Heaven, as inner trigram, always seems to be asking, can this be realised? How, or how completely, or how directly? There’s an inner energy seeking expression or realisation through the outer trigram – perhaps it’s the potential in the situation asked about, or the true inner nature of the questioner, or the idea they brought to the oracle in their question. (Those would be possibilities to look out for in readings.)
Another way to imagine the two trigrams: qian is completely pure energy, featureless in itself, but infusing the outer trigram with power. So your experience of the hexagram as a whole might be of a kind of hyper-charged version of the outer trigram.
Hexagram 11, Flow
‘Flow.
Small goes, great comes.
Good fortune, creating success.’
Heaven inside, earth outside: inner power enters a wide open field of possibility. One meaning of this hexagram’s name is simply great. This is a time to think bigger! Everything can be done; all ideas can be made real. A lovely hexagram to receive when you are wondering whether your big idea is practical – if also a little daunting.
The hyper-charged outer trigram kun embodies an absolute willingness to serve, and that comes through in the Image:
‘Heaven and Earth communicate. Flow.
The prince enriches and completes the dao of heaven and earth,
Upholds and assists the order of heaven and earth,
To support and protect the people.’
Where many Image texts just say ‘[inner trigram] below, [outer trigram] above,’ this uses the verb 交 jiao, to mix, mingle, join (including sexually). And the whole Image is crammed full of verbs, showing how the tireless drive of qian – its relentless truth – has free rein here.
Having said that, the word I’ve translated as ‘enriches’ could be a noun: the prince uses wealth to complete the dao of heaven and earth. It will take all his wealth (broad fields, good soil) to realise such potential.
The ‘order’ ‘or ‘harmony’ of heaven and earth is its yi, 宜, a word translated as ‘right’ or ‘fitting’ in the older Zhouyi text (in 19.5 and the oracles of hexagrams 55 and 62), but which was originally an ‘offering made to the earth spirits before starting a major undertaking or a journey.’ That’s not its primary meaning here, but perhaps still an undercurrent: a reminder that joining heaven and earth, supporting this realisation of what’s meant to happen, is an act of worship.
Hexagram 14, Great Possession
Next comes inner qian with outer li. Heaven sustains and finds its expression in fire and light – bright, visible, manifest, seen and understood.
‘Great Possession.
From the source, creating success.’
and
‘Fire dwells above heaven. Great possession.
The noble one ends hatred and spreads the good,
She yields to heaven and rests in her mandate.’
Why so different from Hexagram 11? Perhaps because this is hyper-charged clarity: seeing the contrast between hatred and goodness, what to end and what to spread. And this is about the noble one knowing where they fit and doing their own individual work, not the prince in service to the whole world.
It’s intriguing that yielding and resting happen with fire, not with earth – but then this is resting in mandate, something you must perceive and understand. Heaven and fire – heaven understood and made present, which is more or less the definition of mandate.
(I’ve already written a lot about this hexagram’s trigram picture in a post about Fire outside.)
Hexagram 26, Great Tending
We’ve had Great Possession, and Hexagram 11 whose name also means ‘great’ (and contains the character da, ‘great’, as a component), and there’s Great Vigour to come in the next post of this series. Of the four hexagrams with ‘Great’ in their name, three have qian as the inner trigram – and the fourth, Great Exceeding, has Creative Force as its nuclear hexagram.
But – as it so often isn’t, with Yi – it’s not that neat and tidy. Inner qian doesn’t mean ‘great’; it also makes for Small Tending, in Hexagram 9. It depends on which outer trigram it’s powering.
And Hexagram 9 does not just mean restraint applied in lesser ways – as if it were trying to be Hexagram 26 but not quite managing – but realising potential by tending it in small ways and small increments.
(For comparison – Hexagram 57, where the trigram xun is doubled, begins, ‘Subtly penetrating, creating small success.’ That also means quietly and incrementally, not necessarily a lesser achievement in the end.)
So what will it mean, in Hexagram 26, to tend qian in great ways, when heaven is inside and mountain outside?
‘Great tending,
Constancy bears fruit.
Not eating at home, good fortune.
Fruitful to cross the great river.’
Not, it turns out, using the mountain’s quality of stillness. Going out from home and crossing the river – this is a thoroughly adventurous, mobile hexagram. The idea isn’t to restrain inner heaven and keep it in check, but to expand the container: more scope, thinking bigger, taking more space. We’re going to need a bigger box.
I wrote about this one before, too, when I was looking at mountain above:
How could we imagine heaven under the mountain? Instead of thinking of heaven’s power stored up, we could try imagining the mountain’s boundary as much further away. All of heaven is on the inside; your world has grown; your possibilities are expanding. ‘The sky’s the limit’?
The noble one of 26’s Image is working on his de, his character, virtue and power:
‘Heaven dwells in the centre of the mountain. Great Taming.
A noble one uses the many annals of ancient words and past deeds,
And tends his character.’
The wisdom and truth of heaven is stored up in the ancient words and past deeds, and it is tended in the noble one’s character. Remember ‘tending’, xu, means nurturing and nourishing. Those ancient writings are de-food, and help to make the potential of qian present: big, rock-solid, unmissable, present and enduring.
9’s noble one was working on de, too:
‘Wind moves above heaven. Small tending.
A noble one cultivates the natural pattern of character.’
‘Cultivating’ is not the same as ‘tending’: it means perfecting, making exemplary, and applies especially to traditional feminine virtues of gentle goodness. And the ‘natural pattern’, wen, means written language, culture, what is patterned as opposed to plain, and what belongs to civil society – the culture of peacetime, as opposed to war. (Hexagram 26 does have martial elements in its moving lines – the horses of line 3 are being trained for war – but 9 has husband and wife, a helpful neighbour, and a firm warning against ‘setting out to bring order’.)
So – again – it’s a difference in quality, not just quantity, of tending. The noble one of Hexagram 9 makes her de more beautiful, gentler and more civilised. In Hexagram 26, well-nourished on ancient wisdom, de will grow big, strong and deep.