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Category Archives: Divination tips

‘DIY’ tips for I Ching divination

The relatable oracle

The relatable oracle

I went away for a week this summer and met a lot of new people. As you can imagine, the “what do you do?” conversations are always interesting for me.

“What do you do?”
“Divination, with the I Ching.”

And once we had got past the “you do what with the who now?” part of the dialogue, I kept thinking how strange and extraordinary it is that I can do this work with something 3,000 years old. The life of the people who wrote this book was unimaginably different from ours. Really, what are the chances that they and we could talk to the same oracle?

It’s true that the differences do make their demands on us if we want to work with the Yi now. To understand its imagery, it helps to learn some history, or at least to use our imaginations (a lot). We need to try to project ourselves into a world where nothing – including information – travels faster than a horse. Where wealth might be measured in cattle and sheep, and food security extends only as far as the next harvest, and – hardest of all to imagine – your survival hangs by the thread connecting you to the kindness of your ancestors. (If the thread breaks, if they are alienated, the harvests will surely fail.) Rain makes the crops grow. Unseasonal thunder is the voice of heaven. Tigers can eat you.

And yet despite this gulf, my experience of the Yi is of something entirely intimate and knowable. The conversation continues…
“How does it answer questions?”
Well, unless they seem really interested, I’m not going to go too far into lines and hexagrams. That always sounds vastly more complicated than it is, especially if you don’t have pen and paper handy. So, instead I say…
“It shows you pictures and tells you stories. For instance…”

And then I find I’m actually spoiled for choice with examples. “Suppose someone asked about taking on extra work and it told them that the house’s roof beam was buckling under the weight…” Everyone understands that; we all know how it feels. We even use the same metaphors in modern English: being under strain, overloaded and at breaking point.

At a very simple level – we share our embodied experience with the original authors. This becomes really obvious with Hexagram 31, or 52, where the best way to understand your moving line is often to walk around the room ‘doing the actions’, as it were. What does influence in your big toes feel like? What happens if you still your calves but can’t check your momentum? The basics of human life haven’t changed: we get hungry, we walk or ride, we carry burdens, we swim, or sink. It all feels the same.

And then there are the animals. Horses are still prey and herd animals, hugely strong, hypersensitive to the tiniest cues; cattle are still startlingly docile for their huge size. Tigers still exert a strange fascination that seems to override our most basic sense of self-preservation. Some of us will need to do some research for some of the animal imagery – I grew up in London suburbia, so I certainly needed to – but none of this is alien.

And more subtly, as with that bending roof beam, we naturally use some of the same metaphors. We still identify light as understanding, even if we can go for months or years now without experiencing real darkness; we feel the distinction between home and the world outside; we all understand life and the passing of time as a journey.

It’s simply an oracle for humans, isn’t it? Perhaps that’s why explaining the imagery as if to a Martian can be so helpful in getting inside it, because it takes us into that simple, shared human experience.

And speaking of getting inside the imagery… that’s a lesson topic and a recurring theme in all our reading practice throughout the Yijing Foundations Class, which I’ll be teaching again starting in October. You can read all the details here, and if you might be interested in joining the Class, please sign up for notifications on that page, so I can let you know when the doors open.

I Ching Community discussion

You are the expert

You are the expert

Recently, when I don’t have any particular news to link to, I’ve taken to making my forum signature read, “You are the expert on your own readings.” I’ve found this is something people really need to hear. There’s a very widespread tendency to rush to commentaries, or the helpful people on the I Ching Community… Continue Reading

Follow-up readings

Follow-up readings

Before you start reading this article, or anything anyone writes about how to consult the Yijing, do bear in mind that there are no rules for this. All I can share is what I’ve found works best in readings, for myself and for other people: the approach that will help you get really clear about… Continue Reading

The words and the magic

The words and the magic

The Yi is an oracle; it speaks. (The word ‘oracle’ has its roots in the Latin orare, to speak, and oraculum, the name of the priest/ess who gave voice to the god.) Other oracles people use now, like tarot, have interpreters to speak their meanings, but Yi is unique: it has its own words and… Continue Reading

Yes/no questions

Yes/no questions

As you might know, I’m very keen on keeping things as simple as possible – not least the questions we ask the Yijing. But this can cause some bafflement when I advise against asking questions that are looking for a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ answer. What could be simpler than ‘yes’ or ‘no’? If you… Continue Reading

First steps into a reading

First steps into a reading

A couple of things I’ve noticed at the I Ching Community… There’s a natural tendency to jump straight to the moving lines. We know those are the most direct answer to the question, and that their meaning takes precedence over the hexagram as a whole. For instance, if you receive Hexagram 54 (‘to set out… Continue Reading

Medical readings

Medical readings

It’s only natural that we should turn to the Yijing with medical questions: we’re vulnerable, uncertain and out of our depth, facing the unknown, so of course we want to consult the oracle. Or if we encounter someone else dealing with a medical crisis who asks for a reading, of course we want to help.… Continue Reading

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