Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).
bluejay
visitor
- Joined
- Mar 27, 2017
- Messages
- 17
- Reaction score
- 7
Gua 50 Ding has come up for me a few times over the past 6 months. But this is the first time I've ever received an unchanging hexagram, and it was Ding, the three-legged bronze sacrificial Vessel. It kind of makes me feel excited haha.
I've recently finished travelling for an extended period of time, and am now visiting my parents for some time while organising the next part of my life, looking for jobs, deciding what I want to do. I mostly travelled with my best friend from university, which means we lived together almost everyday for close to five years by the time we parted ways, from the beginning of university (a big beginning) until now. To me, this signified the end of an era in my life. I have always travelled, all through my childhood, which broke it up into three or four year segments when I lived in different countries. But this five years was different, because it was not attached to a place but to a person. So that made this feeling of being "the end of an era" much stronger.
As I'm now essentially in Limbo, I decided to ask the Changes what it thought the next moon cycle would bring, having consulted it the night of the new moon. It returned with 50 unchanging.
Now to me Ding represents the archetype of alchemy and transformation. It's the hexagram for the refinement of both the self and civilisation. A sacred vessel, not for everyday use. It holds the offerings, the sacrifice, the transformations. However the character 鼎 also means "grasping the new", in the sense of establishing a new order based on a firm foundation (the Ding's tripod legs).
Ding is also a symbol of the emergent properties found in a whole -- how varied ingredients come together in a meal, transmuted alchemically into a seamless dish. This includes a sense of nourishment, not onliny in the image of a food vessel, but in feeding of wood to fire, and the process of producing a Ding through metalworking.
Ding, as a hexagram, is both the occasion for transformation (wood into fire), and the space for it (the hexagram forms the image of a Ding). The advice here -- "correct one's position and gather together one's circumstances" (Xiang) -- shows that it's a time for establishing the right context for "destiny" to manifest, finding a nourishing position and gathering together all the ingredients for the right circumstances to emerge.
With it's partner Gua 49: 革Gé, Shedding Skin, the story is that part where the Shang dynasty is overthrown. Ding represents founding the new one.
So keeping all that in mind, the next month will be an auspicious and important one for me. Really, I already knew that. After all, I branded last month as the "end of an era". It follows that this moon cycle would be the beginning of a new. Yet, once again the Changes is offering me some advice that I already knew deep down, but which needed teasing out through this processing.
First, "the sagely person sacrifices to the Most High, and so gains great fulfilment from nourishing the holy and worthy". (Tuanzhuan) Here the Changes are reminding me of what's truly important, what's at stake at this critical crossroads of my life. Any sacrifices I do make in the next month (or ever really) must first pass through this filter. In turn, I will only ever find great fulfilment by nourishing the holy and worthy within me and my life. These two are mutually inclusive -- sacrifice oneself to the most High, and nourish the holy and worthy within and without: that is how to be truly and deeply fulfilled.
Essentially, if Ding is the beginning, the transformation from an end to a new, then it's also sowing the seeds for the coming time. Meaning that the Changes are asking me "How are you going to start this next 'era'? What standard will you set?"
Supreme fulfilment, in turn, will come from following the advice and actualising the hexagram itself. Xun below, Li above: "through gentle penetration, clarity will manifest". "The yielding advances and rises" (bottom line). "It attains the centre" (line 5, hexagram ruler). (Tuanzhuan) This puts it in correspondence, in harmony, and so there is superlative fulfilment. That is the way forward advised here. Nothing concrete, but nonetheless a way forward, a way to refinement and transmutation. Anyway, we'll see how the rest of the month progresses.
I've recently finished travelling for an extended period of time, and am now visiting my parents for some time while organising the next part of my life, looking for jobs, deciding what I want to do. I mostly travelled with my best friend from university, which means we lived together almost everyday for close to five years by the time we parted ways, from the beginning of university (a big beginning) until now. To me, this signified the end of an era in my life. I have always travelled, all through my childhood, which broke it up into three or four year segments when I lived in different countries. But this five years was different, because it was not attached to a place but to a person. So that made this feeling of being "the end of an era" much stronger.
As I'm now essentially in Limbo, I decided to ask the Changes what it thought the next moon cycle would bring, having consulted it the night of the new moon. It returned with 50 unchanging.
Now to me Ding represents the archetype of alchemy and transformation. It's the hexagram for the refinement of both the self and civilisation. A sacred vessel, not for everyday use. It holds the offerings, the sacrifice, the transformations. However the character 鼎 also means "grasping the new", in the sense of establishing a new order based on a firm foundation (the Ding's tripod legs).
Ding is also a symbol of the emergent properties found in a whole -- how varied ingredients come together in a meal, transmuted alchemically into a seamless dish. This includes a sense of nourishment, not onliny in the image of a food vessel, but in feeding of wood to fire, and the process of producing a Ding through metalworking.
Ding, as a hexagram, is both the occasion for transformation (wood into fire), and the space for it (the hexagram forms the image of a Ding). The advice here -- "correct one's position and gather together one's circumstances" (Xiang) -- shows that it's a time for establishing the right context for "destiny" to manifest, finding a nourishing position and gathering together all the ingredients for the right circumstances to emerge.
With it's partner Gua 49: 革Gé, Shedding Skin, the story is that part where the Shang dynasty is overthrown. Ding represents founding the new one.
So keeping all that in mind, the next month will be an auspicious and important one for me. Really, I already knew that. After all, I branded last month as the "end of an era". It follows that this moon cycle would be the beginning of a new. Yet, once again the Changes is offering me some advice that I already knew deep down, but which needed teasing out through this processing.
First, "the sagely person sacrifices to the Most High, and so gains great fulfilment from nourishing the holy and worthy". (Tuanzhuan) Here the Changes are reminding me of what's truly important, what's at stake at this critical crossroads of my life. Any sacrifices I do make in the next month (or ever really) must first pass through this filter. In turn, I will only ever find great fulfilment by nourishing the holy and worthy within me and my life. These two are mutually inclusive -- sacrifice oneself to the most High, and nourish the holy and worthy within and without: that is how to be truly and deeply fulfilled.
Essentially, if Ding is the beginning, the transformation from an end to a new, then it's also sowing the seeds for the coming time. Meaning that the Changes are asking me "How are you going to start this next 'era'? What standard will you set?"
Supreme fulfilment, in turn, will come from following the advice and actualising the hexagram itself. Xun below, Li above: "through gentle penetration, clarity will manifest". "The yielding advances and rises" (bottom line). "It attains the centre" (line 5, hexagram ruler). (Tuanzhuan) This puts it in correspondence, in harmony, and so there is superlative fulfilment. That is the way forward advised here. Nothing concrete, but nonetheless a way forward, a way to refinement and transmutation. Anyway, we'll see how the rest of the month progresses.