I Ching with Clarity

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!)

I Ching Community discussion

I've been working on a post on the trigram kun, earth, as inner trigram. That one will come soon - this is just something I wondered about along the way.

I started going through the sequence of hexagrams, looking at the Image texts for the ones with earth inside...

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

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

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

I'd got about this far when I was distracted by the ancient kings: there seemed to be a great many of them about. Was this a pattern, or a coincidence?

Well… there are seven hexagrams that mention the ancient kings in their Image text: 8, 16, 20, 21, 24, 25 and 59. Of these, three have kun as their inner trigram, and then there's also 24 with kun as outer trigram. If the distribution were random, I don't think you'd expect to see it more than a couple of times overall, and once as inner trigram.

So are the ancient kings especially like earth? Mothers to their people?

Perhaps. But this is only half the picture: the trigram zhen, thunder, also appears three times as inner trigram and once as outer trigram in 'their' hexagrams. The ancient kings are also innovators, the inner impulse that set civilisation in motion.

The arrangement of earth and thunder through these seven hexagrams is oddly symmetrical, look:

Here they all are, ignoring the actual distances between them in the sequence. (What is Hexagram 59 doing out there on a limb?)

And here's the character wang, king:

王

It's been written much like this since early times: three horizontal strokes joined by a single vertical one through the centre.

(Not for the first time, I feel as though I'm catching on v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y...)

I Ching Community discussion

How does the Yi help in an impossibly painful situation? It's hard to describe - deep recognition, being recognised, a sense of reconnection. Dominique's reading for this episode:

"What is the lesson that I must learn through the pain of losing my marriage and our future?"

And Yi's answer: Dispersing - Hexagram 59, with no changing lines.

It's a beautiful response - I hope you enjoy listening

Transcript, for Change Circle members

I have just heard that Stephen Karcher, author of Total I Ching and How to Use the I Ching, collaborator on the original Eranos edition, has died. I owe Stephen a great deal, so I'm writing this to express my gratitude.

My very first encounter with the Yi came when I found a copy of Legge in the Oxfam bookshop - but it was when I borrowed the Ritsema/Karcher Eranos edition from the library that I first realised I'd found something I could connect with. Yes, I know now that the Eranos version isn't perfect, but for me it opened the way into the heart of the oracle - a revelation. I monopolised the library's copy for a long time, renewed it, and renewed it some more, and finally bought a copy... and then had the idea of doing readings for other people.

Then I found How to Use the I Ching, a modest little beginner's book that provided exactly what it said on the cover. It has a really excellent introduction - one that doesn't, unlike most, stop at telling you how to cast a hexagram, but walks you in detail through a process of interpretation.

This introduction was where I first learned to understand the second, resulting hexagram of a reading as the 'relating hexagram', the 'sea in which the primary figure swims'. Stephen wasn't the first or only diviner to notice that this second hexagram was not rigidly 'The Outcome', of course, but he might have been the first to write and teach this. This was because he wasn't primarily a translator or academic - though he was both of those - but a diviner. He did readings, for himself and other people, and this experience is the foundation for his books. He had conversations with Change, and was hugely invested in introducing people to the oracle so they could do the same, and ways to transformation would open.

I reached out to Stephen, and was lucky enough to meet him a couple of times. In person he was tremendously energetic, brimming with ideas and creativity - think Laozi meets Tigger. After he'd given a long, lively talk out in Cowley, and answered questions afterwards, I imagined we'd take the bus back to the centre of Oxford - not a chance. We walked (or I walked, and he bounced).

He was also unstintingly generous with his ideas and his support. Of course I found it immensely encouraging that he was already making the Yijing his life's work: it could be done! And he offered me personal encouragement, especially to get started offering readings in conversation instead of just by email.

I was thoroughly apprehensive about this: what if people asked questions I couldn't answer, and I couldn't think of anything to say? As part of persuading me to give it a go, Stephen read for me by phone. It was about a business relationship that wasn't working, and the primary hexagram was 23, Stripping Away. I couldn't see the wood for the bushes I was beating around, looking for subtle things this might be referring to; Stephen told me completely directly that the relationship was at an end. (It really was.) He also responded to my anxieties with the best advice any diviner could receive: 'Trust the Oracle.'

I asked Yi to talk to me about Stephen - something I often do when someone I know dies. It responded with Hexagram 14, Great Possession, with no changing lines.

