I Ching with Clarity

How does the Yi help in an impossibly painful situation? It's hard to describe - deep recognition, being recognised, a sense of reconnection. Dominique's reading for this episode:

"What is the lesson that I must learn through the pain of losing my marriage and our future?"

And Yi's answer: Dispersing - Hexagram 59, with no changing lines.

It's a beautiful response - I hope you enjoy listening

Transcript, for Change Circle members

I have just heard that Stephen Karcher, author of Total I Ching and How to Use the I Ching, collaborator on the original Eranos edition, has died. I owe Stephen a great deal, so I'm writing this to express my gratitude.

My very first encounter with the Yi came when I found a copy of Legge in the Oxfam bookshop - but it was when I borrowed the Ritsema/Karcher Eranos edition from the library that I first realised I'd found something I could connect with. Yes, I know now that the Eranos version isn't perfect, but for me it opened the way into the heart of the oracle - a revelation. I monopolised the library's copy for a long time, renewed it, and renewed it some more, and finally bought a copy... and then had the idea of doing readings for other people.

Then I found How to Use the I Ching, a modest little beginner's book that provided exactly what it said on the cover. It has a really excellent introduction - one that doesn't, unlike most, stop at telling you how to cast a hexagram, but walks you in detail through a process of interpretation.

This introduction was where I first learned to understand the second, resulting hexagram of a reading as the 'relating hexagram', the 'sea in which the primary figure swims'. Stephen wasn't the first or only diviner to notice that this second hexagram was not rigidly 'The Outcome', of course, but he might have been the first to write and teach this. This was because he wasn't primarily a translator or academic - though he was both of those - but a diviner. He did readings, for himself and other people, and this experience is the foundation for his books. He had conversations with Change, and was hugely invested in introducing people to the oracle so they could do the same, and ways to transformation would open.

I reached out to Stephen, and was lucky enough to meet him a couple of times. In person he was tremendously energetic, brimming with ideas and creativity - think Laozi meets Tigger. After he'd given a long, lively talk out in Cowley, and answered questions afterwards, I imagined we'd take the bus back to the centre of Oxford - not a chance. We walked (or I walked, and he bounced).

He was also unstintingly generous with his ideas and his support. Of course I found it immensely encouraging that he was already making the Yijing his life's work: it could be done! And he offered me personal encouragement, especially to get started offering readings in conversation instead of just by email.

I was thoroughly apprehensive about this: what if people asked questions I couldn't answer, and I couldn't think of anything to say? As part of persuading me to give it a go, Stephen read for me by phone. It was about a business relationship that wasn't working, and the primary hexagram was 23, Stripping Away. I couldn't see the wood for the bushes I was beating around, looking for subtle things this might be referring to; Stephen told me completely directly that the relationship was at an end. (It really was.) He also responded to my anxieties with the best advice any diviner could receive: 'Trust the Oracle.'

I asked Yi to talk to me about Stephen - something I often do when someone I know dies. It responded with Hexagram 14, Great Possession, with no changing lines.

There's not much to add to that, is there? I think this makes a lot of sense - naturally - as part of the Pair with Hexagram 13, People in Harmony. Stephen was a tremendous synthesiser of Yijing ideas and research, joining many sources into a Great Possession of divinatory tools.

I came to think of him as a kind of Yijing alchemist. Everything he learned went into the crucible - Jung, etymology, myth and legend, insights into the sequence and structure of the Yi… - and every new insight or tool he cooked up, he wanted to see shared and used, explored and developed in live readings, where we could discover how they worked.

I tried to make a list of what's found its way from that alchemist's laboratory into my own readings. Right at the foundation, there's the concept of a relating hexagram. Then there's the habit of paying attention to Xugua and Zagua, and of thinking of hexagrams as one half of a pair. There are trigrams as 'spirit helpers'; there are steps of change and (with LiSe) line pathways. There are patterns of change, or 'change operators' as he called them later on - first the yin pattern, which I think was part of that brilliant introduction to How to Use the I Ching, and then yin and yang together. There are ideal and shadow hexagrams - the 'shadow hexagram', as far as I know, is a Karcher original, something that emerged from Scott Davis' insights into the Sequence.

There's also a whole lot more I never quite wrapped my head around - something that would not have perturbed him in the slightest. What he leaves us is -

'Great Possession.
From the source, creating success.'

