Looking away Hexagram 52 is called gen, 艮, and so too is the trigram that’s doubled to make the hexagram. It translates as ‘looking away’: in the ancient character, you can see a reversed human figure with a great eye. Nowadays, it apparently also translates as ‘tough, hard to chew’ – something… Read more »Hexagram 52, Stilling
Not just for decisions It’s no secret that Yi is tremendously helpful when it comes to decision-making. You look at your options, single out the most likely one, and ask Yi, ‘What about this?’ And the oracle tells you what to expect if you take that road – be that… Read more »How Yi helps with planning
Its name (and nature) Hexagram 55 is unusual in that its name contains two meanings – The character feng 豐 means abundant, bountiful, plentiful. The ancient character appears to be an elaborated, decorated version of the character for ‘drum’: see Richard Sears’ site – Feng, name of Hexagram 55 Zhu, drum the donations link… Read more »Hexagram 55, Abundance
Do you need to be psychic to read the I Ching? Well, if you do, I’m in trouble. Yet this is something readers – maybe mostly tarot readers – often claim: that their psychic powers have been apparent from early childhood, and it was always clear that they were destined… Read more »Not being psychic
‘See the great person’ (or ‘great people’) is one of the Yijing’s recurrent phrases: in Hexagram 1, lines 2 and 5, in the oracle texts of hexagrams 6, 39, 45, 46 and 57, and in 39, line 6. (There’s also just ‘great person’ – without the advice to see them… Read more »Seeing the Great Person (a story)
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
It’s a common source of confusion and frustration with I Ching readings: ‘My answer has multiple moving lines, and they contradict one another. How am I supposed to make sense of this?’ Here’s an article to help you with that. Why ‘revisited’? Many years ago now, I wrote a rambling… Read more »Multiple moving lines, revisited
