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hilary
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Words of Radical Change
Half an idea about the third line of Hexagram 49, Radical Change –
Overall, this is telling us that radical change isn’t something you get at once, like flicking a switch. You can’t just march out and make it happen, fixing the world to be as you think it should. Ousting the old regime – not least one’s own internalised ‘government’ – takes time.
The line changes to Hexagram 17, Following: you can’t force this, but need to go along with the reality, respecting the way things naturally unfold. Also, you are creating compliance – another meaning of Following: a willingness to go along with the change.
The idea is somewhat similar to the three days before and after the seed day in the Oracle of Hexagram 18 –
…except that one (along with its echo over in 57.5) speaks of a number of days to prepare and to wait. Overthrowing the old specifically takes three installments of words. These can be outer or inner words, I’ve found: talking it over, or thinking it over, or both, to catch up mentally with the idea and find a new consensus.
Now… if you had to pick one trigram to represent words, which would you choose?
I suggest dui, the lake:
In the Shuogua‘s lists of trigram attributes and associations, it’s ‘mouth and tongue’; bring two lakes together, and their Image is:
And so this gets me looking around 49’s neighbouring hexagrams in the Sequence for lakes.
There are two options: we can look forward, or back. Looking forward, there are lakes in hexagrams 54, 58 (admittedly, there are two there, which rather spoils the count), 60 – and then in Hexagram 61, Inner Truth. Its name, zhong fu, 中孚, contains that same word translated as ‘truth and confidence’ in 49.3.
I think looking back makes more sense, though. That way, you find your three lakes in consecutive hexagram pairs, 47, 45 and 43 – and all of them in the upper trigram, out in the world, making themselves heard – followed by a fourth lake in Hexagram 49, where ‘on your own day, there is truth and confidence.’
Also, the words are said to draw near three times, and to my ear that sounds more like words coming up towards this hexagram through the Sequence than travelling on away from it. (Of course, this doesn’t mean that when you receive this line the words have already gone the rounds three times so you can forge ahead. It might mean it’s a good idea to pause and look back through the Sequence.)
The word for ‘drawing near’ is 就 jiu, and this is it’s only appearance in the book. It means to come near, move towards, reach, complete, and also to follow, accompany or accommodate to. The character breaks down into two components: a capital city or very tall building 京, and a character 尤 meaning, really, especially, which apparently originally showed a hand with a wart or injury.
Now, the ‘capital city’ component is no relation of the ‘city’ in the Oracle of 43, and the component showing a hand and a mark is not the same as the hand holding up the token in the name of 43, so I suppose if that reminds me irresistibly of Hexagram 43, I shouldn’t set too much store by this.
But… these three hexagrams make very good sense to me as ‘words drawing near three times’.
The message of revolution was first brought in 43, when dui emerged as outer trigram after it had formed at the foot of the mountain in Hexagram 41.
Then it’s gathered together in Hexagram 45, where it’s no longer the voice of a single conviction but rather the ‘pooled’ resources and identity of all the people gathered at the temple. And in Hexagram 47, words are not yet trusted, but flow inward to merge with the great person’s own inner currents, since mandate and aspiration are made of the same element in the end:
Half an idea about the third line of Hexagram 49, Radical Change –
Overall, this is telling us that radical change isn’t something you get at once, like flicking a switch. You can’t just march out and make it happen, fixing the world to be as you think it should. Ousting the old regime – not least one’s own internalised ‘government’ – takes time.
The line changes to Hexagram 17, Following: you can’t force this, but need to go along with the reality, respecting the way things naturally unfold. Also, you are creating compliance – another meaning of Following: a willingness to go along with the change.
The idea is somewhat similar to the three days before and after the seed day in the Oracle of Hexagram 18 –
…except that one (along with its echo over in 57.5) speaks of a number of days to prepare and to wait. Overthrowing the old specifically takes three installments of words. These can be outer or inner words, I’ve found: talking it over, or thinking it over, or both, to catch up mentally with the idea and find a new consensus.
Now… if you had to pick one trigram to represent words, which would you choose?
I suggest dui, the lake:
In the Shuogua‘s lists of trigram attributes and associations, it’s ‘mouth and tongue’; bring two lakes together, and their Image is:
And so this gets me looking around 49’s neighbouring hexagrams in the Sequence for lakes.
There are two options: we can look forward, or back. Looking forward, there are lakes in hexagrams 54, 58 (admittedly, there are two there, which rather spoils the count), 60 – and then in Hexagram 61, Inner Truth. Its name, zhong fu, 中孚, contains that same word translated as ‘truth and confidence’ in 49.3.
I think looking back makes more sense, though. That way, you find your three lakes in consecutive hexagram pairs, 47, 45 and 43 – and all of them in the upper trigram, out in the world, making themselves heard – followed by a fourth lake in Hexagram 49, where ‘on your own day, there is truth and confidence.’
Also, the words are said to draw near three times, and to my ear that sounds more like words coming up towards this hexagram through the Sequence than travelling on away from it. (Of course, this doesn’t mean that when you receive this line the words have already gone the rounds three times so you can forge ahead. It might mean it’s a good idea to pause and look back through the Sequence.)
The word for ‘drawing near’ is 就 jiu, and this is it’s only appearance in the book. It means to come near, move towards, reach, complete, and also to follow, accompany or accommodate to. The character breaks down into two components: a capital city or very tall building 京, and a character 尤 meaning, really, especially, which apparently originally showed a hand with a wart or injury.
Now, the ‘capital city’ component is no relation of the ‘city’ in the Oracle of 43, and the component showing a hand and a mark is not the same as the hand holding up the token in the name of 43, so I suppose if that reminds me irresistibly of Hexagram 43, I shouldn’t set too much store by this.
But… these three hexagrams make very good sense to me as ‘words drawing near three times’.
The message of revolution was first brought in 43, when dui emerged as outer trigram after it had formed at the foot of the mountain in Hexagram 41.
Then it’s gathered together in Hexagram 45, where it’s no longer the voice of a single conviction but rather the ‘pooled’ resources and identity of all the people gathered at the temple. And in Hexagram 47, words are not yet trusted, but flow inward to merge with the great person’s own inner currents, since mandate and aspiration are made of the same element in the end: