Blog post: Getting inside the imagery

[hilary]

- or, How just a Smidgen of Background Knowledge can take you a Surprisingly Long Way.
As soon as you start talking with the Yijing, it’s apparent that there are things here you don’t understand. ‘Crossing the great river’, for instance. You probably don’t make a habit of wading rivers, especially not rivers big enough to drown you, so what on earth does Yi mean by saying it would be fruitful to cross one now?
Well… you read commentaries, engage your child-mind (who knows that you’d only try to wade a big river if you were really sure about it), maybe pick up a bit of history (oh, or a glossary – can’t miss the opportunity to plug that), and you get an idea of what it means to cross the great river.
I think it’s actually harder to get inside the imagery that sounds more familiar. People email me from time to time to ask the meaning of ‘cross the great river’, but no-one’s emailed yet to ask what ‘hunting’ means, or ‘taking a woman to wife – presumably because we all already know what those mean.
Except that, of course, when it comes to these images in the Yi we actually have no clue. After all, most of the readings that feature marriage as an image-to-think-with don’t involve romantic relationships, any more than most of the readings that mention ‘crossing the great river’ involve waders. We need that background knowledge more than ever – not necessarily an encyclopaedic amount, but just enough to nourish the imagination and let us start to respond to the reading.
An example – I see quite a lot of Hexagram 31, Influence, in readings about handling emotions – sometimes other people’s emotions picked up empathically, sometimes my own.

‘Influence, creating success.
Constancy bears fruit.
Taking a woman, good fortune.’
​

Marry? Why? How? Whom? How is marrying supposed to help me handle this [terror/ restlessness/ joy/ nameless emotion] (delete as appropriate). This is beyond fuzzy.
But the picture starts to clear as I reflect on how, when a man married in ancient China, he took his wife into his home. So to ‘take a woman’ is to take her in and make space (or find space, or recognise that the space was always there) for her inside.
Also… that the same verb ‘take’ means literally taking something in your hand, and is used of an idea, to mean ‘apprehend, grasp’. So there’s the idea of grasping and owning the emotion (wherever it came from), of getting a grip on it.
So if I imagine myself as the man taking a wife (and if you can’t imagine yourself in the opposite gender – men, too – you are certainly using the wrong oracle) then I have a sense of taking hold of the emotion, accepting it and allowing it in, having space for it inside myself and my daily life. (This might seem obvious, but it makes a difference for me: my default mode would be ignore it, push it out, and find a distraction.) And, of course, I can expect this to change everything – he couldn’t bring the woman into his home and then* continue just as before.
And conversely, if I had Hexagram 44 instead on the same topic -

‘Coupling, the woman is powerful.
Do not take this woman.’
​

- I would know that this was too powerful for me and I shouldn’t attempt to own and internalise it. For instance, I think if I saw this in a preliminary reading about a prospective client (I sometimes ask Yi ‘how could I help x?’ before we first talk), I might apologetically decline to work for them, because I wouldn’t be up to the task of ‘taking on’ their experience.
There… one small example of the difference even a smattering of background knowledge can make by opening a door into a reading.

 

[sooo]

It usually leaves me scratching my head when someone has difficulty understanding these metaphors, perhaps because I've a lopsided and heavy right brain, or as you called it, the child mind. I've also been sighted as seeing or summing things in a grand scale rather than becoming absorbed in specifics, or as someone recently told me, you say something in a few words what it takes most people a page. It's the biggest problem I have getting more than a few pages into writing a book: I'm at "The End" of the story far too quickly to make for writing more than a pamphlet.

A woman, to me, always represents something foreign. It occurs to me now, that would likely be more problematic if I was a woman! 54 is not me, and I include my own body in that statement. To marry her is to add her to my accumulative self, but it is not me. And, to get down to it, that also includes the good guys and the bad guys just as well. These are all "add-ons", traits my sexless soul wears or becomes attached to, or for that matter, divorces.

How much more is this with "things" such as moods! I am not my moods, therefore they are things I marry or choose not to marry. If I feel depressed, that is not me. If I feel angry, that is not me. If I feel happy, that is not me either. They are moods, feelings, sensations, that my soul experiences. If I marry them, they attach themselves to me, and I thereafter feel like them.

