Blog post: Laws of Yijing Practice

[hilary]

Here’s a challenging post from Harmen Mesker: Ten Laws of Proper Yijing Practice Explained. While I’m unlikely ever to call anything to do with the Yi a ‘law’ (there’s a distinct shortage of rules graven on stone tablets for divination), this is a really thoughtful and thought-provoking article.

Law 1:

If you receive the same hexagram three times you have three different answers.

The meanings of the hexagrams are not fixed, they change according to your situation. Hexagram 3 can mean that you are experiencing initial difficulties, but it can also mean that initial difficulties elsewhere have to be addressed. A friend of mine was asked to give a beginners course at the upcoming Yijing Symposium in Ruigoord. He asked the Yijing whether this was a good idea, and he received hexagram 3 (5th line moving). You could see this as a difficult start, leading to a troubled course, and be tempted not to do it. But who were the targets of the course? Indeed, those people who experience difficulties when starting to use the Yijing. Therefore, “if you receive the same hexagram three times you have three different answers”.

​

This is very often true. Its corollary is that when we receive that same hexagram again, we still need to go read it afresh as a new response. There is a risk of getting stuck in a mental groove: ‘Oh, that one, I know what that means,’ substituting what we ‘know it means’ for what it says.

A related and trickier question: when you receive the same hexagram three times, should you assume that you have three connected, related answers, and Yi is pointing out a connection between your questions?

Or if you form a strong personal association between, say, Hexagram 53 and marriage, is it reasonable to assume that when you ask a work question and receive Hexagram 53, this is a reminder to consider your marriage?

I think this can only be answered by intuition, in the moment. Repeating hexagrams is one way Yi can point out connections you’d otherwise miss; however, rather than saying the Hexagram 53 reading is about your marriage, not your work, I’d be more inclined to look for a pattern of Gradual Progress that’s common to both areas of life. Those personal thematic associations need to be taken lightly and allowed to come and go, so the conversation stays free and alive.

However… sometimes when you receive the same hexagram three times, you might have one answer and two reminders that it would be a really good idea to take notice of that answer. (For example, there have been a couple of occasions when I’ve spent a long time thinking about a reading’s primary hexagram, finally asked a clarifying question, and received in response, with no lines changing, the relating hexagram from the original reading. I imagine the oracle speaking to me extra – slowly – and – clearly…

)

Law 11 of Yijing Practice: there are not many laws.

Law 2, from Harmen:

Moving lines do not move.

Many users have the habit of immediately changing the moving lines in the received hexagram to generate a second hexagram. Apart from the fact that moving lines were probably a later invention and not used in the early days of Yijing practice (Rutt, p. 154-155; Nielsen, p. 22), the habit of generating a second hexagram makes it tempting to bypass the original answer of the Yijing if the second hexagram is more to your liking. But you do not receive the second hexagram as answer from the Yijing, you receive the first hexagram. And that’s the hexagram you have to deal with. An example from Clarity’s forum:

I got 39.3>8. Then, my I Ching book asks me to throw again when I receive hexa 8, so I asked for clarity and I got 37 “Family”.

​

The querent seems to skip hexagram 39 completely, going right over to hexagram 37 which could be called the third hexagram. But that is not the initial answer that she got from the Yijing and that she should have started with. Therefore, “moving lines do not move”.

• Bent Nielsen,*A companion to Yi jing numerology and cosmology
• Richard Rutt, Zhou Yi – the Book of Changes

Well, this is more contentious!

As far as I know – which is nowhere near as far as Harmen knows – line texts have been described in terms of the hexagram they lead to for a long time. 39 line 3 is 39 zhi 8, 39’s 8. Impossible to tell from this, of course, whether or not this implied that people would actually go on to read Hexagram 8.

More important for me is what I find works in divination, which is that if you receive 39.3 changing to 8, you have received the combination of both hexagrams, and the relationship and ‘conversation’ that takes place between the two. You could also say that you’ve received Hexagram 39 in a context of 8: Difficulties and Limping as seen from or through a perspective of Seeking Union, the Seeking Union experience of Difficulties. So you might expect this to focus on how, when you are struggling, you seek people with whom you have a natural affinity. (Hexagram 39 already contains the idea of changing direction and going ’southwest’; Hexagram 8 accentuates that aspect of its meaning.)

If Harmen finds that this second, relating hexagram often draws people’s attention, that would be because it tends to describe them: where they are, how they relate to the situation, what the reading is about for them. In this case, the reading was about a woman’s strong desire to leave an environment where she was struggling and move back home to her family and friends. Her moving line reads,

‘Going on, limping; coming back, turnaround.’

- endorsing her desire to change direction and go home, as the readers on her thread agreed.

Generally speaking, hurrying to ask again – not necessarily what Hexagram 8 advises – is not recommended. However… if this reading is an example of a broken ‘law’, it’s also an example of Yi’s flexibility and responsiveness to the sincere questioner. After she skimmed over her first reading, she was given a second answer that carried the same message, clear as day.

(More later on laws 3-10.)

 

[meng]

interesting..

Initially, first read, some seems right, some seems not so right. Love Law 1, but not sure about Law 2.

What I get is that by covering one eye, the open eye operates uniquely, and perhaps even more astutely, by not using the background of the resulting gua. And meaning may be mined from that more limited perspective, that could be lost when including the resulting gua. I can see that, if that's what Harmen means. Otherwise I'm not sure.

But Law 1 is very interesting. I'm seeing how their both kinda saying a similar thing. Reminds me of 35, three times something is recognized. Not saying recognized the same way or as being or meaning the same thing.

Look forward to 3 - 10.

 

[elvis]

There are differences between instances and classes. A class is a regular pattern that is vague enough to lack colouring of some local context but is repeated to form a universal and as such spans seconds as it does centuries/millenia etc - it all comes down to the SCALE covering the instance and so interpretation.

OTOH the concept of an instance maps a situation to a moment and as such is independent of any previous or future instances and so reflecting the uniqueness of that instance (standard probability - each moment is unique (e.g .1 in 2 chance) and so no accumulation of probabilities etc). The problem here is any reflection on that instance is a reflection on a moment that is past and no longer applicable as a new instance(s) has(ve) already occured! In the IC on the other hand the building of a hexagram is based on building meaning an instance at a time to summing of six instances of yang/yin assessment OR is it interpretable as an instance being the moment of hexagram creation?

If an instance maps to a moment and as such is 'meaningless' outside of that context, what to do? I can get a hexagram five times in a row but the meaning such would generate (as in 'this must be significant') is in fact FALSE and as such makes all such forms of enquiry meaningless other than covering 'afterthoughts' (as in 'what was THAT moment about?').

From the perspective of general meaning generation we have the Chaos Game, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_game , where such is extendable to ANY containment of noise and that includes our sensory systems/brain. What it shows is classes of meanings spontaneously generate when noise is contained. These classes are developed in that container such that they elicit responses to 'like' noise that enters the container - IOW we see emerge resonance where some pattern 'out here' resonates with the classes formed 'in here'.

As for traditional 'moving lines' they in fact reflect dodecagrams (12 line symbols) compressed into six lines with each line having four choices rather than two (but when decompressed give us 12 line symbols of two choices but with an added temporal element in the ORDER of the pair of lines that map to the hexagram's changing line)

By identifying the possible CLASSES of meanings we can identify what elicits resonance with 'out there' regardless of the time period we allocate to an instance - IOW scale issues comes into consideration with instances as does the methodology of deriving an instance - be it through random means or external-source means or reasoned means.

The 'best fit' therefore of identifying a situation and its development (and so move us into considering foresight not just afterthought/hindsight) is in having a copy of 'out there' 'in here' and so allowing for resonance regardless of temporal or spatial scale.

