Speculations on relations between hexagrams: the Sequence, patterns of trigrams, nuclear hexagrams, etc
Simple Two lines in Hexagram 7, the Army, talk about carting corpses: line 3: ‘Perhaps the army carts corpses.Pitfall.’ and line 5: ‘The fields have gameFruitful to speak of capture:No mistake.When the elder son leads the army,And younger son carts corpses:Constancy, pitfall.’ The core meaning is surely intuitively obvious: an… Read more »What’s wrong with carting corpses, anyway?
The relating hexagram, the one revealed by the moving line changes, can show the aspect or quality of the cast hexagram embodied in those lines. One way to imagine this is to say to yourself, ‘The reading shows how [primary hexagram] might do [relating hexagram].’ That works well in readings, because… Read more »Nourished by synchronicity: 38 zhi 27
Back in 2007, I wrote about the nuclear family of Hexagram 37, People in the Home. That’s the four hexagrams that contain 37 as a nuclear, coiled in potential within their inner lines. If you unpack lines 2,3,4 and 3,4,5 from any of these hexagrams – – you see Hexagram… Read more »Nuclear families of 37 and 38
From its first appearance in the first words of the Yi, the creative flow through the four characters yuan heng li zhen is tangible. Its power is felt in the other five hexagrams with the whole, uninterrupted formula. But the natural cohesion of the four-word formula can also be felt… Read more »Theme and variations
Hexagram 1 says yuan heng li zhen – from the source, creating success, constancy bears fruit. Hexagram 2 says yuan heng li pinma zhi zhen – from the source, creating success, a mare’s constancy bears fruit The remaining hexagrams can be seen as ‘children’ of these two – 62 ways of blending… Read more »Yuan heng li zhen
Complementary hexagrams are paradoxical things. On the one hand, there is no hexagram more different from 21, Biting Through than 48, the Well: Every line is changed, so they have nothing in common. If it’s time to bite through, then it is exactly not time for well-maintenance. And on the other… Read more »A shared dao of 21 and 48
A thoroughly useful guiding principle for both diviners and translators: this means something. For diviners with/ translators of the Yijing, the principle needs elaborating: this means something, whether or not I have the faintest glimmerings of a clue what it means. That should really be inscribed in every Yijing book and… Read more »This means something
