Comments on whole hexagrams, individual lines and so on
I’ve been thinking about Hexagram 35 – and especially how it shows up as a relating hexagram. Introducing Hexagram 35 The name of this hexagram is ‘Advancing’, or ‘Progress’ or ‘Flourishing’. The oldest form of the character seems to show arrows in their sheath: Those arrows – along the text… Read more »Making the most of it
Looking simply at the shape of hexagram 33 with a naïve, imaginative eye… …we might see the entrance to a cave. And if you look at the picture painted by the trigrams, heaven above the mountain, then it conjures up the idea of a hermit who Retreats to the mountain-top.… Read more »Hexagram 33, Retreat
I’ve been mulling over this line – part of a recent open reading of mine – for a while. ‘Seeing the realm shining out. Fruitful and useful to be a guest of the king.’ Changing this line takes you to Hexagram 12, Blocked – a situation where no messages get… Read more »Contemplating 20 line 4
Integrating trigram imagery into a full reading is sometimes tricky: we don’t, after all, know what the trigrams represented to the people who first wrote the book. So attempting to justify text in terms of trigrams can get one tied up in all sorts of over-elaborate knots. However… those original… Read more »Drums in the lake
A thought on Hexagram 4. We think of Not Knowing as a default state, a starting position: children don’t know at first, so they learn; we start off not knowing, so then we consult the oracle. (Though preferably not for a second and third time…) In today’s news, the BBC announces the… Read more »A spring of doubt
Crossing the line: guo Hexagram 28 shares its core concept with 62: Exceeding, guo, great or small. I wrote about this a while ago: Hexagrams 28 and 62 are both about guo: ‘passing, going by, exceeding’. The central idea is crossing a line – whether that’s a standard of morality or… Read more »Hexagram 28, Great Exceeding
A friend who works as a coach/counsellor, who’s learned from and drawn on probably hundreds of sources as she develops her own way of helping, has recently had a couple of teachers ask her for payment for her use of their intellectual property. I was bemused, because this is something I’ve never… Read more »Gratitude
