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Blog post: Hexagram 44, insect bites and nuclears

hilary

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Here is a remarkable article from Alexa over at the Quotable I Ching, about Hexagram 44 and desire – and, yes, insect bites. Remarkable for how she captures the spirit of the hexagram – and without mentioning the ‘powerful woman’ even once.
44.gif
She says the ‘encounter’ of 44 is like the encounter with a biting insect that leaves an itch – an irritation, invitation, temptation and chaotic force. ‘Trouble brewing under the skin’, she says – and you can see that in the shape of the hexagram, I think, with its*insignificant-looking little opening in line 1 .
So where does ‘the woman is powerful, do not take this woman’ fit in? Perhaps she represents the strength of desire and the object of desire, and taking the woman is like – well – scratching the itch. It misses the point, because she has further to go. Trying to bring her under control in this way not only works just about as well as scratching the mosquito bite, it also misses the potential, fails to see where this could go. Alexa writes, ‘Often, what we want right now is a scratchy shroud over what our soul longs for.’
Actually, the beginning of her*post reminded me of Hexagram 31 as much as 44. Which is interesting, because 44 is the nuclear hexagram of 31 –
44in31-300x236.jpg

– folded within it as potential, so that 31 shows one way in which the challenge of 44 can be worked out in living experience – through opening to influence, creating space and being moved.
And the other hexagrams of which 44 is the nuclear – the other ways of living it out?
In Hexagram 49 – through radical change, changing the form of government, changing skin. Hidden at the heart of such change is the force that demands it, with an implicit warning that it might not be quite as under control as you think.
(I think Rilke wrote about the 49-experience of 44 in his*Archaic Torso of Apollo.*Here’s the German original, and an English translation.*Somehow,*an intense encounter with a work of art – that ‘glimmers like the hide of a predatory animal’ –*becomes an extraordinary imperative:*you must change your life.)
In Hexagram 13, through going out beyond the familiar walls*and into the wilds to meet strangers-and-allies. (What if*they’re completely different from us? What if they aren’t?)
And in Hexagram 33, through retreating – up the mountain, away from the threat, but still carrying the inner itch with you. (You never know what might visit you, up in the cave.)
 

Trojina

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Can I tally her ideas on 44 with a visit from the in laws ? If you look for occasions where you cast 44 in your journal how often did it come up around desire ? Often what people write about 44 and how 44 actually shows up in readings, is very far apart. 44 is consistently very much idealised and made glamorous, interestingly as if people find the idea of it seductive. But actually when you ask people for an experience where they received 44 where their question was actually was around some great or even small desire they don't have much to offer. They do often have readings where something obtrusive or unexpected was happening....but notably mostly not that for which their soul yearned. But then I guess a soul doesn't yearn for an insect bite
 
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hilary

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I have very few 44s in the past few years, it seems. But yes, I've seen readings where 44 was about desire and what (not) to do with it.
 

Liselle

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Speaking of insect bites, your "You may also like" section at the end of your blog article has been infiltrated by spam links, at least for me.
 

hilary

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Huh - so it had. Thank you for pointing it out. I'd just updated the plugin that does that, and carefully turned off the 'promotional content' options. Fat lot of good that did, so I've deactivated the plugin.

I suppose that's what I get for writing about 44...
 

Tohpol

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the spam "bit" and the plugin folded. 44 indeed :D
 

Liselle

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The sad thing is I liked browsing the "You may also like" section :(. But if they're going to allow the sketchy supplement links to be optional, it would be nice if the option actually worked.
 

Trojina

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I've got the urge to 'translate' Hilary's blog post in order to make sure I understand it. My impression is it's poetically interesting to read but I'd like to get to the nuts and bolts of what she thinks Alexa is actually saying about 44.

I am going to try to do this later. I'm not sure I'll be able to but I'm going to try. It would be interesting to see if we all understand the same thing ?

Off top of my head, without re reading yet I thought it was saying the itch leads us to the souls true desire hence we must not just scratch it to shut it up but follow it.