Hexagram 14 has the first two of the 'big four' words - yuan heng, 'from the source success', a 'primal offering' - but not the third and fourth - li zhen, 'constancy bears fruit', 'fruitful divination'. We're left, not with a well-polished, monolithic system, with everything said that he would have wanted to say, but with a great profusion of ideas and approaches to try, a gift waiting to be used. The absence of a relating hexagram seems to emphasise that open-ended quality of the hexagram, leaving the 'fruitful divination' part up to us.

I wish I could have quoted Total I Ching in this post, but sadly my copy is tucked away in storage. You can find Karcher on Hexagram 14 at the 'Mothering Change' website, though. An excerpt:

'Circle of Meanings
A great idea, a great leader, a great person, great power to realise; great results, great achievements; an inner concentration of the will around a central idea that brings wealth and abundance.'

I Ching Community discussion

Where they are in the Yijing

There are three mentions in the Zhouyi - the oldest layer of the Yijing text - of 'establishing feudal lords': in the Oracle of Hexagram 3, and its first line, and in the Oracle of Hexagram 16. (Then they're also mentioned in the Image of Hexagram 8, and there's Lord Kang in Hexagram 35.)

If you mostly use the Wilhelm/Baynes translation, you may well have no idea what I'm on about. (Of course this may often happen to many people and for unrelated but excellent reasons…) It doesn't mention 'establishing feudal lords', only 'installing helpers'. 'In order to overcome the chaos' of Hexagram 3, according to Wilhelm's commentary, 'he needs helpers.' And at Hexagram 16, 'It is Enthusiasm that enables us to install helpers for the completion of an undertaking without fear of secret opposition.' Helpers create order, foster harmony and get things done.

And this is - of course - good, directly usable advice: get some help in place if you want to accomplish anything. However, if we dig a bit further into the original meaning, there might be more to learn.

What is a feudal lord, anyway?

Feudal lords are those appointed by the king to rule the regions in his stead. The Chinese words in hexagrams 3 and 16 are 建侯, jian hou, and they can be literally translated as 'enfeoff a lord'. The etymology of both characters is interesting:

侯 hou, lord, shows a person and an arrow hitting a target - or in very early forms, just the arrow in the target. A lord may originally have been a distinguished archer. The Shuowen says of this,

'Targets for archery at the great Spring Ceremony. The character shows a man and the target where he has shot his arrow. The sovereign shot at bear, tiger and leopard targets [ie targets made from these animal skins], showing thus that he repressed rebellion. The feudal lords shot at bear, boar and tiger, the senior officials at large deer, the officials at smaller deer and at panther, to expel evil influences from the fields.'

So… perhaps the foundational idea is that a lord is someone who keeps things safe and peaceful, deterring attacks and driving out enemies material or spiritual, through his skill with the bow.

And 建 jian, meaning to enfeoff, establish, found, originally seems to have depicted a man driving a post into the ground. (As always with ancient Chinese characters, this isn't an exact science - no doubt different scribes wrote the word differently - but the bronze inscription characters here and here look very much like someone driving in a post.)

Installing feudal lords starts to look a little like building a line of defence - and that's certainly part of the historical picture. According to the Book of Rites, immediately after King Wu had overthrown the Shang regime, before he had even descended from his chariot, he had already begun to enfeoff lords. They would have held land on his behalf, outposts distributed along the Yellow River Valley.

A noble, often a relation of the king's, might be comfortably ensconced in the security of the capital, only to be told by his king to take troops and set out to establish a garrison - Britannica describes these as 'colonies'. Such lords would support one another, and could also call on military support from the centre.

In this way the ruler at the centre expands his sphere of influence and - I imagine - creates a 'buffer zone' between the capital and hostile forces. It reminds me of the defensive role of the archer, and the lords driving evil influences from the fields.

Within his own realm, a feudal lord was like a mini-king: making local law, conducting religious rites, and entitled to his share of local produce. He would also owe a duty to the king, to provide tribute and soldiers. The flow of resources goes both ways, both from and to the capital, and also between the feudal states in mutual support.

In the bronze vessels cast to commemorate enfeoffments, becoming a feudal lord is described as a great honour, one the lord accepts with humility and gratitude. Inscriptions express faith that the newly-cast vessel would be handed down to their descendants, and so too would the fief. There's no sense here of defence or precarity, only becoming part of an ever-expanding, harmonious realm, held together by bonds of mutual loyalty.

