...life can be translucent
Menu

Hexagram 53 musings

Hexagram 53 musings

‘Gradual advance. The woman marries.
Good fortune.
Constancy bears fruit.’

Hexagrams 53 and 54, Gradual Advance and the Marrying Maiden, are what Stephen Karcher calls ‘The Great Marriages’. So what does ‘marriage’ mean?

To a large extent, that depends on your perspective: in old China, marriage for the man means opening his home to a newcomer and all the change she will bring, while marriage for the woman (as in this hexagram pair) means coming home into a new place. Those are two quite different experiences that work quite differently as images in readings. But in the most general terms, marriage means joining, becoming part of something larger than you are, to some extent merging your identity into it, so that your growth and its growth coincide. And ongoing growth and movement is a core theme for Hexagram 53: the geese are still in flight in the sixth line, and the commentary on the Oracle says, ‘Keeping still and penetrating: this makes the movement inexhaustible.’

Of course, this is a fascinating hexagram to receive about a relationship – and of course, it also describes many other things: how a career is transformed through a new job; how a business evolves through growing relationships; how someone ‘comes home’ into health, as a whole, integrated individual. All kinds of journey-growth-transformation in joining-union-homecoming – all kinds of marriage.

Hexagrams 53 and 54 are both about a woman’s marriage: coming into a new and bigger place, which is also coming home. They’re an inverse pair, two perspectives on the same experience. (To see what I mean, draw hexagram 53, and turn the paper through 180 degrees so you’re looking at it from the other end :). ) They’re also a complementary pair, polar opposite experiences that fit together to create something complete. You can be compelled to change by being transplanted, like the marrying maiden, into something you’re not ready for and must grow into. Or you can evolve as part of a situation that evolves with you – though naturally this has to happen at the pace of the slowest partner or element in the union:

‘Gradual Progress: the marrying woman waits for the man to act.’

says the Zagua. (This sometimes means waiting for another person, sometimes waiting for some part of yourself to catch up.) Without this waiting, the tremendous gradualness of Hexagram 53, it couldn’t be a marriage at all. ‘Constancy bears fruit’ because the journey is so gradual that it’s easy (not least in our instant-gratification culture) to forget where we’re going, or imagine that we’re making no progress at all.

On the face of it, it seems odd that the marriages would come where they do in the Sequence. We undergo Radical Change and revolution; the old is overthrown, the new is established as the Vessel is cast. We experience this as Shock and respond with Stilling. Next there will be the portents at Feng and the Mandate of Heaven – but first, interspersed abruptly into all this epic historical drama, there are marriages. At 53.3, we even get an unexpected insight into these grand military campaigns from a more human perspective:

‘The wild geese gradually progress to the high plateau.
The husband marches out and does not return,
The wife is pregnant, but does not raise the child.
Pitfall.
Fruitful to resist outlaws.’

The husband has marched out to war (it’s the same character I usually translate as ‘setting out to bring order’), and the wife is left alone. We’re in the territory of many soldiers’ laments in the Shijing, as they trudge in the dust behind the carts, wondering who will feed their families. The best anyone can do is to resist outlaws – fight off bandits, and hence fight to stay within the fabric of marriage and society, even as it’s stressed to its limits.

So on the one hand Hexagram 53 is an abrupt switch into domesticity… and on the other hand, maybe not so abrupt or strange, if you think of how the eldest son works through Shock to restore a sense of continuity, and how family is its ultimate guarantee.

This hexagram’s traditionally associated with the ceremonial preparations that lead up to marriage – only, if you look at the moving lines, it’s clearly also about the course of the marriage itself. Successful child-rearing is supremely important: it maintains the chain of connections from the living world through the ancestral spirits to heaven.

It seems as though the journey through the lines is travelling in the same direction, from the shore to the high plateau and beyond. The high plateau is no place for geese to live, of course, and so in the third line it’s associated with the disastrous failure to raise the child. But in the sixth line, I imagine we have a couple who have travelled beyond childbearing age. ‘Their feathers can be used to perform the sacred dances. Good fortune.’ Richard Rutt says this is a ‘ritual dance before the ancestral shrine.’ And Bradford Hatcher says, ‘See the Buddhist Heart Sutra’s line: gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha. Gone, gone, gone beyond, completely gone beyond: waking up: hooray!’

Gradual Advance is a steady flow, through to its objective and beyond. You can see from the name of the hexagram, the old Chinese character, that it isn’t a headlong rush:

LiSe explains the components: the flowing water, the wheel, and the channel cut for the water to flow through. Running water is a potent force – flowing free, it can sweep away all you have; channelled, it brings life and power. Or as Ernest Thompson Seton (one of my favourite authors growing up) puts it:

“There is magic in running water. Who does not know it and feel it? The railroad builder fearlessly throws his bank across the wide bog or lake, or the sea itself, but the tiniest rill of running water he treats with great respect, studies its wish and its way and gives it all it seems to ask.”