In my own experience this has no connection with 44. For example the spam is very 44ish. It needed eliminating (43) not following.

I don't mind being corrected with what anyone else thinks the blog post meant because there's a lot I don't understand this week.

My crowning moment has been where Ethel said in a thread she must 'resign myself to gate'. I wondered what she meant for a good 10 minutes. It was just a typo. She meant 'fate'.
 

Trojina

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The sad thing is I liked browsing the "You may also like" section :(. But if they're going to allow the sketchy supplement links to be optional, it would be nice if the option actually worked.

:confused: I can't even find a 'you may also like' section. Where is it ? I don't see it anywhere so for me it's not even an option
 

Liselle

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:confused: I can't even find a 'you may also like' section. Where is it ? I don't see it anywhere so for me it's not even an option

I'd just updated the plugin that does that, and carefully turned off the 'promotional content' options. Fat lot of good that did, so I've deactivated the plugin.




I wondered what she meant for a good 10 minutes. It was just a typo.
You've been sick; Mercury's been in retrograde...(that's over now, for which we are all thankful).

How are your &%(@ gallstones, by the way? Have they gone away? :rant:
 

Trojina

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My god the thread has taken a nosedive :rofl: ( they are just being nice and quiet. I now have a head cold. That's my excuse.)

I don't know what a plugin is. I've heard of em, no idea what they are...oh well that's probably because I don't want to know. So Hilary had a plugin but now she's unplugged it, but it was about things we might like. I see :flirt: it all makes perfect sense.

Now the thread has gone so far downhill from it's sublime beginnings Hilary won't mind how I read this yesterday


And in Hexagram 33, through retreating – up the mountain, away from the threat, but still carrying the inner itch with you. (You never know what might visit you, up in the cave.)

'Carrying the inner itch with you' made me think of thrush....and other things. You never know what you might catch in the cave :rofl:


Now....back on topic. What was Hilary's blog post about if translated into a simple sentence ? It wasn't about thrush or thrush pessaries...
 

hilary

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The sad thing is I liked browsing the "You may also like" section :(. But if they're going to allow the sketchy supplement links to be optional, it would be nice if the option actually worked.
Amen.

There are other 'you may also like' plugins that do not include 'promotional content' :)mad:) as a 'feature'. I will find one presently. I thought this one could be useful because it does both the sharing buttons and the related posts links in one plugin, and generally speaking the fewer plugins the better - but maybe not.

I've got the urge to 'translate' Hilary's blog post in order to make sure I understand it. My impression is it's poetically interesting to read but I'd like to get to the nuts and bolts of what she thinks Alexa is actually saying about 44.

I am going to try to do this later. I'm not sure I'll be able to but I'm going to try. It would be interesting to see if we all understand the same thing ?

Off top of my head, without re reading yet I thought it was saying the itch leads us to the souls true desire hence we must not just scratch it to shut it up but follow it.
Better ask Alexa what Alexa is saying - I'm just responding in an improvised (possibly poetic) sort of way. But are you sure you want to try to pin down a post about 44? :mischief:

And yes, my general idea of the 'itch' was that there could be an underlying real desire. The thing with 44 is that, of course, it does not say what to do with the encounter apart from not marrying. But if there is a real (not necessarily beautiful, just real) desire here, what to do with it? It's got to go somewhere.

There may be no very satisfactory answer.
In my own experience this has no connection with 44. For example the spam is very 44ish. It needed eliminating (43) not following.
True. And the way it crept in through a back door I thought I'd already closed is classically 44-ish.

there's a lot I don't understand this week.

My crowning moment has been where Ethel said in a thread she must 'resign myself to gate'. I wondered what she meant for a good 10 minutes. It was just a typo. She meant 'fate'.

I think I can cap that. I am in 'creative misreading' mode - my best recently is reading adverts for Infusionsoft, a thoroughly respectable premium-priced email marketing service, as advertising Intrusionsoft.

