Things that come in threes

One of many things about Yi that I first became aware of when Scott Davis pointed it out: there’s a tendency for motifs to occur three times. (He gives the example of whether words are trusted – not in 43.4, not in 47 – not until 49.3, when words of revolution have gone round three times.)

Why three times? Perhaps because three points are the minimum to develop an idea, or describe the arc of a story: thesis, antithesis, synthesis; beginning, middle and end. The ‘boundaries’ motif I wrote about before is one such; here is another.

Not robbers…

匪寇婚媾: ‘Not robbers, marital allies.’ This phrase occurs in three lines: 3.2, 22.4 and 38.6.

The custom that’s said to be behind this phrase is an odd one. Traditionally, the groom would come to the bride’s home with much pomp and splendour – fine horses, a shining carriage, a grand escort. But there was also a custom of the groom and his party masquerading as robbers come to steal the bride away. (Perhaps this was for use when the groom was poor and unable to provide a sufficiently splendid procession, so the bride’s family could be spared the shame of giving their daughter away to a poor man. The ‘saving face’ idea doesn’t seem especially relevant to these lines in the Yi, though.)

The core idea is simply that although this looks like someone who has come to steal from you, in reality they are here to offer a partnership that will benefit you. Robbers and marital allies are perfect opposites: robbers are beyond the pale of society; marriage reinforces the social fabric. (The emphasis is on partnership and alliance – marriage as a means of creating relationships between families, perhaps preventing war – rather than romance.)

Unlike the ‘boundaries’ idea – where every line that contains it changes to the trigram kan – this one occurs in a different trigram every time: thunder changing to lake, mountain changing to fire, then fire changing back to thunder. However… the lines do seem to tell a story, and the unfolding trigram changes are part of that.

3.2 – the beginning

‘Now sprouting, now hesitating,
Now driving a team of horses.
Not robbers at all, but marital allies.
The child-woman’s constancy – no children.
Ten years go by, then there are children.’

Of course Hexagram 3 is the very beginning of everything – and it’s also the first time the marriage theme appears in the Yi at all. The future bride is still a child herself (following Wu Jing Nuan’s interpretation, which has always felt right to me) so it is far too early for children. All you have to do, though, is to be patient and constant for ten years. If you’re willing to wait that long, and can afford to, then there is no need for hesitancy: a delay might be mistaken for a theft, but it is not at all the same thing.

The line has some very hexagram-3-esque ‘fertile confusion’ about it: the one hesitating, then driving the horses, must be the groom; then there’s an abrupt switch of point of view to the bride and her family, the ones who might mistake marital allies for robbers. And then it’s the woman’s constancy that answers that initial hesitancy. The two perspectives are stirred and mixed together, and by the end of this mini-story they’re united (allied, married…) in the promise of children to come.

Aspects of the structure feed into the line’s meaning…

This is line 2, reaching out for relationship with line 5 (and finding it, since this is yin and that’s yang).

This is the trigram zhen, thunder, action and initiative and setting-things-in-motion, changing to dui, lake, trigram of relationship and fertility. With one line change, action quite naturally and simply translates into relationship – it needs only constancy to carry it through.

(Also, Takashima would probably count forward ten lines to cover the ten years, and incorporate 4.5, ‘Young ignoramus, good fortune,’ into his interpretation.)

22.4 – the middle

‘Now beautiful, now silver-white,
Now a plumed white horse.
Not robbers at all, but marital allies.’

A confession first – this is not the translation you’ll find in my book. I only just realised today that there is a perfect, character-for-character textual parallel between 22.4 and the beginning of 3.2, which I’d completely obscured in my version. Not good. Here it is:

賁如皤如。白馬翰如。匪冠婚媾. (22.4)
屯如邅如。乘馬班如。匪冠婚媾. (beginning of 3.2)

You don’t need to read Chinese to see the parallel.

(Also, I think that 如 ru, when used in these repetitive formulas, describes not just things that are alike, but things that necessarily follow one another swiftly in time.)

This seems to be a much more straightforward story than 3.2. The hesitation has been overcome and we’re underway. There’s almost a breathless feel to it: the horse’s mane and tail streaming out like plumes as if it could fly, sweeping the bride off her feet with its momentum.

However, the commentary on the line points out that there is still a moment of hesitation: ‘Properly positioned, but doubted. …In the end, no question.’ (Hatcher) She still needs to understand that this is not a robber but a marital ally. And actually… that’s quite odd. 22 is a hexagram of demonstrating, making clearly visible, and this groom isn’t dressed up as a robber, but is signalling his intent clearly with his beautiful greys. So how could there be any mistake?

Well… we’ve moved up to line 4 now, a place that doesn’t just look for relationship, but asks ‘What’s possible here? What can be done?’  Perhaps the 22 equivalent of that is to ask, ‘What’s this I’m looking at, really?’ It’s coming at me so fast – is it all it seems? And the line answers that yes, this is exactly what it seems: no less and also no more.

The trigram change for this line: mountain to fire, the solid ‘stop’ sign trigram becoming clear perception. Eyes are opened, the lights come on: with his beautiful plumed horses, the suitor makes marriage visible. 3.2 only needed patient constancy to carry it past its initial hesitancy, but 22.4 requires a change in perception.

38.6 – the next beginning

‘Opposed, alone.
Seeing pigs covered in muck,
The chariot loaded with devils.
At first drawing the bow,
Then relaxing the bow.
Not robbers at all, but marital allies.
Going on meets the rain, and so there is good fortune.’

This is the longest, most complex story of the three. We’ve moved up again to the sixth line, so now the question is not ‘how can I connect?’ nor yet ‘what can I do?’ but ‘what is happening here?’ – line 6 seeks a complete overview.

This is also the one line that doesn’t mention the groom’s horse-team. In their place, at first you see pigs and a cart full of devils… but perhaps this uncanny, sinister vision is not what’s really there. 38 is the hexagram of Opposition: people who are not from inside our home, not our kind of people, but other. Line 6 – all alone – needs to rise above its natural fear and suspicion of the other before it can put aside its defences and recognise that these are ‘not robbers, but marital allies’.

When 3.2 realises that these are not robbers, that’s simply a cue to keep going; for 38.6, on the verge of treating the strangers as robbers and peppering them with arrows, it requires a complete change. With this new understanding, then they can ‘go on and meet the rain’, with its promise of new growth.

This line changes to Hexagram 54, a deeply unpromising situation for the junior bride, its positive potential very well-hidden. And the trigram change that takes us from insight to action is from fire back to thunder, where our trigram story started.

Synthesis?

As I said at the beginning, this set of three seems to involve trigrams in telling its story, or developing its idea. Action (zhen) created relationship (dui); an established pattern of ritual (gen) gave rise to understanding (li); finally, understanding (li) can give rise to clear action (zhen). Have a look at the initial, cast trigram for each line in turn:

        .

Thunder, and then its inverse, and then… actually, then, what looks like the two trigrams superimposed.

  +  =  ?

Combine the urge to action with stability, and you have marriage?

(I’m getting carried away, of course…)

I’ve been browsing with growing fascination through the Takashima Ekidan. Published in 1893 in Tokyo, this is an English translation by Shigetake Sugiura of an original Yijing translation by Kaemon Takashima, a successful serial entrepreneur and respected diviner. (‘Eki’ is the Japanese name for the Yi, and I believe ‘dan’ means ‘monograph’.) It includes a full translation of Judgement, line texts, Commentary on the Judgement, Image and the Small Images (line commentaries) – and despite the fact that this has come from Japanese through English, it’s reassuringly familiar.

What I love about the book, though, are the example readings given for most hexagrams.

There is something deeply affecting and quite startling about these readings. The best comparison I can find is that it’s like finding old, previously-unseen photos of your parents from before you were born. Here is the same Yi I know well, and was talking to this morning about ‘cello repairs, conversing and advising on concerns of 19th Century Japan. There are readings about business, about war and diplomacy, marriage, debt, illness, modern technology, and a dispute between fishmongers – and Yi is right in the midst of it all. Through these readings, I get glimpses of a world that’s completely strange to me – as are some of the methods of interpretation (more on that in another post) – but Yi itself is absolutely recognisable.

These are undoubtedly real readings. There is one where he admits to a misinterpretation, and several where he says the final outcome isn’t yet known. There are many deeply satisfied querents, including a family who are pleased because, although they’ve yet to see proof his reading was correct, it agrees with what they were told by a gypsy. Takashima is a skilled, sincere diviner, greatly impressing others with the force of his conviction, free and confident – maybe sometimes a little too much so – in his interpretations. Even when his methods are unfamiliar, his genuine relationship with Yi shines through.

Here are three of his example readings:

The Shimonoseki indemnity

A group of senior government figures asked Takashima whether American would repay the Shimonoseki indemnity. (This is one of those readings where Wikipedia is our friend – search this article for ‘indemnity’ to get some idea of what this is about!) He divined, and received 4.4 to 64.

(He doesn’t say how he divined, but I wonder whether he used stalks or the Plum Blossom method, since he begins this anecdote with the first words of one of his guests: ‘As it is raining today, we cannot go a-hunting and a-walking among the hills. Being too solitary, we are all come here to hear from you some Eki.’ Rain prevents us from going to the hills… kan before gen?)

The first thing that really grabs me about this reading is Takashima’s interpretation of 4’s Oracle:

“It says, ‘We do not apply to children; children do apply to us.‘ As this was obtained by divining whether America will return the ransom or not, I must take America as the leader and us as the follower… Then, ‘we‘ means America, and ‘children‘ us.”

I’ve often encouraged people to work with this hexagram in the same way: no, it is definitely not always the case that Yi is the speaker here, warning the querent against repeated divinations. It’s much more likely that both ‘applicant’ and ‘applied-to’ are human. In one of my earliest experiences with Hexagram 4, I was the child, and my web hosting company was the one not responding well to my repeated support tickets.

Of course, being characterised as the importunate infant is no fun, and characterising Imperial Japan in this way did not go down well with the ministers. Again, not an unfamiliar experience for a diviner, as Yi is no respecter of our sense of dignity. Takashima responds,

“Well, sir, the Eki indicates the divine will, and so, even the sagest personages conduct as if they were infants when they receive this hexagram. It is quite independent of time and place. …We may be conceited and deny to be infant, but the Almighty shows us the hexagram of Mo, which is inevitable.”

This sounds quite a lot like the kind of explanation I’ve given when trying to explain to some dignified older person how Yi is describing them as a toddler. This is just about how you look from Yi’s perspective, and seen from there, we are all infants. With a very offended querent, I might also make diffident noises – Yi said it, not me, please don’t shoot the messenger – but Takashima is characteristically unapologetic: the Almighty said this, through Yi, and so you must just accept that it is right. (And furthermore, he adds, the conduct of the country in this particular affair was ‘infant’.)

What he goes on to do with the line is odd. You or I might look at 4.4 and conclude that the money is lost:

‘Is sunk in Mo; inauspicious.’

But Takashima goes further. To start with, he also reads the xiaoxiang for that line:

‘The calamity of being sunk in Mo is the result of keeping himself aloof from the intelligent.’

The problem, it seems, is that the Japanese are not claiming the money back; they must move forward and do so.

“If we advance a step to the position of the Negative V [ie line 5] and claim, we will be ‘an infant, and lucky.’ Undoubtedly she will satisfy our claim and return the sum.”
“I do not know when America will return it to us, if we do not claim, but only wait the determination of her senators. Our government must convince her of our no more being infant and of being in want of money to promote our civilisation. …In this way, I am sure, she will regard our claim as being ‘children apply to us‘ and return the required sum of money.”

And he was quite right: according to Wikipedia, “In 1883, twenty years after the first battle to reopen the strait, the United States quietly returned $750,000 to Japan, which represented its share of the reparation payment.”

This is just one among many readings that show this free approach to the lines. Takashima uses a casting method that always generates just one moving line, but this doesn’t mean that he ignores the other moving line texts. Instead he normally regards them as points on a timeline. If the casting shows that you are currently at line 4, then lines 5 and 6 are still to come – and perhaps, as in this reading, you can change the outcome by moving to a new line.

(This reading’s actually unusual for him; in others with negative omens, he regards the disastrous outcome as an inevitability, or at least something that can only be averted by prayer, not by any human endeavour.)

The railway bridge

Here’s a fine example of practical reliance on Yi. In 1882, construction work on a railway Takashima had funded was interrupted when a flood swept away a temporary river bridge. Railway bridge construction, he explains, is a catch 22 situation: to construct a full, permanent bridge, you need building materials on both sides of the river; to transport the materials across the river, you need a bridge. So the high banks of the river had been cut down almost to water level and a temporary bridge constructed – and this had been demolished by the flood.

The Director of the Railway Department, who showed up on site at the same time as Takashima, indicated that they had three choices. They could rebuild another bridge at the same level, which would be a tremendous waste if it were to be lost in another flood, or they could build a temporary bridge at the full height of the banks, or something intermediate. The matter was to be settled by divination.

Takashima cast Hexagram 45, Gathering, changing at line 1 to 17, Following.

He observed first of all that 45, with lake over the earth, was a hexagram of flooding. We might add that it’s also a hexagram of great and purposeful investment, a gathering of men and resources – a perfect description of a great railway construction project.

Since line 1 changes to 17, and 17 means ‘to follow an example‘, they should build the same kind of bridge as before – only they should chain the beams to the banks, so they can be lifted out of the way in case of flood. He doesn’t say where this idea comes from, but I imagine it’s some combination of the Image of 45

‘Lake higher than the earth. Gathering.
A noble one sets aside weapons and tools,
And warns against the unexpected.’

reminding him to take precautions, and the Dazhuan passage that attributes the invention of harnessing oxen and horses to carts to Hexagram 17. (He does mention this part of the Dazhuan in another reading.)

