I’ve been looking lately at something so simple I almost missed it: how the ideas in the Yijing’s texts develop, from one phrase to the next. It’s easy to look at something like,
‘Dispersing, creating success.
With the king’s presence, there is a temple.
Fruitful to cross the great river,
Constancy bears fruit.’
and see only a bunch of familiar formulas: the king in his temple (just like in Hexagram 45), crossing the river, constancy being fruitful.
But this is not just a few formulas thrown in and swirled around at random. The ideas here are unfolding, one step at a time, with a coherent internal logic. The king needs to be in the temple before it becomes fruitful to cross the river. And when we receive this oracle, accepting its guidance means slowing down and taking in one thought at a time, so we’re in the right place to absorb the next one, and the next. Picking out just the bits we like or that ‘make sense’ from the outset is not going to work half so well.
An analogy… when I was quite small, my friend Richard and I were busy in the kitchen making a cake, all on our own. I think one of us was in charge of the ingredients and the other in charge of reading the recipe, or something, so we weren’t quite clear who should be doing what… but anyway, we got the cake into the oven before we noticed the eggs sitting untouched on the countertop.
Oops.
I’m sure his mum managed to make something from our efforts, because she was a culinary genius, but not even she could have turned it into an actual cake.
Same idea here. If I want my cooking to result in a cake, I should include all the ingredients, and add them in the right order. If I want my reading to result in deep change, I also need to include all its words, add them to the inner mix in the order the ancient recipe describes, and not forget any ingredients.
I’ve written before about Hexagram 4, and the beautifully elegant way the structure of its oracle text actually enacts what it describes. Here are some more examples…
Hexagram 34, line 3
A curious Change Circle member had a look at this –
‘Small people use vigour,
Noble one uses a net.
Constancy: danger.
The ram butts a hedge,
Entangles his horns.’
and asked, why is ‘constancy: danger’ in the middle of the line? Why not at the end? Or after ‘Small people use vigour’? It’s dangerous for small people to keep using vigour, it’s dangerous for rams to keep charging hedges, but aren’t we meant to be realising that the noble one’s net idea is better?
(Aside: not every translation has a net here. The word I’ve translated net is also used as a negative, and so some just say ‘the noble one does not’. I do think it’s a net, though, because…
- there are other words used regularly as negatives in the Yi (including in 3.3 specifically to mean ‘the noble one doesn’t do this’). This one, 罔 wang, only appears in one other line, 35.1…
- …and it has meant ‘net, catch, snare, entangle’ since ancient times
- 34.3 has a clear parallel construction: 小人用壯。君子用罔. ‘Small person uses vigour. Noble one uses 罔.’ That sounds as though 罔 is a thing or quality the noble one makes use of.)
That was a good question I’d never really asked before, so I did some looking around. Stephen Field’s translation says the noble one uses ‘wiles’, and his commentary was helpful:
‘The counsel indicates that the common man uses strength to get ahead, while the nobleman uses his wits. That the omen is one of danger may stem from the context of the “net” which is the root meaning of “wits, wiles.” Those who get ahead by trying to outwit the competition sometimes end up outsmarting themselves.’
I’m in the habit of looking at lines that contrast the choices of small person and noble one as inviting the querent to choose which of these alternative paths to follow, but this line is starting to feel different. Here’s how it looks to me now:
If a small person (someone unimaginative, lacking in resources) uses vigour, a noble one with their net/ wiles can no doubt outwit them. But constancy in this pattern is dangerous for everyone involved. Why? The line explains:
‘The ram butts a hedge,
Entangles his horns.’
The ram is like the small person – and the hedge is functioning like a net. Now your hedge is damaged, and you need somehow to deal with the furious ram tangled up in it, which is not a good problem to have.
I’d never have thought of any of this if someone hadn’t paused to ask, ‘Why are the phrases in that order?’ and not assumed that the answer was, ‘Because this text was cobbled together at random by primitive people who didn’t know how to write a book.’ As I’ve said before, I think Yi is more like a symphony than a skip.
Some more examples:
Hexagram 40
‘Release. The south and west are fruitful.
With no place to go,
To turn round and come back is good fortune.
With a direction to go,
Daybreak, good fortune.’
This is one of my favourites for its blunt practicality.
‘Yi,’ I ask, ‘what about doing this?’
‘Well,’ says the oracle (possibly rolling its eyes), ‘suppose you think about it for five minutes? This path you’re planning on going down, does it lead to a place you’d want to reach? If not, turn back. If it does, the sooner you start, the better.’
