Archery in Hexagram 40

Hexagram 40 is Release: its core theme, from the simple decision of the Oracle to the clear air after the storm of the Image, is the release of tension. That might remind you of archery, which is a special, intentional kind of tension-release: deliberately drawing the bow, creating tension, and releasing it into the arrow's line of flight.

I can imagine this in the trigrams of Hexagram 40, too: the inner trigram kan reminds me of the bow under tension, and outer zhen - thunder, associated with sudden, swift movement - looks like the flight of the arrow. (The Shuogua, the Wing that describes trigram attributes, says kan represents 'bending and straightening; bow and wheel.')

Its two arrows

But for all these imaginative associations, archery is actually mentioned in just two lines of Release: lines two and four.

'In the field, taking three foxes.
Gaining a golden arrow.
Constancy, good fortune.'

Hexagram 40, line 2

‘A prince uses this to shoot a hawk, on the top of the high ramparts.
He gets it. Nothing that does not bear fruit.’

Hexagram 40, line 6

In line 2, the hunter finds release from the foxes: he overcomes deception (including self-deception) with directness. We can tell this as a story of using the arrow's gift of directness to overcome the wiles of the foxes, or as gaining that quality by overcoming them. And the story of how this line changes to Hexagram 16, Enthusiasm -

 - can be told in the same two ways. This can be the Release of Enthusiasm, of your powers of motivation and imagination, when they're no longer foxed; it can also be that the clear, strong, spirited motivation of Hexagram 16 provides the energy to see beyond delusions (for instance, seeing beyond busy-work to what's really important).

Line 6 shows the right moment to bring down something oppressive that looms over you. Wilhelm identifies the hawk as another person, 'a powerful inferior in a high position'; I've found it can also be one's own hesitancy, as with that task that grows ever bigger and more forbidding the longer you put it off, or imaginings, as with not daring to approach someone because of the imagined importance of their opinion.

This line joins Release to Hexagram 64, Not Yet Across, suggesting a release from the suspense and hesitancy of 'not-quite-yet', and also a reminder that, with hawks just as with river crossing, you only get one shot at it, and the fruits of the task all lie in the future, on the other side of your venture.

Release Advancing

But what really catches my attention here is the way those two archery lines together change to Hexagram 35, Advancing:

'Advancing, Prince Kang used a gift of horses to breed a multitude.
In the course of a day, he mated them three times.'

Hexagram 35, Advancing

Archery is the fully intentional version of Release, and it's all about seizing your moment: you can't build up gradually, taking a quarter of a shot today and half of a shot tomorrow; you have to be ready to see your opportunity and act. And this is entirely the spirit of Hexagram 35: now is the moment to breed the horses; the sun (upper trigram li, fire) is shining over all the earth (lower trigram, kun) now, so make hay!

Compare LiSe's vivid imagining of Hexagram 35...

'Prosperity does not arrive by itself, it visits the people with the right attitude. The one who always carries along arrows is probably the only one who comes home from a walk with a rabbit for dinner. The lord of Kang grasped the opportunity of a gift to breed a meadow full of horses. The first one who sees a gap in the market builds up the multinational.  Grasp the small chances, do not wait for the big one to arrive, stay alert with eyes and ears and hands ready, and a quiver filled with arrows.'

LiSe Heyboer, https://yijing.nl/hex-stories/35.html

...with what the 'Master' in the Dazhuan has to say about Hexagram 40, line 6:

'The hawk is the object of the hunt; bow and arrow are the tools and means. The marksman is man. The superior man contains the means in his own person. He bides his time and then acts. Why then should not everything go well? He acts and its free. Therefore all he has to do is to go forth, and he takes his quarry. This is how a man fares who acts after he has made ready the means.'

The Dazhuan, Wilhelm/Baynes translation

But this connection is altogether easier to see than it is to describe: you need only look at the Chinese name of Hexagram 35:

And there, hidden in plain sight, are your two arrows: the golden arrow of the line 2, and your one shot at the hawk at line 6.

I'll be opening for readings very shortly. To make sure you're notified when I open and have a chance to book a slot, please sign up on the readings page for 'Ways of Opening', a pdf guide to finding your question. (And have a look through it - I hope you'll find it helpful!)

I'm open almost all the time for 'I Ching chats', a 30 minute quick overview of a reading, but only once or twice a year for this full, in-depth reading service. This is for a deep dive into a big question.

(Don't worry if you don't know exactly what you'd ask, or you're not sure whether this is something that would 'work' as a reading. That's what the first, no-obligation call is for.)

Have a look at the details here and put your name down if this could be for you. I'll be in touch by email in a few days' time.