You've been sick; Mercury's been in retrograde...(that's over now, for which we are all thankful).
Possibly there is something in the air. I spent Wednesday morning having norovirus. Hooray. (That's why I'm home posting today instead of out volunteering as usual - it would not be helpful to infect people with this.) Possibly brain is still convalescing, and the blog post is a bit less than coherent as a result. Between my meanderings and Trojina's translation, it should all be thoroughly 'poetically interesting'.
 

Trojina

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And yes, my general idea of the 'itch' was that there could be an underlying real desire. The thing with 44 is that, of course, it does not say what to do with the encounter apart from not marrying. But if there is a real (not necessarily beautiful, just real) desire here, what to do with it? It's got to go somewhere.

Hmm what's the difference between a real desire and a desire to scratch really ? Is there a hierarchy of desires with some being not good like to scratch an itch, which is delicious BTW, and other desires which are more worthy ? Well I suppose so. I suppose it's better to want to save the planet than desire to eat a dozen cakes straight off. But is 44 really so much about desire in practise ? Desire is a word that covers so many things. That's why I found the blog post poetically interesting but not quite weather proof, not relating too well to our real life experience of 44.

At the same time this thread is running so is this one http://www.onlineclarity.co.uk/friends/showthread.php?20075-Hexagram-44-to-64-Shoplifting-Accusation where a person got 44 re being falsely accused of theft. How is that to do with desire ? I see the intrusive forceful aspect of the event, it does seem a very 44 kind of situation but it does not contain desire as such. The only reason desire is bought into the idea of 44 is because the strong woman is a metaphor for that which can derail a man's good intention through his passion for her. So the idea of desire is a metaphor for anything intrusive, that demands one's attention, that derails one's life for a while...which may be creative or not so creative...but is in any case often some kind of catalyst for breakthrough, hexagram 43.

So I'm thinking to get too fixed on 44 as desire is to get too fixed on the metaphor. I think if you look through most 44 answers, desire is not the stand out feature




But are you sure you want to try to pin down a post about 44?

No, I don't suppose I do.
 

Trojina

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I think I can cap that. I am in 'creative misreading' mode - my best recently is reading adverts for Infusionsoft, a thoroughly respectable premium-priced email marketing service, as advertising Intrusionsoft.

That was their fault, rather than yours, for making an email marketing service sound very much like a teabag....or a bath product.
 

pocossin

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thrush or thrush pessaries...

What an interesting topic. So much I do not know!

http://www.embarrassingproblems.com/problem/genital-infections/thrush-women

Oh am I tempted to comment on 'nosedive'! -- an occasional cause of vaginal thrush, but back to the topic. Perhaps Alexa got 'insect' from the lower trigram, and insect bite from the powerful woman idea, female insects often being blood suckers, as in the case of mosquitoes and ticks. It is the middle of winter here with night time temperature in the Fahrenheit teens, and yet I am still finding hungry female ticks on my cat. Need that blood for their eggs. Hexagram 44, the Plastron, also looks like a swollen female tick. Also, yesterday I was in for my monthly bleeding -- lab work, it's called -- to determine my level of blood coagulation, and for the last five years I have yet to have a blood sucker (phlebotomist) who was not female. Indeed, I think it is unusual for a male to be able to draw blood. A cousin abandoned nursing for truck driving because he could not draw blood, and the one male who showed up in the lab and for whom I volunteered, with shaking hands and repeated painful punctures, was unable to find a vein. Thank God for female phlebotomists. See, when dealing with blood, being female is an advantage.
 

hilary

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Not the desire, but the chaotic/ disruptive/ derailing influence, which might be desire, or might be something else, like a spam-generating plugin or a nasty employee?
Could be. :bows:

What strikes me as a 44-ish element in the nasty-employee thread is
I blurted out: "You people are crazy." He responded: "Yes, we are." I'm not sure why I uttered those exact words to him.
As if there were some weird influence making her say that and maybe making him crazy, too. I agree, it still doesn't sound much like desire of any kind at all.

