36, Brightness Hiding

With Hexagrams 13 and 22, and maybe even 30, I could build up a picture of how li inside projected its light through the outer trigram, bringing awareness and enlightenment to it. When I get to Hexagram 36, with light inside earth, this becomes altogether trickier. It's called, at least in some translations, Brightness Hiding, because (and this blog post comes to you, as they so often do, from the Department of the Blithering Obvious) light can't shine through the earth. This is why it's dark at night time.

The main story of the hexagram, that of Prince Ji, is also of light hidden. He keeps his light under a bushel, disguising his intelligence and understanding, to stay out of trouble. As a rule, the trigram earth outside offers service, acceptance and protection - but Prince Ji is in no position to offer much service. There isn't anything very useful he can do. In practice, for him, bringing light to earth or intelligent awareness to service and responsiveness means being unavailable - or at best, being very discriminating indeed about his availability.

Light inside earth is wounded because it cannot shine. Fire inside earth might be banked up - maybe for charcoal burning, maybe just to keep the embers warm enough to rekindle in the morning. While I can't see any trace of the story of banking a fire in the lines of Hexagram 36, the simpler idea of protecting the fire with earth is something we know as part of our experience of the hexagram.

It turns out I was already writing about li as inner trigram some 13 years ago, and perhaps what I came up with then is an adequate description of Jizi:

It’s night-time; perhaps the eyes are closed, and the light of awareness is earthed up like a charcoal-burner’s fire. You might be hiding the extent of your insight (often what 36 seems to be advising); you might be seeing in an earth-like way: open, receptive, not doing anything to change what you see, just being aware.

All this only goes to show what we already knew: that spinning formulas from trigram characteristics is all very well, but always secondary to the characteristics of the individual trigrams and their unique relationship. So is there any use at all here for the more abstract formulation that inner li enlivens and enlightens the outer trigram? Fire within in Hexagram 22 lit up the mountain and brought awareness and intelligent relativism to human standards; fire inside the lake in Hexagram 49 will bring clarity to human interactions; and in Hexagram 55, casting light on thunder, it will mean enlightened initiative. So is there some kind of enlightened responsiveness in 36?

I think there is, but it took the Image authors to see it:

'Brightness enters the earth's centre. Brightness Hidden.
A noble one, overseeing the crowds, uses darkness and light.'

or

'...using the darkness to shine in.'

Rutt, Zhouyi

or

'...It is by keeping it dark that brilliance is had.'

R.J. Lynn, Classic of Changes

or

'He veils his light yet still shines.'

Wilhelm/Baynes

or

'...using darkness, but with intelligence.'

Bradford Hatcher

Different translators add their own flavour to the text, and with it their own interpretation of what the noble one does here, but the original says simply that he makes use of dark and light.

We can see, of course, that light belongs to the inner trigram and dark to the outer. But the combination is also something like enlivened and enlightened acceptance and protection. At least, this is a traditional interpretation of the image. Cheng Yi said, in effect, that too much light impairs your vision because it damages your tolerance and acceptance of people. Wang Bi also said that too much light would be counterproductive and one should keep one's brilliance suppressed so as not to put people off. (I love Wilhelm's warning against 'dragging [people] censoriously into the light.')

So perhaps too much light would create a hostile reaction, or too much light would be too lacking in earth's quality of unlimited acceptance. In practice, the two go together. If you show someone too much of your brilliant insight all at once, they may well react with hostility, not feeling accepted or understood. So it's better to use both darkness and light, which in effect means adding some understanding to your acceptance, adding some li to your kun - and vice versa - recognising that not everyone is going to be quite as fully enlightened as you are all at once.

Not that Hexagram 36 always means perfect understanding and enlightened acceptance. (My own experience with 36, especially as relating hexagram, is that it can indicate I am being notably dim.) The Image is not a prediction, but an ideal; the 'formula' of inner light enlivening and bringing enlightenment to an outer trigram works, but more as an aspiration than an immediate reality.

37, People in the Home

'Injury on the outside naturally means turning back towards the home, and so People in the Home follows.'

Hexagram 37, the Sequence of Hexagrams

From wounding to refuge - but the only difference between Brightness Hiding and People in the Home is the outer trigram, changed from earth to wind/wood. The light that was hidden or wounded has become - in the picture the Image authors saw - a fire strong enough to generate a draught:

'Wind comes forth originally from fire. People in the Home.
A noble one's words have substance and her actions are consistent.'

Hexagram 37, the Image

Wind on the outside means growth and development - often, carrying through the work of the inner trigram, unfolding it as a process over time and spreading its influence. In Hexagram 37, it translates inner awareness into continuous action in the world; it gives light a new way to spread and create change.

You can feel the hot air rising from the fire in this one - but thinking of xun as wood, I also always picture a hearth fire under a roof, with its light flickering over wooden walls and rafters.

The trigram change encapsulates the difference between the two hexagrams. The difference between Jizi and the people in the home isn't that he stays in place - so do they ('people in the home means inside', says the Zagua) - but that his light is covered over and goes unseen: his influence is stifled. The noble one of 37 no longer needs to use darkness with light: her words can have substance and her actions consistency, like wind filled with fire and light. The people in the home aren't confined to their four walls - not even the women of ancient China, who went out to new homes when they married. A home is an inner light that shines out.

The Confucian ideal is of a home whose harmonious inner light spreads throughout society, with the whole culture following from that. I can certainly see, in these trigrams, a picture of an honest, dependable individual whose actions reveal a strong inner light - one that might well have its origins in a warm home life.

And overall, the hexagram reminds me of staying in my grandparents' house as a child in winter. It was many centuries old, timber framed with some wattle-and-daub construction. Grannie - my father's mother - came downstairs at the crack of dawn each morning to sweep out and relight the fire that was the only source of heat in the place, and warmth from that centre would spread through the house. But it also spread through my father and into my childhood - and through his sister's kindness into the home I have now, which is her house. (And that reminds me: I need to get the chimneys swept before winter.)

‘People in the Home.
A woman's constancy is fruitful.’

Hexagram 37, the Oracle

I Ching Community discussion

Recently, when I don't have any particular news to link to, I've taken to making my forum signature read, "You are the expert on your own readings." I've found this is something people really need to hear. There's a very widespread tendency to rush to commentaries, or the helpful people on the I Ching Community forum, instead of listening to and trusting your own natural response to what the Oracle says.

Don't misunderstand me - I love helping people with their readings. But all too often, I hear this:

"Oh, I had a feeling it was saying this... It really felt as though it was speaking to me, but I'm not the expert, so I don't know, I'm not sure. Perhaps I got it wrong."

And I respond every time that they did not get it wrong and that their immediate feeling of the Oracle speaking to them was actually their reading. It's not something to second guess and dismiss before you go and consult a real expert who can tell you what it really means.

Why you are the expert

When you consult the Yijing, it responds to you as a whole person. It both answers your question and responds specifically to your way of thinking: it joins in with the conversation in your head. No one else is going to know how you are talking to yourself about the subject in the privacy of your own mind. The Oracle responds not just to how you word the question, but to how you picture the situation and the imagery you're thinking in - whether you feel you are engaged in a fight, say, or in a climb, or maybe drowning. Whether its response echoes your thoughts or it challenges them, you are uniquely well placed to recognise what it's saying.

This does not just come with experience. I've had clients who in their very first reading, their first ever encounter with the Yijing, were able to take the reins and do the interpreting themselves. I just needed to unpack the imagery for them and show them how it all worked together.

Also, you may have unique personal connections with the imagery of your reading - connections no one else would know. Possibly my favourite example of this was a father who asked about helping his daughter who has cerebral palsy and received Hexagram 16, Enthusiasm. The name of this hexagram also contains a component meaning elephant, and some people actually translate it as "Elephant". I wouldn't always necessarily mention the elephants to a client, but on this occasion it felt like a good idea. And the father explained that when he did relaxation exercises with his daughter to reduce the spasticity in her muscles, he would say, "Tell the elephants to let go of your legs."