In context

After Hexagram 57, Subtly Penetrating, comes 58, Opening. It's an inverse pair: 58 is 57, turned around:

There's a change of orientation: 57 faces inward, 58 outward. 57 enters in - the Sequence says it's like entering the home - and 58 opens out, shares and circulates. When I was thinking about 57's place in the Sequence, I wrote that,

"the work of 57-58, Subtly Penetrating and Opening, seems to be one of reintegrating and reconnecting – finding a place for individual identity and purpose. In Hexagram 58, that happens through explicit, lively interaction and exchange between separate entities; in 57, it’s ‘hidden away’, a matter of individual nature coming to expression and finding its place as part of the whole."

And when it's found its place, says the Sequence, 58's rejoicing naturally follows:

'Entering in and then rejoicing, and so Opening follows.'

One more thought on the bigger context -

This hexagram pair, 57/58, is flanked by 55/56 and 59/60, which are complementary (change all the lines of 55 to get 59, and all the lines of 56 to get 60). 55 and 59 both speak of the king's presence, but in 55 this is part of the concentration of power and energy at the centre, while in 59 the energy is Dispersing outward. It all seems to be part of a theme, in this part of the book, of concentrating inward vs spreading outward.

But back to 58 itself...

Its name

The trigram

Hexagram 58 is called dui; it shares its name with the trigram dui that's doubled to make it:

The trigram dui has one broken line above two solid ones: it's open at the top. It represents a lake or marsh, and you can see how it represents one, with the wide-open surface of the water constantly stirred and broken.

Scott Davis, in The Classic of Changes in Cultural Context, writes of this shape:

'The feature of topmost openness is important for ancient Chinese sacred experience. A shrine might have walls but not a roof; shrines of defeated dynasties were roofed over, cutting off communication with those on high.'

Scott David, The Classic of Changes in Cultural Context

Dui is a trigram of communication because it represents openness. And the same's true of its association with joy and delight: 'Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof...'

The character

If you look at the trigram as it might originally have been written alongside its Chinese name, the resemblance is unmissable:

The character dui is made up of a man with a big mouth (meaning older brother, the one who does the talking, especially to the ancestral spirits); the lines to either side of the mouth, corresponding to the upper line of the trigram, mean 'separating'. You can imagine it as a picture of speaking words that open the way.

Harmen pointed to dui's early meanings of forcing an opening, as in the Shijing where it means opening a road through a forest. Even today, its use in compounds brings a few reminders of that 'separating, opening' meaning: 'grain+dui' is tax, 'metal+dui' is sharp, 'flesh+dui' means to cut from the bones, and 'snake+dui' means to moult and slough off.

Hexagram 58 is actually the shortest in the book - a mere 30 characters in total of the original Zhouyi. It's so enigmatically brief that the word 'dui' has been translated throughout its lines - in every case by someone seeking its original meaning - as 'joy' (Minford), 'talks' (Field) and 'the salient' (Harmen).

I think its core meaning is communication and exchange, and hence the joy of mutual openness. It's not just about a passive 'pleasure': it has the active power of opening things up to allow a flow of exchange.

The oracle

The Oracle of Hexagram 58 says only 兌亨利貞 - dui heng li zhen:

‘Opening, creating success.
Constancy bears fruit.’

Hexagram 58, the Oracle

This is an echo of the very beginning of the book:

'Creative Force.
From the source, creating success.
Constancy bears fruit.'

Hexagram 1, the Oracle

Qian, yuan heng li zhen. Yuan heng li zhen, 'from the source, creating success, constancy bears fruit,' is a potent mantic formula that's inspired great reams of commentary; its first word, yuan, means the beginning, the origin, what is fundamental and great. It points to the creative, spiritual origins of divination and sacrifice.

In Hexagram 58, dui stands in place of yuan in the same phrase. With its power of 'opening', it can fulfil a similar role: not necessarily reaching for ultimate origins or ancestors, but simply for the possibilities of interaction and mingling in the present moment. Success, fruition and constancy can begin from here.

(This exact pattern, with the hexagram name replacing 'yuan' in the mantic formula, occurs once more - in Hexagram 31, which has its own power to open and begin. Various other hexagrams create their own nuances of meaning by adding to, varying and interrupting the same formula.)

So the Oracle of Hexagram 58 packs quite a lot into its four words - but the authors of the Wings had more to add...

The Image

‘Lakes joined together. Opening.
A noble one joins with friends to speak and practise together.’

Hexagram 58, the Image

The Image uses dui's traditional association, as a trigram, with lake and marsh. Water's a medium of connection: it can flow together, it can dissolve things and mix them. (It also has some interesting associations with divination: scrying in still water, the yarrow growing best in damp areas, the turtles and water buffalo used in pyromancy.)

