagram from 4 to 49 finds its complement within that span of hexagrams, which is interesting. Then there turns out to be a series of structural connections at the outer surface, and also apt hexagram shapes at the centre. But wait, there’s more! Let’s make the connections one at a time…
Complements
If you map out the Vessel casting pattern by hexagram shapes, it looks like this (you can click on each image in this post for a larger version):
You can see hexagrams 3/4 standing opposite their complements, 49/50, at one end, and 27 opposite its complement 28 at the other, looking oddly vessel-shaped, or like a casting and its clay mould –
And oh look, there’s 19/20 opposite their complements too, 33/34:
‘Transferred’ lines
Hm… that’s a third of the way along, from right to left. What happens one third of the way along in the opposite direction? Hexagrams 11 and 12 – which are already one another’s complements, so naturally what stands opposite them must be something different. It’s 41/42, which Wilhelm tells us are related to 11/12:
“Peace and Standstill have an inner connection with Decrease and Increase, because through the transference of a strong line from the lower to the upper trigram, Decrease develops from Peace, and through the transference of a strong line from the upper to the lower trigram, Decrease develops from Standstill.”
(41 and 42 both include vessel characters as part of their Chinese names.)
So our Vessel casting pattern is divided into three equal parts, like this:
Actually, hexagrams 9/10 and 43/44 are related in the same way, but by the ‘transference’ of an open line from line 3 or 4 to line 6 or 1. You can imagine 9.4 moves ‘down’ to 44.1, and 10.3 moves ‘up’ to 43.6. Also, they’re exchanged trigram hexagrams – wind and lake above/below heaven. Anyway, they belong together –
Changing lines
As I mentioned in the original article, 5/6 connect with 48/47, and 7/8 with 46/45, through a single changing line – 5.1 > 48, 7.3 > 46. (As with the ‘transferring’ lines, it’s line 1/6 or 3/4 that make the connections – either the core or the surface.)
This leaves two groups of three apparently-unrelated hexagrams: in my original 2012 article, I said the pattern ‘melts away to nothing’ towards the centre. This, as it turns out, isn’t quite true. Vessels made of bronze have carefully crafted joints hidden beneath the surface, fully visible only to X-rays. And vessels made of hexagrams…?
13/14 stand opposite 39/40, and aren’t (as far as I can see) very related to them. It’s 15/16 that connect to 39/40: 15.5 > 39. Oh, and 15/16 also connect by a single line change to 35/36: 15.1 > 36. Isn’t that pretty?
I wonder…
13.4 > 37…
…
…but no, we do not get a complete interlocking pattern: 17/18 are not one line away from 37/38.
So there is almost a perfect interlocking pattern, but the symmetry is broken by the hexagram called Corruption, whose Chinese name shows a vessel that contains worms, used for dark magic.
However, 17/18 (which are one another’s complements), are one line away from both 3/4 and 49/50. 17.4 changes to 3; 18.4 changes to 50.And of course 50.4 changes to 18:
‘The vessel’s legs break off, The prince’s stew is upset, Dignity soiled. Pitfall.’
The hidden interlocking joint is Corrupted; the legs break off.
And finally?
What about the final third of the pattern, towards the centre of the mould?
This part is thoroughly molten. 29 and 30 are complements, of course…
…but what about the line above, hexagrams 21 to 26?
They have no immediate structural connection to 29-32: no single changing line relationships here, and no complementary hexagrams. Wait… where are the complements for these three pairs?
Ah yes. There they are.
The ancient Chinese crafted vessels with exceptional skill, using techniques that would not be understood in the West for centuries…
What can we make of this?
This pattern of relationships – which I freely admit looks like a dog’s breakfast with the boxes and lines I’ve scrawled all over it – beautifully represents something I’ve come to love about the Yi. This is not a model of perfect mathematical symmetry; it doesn’t take a single principle of transformation or relationship and use it with rigid consistency. You couldn’t analyse or reproduce it with a computer program.
Instead, it offers a creative, shifting play of relationships and broken symmetry, that’s all inextricably woven together with the meaning of the hexagrams. Yi is an oracle, after all, so the patterns it makes must surely be meant to speak to us in readings – if we can just develop the ears to hear. I’ve written much more on this in Exploring the Sequence (Part 5, on Vessel Casting, is over 7,000 words…), but I wanted just to share the pattern here. Isn’t it beautiful?
Its name and nature
The name of Hexagram 37 is simply 家人, jiaren, ‘Home People’ – which also means the members of a family.
Here’s the old form of the character –
– where you can see that a ‘home’ is an animal – a pig – under a roof. Home is where the pig is; it’s the safe place to keep what you value.
In readings, this idea unfolds to encompass any ‘shared space’ and its members. Often it’s literally a family home, or it can be any organisation and the stakeholders who work together within it – all feeding the same pig, as it were. More generally, the ‘home’ is any overarching structure, a working system where all the components cooperate harmoniously: a school of thought, a relationship, a way of making a living, a healthy body. The home provides our shelter, or economy (from Greek oikonomia, ‘household management’), or habitat – our ordinary living space.
The Oracle
‘People in the Home. A woman’s constancy is fruitful.’
Why a woman’s constancy in particular?
The Tuanzhuan begins by saying, ‘Woman’s proper position is inside, man’s proper position is outside.’ Tradition in China, as in Europe, said that the man dealt with the outside world, the woman managed the inside: he farmed or fought, she cooked and spun. (Though what happened in practice might be different.)
Bearing in mind that casting Hexagram 37 has always been an equal opportunity affair, ‘woman’s constancy’ can best be understood as, ‘constancy in doing inside work‘: everything that maintains a working, integrated space where people can live and grow. (I find it helps to connect ‘woman’s constancy’ with the original ‘female’ hexagram, 2, Earth: the one that provides what is needed. )
This stands in clear contrast to its paired hexagram, 38, Opposing:
‘Opposing means outside. People in the Home means inside.’
Building a house creates an inside and an outside. This is the hexagram of inside.
Trigram Storytelling
The Sequence from Hexagram 36 shows why we build it:
‘Injury on the outside naturally means turning back towards the home, and so People in the Home follows.’
As anyone who’s ever called a friend or written in a journal after a painful experience knows, when injured we want to retreat to a safe place. The trigrams tell the story:
Hexagram 36, ‘Brightness Hidden’ or ‘Brightness Injured’ shows the trigram li, fire, hidden under the earth. Light kept firmly under a bushel, not letting yourself be seen for fear of getting hurt again. Hexagram 37 still has li inside, but now it is not hidden but sheltered by outer xun, wood. 36 looks like a fire fully banked up with earth; 37 looks like the hearth fire under the roof.
Xun is the trigram of wind as well as wood, and you can see from its shape, with the open line at the bottom, how it is open and responsive to what’s below it. Here it’s ‘listening’ to the inner light, which permeates and illuminates the structure, bringing it to life. And it also powers it: a roaring blaze will create its own draught.
So the Image says,
‘Wind comes forth originally from fire. People in the Home. A noble one’s words have substance and her actions are consistent.’
Consistent words and actions are like the wind that comes forth from fire – powered by inner light. On a large scale, this looks like culture that develops from the family unit; on an individual level, it’s the secure inner light that permeates everything you do and are, and becomes a source of strength and confidence in the world.
What this isn’t
Hexagram 37 is precisely notHexagram 40, Release: they’re complementary hexagrams, with every line different:
You could imagine these two as different answers to one question: ‘Where should I be, what should I do?’
Release says, ‘Well, which path leads to where you want to go?’:
‘Release. The west and south are fruitful. With no place to go, To turn round and come back is good fortune. With a direction to go, Daybreak, good fortune.’
Release is time to dismantle structures, untie knots, and most certainly beware of any thoughts beginning ‘I should’. A pre-determined role would only be another knot to untie.
Hexagram 37 already knows the answer: you belong in the home, fulfilling your role there. This is something profoundly necessary to us, and deeply comforting. We don’t need to keep asking, ‘What would get me where I want to go?’ when we have our place and our part in the whole. (The local church probably has a rota to say who is doing the flowers this week; it’s probably had one for centuries.)
We can be self-determined, choosing what’s right for us in the moment; we can also be determined by our context. And in practice, these things work together and we’re both at once: we choose our commitments, and our commitments create the ‘home’ where we become ourselves. (If any of the ‘homes’ I’ve committed to – marriage, relationship with Yi, even ‘cello-playing – were missing, I would not be the same person.) Too far into Hexagram 40, and we become rootless and shallow; too far into 37, and we become hidebound – or delusional, doggedly fitting all experience into an rigid structure of meaning.
Reading through… the moving lines all seem to emphasise, often quite fiercely, that the inside is what’s important. In readings about other people, these lines (especially 1 and 5, also 2) have been known describe how they’ve pulled up the drawbridge, leaving you on the outside – simply not part of the picture any more. In readings about your own world – well, sometimes it actually helps to have a narrower perspective and not to see quite so far afield. A strong hearth fire creates a strong draught; a robust home space lends you strength in the world.
‘With barriers, there is a home. Regrets vanish.’
Barriers create ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ – with them, a home is possible. A house has walls; a body has an immune system. Why do ‘regrets vanish’ now? It doesn’t say… but perhaps because the barriers draw a line between you and all the other things you maybe ought to have done, or done differently. Nothing can creep through to whisper, ‘Wait, there’s somewhere else you should be…’
‘No direction to pursue, Stay in the centre and cook. Constancy, good fortune.’
Line 2, a place for human connection – and this is the line providing fuel at the heart of the fire. (Think of lines 1 and 3 as flames licking along the sides of a log.) Hexagram 40 says, ‘With a direction to go, daybreak, good fortune.’ This says there is no direction, nowhere else you need to be. Be central; provide nourishment; don’t be distracted. That could be what a woman’s constancy looks like.
‘People in the home scold and scold, Regrets, danger: good fortune. Wife and child giggle and giggle. In the end, shame.’
Hello! Anybody home? Use the extra energy of the moment – however uncomfortable – to be present where you are! If the woman’s constancy is fruitful, then the wife giggling with the children surely isn’t.
‘Enriching the home. Great good fortune.’
I had this line once about moving my piano out of storage and into our home. (For years, we’d thought there wasn’t space, and maybe the piano should wait until we moved.) This is your home, so this is where your pigs and/or pianos belong; open it up, accommodate them. A home isn’t hermetically sealed: enrich your inner space, and allow growth.
‘With the king’s presence, there is a home. Do not worry. Good fortune.’
This completes the process that began at line 1. Barriers are a prerequisite for the home, and an authoritative presence completes it. Why does it say not to worry? Because (I think) this is the king’s space, so he says what is important here. The ruler doesn’t allow anything else – not even other people’s feelings – to usurp their authority.
‘With truth and confidence as authority. In the end, good fortune.’
Line 1 is just creating the home; line 6 reaches beyond it, with influence that might extend past its four walls. This is a source of authority beyond the king’s: truth and trust, a higher connection that transcends the home.
From the I Ching Community
Talking with Yi is a conversation – and with regular readings, we develop a relationship with the oracle. We habitually talk about it as a person: ‘Yi’ rather than ‘the Yi’; something we can ‘get to know’ rather than just ‘learn’; something that speaks. (The roots of the word ‘oracle’ are in Latin orare, ‘to speak’. Oracles can talk.)
The reason Yi speaks is, of course, because it has words of its own. Tarot speaks through images; Yi speaks through the patterns we call hexagrams, but also in words, like we do. I think this leads to a different experience of divination: having a conversation with a person, versus applying a system. Yes, just as with tarot, there’s a system of symbols to learn and apply, and skills to develop – and beyond that, Yi also has something to say. Yes, there’s water above heaven (clouds in the sky, inner constancy in the face of outer uncertainty, and so on…) – and also, Yi says, ‘Wait, with truth and confidence…’
Consequently, a lot of good divination advice is also good relationship advice. Talk openly and often; be honest and straightforward. Let no topic be off-limits. Have boundaries: keep your autonomy, don’t become dependent on having Yi tell you what to do. And so on.
Also, of course, we are actually talking to a 3,000 year old book, or something that speaks through the book – and however we conceive of this speaker, it certainly can’t get bunions. Talking with Yi is also not like talking with a human being.
This has a lot of implications. Some of them make it rather like talking to an infinitely wise person, beyond ordinary human limitations: someone who can’t possibly misunderstand your question, but whose ideas of what constitute good or bad fortune might be quite different from your own. However, another is that you will tend to hear Yi speak in your own inner voice.
