When you're looking at a hexagram through the lens of its trigrams, I think it's important to see how they work together, as a trigram picture rather than a dry list of attributes. However, it's still interesting to single out a trigram and a position (inside or outside), to compare the different ways it can interact.

Mountain, for instance, is the outer trigram of hexagrams 4, 18, 22, 23, 26, 27, 41 and 52. Here's what it looks like in the first two of those:

Hexagram 4 and its mountain

This is the first mountain to appear in the Sequence of Hexagrams, rising above the stream. And as befits an introduction, its role here is quite plain. One of the meanings of the hexagram name, meng, is 'cover', and the early form of the character shows a pig under a cover:

(If you can't quite see the pig there, here's some help from LiSe.) And if you turn to the Shuogua, you learn that,

Qian is a horse, Kun is an ox;
Zhen is a dragon, Xun is a cock;
Kan is a pig, Li is a pheasant;
Gen is a dog, Dui is a sheep.

Richard Rutt, Zhouyi

So this turns out to be one of those wonderful hexagrams whose shape corresponds exactly to its name: the inner trigram is the pig from the meng character, and the outer trigram, mountain, is the cover. (Of course, the Shuogua authors may have learned that 'kan is a pig' by looking at Hexagram 4.)

This mountain-cover can be protective. The character also normally has a 'plant' component above the cover, so that LiSe once suggested the pig might be a piglet whose mother pushed it into the undergrowth to hide it.

It could also be a source. A stream under a mountain, like the one in Hexagram 4's trigram picture, would have its source high up in the mountain's gathered rain- and meltwater.

And it can be an obstacle. After all, the primary meaning of meng in divination is ignorance: obscured awareness; something getting in the way. If the same word is written with an added 'water' component, it means drizzle or mist. With 'moon' added, it means dim moonlight; with 'eye', it means blindness. For a vivid picture of this 'obscuring' in action, see 'Not Knowing about dodder’. ('Dodder' may well be the character's oldest meaning.)

It's tempting to identify this obstacle with the speaker's refusal to answer repeated questions in the Oracle. That certainly feels like a solid, mountainous 'Stop' sign. But there's also the block-headedness that makes us keep asking, instead of listening.

So Hexagram 4's mountain is an obstacle, a cover that obscures - and also one that shelters, and a source of wisdom. That's quite reminiscent of the speaker of the Oracle, who both favours you with a clear answer and also obstructs your repeated questioning. A tutelary mountain?

Hexagram 18 and its mountain

Mountain's next appearance as an outer trigram (after a brief interlude as bedrock in Hexagram 15) comes in Hexagram 18, Corruption: mountain above wind.

Here, too, the mountain is containing the inner trigram - putting a lid on it, as it were. The name of the hexagram, gu, meant a form of dark magic made with venomous creatures in a vessel. Even though the character doesn't show the lid on the pot, we know there must be one, to trap them inside.

In the same way, around the world, wind that's trapped below the mountains has a reputation for being unwholesome, 'bad air'. And when we cast Hexagram 18, we think of corrupt patterns passed down through families - an oppressive weight of inheritance or tradition, and all things 'set in stone'. 18's mountain has all these associations.

Only… if we read beyond the name of the hexagram, Corruption actually turns out to be anything but stagnant:

'Corruption. Creating success from the source.
Fruitful to cross the great river.
Before the seed day, three days. After the seed day, three days.'

Hexagram 18, the Oracle

A mountain is also (from the Shuogua again) a gate or boundary, and this one seems to be drawing a line between before and after. Hexagram 18 marks a moment when those old patterns can be changed.

The authors of the Image took the picture of 'bad air' under the mountain and transformed it:

'Below the mountain is the wind. Corruption.
The noble one rouses the people to nurture character.'

Hexagram 18, the Image

The noble one is like wind, rousing the people, and like mountain, not trapping but nurturing. This is the exact same phrase that was used for Hexagram 4,

‘Below the mountain, spring water comes forth. Not Knowing.
A noble one nourishes character with the fruits of action.’

Hexagram 4, the Image

The noble one 育德 , yu de, nurtures and nourishes de. Yu, 'nurtures', originally means 'gives birth to' - interesting, when you think of wind or water flowing down from the summit - and by extension to nourish, rear, foster and educate. Again, the mountain above looks something like a mentor.

(More later on the other hexagrams!)

I Ching Community discussion

I've been having another look at the mysterious fourth line of Hexagram 1, Creative Force:

'Someone leaping in the abyss.
No mistake.'

Hexagram 1, line 4

A story of dragons

This line is generally understood to be part of the story that begins in line 1, with the dragon still asleep underwater,

'Dragon underwater - don't act.'

and culminates in line 5 with the dragon in full flight,

'Dragon flying in heaven.
Fruitful to see great people.'

Then the dragon overreaches in line 6, and all six dragons take flight without a leader when all six lines are changing.

There are two ways of understanding the dragon. The more widely-accepted view is that this is the Azure Dragon asterism: a giant group of constellations that begins to rise above the horizon at the beginning of spring, and is in full view at the height of the year.

So the dragon is first sleeping below the horizon, and hence beneath the waters that were thought to surround the habitable world -

'Dragon underwater - don't act.'

Then the first star of its horn appears just over the fields at nightfall, and it's time to work together (zhi 13) and prepare for the growing season -

'See the dragon in the fields.
Fruitful to see great people.'

And then (after line 3, which is about the noble one instead of the dragon), comes:

'Someone leaping in the abyss.
No mistake.'

By April, the dragon's horn and neck are clearly visible above the horizon, and the rest of its body is coming into view. It's arranged almost vertically, and so appears to be 'leaping' straight up from the watery abyss below the world.

S.J. Marshall has another take, and though he offers it as an alternative to the star-dragon, I see no reason why the two shouldn't co-exist. He describes how dragons slept in pools in the mountains over winter, until, at the first sign of clouds gathering in spring, the people rushed to the pool to wake them with offerings, noise and aggravations. The rain would only fall once the dragon took flight. So at line 4, there's a glimpse of something rising from the pool to the clouds - and when it reaches them, in line 5, we'll have rain.

'Someone'?

The odd thing - or at least, I find it odd - is that this line doesn't mention dragons. Lines 1,2,5 and 6 straightforwardly name the dragon, but not line 4. Someone is leaping, or maybe there's leaping. How come?

Marshall's story of the dragon in the mountain pool might explain it:

As clouds descend low in the mountains it is perhaps easy to enter into the spirit of the occasion, particularly as the dragon is said to possess the power of making itself invisible when it leaves the water to mae its ascent. Those intoxicated by wine may swear they saw a claw, or the tip of the tail, entering a cloud.

S.J. Marshall, The Mandate of Heaven

A mostly-invisible, barely-glimpsed dragon would create this kind of uncertainty.

Here's another possibility, though. If you look through the Songs (the Shijing) for 'leaping in the abyss', you find Song 239, celebrating the joys of a prosperous country with a good prince. Among its signs of prosperity and harmony:

The hawk flies up to heaven, the fishes leap in the deep.

The 'leaping' and 'deep' are the same words as in 1.4. Fish leap in the abyss, too.

Leaping carp

A Chinese folktale tells how, once a year in the third month of spring, the carp swim up the Yellow River to the foot of the mountains, where there is a waterfall called Dragon Gate. If they can leap the falls, they will be transformed into a dragon - and when the first fish makes the leap, the rains come. So we have…

• leaping from the pool,
• the possibility of attaining a whole new level of being
• at roughly the same time of year that the dragon constellation rises vertically from the horizon,
• becoming a dragon,
• and bringing rain.

(For more detail, see these two Wikipedia articles. And a little way down this page, you'll find a lovely video of the story.)

More about the leap…

The carp's leap is said to represent a sudden rise in social status, especially from passing the imperial examination. (Work hard in school, and you'll get on in life!) The Yi is older than the imperial examination, of course, and has more to say with this line, but who's to say how long carp have been attempting the dragon gate?

The leaping carp is moving up into a higher realm, much as the fourth line moves up a level into the upper trigram. This is the original 'line 4 moment': going from theory to practice, testing your strength and exploring the possibilities - though you're not quite sure yet what they are.

A natural and traditional view is that the recipient of this hexagram should imagine themselves as the dragon, and that at line 4 they might move out into public life. Or, equally, they might not: there is hesitancy, and the wise querent will pay attention to right timing. The Wenyan (the seventh Wing) says,

'The true gentleman cultivates inner strength, fulfils his task. He tunes Self to the moment, and thus incurs no harm.'

Translation by John Minford

Alfred Huang says this is like King Wu making sorties against the Shang and then retreating, 'testing his capability for success.'