Another image, crossing the great water. Sometimes the great water may actually be a great body of water. All other times it is crossing something LIKE a great water, an undertaking, a challenge, a decision, a significant change. In order to apply it, one must figure out what that great water is specifically in context with their question. That shouldn't be difficult to do! One just needs to pay attention to their own question and then use that childlike imagination. That's why I repeatedly say, there's nothing in the IC that an average 10 year old (or younger) can't understand. That left brain is the one that needs everything spelled out in literal terms. Keep It Simple, Student - you junzi!

 

[sooo]

Hilary, I've an idea which may interest you, since you give workshops and such. What if each individual were to cast a hexagram (change lines and relating gua optional), and then draw in childlike forms what that hexagram is saying to them regarding their own specific question? No words allowed, only primitive pictures, stick figures and drawings.

 

[anemos]

I think it’s actually harder to get inside the imagery that sounds more familiar. People email me from time to time to ask the meaning of ‘cross the great river’, but no-one’s emailed yet to ask what ‘hunting’ means, or ‘taking a woman to wife – presumably because we all already know what those mean.

I think that even if we haven't cross any river we all know how it feels. "how it feels" seems to me the entrance to get into the imagery. I have cross some small rivers but nothing compares it with the times I need to cross a "river" made of rain water to go to the other bank, where the bank is to deposit some money. That 'wading' is familiar. Stepping into the water, feeling the cold water wetting your foot , wonder if you reach the other shore, feel the racing heart, thinking if what is in the other shore worth it is something we all have experience.

I like sooo's suggestion a lot. Not sure if it works for everyone but recently trying to understand 40.6 I needed to draw the image. If you asked me to explain what that line meant i might not be able to find the words but I felt it in my bone's and killed that hawk ! Actually I use painting to dig into areas the mind is not able to reach. That way of "thinking" whether you draw on a paper or in your mind opens unexpected doors and what you thought you didn't knew or understand is before you on a paper.

 

[sooo]

Not sure if it works for everyone but recently trying to understand 40.6 I needed to draw the image. If you asked me to explain what that line meant i might not be able to find the words but I felt it in my bone's and killed that hawk ! Actually I use painting to dig into areas the mind is not able to reach. That way of "thinking" whether you draw on a paper or in your mind opens unexpected doors and what you thought you didn't knew or understand is before you on a paper.

eggs acatackally.

Feelings have much more power than words, and real images are more likely hardwired to our brain than words used to describe those images. Even if you've never shot a hawk on a high wall, an image of doing so will evoke all sorts of feelings, including a feeling of "now, did I really need to do that to make my point? Couldn't I have just let it go instead?"

Perhaps it shouldn't, but it's always bugged me when someone starts off to answer a Shared Reading question with "hex X is about..." What an awful way to get inside an image.

 

[anemos]

I desperately need a Playground Section or thread for just play without censoring or worry what King Wen meant. Get my fingers dirty with paint - metaphorically speaking

I just finished a paragraph in my textbook about dreams and if understood it correct some mechanisms of vision are activated during dreaming. its well-known that areas that support vision occupy a very large portion in our brain. Areas responsible for emotions too, in the primitive part of brain are active also during dreaming. We see and feel almost all the time. I think the writers of Yi knew that very well. Yi is full of feelings and images ; shame , remorse, the fear of misfortune and loss, the serenity of good fortune , been stuck in a ravine, fly like the goose in 53.6.

Your suggestion brought in mind primates drawing on their cave's wall. it never cease amazing me what our "old" brain does. In some ways , i think Yi helps us connect with both the Great Man and the primate man. That's the Zunzi , imo- those two working as one.

 

[sooo]

Was not original Chinese written communication made of just such ideograms? LiSe's site predominantly illustrates this.

The Bible, in John 1.1 says: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." I take that Word to be the peal of thunder. It doesn't get more primitive than that. Also noteworthy, both the Word and Thunder were used as a metaphor for the first born son of heaven; the difference being that thunder is the first born of heaven and earth, as are the rest of the five trigrams. I think/feel that the sound of thunder is much more inside, something we feel - shock comes, uh-oh! laughing words, ha!ha!. The Word is left brain material only, as words are. They have to be translated to sensory perception, so words are not a direct communication to our senses.