However, Takashima has more to say – again, making use of the lines that were not moving, though this time only their zhi gua, not their text. To construct a higher bridge, ‘the posts must be heavier, and the whole will not bear itself against a flood.’ This he sees in the fact that line 2 changes to 47 (and also the trigram kan). A strong, high, iron bridge would be line 3, and since it leads to Hexagram 31 (and the trigram gen) that should certainly be built in the end, but at present it would be too time-consuming. So… it turns out that he is using the height of the line, in the ‘earth’ trigram, to determine the height of the bridge. Line 1 is the ground-level construction; line 2 would be higher; the highest, strongest bridge would be line 3.

They rebuilt the temporary bridge at the low level, and, ‘In the next year, we found that this hexagram was not wrong.’

How to repay a debt

In 1721, Bach wrote 6 glorious Suites for ‘cello. They were not much played, certainly not performed, until they were discovered by Pau Casals, the grandfather of all modern ‘cellists.

In 1936, Casals made the first ever recording of the Suites. Countless distinguished ‘cellists have followed with their own interpretations.

‘Cellos live a great deal longer than humans, and Casals’ ‘cello is now played by Amit Peled, who is recording the Suites on it once again. When I heard what Peled had to say about his position, I could see parallels at once to those of us still divining with Yi.

“At one point, Casals held this ‘cello and played Bach. Many years have passed, and now I’m holding it and playing Bach on the same ‘cello. And I know that one day somebody else will hold this ‘cello and will play the same Bach suites. And it might be 100 years from today. It will be the same Bach suite, it’ll be the same ‘cello – and a totally different person. So it gives you perspective, how amazing this art is, and how small we are. We’re just servants. And I’m just happy to be the servant that can hold it now and can use it to bring out my soul.”

Name and nature: the enigma of guai

Hexagram 43 is called 夬, guai, which is generally understood to mean‘decision’ or ‘resoluteness’ or ‘breakthrough’. The oldest forms of the character show a hand holding up an object – a token of authority, perhaps, or an archer’s thumb ring. In some early versions of the character, it’s quite clearly a drawing of a hand with a thumb ring: 

Nowadays, the word for an archer’s ring is jue, 玦, formed by combining guai with the ‘jade’ radical.

The Wings (Tuanzhuan, Zagua and Xugua) agree, though, that 夬 means  jue 决: a word that combines guai with the ‘water’ radical and means decide, breakthrough, breach (of a dike), certainty, execution. This, they say, is what the solid lines of the hexagram are doing to the one broken line at the top: ‘taking decisive action’ against it (Lynn).

43 as motion

Translators almost all follow the wisdom of the Wings authors, because their understanding fits so naturally with the shape of the hexagram. Following its energy through from the bottom line to the top, you get the sense of a powerful upward drive, pushing out that final yin line. It feels like a single giant arrow of motion: one way only.

I wonder whether guai might originally refer to a particular kind of motion: the kind that characterises both the bowstring released by the archer’s thumb and the water that breaches a dike. Stored energy is released into swift motion – in a single direction, with momentum, and not to be diverted.

The position of this hexagram in the Sequence carries the same idea: the lake gathers under the mountain in 41, and then there is Increase, and then ‘Increasing and not reaching an end must mean breakthrough.’

(Here’s more on 43 as the ‘breakthrough’ of water breaching a dike.)

The Oracle

The Oracle of 43, though, seems to tell the story of an idea:

‘Deciding, tell it in the king’s chambers.
With truth, cry out, there is danger.
Notify your own town.
Fruitless to take up arms;
Fruitful to have a direction to go.’

It begins with communication: broadcast the message in the king’s chambers, truth calls out there is danger, notify the town. The word translate ‘cry out’ means to yell, or howl like the wind: ‘Truth that howls means danger!’

The message ripples outward: from the royal court to the town and beyond, into a ‘direction to go’. In this way, it translates into motion – the potent momentum of the hexagram. An idea with power behind it is carried through into action.

The Oracle finishes up with a very clear contrast: to take up arms is fruitless; to have a direction to go is fruitful. What’s the distinction it’s pointing to here? The Tuanzhuan says that taking up arms would mean what you hold in high esteem comes to nothing – which actually seems odd: with all this energy and momentum, wouldn’t you expect to win any battles you started?

In my book I only said, ‘It will serve you better to focus with clear intention on what you’re moving towards, rather than what you’re reacting against.’ I think we might add that taking up arms would be a distraction from 43’s single direction.

