Clarity,
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Phone/ Voicemail:
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The hexagram of sequence
This is simply the hexagram that immediately precedes the one you cast in the I Ching. It reveals the roots of your situation, or perhaps something which you will have to acknowledge or work on before you can exploit the current situation’s full potential. Like the contrasting hexagram pairs, the sequence of hexagrams has a Wing to itself, the Xugua. This hexagram can’t be generated from the original one (though it will be the same as the contrasting one 50% of the time, of course) – you have to look it up.
Here’s a blog post on understanding Hexagram 46 in the light of 45, and one on Using the Sequence in readings.
...and the sense of being part of something significant translating into a desire to go somewhere significant, to offer something. The Xugua (Sequence) says,
‘Assembling and moving higher is called pushing upward, and so pushing upward follows.’
This is what is called pushing upward – the sequence follows just from naming the essence of the gathering. There’s a sense that the gathering contains the aspiration within it (‘fruitful to have a direction to go’), and 46 gives it expression. It’s the story we see unfold when a whole group of people all aiming for the same thing starts to move, or when you align your whole self – all the ‘little selves’ – towards a single purpose, and then naturally find yourself in motion. Investing and identifying creates its own momentum.
Receiving Hexagram 46, you look at Hexagram 45 both for this broader sense of story from the Sequence...
This is created from the original hexagram’s inner lines. A hexagram’s lines are numbered, from the bottom upwards, 123456, and the nuclear hexagram is formed from lines 234345. To take an example: with the original hexagram 33:
… then the nuclear hexagram would be #44:
The nuclear hexagram is like a seed in the original hexagram: something held in potential, that might grow. It can be a hidden possibility, or a hidden issue that’s being worked out through the original hexagram.
More on nuclear hexagrams from the blog:
Complementary hexagram
The complement of a hexagram is its mirror image: each broken line is replaced with a solid one, and vice versa. So the opposite of Hexagram 33, Retreating –
… is Hexagram 19, Nearing.
You can imagine how these two together form a yin/yang pair… like the sides of a coin. By showing exactly what your situation isn’t like, this hexagram helps you to understand more closely what it is.
More from the blog on complementary hexagrams:
- Casting the Vessel (a remarkable pattern created by complementary patterns in the Sequence – fully ‘worked out’ in the Sequence article in Change Circle)
- Pushing Upward, step 4 (more hexagrams of context)
A quite different kind of ‘not that’ comes from the complementary or opposite hexagram, the one created by changing every line.
Hexagram 25, Without Entanglement, has no line in common with Pushing Upward; nothing could be more different. But of course, seeing them together, that’s not the only thing you notice. You also see how they have the same pattern of lines, and how they fit together like pieces of a jigsaw.
These two are visibly both opposites and complements, and both ways of seeing them help in readings. The opposition is generally easier to observe. Hexagram 46 is wholly committed to striving upward. Hexagram 25 is disentangled. Hexagram 46 can create something good; Hexagram 25 may experience something bad, but knows this is not of its own creation. Basically, if I receive 46 I’m going to be looking for ways I can undertake more, engage more, take it to another level… – and if I receive 25 I’ll be asking myself what I need to put down, to disengage from, to straighten out my relationship with the world. I can do one or other of these things, not both. Simple.
Only… they are also complementary. Seeing them this way is harder – complementarity has something of a koan-like quality to it, I think. I find I will sometimes get a non-verbal sense of how hexagrams are complementary when I’m in the midst of experiencing one. I had that sense of 46-25 once when walking through the woods near our home, with their beautiful mature beech trees. They grow, they draw nourishment upward (standing with them, you can feel the power of that), and their living essence is joined with the creative life of the whole just as 25’s inner trigram, thunder, joins with its outer trigram, heaven. Their dao is natural growth, and that exists simultaneously as 46’s upward striving and 25’s immutable participation in the creative principle.
As I was saying – a non-verbal sense. You might do better to ask the trees directly.
Contrasting Hexagrams
The Sequence of hexagrams in the I Ching is arranged in contrasting pairs. The pair is usually generated by turning the original hexagram upside down. So the contrast to Hexagram 33:
...is Hexagram 34, Great Strength:
Some hexagrams, though, are symmetrical – they are the same if turned upside down. In these cases, the complementary hexagram is also taken as the contrast. For example, the complementary and contrasting hexagram to 30, Clarity –
– is 29, Repeating Chasms:
The contrasting hexagrams are paired in the I Ching – in other words, this is a vital part of its basic structure. They provide a context that helps to define the primary hexagram, often as part of a larger unit of meaning.
This relationship is the subject of the Zagua, one of the Ten Wings of commentary that make the I Ching a classic, which is included in complete translations.
(The moving line was 7.5, the "nope": 'The fields have game. Fruitful to speak of capture: No mistake. When the elder son leads the army, And younger son carts corpses: Constancy, pitfall.' (Hilary's translation.) The game is in the fields: the errands are ripe for doing. Convince myself to "capture" them. Don't cart any corpses that might hinder the operation.)Had errands; didn't want to do errands; asked Yi about oh-so-reasonable rationale for putting off doing errands. Cast reading: 7 to 29. (In other words, "Nope.") Shadows: 58 and 36. There would be no joy (58) in sitting at home, hiding (36) from errand-chaos. I knew from previous such procrastination attempts that I'd just become more and more anxious. Outcome: once I got going, things went pretty well.
Fan Yao (Reverse Line, or Line-Coming-Back) Pairs. These pairs will often share vocabulary elements, cross-references, subjects, or grammatical tone, voice and mood.
The resonant line in the Zhi Gua. This is not part of the Yi’s response, but it may hold clues to the Changing Line’s meaning
This is the Yarrow stalk divination method with a slight difference. (I have posted a primitive version of this description on Clarity Community forum, but I've worked on it in the mean time and I thought I'd share my revolutionary idea again with added colourful diagrams and an analysis of the numbers (to the best of my abilities) . I'm very proud of the tables. They show how the number combinations work inside the sticks when the divisions and counting are performed. It may not be of general interest, but to myself I have always been curious about it, but found it too difficult to work out. This is my first serious attempt to probe the numerology of the yarrow stalks. My study was initiated by the question: Why do we remove a stalk from the right hand bunch after the yarrow stalks have been dividided? Why not from the left hand? Why not from either? Comments and criticism are welcome. My thinking may be full of flaws, and a bit premature, or maybe just superfluous, but I think that the basic theory is sound, and has been thoroughly tested. I hope my writing is clear and easy to understand, and I apologise for mistakes and pompousness. I hope you enjoy reading it.
If you're using an unusual tool or method in your interpretations, one that a newcomer here wouldn't be familiar with, then we ask you to explain it - either in your post, or somewhere you can link to from the post. This is a thread for those explanations!
Please add your tool/ method here, and tell us
If you have a lot to explain, you're welcome to start a new thread in this forum, or link to your own website - whatever works. But this thread should be a useful place to collect the shorter explanations.
- ...what this is / how you find it, with an example or two. (Something like these explanations of nuclear hexagrams and complements.)
- and how you would use it in a reading.
(If you want to discuss a method described here in more depth, please start a new thread for that, so we can keep this one manageable.)
Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).