By ‘inner voice’ I mean both the tone of voice, and also the kind of thing it can say. If your own inner voice is hypercritical, or sarcastic, or sanguine, then your Yi will tend to sound like this, too. Yi is not your inner voice, of course, and it can and will shatter that illusion from time to time and sound unmistakably other. However, it remains true that it’s harder for a pessimist ever to hear Yi being optimistic, or a laid-back character to hear Yi being fiercely critical, or vice versa.
And this is why, even though your relationship with the oracle is an absolutely individual one, and you are the only true authority on the answers you receive, it’s also good to share a reading with another person and listen to their response – because you get to hear the reading speak with a different voice. I’ve had a few I Ching chats with Change Circle members recently, and it seems to me that what I contribute is only partly familiarity and skill with the ‘system’ of how Yi makes meaning; it’s also how I make it possible for people to hear Yi differently. The same kind of thing happens in Clarity’s forums: ‘Here’s how I hear the reading,’ we say. ‘Does that resonate for you?’ And then, perhaps, comes that unmistakable sense of being spoken to.
I’m very, very pleased to announce the birth of
The Resonance Journal, version 2.0!
With this version, you can:
Print your entries
…which also means you can use your computer’s ‘print to pdf’ driver to share individual entries.
Protect your journal with a password
And adjust the size and font of all the text you see in the program (menus, entry lists and so on)
Hexagrams 41 and 42, Decreasing and Increasing, are an especially clear hexagram pair: the two of them together describe a single phenomenon, seen from two perspectives. There is a single flow of energy, life and abundance, and it moves as a cycle: ‘Decrease, Increase, the beginnings of abundance and decline.’ When you receive one of these hexagrams, you have to think of is as part of that whole.
This is the main distinction between the experiences of Decrease and Stripping Away, Hexagram 23. 41/42 are about active participation in the flow; 23 in its purest form is just a loss you undergo, as something is taken from you. Hexagram 41 also means having less, but with an underlying awareness that there is no net loss.
There are two good examples in this I Ching Community thread: letting a plane journey go and gaining an upgrade to the bullet train; acknowledging the reality of deteriorating eyesight and getting corrective lenses. The energy hasn’t been lost, but it has been transferred – for instance, from the natural lens to an external, artificial one. There is loss, and life goes on.
The counterbalancing gain is by no means always as clear as in these examples, but it’s always happening somewhere. If you’re experiencing loss, that would be because it is your time to have less, to give things up. The Tuanzhuan, Commentary on the Judgement, lays especial emphasis on timeliness:
‘”Two baskets” corresponds to the times. To decrease the strong and increase the weak has its time. Decrease and increase, to fill and to empty, should be linked with time and associated actions.’ (Wu Jing Nuan’s translation)
The role of 41/42 as a unit stands out when you see their position in the Vessel pattern of hexagrams. They stand opposite 11/12, the hexagrams from which they’re ‘created’ by the migration of a single line between trigrams – in Hexagram 41, when the inner trigram of 11 is ‘decreased’ by one yang line that moves to the sixth place. With this, it encloses three yin lines with three yang, and creates a ‘container’:
becomes
Here is the vessel, now cast, ready to use for pouring out or receiving:
The Oracle’s story
As so often with Yi’s longer texts, the oracle of Hexagram 41 is telling us a story…
‘Decreasing: there is truth and confidence. From the source, good fortune. Not a mistake, there can be constancy. Fruitful to have a direction to go. How to use this? Two gui vessels may be used for the offering.’
Fu opens the way
It all opens with ‘truth and confidence’, fu. From the Language of Change Yijing glossary:
“Fu can sometimes (11.3, 44.1) mean simply ‘what is true’ or ‘the true nature of this’. But more often, it means the quality of trust and being true which opens channels and creates an interface – a way or place of connection. Relationships of all kinds happen through fu; it’s the prerequisite for both inner and outer communication. In the Songs, it unites the king with heaven’s mandate, and unites the people with the king.
Fu in readings most often describes human relationships. At its simplest, this is just an undeniable connection between people. At its fullest, it creates mutual trust and rapport such that people can act with unanimity. It allows transmission (teaching and learning) and precludes any strategising or manipulation.
Fu is also the prerequisite for another kind of relationship: offerings, which must be made with sincerity and an undivided heart. Just as in relationships between people, truth and trust are the conduit through which connection flows – and it is always important to care for the conduit.
As an inner state, fu is truth to self, often experienced as self-belief and confidence. It arises as a motive energy and awareness that enables you to take decisions – to commit yourself without reserve. It is the opposite of anxiety, defensiveness and doubt, of second thoughts or ‘being in two minds’. Because it means openness, it can support exploration and learning – crossing the great river, or having a direction to go.”
For Decrease, fu comes first, because it is the key to a true offering. You have to be fully present, not in two minds about it. All the good omens that follow come from this: if there is fu, then there is an opening to the source, good fortune without mistake, constancy is possible and a direction to go gives good results.
From trust to action
How does all that flow from fu?
The next thing we need to know: this is not a mistake. I think this is an example of Yi using this phrase for reassurance: it might feel wrong, but it isn’t. We don’t like losing things and having less, so Yi guides us step by step towards understanding and full participation. With trust. Not wrong.
This allows constancy. ‘Allows’, ke 可, originally has to do with speaking or singing, words of assent. Someone/ something says ‘this can happen’ – in other words, the action is in harmony with the time. The same word is used at the end of the Oracle: ‘two gui vessels may be [ke 可] used’. It allows constancy, which is also (in the earliest meaning of the word) divination: perceiving truth, seeing what the time calls for, and loyally following through.
Then, having a direction to go bears fruit. This gives me a sense of reaching out towards the future – deliberately stretching your awareness beyond the immediate experience of loss and into the reasons why. To make an offering, you need a sense of purpose.
‘How to use this?‘
In the middle of the oracle text, a voice asking questions. Again, I think this is Yi acknowledging that giving things up is hard. The very presence of a question and answer session in the middle of the oracle suggests thoughtfulness. (Also, look at the prerequisite for Decrease in the first line text: ‘considering decreasing it,’ conscious deliberation.)
‘How to use this?’ is very much the question you are asking and Yi is answering with this hexagram. It seems to me to lie somewhere between ‘How can I use this time?’ – a respectful enquiry about being in harmony with the time – and ‘What use is this sacrifice, what is it good for?’ with an implied ‘How can I possibly do this?’ and a hint of ‘Why should I?’
‘How to use this?’ ‘Two gui vessels may be used.’
The verb ‘use’ is the same; this is a direct answer to the question. With this dialogue, awareness that was stretched towards future times and distant places contracts back to the present moment. How to participate in the larger whole? By staying at your own size.
Gui vessels are not necessarily mere baskets – the word does originally mean a bamboo basket, but by Shang and Zhou times was a kind of bronze vessel. However, it was used for offerings of grain, so the message is the same: this is not a casual or trivial offering, but it is also not a vast state occasion with oxen and sheep (and maybe prisoners of war) sacrificed in their hundreds. It’s proportionate and manageable; you do not need to make exaggerated dramatic gestures of self-sacrifice.
Letting go and lightening up
In fact, Hexagram 41 can encourage us to take our sacrifices more lightly. It follows from Hexagram 40, Release:
‘Letting things take their course necessarily has occasion to let go. And so Decrease follows.’
After untying the knots of obligation, after the relief of the thunderstorm, after letting go of the uphill struggle, then Decrease.
The Dazhuan, Great Treatise, agrees:
‘Decrease is the renewal of de. Heaviness before, lightness afterwards. Keeping harm at a distance.’
Becoming lighter in this way can mean becoming much less attached to the conviction that ‘I have to Do Something!’ and investing what you need to give up with less significance. Maybe you don’t need to solve everything, just give what you can. (I’ve been greatly consoled by this hexagram in situations where I had no idea how to help.)
Decrease can renew your de, your strength and energy, perhaps just because you cease to imagine that you have to control things you can’t, in fact, control. You become less attached to making things happen a certain way, and hence less vulnerable when they don’t.
The Image: reflective presence
The Image has more to say about how to handle the emotions of Decrease:
‘Below the mountain is the lake. Decreasing. A noble one curbs anger and restrains desires.’