In this connection, it’s interesting to see how Wang Bi describes this (in Lynn’s translation). He points out that 43 is the opposite of 23, when ‘the Dao of the noble man wanes’ and ‘his virtues of strength and rectitude are denied a straight path to action.’ Since 43 does have a straight path to action, best to keep to the path.

Lonely as a cloud

The Image of 43 says,

‘Lake above heaven. Deciding.
A noble one distributes riches to reach those below,
He dwells in power and virtue, and also shuns things.’

…except that there’s actually more than one way to understand that final line. Word for word in Chinese, it’s literally something like, ‘Dwelling-in virtue and/thus avoid.’ Wilhelm has, ‘he refrains from resting on his virtue;’ Lynn, following Wang Bi, has ‘dwells in virtue and so clarifies what one should be averse to.’ (Wang Bi says that to be averse to something implies to prohibit it, and this is about having very clear laws without laxity.)

What do the trigrams imply? The outer lake has to do with communicating, spreading and sharing. Heaven on the inside indicates both lasting power and unchanging truths behind this communication – probably what Wang Bi had in mind when he talked about having clear laws.

Of course, the simplest way to understand a ‘lake above heaven’ is as a cloud. A cloud distributes riches to those below. It reaches everyone, but no-one can reach it: rain water is always pure; the shores of a sky-lake never get muddy. It makes sense to me that the noble one is like this: simultaneously generous and aloof. In the line texts, it turns out that we do need a certain reserve and distance to keep going.

(In support of this – the Image of 53 has a very similar phrase, ‘the noble one dwells in good character and virtue’. No-one interprets this as lazily ‘resting on his virtue.’)

Words have power

According to the Dazhuan, the hexagrams predate civilisation and inspire its greatest creations – such as the written word:

‘In remote antiquity, people knotted cords to keep things in order. The sages of later ages exchanged these for written tallies, and by means of these all the various officials were kept in order, and the myriad folk were supervised. They probably got the idea for this from the hexagram Kuai.’ (Lynn)

The idea of written tallies comes – like the image of the cloud – from the trigrams: communication (lake) that contains enduring power (heaven). As Wilhelm says, ‘words should be made strong and enduring.’ Writing infuses communication with greater power.

In this connection… it’s interesting to see the role Hexagram 43 plays in the Zagua, the ‘Miscellaneous Hexagrams’ Wing that describes contrasting pairs. At the end of this Wing, the last few hexagrams mentioned are no longer grouped with their pairs. (No-one knows why.) 43, separated from 44, is the very last of all:

‘Guai is breaking through,
Firm breaks through soft.
The noble one’s dao is long lasting,
The small man’s dao is sorrow.’

Why might this be the final word? I wonder if it’s because 43 is about words with power behind them. The Zagua is a simple little text, mostly in rhyme – I imagine it was intended to be recited out loud by a student learning the pairs. The recitation ends with something like an incantation, with the power of the whole book behind it: may the noble man’s way endure, may the small man decline.

Journey through the lines

The line texts of 43, true to its sense of direction and momentum, tell a story. Deciding – it makes clear – isn’t just theoretical: it means carrying your intention, your words-with-power-behind-them, through into action.

Line 1

‘Vigour in the leading foot.
Going on without control means making mistakes.’

It’s no good to start moving too soon, before you’re capable of the task. Just declaring your intent is not enough. This line joins with Hexagram 28, Great Exceeding. Someone has such an overwhelming sense that Something Must Be Done that she falls over her own feet in her hurry to get going.

Line 2

‘Alarmed, crying out.
Evening and night, bearing arms.
Do not fear.’

The ‘crying out’ from the Oracle is heard again. This line connects with 49, Radical Change. Truth howls in the dark, and we are thoroughly alarmed. (The character ‘alarm’ consists of ‘heart’ and yi, ‘change’, making it pretty clear what frightens us.) This is when we’re liable to take up arms, which the Oracle said wasn’t a good idea. Perhaps it still isn’t – at all events, better not to over-react or over-identify.

Line 3

‘Vigour in the cheekbones means a pitfall.
Noble one decides, decides.
Walks alone, meets the rain,
And is indignant as if he were soaked through.
Not a mistake.’

Deciding meets Hexagram 58, Opening: it’s time to go out into the open and communicate. Line 3 asks ‘can I, should I, go out across the threshold?’ and the answer is yes. To decide now is to walk out alone, though you may end up bedraggled and sputtering. Never mind preserving your dignity: some things are more important. (You can see the reflection of this noble one in the Image.)

Line 4

‘Thighs without flesh,
Walking awkwardly now.
Lead a sheep, regrets vanish.
Hear words, not trusted.’

