Dear community members,

do you think it is possible, that a situation or progress shown in your I-Ching cast could come true months or years after you asked? While another is only accurate for the next days? Or let's rather say, did you experience this? I know it is hard to tell, but I would be interested in your opinion.
(I already used the forum search function, found interesting threads regarding the topic, but not really a proper match.)

Best regards and thank you, blackmilk

blackmilk said:

do you think it is possible, that a situation or progress shown in your I-Ching cast could come true months or years after you asked?

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Yea. There are ways to tell, but I doubt I would be able for years. Some people can... Still all is just play of the elements... The years element can prevent something happening... At the right time it can start working... Then if it happens it's more then likely it will happen in the month and day connected to the year(so if it's Xu Dog Year, it may happen in October at 19-21pm etc. since all that is Xu Dog branch).
It can be very precise when used right, however I haven't used it to show years, but it can be used of people with a lot more practice. And it does work very well for months.

Thank you

John Blofeld's Gateway to Wisdom (p. 63-65) has a good anecdote about pondering a hexagram's meaning for many years. Being told by a Daoist to "Take to heart the Hexagram 57 SHUN and you may yet do well," "unlimited meekness." This attitude later saved the man in an encounter with a tiger. His submissiveness caused the tiger to merely lick him instead of attacking!

Thats's a great anecdote and it makes me wanna read this book finally. Thank you

I push the thread because I am still curious if there is someboday who ever received an answer for a question and the result has come to hand years later?

black milk said:

I push the thread because I am still curious if there is someboday who ever received an answer for a question and the result has come to hand years later?

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Yes of course. We can only apprehend a certain scale of time but Yi's answers sometimes over arch that span. Take hexagram 3 line 2. I've seen that literally as 10 years a couple of times. We see the bits of our lives around us now, I think someone described it once like if you pulled a huge chain out of the sea, you may just see a few links of that chain above water the rest is still there but under the sea, well that is how I view our perception of time, our lives are like the few links above the water.

Also as I have a journal of my casts I can see years later how far reaching some of Yi's answers were. Indeed one of the most common causes of misunderstanding I can see via my journals, which I have kept since 1988, is I didn't appreciate how BIG or over -arching the answers were. I might be looking at one little section of the chain where Yi was giving a long term view of the whole thing.

It will depend on how you phrase the question of course though I don't think Yi is tame enough to always sit obediently within the frame of the question. Very small scale questions about a problem today can get small scale specific answers but sometimes if they don't make sense it's worth zooming out, like a camera lens, to see if the answer is wider than anticipated.

There are many answers I still carry with me from years ago and see them unfold gradually or rather my understanding of them unfolds gradually. This may be why I don't mind at all when I don't understand answers, I even like it because I know it's one to carry around with me, to keep in my pocket and look at again.

Thank for your answer Trojina, it helped me a lot!

Yi may answer "When?" questions another way.
(Without resorting to numerology or Feng Shui systems)

Example, "When will I find a love partner?"
(Asked by a forum member who was without a home at the time.)
Answer: 37.2
After you are in your new home.

Example, "When will this thing happen?"
Answer 8.6
(After the leader is gone.)

Once, I asked I-Ching if it can see the future "for sure".
The answer was...
20.2 "Only a partial view"