 

[Trojina]

It's ironic that the pair of you are so disparaging about the functions of the left brain yet are writing posts, in words, to discuss it LOL

I am quite puzzled at how there seems a trend for 'brain apartheid'.


We all have both sides of the brain and they do communicate with each other.

We could argue about which brain side is 'better' but that would be silly wouldn't it. As silly as arguing arms are better than legs and so on. However people who think they are 'right brained do seem to sort of feel it's superior or something. I can't think why as as I say we all do use both sides don't we.


Anyway what does this have to do with Hilary's blog post ah , I know it's because she is speaking of Images.

But the I Ching is a book and we use words to make the image in our mind and that is what is called reading, an activity combining both sides of the brain maybe ? I mean to read one must understand the word but also inwardly see the images described. I read of a river and in my mind I see a river and so on.


Anyway I challenge you two to have a no words conversation....pretend you can't talk, .....go on

If you write another post saying images convey much more than words it won't count. I want to see it in action.


There is a saying that 'an image conveys a thousand words', something like that, but it's not true. If it was true people wouldn't spend so much time talking about images.

They have to be translated to sensory perception, so words are not a direct communication to our senses.

It works both ways , the sense can actually modify or adapt themselves according to our understanding which may come through words. If I feel terrible pain and someone says "it's okay, it's not serious, it will pass" Guess what ? That pain won't feel so bad. Likewise the way things are described can impact on how the senses perceive them. It really is a 2 way thing as countless studies in psychology have shown.


I don't feel brain apartheid is useful....I think brains, like legs, work best when both sides are involved


Now c'mon I am looking forward to the no words conversation

I desperately need a Playground Section or thread for just play without censoring or worry what King Wen meant. Get my fingers dirty with paint - metaphorically speaking

well go and make one then.

What if each individual were to cast a hexagram (change lines and relating gua optional), and then draw in childlike forms what that hexagram is saying to them regarding their own specific question? No words allowed, only primitive pictures, stick figures and drawings.

that's quite a nice idea

 

[sooo]

Words are a translator. There's no brain apartheid, no segregation or prejudice, but it's common knowledge it operates from a dualistic mechanism. And it's very obvious we have become more dependent on the left/logical side at the expense of the right direct and intuitive side. Lighting a fire to the creative sensory functions ought not be a threat to anyone.

And, it has everything to do with "Getting inside the imagery".

 

[anemos]

It's ironic that the pair of you are so disparaging about the functions of the left brain yet are writing posts, in words, to discuss it LOL

I am quite puzzled at how there seems a trend for 'brain apartheid'.

We all have both sides of the brain and they do communicate with each other.

you are using images ( emoticons)

I am talking about specialization not which part is inferior or superior. Its not the same. Of course we use both sides, its well known and we need both of them. Einstein is a good example . split-brain patient is another one.

My point was. One doesn't need to book a trip to a river and cross it to understand what "crossing the river" means and how it feels. That kind of thinking is just not helpful. In other occasions that kind of thinking is helpful.

re words. Can one explain to a blind person what is "blue"? Some experiences are ineffable and our vocabulary sometimes is inadequate to describe those experiences. I think we all agree on that.

 

[hilary]

...

Another image, crossing the great water. Sometimes the great water may actually be a great body of water. All other times it is crossing something LIKE a great water, an undertaking, a challenge, a decision, a significant change. In order to apply it, one must figure out what that great water is specifically in context with their question. That shouldn't be difficult to do! One just needs to pay attention to their own question and then use that childlike imagination. That's why I repeatedly say, there's nothing in the IC that an average 10 year old (or younger) can't understand. That left brain is the one that needs everything spelled out in literal terms. Keep It Simple, Student - you junzi!

Oh yes, I spend quite a lot of time with people encouraging the inner 10 year old - or maybe a bit younger, maybe about 5 - to answer the questions. What's a cart for? What are horses like? What's a mountain?

However... my point is, we don't necessarily know the answer to these questions. Once we - intellectually - know the answers, then the inner 5 year old can do her/his thing and we can understand the reading. The river-crossing is a good example: you're not crossing it on a bridge or in a boat, you're wading and swimming across a big river. Now ask the 5 year old whether you would do this on a whim.