When people join together, ideas circulate between them like currents in the lakes. No-one puts this better than Wilhelm:

"A lake evaporates upwards and thus gradually dries up; but when two lakes are joined they do not dry up so readily, for one replenishes the other. It is the same in the field of knowledge. Knowledge should be a refreshing and vitalizing force. It becomes so only through stimulating intercourse with congenial friends with whom one holds discussion and practices application of the truths of life. In this way learning becomes many-sided and takes on a cheerful lightness, whereas there is always something ponderous and one-sided about the learning of the self-taught."

Wilhelm/Baynes I Ching

(You can find the I Ching Community here.)

The Commentary on the Oracle (tuanzhuan)

So for the Image authors, dui means communication. For the Tuanzhuan, it's more to do with joy (shuo 說, 'words'+dui):

'Dui means "to give joy". It is by being hard inside and yet soft outside that one manages to give Joy and still fittingly practice constancy. This is how one can be obedient to Heaven and yet responsive to mankind. If one leads the common folk with Joy, they will forget their toil, and if one has them risk danger and difficulty with Joy, they will forget about dying. Great is Joy, for it is the motivating force of the common folk!'

RJ Lynn, I Ching

True, this sounds a little like the offspring of 'The I Ching For Populist Politicians' and Mary Poppins' 'Spoonful of Sugar'. But beyond that, it's also describing how the energy of the trigram works: the solid inner lines embodying enduring truth; the open line above allowing responsiveness and connection. It's this combination that makes joy not just an emotional condition, but an active force that not only outweighs hardship and fear but can banish them from awareness.

Hexagram 12 - Blocked?

'Blocking it, non-people.
Noble one's constancy bears no fruit.
Great goes, small comes.'

Hexagram 12, the Oracle

However clearly we understand that there are no 'bad' hexagrams, we're probably not over the moon when we cast Hexagram 12. It's at least nice to be able to think that, if we could come up with some 'noble one's constancy', it would bear fruit.

And yet... that feeling of stasis, frustration and head-meet-brick-wall futility are strongest when 12 is unchanging - Blocked with nowhere to go. When lines are moving, it tends to be about shifting the block - one way or another, with more or less success - much as Hexagram 18 tends to be about dealing with Corruption. 12's moving line texts are lively and rich with imagery. For instance...

Bao 包, embracing

…bao 包, 'embracing', in lines 2 and 3:

'Embracing the charge.
Small people, good fortune.
Great people, blocked. Creating success.'

Hexagram 12, line 2

'Embracing shame.'

Hexagram 12, line 3

The word means enveloping, enwrapping, encompassing, and also undertaking something - wrapping yourself round it, as it were, and making it your responsibility.

Hence in 12.2, 'embracing the charge' has to do with accepting a task, internalising an order. As I put it, going on for 10 years (!!?!) ago:

"You are offered an agreement like a contract, with its own set of mutual expectations, requirements and compensations. To embrace it is to accept the terms you are given, and enter into their service - something which has an utterly different significance for small and great people."

Commentary on 12.2 from I Ching, Hilary Barrett

Line 3 describes someone taking on and internalising shame in a similar way:

"You feel shame, and carry it enfolded within you, as part of yourself - whether or not you're fully aware of its influence. Since you don't feel entitled to anything much, you draw back into yourself and don't feel able to ask directly for what you want or need."

Commentary on 12.3 from I Ching, Hilary Barrett

You can get more of a feel for this one by looking at its position in the trigram-picture as a whole. Line 3's just inside the threshold between inner and outer trigrams, looking (and leaning, and sometimes hankering) outward. But here, heaven's above earth and moving away, and so as line 3 looks out across the threshold, it feels how the gap is widening. It curls inward around its sense of inadequacy, of being small, and Retreats - but also wants to reach out with an offering in expiation (another meaning of 'shame').

The etymology of bao is very simple: it shows a foetus in the womb.

(That casts a whole new light on 'great goes, small comes,' doesn't it?)

And here's the Easter egg: when 12's two bao lines change, they show Hexagram 44, Coupling behind them:

That's Hexagram 44 whose name shows a woman giving birth - see LiSe's site for more:

And, of course, Hexagram 44 has its own rich fertility imagery, with the wrapped (bao) fish and melon.

Blocked with bao-enwrapping means Coupling and birth.

One more wrapper...

Hexagram 12 has one more instance of bao, hidden away in line 5:

'Resting when blocked.
Great person, good fortune.
It is lost, it is lost!
Tie it to the bushy mulberry tree.'

Hexagram 12, line 5

The hidden bao character here is the word translated as 'bushy'. It's written with the same foetus-in-the-womb element, plus the 'plant' radical: 苞. We can imagine that a bushy mulberry is one that wraps and contains, womb-like.