Wilhelm, though, has a remarkably different idea. It's not just a choice between advancing and not-advancing, but between going on into public life or withdrawing and becoming a sage - two positive choices that are equally good, and equally adventurous:

Here we reach the upper limit of what pertains to man in the hexagram. Advance on level ground is no longer possible. In order to advance, a man must dare to relinquish his foothold on earth and soar into realms of uncharted space and utter solitude. Here the individual is free - precisely because of the possibilities inherent in the position. Each man must determine his own fate.

Wilhelm/Baynes

Hesitancy and Hexagram 9

I tend to think of the pure yang of Hexagram 1 as in search of a field of action, and each changing line as opening a new field. So at line 4, Creative Force finds its scope for action in Hexagram 9, Small Taming - a hexagram which explicitly says there are 'dense clouds without rain'.

This means fulfilment is still in the future; the decision is not yet taken; the dragon has not yet taken flight. And I think it also implies feelings of uncertainty, unreadiness and possible inadequacy -

Will the dragon take flight? For now, there is the dance along the border between ‘just enough’ and ‘not quite there’, stretching your wings and playing with vast possibilities. There’s no shortage of creative drive and imagination, but it’s not clear what will prove attainable.

(from my book)

(What if I turn out to be just a fish, after all?)

LiSe goes a step further, looking at the fan yao, 9.4 -

Being sincere, blood goes away, fear goes out. Without fault.

LiSe's translation

- and seeing that 1.4 is the time deliberately to banish such fears:

Fearlessness can accomplish miracles. As soon as a stuntman feels fear, he is in danger. Fearlessness is the core of the hero. Hex.9.4 tells you to forget yourself (and any fear) for the sake of your responsibilities. Hex.1.4 is about what fearlessness accomplishes.

LiSe

Leaping, dancing and playing

1.4 evokes the eager leap of a fish seeking to become a dragon, striving for a whole new level of existence. And… the verb 躍 yue means not only 'leap' but also 'dance'. Yue is not just for fish… the character contains 'foot', after all, as well as 'feathers' and 'bird', and it's used in Song 31 to describe a war dance. (Might the dancers leap higher with feathers on their ankles?)

Some alternative perspectives…

Karcher translates,

'Someone' is playing in the Primal Abyss.
This is not a mistake.

Karcher, Total I Ching

and insists that we should not 'lose the playful spirit' because 'joy is the key to creation'.

Wu Jing Nuan:

Who is jumping? Is it man or dragon or both? The ideogram yue shows a foot, a bird, and feathers. This is a shamanistic picture of leaping about and dancing, a ritual to promote creativity. The abyss ideogram, yuan, is fashioned from the symbols for water and vortex, the whirlpool of constant, overwhelming phenomena. The recipient of this line must jump free of the whirlpool of everyday life.

Wu Jing Nuan, Yijing

My favourite commentary on this line by far comes from Bradford Hatcher. I recommend reading it through a few times:

The shaman drinks his brew, spreads his feathers, steps to the edge of the known, to dance into higher realms. The brave young dragon stands at the edge of the cliff, facing this rite of passage one way, his white-knuckled talons scarring the rocks, preparing to leap from aerial theory to practice, now two different things at long last. To gain the abyss will mean to let go of that clawhold completely. The wind will be no easy thing to take hold of, until reaching dangerous speeds. But here is the only control to be gained, the wind becomes the master: the only conquest comes from obeying the facts. No wavering will lift this beast, much less beast and his baggage, so lightening up should help. And never miss half the point by failing to look down. There can be no half measures here, in fact, as there are no real dragons in theory.

Bradford Hatcher

No real dragons in theory. Exactly.

Coda: and in experience?

What does 'leaping in the abyss' look like in practice?

Like a leap to a whole new level, certainly, or dreaming of that. Plenty of people receive 1.4 as they're dreaming of possibilities that might or might not become real, with motivation that might or might not break through into action - and yes, typically accompanied by some anxiety (or good old impostor syndrome) that probably needs banishing.

I found several readings about whether a relationship might make the leap from friendship or flirting into romance, several 'how will the job interview go?'...

...and then there's one about a quite different leap: a painfully-conscientious business owner asking, 'How can I get to retirement safely?' Years later, he's dived into a joyful, creative retirement full of art and song-writing.

I Ching Community discussion

Hexagram 12 is no fun at all...

