I Ching with Clarity

A story in three parts?

I've mentioned before that there's a pattern in the Zhouyi of concepts or images showing up in threes: three pots, three almost-full moons, three raids that are marital allies, not robbers, and so on. And there are also three zhang 章: in lines 2.3, 44.5 and 55.5.

‘Containing a thing of beauty: this allows constancy.
Maybe engaged in a king’s business -
Without accomplishment, there is completion.’

'Using willow to wrap gourds.
Containing a thing of beauty,
It comes falling from its source in heaven.'

'A thing of beauty coming.
Brings reward and praise, good fortune.'

Only a zhang, that 'thing of beauty', is something of a mystery object. In Wilhelm/Baynes it becomes 'lines' (two sets of 'hidden lines,' then 'lines are coming' in 55.5); Field has 'the pattern holds' when zhang is hidden, but then substitutes 'Shang' for zhang at 55.5 so he can translate 'he comes to Shang'. Lynn has 'effaces his own prominent qualities,' 'harbours beauty within,' and finally 'this one arrives here and manifests himself'. Bradford Hatcher: 'Restraint in display,' 'restraint is displayed,' and 'the pattern emerges'. And one more: Deng Ming Dao, 'hide your talents,' 'held in place', and 'receiving the seal'.

According to various dictionaries, zhang means…

• splendid, distinguished
• obvious, apparent
• elegant, well-made
• a stanza of poetry or section of a musical composition
• customs, law, institution
• a moral example
• the blazon on a standard
• the insignia of court officers

Originally, it was (probably) one half of a jade gui tablet, which might be bestowed on you as token of your royal authority for a mission. (There's no agreement on the character's etymology: Sears says it's a speaking mouth plus the number ten; the Pleco dictionary says it's jade and the chisel to work it.)

All of which gives a clear sense of a theme, but not a unitary translation.

Exploring 44.5, I found,

In the Shijing, the Book of Songs, this word means variously the blazon on a flag, finely woven cloth, elegant speech, gold and jade ornaments, ancient statutes, the laws or the personal example given by a great ruler, and the form of the Milky Way in the heavens.

The simplest thing I can say about all these is that they're meant to be seen. Going back to the original idea of a jade token of authority, being seen is really the entire point.

And yet in 2.3 and 44.5, this beautiful thing is han 含: literally, held inside the mouth; by extension, contained and concealed, like life force in the grain (or in the human). From early times, han meant keeping your mouth shut and concealing your feelings.

This seems to me a really extraordinary thing to do with a blazon, or insignia, or personal example, or law, or musical composition… let alone with a jade token of authority. What could possibly be happening here? And when the zhang concealed in 2.3 and 44.5 'comes, bringing reward and praise' in 55.5, what story is being told?

(Note: some translators escape the paradox by saying a jade baton is being held in front of the mouth to hide it when speaking to the king. I'm not convinced at all - not when han specifically means holding something inside the mouth. Han was actually used in the Liji for the practice of putting jade in the corpse's mouth to ensure a good afterlife.)

Line by line…

2.3 changing to 15

‘Containing a thing of beauty: this allows constancy.
Someone engaged in the king’s business -
Without accomplishment, there is completion.’

The inner logic and contrasts of this line seem fairly clear. Containing the zhang makes constancy possible: you can persist, find truth and carry it through, because that shining sign is hidden away. And then in parallel, if you're doing the king's work, you can bring it to an end ('allows constancy'), though without accomplishment (because the zhang is hidden?).

What could this actually mean in practice?

Zhang is a word that requires context to narrow down its meaning - which naturally makes it perfect for use in an oracle, where each individual reading provides its own context. This line adds a little context of its own, though, with the king's work - something you might well do with a zhang that is half a jade gui, the token of mandate and personal authority.

Maybe hiding the token is why there is no 'accomplishment'. 'Accomplishment' means specifically completed work: the house is built, the cloth is woven, the war is won. It's not just that we finished working, but the work itself is finished. 'Completion' means simply the end of a period of time: you came through it.

And… 'completion' is a key word in 15, Integrity, the hexagram revealed when 2.3 changes:

'Integrity creates success.
The noble one completes it.'

And 15.3, changing back to 2:

'Toiling with integrity.
A noble one completes it.
Good fortune.'

The noble one of 15 stays in his lane, does the work there is for him to do, isn't worried about how it will look - and this is consistently described as a recipe for success. The Tuanzhuan for 15, its commentary on the oracle/judgement text, suggests why:

'It is the way of heaven to decrease the arrogant and to augment the humble.
It is the way of earth radically to change the arrogant and to flow into the humble.
The souls and spirits harm the arrogant and bless the humble.
It is the way of people to hate the arrogant and to love the humble.'