And then I can work myself free from all the ‘ought to’s and ‘what will people think’s and sunk costs fallacies I’ve been using to tie myself in knots, and solve the problem.
(There’s a bit more to it than that – especially with the distinction between ‘place’ and ‘direction’ – but I’ve written about that elsewhere.)
Only… why would it bear fruit to head south and west? And why might I need to do that first?
In trigram terms, the south and west are fire and lake: light, warmth and joyful exchange. Between them, in the southwest, is earth. Also, the Zhou people looked south and west to find allies. Combine all these, and the south and west suggests a land of fertile, sunlit fields that friends can work together. The preceding and paired hexagram, Limping, has already got us thinking about the difference between this and north/east, land of chasms, mountains and thunder, which is enemy territory.
And actually, the Sequence of hexagrams – the xugua Wing – gives us the clearest indication of why we should start thinking about Release in the south and west. Go a couple of steps back, with Hexagram 38, Opposing, and how it leads to 39:
‘Turning away naturally means hardship, and so Limping follows.’
Turning away from the home (of 37), making yourself an outsider and going it alone, makes life harder. There are moments when this is called for, but by the time you reach hexagrams 39 and 40, you need to change direction. Stop struggling up the mountain in the rain and head for those sunny pastures. Talk to your friends! Fall back, regroup, stop trying to do it all on your own. Step out of your ‘solitary hero’ story and connect with some real people in the real world.
Once you’ve done that, turning back or exploring further can be good fortune. I think that’s partly because you have thought to ask whether help will be available, but also because getting back into relationship with people, out in those fields, grounds you in reality again. In that context, you can understand whether there’s a place to go.
Hexagram 59
One more example – the one I started the post with:
‘Dispersing, creating success.
With the king’s presence, there is a temple.
Fruitful to cross the great river,
Constancy bears fruit.’
In a time of Dispersing, everything solid is dissolving away. It might feel like having your footing swept out from under you, or just not knowing where you are. What to know about a time like this?
To start with: dispersing, heng. ‘Dispersing creates success’, or ‘dispersing, a successful offering’ – a sacrifice offered and received, so you are actively, creatively engaged with the cosmos. (Lots of hexagrams start this way. I’d suggest reading each one as, ‘This experience, this quality of time or way of being, can be a way of creative engagement – and here’s how…’)
For Dispersing to create success, first locate the king in the temple; then it will be fruitful to cross the great river, and hold with constancy to what you know and choose.
Why?
Because the king is not just the one who takes charge (as in Hexagram 55, the opposite of this one), but the embodiment of spiritual connection whose presence means we belong here, we are part of this. With the king’s presence, the temple becomes a conduit. Or – when you make the connection between your decision-making self and your sense of the sacred, you can reconnect with the moment, however disorientating. You discover that the energy and momentum of the flood is also yours.
This is another one where reading through the Sequence of hexagrams helps with understanding. After the king assumes responsibility in Hexagram 55, the Traveller steps outside…
‘The Traveller has no place where he is accepted, and so Subtly Penetrating follows. Subtly Penetrating means entering in.’
And once you are inside the fabric of things, you celebrate it, and find the deep joy of communion as your world is enlivened –
‘Entering in and then rejoicing, and so Opening follows.’
I can imagine Hexagram 58 as the delight of ‘thinking’ with more than just your own small mind – also with synchronicities, with trees, with human community, as part of a much bigger, free-flowing intelligence.
‘Rejoicing and hence scattering it, and so Dispersing follows. Dispersing means spreading out.’
Only then the sense of self and agency, place and ownership, is also all scattered. To avoid feeling completely lost in it all, we need the king in the temple. And with this, it becomes possible to cross the river: pursue your own journey, commit to something perilous, get your feet wet.
A wise client pointed out that this unfolding, from the temple to the river-crossing, mirrors the relationship of Hexagram 1 and Hexagram 2: creative inspiration first, then real-world action. Which is, after all, the core idea of divination itself, that action should originate from spiritual connection. Yuan heng, li zhen – start from the source, create success with the offering accepted, and constancy will bear fruit. There are other hexagrams that unfold in the same way.
In conclusion…
…it works well to start from the assumption that Yi has reasons for saying what it says, in the order it says it in. Skimming past familiar phrases, skipping to the bit that grabs you, you’ll gain something from your reading, but you’ll also miss a great deal. Instead of the cake you might have enjoyed, you may end up with a rather sad biscuit. Better to let the oracle take you by the hand and guide you, one step at a time.
(If there are other hexagram or line texts you’d like me to explore in the same way, let me know!)