A second look at the text

What light could all this cast on the hexagrams?

The name of Hexagram 3, zhun, might be translated as 'sprouting' and 'Difficulty at the Beginning' - but also (pronounced tun) means to station troops, or a garrison. In other words, exactly what a feudal lord would establish when first sent out to bring a new region into the king's realm.

And there's the most basic idea of Hexagram 3: that this is the beginning. Wu starts naming feudal lords before he even gets down from his chariot. To weave together a thriving, interconnected kingdom, you need your garrisons first. To grow an oak tree, the acorn starts with roots.

In the Oracle of Hexagram 3, setting up feudal lords is one half of a contrast:

'Sprouting.
From the source, creating success, constancy bears fruit.
Don't use this to have a direction to go,
Fruitful to establish feudal lords.'

'Do this, not that': don't go places, don't set out to explore in a single direction; instead, consolidate power at the centre first by spreading your network in all directions. This is how to grow.

There might (speculation alert!) be a more specific contrast implied here. Harmen Mesker has suggested that the 'direction to go', 攸往 you wang, is a 'far place', and this is about making a royal journey out to the border realms. Shang kings (according to Britannica) had been largely peripatetic, constantly touring in an effort to maintain their influence and alliances with regional lords. But if the regional lords are your own appointees (and probably family members), the strength of the network would strengthen the centre and mean less need to tour.

So… 'having a direction to go' vs 'establishing feudal lords' is the difference between narrowing and expanding possibilities, but perhaps also between trying to do it all yourself, be everywhere at once, and delegation. (Or 'installing helpers', as a wise translator once wrote...)

There's a spectrum of associations for feudal lords: from the harmonious flow of support and loyalty through an ordered network, through to a venture into new territory to establish the first garrison. Plainly, Hexagram 3 is at the beginning.

But… look what stands across from it: its complementary hexagram, 50, the Vessel. The rituals of enfeoffment could involve a gift of metal with which to cast the new commemorative vessel - we know this from an inscription on a bronze vessel from the reign of King Cheng (~1042 to 1021 BC). That has to cast new light on the whole big, beautiful pattern the Sequence of Hexagrams makes between hexagrams 3 and 50. (I've described these patterns more completely and clearly in Exploring the Sequence, available in the Change Circle Library.)

Then comes 3.1 - the absolute beginning of the beginning:

'Encircled by stones.
Fruitful to settle with constancy,
Fruitful to establish feudal lords.'

When this line changes, it reveals Hexagram 8, Seeking Union, with its trigrams showing the rivers flowing over the earth. I remember the feudal outposts established along the Yellow River Valley - and the Image of Hexagram 8:

'Above earth is the stream. Seeking Union.
The ancient kings founded countless cities for relationships with all the feudal lords.'

And finally Hexagram 16, Enthusiasm, or Anticipating - or Readiness, as Bradford Hatcher translates it.

'Enthusiasm.
Fruitful to set up feudal lords and mobilise the armies.'

Now the feudal lords are linked with mobilisation. I'm no longer sure whether these armies will be marching from the regions to the capital or vice versa, but either way, the local lords will provide them with structure and direction.

Traditionally this is seen as the role of line 4, the single yang line, mobilising the army of yin lines. Action emerges from compliance like the outer trigram thunder from inner trigram earth. So R.J. Lynn translates the Oracle of 16 as,

'It is fitting to establish a chief and to send the army into action.'

Hexagram 3 made me think of how feudal lords broke new ground and expanded the king's realm; Hexagram 16 reminds me more of their role as defensive outposts. Energy is gathered and galvanised in 16 partly in sheer delight, and also partly to be ready. Remember the role of 16 in inspiring the creation of fortifications and warning systems?

‘They made defensive double gates and watchmen’s clappers to keep off marauders. This may have come from Yu.’ (16)

(That's from the chapter of the Dazhuan that describes how certain hexagrams work almost as culture heroes.)

Feudal lords in readings

And so to the point of it all: will that extra bit of background information make a difference in readings?

I think - unsurprisingly - it depends on the reading. I can think of a couple where 'install helpers' is exactly the advice needed, and the rest is probably clutter. In the 45th episode of the podcast, Abby understood the feudal lords of Hexagram 3 as the people whose advice helped her to resolve a family conflict. In the 33rd, Joanna's Hexagram 16 feudal lords made sense as relationships she could usefully develop in another country before moving her whole family there.

But I've also come across many readings where the extra background does help. Here are a few…

In the last podcast, with Hexagram 3 unchanging, Ludimila connected with the idea of feudal lords bringing knowledge and resources to the centre. In this connection, I really appreciate Bradford Hatcher's wisdom on Hexagram 3:

'And when it seems to be only you, against all the chaotic world, the trick is to rethink what 'you' is, to include the sum of all your helpers and all the resources at hand. Collect the wits first and start turning things to advantage.'

If we're asking, 'What helpers? There's no-one to help me!' - which in Hexagram 3, we well might be - this would have us think not so much of appointing the feudal lords as recognising where they already are, or converting aspects of the existing situation into feudal lords. (There's an element of that in the historical picture, too: existing Shang rulers were involved in consolidating the Zhou kingdom.)

One idea that comes through again and again, especially with Hexagram 3 line 1 (and actually with Abby's reading, too) is that of feudal lords as a network of mutual support that makes your world bigger. People caught amidst the 'encircling stones' might find new connections - often new friendships - beyond a claustrophobic family, or oppressive marriage or job, so that they can see themselves and their situation in a new way.

I had 3.1 as advice for the last Christmas I spent with my mother-in-law. She would come to stay with us, and she and I would sit together in the one small room of the house that could be kept (almost) warm enough for her comfort, where I wondered how to make things feel even slightly festive for her. The local church welcomed her with great, practical kindness to a beautiful Christmas service - but apart from that, she was happier staying in. We settled down inside the rock circle of her blindness and frailty, where Youtube videos of songs she remembered (every word of) from 70 years ago played the part of feudal lords, bringing more life and delight into our small room.

Also - especially with Hexagram 16 - it can help to think of feudal lords specifically as a defensive perimeter, expanding security.

For instance… I find I've received Hexagram 16 a couple of times when asking about the effect of fluoride on my teeth. (It forms a compound on the surface of the teeth that's more acid-resistant than natural enamel.)

Then there's a reading Balata shared on the forum: 16 unchanging as the best description of a composer who first hired assistants as he began to go deaf, and ended up passing off their work in its entirety as his own. You can see his 'ghost composers' as feudal lords, increasingly employed to defend a central self-concept.

(But on the other hand, and before I pigeon-hole 16's feudal lords into a purely defensive role, there's also a story on the forum of Hexagram 16 describing why someone couldn't contact an elderly friend. He was fine; it was just that his students had got him a new email address and he needed to reinstate her as a phone contact.)

16's feudal lords take on their organising, ordering role in podcast 52, where Roslyn needed to develop a business plan/ strategy/ structure (her word), not just throw spaghetti at the wall to see what would stick.

And in podcast 49, they were the people who run Family Constellations workshops and who are delegated there as representatives, who need to be interconnected in mutual support, as parts of a greater whole - ensuring the whole thing is grounded, not just a flight of fantasy. Lux called them the 'people that hold the space'.

A few portable ideas

If you're a king establishing feudal lords, what might you be doing?

• creating an interconnected, mutually enriching network
• delegating and decentralising
• making your world bigger, opening up resources, creating greater resilience
• protecting the centre, creating more safety, holding the space

I Ching Community discussion

Ludimila had graduated in psychology and opened her doors as a therapist a few years previously, but wondered whether she was being prompted to hold onto her secure, old work as a teacher and translator. So she asked,

'What should I focus on professionally?'

and cast Hexagram 3, Sprouting, with no changing lines. It's a beautifully simple answer, and we thoroughly enjoyed exploring it together.

Those explorations touched on the nuclear story, at which point I came up with a highly sophisticated visual aid...

(This may come in useful towards the end of the episode if you're not familiar with nuclear trigrams and hexagrams!)

You can learn more about Ludimila and her work here - she does sessions in both Portugese and English.

Introducing the book

Johan Hausen has kindly sent me a review copy of his book, Yijing Ethics. It's a transcription of the oral teachings of Xing De, also called Li Shifu, a Daoist renunciant who is deeply immersed and skilled in traditional Daoist arts. (He is a healer as well as a Yijing practitioner.) So Xing De is a link in a long, long chain of transmitted teaching - and I wasn't far into the book before I realised how different his mental landscape is from mine, not least in its concept of ethics.

The book is tiny: sixty-odd well spaced pages, plus another twenty of Hausen's explanatory end notes, which are essential and very much worth reading. Its contents:

The Introduction - introducing the Yi to newcomers (from a traditional rather than an academic perspective) and laying out Li Shifu's basic approach.

The Yi Jing Virtues and Karma - going into more depth on the world view behind the practice.

Yijing Requirements - describing the full ritual surrounding readings.

Legends and Stories - lively tales of real-life readings, and an intriguing glimpse into divinations to locate lost objects with the properties of a single trigram.

And then come the endnotes. (I can recommend reading with a second bookmark in the endnotes so you can look all of them up.)

Yijing Ethics is the 'prequel' to a bigger volume on using the Yijing for healing. We'll have to wait for that volume for an explanation of how Li Shifu does readings - apparently with a textless method that uses the theory of five phases.

First reactions…

In a nutshell, this little book gives me a glimpse of a whole different world of divination.

My first reaction was funny in an embarrassing sort of way: oh, I already know this. I already know there's a traditional approach to the Yijing that uses incense and altars; I know that in this traditional view, the oracle is not to be consulted in trivial matters. I also already know I don't agree with the necessity of incense or the interdiction of small questions.

Reading a little further, it dawned on me that there's a difference between knowing about something, and knowing it. I don't know the traditional approach of ritual before divination, because I've never undertaken it as a regular practice; this has never been my way of expressing the reverence and gratitude I feel for the Yi. Yijing Ethics comes from someone who knows this practice in his bones. It's not so much food for thought as an invitation to experience.

Ethics?

I probably shouldn't be surprised that 'Yijing ethics' means something very different for Li Shifu. There are some fundamentals we have in common: not consulting for excessive riches or power (not directly with your own readings, nor as a practitioner); being guided by reverence and gratitude for the oracle. But questions I might consider to be 'Yijing ethics' (like 'When is it OK to divine about another person?') aren't here at all. And the way the book opens is quite disconcerting...

In his introduction, he explains the questions you can ask the Yi - and almost every single one of them is asking for a prediction, like 'Will I win the competition or not?' There are no questions at all about choosing your path, no requests for advice. That doesn't necessarily mean he would never consider such questions, of course, it's just startling to me that he doesn't mention any.

There's just one exception: he also mentions asking for medical diagnosis - which is something that I would never get into for other people, precisely for ethical reasons! 'When healing through the Yijing,' he says, 'there is no need to prescribe medicine.'

Like I said, this is all disconcerting. But as I reflect some more, a bit of light begins to dawn.

Why would it be unethical for me to use the Yijing to diagnose people's medical issues? Because I've discovered that I can't do it very well - but the medical profession can. Li Shifu's experience is not necessarily the same.

Why would you think of the Yi as a means of prediction, and in medical cases of description, but not as a source of wise counsel? It depends on what you consider to be a worthy goal - of any human endeavour, divination included. More on that below, under 'desire'.

So what are 'Yijing ethics'?

The essentials

Everyone reading this will have their own habitual patterns of approaching Yi, some with more 'ritual' elements than others. In my world, this is just a matter of what works best for each person to help us to focus.

But this book comes from a different world. Here, traditional spiritual practices are absolutely, inseparably part of reverence and sincerity in divination. Gratitude to the oracle entails reciting a certain prayer. 'Yijing ethics' means ritual - not exclusively, but inseparably.

So divination requires music, incense and prayer. It requires purification for three days before consulting, during which time, 'you must not think about anything bad or harmful, such as relationship issues or sexual matters.'

Also, it's based on the practice of sitting meditation to cultivate the inner qualities needed. In support of this comes a quotation from the Dazhuan - part 1, chapter 10:

寂然不動，感而遂通
'Quiet and unmoving, perceive it and succeed in communion.'

I went and looked this up, as that's not the translation I remembered. And sure enough, in Wilhelm/Baynes this passage comes out as, 'The Changes… are quiescent and do not move. But if they are stimulated, they penetrate all situations.' For Wilhelm (and other translators I've seen), this passage describes qualities of the book - how it does nothing until activated by a questioner. But for Li Shifu, these are the necessary qualities and practice of a diviner.

Divination and desire

This is where the complete difference in world view really comes into focus.