I've mentioned this example before, chiefly because it's one where I had the rare presence of mind to seek my client's permission to share his reading experience. But it's a striking one because, obviously, nobody else was going to know what those elephants meant. I certainly didn't!

And with experience, you will also develop your own unique associations with hexagrams. Hexagram 16 provides an example here, too: it's one I've received again and again when asking about responding to limited time offers. (That's the kind of thing where you can get lifetime access to some exciting piece of software but only if you buy now; if you wait, it's going to be much more expensive.) Hexagram 16 talked to me about my wild, elephantine enthusiasm for these things which was largely ungrounded in the consideration of whether I had any use for them at all.

Now, Hexagram 16 is not always about being unrealistic and carried away by enthusiasm and imaginings. Sometimes, as in my most recent podcast, it's exactly the attitude you need. But when I, in particular, am thinking of buying something and get Hexagram 16, I know what to look for, because I have this series of readings in my journal. For anyone else to get the message, they would need to know all my readings as well as I do.

How to tap into your own expertise

Using help

You may be saying, "This all sounds good in theory, but in practice I don't understand my readings at all, and I need help." Being the expert on your own readings is not at all incompatible with getting help. The point is that when a book or another person offers you an interpretation, you are the only one who can decide whether it resonates.

A newish member of the I Ching Community has actually taken to signing off all of his reading posts with "Take what resonates and discard the rest." This is good advice overall - with the one proviso that "what resonates" is not necessarily the same as what you want to hear. (We do occasionally get friction at the I Ching Community when an interpretation offered is just not what someone wants to hear - which isn't fair on the person who took the time to help.)

Also, when you are looking for help, again in the forum or in conversation with a diviner, in a private reading or from a book of commentary, look for a helper who doesn't just "tell you what the reading means," but someone who will help you relate to what the Oracle says. If you're a beginner, you may need help to recognise yourself in the reading's imagery and trace a pathway from that to understanding. But it's that pathway you're looking for. You need to understand where the interpretation of a reading is coming from - it should 'show its workings', as it were.

On your own

(Some tips you may have seen from me before!)

The very best advice I can give you is to take your time with your reading. Read what the oracle says: read it aloud if you can, and listen to it as an answer. Play with the imagery. Pretend whatever commentaries you have access to don't exist. Sleep on it. And don't be alarmed if you don't understand everything at once!

For guidance on how to go about all this - connecting with imagery and navigating the many parts of a reading with confidence - I can recommend my own Yijing Foundations Course, which is available on its own or as part of Change Circle membership.

The best Yijing book you will ever own is your own readings journal. It doesn't matter too much what you use for this, provided you can easily refer back to your past readings and find the ones with the same hexagrams (a first step to developing your own unique shared language with Yi). This is made easy with the Resonance Journal, which is designed especially for Yijing readings.

And take the time to listen for your own response to what the Oracle says. A reading is a conversation. You ask Yi a question, it responds (maybe it asks you another question); the response to what it says arises within you. All this interaction is your reading. So when something strikes a chord, when you have an inkling of what it's saying, give that some space and keep listening! The absolute worst thing you can do is to mistrust your inklings, shut them down, and rush off in search of an expert.

I Ching Community discussion

One intriguing way to learn more about hexagrams is to study them in groups: contrasts and opposites, groups that are joined in sequence, nuclear families, and so on. Recently, I've been looking at the groups of hexagram that share a trigram in the same position, like for instance mountain on the outside, or fire and light - the trigram li - on the inside.

Li represents both warmth and light and also awareness, understanding and clarity of perception - the whole continuum from light through to enlightenment. As the inner trigram, I think it's especially associated with understanding (years ago, I imagined it as eyes). Only… how does this interact with different outer trigrams? Does this depend entirely on the picture the two trigrams make together or are there some commonalities?