I’ve always liked this Image for its realism in what it doesn’t say: ‘A noble one is perfectly free of anger and feels no desire.’ The noble one, we can assume, also doesn’t like giving things up – but he will put a mountain-sized lid on his reactions and keep them in check.
And… maybe the mountain creates the lake: it forms a vessel to contain the water and prevent it from draining away. Perhaps the noble one is creating a state of deep reflection instead of getting carried away on a torrent of emotions – and perhaps anger and desire need to be checked just because they would carry you away from what’s present and real.
The Sequence – as it often does – points to a deeper significance. The lake gathered under the mountain in Hexagram 41 will become the outer trigram in hexagrams 43, 45, 47 and 49. It seems as though Hexagram 41’s Offering has deepened this capacity to communicate and share, that will lead all the way from Deciding to Radical Change.
A few years ago now, I first noticed the Vessel Casting pattern in the Sequence, and got tremendously excited about it. For the past couple of months, I’ve been developing those ideas and their application in readings for Part 5 of ‘Exploring the Sequence’, which Change Circle members can find here. For this post, I won’t try to discuss the themes and significance and use of it all – that’s in Part 5 – I just want to point to the patterns and wave my arms around excitedly…
In brief… Vessels are made by casting them from moulds that form their reverse image.
The ‘reverse image’ of Hexagram 50, the Vessel, is Hexagram 3, its complement. And every hexagram from 4 to 49 finds its complement within that span of hexagrams, which is interesting. Then there turns out to be a series of structural connections at the outer surface, and also apt hexagram shapes at the centre. But wait, there’s more! Let’s make the connections one at a time…
Complements
If you map out the Vessel casting pattern by hexagram shapes, it looks like this (you can click on each image in this post for a larger version):
You can see hexagrams 3/4 standing opposite their complements, 49/50, at one end, and 27 opposite its complement 28 at the other, looking oddly vessel-shaped, or like a casting and its clay mould –
And oh look, there’s 19/20 opposite their complements too, 33/34:
‘Transferred’ lines
Hm… that’s a third of the way along, from right to left. What happens one third of the way along in the opposite direction? Hexagrams 11 and 12 – which are already one another’s complements, so naturally what stands opposite them must be something different. It’s 41/42, which Wilhelm tells us are related to 11/12:
“Peace and Standstill have an inner connection with Decrease and Increase, because through the transference of a strong line from the lower to the upper trigram, Decrease develops from Peace, and through the transference of a strong line from the upper to the lower trigram, Decrease develops from Standstill.”
(41 and 42 both include vessel characters as part of their Chinese names.)
So our Vessel casting pattern is divided into three equal parts, like this:
Actually, hexagrams 9/10 and 43/44 are related in the same way, but by the ‘transference’ of an open line from line 3 or 4 to line 6 or 1. You can imagine 9.4 moves ‘down’ to 44.1, and 10.3 moves ‘up’ to 43.6. Also, they’re exchanged trigram hexagrams – wind and lake above/below heaven. Anyway, they belong together –
Changing lines
As I mentioned in the original article, 5/6 connect with 48/47, and 7/8 with 46/45, through a single changing line – 5.1 > 48, 7.3 > 46. (As with the ‘transferring’ lines, it’s line 1/6 or 3/4 that make the connections – either the core or the surface.)
This leaves two groups of three apparently-unrelated hexagrams: in my original 2012 article, I said the pattern ‘melts away to nothing’ towards the centre. This, as it turns out, isn’t quite true. Vessels made of bronze have carefully crafted joints hidden beneath the surface, fully visible only to X-rays. And vessels made of hexagrams…?
13/14 stand opposite 39/40, and aren’t (as far as I can see) very related to them. It’s 15/16 that connect to 39/40: 15.5 > 39. Oh, and 15/16 also connect by a single line change to 35/36: 15.1 > 36. Isn’t that pretty?
I wonder…
13.4 > 37…
…
…but no, we do not get a complete interlocking pattern: 17/18 are not one line away from 37/38.
So there is almost a perfect interlocking pattern, but the symmetry is broken by the hexagram called Corruption, whose Chinese name shows a vessel that contains worms, used for dark magic.