Marriage is a ‘channel’ itself:

“The love between man and woman that marriage engendered and the emotions and jealousies it provoked was considered a potent and dangerous emotion that doubled the creative force of the cosmos, the connection between Heaven and Earth. It was channelled and articulated in the marriage rites and the River-Mountain festivals and was seen as an image of the fundamental process of Change.”

This is from Karcher’s Total I Ching, and I think it’s an important aspect of 53: we’re channelling a potent, potentially destructive moving force into creative and life-sustaining ways. Other hexagrams also talk about handling and responding to great energies (10 and 11 come to mind), but 53 lays especial emphasis on how gradual this is, so that it becomes a journey, and ‘constancy bears fruit.’

The Image also talks about a gradual change:

‘On the mountain is a tree. Gradual advance.
A noble one abides in virtuous character and improves the ordinary.’

The noble one abides like the mountain and grows in influence like the tree.

“The tree on the mountain grows very slowly compared to the one in the valley; it needs to put down strong roots. As it grows, it creates a micro-habitat around it, gradually, subtly changing the nature of its environment. The noble one’s good character has the same effect, causing a gradual evolution in the habits of ordinary life. Inwardly as still and firm as the mountain, she settles into her high standards as if into a home, and reaches out in kindness like a growing tree.”

(That’s from my own book – I can’t think of much to add just yet!)

It’s interesting to compare this to the hexagram of betrothal: 31, Influence. (31, for the record, is not paired with its complementary hexagram, but it is formed of complementary trigrams, which is a whole other subject.) It also talks of marriage, but from the male perspective: ‘taking a woman, good fortune.’ And it also has an inner mountain, which allows space for the lake above it – or you could say that the lake opens up the mountain, so the noble one ‘accepts people with emptiness.’ Hexagram 53 is the woman’s marriage, integrating with the new place, and its outer trigram is xun: it puts down roots into the mountain, or transforms the mountain (inherited from Hexagram 52) into organic matter, turning independence into growth through connection.

Enough musings for now. Thoughts?

Hexagram 53 - pair of geese in flight

6 responses to Hexagram 53 musings

  1. Hexagram 53 is another one where the fifth line is yang and the second yin. And in 54 the second yang and the fifth yin. When one transfers from a state of singleness to marriage, everything in life changes. The two partners become more balanced in themselves and create a comprehensive wholeness.

    We see this to a certain extent in hexagram 8 where the second is yin and the fifth yang. Hexagram eight shows that relationships must be based entirely on mutual choice between the two partners, but when they do make that choice and unite, the create a collective force that would be hard to contend with, depicted in hexagram 7. The proper emphasis within society is on relationships. Without them a society falters. With them it has a collective force that is hard to conquer. The same can be said in hexagram 54 to a certain extent where the newly married male marches off to war. He has a stronger motive to campaign for his country when he has a wife and children at home.

    The integration of yin and yang creates power.

    Gene

  2. Gui Mei shows the quickest way to dance to a new rhythm.
    Jian is a step by step guide to attain one’s best potential.

  3. I think the best hexagram describing what marriage is in the I Ching is hex 32, the long lasting. The lower trigram is SUN, the gentle, and the upper trigram is CHEN, the active. They are gentle with each other, and when they act, they act together. At times when other relationships reach their natural conclusion, something that is a marriage begins again, because it has the capacity to survive a transformation and become something new.

    That sounds like an impossible dream these days, I know, when many relationships of all kinds seem to be on the verge of being torn apart or broken asunder. We are all being influenced by extraordinary astrological influences. Yet they say our Will is stronger than any astrological influences. We lost the concept of the ‘Will’ somewhere in the 1940s in the West, I believe. What was it replaced by? Because suddenly we need it again …

  4. At times when other relationships reach their natural conclusion, something that is a marriage begins again, because it has the capacity to survive a transformation and become something new.

    Exactly – 32 describes a circular journey, to and fro across the water.

  5. I asked about sticking to my professional career, sticking to my guns, because I realised the extent to which I’ve been neglecting important drivers within me. I received 53 changing to 23, “gradual advance” to “stripping away”. Gradual advance seems to stay: stay with it, growth comes gradually. 23 seems to say something needs to be cut out. I wonder how you see the pair 53>23?

  6. When I drew Hexagram 53, I knew it’s meaning for me did not have to do with traditional marriage between two human beings. It was speaking about my Spiritual Journey to be in constant communion with Divinity……A Spiritual marriage. Gradual advancement, allowing the River of Supreme Consciousness to soak into all those rock hard walls I have erected in this life….built of thoughtforms beliefs and emotions. I work to join the peaceful yet creative flow that runs through all Life but as a human sometimes impatience blocks my progress….I must remember Gradual Advance.
    I love how I Ching expands understanding across various age groups and experiences. I am 73 yrs old and some of the more worldly traditional aspects of marriage and family are now completed. However, the wisdom of the I Ching and Hexagram 53 Gradual Advance, prevail!

Leave a Reply to Johan Siebers Cancel reply

Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom

Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).