So that Change Circle’s ‘WikiWing’ doesn’t start life as 64 empty pages, I’m writing my own contribution for each hexagram before we open – an edited and distilled version of my own working notes. That way there’ll be something there to refer to for every hexagram and line right from the start, and also something to refine and build on.
I’d like to make you a present of one of these preliminary contributions – the one for Hexagram 47:
Hopefully this’ll be helpful to you in its own right, as well as giving you a flavour of what’s to come later this summer. Any suggestions for what to include or how to structure entries? And would it be helpful if I released another one of these publicly before Change Circle opens?
This is good!! All 64 together would be a very good I Ching. One I would immediately buy if it were available.
Of course I want another one, for very selfish reasons. But the prospect of getting them all 64 is even better. I will gladly wait a bit more for that.
I don’t know if it means other comments will get interspersed with it? Would be a shame, even if the other comments are very good. Is it possible to give each kind its own place?
No idea, maybe everything together would be great as well. I guess it is just my enthusiasm right now.
LiSe
Thank you!
Yes, the idea is that everything goes in together, everything can be edited and nothing is set in stone. It seems to me to be a good fit with Yi – technology finally catching up with how an oral tradition might work, a kind of alchemy of everyone’s ‘aha!’ moments.
But once I have all my own notes written up, I could also make them available separately. Why not? Of course I don’t feel they’re ready, at all, in any way… but what else is new ? 😉
That’s a magnificent 47. I agree with LiSe; I’m already coveting the whole set. I’d be delighted if you made them available separately.
Well, here I am again, harping on the same note. I would love if you offered your hexagrams separately. They are well worth any wait and would make a fine addition to the Clarity shop!
Thank you Hilary.I appreciate this.:-)
I didn’t know it when I began reading, –but what came to mind was one of the 1st times or maybe *the* 1st time I received this hexagram!
I had no conscious thought of looking for any meanings in particular this time around, since I wanted to just read it through.But while I have prbably read #47 coiuntless times now, that early day was what I was thinking of.I was just turned 18, had been engaged, and was (both of us) drifting apart, though I don’t think I consciously believed that fully.I became reinterested in someone I’d met at the same time that I’d always liked who suddenly became interested in me and showed it for a change.
Like I said I was only 18.
But I know I thought if my returning love wanted me to be with him, I probably would have accepted, but I was waitng to be asked.
Being rather unable to express sincere feleings myself I had zilch abilty to tell the person, nor did I even give him much chance to tell me how I felt(which like I said, I htought I wanted!)
Instead I foolishly teased and giggled about it–but in all sweriousness i tried to reassure him that if my engagement was broken it wasn’t about him.
Unfortunately that statement had the exact opposite effect.
He never opened his mouth agian and a month later met someone else.
I rememebr I had received (I think) lines 1, 4, and 6.
And they looked formidable.
While I couldn’t yet imagine the outcome of it all I knew things would at least seem , if not be all messed up.
While I believe I have a god understanding of the judegemnts and lines,and I do knw the relationship that exists between the lines, I find it quite difficult to incorporate it into my reading and understanding of whatever I receive as an answer.
All of what you interpreted #47 to express was great, but believe me–those lines as applied to that day back in Ocotober of 1971–make a lot more sense to me now!
[ 😛 36 yrs later! 🙂 ]
I started out assuming that these notes were nothing like enough to make a product without loads more work. Between you good people and receiving 29.5 this week, I’m starting to think differently!
Proserpine, that’s exactly the kind of experience and insight I’d like to gather together in the WikiWing. (And I have a lot of sympathy for your 18-year-old self.)
Since early 2005 I have applied myself to learning i ching knowing only my expertise in being ignorant alwayse about something.A good attitude for me meens knowing who/how/what I am.I left myself to my own holistic part of the grand thus relying on my compulsion to make mistakes as often as is reasonable (sometimes the word ‘reason’ could never apply to my hell-bent unreasonable behaviour).It so happens that often an individual must dance with the devil to boogie with the saints.make the same mistake twice?hee-hee-hee……….more like an average of 20.My core belief is that our lives contain with in them all the guidance and wisdom teachings the ‘universe’ has pre loaded us with.I previously had looked and expected answers to come from some idealized teacher.I Know you have seen these sadu’s bringing their psychological issues re:wanting a perfect parent;to the teacher /practice etc relationship.Christopher titmuss told us once on retreat inhis strong british way “Oh,and if you must have a guru please choose a dead one”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.Needless to say and even needles to say it took some heavy beating from my last teacher in the esoteric to eternally have learned where to find the purist essence of the enlightened god head.Yris is my Maha-teacher and will alwayse be my last teacher for all of life must be my teacher ipso facto in the realization process.FINALLY The Point……….in utilizing the i ching by wrote mainly with three editions only,it occured to me that my present understanding and lack there-of could be usefull to a great project you have endeavored.So…….the various qualities each position represents……………how do these qualities relate vis-a-vis the several wayse the lines have been grooped together to represent totality.ie concerns of earth,man ,heaven or just concerns of earth and heaven as in the bottom three and the top.in other words does a changer indicate one ought also consider all the appointed qualities of that line as being in play regarding the question?that would mean the constituant lines status in the relationship between them becomes more emphatic? Is using information about the lines qualities very important(i don’t mean the wing info if indicated by change)in making correct diagnosis?i actualy have about three more questions i am unable to use my brain disscurssively right at the moment and do not wish to be a bore or an ingrate if i can stop it. love and light sister sincerely are you
Expertise in being ignorant – probably the most valuable sort. Certainly the most versatile 😉
I do always look at where a changing line is, but more in terms of its personality, or stage in the story, or the part of oneself that tends to speak up here. Intuition and inklings, heart-felt connections, the desire to move onward and outward, flexing your wings and finding your useful scope, choice of stance and direction, the view from beyond the situation… that kind of thing. It’s a good starting point, and a help in orienting myself among multiple changing lines.