However, 17/18 (which are one another’s complements), are one line away from both 3/4 and 49/50. 17.4 changes to 3; 18.4 changes to 50.And of course 50.4 changes to 18:
‘The vessel’s legs break off, The prince’s stew is upset, Dignity soiled. Pitfall.’
The hidden interlocking joint is Corrupted; the legs break off.
And finally?
What about the final third of the pattern, towards the centre of the mould?
This part is thoroughly molten. 29 and 30 are complements, of course…
…but what about the line above, hexagrams 21 to 26?
They have no immediate structural connection to 29-32: no single changing line relationships here, and no complementary hexagrams. Wait… where are the complements for these three pairs?
Ah yes. There they are.
The ancient Chinese crafted vessels with exceptional skill, using techniques that would not be understood in the West for centuries…
What can we make of this?
This pattern of relationships – which I freely admit looks like a dog’s breakfast with the boxes and lines I’ve scrawled all over it – beautifully represents something I’ve come to love about the Yi. This is not a model of perfect mathematical symmetry; it doesn’t take a single principle of transformation or relationship and use it with rigid consistency. You couldn’t analyse or reproduce it with a computer program.
Instead, it offers a creative, shifting play of relationships and broken symmetry, that’s all inextricably woven together with the meaning of the hexagrams. Yi is an oracle, after all, so the patterns it makes must surely be meant to speak to us in readings – if we can just develop the ears to hear. I’ve written much more on this in Exploring the Sequence (Part 5, on Vessel Casting, is over 7,000 words…), but I wanted just to share the pattern here. Isn’t it beautiful?
Its name and nature
The name of Hexagram 37 is simply 家人, jiaren, ‘Home People’ – which also means the members of a family.
Here’s the old form of the character –
– where you can see that a ‘home’ is an animal – a pig – under a roof. Home is where the pig is; it’s the safe place to keep what you value.
In readings, this idea unfolds to encompass any ‘shared space’ and its members. Often it’s literally a family home, or it can be any organisation and the stakeholders who work together within it – all feeding the same pig, as it were. More generally, the ‘home’ is any overarching structure, a working system where all the components cooperate harmoniously: a school of thought, a relationship, a way of making a living, a healthy body. The home provides our shelter, or economy (from Greek oikonomia, ‘household management’), or habitat – our ordinary living space.
The Oracle
‘People in the Home. A woman’s constancy is fruitful.’
Why a woman’s constancy in particular?
The Tuanzhuan begins by saying, ‘Woman’s proper position is inside, man’s proper position is outside.’ Tradition in China, as in Europe, said that the man dealt with the outside world, the woman managed the inside: he farmed or fought, she cooked and spun. (Though what happened in practice might be different.)
Bearing in mind that casting Hexagram 37 has always been an equal opportunity affair, ‘woman’s constancy’ can best be understood as, ‘constancy in doing inside work‘: everything that maintains a working, integrated space where people can live and grow. (I find it helps to connect ‘woman’s constancy’ with the original ‘female’ hexagram, 2, Earth: the one that provides what is needed. )
This stands in clear contrast to its paired hexagram, 38, Opposing:
‘Opposing means outside. People in the Home means inside.’
Building a house creates an inside and an outside. This is the hexagram of inside.
Trigram Storytelling
The Sequence from Hexagram 36 shows why we build it:
‘Injury on the outside naturally means turning back towards the home, and so People in the Home follows.’
As anyone who’s ever called a friend or written in a journal after a painful experience knows, when injured we want to retreat to a safe place. The trigrams tell the story:
Hexagram 36, ‘Brightness Hidden’ or ‘Brightness Injured’ shows the trigram li, fire, hidden under the earth. Light kept firmly under a bushel, not letting yourself be seen for fear of getting hurt again. Hexagram 37 still has li inside, but now it is not hidden but sheltered by outer xun, wood. 36 looks like a fire fully banked up with earth; 37 looks like the hearth fire under the roof.
Xun is the trigram of wind as well as wood, and you can see from its shape, with the open line at the bottom, how it is open and responsive to what’s below it. Here it’s ‘listening’ to the inner light, which permeates and illuminates the structure, bringing it to life. And it also powers it: a roaring blaze will create its own draught.