There's not much to add to that, is there? I think this makes a lot of sense - naturally - as part of the Pair with Hexagram 13, People in Harmony. Stephen was a tremendous synthesiser of Yijing ideas and research, joining many sources into a Great Possession of divinatory tools.

I came to think of him as a kind of Yijing alchemist. Everything he learned went into the crucible - Jung, etymology, myth and legend, insights into the sequence and structure of the Yi… - and every new insight or tool he cooked up, he wanted to see shared and used, explored and developed in live readings, where we could discover how they worked.

I tried to make a list of what's found its way from that alchemist's laboratory into my own readings. Right at the foundation, there's the concept of a relating hexagram. Then there's the habit of paying attention to Xugua and Zagua, and of thinking of hexagrams as one half of a pair. There are trigrams as 'spirit helpers'; there are steps of change and (with LiSe) line pathways. There are patterns of change, or 'change operators' as he called them later on - first the yin pattern, which I think was part of that brilliant introduction to How to Use the I Ching, and then yin and yang together. There are ideal and shadow hexagrams - the 'shadow hexagram', as far as I know, is a Karcher original, something that emerged from Scott Davis' insights into the Sequence.

There's also a whole lot more I never quite wrapped my head around - something that would not have perturbed him in the slightest. What he leaves us is -

'Great Possession.
From the source, creating success.'

Hexagram 14 has the first two of the 'big four' words - yuan heng, 'from the source success', a 'primal offering' - but not the third and fourth - li zhen, 'constancy bears fruit', 'fruitful divination'. We're left, not with a well-polished, monolithic system, with everything said that he would have wanted to say, but with a great profusion of ideas and approaches to try, a gift waiting to be used. The absence of a relating hexagram seems to emphasise that open-ended quality of the hexagram, leaving the 'fruitful divination' part up to us.

I wish I could have quoted Total I Ching in this post, but sadly my copy is tucked away in storage. You can find Karcher on Hexagram 14 at the 'Mothering Change' website, though. An excerpt:

'Circle of Meanings
A great idea, a great leader, a great person, great power to realise; great results, great achievements; an inner concentration of the will around a central idea that brings wealth and abundance.'

I Ching Community discussion

Where they are in the Yijing

There are three mentions in the Zhouyi - the oldest layer of the Yijing text - of 'establishing feudal lords': in the Oracle of Hexagram 3, and its first line, and in the Oracle of Hexagram 16. (Then they're also mentioned in the Image of Hexagram 8, and there's Lord Kang in Hexagram 35.)

If you mostly use the Wilhelm/Baynes translation, you may well have no idea what I'm on about. (Of course this may often happen to many people and for unrelated but excellent reasons…) It doesn't mention 'establishing feudal lords', only 'installing helpers'. 'In order to overcome the chaos' of Hexagram 3, according to Wilhelm's commentary, 'he needs helpers.' And at Hexagram 16, 'It is Enthusiasm that enables us to install helpers for the completion of an undertaking without fear of secret opposition.' Helpers create order, foster harmony and get things done.

And this is - of course - good, directly usable advice: get some help in place if you want to accomplish anything. However, if we dig a bit further into the original meaning, there might be more to learn.

What is a feudal lord, anyway?

Feudal lords are those appointed by the king to rule the regions in his stead. The Chinese words in hexagrams 3 and 16 are 建侯, jian hou, and they can be literally translated as 'enfeoff a lord'. The etymology of both characters is interesting:

侯 hou, lord, shows a person and an arrow hitting a target - or in very early forms, just the arrow in the target. A lord may originally have been a distinguished archer. The Shuowen says of this,

'Targets for archery at the great Spring Ceremony. The character shows a man and the target where he has shot his arrow. The sovereign shot at bear, tiger and leopard targets [ie targets made from these animal skins], showing thus that he repressed rebellion. The feudal lords shot at bear, boar and tiger, the senior officials at large deer, the officials at smaller deer and at panther, to expel evil influences from the fields.'

So… perhaps the foundational idea is that a lord is someone who keeps things safe and peaceful, deterring attacks and driving out enemies material or spiritual, through his skill with the bow.

And 建 jian, meaning to enfeoff, establish, found, originally seems to have depicted a man driving a post into the ground. (As always with ancient Chinese characters, this isn't an exact science - no doubt different scribes wrote the word differently - but the bronze inscription characters here and here look very much like someone driving in a post.)