 

[hmesker]

While I’m unlikely ever to call anything to do with the Yi a ‘law’ (there’s a distinct shortage of rules graven on stone tablets for divination)

You are right, when it comes to the Yi there are no laws, and I thought of calling them 'suggestions', 'guidelines' or something similar. But if you call them laws they become larger - as if it is a major offense not to abide by them. As 'suggestions' you can glance at them without thinking. As 'laws' they can make you feel uneasy, and you have to think about the 'laws' you personally use, and if they align with my 'laws'. Of course they are not laws. But if you consider them that way, are you capable of breaking them? If you can do that you have made a choice and you are defining your own path (and the 'laws' the accompany you), and nothing can be more rewarding. But many Yi-students just 'do' without knowing what they do, and why. I like to wag their fundaments a little.

A related and trickier question: when you receive the same hexagram three times, should you assume that you have three connected, related answers, and Yi is pointing out a connection between your questions?

That is possible, and my 'law' doesn't gainsay that. The fact that there might be a connection does not mean the hexagram has to be interpreted in the same manner.

Or if you form a strong personal association between, say, Hexagram 53 and marriage, is it reasonable to assume that when you ask a work question and receive Hexagram 53, this is a reminder to consider your marriage?

Yes, this is reasonable, but even then it doesn't have to mean that hexagram 53 always has to do with marriage. You said it right, "when we receive that same hexagram again, we still need to go read it afresh as a new response". But I have seen that especially those who are using the Yijing for many years are hardly capable of doing that. Say to them that you have received hexagram 47 and within a second they will tell you what it means, without thinking about it. That is one aspect my 'law' warns against.

(For example, there have been a couple of occasions when I’ve spent a long time thinking about a reading’s primary hexagram, finally asked a clarifying question, and received in response, with no lines changing, the relating hexagram from the original reading. I imagine the oracle speaking to me extra – slowly – and – clearly…)

Yet I think the same hexagram can have two different meanings here because the 'clarifying question' can not be discarded, and the second instance of the hexagram is an answer to that specific question and should be regarded as such. The same hexagram can give an explanation why you needed to ask a clarifying question - what keeps you from seeing the answer from the Yi that forces you to ask a 'clarifying question'? This question should be answered, otherwise you will not learn from it.

As far as I know – which is nowhere near as far as Harmen knows – line texts have been described in terms of the hexagram they lead to for a long time. 39 line 3 is 39 zhi 8, 39’s 8. Impossible to tell from this, of course, whether or not this implied that people would actually go on to read Hexagram 8.

According to Rutt they did not do that. What is also interesting is that during the Warring States Period there seems to have been the practice to obtain two hexagrams; we see this in the Baoshan divination slips but sometimes also in Shang bone inscriptions, and Zhou bronze inscriptions. However, at the moment it is not sure if there is a relation between the two hexagrams.

More important for me is what I find works in divination, which is that if you receive 39.3 changing to 8, you have received the combination of both hexagrams, and the relationship and ‘conversation’ that takes place between the two.

What I find interesting in this is that you actually did not receive hexagram 8 - you personally change hexagram 39 into 8, it is your choice to do that. I never use the resulting hexagram, it is of no importance to me and it would distract me from the initial answer. I never miss it. In other words, it is a personal choice to work with them or not. It is not necessarily a part of Yi's answer. And that is what I - albeit a bit clumsy - tried to tell with this second 'law'.

If Harmen finds that this second, relating hexagram often draws people’s attention, that would be because it tends to describe them: where they are, how they relate to the situation, what the reading is about for them. In this case, the reading was about a woman’s strong desire to leave an environment where she was struggling and move back home to her family and friends.

This may be so, but it doesn't deny the fact that she immediately jumped to hexagram 8 while in my opinion she should have looked at hexagram 39 a bit more.

‘Going on, limping; coming back, turnaround.’

- endorsing her desire to change direction and go home, as the readers on her thread agreed.

Exactly, the other readers looked at the initial hexagram, but the querent did not. That's the point I was trying to make.

After she skimmed over her first reading, she was given a second answer that carried the same message, clear as day.

No, it was not 'clear as day', she let others tell here what to do, instead of figuring it out herself. In my opinion that is not how the Yi should be used. You should give yourself the time to not understand the answer. Insights don't always come at the time you want. The answer is not a fixed moment in time but part of a process. If you can leave the answer for what it is for a while, then it can have more implications than when you immediately demand an understanding. Why are so many users always in a hurry?

