All meanings of the name of this post are intentional, as I really don’t know the first thing about Chinese etymology. But in my ignorance, I just stumbled over something wonderful in the first line of Hexagram 4, Not Knowing. Hexagram 4, line 1 speeds the young ignoramus on her… Read more »Not Knowing etymology
For some reason, working through the lines of hexagram 32 recently took much longer than any other hexagram had done… 😉 I did find, looking through threads about it at the forum, that other people find it hard, too. Especially, it’s puzzling how a hexagram that describes something essentially positive… Read more »Lasting
Harmen has just published a new article, which is always a wonderful thing (even if I wish he’d translate his Chinese sources for me!). This one is about fu – that word from the name of Hexagram 61 that means truth or trust or sincerity or confidence, or ‘conforming’ in… Read more »Truth, confidence and captives
(Eep… this is the longest gap between blog posts in ages. Where have I been? I’m not completely sure… but it’s involved getting started writing a book (more about this in Change Circle shortly), getting to know the excellent people who are participating in this year’s Yijing Class, and starting… Read more »No mistake
(Sometimes I’m working through my notes and some small thing comes into focus. Here’s one of them.) Hexagram 28 is ‘Great Overstepping’: the time of ‘overstepping the mark’ or ‘stepping over the line’, when the weight of things goes beyond what the structure can support, and the ridgepole begins to… Read more »White thatchgrass
Sometimes, after you’ve looked at an I Ching reading for a while, the natural next step is to ask another question to help you understand aspects of that first reading. And sometimes the further answers you’re looking for are already present in your original reading, if you just have the… Read more »Going deeper
Hexagram 34 is Great Vigour – or Power, or Strength. The old character shows a scholar, or an impressive man, and half the character for ‘tree’. It means robust, powerful, in the prime of life. Combined with the character for ‘great’ – a man standing straight – this gives a… Read more »Hexagram 34: Great Vigour