Such imaginings are not too academically respectable - but on our way back to respectability, let's take a detour via the story of the birth of Yi Yin:

A woman who lived near the Yi River was warned in a dream that when she saw her mortar leaking water, she should flee to the east and not look back.

This happened the very next day, so she warned her neighbours and fled east as she'd been told. But after ten leagues, she looked back, seeing how her town had completely disappeared beneath the floodwaters - and she was transformed into a hollow mulberry.

Later, when a local woman came gathering mulberry leaves for the silkworms, she found the baby Yi Yin inside the tree.

Of course, bao means 'enwrap, embrace', not 'pregnancy'. Still... the Yijing is poetry; it has layers.

And speaking of those layers - changing all three bao lines of Hexagram 12 leads to Hexagram 50: the great Vessel, the ultimate container.

*Easter egg?

(*That’s 'Easter egg' in the painfully geeky sense as defined by Wikipedia, here. Basically, an 'Easter egg' is a hidden message or feature, tucked away somewhere in the system, just waiting for someone to find it.

So we could imagine a wise diviner secreting away extra connections between changing lines and their destinations, ready for us to dig up 3,000 years later, but we don't have to. It could simply be that these hidden gems are an intrinsic property of the book. The Yi's made of solid truth, all the way through, and - naturally - it shows.)

The 'Yi' character appears twice more in the book, in 55.4 and 59.4. It turns out that these three occurrences are connected both thematically and structurally.

In both 55.4 and 59.4, 'Yi' refers to specific people - the Yi barbarians:

'Feng is screened off
At midday, seeing the Dipper.
Meeting your Yi lord,
Good fortune.'

Hexagram 55 line 4

'Dispersing your flock,
From the source, good fortune.
Dispersing gains the hilltop,
No barbarian [Yi] has occasion to think of this.'

Hexagram 59, line 4

55.4 changes to 36: this is the Brightness Hiding moment of Abundance, at the garrison of Feng. Here, the light can be fully hidden, fear and threat may dominate, but you can still see the Dipper. (The nearest English equivalent might be 'see your true North'.)

The line goes still further, with the extraordinary implication that you might make an ally of the Yi lord, despite all he represents: fear, wounding, oppression, the darkening of the light. It's a real challenge to find how such a meeting can be 'good fortune', one I grappled with before.

Hexagram 59, Dispersing, is the opposite of 55 - different at every line:

Hence 59.4 is the opposite of 55.4 - though another, maybe more interesting way of putting this is to say that changing every line of 59 except this one leads 59 back to 36:

In other words, 59.4 is exactly how not to reach 36. This line's about the perfect antithesis of barbarity: something, it says, that the barbarians couldn't even imagine.

What could this be?

The trigrams of Hexagram 59 show wind above water, stirring and evaporating it. So line 4 would be the moment when the water has just become water vapour and begun to rise into the wind. It's undergone a change of state, and a change of direction.

Disperse your flock, says the line, and gain the hilltop. Remember the atmosphere of Hexagram 36: you're under threat, you could be hurt (again); you hide. If the barbarians are invading, wouldn't it make sense to round up your flocks into a defensible enclosure and do your best to hide them?

Perhaps - but it probably makes perfect sense to the barbarians, too. Whereas if your flock is dispersed, there's nothing for them to attack - in fact, there's no flock at all, just some scattered sheep. If you're not gathering your possessions together and holding on, there's no target: you're not available to be oppressed. This is the line with no connection to Hexagram 36.

Another way to see the shift in thinking here: it's recognising that what you treated as a noun is really just a verb. The classic example is a fist: 'fist' is a noun, an object, like 'book' or 'brick'. Only... books and bricks don't disappear, but relax your hand, and where has the fist gone?

Flocks could be the same, and so could any 'possession' or 'position': it exists for as long as someone holds it, and if no-one holds it, it's not a possession or position any more. Ice melts, water evaporates, things change state and turn out to be ways of acting, and not at all the 'things' they'd become in your mental shorthand. Hexagram 59 in action.

Dispersing gains the hilltop: it rises. Yi-thinking - barbarian thinking, 'levelled' thinking - can't conceive of that extra dimension.

The Yijing doesn't just talk to you one reading at a time: it communicates a lot through the patterns and themes that recur through many readings.

The Resonance Journal has always been brilliant for finding these patterns in your readings: they're a click or two away, via the Cast History feature (the easy option, my favourite) and the Advanced Search (especially useful when you're looking for patterns that range across dreams and synchronicities as well as readings).

The Insights Pane is different, because it 'volunteers' information about which hexagrams you're getting most frequently: you can see at a glance when something unusual's happening, with no searching required.

Once you've updated your Journal to the latest version, you'll see the Insights Pane when you next open it. Here's a tiny, 2 minute video introduction:

If you're new to the Resonance Journal, download your own copy here.