Hexagram 39 is called ‘Difficulties’ or ‘Limping’. It describes the experience of a perpetual uphill struggle: just one thing after another, grinding on and on, battling with handicaps or with the elements or with an unforgivingly inhospitable world… …and it also describes the moment when you turn this around. I’ve… Read more »Turnaround in Hexagram 39
This is a subject that deserves much more than these few lines, but I’m so interested to hear what you think about it that I don’t want to wait until I have something more eloquent to say. The ‘default’ idea of divination is that we cast hexagrams, and they describe… Read more »Talismanic qualities of hexagrams
This topic’s been discussed more than once at the I Ching Community, where I Ching beginners very often show up asking questions like, ‘What does he feel about me?’ Goodness knows this is an absolutely normal, human thing to want to ask – but anyone who’s watched a few of… Read more »Asking how he feels
A couple of my most startling, transformative readings lately have come when I asked questions I could and should have asked a year or more ago. The issues were on my mind – in some cases driving all I did – yet it never dawned on me to talk with… Read more »Unasked questions
It’s one of those FAYQ*: “Does the Yijing always answer the question you ask?” My standard answer is yes, almost always. And yes, it is always good to assume in the first place that this is what’s happened, and you’re looking at an answer to your question. The alternative –… Read more »What Yi answers
I wrote a few days back about how the I Ching unavoidably, undeniably, takes time. I also touched on how it gives time back, re-tuned and humming. Setting aside enough time for a reading means greater clarity, better decisions, and just a more grounded, fluent experience. Also, it makes for… Read more »Gifts of time from the I Ching
I just heard this in an audio sample from Marianne Williamson’s Sacred Dialogue programme: “We say, OK this is not joyous, and so I want another life, and so we pray for another life. …We tend to think of it like, ‘This life isn’t good enough, and I want another… Read more »Change and Cinderella
