Harmen Mesker's trigram-focused approach to readings?

[liquidity]

What do people think of Harmen Mesker's approach to readings, which focus heavily on trigrams?

I've only looked at his Youtube channel, but this is what I get from it.

While he values the text of Yi, it seems not to be the primary thing he looks at, and he seems to suggest that the text is not even absolutely necessary.

He seems to do his readings like this:

The lower trigram of the hexagram is "yourself" and the upper trigram is the object/situation. The trigrams suggest how each should be -- i.e. in hexagram 36, you are told to be like Fire/Li in dealing with yourself (e.g. focusing on light and clarity, relationship, outward form, commitmment/clinging), and to be Receptive/Kun in dealing with the outer situation...

If there are moving lines, they suggest an 'imbalance' in the trigram that can be fixed by the trigram which it becomes. E.g. in 36.2, fire is unbalanced (unbalanced qualities of fire might include being excessively/destructively attached, concentrating too much on outward appearance as opposed to substance, etc.)... here the imbalance can be remedied by Heaven/Qian qualities... i.e. vision, leadership, creativity, goal-oriented direction, etc.

He also looks at nuclear trigrams and what is preventing them from manifesting (which may be either a good or a bad thing) by the trigrams formed by the lines above and below them. E.g. the first nuclear trigram in 36 is Water/Kan... which is obstructed from manifesting by Thunder/Zhen (the two broken lines above, the solid line below).

And that seems to form the heart of the reading.

Thoughts on this approach? If I've misstated/misrepresented his position, too, please let me know...

 

[IrfanK]

I think you've summed up Harmen's approach quite well. I think its really interesting, BUT that it's probably just one tool among many that you could use to understand a reading. Sometimes it really seems to hit the mark, others less so. But it's worth looking at. Also, he's a great story teller with a funny, dry style that makes him fun to listen to. Haha. I think he likes getting a rise out of people, provoking them. He's positively proud of how many thumbs down he got for one of his YouTube shows. Maybe his saying you don't need to look at the text is part of that. I'd love to read his book if he ever gets around to translating it into English!

 

[hilary]

I think you've summed up Harmen's trigram-only method very well - and it is remarkable how much he can 'get' just from trigrams.

However, you don't have to ignore the text in order to benefit from the trigrams. You will normally see people here looking at both together - two parts of a whole. (Along with other things like the shape of the whole hexagram, and all kinds of relationships between different hexagrams.)

 

[liquidity]

I think you've summed up Harmen's approach quite well. I think its really interesting, BUT that it's probably just one tool among many that you could use to understand a reading. Sometimes it really seems to hit the mark, others less so. But it's worth looking at. Also, he's a great story teller with a funny, dry style that makes him fun to listen to. Haha. I think he likes getting a rise out of people, provoking them. He's positively proud of how many thumbs down he got for one of his YouTube shows. Maybe his saying you don't need to look at the text is part of that. I'd love to read his book if he ever gets around to translating it into English!

Yes, absolutely, he's quite funny!

 

[liquidity]

I think you've summed up Harmen's trigram-only method very well - and it is remarkable how much he can 'get' just from trigrams.

However, you don't have to ignore the text in order to benefit from the trigrams. You will normally see people here looking at both together - two parts of a whole. (Along with other things like the shape of the whole hexagram, and all kinds of relationships between different hexagrams.)

Absolutely. I've been experimenting more with trigram stuff. For quite a while now I'd been mostly very focused on the text... the trigrams just didn't speak to me the same way. But now I'm finding that's changing, and I'm enjoying trigram interpretation more. There's a certain flexibility there that allows one to go beyond the text, while, as you say, not neglecting the text either.

How much value do you find in the shape of the hexagram/relationships between different hexes, etc.? Is that very important to you in your readings?

 

[Freedda]

What do people think of Harmen Mesker's approach to readings, which focus heavily on trigrams?

I quite like looking at the imagery of the trigrams. I have taken Harmen's online workshop ‘The Power of the Hexagrams’ - a new session of this course is starting this week, and I've linked to it here.

I found using the trigrams really helpful in working with the Yi. However, I'm now taking another online course with Harmen, 'the Mystery of the Text' which focuses on working with the text of the Zhouyi (the hexagram and line statements).

In some respects this feels like a completely opposite approach - reading the text versus working with the trigrams. However for me, both of these courses and approaches have two important things in common:

1) Both emphasize exploring and working with the Xiang (shang) the images and imagery - which you can find in both the text and the hexagrams / trigrams. For me this feels like a core message in Harmen's approach. And ....

2) Harmen always says that he is sharing his 'guidelines' but that there are no 'rules' in working with oracles like the Yi. In this text course he has asked us to work with the text in certain ways (the guidelines), but this is mainly so we can get a better sense of what he's sharing with us. If we later want to branch out, or apply what he's sharing differently, or reject it entirely, we should feel free to do so.

PS - a few of us in the current course have asked about combining working with the text and working with the trigram images. Harmen said that of course we can do that.