I haven’t found so much mileage in the heaven-earth-man qualities. However, if you make your way to LiSe’s page about hexagram structures, you can scroll down a little for a characterisation of each line in terms of its blend of trigram and hexagram heaven/earth/man focus.
It’s beautiful — succinct — touches on all the essentials, I think … Lovely blend of “the now and the then” –> your unique scholarship and perspective with the wisdom of scholars past. I especially appreciate your perspectives on the hexagram sequence …
…I presently have nearly 30 versions / commentaries, etc., of the I Ching (my touchstone being Jack Balkin’s), and every one of them adds another facet to the gem, so to speak… I love this about the oracle — that its evolution through time speaks so universally, through so many individual minds and ways of apprehending and transmitting the wisdom…
Hilary, you cracked me up by writing “So what else is new?” re: your notes not being “ready at all, in any way” –> My own I Ching “version” has been gestating from an idea that first came in 1996 … and my husband is nearly out of his mind with the overstuffed file boxes, piles of paper, crinkly old notebooks, etc., that I have accumulated over the years –> ideas, quotations, questions, ruminations, printoffs, blatherings, etc., etc., etc. … ;-D (Hmmm…does anything in Hexagram 28 speak to the packrats among us?!)
Chortle… could be… following from the insatiable appetite of hexagram 27, presumably.
Thank you Hilary.I only wish I’d seen this sooner than right now, this morning.I have a severe finacial crisis and ahve been focussing ,mostly on that lately..I was touched that you understood or sympathized wit my 18 yr old self back then.:-)
I am gld I talked about it, if it was good to know too.
Glad to be here right now and grateful for your contributions..
Jaliya, I can relate to having pages and pages, and scraps and many an I Ching book taking up space.:-)
It is like #28, a bit yes.
My husband too often groans at my papers, and notes all over, and my (in his opinion) over accumulation of books.
I found to my surpise one day a while back while visiting friends there was a lovely girl, a guest from China who’s a Columbian national, and now lives here.
She was talking about the I Ching, and we got to talking, and I realized only later, that my husband was real proud of my knowledge.
Yours probably is too.:-)
It’s just easier to compilin or sigh about the excess.;-)
Oh Hilary, just for information.I do’nt know if this is as pertinent.But what actually did happen back then was my fiance and I split up, and I did not see the other fellow for a long time afterward.
I was very very unhappy –miserable even for a while but soon made a decision to try to improve what I was and had on my own.I stopped drinking, eating junk, and actually spent about 3 months reading you guessed it–my I Ching.I was so empty the wind seemd to be about to blow me away–but it was also one of the most meaningful times i my life.
I didn’t keep it going for long, I stayed slimmer, but began drinking again a couple months later–but–it set the stage for my completely stopping(for good) some 4-5 yrs later.
I still think of these days, alone, but so intimate with myself, and experiencing spirituality, maybe for the first time.
I mention this to suggest that maybe #47, was also about that 3 month time period alone, contemplating and reading.
I do’nt think I understood that much back then, but it already was speaking to me, and gave me hope, and a sustenance I couldn’t explain to other people.
Yes, that sounds very, very 47-ish. Making “a decision to try to improve what I was and had on my own,” being “alone, but so intimate with myself” – that’s all there. If you follow the flow of 47 far enough downward and inward, you find your way into 48.
Um…….Ur…..Eh……Aaaa…..Uh, a bit agoo and off subject your response was encouraging.By accident or design depending on taste,#47 is my personal calling card of late times.My wifes in-laws are less than un-enthusiastic about there 51 year olds choices and the relultant life in their house lo these last 7 years.I am a captive as i cannot leave the third floor and utilize the kitchen neither leave the house for a walk.They are very elderly but still with faculties,they do not even know my wfe and i are married.In any case ,doing things whenever i please applies to me only in the universe of abstract thought(ok ok ,i a m a male of the speciesand renegade to boot.I am not allowed through the front door and i have very limited use of the showers.Sharing an atic apt with her in a land mark victorian house with flours all about stops the compaints.I knew this restriction(which gets mind numingly complicated,was a training opportunity as the long hours of solitude became a very wealthy and rich learning experience of observations of myself stripped bare as it were.As example and in concurence with what you mentioned regarding the positive nature of employ made duringing restriction.From 2001 to 2005 ,my sense of self righteousnous and sensitiity in general(i did not mean to write that…..Ur…..Uh.Sorry) was rudely messing up who i thought i was.I felt undercompinsated blah negative blah blah …..Very mad that “i” ralph sine’quo non had to hide in the bush in cold winter before sneeking in his supposed abode.I went on and on how self abasing it was,………….How “going in and outof this house is the rason i have self esteem issues”.Since 2005 these thoughts do not occur;and,i laugh at myself a ‘lil’.# 47 Teaches me that there is a vast difference between solitude and feeling lonely.In addition restriction is often a key to cure for maladies ala tete;or ………….Pour moi,mal ala gorge(gorge.Get it!!!!!!)Thanks hillery, your cool.You have the single best site at any rate for i ching.Best of all it reflects from its progenitor a compassion and sympathetic joy which are part of the healing art we all must remember even when doing simple readings for ourselves or riding the aweful greyhound bus.I am excited that i will soon be able to have a reading(one hopes) regarding hot potato questions which i avoid but would like to address.Happy 888,23….23…23,2….2….2!!!!!!!!!! Ralph