Comments on whole hexagrams, individual lines and so on
People quite often ask me about the Yijing’s vocabulary of periods of time. But as I worked my way through them – seven days, three days, ten years… – I found one that I haven’t been asked about: a whole day. Just like seven days, three days and ten years,… Read more »All day
A Change Circle member recently mentioned getting a whole series of readings with 15 as relating hexagram, so I thought I’d dig in and explore how it works there, as the background to a reading… Integrity, humility… The name of Hexagram 15, qian 謙, means humility – or perhaps integrity,… Read more »Hexagram 15 as relating hexagram
Measuring Hexagram 60 is called Measuring, or Limits – not in the sense of imposing restrictions, but of knowing where the edges are, and discovering or negotiating what’s workable. The original concept is the knots and segments of bamboo, and hence all ways of dividing up something big into smaller… Read more »Hexagram 60 as relating hexagram
The Yijing is an optimistic oracle: omens of good fortune come more often than those of misfortune. But on four* occasions, it goes one step further and promises great good fortune: ‘Enriching the home.Great good fortune.’ Hexagram 37, line 4 ‘Great good fortune, no mistake.’ Hexagram 45, line 4 ‘Welcomed… Read more »Great good fortune
‘Not yet across, creating success.The small fox, almost across,Soaks its tail:No direction bears fruit.’ There are ten places where the Yi says that ‘no direction bears fruit’, or (in the Wilhelm/Baynes version) ‘nothing furthers’: 4.3, 19.3, 25.6, 27.3, 32.1, 34.6, 45.3, 54.0, 54.6, and finally 64.0. It’s easy to see… Read more »No direction bears fruit
If you try for an ‘eagle’s-eye view’ of the Yijing, you get to admire its architecture: the intricate connections between hexagrams, the Sequence, two-line changes and so on. What if you zoom in, instead, for a mouse’s eye-view? Here’s an example of that. I’ve translated Hexagram 4’s Oracle like this:… Read more »Hexagram 4, ‘polluting the waters’
A Change Circle member asked for examples and impressions of Hexagram 56, Travelling, as relating hexagram. After I’d trawled through my journal for examples for her, I thought I’d like to keep digging, so here’s the result… I’d expect the relating hexagram to describe subjective more than objective reality, and… Read more »Travelling as relating hexagram
