Comments on whole hexagrams, individual lines and so on
Recently, I heard someone say that the phrase ‘no mistake’, wu jiu 无咎, occurs so often in the Yijing that he tends to ignore it in readings. Well… you know how I generally feel about ignoring bits of readings… so, naturally, I dived back in to see what more I… Read more »Not a mistake
In my last post, I mentioned how ten pairs of tortoises hexagrams lead us from Hexagram 41 to 61, where the crane calls back across the space between hexagrams. This line is a not-so-hidden gem, beautiful in its own right: ‘Calling crane in the shadows,Her young respond in harmony.I have… Read more »The crane, her young and the wine vessel.
There’s more than one way to engage with the trigrams that make up the Yi’s hexagrams. The one that I find most engrossing – that most often shows me hidden beauties of the book, and most often makes for powerful, transformative readings (not unconnected!) – is to look at them… Read more »Trigram pictures
(This post’s one of a series about the hidden gems of the Yijing. They may quite often describe things I’ve mentioned before, but I think they bear repeating. The idea is to point to especially lovely or ingenious or playful ways that the Yi creates meaning and speaks to us… Read more »An interruption
This post is for Liz, who commented, “Hi Hilary,Ok. Point blank – what does crossing the great river mean?” How does it feel? This is a better question to ask, because divination does not work by replacing images with what they mean. First, you use your imagination to get inside… Read more »What does ‘crossing the great river’ mean?
Hexagram 47, Confined Confining is de’s test. It is hard-pressed, and wholly connected. It is used to lessen resentment. Wilhelm/Baynes calls 47 the ‘test of character’, which is memorable – but the meaning isn’t so much what ‘puts you to the test’ as the test that identifies something by differentiating… Read more »‘Character’ hexagrams: Confined, the Well, and Subtly Penetrating
Here are the next three ‘character’ hexagrams… 32, Lasting Lasting is de‘s steadfastness. It means [encountering] miscellany and not [feeling] disgust. It provides for a single de. As you can see from the [square brackets], I haven’t quite managed to find English equivalents to the Chinese words for this one.… Read more »‘Character’ hexagrams: Lasting, Decrease, Increase
