I’m experimenting with a different kind of post: taking just one line of the Yi, looking at what the translators and interpreters make of it, and seeing what I can learn from the different perspectives. Let’s start with the fifth line of Hexagram 44, Coupling – a strange line, in… Read more »Melon perspectives
Hexagram 44 is – famously – a tricky one. ‘Coupling, the woman is powerful. Do not take this woman.’ That’s all it says – which is more than enough to give rise to all kinds of ideas. The traditional one is that the woman represents something malevolent, the seductress, power-grabbing… Read more »More on hexagram 44
Here is a remarkable article from Alexa over at the Quotable I Ching, about Hexagram 44 and desire – and, yes, insect bites. Remarkable for how she captures the spirit of the hexagram – and without mentioning the ‘powerful woman’ even once. She says the ‘encounter’ of 44 is like… Read more »Hexagram 44, insect bites and nuclears
I’m just coming to the end of the ‘omens’ section as I revise and enlarge ‘Words of Change’, my Yijing glossary. This involves testing out ideas by looking at every instance of each omen, along with all the example readings I can find. Since I’m going into more detail this time… Read more »Danger – good fortune?
I’ve been looking at the patterns that take shape within the ‘container’ formed by hexagrams 3 and 50, and wondering what they might mean. Here’s a bit more wondering. It looks as though hexagrams 3 and 50, living energies and vessel, form a mould, within which an individual life (or… Read more »Casting the Vessel, so… (part 2)
I’ve been listening to Clarissa Pinkola Estés talking about creativity and telling stories (always a good idea). She talked about that time when an artist becomes utterly obsessed by his (or her) art: the work is so perfect, so beautiful, so right, that nothing else matters. The artist forgets all… Read more »The Lorelei
My I Ching reading for last week was Hexagram 36, Brightness Hiding, with no changing lines. And following the plans I’d already made for that week, which involved reaching out and making connections to others in various ways, I hit one technical road-hump after another. (Moral of this story: consider… Read more »The challenge of Hexagram 44