This is the line associated with Yu the Great, the hero whose thighs were wasted from his decades spent battling the floods. It’s the second line about how you move: alone in line 3, understandably awkwardly now.

This line joins with Hexagram 5, Waiting: the floods didn’t recede instantaneously just because Heaven said that Yu should conquer them. ‘Deciding’ can be a long-term undertaking. If things are getting on top of you, surrender to the reality of it and just keep hobbling on.

This is a hexagram of words with power, but now we reach the outer trigram, words are not trusted. I think that’s partly because it’s time for action now – words alone aren’t enough – and partly because these words come from the sidelines. LiSe sees Yu here and in line 3, getting no thanks for his labours.

Line 5

‘Amaranth on high ground.
Decide, decide.
Walk in the centre, no mistake.’

A third ‘walking’ line, now with Great Vigour (Hexagram 34) – like that amaranth, perhaps, or like the energy it would take to harvest it. At line 5 – the place of personal autonomy and choice – in a hexagram about Deciding, Yi is remarkably open-ended. Decide for yourself where the middle path lies, and walk it.

Line 6

‘Not crying out.
In the end, pitfall.’

If truth never cries out, there’s no deciding; nothing happens. Hexagram 1 shines through this line, bringing the necessity of creative change – but also, perhaps, a desire to keep clear of messiness, and not allow anything to go wrong. This reminds me somewhat of 55.6, and also 21.6: what if the message never got through? What if the upheaval never happened? In the short term, this might make things easier, but not in the end.

What is Jie 介 ?

The character jie 介 occurs three times in the Yi:

16.2

‘Boundaries of stone,
Not for a whole day.
Constancy, good fortune.’

35.2

‘Now advancing, now apprehensive.
Constancy, good fortune.
Accepting this armour blessing from your ancestral mother.’

58.4

‘Negotiating opening, not yet at rest.
Containing the affliction brings rejoicing.’

As you can see, I haven’t managed to translate it with the same word each time: no-one does, and there’s a lot of variability in the translations. Even 58.4, which on the face of it seems the simplest, has translations of ‘jie affliction’ varying from ‘ward off harm’ (Lynn) to ‘disease confined’ (Rutt) to ‘great illness’ (Field) to ‘being aided when ill’ (Redmond).

So…

What does it mean?

In the Shijing, the Book of Songs, jie overwhelmingly means ‘confer/ grant/ vouchsafe [a blessing]’. It’s used again and again at the end of songs and hymns to ask the ancestors to bless the ruler, and also used to describe the king conferring authority on a feudal lord.

In the Liji, the Book of Rites, jie means armoured, shelled (as in ‘creatures with shells’), and ‘attendants’ – as far as I can see, it’s only used once as a verb, meaning ‘to present’.

How can one word possibly mean everything from an attendant to a beetle’s carapace to the act of an ancestor granting long life?

In the dictionary, jie is defined as ‘armour, shell’ and ‘be situated between, interpose’. According to Richard Sears, its original meaning is ‘border’ and the original character is thought to show a man in armour protecting the border.

As far as I can see, the meaning stretches from ‘what goes inbetween (you and everything out there)’, including the attendants who flank you, to ‘what covers you (and protects you against everything out there)’ to ‘the act of covering and shielding you’. There’s something comparable in Psalm 28: ‘the Lord is my strength and shield,’ and ‘shield’ there is a word that means both armour, defending a city, and the scaly hide of a crocodile. I get the idea of being clothed in spiritual power or authority.

But what about the use of the word in the Yi, which is neither quite a book of songs and invocations, nor quite a book of prescriptions for correct behaviour?

Jie and kan

Yi, of course, makes its meanings out of structures as well as words. So here are the three structures in which the word jie appears:

and

and

As you can see, in each one, the line change creates the trigram kan.

Kan is traditionally said to represent pits and running water. If you consider the yang line to represent what moves and acts, and the yin lines to represent what’s acted on, then it looks like a river flowing between its banks. The river is acting and carving its course… though then again, the banks are also containing and directing the flow of the river. Where the two meet, they are always shaping one another.

And now, thinking of the trigram kan, look at the shape of the ancient character jie:

The border guard in his armour is represented as a solid human figure clothed in something broken and flexible.

If it’s possible, I would like to learn what the trigrams meant to the people who wrote the Zhouyi – not just what they meant in separate, parallel traditions such as that represented by the Shuogua Wing, but the understanding revealed by the Zhouyi itself. I think this association of jie with kan is a tiny fragment of that understanding.

Jie in the Yi

Once I’d looked at jie, looked at kan, and got very Yeekily excited, I dived into the line texts in more depth. From this, I think I can see…

• a consistent theme running through the lines (even though the word jie is used in different ways), and
• that theme expressed in different, evolving ways according to the phase of the Sequence to which each hexagram belongs.

