One of the strangest things about conversations with Yi is how immediately relatable most of its imagery is. Life is a journey; we walk our paths (Hexagram 24). We can be stressed and over-burdened to breaking point (Hexagram 28) – it’s actually next-to impossible for us to talk or think about stress without using the same metaphor. We can stretch our imaginations a little to remember that, to the Yi’s authors, horses are not only beautiful and fast, but the fastest things in the world and a vital military advantage. We may not know that tigers are guardians, or associated with the west, but we know about their teeth. So we can consult with this book written several millennia ago, in an unimaginably different culture, and more often than not, understand what it’s saying.
Only… then there are the offerings.
Offerings in the Yijing
Even if you are reading Wilhelm/Baynes, there are plenty of them. ‘One may use two small bowls for the sacrifice’ in Hexagram 41; ‘The neighbour in the east who slaughters an ox does not attain as much real happiness as the neighbour in the west with his small offering,’ in 63.5, for instance.
And if you turn to one of the authors who sets out to reconstruct the original, Bronze Age meaning of the text – or someone like Karcher, who made these scholars’ work accessible for modern divination – the offerings are everywhere. In Rutt’s version, Hexagram 23 is flaying a ewe, Hexagram 31 is chopping up a human sacrifice, Hexagram 52 is ‘cleaving’ some unspecified victim joint by joint, there is blood gushing all over Hexagram 59, and every instance of ‘truth and confidence’ has turned into war captives, on their way to the sacrificial altar. The whole book starts to sound like a helpful manual for blood sacrifice.
Rutt intended his book as a scholarly translation, of course, not for use in divination. But Karcher, who certainly did write for modern diviners, translates heng (‘success’ in Wilhelm/Baynes) as, ‘Make an offering and you will succeed.’ What offering?
The idea of ‘offerings’ or ‘sacrifice’ seem to be what makes the oracle feel most remote from us, ancient and alien. We don’t have feudal lords, but we do have networks of communication and helpers – we can understand their function and what fulfils that role for us. Most of us don’t own cattle, but we all understand ownership, wealth and its attractions. Most of us don’t make offerings… and there is no apparent modern equivalent to take their place.
So people look at ‘make an offering and you will succeed’ and wonder whether they literally need to start making offerings. Or read Stephen Field’s translation of Hexagram 29 –
‘There is a capture. Consider offering the heart in sacrifice. A trip will be rewarded.’
– and lament that they have already sacrificed their heart to this, and they’ve had enough!
Part of our problem here is the colloquial English meaning of ‘sacrifice’. Consider…
‘She sacrificed her family life for her career.’
or
‘She sacrificed her career to support him.’
In either scenario, we understand that she suffered a loss, overall. A sacrifice – even if made for good reason – is something painful that makes you poorer.
This is not what offerings mean in the Yijing.
Offerings in ancient China
Offerings were of central importance to ancient China’s rulers. Performing offerings and divinations, sustaining a living relationship with the spirits of his ancestors who would care for the people, might be the king’s most important job. The calendar is defined by rituals.
The great feasts where the king would ‘host’ his ancestors were also festivals: the offering is cooked in the great ding vessel, the spirits are nourished by the fragrant steam, and people gather to enjoy the spirits’ leftovers. This is what I imagine with Hexagram 45: the offering as a shared social experience, reinforcing the bonds (to one another, to place, to ancestors) that unite people.
There may not be a perfect modern analogue for this, but we can see a connection with our own gatherings, big or small – from sporting fixtures to Christmas dinner – where we participate in shared traditions and remember the dead.
This points to a vital role of offerings: they create connection and relationship – not least among people. There are even a couple of instances in the Yijing where an ‘offering’ can be interpreted as being made to another human being – 47.2.5, maybe 14.3. We can certainly use the concept of offerings that way in our own readings. Open-source software is a modern offering; so are those apples left out by the roadside just up the road from me, with a sign asking, ‘Please take some.’ We’re all in this together, say the offerings; let’s help one another.
Offerings made to the spirits of nature or ancestors say very much the same thing. If you make a sacrifice to the mountain spirits, you are expressing your confidence that they will respond. I don’t think you would imagine that you were making yourself poorer.
My modern prejudices are telling me that if you expect something in return for your offering, this somehow cheapens it. But I think my modern prejudices are missing the point. An offering isn’t purely transactional, quid pro quo; it’s shared. You are sharing your meal with the winds and mountains – or the winds and mountains are sharing their meal with you. If anything, the offering is a celebration of how you are part of a single ecosystem of mutual support.
Only someone wholly immersed in the circulating flow of energy, giving and receiving, could make this kind of offering. And being part of this cycle of goodwill, that circulates through offerings, rain and harvest, is not optional. If the crops fail, you can’t step outside the cycle and order a supermarket delivery instead.
Ancient offerings, modern readings
So… a few ‘offerings’ in readings will be obvious in the context (cooking a meal, giving a concert…). For the many that aren’t obvious, it might help to think of an offering as a way of nourishing, investing in and (re-)creating a relationship.
We can think of it in terms of human relationship to start with. Love is a verb. How much can you give? How fully and wholeheartedly will you participate?
Or to put it another way – what are you prepared to spend? Spending our resources for someone or something – time, energy, attention, not just money – is an offering. You might make offerings for your creative work, or for your children – not as an abstract decision, but in your daily actions.
“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run …”
Henry David Thoreau
I also think it’s important that an offering is a ritual. As a ritual, it may or may not involve incense and candles, but it certainly involves attention. So when a reading invites me to make an offering, I need to become conscious and deliberate about what I’m giving and how that works: what does it create, what is it part of? (How does it ‘create success’?) Whatever I’m doing can become more intentional. There’s more than one way of cooking supper.
The Book of Rites says,
“Sacrifice is not a thing coming to a man from without; it issues from within him, and has its birth in his heart. When the heart is deeply moved, expression is given to it by ceremonies; and hence, only men of ability and virtues can give complete expression to the idea of sacrifices.”
Liji, the Book of Rites, Legge translation.
It’s also interesting to reflect on how divination and offerings were originally part of the same ceremony. People would often divine to ask what would be a fitting offering. With an expanded idea of an offering as conscious spending, deliberately nourishing relationship… many of our readings now might be doing the same. We’re still asking what to do, what to bring, how to participate… what to offer.