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Interpreting hexagrams

Comments on whole hexagrams, individual lines and so on

The non-people of Hexagram 12

‘Obstructing it, non-people.
No harvest in noble one’s constancy.
Great goes, small comes.’

The ‘usual’ interpretation of the Judgement of Hexagram 12 is that there are bad people at work, dominating the environment, sabotaging the noble one’s good efforts. And sometimes, indeed, it can mean exactly that – in particular, that someone is promoting malicious rumours. But in my experience of hexagram 12, this isn’t always – or even usually – the case.

Some translations offer an alternative perspective. James Legge writes of ‘the want of good understanding between men’; Thomas Cleary, in his Taoist I Ching, has ‘denial of humanity’. The Obstruction isn’t necessarily caused by the presence of bad people, but by people denying one anothers’ humanity.

The banner of qian – from Harmen

Harmen’s gone back to the first character of the Zhouyi and offers the theory that it originally depicted a banner. As always with Harmen, very interesting reading! The banner of ‘qian’ – Harmen’s Dagboek

‘Favourable to have somewhere to go’ in hexagram 24

Hexagram 23 is the Pair of 24, Returning, which Nelson asked about. Unlike Stripping Away, the Judgement of Returning concludes that there is harvest in having a direction to go.

This could get particularly confusing, as the Daxiang (the Image) says that this is time to stay home and most definitely not tour the border regions. But I think this is is a snapshot of just one stage in a whole cycle described by hexagram 24 – and that ‘having a direction to go’ fits naturally within the broader context.

Yi blog riches

Two pieces of excellent news for ‘Yi people’:

Steve Marshall is updating his blog again at http://www.biroco.com/journal.htm. On April 2nd (scroll down!) he wrote about hexagram 25, line 2 – something I’ve been wondering and speculating on for years.