All the best ...

 

[IrfanK]

How much value do you find in the shape of the hexagram/relationships between different hexes, etc.? Is that very important to you in your readings?

Some of them the shape is really important for me. Like 20, Guan (Watching). Two yang lines above four yin, it looks like a watch tower. That's how I remember it, if you say "wind over earth" it doesn't click for me until I construct the image in my head. 21, Shi He (Biting Through) looks like a mouth biting through something.

But others it's much more about the relationship between the trigrams (a big thunderstorm for Resolution, or bad air trapped below a mountain for Corruption). For others, it's a bit more mathematical, all about relationships between yin lines gathered around a strong ruling line, or correspondences between lines in different positions.

Maybe different people see each one differently, there's often more than one way of coming to the same conclusion. That's why I think Harmen's ideas are really useful, but at the same time, you don't have to take it to extremes. I actually don't think he thinks you should either. Maybe he's really just against the idea that the hexagram is just some kind of useful filing system that helps you find the text and nothing more. He makes a joke somewhere on one of his clips about I Ching users really love reading.

 

[hilary]

How much value do you find in the shape of the hexagram/relationships between different hexes, etc.? Is that very important to you in your readings?

Yes - hexagram relationships, especially, are woven into how I understand hexagrams and lines.

For example, hexagram pairs - 1 with 2, 3 with 4 etc. I was talking through Hexagram 52 with someone yesterday, and I naturally found myself talking about how it responds to Hexagram 51. There's Shock, upheaval, lots of running round in panicked reaction, and then you need Stilling. (So often, 'not seeing your people' feels like very weird advice, and putting the hexagram in this context helps to understand that.) Tomorrow I'll be talking to someone about Hexagram 41, and I expect I'm going to be describing Hexagram 42 as well, because those two are part of a cycle.

Then there are zhi gua, and the single steps of the Sequence, and then more obscure things like nuclear hexagrams, the bigger patterns in the Sequence, complementary hexagrams... it's all part of how Yi makes meaning.

The shape of the hexagram... much as Irfan was saying, it leaps to the eye more in some hexagrams than others. Some (eg 62) work as pictures, some (eg 61) immediately jump out at me as 'energy diagrams', through the overall shape as well as the interaction of the trigrams.

 

[dobro p]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but it embodies ideas that I've been considering, and rather than reinvent the wheel...

My impression is the meanings/images for each hexagram (the overall hexagram meaning and the individual line meanings) were arrived at using a handful of principles. However, the same principles weren't all used every time for each hexagram, and certainly not consistently. It wasn't a systematic, comprehensive, mechanistic approach, in other words. The sage(s) just drew on these principles as they suggested themselves in order to arrive at a range of usable meanings for the oracle.

What do I mean by handful of principles? Things like trigram meaning and relation, relation of type of line to its position (and/or in the context of overall hexagram meaning), the meaning of the hexagram it's paired with, hexagram shape, preponderance/scarcity of yin or yang lines. Have I missed anything? (From where I'm sitting, the jury's still out on nuclear hexagrams - although I know for a fact that considering nuclear hexagrams can be useful when consulting, I am much less convinced that meanings were assigned to hexagrams based on that. I am, however, completely happy to be shown how wrong I am on this one. )

What do I mean by the principles weren't used consistently for each hexagram? Well, for example, not only does 27 look like an open mouth (hexagram shape) but the action of the trigrams suggests the action of a rigid upper jaw and a moving lower jaw (trigram meaning). By contrast, I'd say that 24 derives its meaning, not from its shape, but primarily from the appearance of the single yang line at the bottom in the context of all the other lines being yin. Shape's unimportant here because the idea is more abstract - the cycle of time/season/energetics. Conclusion: the same principles weren't applied in assigning meaning to these hexagrams.

Whatcha think? The meanings aren't arrived at systematically, they were arrived at by a process of symbol association using a handful of principles. In other words, looking for patterns is fun and useful, even, but if you really want the richest experience when consulting the oracle, develop a rich repertoire of associations and meanings for each hexagram, each line, pretty much case by case.

Phew. Sorry about the length - I've been mulling this one for a while.

 

[IrfanK]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but it embodies ideas that I've been considering, and rather than reinvent the wheel...

My impression is the meanings/images for each hexagram (the overall hexagram meaning and the individual line meanings) were arrived at using a handful of principles. However, the same principles weren't all used every time for each hexagram, and certainly not consistently. It wasn't a systematic, comprehensive, mechanistic approach, in other words. The sage(s) just drew on these principles as they suggested themselves in order to arrive at a range of usable meanings for the oracle.

What do I mean by handful of principles? Things like trigram meaning and relation, relation of type of line to its position (and/or in the context of overall hexagram meaning), the meaning of the hexagram it's paired with, hexagram shape, preponderance/scarcity of yin or yang lines. Have I missed anything? (From where I'm sitting, the jury's still out on nuclear hexagrams - although I know for a fact that considering nuclear hexagrams can be useful when consulting, I am much less convinced that meanings were assigned to hexagrams based on that. I am, however, completely happy to be shown how wrong I am on this one. )

What do I mean by the principles weren't used consistently for each hexagram? Well, for example, not only does 27 look like an open mouth (hexagram shape) but the action of the trigrams suggests the action of a rigid upper jaw and a moving lower jaw (trigram meaning). By contrast, I'd say that 24 derives its meaning, not from its shape, but primarily from the appearance of the single yang line at the bottom in the context of all the other lines being yin. Shape's unimportant here because the idea is more abstract - the cycle of time/season/energetics. Conclusion: the same principles weren't applied in assigning meaning to these hexagrams.

Whatcha think? The meanings aren't arrived at systematically, they were arrived at by a process of symbol association using a handful of principles. In other words, looking for patterns is fun and useful, even, but if you really want the richest experience when consulting the oracle, develop a rich repertoire of associations and meanings for each hexagram, each line, pretty much case by case.

Phew. Sorry about the length - I've been mulling this one for a while.

Yaaaaaaa. None of the rules apply all the time to all of the hexagrams. Sometimes they help to explain a few of them, either to a greater or lesser extent. Even people who don't usually give a second thought to the idea of an appropriate place for broken and solid lines seem to think it works for 63 and 64. On the other hand, it's hard to ignore the shape created by the lines for 50. And the story of the tree pushing up through the earth is a delightful image for 46. And so on.

 

[Liselle]

not only does 27 look like an open mouth (hexagram shape) but the action of the trigrams suggests the action of a rigid upper jaw and a moving lower jaw (trigram meaning).

Well that bit of obviousness finally clicked with me, thank you! Mountain over thunder.

 

[hilary]

What do I mean by handful of principles? Things like trigram meaning and relation, relation of type of line to its position (and/or in the context of overall hexagram meaning), the meaning of the hexagram it's paired with, hexagram shape, preponderance/scarcity of yin or yang lines. Have I missed anything?

Probably not, depending what you mean by hexagram shape, which turns out to give rise not just to mental images but to character images: https://onlineclarity.co.uk/friends/index.php?threads/blog-post-hexagrams-as-pictures.34461/ .

I don't think line position stuff is relevant, though - it's a more recent invention/discovery (delete ad lib).

To your more general point that there's a mix of principles involved and we're not going to reduce it to a single system - yes, amen, absolutely. Also, there is mystery. They were sages, after all; we're never quite going to retrace their steps.

 

[IrfanK]

I don't think line position stuff is relevant, though - it's a more recent invention/discovery (delete ad lib).

I must say, I don't get that. I find your approach to the Yi extremely inclusive. You seem to find something of value in almost all the major ideas about the Yi, and quite a few of the minor ones -- with the one exception that line position seems to leave you cold.

It's not really that recent. It's all over the Da Zhuan, and that wasn't exactly written yesterday. And it's certainly not as recent as some of the stuff Karcher has come up with, and you don't mind that.

I was thinking about that just the other day when I got 60.4, and couldn't get much of a feeling for it.

Contented limitation. Success.

And then I looked up Wilhelm's book three:

The success of contented limitation comes from accepting the way of the one above.

This correct, yielding line is in the relationship of receiving to the ruler. It adapts itself contentedly to its position, hence gains success by joining with the line above, the nine in the fifth place, which it follows.

And that seemed to me to be a very useful, convincing way of looking at the idea of contented limitation, something that you could use in a reading. Anyway, it seemed to work for my reading. The idea of being content with a subordinate position, serving something bigger than yourself.

Well, we all have stuff that we find useful and otherwise. I never found much in the sequence, for example, although I really like pairs.

 

[hilary]

I never found much in the sequence, for example,

Philistine!

Dobro's question was about how people arrived at the meanings of hexagrams and lines originally, which is not the same as what might help us to understand them now. Whole other kettle of fish.

It's true that I'm not inspired by the 'correctness' stuff, formulaically applied, but I appreciate the more dynamic ideas of relationships between lines. I think 45.4 has to be 'great good fortune' because it's supporting line 5, for instance.

 

[dobro p]

Irfan said: "Well, we all have stuff that we find useful and otherwise. I never found much in the sequence, for example, although I really like pairs."

^ This. (That makes two Philistines, then.)

However, the fact that the Yi starts with 1 and 2, and winds up with 63 and 64 - that's a thing of beauty.

 

[IrfanK]

Dobro's question was about how people arrived at the meanings of hexagrams and lines originally, which is not the same as what might help us to understand them now. Whole other kettle of fish.

Oh. Ah. Well, I like ancient cave paintings. Great fun speculating what might have been going in people's heads when they were doing them. All sorts of clever theories about it. It's fun asking questions about stuff to which you'll never know the answer.

 

[hilary]

It's fun asking questions about stuff to which you'll never know the answer.

It is!