And it might also help her/him to know that you could be leading armies on a great mission to the other side of the river - or you might be leaving your home and all you know behind on this bank to go across to your husband. The imagination does the work - but it needs the right materials to do it well.

Hilary, I've an idea which may interest you, since you give workshops and such. What if each individual were to cast a hexagram (change lines and relating gua optional), and then draw in childlike forms what that hexagram is saying to them regarding their own specific question? No words allowed, only primitive pictures, stick figures and drawings.

Well... it would depend on the individual. Some of us draw naturally, like Anemos, some of us don't. I don't - but I might be found clenching and unclenching my fists in response to 40.4, or doing funny walks in response to various lines of 31, or noticing weird tension round the diaphragm in association with… well, you can guess that one.

I think that even if we haven't cross any river we all know how it feels. "how it feels" seems to me the entrance to get into the imagery. I have cross some small rivers but nothing compares it with the times I need to cross a "river" made of rain water to go to the other bank, where the bank is to deposit some money. That 'wading' is familiar. Stepping into the water, feeling the cold water wetting your foot , wonder if you reach the other shore, feel the racing heart, thinking if what is in the other shore worth it is something we all have experience.

Exactly... because you know it's about wading, feeling the strength of the current sucking against the direction you're trying to move in… all this. If you didn't know it was about wading, you wouldn't know how it felt at all.

e
Feelings have much more power than words, and real images are more likely hardwired to our brain than words used to describe those images. Even if you've never shot a hawk on a high wall, an image of doing so will evoke all sorts of feelings, including a feeling of "now, did I really need to do that to make my point? Couldn't I have just let it go instead?"

Perhaps it shouldn't, but it's always bugged me when someone starts off to answer a Shared Reading question with "hex X is about..." What an awful way to get inside an image.

I've written assorted blog rants over the years about the indispensability of the image. Nothing gets me on the warpath faster than a 'simplified' version of the Yi that's been made 'approachable' by stripping out all the images that are how it actually works.

As for shooting the hawk... my imagination feels undernourished here. I have a feeling that the hawk is a bird of ill-omen, looming and lowering, and to shoot it removes the shadow it was casting over you - but I would feel a lot better about this if I knew a Song or two about shooting hawks.

But the I Ching is a book and we use words to make the image in our mind and that is what is called reading, an activity combining both sides of the brain maybe ? I mean to read one must understand the word but also inwardly see the images described. I read of a river and in my mind I see a river and so on.

Yes. And think how much we typically don't like 'the film of the book' because it looks wrong: actual external images fail entirely to match the inner ones that can be created by words.

Also, of course, Yi is not just calling on you to see the images but also to call up what you know about them, to remember the daily experiences they're part of, and also their myths and stories. Imagining skinless thighs is one thing, learning and telling the story of Yu the Great is something else.

Yi's images come in layers. Some we can apprehend immediately - enough that the oracle can talk absolutely directly to someone who comes to it for the first time with zero background knowledge. Some take practice (like getting a feel for hexagrams as something like 'energy diagrams' as the energy flows up through the lines and the trigrams interact). Some just require knowledge - from knowing about wading rivers, or the different meanings of marriage, to the history and myth, to the etymological roots. Some of what it would be good to know is lost - how I wish I knew the whole story of Wang Hai! - but we're still swimming in a beautiful great sea of available knowledge, and it all helps, so let's enjoy it.

 

[sooo]

I think you greatly underestimate the translating impressions of most young folk. They do have cognitive skills by that time you know, they are not mass balls of clueless questions alone. They are quite keen on natural truth before being snared into entanglements of endless intellectual debates.

You're topic pertained to getting "inside" an image. Trying to do that with words alone will amount to words alone. Why has early Chinese used ideograms to depict these meanings? Why else does the Yi rely on images rather than on rationality and lengthy discourses of debatable words, such as the Bible does? I'm sure some intellectuals will agree with you though, and I don't care about that. There's knowledge to be found there too, though it generally fails to penetrate to the core the way images do.

