I’m really the wrong person to review this book: it’s a scholarly work, and I’m not remotely qualified to write a scholarly review. So here is a diviner’s take, instead. It comes as a sort of ‘whinge sandwich’: appreciation beginning and end, nitpicking in the middle. (Don’t take too much… Read more »Review: Stephen Field, The Duke of Zhou Changes
Here is a cautionary tale about involving Yi in decision making, how this can get you tied up in an endless series of unpromising readings, and the tremendously simple way to avoid this. Why is this a cautionary tale? Well, because I’ve managed to act out the full story twice… Read more »Yi and decisions: a cautionary tale
This oracle, as I keep saying, isn’t a slot machine. It’s not ‘insert question, get answer’. Someone who is completely familiar and comfortable with Yi does not therefore receive the answers to all their questions and live in a state of perfect certainty. What they are is deeply engaged in… Read more »Some ways Yi doesn’t answer your question
Why look for the stories behind the hexagrams? To start with something uncontentious: the people who wrote the Yi had wisdom and intelligence (as well as mind-boggling genius), and were well-informed, and had good reasons for their choices. One of the things they appear to have been well-informed about is… Read more »Myth and legend in hexagrams
I asked Yi for work advice recently, and received hexagram 58. It seems that work has a lot to do with communicating – who’d’ve thought, right? So I will do more of that and less keeping of things under wraps, and if I ever seem to have gone a bit quiet, please… Read more »News from Clarity
From time to time, someone asks me about the validity of consulting with a computer program. Does it work – are the answers real? I always say yes, it works. What matters is not the physical method, but the quality of your attention. I have plenty of experience to back… Read more »Consulting under the sky
The ancient character for jie, the name of Hexagram 40, shows hands with a knife removing a cow’s horn. Perhaps this has to do with a horn implement for prising knots apart – Chinese boys could carry a knot-horn at their belt when they became men – or perhaps simply with… Read more »Hexagram 40, Release