16.2: boundaries of rock

‘Boundaries of stone,
Not for a whole day.
Constancy, good fortune.’

This is one of those lines addressed by the master diviner who speaks in the Dazhuan. This does not take a whole day, he says, because the protagonist ‘knows the seeds’, recognises what is incipient – is quick on the uptake, basically, and so doesn’t have to wait for events to play themselves out.

Wilhelm translates this one as ‘firm as a rock’ (not impressionable); Rutt translates as ‘pilloried on the rock’. Both readings fit quite naturally with this idea of ‘not for a whole day’: it doesn’t take someone who is ‘firm as a rock’ long to understand the seeds; the punishment on the rock doesn’t take a whole day because the person learns their lesson quickly.

What does happen with these rocks? The Chinese has just three words: ‘jie at/to/by/from rock’. Direct translations could be ‘bordered by rocks’, ‘armoured by rocks’ or ‘hemmed in by rocks’. Field even observes the elephant in the name of 16, and thinks the line describes an attempt at containing it.

Is this rock-solid boundary a protective blessing, or is it oppressive? Well… ask a teenager and their parents about boundaries.

Also, consider a third possibility (thanks to LiSe for opening my eyes to this one): that they’re also formative. Boundaries of rock shape you, harden you, keep you safe – but that doesn’t take all day.

Why not? Because this line is 16 changing to 40: Enthusiasm’s Release. Release unties knots, solves problems, sees what can be done and sets out at daybreak. Teenagers see how the world should be different and set out to change it.

For another view of boundaries, consider the paired line, 15.5:

‘Not rich in your neighbour:
Fruitful to use this to invade and conquer.
Nothing that does not bear fruit.’

You have neighbours because there is a boundary between your land and theirs. Such a boundary is essential – but not impregnable. There may come a moment when you can no longer live within them. What persists when boundaries crumble is constancy: persisting loyally in what you know to be true. Inner security – like the teenager who knows that the world must change – is stronger than rock.

35.2: mantled in blessing

‘Now advancing, now apprehensive.
Constancy, good fortune.
Accept this jie blessing from your ancestral mother.’

This line sounds closest to the use of jie in the Book of Songs: an ancestor confers a blessing. ‘Accept this conferred blessing’, maybe ‘or ‘accept this protective blessing’ – or both.

I find it intriguing that it says ‘accept this blessing,’ though. (I failed to notice this in my book.) After Christmas dinner, when we settle down to open presents, if I say, ‘Take this one,’ it’s because I’m already handing you a parcel. Couldn’t it be the same in the line, with ‘this’ referring to a blessing you can already see?

…in other words, might the apprehension itself be the conferred armour-blessing?

Think of the nature of this line’s anxiety. It’s where 35, Advancing, meets 64, Not Yet Across: making progress, but not yet arrived. What if you can’t make it across? Apprehension marks the boundary where your plans and intention meet your circumstances – and you created this boundary, this line of tension, by making progress. To be apprehensive because you are making progress might be described as a blessing in itself.

Boundaries, here, draw a line between you, with your resolve, on the inside, and the circumstances you’re worried about, on the outside. ‘Constancy is good fortune’ because inner resolve is stronger and more real. (Constancy means good fortune in both 16.2 and 35.2, and also in the fan yao of each line, 40.2 and 64.2.)

This protective mantle of apprehension shields and strengthens you; it makes you acutely aware of where the edges are, what’s part of you and what isn’t. (For more on this idea, in association with kan, see the Tuanzhuan on Hexagram 29.) So this, like the banks of the river, and like the rock boundary of 16.2, has a shaping and defining effect.

58.4: contain the infection

‘Negotiating opening, not yet at rest.
Containing the affliction brings rejoicing.’

Jie clearly means something different here: it’s containing the affliction, not conferring it. Still, the idea is very similar to 35.2: jie wraps round the anxiety or disease, setting a boundary, defining its edges. Rutt cites Arthur Waley, who thought jie in these lines could describe a kind of magical practice of containment.

This is 58 changing to 60: Opening’s Measure and Limiting. Hexagram 60 draws lines, subdivides things, breaks them into segments like the bamboo stem. The line seems to show two ways ‘Opening with Measure’ could go: an anxious desire to nail everything down and set comprehensive terms (as I think also happens in 61.6 zhi 60), or breaking things down into manageable portions. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof; cross that bridge when you come to it; eat the elephant one bite at a time.