Installing feudal lords starts to look a little like building a line of defence - and that's certainly part of the historical picture. According to the Book of Rites, immediately after King Wu had overthrown the Shang regime, before he had even descended from his chariot, he had already begun to enfeoff lords. They would have held land on his behalf, outposts distributed along the Yellow River Valley.

A noble, often a relation of the king's, might be comfortably ensconced in the security of the capital, only to be told by his king to take troops and set out to establish a garrison - Britannica describes these as 'colonies'. Such lords would support one another, and could also call on military support from the centre.

In this way the ruler at the centre expands his sphere of influence and - I imagine - creates a 'buffer zone' between the capital and hostile forces. It reminds me of the defensive role of the archer, and the lords driving evil influences from the fields.

Within his own realm, a feudal lord was like a mini-king: making local law, conducting religious rites, and entitled to his share of local produce. He would also owe a duty to the king, to provide tribute and soldiers. The flow of resources goes both ways, both from and to the capital, and also between the feudal states in mutual support.

In the bronze vessels cast to commemorate enfeoffments, becoming a feudal lord is described as a great honour, one the lord accepts with humility and gratitude. Inscriptions express faith that the newly-cast vessel would be handed down to their descendants, and so too would the fief. There's no sense here of defence or precarity, only becoming part of an ever-expanding, harmonious realm, held together by bonds of mutual loyalty.

A second look at the text

What light could all this cast on the hexagrams?

The name of Hexagram 3, zhun, might be translated as 'sprouting' and 'Difficulty at the Beginning' - but also (pronounced tun) means to station troops, or a garrison. In other words, exactly what a feudal lord would establish when first sent out to bring a new region into the king's realm.

And there's the most basic idea of Hexagram 3: that this is the beginning. Wu starts naming feudal lords before he even gets down from his chariot. To weave together a thriving, interconnected kingdom, you need your garrisons first. To grow an oak tree, the acorn starts with roots.

In the Oracle of Hexagram 3, setting up feudal lords is one half of a contrast:

'Sprouting.
From the source, creating success, constancy bears fruit.
Don't use this to have a direction to go,
Fruitful to establish feudal lords.'

'Do this, not that': don't go places, don't set out to explore in a single direction; instead, consolidate power at the centre first by spreading your network in all directions. This is how to grow.

There might (speculation alert!) be a more specific contrast implied here. Harmen Mesker has suggested that the 'direction to go', 攸往 you wang, is a 'far place', and this is about making a royal journey out to the border realms. Shang kings (according to Britannica) had been largely peripatetic, constantly touring in an effort to maintain their influence and alliances with regional lords. But if the regional lords are your own appointees (and probably family members), the strength of the network would strengthen the centre and mean less need to tour.

So… 'having a direction to go' vs 'establishing feudal lords' is the difference between narrowing and expanding possibilities, but perhaps also between trying to do it all yourself, be everywhere at once, and delegation. (Or 'installing helpers', as a wise translator once wrote...)

There's a spectrum of associations for feudal lords: from the harmonious flow of support and loyalty through an ordered network, through to a venture into new territory to establish the first garrison. Plainly, Hexagram 3 is at the beginning.

But… look what stands across from it: its complementary hexagram, 50, the Vessel. The rituals of enfeoffment could involve a gift of metal with which to cast the new commemorative vessel - we know this from an inscription on a bronze vessel from the reign of King Cheng (~1042 to 1021 BC). That has to cast new light on the whole big, beautiful pattern the Sequence of Hexagrams makes between hexagrams 3 and 50. (I've described these patterns more completely and clearly in Exploring the Sequence, available in the Change Circle Library.)

Then comes 3.1 - the absolute beginning of the beginning:

'Encircled by stones.
Fruitful to settle with constancy,
Fruitful to establish feudal lords.'

When this line changes, it reveals Hexagram 8, Seeking Union, with its trigrams showing the rivers flowing over the earth. I remember the feudal outposts established along the Yellow River Valley - and the Image of Hexagram 8:

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

And finally Hexagram 16, Enthusiasm, or Anticipating - or Readiness, as Bradford Hatcher translates it.

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

Now the feudal lords are linked with mobilisation. I'm no longer sure whether these armies will be marching from the regions to the capital or vice versa, but either way, the local lords will provide them with structure and direction.