Perhaps this is why hiding the shining zhang allows constancy, by leaving space to receive blessing, not being so 'full of yourself' (the literal meaning of 'arrogant' is 'full to overflowing') as to excite antagonism.

Tradition generally agrees that this line is about concealing one's talents - think of the English expression, 'swallow your pride'. I've found it can also mean not broadcasting your plans, not using your insights to win the argument, or specifically hiding the full extent of your authority in the situation (even, or especially, when insisting on it seems like the obvious shortcut to achieve your goals). The trigram kun here is becoming gen, mountain: putting a lid on things.

So at the end of the story, you will have no accomplishment, nothing 'to show for it', and quite possibly no-one will know you got anything done. But you will have come through, and stayed loyal. My experience of the line has been that you do attain your ends, though I wonder whether that's always the case: the goal might need to be redefined.

44.5 changing to 50

'Using willow to wrap gourds.
Containing a thing of beauty,
It comes falling from its source in heaven.'

The sheer brilliance of the imagery of this line, the perfect way it shows the meeting of Coupling with the Vessel, makes me fall in love with this book all over again.

So… this line looks to Hexagram 50, the Vessel. That is, it's looking to create something very like a zhang: a complete and beautifully crafted work of art that makes tangible the spiritual authority of the new regime. But it is the fifth line, the decisive moment, of Coupling, the hexagram of the disruptively powerful woman, not to be married because such a marriage could not last. There is too much energy here for the structures available - nothing that will be neatly contained. And whatever had seemed complete and settled before has just been opened up and brought into question. In such a time, meeting with all this unpredictable, uncontrollable, unassimilable power, how can anyone start thinking about casting a vessel?

Answer: by creating a gourd vessel, one that is not cast in a mould, but grows into one.

The changing line shows this happening with something like stop-motion animation, as the inner solid line of the upper trigram qian opens up and creates the gourd's hollow interior. (Not the only line where this happens.)

How to make a gourd vessel

A bottle gourd actually grows into a usable bottle shape on its own: you need only wait very patiently for it to ripen and then dry out fully. You would still use a willow wrapping to cushion the brittle gourd and to give it a handle/ hanging loop.

But to create the vessel shape you want, you can't start with a mature gourd: you need to shape it as it grows. Since the Qing Dynasty at least - and maybe earlier, who knows? - there has been a technique of enclosing the small, growing gourd in a two-part mould, so it would grow into the chosen shape.

You could create the mould by a process quite similar to casting a bronze vessel: make the shape you want from clay, bake it hard, then layer clay on top of this to make a reverse-image mould. To make a bronze vessel, you bind the two halves of the mould together with spacers inbetween, bury them to hold them in place, and pour in molten metal. To make a simple gourd bottle, you bind the mould firmly to your growing gourd. If all goes well, then after many months of growth you will be able to remove the mould and reveal the finished product… the zhang?

As I scoured the internet to learn more about this, I came across a truly fascinating article about a modern gourd artist, and his process of mastering the mould technique. Nowadays, apparently, he uses ropes and cords to shape the growing gourds. I wonder if the flexibility and strength of willow withies would be more useful than reinforcement with steel?

In 2001, Kung ordered a mold of the bodhisattva Kuanyin, with which he planned to shape a growing gourd. But the melon refused to co-operate, and burst through the steel-reinforced plaster mold by a good ten centimeters. This illustrated to Kung the resilience of nature-even something as small as a young melon could summon such explosive power in the name of self-preservation.
After three years' work, Kung came to the realization that some kind of "escape route" needs to be left in any mold, so that once the melon has fully grown into the mold, it can carry on growing out through that hole, leaving both artist and nature satisfied.

So there is the story of someone searching for ways to engage with Hexagram 44's power so as to create a Vessel that is also a work of art.

44.5's 'thing of beauty' is the finished gourd bottle, I think, which in turn works as a symbol of fertility (because gourds are full of seeds!) and a swelling pregnancy. And the birth of the heir in turn prefigures the coming new regime with the vessel that embodies its spiritual authority.

And 'falling from heaven'?

'Using willow to wrap gourds.
Containing a thing of beauty,
It comes falling from its source in heaven.'

The Chinese really only says 'there is falling from heaven' - something coming down to us. The verb 隕 yun, 'fall', is an interesting one: it means to fall to the ground like rain or leaves. A yun star is a falling star, and a yun stone a meteorite, so some authors see a celestial sign here; it's hard, in any case, not to think of the Mandate of Heaven coming to the Zhou people. The character yun is written with components for hills or a barrier and, on the right, the phonetic part showing a round ding-vessel.

