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More Hexagram 2

Yi has been giving me hexagram 2 as relating hexagram for three weeks in succession now – ever since I asked what Mum’s ‘power’ was, and received 2 with no changing lines. (Prior to that, I’d asked why she kept showing up in my dreams with work for me to do, and received 44 moving to 18. Most of the reading I could relate to, but the idea of Mum as ‘powerful woman’ was alien to me at first – hence the question.)

After another few days of house-clearing work, I’m beginning to get more of an idea of how Hexagram 2 power might appear in ordinary life. It manifests, for one thing, as box after box after box filled with neatly-filed pages of notes in Mum’s small, tidy handwriting. She was a teacher, so there were umpteen boxes full of carefully-planned teaching notes. She was a Reader (a kind of lay minister) in the local church, and so there were boxes upon boxes of sermon notes, service notes, duty rotas (you’d be amazed how much work goes into running all the paraphernalia of formal church services), home communion notes, Bible study group notes, confirmation group teaching notes… And then there were theology notes for her studies to become a reader. And more for her MA. And I haven’t even started on the boxes (and boxes, and boxes) of notes for her M Phil (which she completed after her 70th birthday). She edited the parish magazine, and so there was a computer-full of materials for that. (It didn’t just get edited when she did the job: it got laid out neatly, illustrated and proof-read to within an inch of its life.) Going back further, there were the recipe notes for birthday cakes and party games, and the hand-written exercise books for my brother’s reading and writing practice – filled with little stories and illustrations, everything her ingenuity could devise to keep him engaged and concentrating. (Keeping a 6 year old with Down’s Syndrome interested in a writing exercise is tricky.) And, and, and…

(Please understand that I have not run out of examples – or boxes – I just anticipate your patience might be wearing a little thin.)

How is Hexagram 2 a kind of power? She is willing to be guided, and more even than that she is ready and willing to be used – whether by a teaching syllabus, the demands of a church, or the needs of her children. (Even when Mum was doing something ‘for herself’, it would always involve putting herself in a situation to learn and receive guidance.) She gives all she can to whatever she undertakes – and she works with the strength of a horse.

15 responses to More Hexagram 2

  1. Hilary,

    That brought tears to my eyes. Your mother should have been an Anglican priest, except that females could not hold that position. Maybe women “readers” were priestesses in a sense.
    She fulfilled the motherly role with integrity, as can clearly be felt in the tone of your words. It touched me by the contrast with my own mother. My mother embodied the motherly role in places, but her conflicted life did not leave such a graceful testament. Maybe that’s why I keep turning the Kun hexagram over in my mind: to expand the image of motherliness and appreciate what she tried to be.
    I’ll share a story of an uncanny divination regarding Kun. (There have been several.) I was sharing house-sitting duties at a remote house with my friend Roger. Our conversations at dinner unfolded like a tapestry. He told me about leaving Mexico and travelling the world in his youth. (He left because friends of his had been killed by police in a demonstration.)
    It took a couple of months before the subject came around to his mother. She had little education, and she had to keep the family going during her husband’s long absences. She found endless solace doing divination with a simple pack of ordinary cards, but she could never communicate to her precocious, bookish son what fascination she found in those deck of cards. Roger believes that her predisposition must have carried over to him, which is why he found fascination in the I CHING for many years.
    We did a divination, after an afternoon of sharing stories about his mother. It was the first divination we did in our conversations. The answer came up Kun with no changing lines.

  2. Yes – 2 gives pause for thought about mothers. Any individual who matched up would be a candidate for canonisation. (Which Mum wasn’t, on the whole.)

    My Dad died a few years ago, completely unexpectedly. A day or so before, I’d received an answer that was obviously unrelated to my question, and I didn’t know what to make of it until I heard about the death. It was 1, unchanging.

    BTW, the C of E does have women priests.

  3. ***A day or so before, I’d received an answer that was obviously unrelated to my question, and I didn’t know what to make of it until I heard about the death.***

    And that’s precisely the reason I don’t consult the Yi as often as most people. In the past the Yi has made me feel specially targeted for answers to questions I wasn’t asking but were, in the end, very present issues. Sometimes, one prefers to remain ignorant…

    L

  4. “I asked what Mum’s ‘power’ was, and received 2 with no changing lines.”

    If you’re asking about her as the person who birthed you, then Hex 2’s pretty appropriate – it’s the archetypal mother energy. If you’re asking about her power as an individual, then the response is along the lines of: “She didn’t initiate, but she put a lot of energy into carrying out a lead that was provided to her”. Hex 2 talks about somebody who looks for direction and then finds somebody or a guiding principle to follow. Hex 2 is a very Christian approach, Christian in the sense of how a Christian typically relates to God. Saints do it best, and a real saint is a very powerful person. When you put a lot of energy into something but you’re zeroing the ego all the while, the result is very powerful. I don’t know how much power your mum had, but the Yi seems to be saying that whatever she did have was characterized by that kind of power.

  5. Luis, if I could keep one reading out of all those I’ve ever been given, that one would be it.

    Dobro – “she put a lot of energy into carrying out a lead that was provided to her” is absolutely spot on. No sainthood, though. 🙂

  6. This is interesting and very helpful. I find Earth showing up as a primary hexagram quite a bit, not as the relating hexagram. So I think my takeaway must be that I should quiet my bias toward activity, and practice responsiveness as the activity. Easier said than done! And perhaps the relating hexagram is what tells me when a specific responsive act is “done” and not to meddle with it further, since the relating Hexagram for me was Repeating Chasms. Wait for it…do the thing called for…and wait again in the dark, with my ears flicking. Perhaps that’s also a sign for not expecting that my strongest powers may not be the ones invoked.

    • Correction to last line: Perhaps [Repeating Chasms] is also a sign that my strongest powers may not be the ones invoked.

    • ‘Waiting in the dark with my ears flicking’ – love it.

      With 2 as primary, perhaps it’s providing space for the second hexagram to emerge?

      • “With 2 as primary, perhaps it’s providing space for the second hexagram to emerge?”

        This was very useful for me, as I have had hex 2 as primary in very important questions that changed into hex 1 as second hex. Your reply is very useful wisdom here. Thank you

  7. It is interesting to me how some of your mother’s tremendous capacities with writing and organizing, filing and helping lots of people show up in her daughter’s genes in a much expanded and more brilliantly helpful way that will last, I think, throughout history, perhaps?

  8. Would hex 2 with nothing changing indicate a ‘NO’ to a question seeking guidance as to whether i should apply a job where a friend can recommend me? (I am up for a challenge, but ambivalent about whether this job is the right one). Thanks, Matthew

    • My first instinct would be to take it as a ‘yes’. Hexagram 2’s noble one is not unlike someone out looking for a job, and the auspices are all in favour of ‘following behind’ someone else’s initiative and going where you find helpers.

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