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Interpreting hexagrams

Comments on whole hexagrams, individual lines and so on

The heart of the Home: Not Yet Across

Hexagram 37, People in the Home, defines a safe space. Within it we can find our place with one another, and become confident enough in our own identities that we can eventually reach out beyond its walls.

The first line of the hexagram sets up those all-important walls:
‘With barriers, there is a home.
Regrets vanish.’
It’s a very clear line: walls create a home; they separate ‘inside’ from ‘outside’, so there can be a secure, close-knit group within. In readings, this line very often points to the need to set limits, to have ground rules, without which there can be no mutual understanding. Fences, as Wu Jing Nuan comments on this line, make good neighbours.

Hexagram 57, in here and out there

The name of Hexagram 57 – Subtle Penetration, the Wind – shows imperial seals on a stand. LiSe describes them as a personal inner blueprint, something that penetrates everything you do. Some influences flow in steadily and shape you, as wind following wind sculpts trees, or rock.

No Doubt

Found at Luminous Heart: “Being without doubt has nothing to do with accepting the validity of a philosophy or concept. Absence of doubt comes from trusting in the heart, trusting yourself. Being without doubt means that you connect with yourself, that you experience mind and body being synchronized together. When… Read more »No Doubt

Horses in ancient China

Horses in ancient China http://www.cs.iastate.edu/~baojie/history/chinese/2002-12-02_horse.en.htm A nice, long article on the role of horses, basically in the military, from pre-Shang to post-Zhou times. Why would we be interested? It casts new light on why horses are so important in the Yi: why Prince Kang would be especially honoured by a… Read more »Horses in ancient China

The prince

I first met Margaret Pearson at a talk she was giving in Clare Hall, Cambridge, about the Yijing and her upcoming translation. She handed out excerpts from her first drafts, including Hexagram 11, and I started reading with great interest. Simple, fluent translation… a couple of ‘why did I never realise that?’ moments… A gently lucid commentary that I can see myself quoting in readings in future.

Then I looked at the Image – and there, instead of the usual ‘ruler’ or ‘prince’, was the queen, ‘guid[ing] the natural forces of both sky and earth’. Oh dear, I thought. She’s just arbitrarily converting the male to the female, I thought. After all, this character means a male ruler, right?

Um. It ain’t necessarily so.

Taking a woman?

There’s a phrase in the Judgements of hexagrams 31 and 44, along with 4, line 2: ‘taking a woman’. Its usual interpretation is ‘taking to wife’, though it’s the same word used to mean ‘take by force’ or ‘capture an animal’. What are we to make of the phrase? And does it mean something different in readings for men and women? And what have translators and commentators made of it?