55.5 changing to 49

We started with someone doing the king's work at 2.3, and now we reach Hexagram 55, Feng, the citadel where Wu, the heir, becomes king. And here, the 'thing of beauty' itself is coming, out in the open:

'A thing of beauty coming.
Brings reward and praise, good fortune.'

Compared with the imagery-wrapped-in-imagery of 44.5, this is a tremendously simple line. Zhang comes. There is reward - 慶 qing, celebration, good fortune, congratulations and gifts - and praise - 譽 yu, honour, eulogy. Good fortune.

So… what is the 'thing of beauty' now? Schilling, who has a very coherent view of all three lines (more on that in a moment), sees it as a sign of the mandate: either revealing it causes the sun (darkened in 55.2.3.4) to be unveiled, or the re-appearing sun is the zhang.

I think this line must mean the way is clear for Zhou victory - I tend to imagine the coming 'thing of beauty' as the shining clear statutes and moral example of the new regime. Zhou will overthrow Shang, and there will be huge celebrations.

The overthrow is - of course - heralded in the connected hexagram 49, Radical Change, the inverse pair of Hexagram 50.

'Radical change.
On your own day, there is truth and confidence.
Creating success from the source, constancy bears fruit.
Regrets vanish.'

A story?

These three lines make a very elegant triangle, don't they? You could see it as standing on its broad base: two contained zhang, one open and celebrated. Or perhaps the triangle stands on its apex: one line at the third place, referencing the king's work, and then two at the fifth place, the line of the ruler, changing to paired hexagrams 49 and 50.

And they also seem to me to tell a clear story.

In Hexagram 2, where the noble one sets out on her journey to find a place to be of service and at home, someone embarks on king's work while keeping their token of authority well-hidden. They are receptive, with Integrity, and so they can complete it - or get through it.

Then it's time to incubate the thing of beauty, grow it into shape, still keeping the plan (heaven's plan, perhaps) hidden safely away. Benebell Wen actually suggests that the 'willow', Qi, in 44.5 is the state of Qi, and the wrapped fruit is Jiang Ziya, a real hidden treasure whom King Wen persuaded to be his advisor when he came upon the old sage fishing without hooks, and who subsequently also guided King Wu. You can read more about Jiang Ziya here - including how he advised Wen to be patient and await the right time for the conquest.

(Bradford Hatcher also thought 44.5 was all about patience, and things 'will have fallen from heaven' if we wait for heaven's timing - something equally applicable to pregnancies and drying gourds.)

And finally, the signs are visible in the open in 55.5, when the whole revolution and transformation is at hand.

Schilling - who is very good at tracing patterns and themes within and between hexagrams - suggests that the zhang might be an omen Wen received to show he was chosen to overthrow Shang, perhaps even a sign visible on his own body. This sign must be hidden at first, while Wen - a famously humble servant-king - is a loyal Shang subject. (There's another way those qualities of Hexagram 15, not provoking antagonism, might be important.) Then in 44.5 its concealment allows for the descent of something (Mandate?) from heaven. And what was hidden is unveiled in 55.5: the sign, with the sun. The long-hidden mandate (or inner vision, or spiritual gift) can become manifest at last.

(Just one reading, sorry, not a universal formula.)

Paloma asked what to do about her worrying pension-less state, and cast Hexagram 5, Waiting, changing at lines 4 and 5 to 34, Great Vigour -

So we talked about patience, and self-care, and standing firm, and also not standing firm at the bottom of a hole...

If you have a reading you'd like to share on the podcast, please book yourself a slot here!

Outside the boxes

When I first heard about Benebell Wen's I Ching, I thought it sounded unpromising. An I Ching book by someone who had already published on tarot, who maintains a website with sections on feng shui, numerology, Western astrology and esoteric Taoism as well as tarot and the I Ching, all while working full time as a corporate lawyer. This was going to be one of those sad little pamphlet-sized offerings of undigested, rehashed Wilhelm/Baynes, right?

(pause)

Er, no. (That's 900+ pages.)

Also, take a look at the table of contents, included in Amazon's excerpt from the Kindle version. Here's how it begins:

...and it continues; do have a look. (The Kindle version is ridiculously cheap in the UK at the moment, by the way.)

So this really does not fit into the box I had ready for it, or indeed any box I can think of. That chapter on Yixue suggests why: Benebell Wen is very well aware of how many different ways there have been of engaging with and understanding the Yi over the millennia. She's not a disciple of any of them, and sees no reason not to draw on them all, or find new ones.

I'd recommend reading what she has to say about the book on her own website, where she calls it both an 'I Ching reference book' and a 'magical grimoire'. She also shares some generous excerpts to give you a flavour of it, including its unique 'practicums'.

Why buy it?

Again - just look at the contents list. That Yixue chapter ranges across Yi's history through China, East Asia and Europe, up to the present day. She's especially good at bringing her knowledge to life. There are many vivid stories from myth and legend, all great imagination food for readings. I'd never before read about Yu the Great receiving jade tablets of magical secrets from Fuxi in a cave, for instance. (It's odd she doesn't mention this one when she gets to 62.5!)

I especially appreciate her portraits of the trigrams, with associated immortals and Feng Shui/ magical/ meditative practices. That whole practical, 'practicum' element of the book, the 'grimoire', is something I've not seen elsewhere, certainly not with these strong Taoist roots.

The introduction doesn't attempt to separate out tradition from history - it tells both in a single story - and so we end up with yin and yang appearing at the beginning, and the Early Heaven bagua before Later Heaven. (Her videos on Youtube have the occasional error, too, though they're still well worth watching.) But better vivid, living tradition with some inaccuracies than dry-as-dust academic correctness, perhaps?

That rich imagination-food continues throughout the translation, which is interspersed with panels telling all kinds of stories from myth and history. And these are Benebell's own versions of the stories: 55's (possible) eclipse comes with a magus who fails to reverse it and has his arm broken in punishment at line 3. Wang Hai shows up in hexagrams 23 and 56, but he's innocent of all wrong-doing, except perhaps in a remote footnote. She's not just following in the footsteps of academics, and there will definitely be associations here you haven't seen elsewhere. Hexagram 54, for instance, will tell you about Tai Si, but also Chang-Er, who went to the moon. 44.5 comes with a page about 'Jiang Ziya, the white muskmelon'.

She presents all these as associations and possibilities, never as the One True Meaning. I imagine she's much too aware of the different meanings lines have held for different people over the centuries to fall into that trap. So her account of Hexagram 55 ends with a panel on eclipses, with their dates, but notes that whether the text refers to either 'is a matter for speculation'. Which is good, because 'here is what this hexagram is about' is just not how readings work.

Translation troubles

(Sadly, there are some.)

No Oracle/ Image

Benebell does not translate the Oracle/Judgement and Image in their entirety. Instead, you get bits of each, interspersed with her commentary, and all blended together. Most Yijing translations use different typefaces to differentiate between translation and commentary - and she does the same with the moving line texts, but not with Oracle and Image. Here, the bold text is a mish-mash of translation and commentary.

Here's Hexagram 28, as an example. She translates the whole as 'Undertake the Great', not 'excess' or 'transition' or 'crossing the line'. (She's not at all consistent in her translation of guo - you wouldn't know that 62 is the small version of the same action.) After a summary of how she interprets the hexagram as a whole, comes -

The lake rises over the trees; marsh submerging wood. Embarking on a great endeavor. The sage is independent and fearless, ever concerned for the world. Let the heart be stable and calm, no matter what conditions endeavor to challenge it. A fragile, unstable roof beam - a critical situation.
Renouncing the world you knew. Expelling melancholy. It is a tipping point. You are reaching critical mass.
Yet fortune favors the inquirer - 利有攸往 (li you you wang). Undertaking a great challenge is likely to yield success, so proceed with confidence.
Take the transformative path. It is a turning point in your life.

There's no way you could reconstruct the original text from this - which is a shame, because the original has its own internal logic:

'Great Exceeding, the ridgepole warps.
Fruitful to have a direction to go.
Creating success.'

That sounds to me as though it's useful to have somewhere to go because of the state of the ridgepole. And likewise with the Image: the original has a prevailing theme of being alone, withdrawing, which is diluted or demoted in her version.

Oddnesses and inconsistencies

The translation of the lines is full of interesting ideas, and some quite odd ones, but none of them seems to be consistently applied through the book. Again and again, I come across an intriguing translation that makes me sit up and take notice, look to see what she's made of the same word or words elsewhere, and find there is no similarity at all: it's as if the lines had been translated by different people.

For instance…

The final three words of 18.1 are 厲終吉 li zhong ji, which I translated, quite conventionally, as, 'danger, in the end good fortune.' Benebell has something very different:

'The whetstone comes to the end of its life - auspicious for the future to come; prosperity and great fortune.'

And she picks up on this in her commentary on the line:

'The whetstone, or a stone used to sharpen metal tools, axes and daggers, symbolizes refinement and the strengthening of character through friction; it's also a symbol of cultivating a new warrior king.'

