I’ve been looking lately at something so simple I almost missed it: how the ideas in the Yijing’s texts develop, from one phrase to the next. It’s easy to look at something like, ‘Dispersing, creating success.With the king’s presence, there is a temple.Fruitful to cross the great river,Constancy bears fruit.’… Read more »One step at a time
How does the Yi help in an impossibly painful situation? It’s hard to describe – deep recognition, being recognised, a sense of reconnection. Dominique’s reading for this episode: “What is the lesson that I must learn through the pain of losing my marriage and our future?” And Yi’s answer: Dispersing… Read more »A marriage dispersing
It probably shouldn’t surprise me to discover that 57, Subtly Penetrating, as relating hexagram is very hard to pin down. That seems to be just the nature of the hexagram. But the most general way of looking at a relating hexagram still works here: imagine how the primary hexagram is… Read more »57, Subtly Penetrating, as relating hexagram
In this episode, Tricia shares her reading about how to leave a conflict behind. Yi answered with Hexagram 59, Dispersing, changing at lines 2, 4 and 5 to 35, Advancing: changing to It’s a remarkable reading – I really enjoyed exploring it with her, and I hope you will, too.… Read more »Dispersing a conflict
Here’s Wikipedia’s definition of a ‘culture hero’: A culture hero is a mythological hero specific to some group (cultural, ethnic, religious, etc.) who changes the world through invention or discovery. Chinese mythology seems to be especially full of these: people who are recognised as heroic because they invented millet farming,… Read more »Hexagrams as culture heroes
Introducing the Image Sometimes we explain things to ourselves by comparing and contrasting – like the Zagua. Sometimes we tell stories, like the Xugua (Sequence of Hexagrams). And often, we paint mental pictures. The Yi is overflowing with pictures, of course – not least the ones created by its component… Read more »The genius of the Daxiang (part 1)
This is an embarrassingly ‘first world problems’ kind of reading, but happily Yi doesn’t judge – and it was tremendously helpful at the time, so I thought it would be a good one to share. The background How were things for you in March 2020? Round here, they were just… Read more »Dispersing Nourishment
