Here’s a very-frequently asked question. This relationship may have been going ecstatically well or this project may have been an intolerable risk yesterday/ last week/ last month, but is that still the case? How long does a reading apply for?
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 does it mean something different in readings for men and women? And what have translators and commentators made of it?
I often get emails asking what the I Ching is and how to get started. And while there is enough to reflect on in the I Ching and its traditions to keep anyone engrossed for several lifetimes, getting started with it is absurdly simple.
Last time I splashed out on books I bought not just the shiny new Ritsema/Sabbadini, but also Sarah Allan’s The Shape of the Turtle. And I am enjoying it no end. She writes about Shang myth, but there are many, many resonances in the Zhouyi. But finding one with the… Read more »More trigrams in the sequence (hexagrams 6, 7 and 8)
James Lewis describes what I know as the yang, ‘inspiring’ pattern of change as the Key Hexagram: If you consider that lines that do not change are yin, and that lines that do change are yang, then you can write down a third hexagram. This is what I call the… Read more »A simpler take on ‘pattern of change’ hexagrams
I first learned from Nina Correa of Your Dao De Jing that in the first lines of the Daodejing –
‘The dao that can be told of is not the constant dao,
The name that can be named is not the constant name’
– the word ‘constant’ in the Mawangdui version is heng – the name of Hexagram 32.
In the first place, seeing an great person means finding a role model or guide. Find someone who can advise, ideally someone who’s been there and done that. Or go to the person who has more influence, make an important connection with someone who can make a difference. Richard Rutt suggests that in Zhou times it could mean ‘taking counsel, preparing for battle, parleying with enemy leaders, or consulting high soothsayers.’