Li, usually translated as an omen word meaning 'danger', did also mean 'whetstone', and there is no punctuation in the original, so 'danger; in the end, good fortune' might also mean 'whetstone ending; good fortune.' Certainly the symbolism of the whetstone as she describes it feels like good, rich stuff for readings.

Exactly the same phrase - 厲終吉 li zhong ji - occurs in Hexagram 6 line 3, where she translates:
'…leads first into trouble, but then to prosperity.'
There's not a ghost of a whetstone here, nor for any other instances of li that I've come across so far in the book.

There are lots of examples like this: she'll pick a character, draw out its ancient etymological associations, make them central to a translation or interpretation - and then completely lose sight of them for every other instance of the character.

One more example - 5's crows.

The first bolded sentence for Hexagram 5 is 'Crows above the clouds.' There's a whole page about 'The crow and the totemic emblem of the Shang because '於 Yu is a reference to a bird in the sky.'

Wait… crows? What's this yu character where she found them?

It's the one used in all the lines of Hexagram 5 as a preposition after 'waiting' (and then after 'entering' in line 6): waiting at the outskirts, on the sands, and so on. Obviously it couldn't be translated here as 'crow', and she doesn't attempt that - but she does make the crow a core part of the hexagram's meaning.

If I'm reading the dictionary correctly, 於 could mean 'crow' when pronounced differently; she hasn't invented this. But the word is used liberally throughout the Zhouyi as a preposition, including in every line of Hexagram 53 in exactly the same way as in the lines of Hexagram 5. (The wild geese gradually progress yu the shore, the rocks, and so on.) I didn't manage to count all the occurrences of yu in the book, but there are more than sixty. Not so much as a feather of a crow accompanies any of them in translation or commentary.

I'm left feeling as though this is partly a translation, partly a riff on individual character associations - not connected with the character's meaning in the sentence, and not part of any decision for the translation or interpretation as a whole.

I don't know why she's done this, but I'm going to hazard a guess that perhaps this has to do with her experiences as a diviner. (She does use the Yi for readings.) I think singling out a character's associations in a reading can work: there could be a single moment of synchronicity when it's revelatory for Hexagram 5 to remind you of crows.

So… perhaps these associations come from such one-off reading experiences? I'm just not persuaded that they belong in a book people will consult for every reading. There, I want imagination food, yes, but with consistency, thought through with care. Partly so it won't send you on wild crow chases unrelated to your reading, and also partly so you can trace real associations from one reading to the next.

(If you cast 44.5 about a topic and later cast 55.5 about something connected, ideally your translation should let you see how Yi is referring back to the previous reading and telling you your story. Benebell has fascinating insight into 44.5 which disappears completely from 2.3 or 55.5.)

Who's this for?

Sadly, not for beginners, because of its translation troubles. If you're going to be introduced to the I Ching, you need to start with the I Ching in as direct a translation as possible. (I know it isn't altogether possible.) Without that, you can never truly connect with the oracle.

It's a shame, as that generous, eclectic introduction would be a lovely place to start, just to get a sense of the scale of the book and the diversity of approaches available.

But if you're no longer a beginner, if you have access to a translation or two and would like to explore further and have your ideas about Yi, its meanings and uses and roots, expanded, then definitely buy this one. You'll love it.

If you look at that 'this is not a pamphlet' photo, the pages identified with the grey margins are the translation, and all the rest is background: history, myth, stories, esotericism from Crowley to Taoist magic, trigrams and DNA and Boddhisattvas… the whole technicolor panoply of the I Ching across time and space. (Or at least more of it than I've ever seen in one place before.) All this, and a fat bibliography and footnotes.

She uses a great breadth of sources, something that really comes across in the footnotes. Note 47 to the translation refers to an obscure academic paper about an incident in the life of King Wen. Note 48 proposes ritual magic remedies 'for amplifying Wood and Thunder to counteract the blockading effects of Hexagram 47.' Note 49 refers to something from Yale University Press. A later footnote tells you in detail how to use 56.1 as a curse. Like I said, I haven't found a box this book will fit in.

I also appreciate the way she uses all this: the eclipses of 55 being 'a matter for speculation'; how she suggests a Taoist mystic could 'repurpose' 64.4 (where the Thunderer subdues the Demon Country) as spell-crafting instructions. She has lots of ideas, she makes them available, and doesn't try to nail anything down or claim that she know 'What It Means'.

I won't be relying on anything here as a sole source of information, but I also wouldn't want to miss out on the breadth, depth and richness of it all. Do visit her site and explore.

