Your reading

what does this post nourish in my favorie hyper-realist?

Your reading resulted in the following hexagrams:

	changing to
22		2

Hexagram 22, Beauty

Key Questions

How can you make the essence visible to others?
What do you choose to communicate?

Oracle

'Beauty. Creating success.
Small yield from having a direction to go.'

This is about natural beauty, like the beauty of a plant, whose form is the perfect, simple expression of its nature. It's also about the way people create images to communicate something of a person's or thing's inner nature.

This becomes a fruitful way to engage with the world when you have a purpose in mind – like someone who becomes a suitor for the sake of his bride, or a figure of authority for the sake of those she teaches. This is an image created for the sake of communication and relationship, as a first step towards a chosen destination.

Yet it only bears a 'small yield' because it is only a first, small step. Becoming something for someone is not sufficient to bring about significant results on its own – it's not the same as wholehearted conviction, or ultimate fulfilment. No created image could ever express a whole person.

So this is not a time to concentrate on results: it's a time for imaginative, lively exploration of beautiful ways the essence could flower and be seen.

Image

'Below the mountain is fire: Beauty.
A noble one brings light to the many standards, but does not venture to pass judgement.'

Sequence

Beauty follows from Hexagram 21, Biting Through:
'Things cannot carelessly unite and be completed, and so Beauty follows. Beauty means adorning.'

Changing Lines

Hexagram 2, Earth

Key Questions

How are you being guided?
How can you lend your strength?

Oracle

'Earth.
From the source, creating success.
The constancy of a mare bears fruit.
A noble one has a direction to go.
At first, confusion. Later, gains a master.
Fruitful in the southwest, gaining partners.
In the northeast, losing partners.
Peaceful constancy brings good fortune.'

Earth is first described in the same words as the Creative Force of Hexagram 1 because they are partners in the flow of creation. Creation unfolds from the original vital energy, creating success with an ongoing exchange between spirit and daily work, flowing through to fruition – in Earth, through the constancy of a mare.

The mare is strong, tireless and incomparably fast, and she is acutely sensitive to the subtlest cues. When you have a mare's constancy, you will be steadily loyal to the truth, and always alert and responsive to guidance.

The noble one has a direction to go: she is purposeful, she has a destination in mind, but this doesn't mean she has her route to it already mapped out. And so at first there is confusion: you set out like a pioneer, open to all the possibilities, and find them as many as scattered rice-grains. But later, since you have set yourself in motion, you can receive guidance – you 'gain a master'.

A master is someone who lights the way. You gain someone or something to be loyal to, where you can find fulfilment in service. Once you have this guiding principle (which may or may not be a person), you begin to follow signs as fluently as the mare.

The Zhou people sought out allies in the southwest before venturing into the northeast to face the Shang. There is a balance to be found between joining with like-minded people and following your own calling alone – but gaining allies comes first. Perhaps your individual sense of purpose emerges more strongly when you've learned to work responsively with others, like the mare running with the herd.

And when you can spread your senses out to roam southwest and northeast without limit, you will be peacefully at home in the whole earth.

Image

'Power of the land: Earth.
A noble one, with generous character, carries all the beings.'

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