Looking forward to your comments on the other 'laws'.

 

[hmesker]

What I get is that by covering one eye, the open eye operates uniquely, and perhaps even more astutely, by not using the background of the resulting gua. And meaning may be mined from that more limited perspective, that could be lost when including the resulting gua. I can see that, if that's what Harmen means.

In a way, yes. But my main point is that the resulting hexagram is not a 'law' , you can do without if it does not hold meaning for you (which is the case with me). In my opinion it is not part of Yi's answer.

 

[meng]

I'll have to pay attention to the change in practical meanings this practice has. It definitely complicates the focus to include extension of the results of change lines, rather than taking change lines at face value.

Thing is, they're all linked anyway. It's just that some links are more obvious than others, such as creating a hexagram from the changes in the first hexagram. I can agree, there's no law there that one must do that.

From there, there's extension to Fan Yao, and the "zig-zag" (my name, not his) method of tracing, Brad uses. They, theoretically at least, are all linked and traceable in any direction. It's just a matter of how you want to trace those links, and how much emphasis you give them in a reading. Your way sounds like an essential method. Flavor to taste, but keep it essential.

 

[hilary]

Harmen! Good to see you marginally-less-passive here . And agreed, calling them 'laws' is a good attention-grabbing move.

No, it was not 'clear as day', she let others tell her what to do, instead of figuring it out herself. In my opinion that is not how the Yi should be used. You should give yourself the time to not understand the answer. Insights don't always come at the time you want. The answer is not a fixed moment in time but part of a process. If you can leave the answer for what it is for a while, then it can have more implications than when you immediately demand an understanding. Why are so many users always in a hurry?

You know, I agree with more or less every word, especially giving yourself the time to not understand the answer. There's a beginner's misconception that I spend a lot of time trying to eradicate:
'I asked, I don't understand the answer, so it didn't work/ I did it wrong.'
This is not always down to being in a hurry, but rather to a lack of confidence.

And yet - while agreeing - I notice that in fact Yi answered anyway, including in that second reading she 'shouldn't' have cast. This makes me wonder what I'm doing pronouncing on 'should's.

Thing is, they're all linked anyway.

Yup. Which means you can't read 39.3 without 8 being present one way or another. It's 'part of the answer' in the sense that these connections are built into the meanings of the lines. Arguably, fan yao and qian yao connections are also built into the meaning of the lines - sometimes more visibly than others.

As you say, it's a question of how - or how far - you want to trace the links. Stephen K, nowadays, seems to have 'downgraded' the relating hexagram somewhat, to just one among many that are linked from the received hexagram pairs, nuclears, complements et al. For me it's still uniquely important among that web of connections, an intrinsic part of the change.

I should get back to at least some of the remaining 7 'laws' .

 

[hilary]

There is interesting - heated, but interesting - reading in the blog comments on this post, too.

 

[Sparhawk]

Interesting discussion...

 

[meng]

I've done a couple readings, and have tried to ignore the resulting/relating hex as part of the essential answer. It's like getting an answer but no reason or explanation for it.

 

[bradford]

\heated, but interesting[/URL], too.

Bradford lost it yet again.