Following on from a previous post…

Hexagram 20, Seeing

Hexagram 20 has xun, wind and wood, over earth; its Oracle text suggests earth's open, available quality:

'Seeing. Washing hands, and not making the offering.
There is truth and confidence like a presence.’

Earth will not act, but allows: the ritual provides space for truth to arise, like the earth provides space for seeds to germinate. If you're from a Christian culture, these trigrams might remind you of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit (spiritus - breath, wind) came first as a strong wind.

The Image as ever, gives a quietly practical perspective:

‘Wind moves over the earth. Seeing.
The ancient kings studied the regions,
Saw the people,
And established their teachings.’

The ancient kings studied and saw, with earth-like qualities, and established teachings that would carry culture as far as the wind.

The character she 設, 'established', is formed of a mouth speaking and hand acting, and naturally speech belongs with xun, wind. 'Studied' is sheng 省, meaning to inspect, examine or watch over, including in a ritual inspection of mores. The character originally shows an eye with a sprouting plant appearing to grow from it:

The Pleco dictionary suggests an original meaning for sheng of a crop inspection, something very relatable for me at the moment (are those aphids on that pepper plant?). But it seems the character was always drawn with the plant growing from the eye, as if from the earth, and wait, don't we know some trigrams about that?

The teachings grow from Seeing like the plant grows from the earth. Outer xun, with its open yin line at the base, joins with earth, is open to it, and emerges from it. The kings, embodying the two trigrams, both respond to conditions and ultimately create them.

Hexagram 23, Stripping Away

With mountain above earth, we're only a single line away from Hexagram 2. But whereas in its Oracle, 'the noble one has somewhere to go,' in a time of Stripping Away, it's 'fruitless to have somewhere to go.' When things are ending, falling away - or being taken away - there's little point in thinking of where else you’d like to get to. Stand on the plain, look up and see the mountain in your way: you are here.

(When 23.6 changes and the mountain becomes earth, 'the noble one gets a cart' and he's back on the road.)

You can imagine - and I think the Image authors did imagine - the mountain eroding into the earth below. Although we analyse hexagrams into two groups of three lines, they don't all look like that at first glance:

Hexagram 23 looks like a group of five contiguous broken lines, with a single solid line above: the mountain's yin lines look like an extension - or a deepening - of inner earth. And sure enough…

'Mountain rests on the earth. Stripping Away.
The heights are generous, and there are tranquil homes below.'

…there is generosity above, just as 'generous de' is a quality of earth -

'Power of the land: Earth.
A noble one, with generous de, carries all the beings.'

It's the same word in the Chinese, 厚 hou, meaning deep and thick as well as generous, and it occurs only in these two hexagrams, the ones with the deepest soil.

The 'tranquil homes' are another echo of Hexagram 2, this time from its Oracle, which ends - after all its travels - with 'tranquil constancy, good fortune.' An 安, tranquil, is one of my favourite Chinese characters:

It shows a woman at home, under her roof - and its shape reminds me irresistibly of 23's component trigrams, with outer mountain in its role as protector, securing the space - not against loss, but through it.

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.'

The 'course of a day' is found in Advancing's component trigrams: the sun over the earth. Bradford Hatcher saw this as the earth energised by the sun, and given order:

'More than light is dawning here. This energy coming into the system not only powers the system: it will organize it too, in the same way that good health will clarify the mind.'

So if the sunlight is powering and organising, what's the role of earth? It provides the sun with something to shine on - something that can respond and be brought to life.

That responsiveness is Prince Kang's: he is ready to commit his energy to breeding the horses, multiplying his gifts. And, of course, it's found in the fertility of the mares, who are the multiplier in all this! (This is horses' second appearance in an Oracle text.) It seems to me to be the same earth-readiness, supporting the outer trigram so its potential can be realised, that you find in hexagrams 8 and 16 (and 45).

Then the Image…

'Light comes forth over the earth. Advancing
The noble one's own light shines in her de.'

…makes clear something we might have missed from the Oracle: that this is not just about the happy chance of a blessing falling from above.

The lucky break has to be part of its meaning: Kang's counterpart in Hexagram 36, Prince Ji, was surely just as willing and virtuous as he was, but could do nothing but hide his light. But the hexagram is not just about being lucky. The light comes forth from the earth, with the same verb that was applied to the thunder of Hexagram 16: chu 出, to come out from, emerge from. This is the noble one's own light: it comes from inside, sustained by their own energy.

Hexagram 45, Gathering

'Gathering, creating success.
With the king's presence, there is a temple.
Fruitful to see great people, creating success.
Constancy bears fruit.
Using great sacrificial animals: good fortune.
Fruitful to have a direction to go.'

