As you might know, I’m very keen on keeping things as simple as possible – not least the questions we ask the Yijing. But this can cause some bafflement when I advise against asking questions that are looking for a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ answer. What could be simpler than… Read more »Yes/no questions
A couple of things I’ve noticed at the I Ching Community… There’s a natural tendency to jump straight to the moving lines. We know those are the most direct answer to the question, and that their meaning takes precedence over the hexagram as a whole. For instance, if you receive… Read more »First steps into a reading
Eight hexagrams of the Yijing are formed from doubled trigrams (chong gua 重卦) – the same trigram above and below. These hexagrams give us the names of the trigrams. They also – as Bradford Hatcher explained – provide some of the best evidence that the original authors of the oldest… Read more »The eight doubled-trigram hexagrams
Three lines Here’s another phrase that appears three times in the Yijing: 富以其鄰, fu yi qi lin, ‘rich in one’s neighbours’. In 9.5, you are rich in your neighbours – ‘There is truth and confidence as a bond.Rich in your neighbours.’ while in 11.4 and 15.5, you aren’t – ‘Fluttering,… Read more »Rich in your neighbours
Hexagram 8… …is called bi 比, which means… You can see the core idea in the old Chinese character: two human figures walking together, one following the other, their outlines matching. (One dictionary even says these are not human figures, but spoons – spooning!) In the context of the Sequence… Read more »Hexagram 8 as relating hexagram
I mentioned in a recent post how the hexagram picture of Hexagram 38, gui, Opposing, looks like the eyes in its name. The six lines together illustrate two eyes that see differently, or squint – which is one of the meanings of gui. What about the trigram picture, though –… Read more »A trigram picture of Opposing
On not knowing the first thing about the Yi Back in 2015, I titled a post, ‘I don’t know the first thing about the Yi‘. By this I meant not knowing how it came to be – how people first knew that a certain pattern of lines belonged with certain… Read more »Hexagrams as pictures