But you, Hilary, are a self-confessed book worm, so if that's where you find your inspiration, then that is where you find your inner core of images. As mentioned earlier, I'm wired differently from that, and I realize, a bit more childlike. Emotions, feelings, pictures and sounds communicate more directly to me than words. I can play with words pretty well too, but that is a learned skill, not an intuitive one. I guess we at least agree on this one point: it does depend on the individual. I prefer direct experience to reading someone else's direct experience, and attempting to put them into words, which has been interpreted by numerous intellectuals, who enlarge seem to rarely agree on the meaning, or the essence of the inner imagery. From a child's perspective, that looks pretty silly.

Your war party emotion probably has more actual core meaning than the many words you might use to try and describe or translate it.

 

[hilary]

No-one is talking about 'words alone'. Words are the way images are communicated, along with concepts, stories, humour and so on. All I'm saying is that some background knowledge really helps the imagination along when engaging with images.

 

[sooo]

No-one is talking about 'words alone'. Words are the way images are communicated, along with concepts, stories, humour and so on. All I'm saying is that some background knowledge really helps the imagination along when engaging with images.

I didn't suggest you were talking about words alone, and I have already agreed that words translate the inside of the images. I have no problem with words, obviously, having written as many or possibly more words on this free forum as anyone, lol, but your topic specifically was named "getting to the inside of images"; I do not feel words are the most direct way to do that, though they may be necessary to communicate what is. But they're not the only way, as Maria demonstrates so well. Stories may be the most direct path to communicate the inside of images. I love, for instance, that LiSe has of recent called her gua commentaries "the ideogram and the story". It categorizes the importance of each in their true order. First the images, then the applicable stories to explain the images. This gets me inside the reading.

I'm not sure why you're perceiving there to be opposition here on my part. I was enthused about your topic and thought it brought insight to understanding. I thought I was contributing to that with my own insight. If my comments create opposition to you, I'll refrain from commenting to your blog in the future. That's a simple fix. No war party here.

 

[hilary]

Oh no, by all means comment, and for goodness sakes disagree if you disagree. What else would I send the posts to a discussion forum for? I thought your main point was in opposition to mine: I'm saying that if you want to engage imaginatively with a reading, it helps to understand what those images are images of. Maria's feeling for wading rivers is an excellent example of that. I thought you were arguing that such understanding is unnecessary?

 

[sooo]

I was excited and enthused with your "inside the image" topic, and I didn't disagree with anything you said, though now I think I may not have understood it as well as I'd thought. Which is perfectly okay. Perhaps I was too extreme in my expression of something, but it really does get old for me, to read the common beginning to a Shared Reading interpretation, "Hexagram 30 is about...." I much prefer an approach which you yourself had brought up awhile back of "being the hexagram". If you can be fire, you'll understand the nature of fire, better than being told what fire is about. It's a bit more challenging to communicate in that way, but if succesful, you will get both you and the subject inside that image. This is what I mean by the child being able to understand.

Say to a child, ok, let's make him or her a creative child with a vivid imagination, "You are fire. How does it feel? What do you want or need? How can someone use you to help them? How can someone keep you alive and burning brightly? Are you potentially dangerous? In what way?" Those are all inside the image perspectives. Yes, they will communicate or translate those ideas through words, or perhaps through panamine, or perhaps through drawings, or perhaps through sounds, and always through that childlike imagination, which you spoke of.

 

[hilary]

Oh yes. And it will help if you can also say to the child, 'What if no one could cook their food or warm their house or even have a light to see in the dark without you?'

 

[anemos]

great thread !!!

 

[sooo]

Oh yes. And it will help if you can also say to the child, 'What if no one could cook their food or warm their house or even have a light to see in the dark without you?'

Wow, um, that one missed me completely.

I will say, my kids never had a problem getting what they wanted or needed; with or without their mother and I, they'd find a way. It's as they grew to adolescence and beyond that they became needy and abusive.

But I don't understand what any of this has to do with your topic. I'll take a pass on this thread now and go about the business of tending cows and horses.

 

[Trojina]

When Hilary said this she wasn't talking about parents as the 'you' but as if the 'you' were the fire itself

Oh yes. And it will help if you can also say to the child, 'What if no one could cook their food or warm their house or even have a light to see in the dark without you?'

So she is demonstrating how one can convey what something is by using words to describe what it does.