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

Hexagram 12, Oracle

The noble one is typically imaginative and willing to learn; constancy means persistence, loyalty, holding firmly to the truth... and none of this is going to make any difference.

The trigram picture...

...conveys the same message: heaven, idea and inspiration and spirit, is pulling away from earth, the field where things grow. Of course new ideas can't take root.

But then in Hexagram 13,

‘People in harmony in the wilds: creating success.
Fruitful to cross the great river.
A noble one’s constancy bears fruit.’

Hexagram 13, Oracle

There's a direct, deliberate contrast: now, a noble one's constancy does bear fruit.

It's not unusual to see this kind of contrast between adjacent hexagrams in the Sequence: 'small goes, great comes' in 11 versus 'great goes, small comes' in 12; 'fruitful to cross the great river' in 5 versus 'fruitless to cross the great river in 6.

But those are paired hexagrams that belong together structurally. (It's quite common for people to allow that the hexagrams of the Sequence are arranged in pairs, but then maintain there's no bigger structuring principle at work.) 12 and 13 aren't a pair, they just happen to sit next to one another in the Sequence. Could there be something more going on...?

Here are hexagrams 12 and 13:

The outer trigram is unchanged: heaven. The inner trigram has changed from earth, that sinks and settles downward, away from heaven, to li, fire, that rises up towards it. We can imagine a new hexagram picture: the stars 'hung from' the night sky, perhaps, or the flames of a camp fire leaping up towards it. Reading the Image,

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

we might imagine sparks rising from the fire towards the gathered clans' ancestral constellations.

(Or you might imagine something else altogether - but do imagine the whole hexagram as a trigram picture.)

So... it's fire that makes the difference, because it relates to heaven in a new way. And interestingly, this is the first time the trigram li makes an appearance in the Yijing, though all the others were introduced within the first ten hexagrams. It's as if it were held back for this impressive entrance: look, now the lights have come on!

And this also reflects Hexagram 13's moment of the Zhou story, when they finally saw heaven's support for their venture written across the sky in the movements of the planets. Harmony with heaven supported harmony among people, and they could gather with their allies in the wilds.

(There's more detail on this and many more hidden gems of the Sequence in my Exploring the Sequence book, available inside Change Circle.)

I Ching Community discussion

The Yijing's changing line texts are in conversation with the hexagrams created by each change. But they can also have quiet exchanges with their fan yao, the 'reverse line' that travels in the opposite direction.

For instance, 11.2 changes to 36, and in reverse, 36.2 changes to 11: 11.2 and 36.2 are one another's fan yao.

and

Here's the text for each line:

'Embracing emptiness.
Use this to cross the river.
Not distancing or leaving behind,
Friends disappear.
Gaining honour, moving to the centre.'

11.2

'Brightness hidden, wounded in the left thigh.
For rescue, use the power of a horse.
Good fortune.'

36.2

There's no obvious connection - until you dig into the Chinese a little.

River crossing here is not like all the other river crossings in the Yi: the words for both 'cross' and 'river' are different. And the verb, 'cross', is ping, 馮. Its components: ice and horse. (Isn't it said that horses are particularly strong, buoyant swimmers because of their huge lung capacity?)

A very small 'hidden gem', this one. The kind of thing that makes me wonder, 'What else am I missing?'

I Ching Community discussion

Recently, I heard someone say that the phrase 'no mistake', wu jiu 无咎, occurs so often in the Yijing that he tends to ignore it in readings. Well… you know how I generally feel about ignoring bits of readings... so, naturally, I dived back in to see what more I could learn by taking a close look at 'no mistake'.

Apparently I did this before, in 2009, describing what I'd noticed from readings: that 'no mistake' tends to come up just when you're persuaded there is something wrong. It's reassurance: despite how you feel, or what others might say, this is not wrong. That's the first interpretation I gave for 'no mistake' in Language of Change.

This idea - despite how it seems, there's no mistake - implies a shift of perspective. This seems wrong to you, but from this other point of view, it isn't. Only… what is that other point of view?

The 'curse'

LiSe writes,

"Blame" was in ancient China something a ghost or spirit caused. Making its victim sick, or even causing him to die. See Constance Cook "Death in ancient China", where she mentions it many times: "..unhappy ghosts and spirits that he somehow offended, thus incurring 'blame' jiu.." (p.71)

And Harmen Mesker has found that 'mistake', jiu, on oracle bones refers specifically to a curse from an ancestor. Diagnostic divinations - 'It is ancestor x's curse, it is not ancestor x's curse' - use the character jiu, and wu jiu is used to say there is no curse.

This is a much more specific meaning than 'nothing wrong', and it casts a whole new light on how we can use this in readings.

A curse from the spirits would not just be 'something wrong', or even 'you've gone wrong', but specifically 'you've fallen out of alignment with the spirits.' If there is no curse, there's no misalignment; you are still in harmony, still in synch… still in dao.

Now, the observation-from-experience that 'no mistake' carries overtones of '(despite how it feels)' makes more sense. You divine because something is troubling you, and you're told there is no curse. That means that whatever's going wrong, it isn't going wrong because your idea is fundamentally out of synch. It's not the case that the whole undertaking was doomed from the outset.

'OK, so you went fishing and haven't caught anything. But there is no curse on this fishing expedition, so there must be something else going wrong. Have you tried a change of bait? Or fishing somewhere else?'

So 'no mistake' implies you can usefully reconsider your tactics or strategy, rather than your overall goal or belief. This could be worth rethinking instead of abandoning outright: it's probably within your power to set it right.

And this, it turns out, is the meaning given in the Dazhuan, long after the 'ancestral curse' meaning had been lost.

Dazhuan: mistakes can be mended

The Dazhuan says,

"No mistake means mistakes can be mended."

and also

"Quaking at No mistake depends on regret."

(Rutt's translation, tweaked)

Wilhelm explains the logic of this: a mistake means doing wrong through ignorance; if you become aware and set things right, then 'no blame' remains. It's not exactly 'no mistake' - you have done something wrong - but you can still escape blame. This is like mending a torn garment, he says - referring to the character for 'mending', which literally means patching torn fabric. Wu jiu: 'Don't panic, this is fixable.'

The word Rutt translates 'Quaking' is zhen, the name of Hexagram 51. Lynn translates this as 'the means to arouse one to so as to have "no blame" depends on remorse.' So the phrase might be reassuring, but it also needs to work as a wake-up call. Are you wishing you hadn't got into this situation? Then do something differently.

When is there 'no mistake'?

I looked through the book and counted how many times 'no mistake' showed up at each line position. An interesting pattern emerges:

Line 1: 20
Line 2: 11
Line 3: 10
Line 4: 19
Line 5: 10
Line 6: 12

It's roughly twice as common in first and fourth lines as the others. So… it looks as though we most need to hear 'no mistake', or 'no ancestral curse', when we are arriving in a new realm - either entering into a new hexagram, or emerging into the outer trigram and starting to put ideas into practice. These beginnings are where alignment matters most.

Hexagram 1: introduction

And speaking of beginnings…

I like to look for where a phrase first appears in the Yijing - quite often, that turns out to be a kind of 'introduction' to the idea. 'No mistake' is introduced in the third and fourth lines of Hexagram 1:

'Noble one creates and creates to the end of the day,
At nightfall on the alert, as if in danger.
No mistake.'
'Someone dancing in the abyss.
No mistake.'

Line 3 -

'Noble one creates and creates to the end of the day,
At nightfall on the alert, as if in danger.
No mistake.'

I think we all know this line. It's the mind that just won't stop coming up with ideas - or the one that decides at 3am that it's absolutely necessary to rehearse a complete plan for dealing with a house fire/ attacker/ alien invasion now. Why is this no mistake?

I see the commentary in my book just talks about 'successfully avoiding mistakes'. Meh. What if we read it as 'no curse from the ancestors'? Then it means this 'creating, creating' is not doomed to fail, and is not an ominous sign in itself - it isn't pathological hyperactivity. It's just high-voltage, plugged into something powerful. And also, just because you feel as if you're in danger, that doesn't necessarily mean that you are. You could just be confusing excitement and fear.

As for what you might be afraid of - this line changes to Hexagram 10, where the tiger (tiger-ancestor?) doesn't bite you… except that in the fan yao, the line that 'points back' to this one and describes its emotional realm, it does:

'With one eye, can see.
Lame, can still walk.
Treads on the tiger's tail:
It bites him. Pitfall.
Soldier acting as a great leader.'

Fear of being bitten, or maybe fear of being found out as an impostor - all calculated to make the noble one lose sleep.

And line 4 -

'Someone dancing in the abyss.
No mistake.'

