The other day, after a series of readings circulating between hexagrams 58, 47, 48, 57, I noticed another little nugget of patterns within the Sequence of hexagrams. Hexagram 37 describes life inside the home, defined by its boundaries (37.1). Hexagram 38 is outside the walls: opposed, seeing differently, alien. Hexagram… Read more »Inside and outside
Every hexagram of the I Ching has its complement: the hexagram created by changing every line to its opposite. The complement of hexagram 1 is hexagram 2 – and the complement of hexagram 63 is hexagram 64 – Other complementary pairs appear through the Sequence, particularly to mark the end… Read more »Patterns of complementary hexagrams
J.M. Berger has been working on the King Wen Sequence of the hexagrams (that’s the traditional sequence), approaching it from an angle I hadn’t thought of or seen elsewhere. He looks at the line changes necessary to change each hexagram into the next: changing all the lines of hexagram 1… Read more »More patterns in the Sequence of hexagrams
Every hexagram can be said to have a ‘nuclear hexagram’, formed by taking its inner lines and ‘unfolding’ them. From the original hexagram’s lines 123,456, you build a new hexagram with 234,345. The effect is like a seed germinating, and the nuclear hexagram’s often interpreted as a latent potential within… Read more »The family of Hexagram 37
The more I look into the King Wen sequence, the more depths I discover. Take the two hexagrams that describe grand, historic events of legendary proportions: 49, Radical Change, and 55, Abundance. Hexagram 49 describes the time of revolution, when the Zhou people overthrew the Shang. And hexagram 55 has… Read more »Layers of story
I listened to Steve Pavlina’s podcast about finding one’s specific purpose, and it got me thinking (as his work often does). He distinguishes ‘specific’ from ‘universal purpose’: universal purpose may be true throughout your life, and is quite open and general; specific purpose is the way you are realising the… Read more »Layers of purpose
Calling all mathematically-minded Yeeks (that’s Yi Geeks) – there is a new monograph available from Berkeley: STEDT Monograph 5: Classical Chinese Combinatorics: Derivation of the Book of Changes Hexagram Sequence Richard S. Cook The first and most enigmatic of the Chinese classics is the Book of Changes, and the reasoning… Read more »New King Wen sequence book