So if the child fully imagines herself as the fire then she sees that without her no one could cook or warm their house or see in the dark.

She was responding to what you bought up here

"You are fire. How does it feel? What do you want or need? How can someone use you to help them? How can someone keep you alive and burning brightly? Are you potentially dangerous? In what way?" Those are all inside the image perspectives

Seems like you thought suddenly she was speaking of parents as the 'you' when you said this

I will say, my kids never had a problem getting what they wanted or needed; with or without their mother and I, they'd find a way. It's as they grew to adolescence and beyond that they became needy and abusive.

she wasn't speaking of parents but of the child embodying fire.

 

[sooo]

I didn't think she was speaking of me specifically, only the importance of words to communicate to a child. I have only my own experience as a a parent to my children to express, that words were not as critical as all that. You know, the old "don't touch that stove top, stove is hot!" routine. But once they touch it, then they understand. First hand experience is still the best teacher. And they are even less effective as the child grows into adolescence and beyond. In fact, words are often a complete waste of breath as they get older. They usually know everything there is to know by the time they're 17, they think. But this too is best learned by the experience of actually raising children.

It's also a fact that talking too much to a dog and most mammals makes them nervous, as it does with people. Nervous and/or tired. It can even raise our blood pressure.

The influence shows itself in the jaws, cheeks, and tongue.
The most superficial way of trying to influence others is through talk that has nothing real behind it. The influence produced by such mere tongue wagging must necessarily remain insignificant. Hence no indication is added regarding good or bad fortune.

Cockcrow penetrating to heaven.
Perseverance brings misfortune.
The cock is dependable. It crows at dawn. But it cannot itself fly to heaven. It just crows. A man may count on mere words to awaken faith. This may succeed now and then, but if persisted in, it will have bad consequences.

Now, please excuse me.

 

[hilary]

Yes, what Trojina said. Point is, for a modern child to imagine themselves 'being fire' in Yi's sense of fire, they will need to imagine those things, too. Your average Western child would never think to associate house-warming, cooking or light with fire - why should they? Any more than your average Western adult has useful associations available to work imaginatively with the Yi's marriage imagery.

 

[anemos]

why to imagine ? we still cook on fire ( BBQ) or go camping and sit around the fire or have dinner under the candlelight or blow birthday candles or use a lighter to find something in dark. Its not the same as 100-150 years , of course, but we still are in touch with such experiences.

 

[hilary]

True. But it's a bit like horses, isn't it? We know they are fast and strong and beautiful, and not to be caught by running after them, but we don't know in our bones that they are the fastest thing in the world, the most powerful military advantage, the swiftest way of communication - when in Yi they’re all these things.

 

[anemos]

when in Yi they’re all these things.

I don't fully agree with that . Yi is not a separate universe , so a horse in Yi and and a horse outside Yi is just a horse with various trait and qualities. if we only think "what is the Yi-horse" we create borders and kind of get isolated and maybe leave out aspects that could help our understanding and interpretation of a message.

Literally , we can never be able to know how is to be a fire a lake a river etc, but collecting all the mental images , emotions, experiences somehow we have an access on those info.

The vet said about our dog , that due to various stressing experience before we get her we have to let her come to us and not run after her. Whether is a horse or a dog , what I have to do is the same although dog and horses are not identical creatures. Or I can search and see the creature inside me, when I need my time and space and someone push me to do something else at the same time. at that moment I'm the observer and the observed and I can have a fairly good understanding about this line although I have no experience with horses.

I see horses or goats and every other creature or object in Yi , merely a stimulus been there to trigger mental images and thoughts. Sticking only to the symbol only is limiting us.

your made a very interesting remark/question earlier

I think it’s actually harder to get inside the imagery that sounds more familiar.

I think it can be true and Its a real problem and , the way I read it, Knowing something can inhibit our understanding in similar ways as when not knowing. If someone has a serious accident in fire , for instance , I presume it'd be very difficult to "see" the positive aspects of fire. Rationally they know that they are, but in their gut , fire is something else.

I see knowing and knowledge having both excitatory and inhibitory affects

 

[hilary]

I don't fully agree with that . Yi is not a separate universe , so a horse in Yi and and a horse outside Yi is just a horse with various trait and qualities. if we only think "what is the Yi-horse" we create borders and kind of get isolated and maybe leave out aspects that could help our understanding and interpretation of a message.

