Comments on whole hexagrams, individual lines and so on
Years ago, I wrote that Hexagram 11 seems like the hexagram of love – “not so much love in its various expressions in human relationships, but as a pure, overwhelming cosmic force for creation.” I think it’s also love as power. Certainly I’ve rarely seen it mean a peaceful experience… Read more »Thoughts on Hexagram 11
I’m enjoying reading Stephen Field’s Ancient Chinese Divination, especially the insight into the early understanding of qi and how it flows. I’m just reading his description of Form School fengshui. While its earliest written description is (in Yijing terms) relatively young (the Tang dynasty Book of Burial), the fundamental idea… Read more »Trigram topography?
Browsing Allan Lian’s blog, with a New Year post offering a Confucian perspective on self-cultivation, got me thinking. What is self-cultivation – where and how does this idea show up in the Yijing? Luckily, I don’t have far to look: my guiding principle for the year for Clarity, as given… Read more »Self-cultivation?
Hexagram 39 is called ‘Difficulties’ or ‘Limping’. It describes the experience of a perpetual uphill struggle: just one thing after another, grinding on and on, battling with handicaps or with the elements or with an unforgivingly inhospitable world… …and it also describes the moment when you turn this around. I’ve… Read more »Turnaround in Hexagram 39
It was some time after I thought I’d ‘completed’ my hexagram commentary to contribute to Change Circle‘s WikiWing when I realised there was a line I’d completely forgotten. Hexagram 2, ‘using sixes’: the text that’s read when every line is moving, and Hexagram 2 changes towards Hexagram 1. ‘Harvest from… Read more »Earth revealing heaven
There seem to be two distinct streams of ideas flowing in Hexagram 49, Radical Change. First, it’s arguably the apex, along with Hexagram 50, of the great historical narrative of the Zhou conquest. ‘Radical Change puts away the old; the Vessel grasps renewal.’ The old regime is overthrown here; the… Read more »The nature of Radical Change
Hexagram 18, line 5: ‘Ancestral father’s corruption. Use praise.’ So how is praise in any way helpful in dealing with corruption? Hexagram 18 is one of those whose lines seem to have a reasonably clear progression, starting with taking on responsibility for and ‘ownership of’ the inherited corruption, and moving… Read more »Using praise