I have just found a new related links plugin and activated it. It will come up with related links at random, or allow me to add those of my choosing. Since the ones it came up with for the last post were very random (no surprise in present context, I suppose...) and two had dead links, I removed those two and hunted round for another 44-related one to link to. It has another example, which might be to do with something seductive.
 

Liselle

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Hmm what's the difference between a real desire and a desire to scratch really ? Is there a hierarchy of desires with some being not good like to scratch an itch, which is delicious BTW, and other desires which are more worthy ? Well I suppose so. I suppose it's better to want to save the planet than desire to eat a dozen cakes straight off.

Maybe any desire is harmful if pursued too vehemently, or beyond one's means. Some desires may be theoretically more noble than others, but good intent doesn't mean it's a good idea or that it will end up well. So maybe in that way 44 could apply to something which seems noble or worthy.

Oh! - also, I could see 44 describing noble or worthy desires which are being intrusively forced on everyone else. As in, "Take your desire to save the world away from me; I'm NOT INTERESTED :rolleyes:."
 

hilary

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...and I see the thread has gone a little further downhill as I posted. Helpful links to thrush information and stories of cat ticks. Splendid stuff!
 

Liselle

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An example of the latter [EDITED: meaning the latter thing on my last post, not Hilary's :rofl:] might be the abundance of telemarketing calls on behalf of charitable causes we are still forced to suffer through, at least here in the U.S. In and of themselves they may be perfectly well-meaning, but STOP CALLING ME ON THE PHONE SIX TIMES A NIGHT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

And if you contribute to one of them, because it is a worthy cause after all, you make the problem worse by encouraging it. So yes, many people will yell witheringly at calls on behalf of poor crippled children or whatever, or hang up on them rudely.

(Would that be a hexagram 44 thing? I think it is, but I'm not completely sure.)
 

Trojina

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I didn't think it could get much lower ....but this plug in thing ? I see nothing anywhere that says 'you may also like' anywhere :confused: where is it located ? I desire to see it otherwise I feel I'm missing out on a possible pleasure.
 

Trojina

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An example of the latter might be the abundance of telemarketing calls on behalf of charitable causes we are still forced to suffer through, at least here in the U.S. In and of themselves they may be perfectly well-meaning, but STOP CALLING ME ON THE PHONE SIX TIMES A NIGHT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

And if you contribute to one of them, because it is a worthy cause after all, you make the problem worse by encouraging it. So yes, many people will yell witheringly at calls on behalf of poor crippled children or whatever, or hang up the phone rudely.

(Would that be a hexagram 44 thing? I think it is, but I'm not completely sure.)

I think it can be yes because it is not the thing in itself which is 44ish but what it is to you at that moment. I also think a broken washing machine can be 44ish...For example in a daily reading, 44 might show that an agenda that was not your to begin with is forced upon you. A friend rang me the other day with the announcement 'I am in a launderette !'. The fact that her washing machine broke actually dictated the rest of her day. She didn't cast 44...all I was saying was that desire can be the intrusive thing or it can be spam or washing machines or anything that powerfully redirects your own agenda.

I have had 44 as an answer for unexpected visits from people...which can be like "shelve your own plans, make the spare bed up, I'm on my way" I can mate with that briefly, I wouldn't be marrying it as a way of life.

However differentiating the worthiness of desires was really a point to Hilary because it was suggested in her blog post that under the itch of a smaller desire there was a much more real desire and so don't scratch the little desire but follow where it leads because it might lead to your soul.

Lovely I thought but does it have much to do with 44 in the readings I've seen ? Then along came the spam, the thrush and the cat fleas.....which all came from the insect bites on the blog post.


I'm always cautious when people wax lyrical about 44 because it's tricksy...and it will turn and bite you on the bum just when you think you got rid of it in 43.