You're right, I put that badly.

I'm not trying to say anything sophisticated at all. Just that what a horse means to someone who has cars, smartphones etc is not the same as what a horse means to someone who hasn't. So you use knowledge to stretch your imagination and get a sense of what a horse means to you 3,000 years ago.

Yi is not a separate universe, but in some ways its images do come from a different world. And in other ways, of course, not. You still can't catch a horse by running after it.

I see horses or goats and every other creature or object in Yi , merely a stimulus been there to trigger mental images and thoughts. Sticking only to the symbol only is limiting us.

Hm. I am very much in favour of sticking like glue to the symbol, and postponing 'I know what this means', for as long as possible.

I think it can be true and Its a real problem and , the way I read it, Knowing something can inhibit our understanding in similar ways as when not knowing. If someone has a serious accident in fire , for instance , I presume it'd be very difficult to "see" the positive aspects of fire. Rationally they know that they are, but in their gut , fire is something else.

I see knowing and knowledge having both excitatory and inhibitory affects

Yes, true. And I think because the oracle is alive, readings sometimes acknowledge and work with this kind of experience directly - that the person who was burned would have hexagram 30 at the right time. (I've seen this kind of thing happen again and again with the individual significance of images, both positive and negative. I expect we all have. Another reason not to be in a hurry to get to 'I know what this means'. Horse means horse first.)

On the other hand... I don't know how much we should expect the oracle to compensate for our general ignorance of what a horse meant to people 3,000 years ago. (Or a fire, a river to cross, a marriage, an offering, a tiger...) If we open a Yijing University, probably the course should include a week working in the stables.

 

[44bob123]

Hilary your last point was right on. If we know little about horses then we should go and meet some! Go horse riding perhaps? This problem of getting into a different culture is almost insurmountable. I have the same problem with Jesus and the New Testament. All I can do is read lots of commentaries to find a closer approximation to what he was trying to say. This seems to work quite well but the Yijing is so much older.
I think I raised a similar issue some time ago? At the time I down loaded "A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols" by Wolfram Eberhard (I think it was free). Useful but not as all-embracing as one would like. I can't see how one could resolve this issue. We could share our readings but they will be based on our personal twentyfirst century experience. Unlike the writers of the Yijing we are not part of a cohesive, delineated society. We are left to struggle with our understandings.

 

[Trojina]

On the other hand... I don't know how much we should expect the oracle to compensate for our general ignorance of what a horse meant to people 3,000 years ago. (Or a fire, a river to cross, a marriage, an offering, a tiger...) If we open a Yijing University, probably the course should include a week working in the stables.

No the oracle cannot suggest to us that a horse is the fastest most powerful thing to travel on in the whole world, we do need some background knowledge of what horses meant in those ancient times. If I as a 21st century person think of a horse it is not as something immensely powerful that can whisk me to safety....it's something large that travels relatively slowly and needs a lot of upkeep.



But whereas I can easily imagine how in ancient China the horse was this immensely powerful fast transport and so when we have a horse in the answer it is so much more powerful than we would imagine a horse in our everyday life now I don't have the same ease with the marriage metaphor..I feel it might mean more than you say or something different to what you say.

But the picture starts to clear as I reflect on how, when a man married in ancient China, he took his wife into his home. So to ‘take a woman’ is to take her in and make space (or find space, or recognise that the space was always there) for her inside.
Also… that the same verb ‘take’ means literally taking something in your hand, and is used of an idea, to mean ‘apprehend, grasp’. So there’s the idea of grasping and owning the emotion (wherever it came from), of getting a grip on it.
So if I imagine myself as the man taking a wife (and if you can’t imagine yourself in the opposite gender – men, too – you are certainly using the wrong oracle) then I have a sense of taking hold of the emotion, accepting it and allowing it in, having space for it inside myself and my daily life. (This might seem obvious, but it makes a difference for me: my default mode would be ignore it, push it out, and find a distraction.) And, of course, I can expect this to change everything – he couldn’t bring the woman into his home and then* continue just as before.
And conversely, if I had Hexagram 44 instead on the same topic -