This might be the fullest expression of earth's willingness to support. Prince Kang lent his energy to horse-breeding; in Hexagram 45, the king, the great people and an offering of the biggest and best animals all support the Gathering. We can picture all the people congregating at the temple with shared purpose.

The trigram picture here is lake above the earth - a reservoir contained by high earth banks. The Image sees the risk this represents:

'Lake higher than the earth. Gathering.
A noble one puts weaponry in good order
And warns against the unexpected.'

From the earliest commentaries, people have recognised that the noble one is warning against the risk of flooding. Gathering all your water in one reservoir has its advantages but also its dangers - all the more so if ordinary people live in pit dwellings.

The role of earth in this picture is clear enough: it contains the water, creates the reservoir, and protects against flooding. It quite literally 'provides the how' - the building material for the banks.

Why does the noble one prepare weapons, though? (This is assuredly what she does: the character for 'warning' or 'guarding against' is the same as in 62.4, and originally showed two hands grasping a weapon.) Wang Bi implied that she was guarding against an emergency when societal consensus might dissolve into an 'every man for himself' mindset.

I tend to think of the depth of water in the lake as a deep emotional investment that can easily run out of control. It doesn't take much for the banks to breach - that's why the police prepare for big football matches. And breaches happen in the individual psyche, too, when we give something all we have. Earth qualities here might mean an openness and readiness to respond to outcomes that aren't what we had in mind.

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Charlie asked 'How to navigate?' and cast Hexagram 27, Nourishment - or Jaws - changing at line 1 to 23, Stripping Away:

What followed was a strongly resonant conversation between his inner imagery and the imagery of the Yi - and also the ancient Chinese motif of being in the jaws of the tiger. The featured image above this post shows a detail from the handle of the Houmuwu vessel, where you can just see the human face between the tigers' open mouths. (The original photo is by Mlogic, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.)

Here's another example, from the 11th century BC:

Earth inside

The easiest way to get to grips with the first two hexagrams, for me, is always to think how much they're not each other. Qian, the creative force of heaven: nothing but solid lines, like the paths of sun, moon and stars across the sky. It moves without ceasing, and we can't change it - not by a millimeter or a millisecond. Kun, earth: nothing but open lines, like the soft earth ready to be shaped by roots, or water, or footprints, or hands, or the plough, to take the shape it's given and provide whatever is needed to bring the creative impulse to full expression.

So when I start looking at how kun works as an inner trigram, I notice first how it isn't inner qian. As an inner trigram, heaven might feel like your irreducible will, life force and creative drive: that part of you which will not be changed, or made to swerve or turn aside. So kun inside could be sustaining and realising power, something that provides the 'how' for the outer trigram; it can also be the power of responsiveness, even malleability.

Let's see…

Hexagram 2, Earth

Earth inside, earth outside: a whole broad expanse of open land waiting for footprints, like the way stretching out ahead of the noble one with 'somewhere to go' of the Oracle text, or the field for the mare:

'The mare is the earth's kindred spirit,
And wanders an earth with no borders.'

(Bradford Hatcher's translation of the Tuanzhuan)

I think the Image authors saw Hexagram 2 as soil:

'Power of the land: Earth.
A noble one, with generous de, carries all the beings.'

To quote myself…

I wonder whether the Image authors might not have been looking down instead of out and across, and thinking of the depth of soil beneath their feet:

‘Power of the land: Earth.
A noble one, with generous character, carries all the beings.’

地勢坤,君子以厚德載物

‘Soil power’! The word for power, shi 勢, is a lovely choice: its component parts are ‘strength’ and ‘agriculture’ – a component (purely phonetic, apparently!) that shows a person kneeling to plant a seedling. In many old versions of the character, they’re holding the plant up above head height, in a way that – to my very-amateur-gardener’s soul – seems like something between exultation and prayer. (‘Look, it’s growing! Can the pigeons please not eat it?’)

And the noble one, mirroring the power of the land, has ‘generous character’, 厚德 hou de – where hou also means thick, deep, dense, profound and weighty. The six broken lines of the hexagram start to look like really deep, rich soil – not just a dusty layer that could blow away. This deep kindness will carry all beings.

Generous de (character/ virtue/ power) is like good earth: all six broken lines, open and friable, with no rocks to dig through. And this power is ready to carry everything - literally to be loaded up like a wagon. That gives me the sense not only of earth's readiness to lend support, but also of carrying things forward, to their natural destination. Qian might bring the 'what' - or maybe more the 'why' - but kun will provide the 'how'.

Hexagram 8, Seeking Union, Belonging

Earth inside, with water running over it.