At first, what Li Shifu says about desire seemed to fall into that comfortable basket of 'things I already know'. He does not want the Yi to be connected with materialism: practitioners should not be driven by their 'need' for another Rolls or private jet, nor yet for 'fame and reputation'. Readings should not be used for excessive gain, either. (Though doing readings for others in return for a subsistence living is fine.)

But the basic idea is far more radical than that. From the Introduction:

'Humans always act, too readily, from the place of their own needs and desires. The Yi Jing came to lead us out of that.'

And later:

'It is not possible to impart the Yi Jing and its practice to someone who pursues their desires with it, even if only in dreams.'

Now, it's possible that by 'desire' he means only rampant materialism, and not the desire for community, or to create, or to be of service - the kind of desire I would think of as divine guidance. But he never hints at such a distinction.

And if he in fact means all desires, then that might explain why his idea of divination is asking for a prediction. 'How can I attain this thing I desire?' would be a completely wrong-headed question; 'Will this thing I desire happen?' would be more acceptable, because it doesn't involve the reading in pursuing the desire.

He goes one step further:

'There is no need to cast oracles to avoid bad things happening, and we should endure the bad along with the good.'

One of those excellent end notes explains Li Shifu's assertion that 'to consult the Yi Jing excessively will affect one's karma':

'This effect on one's karma will be either as the creation of a karmic attachment to controlling one's future or because one misses out on lessons in the cultivation of virtue (such as learning forbearance) by shunning any negative experiences.'

I would agree that readings should not be used as a way to avoid the fullness of experience, but this goes one step further. If you need bad experiences to learn from, then using readings to avoid bad experiences is completely counter-productive.

The primary objective for Li Shifu is not to change your experience, but to grow in understanding. This is why readings to restore physical health are acceptable, because the body is a necessary vehicle for spiritual cultivation. Readings about anything that isn't such a necessity - like material comfort - are less so.

He even says that if a reading predicts you will lose all your wealth from a choice, you should not use this reading to change course and avoid the loss. Instead, you should learn from the experience of loss. When you have learned, then perhaps you can change the causes and hence the effects.

Conclusions?

I find this book a fascinating glimpse into a whole different world of divination. I don't want to move there, but I do want to understand it better.

And amidst all the difference, the points of contact and shared experience are all the more striking. He gives the example of approaching the oracle with sincerity, making a correct forecast - and then months later, finding he'd had the wrong hexagram. 'The fourth and fifth dimensions,' he says, 'are full of mischievous spirits.' Even in our different worlds, I think we've met some of the same spirits.

Looking at a reading the other day, I found myself revisiting (after a gap of ten years) the idea of qian, heaven - the name of Hexagram 1 - as a central axis. It's a concept that shows up in many ways…

What does qian mean?

The character qian is now simply the name of the hexagram (and trigram): it means pure yang, heaven and its influence. (More on that in a moment…)

Here's what I've gleaned from Harmen, LiSe and assorted dictionaries about the character qian…

Qian 乾 breaks down into two component parts:

• 倝 gan, meaning dry, dried or drought
• 乙 yi, which is the second heavenly stem and means 'second' generally

Some say that 乙 originally represented a germinating sprout, full of potential energy; others say that it's originally a small stream of water. The Pleco dictionary says this is a 'distinguishing mark' that contributes no particular meaning to the character; Stephen Field says the whole character's meaning 'is derived from the lower right-hand element in the graph depicting the "twist" of a newly emerged sprout.' The decomposition of Chinese characters is not an exact science…

But it's the other part of the character that brings me back to qian as axis. Gan, 'dried', breaks down in turn into two components:

• the rising sun, sunrise
• yan 㫃 , a flag flying in the wind

Harmen dug up some very interesting nuggets about the flag: how the flagpole would be set up in the centre of the town or village, with all the houses facing towards it, and how it might also act as the gnomon of a sundial.

So the flagpole is the centre: we build our settlement around it; we look to it to orient ourselves. In battle or on the march we gather around it and look to it for orders; its bright blazon shows who we are.

What is the 'influence of heaven'?

This definition of qian can seem very abstract. What's 'heaven' and how does it influence us? Once we've cleared out the serried ranks of angels and archangels cluttering our Western imaginations, what's left?

There is a Chinese concept of the 'will of heaven' that's not unrecognisably different from the Christian idea of a 'divine will'. But qian is not just 'heaven' but also the firmament: where sun, moon and stars follow their courses. (Remember the rising sun is part of the character.)

Qian is made of closed, firm lines. Nothing whatsoever can be done to it. (Unlike the open lines of kun, earth, which can be broken open by plough/roots/rivers, excavated, piled into ramparts, baked into bricks…) Those parallel, unbroken lines remind me of long-exposure photos of the night sky:

Quick question: what time is it now, as you're reading this?

You probably glanced reflexively at the corner of your screen to find out. A decade or so ago, you might have looked at your watch (confession: I still do), and I suppose Grannie would have looked at the clock on the mantelpiece to see when it was time to get started on supper. But not so many generations ago, your reflexive glance would have been to the sky, to see the angle of the sun.

You need to know what time it is because you understand and order your life in days and nights. You also order it by seasons - especially if you're a farmer - and to know accurately what time of year it is, you look at the night sky.

This is the story traced through the line texts of Hexagram 1, or at least part of it: the dragon constellation that is submerged in line 1, when it's too early to sow, and begins its journey across the sky as work in the fields begins.

It's good to appreciate how much this dragon does not come with 'pause' or 'fast forward' buttons. (Every year without fail, Facebook gardening groups are full of pictures of forlorn, leggy seedlings that were sown too soon and light-deprived.) Qian is what is so.

The sun and stars are for time what the flagstaff is for space: what our lives revolve around; how we orient ourselves; where we start from; how we know what to do.

Sequence reflections

Is this characteristic of qian reflected in the Sequence?

Well, it's literally where we start from - the first hexagram. And the trigrams qian and kun are mostly concentrated towards the beginning of the book: in eight of the first 10 hexagram pairs, and none of the final 10.

I've started talking about qian and kun together because that's how they work. Every hexagram pattern that includes the trigram qian is adjacent to a pattern with trigram kun - most often followed by it, as hexagram 1 is by hexagram 2. Sun and stars only 'move' because we have a place to stand to watch them; the flagstaff is planted in the earth.

Here's the complete list of hexagrams with qian as a component trigram:

• 1
• 5/6
• 9/10
• 11/12
• 13/14
• 25/26
• 33/34
• 43/44

As we emerge from the dense cluster of heaven and earth trigrams from hexagram 5 to 16, a pattern appears: 13-16, 23-26, 33-36 and 43-46 are all qian and kun pairs. (23-26 are the exception to the rule that qian comes first.) How about imagining these as the flagstaff planted in the earth at the centre of each group of ten hexagrams?

When qian and kun are combined into a single hexagram, in hexagrams 11/12, they become the axis of what Scott Davis dubbed the first 'big/little' set of hexagrams. Have a look -

(I've turned the hexagrams on their sides so you can more easily see each single pattern that forms an inverse pair of hexagrams.)

11/12 is like a mirror, with two qian hexagrams closest to it and two kun hexagrams beyond them. Also, all the hexagrams in here are complementary/ opposite to one another: 7/8 to 13/14, 9/10 to 15/16, and 11/12, of course, are a complementary pair.

What does this matter?

Sequence patterns are satisfying in their own way, but are they worth noticing? In other words, does this make any difference in readings?

All the reflections, shared themes and stories of 11/12 and their surroundings most certainly do, but they're way beyond the scope of a blog post. You can find much more about them in Exploring the Sequence, which is part of the Change Circle Library.

As for the idea that each decade of hexagrams might have its own qian-kun 'flagstaff' planted at its centre: this is one I'm just starting to play with. You can do the same - in general, from your experience with the hexagrams, and especially as they come up in your own readings. That's always the real proof of the pudding. See what tastes good!

We might experiment with thinking of the earth hexagrams (7/8, 15/16, 35/36, 45/46) as responses to the challenge of the heaven ones (5/6, 13/14, 33/34, 43/44). (I know that begs the question of what to do with 23/24-25/26.) If the Army is gathered in response to the obstruction of Hexagram 6, then can we also imagine Seeking Union as a response to, or an expression of, Waiting? How about hexagrams 35 and 36 as historically grounded, real life responses to the question of whether to Retreat or stand firm?

…and so on. When I next receive hexagrams from these neighbouring pairs for related readings, I'll certainly sit up and take notice - and look for the flagstaff.

I Ching Community discussion