‘Coupling, the woman is powerful.
Do not take this woman.’
- I would know that this was too powerful for me and I shouldn’t attempt to own and internalise it

I find this much harder to imagine or relate to. I know the significance of a thing that has great speed and power and what it can do. I don't know the concept of 'taking' another person since people can never be truly owned or possessed or amalgamated. A horse could once have truly been the most powerful means of transport, but people were never truly 'owned'. I suppose as 'take, grasp, apprehend' is there in Yi there is no getting away from it, but it is still hard to relate to. If a person never could truly own another then if we put the metaphor onto an emotion then we could never truly own that and so on. Anyway it's just a much more difficult metaphor to work with than the horse or the cart, for me.

 

[hilary]

Hilary your last point was right on. If we know little about horses then we should go and meet some! Go horse riding perhaps? This problem of getting into a different culture is almost insurmountable. I have the same problem with Jesus and the New Testament. All I can do is read lots of commentaries to find a closer approximation to what he was trying to say. This seems to work quite well but the Yijing is so much older.
I think I raised a similar issue some time ago? At the time I down loaded "A Dictionary of Chinese Symbols" by Wolfram Eberhard (I think it was free). Useful but not as all-embracing as one would like. I can't see how one could resolve this issue. We could share our readings but they will be based on our personal twentyfirst century experience. Unlike the writers of the Yijing we are not part of a cohesive, delineated society. We are left to struggle with our understandings.

Fortunately it's not quite that bad. China in the time of the Yi isn't a complete mystery - there's plenty of academic work done to piece together how people lived and thought then. The problem I'm having as I work on the glossary is not a lack of material, believe me! It's making myself stop reading and start writing.

Fantastic place to start for anyone: the Book of Songs.

Also - part of what I was trying to say in the original post is that the smallest bit of background knowledge can make a big difference in a reading. Having a perfect understanding would be nice, but we don't need that to get started. We can feed our hungry imaginations with one little fragment of information at a time, and it still helps with readings.

...But whereas I can easily imagine how in ancient China the horse was this immensely powerful fast transport and so when we have a horse in the answer it is so much more powerful than we would imagine a horse in our everyday life now I don't have the same ease with the marriage metaphor..I feel it might mean more than you say or something different to what you say.

I find this much harder to imagine or relate to. I know the significance of a thing that has great speed and power and what it can do. I don't know the concept of 'taking' another person since people can never be truly owned or possessed or amalgamated. A horse could once have truly been the most powerful means of transport, but people were never truly 'owned'. I suppose as 'take, grasp, apprehend' is there in Yi there is no getting away from it, but it is still hard to relate to. If a person never could truly own another then if we put the metaphor onto an emotion then we could never truly own that and so on. Anyway it's just a much more difficult metaphor to work with than the horse or the cart, for me.

Yes, people aren't owned, as a rule. But we still talk about 'my husband' and 'taking a wife' and 'to have and to hold'. The idea isn't that alien. But yes... much harder to handle than horses, and that's even before you get to Yi's complete lack of regard for gender roles.

 

[heylise]

When I read an image in the Yi, I try to imagine myself "back then". It is not that difficult. Of course there is a whole lot I don't know, but I do know the basics. No electricity, no hospital, small communities, except the court and even that is very 'rural', the emperor himself would plough or sow in spring to tell nature what would be nice to happen.
Inside everyone is a knowledge about living without modern stuff. You know you have it, it is not automatically part of your life, it has to be made or bought, so it is possible to imagine life without it. Almost everyone has been in a situation without any comfort, like camping or trekking, or even a long walk in nature.
And then I add "culture", even though I don't know exactly how it was back then. In all times there were rules of nobility of character, honesty, love, fear, and ways to deal with it. I am happy with every information, but even with very little of it, I can 'imagine' a lot by reading a hexagram or line.
Nature was overwhelming. Leaving your safe home was a huge undertaking. So crossing a mountain of river was extremely hazardous, and often a one-way route. There were many things still unexplained, so the world was filled with spirits, monsters and ghosts.
A line, or image, and every line is an image, which reaches back to such basic times touches your feelings, not your thinking mind. It is like hearing a fairytale of myth, it makes one wonder and not think. Wondering makes you understand, because you hear it very deep inside.