The negotiations are ongoing, there’s no peace settlement yet – and the important thing seems to be to let them stay open and a work in progress, and not be in too much of a hurry. (The paired line, 57.3, is part of the same idea.) The jie boundary still draws a line between an inner state (affliction, illness, stress, feverishness…) and the outer world, but now I think it’s there to protect the outer world. The negotiations need to be insulated from any contagion.

Summing up…

Change Circle members who’ve read the Sequence book will be familiar with the idea that the final part of the Sequence belongs to elders, storytellers and those who make history. Boundaries shape – but can’t hold – the young ones; they become a gift of awareness and protection for the adventurous adult; they keep fretful individuals out of the way of the flow of history.

And one more thing,

A word from the Department of Wild Speculation

As Field points out, the word translated ‘Negotiating’ in 58.4 is actually the name of the Shang dynasty. His translation begins, ‘There is negotiation with Shang, but no reconciliation as yet.’

Also, the final two words of the line, ‘having rejoicing’, are a phrase meaning ‘expecting a child’. ‘Nine at fourth’s rejoicing,’ says the xiaoxiang, ‘has celebrations.’

It would make particularly good sense to protect a pregnant woman from infectious disease.

The business with Zhou and Shang was only ultimately resolved when Wu, son of Wen and (almost certainly) a Shang mother, came to power. 57/58 – again, see the Sequence book – is the axis of a ‘history-making’ decade of hexagrams, looking backward to the second wife in 54 and forward into the ‘sweet measures’ of Zhou rule, and linked via 57.5’s line pathway to the ‘small child’ of 17.2 – the ‘small child’ being the name Wu gave himself in speeches.

So… perhaps we might need to keep the feverish contagion at a safe distance, in 58.4, and allow the negotiations to be unresolved, while we wait for Wu’s birth.

Field sees in 35.2 a specific reference to Kang, a younger brother of Wu, being granted the fiefdom of Wei with its relocated Shang nobles because of his Shang mother.

The exact number and birth order of King Wen’s sons isn’t clear, but S.J. Marshall says that Wu is Wen’s second son of ten, and Kang his ninth. In that sense, both are middle sons  – like kan.

Talking with Yi is a conversation – and with regular readings, we develop a relationship with the oracle. We habitually talk about it as a person: ‘Yi’ rather than ‘the Yi’; something we can ‘get to know’ rather than just ‘learn’; something that speaks. (The roots of the word ‘oracle’ are in Latin orare, ‘to speak’. Oracles can talk.)

The reason Yi speaks is, of course, because it has words of its own. Tarot speaks through images; Yi speaks through the patterns we call hexagrams, but also in words, like we do. I think this leads to a different experience of divination: having a conversation with a person, versus applying a system. Yes, just as with tarot, there’s a system of symbols to learn and apply, and skills to develop – and beyond that, Yi also has something to say. Yes, there’s water above heaven (clouds in the sky, inner constancy in the face of outer uncertainty, and so on…) – and also, Yi says, ‘Wait, with truth and confidence…’

Consequently, a lot of good divination advice is also good relationship advice. Talk openly and often; be honest and straightforward. Let no topic be off-limits. Have boundaries: keep your autonomy, don’t become dependent on having Yi tell you what to do. And so on.

Also, of course, we are actually talking to a 3,000 year old book, or something that speaks through the book – and however we conceive of this speaker, it certainly can’t get bunions. Talking with Yi is also not like talking with a human being.

This has a lot of implications. Some of them make it rather like talking to an infinitely wise person, beyond ordinary human limitations: someone who can’t possibly misunderstand your question, but whose ideas of what constitute good or bad fortune might be quite different from your own. However, another is that you will tend to hear Yi speak in your own inner voice.

By ‘inner voice’ I mean both the tone of voice, and also the kind of thing it can say. If your own inner voice is hypercritical, or sarcastic, or sanguine, then your Yi will tend to sound like this, too. Yi is not your inner voice, of course, and it can and will shatter that illusion from time to time and sound unmistakably other. However, it remains true that it’s harder for a pessimist ever to hear Yi being optimistic, or a laid-back character to hear Yi being fiercely critical, or vice versa.

And this is why, even though your relationship with the oracle is an absolutely individual one, and you are the only true authority on the answers you receive, it’s also good to share a reading with another person and listen to their response – because you get to hear the reading speak with a different voice. I’ve had a few I Ching chats with Change Circle members recently, and it seems to me that what I contribute is only partly familiarity and skill with the ‘system’ of how Yi makes meaning; it’s also how I make it possible for people to hear Yi differently. The same kind of thing happens in Clarity’s forums: ‘Here’s how I hear the reading,’ we say. ‘Does that resonate for you?’ And then, perhaps, comes that unmistakable sense of being spoken to.