Robbers show up a few times in the Yijing. In 4.6 you’re advised to ward off robbers, not act like one; in 5.3 and 40.3 you’re in danger of inviting them; in 53.3, once again, it’s useful to ward them off. There are also three lines (3.2, 22.4, 38.6) where… Read more »Robbers?
(Just one reading, sorry, not a universal formula.) Paloma asked what to do about her worrying pension-less state, and cast Hexagram 5, Waiting, changing at lines 4 and 5 to 34, Great Vigour – changing to So we talked about patience, and self-care, and standing firm, and also not standing… Read more »Panic-free finances
A reading where we already knew the outcome – which really gives us a chance to learn from it! The reading’s about a family argument, and pausing to find a new way to respond, and the advice was Hexagram 5, Waiting, changing at lines 2 and 3 to 3, Sprouting:… Read more »With hindsight
In this episode, Katie – a psychotherapist in training – asks, “What do I most need to know right now?” Behind this question lies a worry that she ought to be doing more, or achieving faster or maybe starting a side business: she was wondering, she said, whether she ought… Read more »The Inner Truth of Waiting
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
In my last post, I talked about how the Daxiang paints pictures of individual hexagrams, as a whole. In this one, I’d like to try a change of perspective, zooming in and zooming out, to see what comes into focus. Commentary on the lines The Image builds on and humanises… Read more »The genius of the Daxiang (part 2)
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?