In the Foundations Course, I wrote,

'As an inner trigram, li suggests a light of awareness that gives you clarity, discrimination, and occasionally foresight. This light is projected into the realm of the outer trigram, where it acts in and through – and sometimes on – that context.'

Hexagram 13, People in Harmony

This is the very first appearance of the trigram li in the whole book. All the other trigrams have already been introduced, in family order, in the first decade: heaven and earth, thunder, water and mountain, and then wind and lake. But fire's appearance is postponed until after Hexagrams 11 and 12, Flowing and Blocked, as part of the storytelling of the Sequence.

In Hexagram 12, all your best endeavours are stymied: 'the noble one's constancy,' says the Oracle, 'bears no fruit.' The component trigrams are earth below and the skies above - impossibly distant, and seeming to move further and further away. This means especially a loss of communication: no messages are flowing between heaven and earth, and none between people either.

In Hexagram 13, you still have the skies above, but now there is fire below, and its flames can rise and join with heaven. Fire works to restore communication between inner and outer worlds - both between humans and heaven, and between people. Now, the Oracle says, a noble one's constancy does bear fruit.

'Heaven joins with fire. People in harmony.
In the same way, the noble one sorts the clans and differentiates between beings.'

Heaven joins with fire, but the noble one's response seems almost the opposite of this, sorting the clans and differentiating between beings. 'Differentiating' is bian 辨 : the character shows a knife placed between people or between criminals. It seems almost as though the noble one is keeping the clans apart to stop them from fighting. (Another early meaning of the character is to divide.)

I wonder if this might mean bringing awareness, the inner fire, to core identities and origins. The trigram qian, heaven, might be a reminder of the way people traced their ancestry back to different constellations - or just of their essential irreducible nature that is finding expression. Qian is the reason why the stars move in their courses and why acorns don't grow into apple trees; it's the true inner nature of things and perhaps of people.

Often, the trigram heaven on the outside of a hexagram indicates that one is facing an ineluctable truth - something like natural law, which is not going to change for you. In Hexagram 6, inner water rebels against this; in Hexagram 10, by reflecting heaven, lake tries to join it and follow it; in Hexagram 25, the thunder moves with it freely and without entanglement - and so on. The inner trigram needs to try to align itself with that outer power if it can.

And in the history of the Zhou people, that is very much what happens in Hexagram 13. The armies may have gathered on the banks of the river, but they could not cross into Shang territory until the heavens showed them this was the right time - specifically. according to Pankenier, until Jupiter went direct. Their inner awareness needed to respond to and align with the movements of heaven above.

The people are in harmony with one another here as they form alliances between the different clans, and they are also in harmony with heaven. Inner intelligence ignites, and the dull clay of hexagram 12 lights up with awareness. The people see how the stars are moving, and they understand.

Hexagram 22, Beauty

The next appearance of inner li is in Hexagram 22, Beauty and making beautiful, where the light is shining on the mountain face above. Fire is lighting up the rules, shining on whatever is established, fixed and settled. I like to imagine this as the flickering light painting different patterns on the rock face. But China is also a seismically active place, so perhaps the fire under the mountain is creating new shapes from molten rock.

‘Below the mountain is fire. Beauty.
A noble one brings light to the many standards, but does not venture to pass judgement.’

The many standards are lit up, brought to life, relativized and humanized by inner awareness.

The Sequence here tells a similar story to that of 12 to 13, but in reverse. From Hexagram 22 to 23, the inner light is extinguished: the fire under the mountain becomes simply earth. The outer forms lose their inner liveliness; they die off, and it is time for them to be stripped away:

'Involved in brightening the appearance; this means success will be truly exhausted, and so Stripping Away follows.'

Hexagram 23, the Sequence

Goethe may not have known the Yi, but he certainly understood the trigram structure of Hexagram 22 - free nature shining in our hearts, and the laws that give freedom:

https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/goethe/sonette/sonette.html

(A good translation here: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/wednesday-poem-nature-and-art-by-j-w-von-goethe-translated-by-david-luke-1114712.html.)

Hexagram 30, Clarity

Then at the very end of the Upper Canon comes Hexagram 30, Clarity, with both inner and outer light blazing forth.

'Doubled light gives rise to Clarity.
Great People with continuous light illuminate the four regions.'

The inner vision of the great people translates into outer light - their vision becomes a light to the world, as it were. It's a picture of the spread of enlightenment and culture: understanding that generates more understanding, like fire ignites more fire. (I wrote about this recently here.)

The Oracle of Hexagram 30 gives us the apparently-unrelated image of raising female cattle -

'Clarity. Constancy bears fruit.
Creating success.
Raising female cattle is good fortune.'

Why cattle?

It does specify female cattle - the ones that can give birth to calves and increase the size of your herd. And the trigram li, according to the Shuogua, represents things that are solid on the outside with space on the inside, like tortoises and snails and hollow trees - and also perhaps cows.

Fire means more fire, light means more light and female cattle mean more cattle. More than that: if you raise - nurture and nourish - your cattle, then they too will nurture and nourish their own calves. Gently fostering understanding will always grow more understanding. Clarity means nurturing your capacity for growth.

I Ching Community discussion

Episode 33 of the I Ching with Clarity podcast features a listener's reading about moving to a new country. How best to make a positive transition to this new place, wherever it may be? The Oracle answered with Hexagram 16, Enthusiasm, changing at line 2 to Hexagram 40, Release:

This is actually the same reading we had in a previous episode last December, when I asked about the characteristics of a good question. I'm hoping it will still be interesting to see how different aspects of the reading are highlighted in response to this different question.

The second reading, which we run through very quickly at the end, is Hexagram 22, Beauty, with lines 1, 2 and 3 changing to 4, Not Knowing -

During this episode I mentioned the Connecting With Imagery course that's part of the Change Circle Library. You can read more about Change Circle here.

Before you start reading this article, or anything anyone writes about how to consult the Yijing, do bear in mind that there are no rules for this. All I can share is what I've found works best in readings, for myself and for other people: the approach that will help you get really clear about your answers and confident that you've understood them. I may get quite emphatic about this at times, but I'm still not telling you the rules.

I once played in a string orchestra directed by a helpful professional violinist who said that on his gravestone he would like the inscription,
"Use less bow!"
Not that this would always solve our problems, but it was surprising how often it did.

My own gravestone inscription is not yet chosen, but it might be,
"Do fewer readings!"
If there's space at the bottom, you can add, "(and take your time)".

The trouble with follow-up readings

Basically, talking with the Oracle is a lot more like talking to a person than it is like using a search engine. If you type variations on the same question into a search engine again and again, you'll get the same answer every time. But if you had an audience with a sage, you wouldn't expect them to behave the same way. Actually, you don't even need to think about the imaginary Sage: just consider how you would respond if someone asked you a question and then, after you'd answered, kept on asking you more or less the same thing. You'd give them as straightforward and helpful an answer as you could at first, and then you might try a few different ways of explaining your answer from different perspectives, and eventually you might ask them why they weren't listening, or just change the subject.

Sometimes I look at a great long string of readings someone has done and see this happening step by step, from the straightforward explanation through the different perspectives to the challenge. But more often, I'll see an initial clear response, and then what follows is more like the experience of using an old radio, where it gradually drifts off the station and the signal is more and more drowned out by static.

I think most people know that asking the exact same question again and again is 'frowned upon' in Yi-land - that you shouldn't expect it to work well, and you might expect to get slapped down with Hexagram 4. But it's also very possible to ask a string of what appear to be different questions, but actually aren't. For instance…

• When will he come back to me?
• How can I get him to come back to me?
• What will happen to his relationship with her?
• What is our future together?
• Can I expect him back by Christmas?

And so on. Or,

• What if I take the job?
• What about sending this acceptance letter?
• Would the job be stressful?
• What would it be like to work there?
• What about what my friend told me about working there?