'Seeking union, good fortune.
At the origin of oracle consultation,
From the source, ever-flowing constancy.
No mistake.
Realms not at peace are coming.
For the latecomer, pitfall.'

What could be the role of earth here?

It could be the water's source: perhaps water is welling up from the earth, like the 'origin of oracle consultation' in inner openness. (Look at where we've come from in the Sequence, too.) Earth could be your willingness to be guided, and the unfortunate latecomer was just not available enough.

It can also be the banks of the river, its course shaping and shaped by the water's flow. Then earth could be what supports and lends shape to your unceasing emotional-intuitive flow of commitment in the world. ('On second thoughts, stop a minute, I'll just go back up the hill and see if there's an alternative route,' as rivers, on the whole, do not say.)

Then the Image shows earth at work:

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

Earth provides the 'how': without the cities, there could be no relationships. I've tended to think of this one as a matter of political/military strategy, but it's really much more than that. The 'relationships' here, 親 qin, are close and personal: ancient meanings include close family, intimacy, cherishing, the love of parents, siblings and children.

So… perhaps we could imagine outer kan as the flow of love, and inner kun as everything that supports it: all the practical things you do to uphold a relationship.

Hexagram 12, Blocked

This is really the odd one out. With the other seven 'earth inside' hexagrams, I can start by asking how earth interacts with the outer trigram, how it supports it, responds to it, is shaped by it, provides the 'how' to realise it… but in Hexagram 12, 'Heaven and earth do not interact.' The Image says so, bluntly; so too does the Tuanzhuan:

'Thus heaven and earth do not unite, and all beings fail to achieve union. Upper and lower do not unite, and and in the world, states go down to ruin.'
(Wilhelm/Baynes translation)

I think it was Sarah Denning who connected this one with the quotation from Waiting for Godot:

"Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful!"

Exactly. So what can we do with or learn from the trigrams here?

'Heaven and earth do not interact. Blocked.
A noble one uses her strength sparingly to avoid hardship.
She does not allow herself honours and payment.'

'Uses her strength sparingly' - literally, the noble one uses 'frugal de', jian de 儉德. That's a direct contrast to Hexagram 2, where she uses hou de 厚德: generous de. The two sentences have exactly the same structure:

'Frugal' means thrifty, the opposite of profligate, and also crop failure. In these times, 'the noble one's constancy bears no fruit': nothing is growing; generous de wouldn't work. So in a sense, the noble one makes active use of the trigrams' non-interaction by withholding her own inner strength, keeping her earth-like capacity to herself.

Not allowing honours or payment seems to me to be the action of the outer trigram heaven - not connecting with earth, but continuing unswerving and uncompromised. (I like Bradford Hatcher's explanation of this as 'not taking bait, not giving wrongness something to rally and live for'. We've all had one of those arguments where you are only giving energy to the wrongness, not getting anywhere.)

Looking at the two trigrams together, you can also imagine standing quietly on the earth and not trying to capture the stars. For a clearer sense of this, contrast it with Hexagram 10, Treading: heaven above, but lake below, reflecting the depths of heaven, aspiring towards it.

Hexagram 16, Enthusiasm/ Anticipating

'Thunder bursts forth from the earth!' We should imagine springtime, when everything that has been dormant in the earth surges upwards into life.

The trigrams are already visible - or imagin-able, at least - in the Oracle text:

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

Thunder sets things in motion, so that looks like mobilisation; then the earth would correspond to the feudal lords, providing the structure that makes it possible. The earth trigram inside Hexagram 16 feels a lot like the one inside Hexagram 8: lending all possible strength and support.

In the Image, you can feel the wholehearted generosity of its commitment:

'Thunder bursts forth from the earth. Enthusiasm
The ancient kings composed music to honour de,
They celebrated and worshipped the supreme lord,
Joining with their ancestors.'

The ancient kings are honouring virtue, chong de 崇德; chong means to respect and elevate, exalt - the character is made of 'ancestral temple' and 'mountain'. So their music uplifts de like the earth supports the thunder that rises through it; it's the same idea we know from familiar psalms and hymns of voices rising to heaven.

I think they also use earth-qualities to 'join with their ancestors' - or as Wilhelm beautifully puts it, to invite them. The idea here is of matching, being worthy of, being in accord with. That suggests the responsiveness of earth, open to invite a spiritual presence, and following in the ancestors' footsteps like the noble one of Hexagram 2: 'following behind, gains a master'.

It's also important that their music has structure, transforming raw enthusiasm into harmony. In the same way, the interconnected web of feudal lords will turn the people's strength into an army, and the matrix of soil will support the new plants' growth.

(Hexagrams 20, 23, 35 and 45 to come!)

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