Or… 'Someone dancing in the abyss, no ancestral curse.' Why might someone imagine that this was a curse? It could be just because they haven't taken off yet. Here they are, out at line 4, where things are supposed to be happening, and yet they're not yet aloft… and in fact, they might not even be a dragon. (It's common to interpret the 'someone' in this line as the dragon, leaping like a fish… but what if it's still just a fish?)

This line points to Hexagram 9, Small Taming, and it probably needs the daily, small-scale practice of that hexagram - and the 'truth and confidence' of the fan yao, 9.4.

These two middle lines form what's traditionally thought of as the 'human realm' within a hexagram. They straddle the divide between inner and outer realms, the transitional moment between idea and realisation. And they're the two lines where the dragon disappears from sight, leaving us to wonder whether we're still aligned with it. So these are the lines of maximum uncertainty within the hexagram, where we need to hear that there is 'no mistake', we're still on track.

They're also the two lines that, changing together, create Hexagram 61, Inner Truth - a direct, strong relationship to spirit which is the exact opposite of any curse.

Hexagram 45: definitely no mistake

Hexagram 45, Gathering, is something of a landmark because every single moving line includes the phrase 'no mistake'. I think this is understandable: at the Gathering, we're bringing 'great sacrificial animals' to the temple, offering our very best, dedicating it to a greater vision or direction. There's an underlying awareness - made more explicit in the Image - that if this goes wrong, it'll be really wrong. What if the reservoir banks breach and our homes are flooded? What if our best offerings are rejected? What if the spirits are alienated?

I mentioned this years ago in an article on Hexagram 45:

Whether the ‘gathering’ is of many individuals or one, it is always a high-intensity way of living. Wu Jing Nuan noted the unusual emotional intensity in the moving line texts: ‘a hug, smiles, distress, sighs and tears’. Perhaps this is because of the constant struggle to align present emotions and actions with the higher purpose. But every one of the line texts also speaks of being ‘without fault’ – I believe this is the only hexagram where this is so. Naturally, the meaning evolves from line to line, but I think the overriding message is that at each stage, the greater purpose puts the extremes of your experience into proportion, making them ‘without fault’. The ‘direction to go’ has to be right – then, its manifestations from moment to moment may be painful, but you are not locked into them.

If you read through the lines of Hexagram 45, most of them (maybe all except line 4) seem to be saying, this emotional mess is not a mistake. This is just your experience, untidy or incomplete as it may be, that's OK, and moving on is also OK.

Mixed omens

I just want to give these a brief mention, as there could be a whole other article or three about this - how Yi creates subtle nuances of meaning through new configurations of familiar omen words, and how easy it is to miss these.

Wu jiu lends itself especially well to omen-mixing, because of its implied shift of perspective: this may go wrong, but that doesn’t mean it is wrong.

It's not really a surprise to find that something can be dangerous, but no mistake - in 24.3, for instance:

'Repeated returning.
Danger,
No mistake.'

And it can also be good fortune and no mistake, as in 49.2:

'Your own day, so make radical change
And set out to bring order: good fortune, no mistake.'

But then it can also be pitfall - the exact opposite of good fortune - and no mistake. Here's 47.2:

'Confined while drinking and feasting,
Now scarlet knee-coverings are coming.
Fruitful to use offerings and oblations.
Setting out to bring order: pitfall, no mistake.'

This is starting to look to me like a question of timing. It's a moment of confinement and isolation, and it's also feast day (this line changes to Hexagram 45). That's a truly awkward disjuncture: you might be inclined to brood in a dark valley (line 1), but the feasting is underway, and already the prince is approaching, wearing the scarlet knee-coverings that accompany solemn ritual. How to bridge the gap?

You need to start with offerings, restoring the sense of connection and involvement, before you march anywhere or try to change anything. The mission itself may be fine - no ancestral curse, truly aligned with the spirits - but are you?

'No mistake' also plays a key role in the complexities of 28.6 and 35.6, that I mentioned in my post on the distance of line 6:

'Exceeding in wading the river, head underwater.
Pitfall.
No mistake.'
'Advancing with your horns.
Holding fast, use this to subjugate the city.
Danger, good fortune, not a mistake.
Constancy: shame.'

Quoting myself on 35.6, plus emphasis -

The line takes a step or two back from the immediate objective, the excitement of charging and winning, and observes that the moral of the story is not what you might think in the heat of the moment.

