Some more examples of ‘ever-flowing constancy’…
Renewal: 22.3
‘Beautiful, as if dipped in water.
Ever-flowing constancy, good fortune.’
The imagery of this line resonates well with the wateriness of ‘ever-flowing constancy’, too.
22.3 changes to Hexagram 27, so this is where image and beautiful presentation look for Nourishment – and find it in the water. You might think of how the pebbles you collect at the beach are shiny and beautiful when wet. Or you might think of the bloom of youth on skin, and bright shining hair. Is this beauty a property of the skin, or the pebble? Perhaps, but not a fixed one. To keep it vital and shining, it needs constant Nourishment with moisture.
Ever-flowing constancy here means constantly renewing that connection. Never dozing off, no inertia, no complacency. Wilhelm, who thinks this line evokes a pleasant, mellow, wine-induced haze, says it is a ‘warning not to sink into convivial indolence.’
It’s a time to create and enjoy the lustre, but also to keep re-creating it: always reconnecting with the divination, or inspiration, or guidance, or reason why. If you got distracted by the shininess, or tried to maintain an image that was no longer true, it would dry and shrivel.
Ever-flowing constancy in 2.7 joined earth with the unceasing creativity of heaven. In the Oracle of hexagram 8, it provided a kind of inoculation against hesitancy. I think it has that same protective quality here: inner armour against seduction or distraction.
The gift: 42.2
‘Maybe increased by ten paired tortoise shells.
Nothing is capable of going against this.
Ever-flowing constancy, good fortune.
The king uses this to make offerings to the supreme being: good fortune.’
Increase looking to Inner Truth: a beautiful reading to receive, and one I’ve written about before. (Getting less watery, though, unless you want to count the trigram change to dui, lake.)
Ever-flowing constancy is good fortune, and the king’s offerings to the supreme being are good fortune: I think the parallelism suggests that those offerings are the way to show that kind of constancy here. You can see the meaning of zhen pivoting from ‘divination received’ to ‘constancy required’: from the unanimous ‘long term augury’ of the tortoise shell divinations to the king’s offerings.
To respond adequately to such a powerful positive message, you live out your divination like a king, making the greatest offerings you can. In other words, you dedicate yourself and your work to the highest ideal, and make your very best effort. This should feel something like Hexagram 61, and especially like the fan yao of this line, 61.2: an unstinting outpouring of yourself.
Which is lovely… and… not necessarily easy. My experiences with this line seem to carry an inner logic of,
‘Since you have been granted this exceptional certainty, inner security and confidence, now use it. And no, not just when you feel like it.’
There are a few examples in my journal where this line encouraged me to give more than I felt like giving, when I didn’t really see why I should have to. But having the tortoise oracle speak to you ten times is not your cue to relax.
“Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.” (Luke 12:48)
Commitment: 45.5
‘Gathering together, has a position.
No mistake.
No trust at all.
From the source, ever-flowing constancy.
Regrets vanish.’
This is another instance where ever-flowing constancy feels quite demanding. Especially since what you have been given in this line is not the spiritual gift of unshakeable inner knowing, but ‘a position’.
A ‘position’ is literally simply a place, and more specifically a rank, your place to stand at court. A good English equivalent might be ‘a seat at the table’. In some of its earliest uses, it was a position of power and its concomitant duties: holding the position of ruler and governing. And also, it’s the word used to denote line position in a hexagram.
So if you join these ancient meanings with the fact that this is line 5, you might get the idea that you are meant to be in command here.
A theme of Hexagram 45 is the intensity of investing your all in a single identity or purpose – be that the shared identity of a group, or committing all your efforts and energies to a single cause as an individual. So every changing line contains the reassurance that there is no mistake. This fifth line often comes up when you’re starting to question the decisions that got you into this position in the first place. But with ever-flowing constancy, those regrets can vanish.
Once again, ever-flowing constancy feels quite demanding. The Oracle text of Gathering says that constancy bears fruit after the king has entered the temple and you have seen the great people – in other words, after you have made a full connection with inspiration and meaning, then you can be constant to it (much like 42.2 and the extraordinary tortoise oracle). But this line seems to work the other way around: you need constancy in order to engender trust.
In this, it’s quite similar to the Oracle of Hexagram 8, the first occurrence of ‘From the source, ever-flowing constancy’. It has the same sense that ever-flowing constancy is something you need to provide in order to restore trust. The ruler’s position here is something like that of Yu the Great, having trouble inspiring the latecomer to join.
So what is it that you need to do here? Basically, keep on showing up. Getting the position might have felt like the end, but you’ve really scarcely begun. You need the imagination, anticipation and motivational drive of the relating hexagram 16, Enthusiasm – though without losing touch with the demands of the present moment.
In a group setting, if you show your loyalty and commitment for long enough, people will start to trust you. As Wilhelm puts it, you need ‘steadfastness and intensified, unswerving devotion to duty.’ For an individual, self-trust comes from constantly doing the thing. (We might expect self-belief to come first, which would make life a lot easier.)
This line could describe the writer who sits down and writes every morning, whether they feel inspired or not. This is how they prove to themselves, every day, that they are a writer. The experience is not necessarily going to be fun. Just look at the fan yao, 16 line 5:
‘Constancy in sickness.
Persevering, not dying.’
Foundation: 52.1
‘Stilling your feet,
No mistake.
Ever-flowing constancy bears fruit.’
This line makes me realize that I have over-emphasised the wateriness of ever-flowing constancy in the past. It continues like a river; it doesn’t ‘flow like water’.
In this line, you stop, pause for thought, and then you can listen to guidance. Stilling your feet seems to fulfill much the same role as the original oracle consultation in Hexagram 8: keeping you in touch with truth and out of trouble.
This line changes to Hexagram 22, Beauty, which makes me reflect that sometimes keeping still can be the clearest sign and demonstration of loyalty. ‘We shall not be moved,’ the protesters sing, and hold fast. ‘I don’t have anywhere else to be,’ says the good friend who stays by your side. ‘Loyalty’ strikes me as a very good word to describe ever-flowing constancy.
And keeping your feet still shows that you won’t be pushed off course. You will fully express who you are, where you are – which becomes a whole lot clearer to yourself and other people when you are not in reaction.
So ever‑flowing constancy means being true to yourself, as opposed to responding to demands or stimuli from the outside. In readings, I’ve seen this mean not trying to anticipate what other people would like or what they might do. It’s a solid foundation for all the quiet self-possession of Hexagram 52.
(Just one more example to come, and a coda.)