That’s how the third line of Hexagram 6, Arguing, begins: ‘Eating ancient de. Constancy: danger. In the end, good fortune. Maybe following king’s business, No accomplishment.’ It’s unusual for Yi to talk in abstract imagery in this way – eating not food, but de. De, as in Daodejing, is virtue,… Read more »Eating ancient de?
The Funeral of the Real » I Ching and the Logos Here’s an unusual I Ching reading, interpreted with great creative insight from an unfamiliar perspective. The question is “What is the I Ching?”, the answer Hexagram 44 moving at lines 3 and 4 to Hexagram 20. So Joe Chip… Read more »What is the I Ching?
Hexagram 44 seems to be the most-debated hexagram of the lot. Should we be afraid of what the yin line in the first place represents? Of encroaching evil, temptation, the thin end of the wedge? (Not to mention the unspeakable horrors of ‘a bold girl who lightly surrenders herself’.) Or… Read more »A picture of Hexagram 44 from Paulo Coelho
I first met Margaret Pearson at a talk she was giving in Clare Hall, Cambridge, about the Yijing and her upcoming translation. She handed out excerpts from her first drafts, including Hexagram 11, and I started reading with great interest. Simple, fluent translation… a couple of ‘why did I never… Read more »The prince
There’s a phrase in the Judgements of hexagrams 31 and 44, along with 4, line 2: ‘taking a woman’. Its usual interpretation is ‘taking to wife’, though it’s the same word used to mean ‘take by force’ or ‘capture an animal’. What are we to make of the phrase? And… Read more »Taking a woman?
Sketchy, impressionistic ideas, these, butI think there’s something behind them…
Looking at the mythical and legendary figures that walk the pages of the Yijing, I can’t help noticing how many pairs of fathers and sons there are. And the overarching theme seems to be the responsibility of the sons to… Read more »Fathers and sons in Yijing