Traditionally this is seen as the role of line 4, the single yang line, mobilising the army of yin lines. Action emerges from compliance like the outer trigram thunder from inner trigram earth. So R.J. Lynn translates the Oracle of 16 as,

'It is fitting to establish a chief and to send the army into action.'

Hexagram 3 made me think of how feudal lords broke new ground and expanded the king's realm; Hexagram 16 reminds me more of their role as defensive outposts. Energy is gathered and galvanised in 16 partly in sheer delight, and also partly to be ready. Remember the role of 16 in inspiring the creation of fortifications and warning systems?

‘They made defensive double gates and watchmen’s clappers to keep off marauders. This may have come from Yu.’ (16)

(That's from the chapter of the Dazhuan that describes how certain hexagrams work almost as culture heroes.)

Feudal lords in readings

And so to the point of it all: will that extra bit of background information make a difference in readings?

I think - unsurprisingly - it depends on the reading. I can think of a couple where 'install helpers' is exactly the advice needed, and the rest is probably clutter. In the 45th episode of the podcast, Abby understood the feudal lords of Hexagram 3 as the people whose advice helped her to resolve a family conflict. In the 33rd, Joanna's Hexagram 16 feudal lords made sense as relationships she could usefully develop in another country before moving her whole family there.

But I've also come across many readings where the extra background does help. Here are a few…

In the last podcast, with Hexagram 3 unchanging, Ludimila connected with the idea of feudal lords bringing knowledge and resources to the centre. In this connection, I really appreciate Bradford Hatcher's wisdom on Hexagram 3:

'And when it seems to be only you, against all the chaotic world, the trick is to rethink what 'you' is, to include the sum of all your helpers and all the resources at hand. Collect the wits first and start turning things to advantage.'

If we're asking, 'What helpers? There's no-one to help me!' - which in Hexagram 3, we well might be - this would have us think not so much of appointing the feudal lords as recognising where they already are, or converting aspects of the existing situation into feudal lords. (There's an element of that in the historical picture, too: existing Shang rulers were involved in consolidating the Zhou kingdom.)

One idea that comes through again and again, especially with Hexagram 3 line 1 (and actually with Abby's reading, too) is that of feudal lords as a network of mutual support that makes your world bigger. People caught amidst the 'encircling stones' might find new connections - often new friendships - beyond a claustrophobic family, or oppressive marriage or job, so that they can see themselves and their situation in a new way.

I had 3.1 as advice for the last Christmas I spent with my mother-in-law. She would come to stay with us, and she and I would sit together in the one small room of the house that could be kept (almost) warm enough for her comfort, where I wondered how to make things feel even slightly festive for her. The local church welcomed her with great, practical kindness to a beautiful Christmas service - but apart from that, she was happier staying in. We settled down inside the rock circle of her blindness and frailty, where Youtube videos of songs she remembered (every word of) from 70 years ago played the part of feudal lords, bringing more life and delight into our small room.

Also - especially with Hexagram 16 - it can help to think of feudal lords specifically as a defensive perimeter, expanding security.

For instance… I find I've received Hexagram 16 a couple of times when asking about the effect of fluoride on my teeth. (It forms a compound on the surface of the teeth that's more acid-resistant than natural enamel.)

Then there's a reading Balata shared on the forum: 16 unchanging as the best description of a composer who first hired assistants as he began to go deaf, and ended up passing off their work in its entirety as his own. You can see his 'ghost composers' as feudal lords, increasingly employed to defend a central self-concept.

(But on the other hand, and before I pigeon-hole 16's feudal lords into a purely defensive role, there's also a story on the forum of Hexagram 16 describing why someone couldn't contact an elderly friend. He was fine; it was just that his students had got him a new email address and he needed to reinstate her as a phone contact.)

16's feudal lords take on their organising, ordering role in podcast 52, where Roslyn needed to develop a business plan/ strategy/ structure (her word), not just throw spaghetti at the wall to see what would stick.

And in podcast 49, they were the people who run Family Constellations workshops and who are delegated there as representatives, who need to be interconnected in mutual support, as parts of a greater whole - ensuring the whole thing is grounded, not just a flight of fantasy. Lux called them the 'people that hold the space'.

A few portable ideas

If you're a king establishing feudal lords, what might you be doing?

• creating an interconnected, mutually enriching network
• delegating and decentralising
• making your world bigger, opening up resources, creating greater resilience
• protecting the centre, creating more safety, holding the space

I Ching Community discussion