And, again, so on.

Here's the thing: your first reading will almost always have answered those extra questions. You just need to take the time to understand it.

Remember, the Yi gives you very detailed, nuanced, specific descriptions. It's not limited to just labelling ideas as good or bad - in fact, it will pretty much never tell you that something is good or bad without also explaining why. So please don't skip over all the imagery and stories to reach the 'good fortune' or 'misfortune' and then cast another reading!

Before you cast another reading to clarify the first one (which, as I've been saying, it often doesn't), it's worth spending lots of time and attention on the original answer. And by 'lots', I mean at least half an hour of intensive thought and exploration, and preferably much more. You could speak your question out loud and read all the text out loud as an answer to it. You could ask yourself Really Obvious Questions about its imagery. ('A horse? What's a horse? Why is it useful? What do people use them for? Why would anyone want one? What difference would it make?') You could spend time visualising the landscape created by its trigrams. And you can sleep on your reading - and that may be the best interpretation advice I can give you.

When follow-up readings are a good idea after all

So when is it a good idea to ask follow up readings? I touched on this in the Beginner's I Ching course:

"Once you have a sense of what the answer’s saying, you may still feel you need more insight. Then you might consider if there’s a follow-up question you need to ask. For instance…
‘What about accepting the job?’ might lead to follow-up questions such as,
‘What effect would it have on my relationship with x if I accepted?’
or
,‘What would the new workload be like?’
– not to mention,
‘What would it mean for me to turn down the job?’
(When you’re standing at a crossroads, it’s often interesting to have a look down both the roads you might take.)
The idea of a follow-up reading is to read its answer together with the previous one to get a more complete picture – not to replace a reading you didn’t understand, or didn’t like."

Probably the best bit of that quote is at the very beginning: a follow-up reading is one you cast after understanding your first reading, or at the very least, after spending plenty of time with it, reflecting on it, engaging with its imagery and getting a few possibilities in mind for how to apply it. Then you may find you have new questions about specific aspects that you hadn't considered before.

I think asking about alternatives makes for the most useful follow-up readings - at least when you only have a couple of choices. Any time you're asking, 'What if I do this?' it's also possible to ask, 'What if I don't?' This isn't always obvious, especially if the alternative actually amounts to doing nothing and just carrying on as before. But it's worth asking about that too. ('What if I don't send the email?' 'What if I don't try to make the relationship work?' 'What if I don't change my diet?')

Just looking at the Oracle's description of the two alternatives, it may be very clear to you which you prefer. If it isn't, you might add a touchstone reading: ask the Yi for its advice. What would be a good guiding principle to bear in mind?

A particular note of caution about follow-up relationship readings. There is a special slippery slope here, and I have seen many people slide helplessly down it into a morass of doubt. You might interpret your first reading as telling you something about someone's inner world, and then you cast a second reading to ask why they would feel like that, or why they would believe that, or what would persuade them otherwise, and so on. This way lies horrible confusion every time. Please don't do it. Go and talk to the person instead. If you don't feel you can talk with them, then perhaps the Oracle can help you to start having that conversation. It certainly can't substitute for it.

And one final bit of advice. Before you get drawn too deeply into a series of readings, it always helps to ask yourself why you're asking - that is, what difference you expect the reading to make for you. After you've phrased your question, try completing the sentence, 'I need to know this so I can…' For example, 'I need to know what it would be like to work there so I can decide how to respond to this job offer.' And then try doing the same again, just to see if there's another layer. 'I need to know this so I can understand how he feels…. and I need to understand how he feels so I can…' - and so on.

I hope this is helpful!

I Ching Community discussion

'Where to go?' was Lilian's reading for this episode of the podcast; Yi answered with Hexagram 47, Confining, changing at lines 2 and 4 to 8, Seeking Union -

- which is a lovely example of Yi answering the person even when I couldn't quite see how it could answer the question. I hope you enjoy listening - and if you'd like to share a reading of your own on the podcast, you can book that here.