I think the mouse chase in the 'Tom and Jerry' cartoon encapsulates the 43/44 pair. The mouse is evicted, the cat sleeps peacefully.....but sooner or later the mouse always gets back in...and has to be evicted again. Effectively Hilary was saying in her original post that if Tom didn't try to catch Jerry but followed Jerry's agenda, to see where it led, Tom might discover his soul's desire. That would make a whole different kind of cartoon,


[video=youtube;zkxqRthhwIs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=zkxqRthhwIs#t=20[/video]
 
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Liselle

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I didn't think it could get much lower ....but this plug in thing ? I see nothing anywhere that says 'you may also like' anywhere :confused: where is it located ? I desire to see it otherwise I feel I'm missing out on a possible pleasure.

The key might be that you have to click on the post title, to display it in the view which shows only one blog post per page, and which also displays the commenting feature. (As distinguished from the view you get from clicking on the blog tab, which shows a chronological string of blog posts down the page.)
 

pocossin

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...and I see the thread has gone a little further downhill as I posted. Helpful links to thrush information and stories of cat ticks. Splendid stuff!

Well, all my views are politically incorrect, but if you were regularly being probed for blood, you would appreciate the gentle touch and the skill in divining for veins that female phlebotomists usually have, as sexist as this may sound. Of course, none of this is relevant to the real meaning of hexagram 44, which is the inscription of a plastron. I was especially interested in my last blood donation because it occurred on the 12th, in the dark of the moon with the moon in Sagittarius and on my late mother's birthday, and I anticipated minimal bleeding and requested the least possible bandaging, which proved correct.
 

Trojina

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The key might be that you have to click on the post title, to display it in the view which shows only one blog post per page, and which also displays the commenting feature. (As distinguished from the view you get from clicking on the blog tab, which shows a chronological string of blog posts down the page.)

Nope...not there. Not to worry, it doesn't sound like I'm missing much...
 

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My experience of 44 has been something sneaking up on me, so I can relate to the insect bite. It's as if the itch is sneaking up and if I scratch it, it's going to get worse.

But I think another parable comes to mind which has been closer to the truth for me. It's the story of the camel and the tent owner - do you guys remember it? - here it is.

This has been my experience of 44 (I have been on both sides of the table) and not just for people, but for habits and tendencies as well.

There was a time when even though I was surrounded by a lot of people, I was feeling very lonely. I was in desperate need for human conversation, but - in hindsight - I was a bit like the Marrying Maiden who would throw herself at any situation that provided the potential for conversation.

It was a strange situation, the more I tried to talk to people, the more I felt I was repelling them. Every time it happened I would ask the Yi, and I remember getting 3 hexagrams consistently: 44, 4, and 54. I often got 44 when my desperation to interact with people was being interpreted as sneaking up to them. I have also received 44 when I felt someone was sneaking up on me. In both cases the 'sneaking up' was not sexual, just something unwanted.
 

ragini

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My experience of 44 has been something sneaking up on me, so I can relate to the insect bite. It's as if the itch is sneaking up and if I scratch it, it's going to get worse.

But I think another parable comes to mind which has been closer to the truth for me. It's the story of the camel and the tent owner - do you guys remember it? - here it is.

This has been my experience of 44 (I have been on both sides of the table) and not just for people, but for habits and tendencies as well.

There was a time when even though I was surrounded by a lot of people, I was feeling very lonely. I was in desperate need for human conversation, but - in hindsight - I was a bit like the Marrying Maiden who would throw herself at any situation that provided the potential for conversation.

It was a strange situation, the more I tried to talk to people, the more I felt I was repelling them. Every time it happened I would ask the Yi, and I remember getting 3 hexagrams consistently: 44, 4, and 54. I often got 44 when my desperation to interact with people was being interpreted as sneaking up to them. I have also received 44 when I felt someone was sneaking up on me. In both cases the 'sneaking up' was not sexual, just something unwanted.
 

hilary

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I hadn't heard the camel-in-the-tent story before - good one, thank you!
 

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