When I lay asleep, then did a sheep eat at the ivy-wreath on my head,--it
ate, and said thereby: "Zarathustra is no longer a scholar."
It said this, and went away clumsily and proudly. A child told it to me.
I like to lie here where the children play, beside the ruined wall, among
thistles and red poppies... .
For this is the truth: I have departed from the house of the scholars, and
the door have I also slammed behind me.
Freedom do I love, and the air over fresh soil; rather would I sleep on ox-
skins than on their honours and dignities.
I am too hot and scorched with mine own thought: often is it ready to take
away my breath. Then have I to go into the open air, and away from all
dusty rooms.
But they sit cool in the cool shade: they want in everything to be merely
spectators, and they avoid sitting where the sun burneth on the steps.
Like those who stand in the street and gape at the passers-by: thus do
they also wait, and gape at the thoughts which others have thought.
Should one lay hold of them, then do they raise a dust like flour-sacks,
and involuntarily: but who would divine that their dust came from corn,
and from the yellow delight of the summer fields? ... .
Clever are they--they have dexterous fingers: what doth MY simplicity
pretend to beside their multiplicity! ... .
Good clockworks are they: only be careful to wind them up properly! Then
do they indicate the hour without mistake, and make a modest noise thereby.
They keep a sharp eye on one another, and do not trust each other the best.
Ingenious in little artifices, they wait for those whose knowledge walketh
on lame feet,--like spiders do they wait.
They also know how to play with false dice; and so eagerly did I find them
playing, that they perspired thereby.
We are alien to each other, and their virtues are even more repugnant to my
taste than their falsehoods and false dice.

 

[meng]

Damned wreath eating sheep!

It's weird but bouncing from Brad to Harmen's comments, they seem to be saying something similar but from opposite sides. Both seem to agree that no associations of changing lines and resulting hexagrams can be identified historically with absolutely certainty. The both stand on the shoulders of their heroes, whom they both seem to love and hate.

Harmen quotes:

But I am referring to changing lines as a ‘divinatory practice’, after all, that is what my second ‘law’ was all about. But when I talk about ‘changing lines’ I mean changing (one or more) line(s) in the received hexagram to generate a second hexagram which is viewed as a follow-up of the received hexagram. In other words, ‘changing lines’ as a one-way street: A –> B. This is how ‘changing lines’ are applied today, and this is what I object against.

The general trend over time on this forum has been to view the second hexagram as "the relating hexagram", for pretty much the reason Harmen stated: integration. Brad has called it (if memory serves) "The resulting hexagram", which I think he means quite literally. Is this the crux of your differences, or one of them?

 

[bradford]

The general trend over time on this forum has been to view the second hexagram as "the relating hexagram", for pretty much the reason Harmen stated: integration. Brad has called it (if memory serves) "The resulting hexagram", which I think he means quite literally. Is this the crux of your differences, or one of them?

The meanings for the particle Zhi are incredibly complex and context dependent.
Other meanings from my glossary are below, all valid translations in one context or another. I've used "resultant" in this context to mean "this is what results when the line changes" but not so much "this is the result of your divination and what your future will be." I've tried to say repeatedly, more or less in agreement with Harmen as far as it goes, that this is a directional vector, a pointer, and not the predicted outcome. You can be going Northward without going to the Arctic. But no matter what, I do think it's important to read the Zhi Gua text, at the very least to give your attitude a heads up that might be relevant to the direction you're traveling, or to put on standby a cognitive tool that the path ahead might require.

zhi1 之 0935 962a 4+3 02.0 ...’s, ...s’; this, him, her, it, them; (to) have, has, had, will have (had), come to have; get, hold, keep, maintain, possess, take (it, this, these); be, (there) is, are, was, were, has/have been, become(s), will be, going to be, will have been (the, one of, that of, those of) or (one to, this to, that to) or (one who, they who, those who, that which, those which) or (for, to, in, of); come to, approach, arrive at, attain to, come into, extend to, fulfill, go (to, towards), lead to/into, leave for, move to, proceed to, reach, resort to, result in, verge on (having, being, coming, going); has/have come to be/have/hold; refer to, consider, hold, regard (as, with) (s, ed, ing); (having, being, coming, going) (s, ed, ing); (is, are, was, were, will be) about, among, around, as, at, by, during, for, from, in, of, on, over, through, to, towards, when, with, within, (one’s, his, her, its, their) (own); or (one, him, her, it, this, that, objects, a thing, things, something, them, they, these, the following, such, thus, same, here, what, that which, this one, such a one, such as these, this one, the others, someone, somebody) or (oneself, himself, herself, itself, themselves); (a, the) outcome, result (s); (to be) resultant, final; in regard to; is this? are these?; this/that to/for; as long as, finally; -ly; genitive and attributive particle.