So the Image says,
‘Wind comes forth originally from fire. People in the Home. A noble one’s words have substance and her actions are consistent.’
Consistent words and actions are like the wind that comes forth from fire – powered by inner light. On a large scale, this looks like culture that develops from the family unit; on an individual level, it’s the secure inner light that permeates everything you do and are, and becomes a source of strength and confidence in the world.
What this isn’t
Hexagram 37 is precisely notHexagram 40, Release: they’re complementary hexagrams, with every line different:
You could imagine these two as different answers to one question: ‘Where should I be, what should I do?’
Release says, ‘Well, which path leads to where you want to go?’:
‘Release. The west and south are fruitful. With no place to go, To turn round and come back is good fortune. With a direction to go, Daybreak, good fortune.’
Release is time to dismantle structures, untie knots, and most certainly beware of any thoughts beginning ‘I should’. A pre-determined role would only be another knot to untie.
Hexagram 37 already knows the answer: you belong in the home, fulfilling your role there. This is something profoundly necessary to us, and deeply comforting. We don’t need to keep asking, ‘What would get me where I want to go?’ when we have our place and our part in the whole. (The local church probably has a rota to say who is doing the flowers this week; it’s probably had one for centuries.)
We can be self-determined, choosing what’s right for us in the moment; we can also be determined by our context. And in practice, these things work together and we’re both at once: we choose our commitments, and our commitments create the ‘home’ where we become ourselves. (If any of the ‘homes’ I’ve committed to – marriage, relationship with Yi, even ‘cello-playing – were missing, I would not be the same person.) Too far into Hexagram 40, and we become rootless and shallow; too far into 37, and we become hidebound – or delusional, doggedly fitting all experience into an rigid structure of meaning.
Reading through… the moving lines all seem to emphasise, often quite fiercely, that the inside is what’s important. In readings about other people, these lines (especially 1 and 5, also 2) have been known describe how they’ve pulled up the drawbridge, leaving you on the outside – simply not part of the picture any more. In readings about your own world – well, sometimes it actually helps to have a narrower perspective and not to see quite so far afield. A strong hearth fire creates a strong draught; a robust home space lends you strength in the world.
‘With barriers, there is a home. Regrets vanish.’
Barriers create ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ – with them, a home is possible. A house has walls; a body has an immune system. Why do ‘regrets vanish’ now? It doesn’t say… but perhaps because the barriers draw a line between you and all the other things you maybe ought to have done, or done differently. Nothing can creep through to whisper, ‘Wait, there’s somewhere else you should be…’
‘No direction to pursue, Stay in the centre and cook. Constancy, good fortune.’
Line 2, a place for human connection – and this is the line providing fuel at the heart of the fire. (Think of lines 1 and 3 as flames licking along the sides of a log.) Hexagram 40 says, ‘With a direction to go, daybreak, good fortune.’ This says there is no direction, nowhere else you need to be. Be central; provide nourishment; don’t be distracted. That could be what a woman’s constancy looks like.
‘People in the home scold and scold, Regrets, danger: good fortune. Wife and child giggle and giggle. In the end, shame.’
Hello! Anybody home? Use the extra energy of the moment – however uncomfortable – to be present where you are! If the woman’s constancy is fruitful, then the wife giggling with the children surely isn’t.
‘Enriching the home. Great good fortune.’
I had this line once about moving my piano out of storage and into our home. (For years, we’d thought there wasn’t space, and maybe the piano should wait until we moved.) This is your home, so this is where your pigs and/or pianos belong; open it up, accommodate them. A home isn’t hermetically sealed: enrich your inner space, and allow growth.
‘With the king’s presence, there is a home. Do not worry. Good fortune.’
This completes the process that began at line 1. Barriers are a prerequisite for the home, and an authoritative presence completes it. Why does it say not to worry? Because (I think) this is the king’s space, so he says what is important here. The ruler doesn’t allow anything else – not even other people’s feelings – to usurp their authority.
‘With truth and confidence as authority. In the end, good fortune.’
Line 1 is just creating the home; line 6 reaches beyond it, with influence that might extend past its four walls. This is a source of authority beyond the king’s: truth and trust, a higher connection that transcends the home.
becomes 
