There’s more than one story of the Yi’s origins… Mythical origins The story begins in the 29th century BCE with Fuxi, China’s first emperor, who may have had the body of a serpent. It was through his insight that the trigrams were discovered, and people could begin to understand their… Read more »Some Yijing origins
An annual reading, this time: the first thing Maria does on her birthday is to sit down and ask to be shown a reading for the coming year. Here’s hers for 2023-24: Hexagram 36, Brightness Hiding, with no changing lines. Since this was an unchanging reading, we had the time… Read more »Hiding Light
Shock in the background I’ve been mulling over how Hexagram 51, Shock, feels as relating hexagram. After all, a relating hexagram is often the background to an answer – scene-setting, a personal theme, the chapter heading for this part of your life. How does something as abrupt as ‘Shock’ work… Read more »51, Shock, as relating hexagram
I’ve written before about Yi’s kindness, but it’s something I keep rediscovering. There’s the gentleness of its responses to people in crisis – all degrees of crisis, without judgement. One of my own favourite readings comes from a moment when I suddenly felt I’d experienced the final straw, had nothing left… Read more »More of Yi’s kindness
In this episode, Katarina and I discuss her reading about moving to a new part of the country – Hexagram 7, the Army, changing at line 2 to 2, Earth: changing to As we talk about her plans, you can hear the qualities of the hexagrams – that meeting of… Read more »The army’s receptivity
We love the layered profundity of the Yijing’s imagery – the way it can speak direct to the soul, giving us entirely new ways of seeing our situation. We know that the Vessel of Hexagram 50 might be a university, or a mindset, or a state of health, or any… Read more »Astonishingly literal
Confusion… Hexagram 8’s called bi, Seeking Union or Belonging (or Union, Alliance, Grouping, Joining, Holding Together, Closeness…)And Hexagram 13 is tong ren, People in Harmony (or Fellowship, Cooperation, Community, Union of Men…) According to the dictionary, we have one hexagram name that means (amongst other things) ‘to share with, join, coincide with,… Read more »Friends and allies