Sometimes the deeper reality coincides with how it feels - or how it is - for you; sometimes it doesn't. Which leads us to…

63.1/64.6 - the conclusion

'No mistake' makes its first appearance in the first hexagram, and its last in the final line of the book, with another question of perspective. And it's also in 64.6's paired line, 63.1:

'Your wheels dragged back,
Your tail soaked,
No mistake.'
'Being true and confident in drinking wine,
Not a mistake.
Soaking your head,
Being true and confident, losing your grip on that.'

63.1 and 64.6

These are altogether messier and less pure than 1.3.4. There's an awkward delay, with a lot of river mud, then falling forward, full of drunken trust and truth (in vino veritas) and probably a certain amount of duckweed. (See also 43.3 for more soggy embarrassment that's no mistake.) You might even be so full of the ultimate truth that you lose your grip on more immediate realities, perhaps like the unwisdom of sharing that video from the party on social media.

But a muddy tail, and at least some degree of drunkenness, are still no mistake - in a contrast between merely human ideas of what's dignified and in good order, and the ultimate reality. However this may look or feel to you, it can still be in alignment.

I Ching Community discussion

Here's a lovely message I had last year from PeterS, getting on well with his Resonance Journal:

"I should note that a pressing reason for me to adopt Resonance Journal is the sense that I was building up a collection of readings for which I was taking careful notes (in a MS Word doc) but that the format was not really amenable to really seeing connections between similar past readings, or even readily finding and accessing such readings, and that the further I went and more consultations of Yi I had, the worse the issue would become.

If I’d been smarter, I should have done this months ago, but as it is, I will have to spend a few hours entering my MS Word journal entries into Resonance Journal. It’s a one-time cost, though.

You may be amused, charmed and flattered to hear my most recent casting:

“What if I were to purchase Hilary’s Resonance Journal and port all my readings from the past six months to it?”

12.6>45.

Seeing the connections between similar queries and replies, sometimes weeks or months apart, is not only important for hearing more clearly and thoroughly what the oracle would impart, but also a key aspect of my continuing journey of learning to trust Yi."

PeterS

Hexagram 12 is Blocked - a state of disconnection and not-getting-anywhere, in which 'the noble one's constancy bears no fruit.' Finding connections between readings was only going to get harder as his journal grew, and no amount of imaginative persistence would really help much. (To be fair to MS Word, it was never meant for journalling - the Resonance Journal is also not your best choice for a dedicated word processor...)

Then there's Hexagram 45, Gathering, in the background:

'Gathering, creating success.
The king enters his temple
Fruitful to see great people, creating success.
Constancy bears fruit.
Using great sacrificial animals: good fortune.
Fruitful to have a direction to go.'

Hexagram 45, the Oracle

That suggests Peter's intention to bring his readings together and see their greater significance. Hexagram 45 has a tremendous sense of an important occasion: the king at the temple, great people, great animals, fruitfulness (three times). Bring everything together with a sense of purpose, bring your best, and expect good fortune.

Describing Hexagram 45, Jack Balkin says, 'You must create or invoke a common narrative through which people can connect themselves back to the past and ahead to the future.' He's talking about a communal sense of continuity of meaning - a bigger, ongoing story - but this is just as relevant on the individual level.

(This is very much the thinking behind many of the Resonance Journal's Yijing-related features. Cast history search is the one I use most often, as a quick and easy way to find previous readings with this hexagram or line, but there's also the Insights pane, just to see which hexagrams are coming up most often, and all the advanced search options to dive into more or less any pattern of hexagrams, lines or trigrams you can think of. All part of Gathering readings, listening for the 'narrative', finding your own connections.)

And that moving line:

'Overturning the block. Before, blocked. Afterwards, rejoicing.'

Hexagram 12, line 6

I do like this line. All the leaden frustration of Hexagram 12 gets jettisoned at once.

A quick 'Cast history' search in my own journal shows a few small occasions when what I'd thought was a Big Unsayable Thing could be communicated easily, and one when I suddenly found I could accomplish something (mobilising a group) that I'd been sure only a quite different kind of person could do. A shared theme: new freedom to communicate. The changing line opens out into the trigram dui, the lake, representing joyful communication and exchange.

So the 'pull' of Peter's Gathering his readings together, convinced of their greater meaning, shifts the block of Hexagram 12 and gets communication flowing. Afterwards, rejoicing.

You can download the Resonance Journal to try for yourself from here.

I Ching Community discussion: Exploring Divination forum, Resonance Journal forum