 Clarity's I Ching Newsletter: Issue 73 "Love is creation raised to a higher degree." Toyohiko Kagawa |
™Letter from the Editor— Dear Subscriber,
'Thank you's first:
If you were one of the people who bought the I Ching Course under the subscriber's special - thank you! I'm already really enjoying the wealth of ideas coming in in the first few assignments, and very much looking forward to getting to know (and helping to develop) your unique style of divination.
And if you were one of the people who didn't buy - also, thank you. I mean it! You've sent me an honest message that I needed to hear: despite the fact that you're interested in learning more about Yi, this course as it stands doesn't meet your needs. What I would really appreciate now is if you could also tell me why it doesn't. Something missing from the contents list? Too complicated? Too simple? Maybe you'd rather it were available on paper as well as as an instant download?
Please let me know - thank you!
Now, speaking of things on paper:
Steve Moore, who used to bring out a wonderful academic journal of Yijing studies called Oracle, has started bringing out individual 'Oracle Papers'. The first of these is his own work, 'Structural elements in the King Wen sequence of hexagrams', and is highly lucid and intelligent stuff. To order a copy, send a cheque for £2.00 or $5.00 (US), payable to The Oracle, to
The Oracle
7 Hillend
Shooters Hill
London SE18 3NH
UK
And to be notified if/when future issues become available, .
No audio content this time, sorry - the headset bit the dust and I've sent it off for a replacement. So we're back to old-fashioned pixels for now. A mini DIY corner, and - with Valentine's Day a not-too-distant memory - Hexagram 11 as 'hexagram of the month'. Hope you enjoy it! Let me know what you think... warm wishes,
Hilary
™DIY Corner: Only one question a day?— "I read some material that said that you should not do the question for I Ching more than 1 time a day. Is it true??"
The short answer: no.
And a longer answer...
This oracle doesn't come with a rule book. The only way to know for sure how often to consult with Yi is to experiment and discover what works for you. This is about developing a personal relationship with the oracle - and if I'm learning anything from running the I Ching Course, it's that no two relationships with the oracle are the same.
Still - here are some useful general tips:
™Hexagram of the Month: 11, Flowing ˜ I think this is the nearest the Yijing comes to a hexagram of love. Not so much love in its various expressions in human relationships, but as a pure, overwhelming cosmic force for creation.
It's most easily understood as the complementary pair to Hexagram 12, Blocked. In Hexagram 12 there's no communication, no movement, no chance to achieve anything of significance: 'Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful.' (Sarah Dening chose that quotation from Waiting for Godot to epitomise Hexagram 12.) As human experiences, Hexagrams 11 and 12 are 'of opposite kind'.
(Though I'm coming to believe that there is a way in which 12 is necessary to complete the experience of 11- but that would be for another issue!)
Hexagram 11 is a hexagram of intense dynamism: despite Wilhelm's translation of its name, Tai, as 'Peace', I've never found it to be remotely peaceful in practice. (This was well illustrated back when someone at the I Ching Community asked 'Will there be war with Iraq?' and received hexagram 11 with no changing lines.)
 Tai is the name of a sacred mountain where 'the emperor performed sacrifices ...in order to harmonise the great spirits with man' (Wu Jing Nuan) and invite their power into human life. The ancient character shows a human figure, hands upraised as if in offering, and a river flowing down. So the name Tai means harmony, great powers, and the flow of good things:
'Flowing.
Small goes, great comes.
Good fortune, creating success.'
Carried by the current of that river thundering down Mount Tai, small concerns dwindle away, and the energy to achieve great things pours in. It can be exhilarating - but it can also be overwhelming, as things that had never before seemed 'small' to us vanish down the river. When we're given this hexagram unchanging, especially, the question of how (or whether) we can interact with such a force comes to the fore. It can sometimes mean being confronted with life and death issues that set the rest of life firmly in perspective.
This aspect of the experience comes out clearly in its hidden core - the nuclear hexagram, 54, the Marrying Maiden. She is 'swept off her feet', hoisted without ceremony out of her comfort zone and up into a realm of far greater possibilities, but one altogether beyond her control. So is this loss of control a hidden danger of Hexagram 11? Perhaps. Or perhaps it's something you have to experience to know 'Flow' from the inside.
However we experience it, Tai is a positive force. And with Small Taming and Treading (hexagrams 9 and 10) behind it, it does actually hold out the promise of peace:
'Treading and also Flowing
Mean that tranquility follows.'
It's perhaps easiest to see how this can happen if you trace the path of the trigram qian, heaven's creative force, through the preceding hexagrams:
Small Taming has qian within, and seeks to express and contain it in small ways through the outer trigram, xun (the wind). Treading uses all the skills gathered here to dance below heaven (the lake dui below, qian above), treading the tiger's tail, taking care not to let it swallow up her own identity. So Treading develops a 'technology of the sacred', an ability to live with this kind of intensity by following behind it, never coming to rest.
With hexagram 11, the power of qian is no longer 'out there' to be followed; it's taken back inside, and made real through the outer trigram, Earth. Now there is a complete creative relationship between inspiration and realisation - and all things become possible:
'Heaven and Earth communicate. Flowing.
The prince enriches and accomplishes the dao of heaven and earth,
Supports and structures heaven and earth's mutual help and harmony,
Helps and protects the people.'
The dao of heaven and earth is to join together and beget new life. The prince simply gives his all in its support: his wealth, his skills in bringing people together (especially the 'ideas' people with the ones who can make things happen), his protection, and his presence.
Offsite:
A beautiful and very strange site (I'm not quite confident I've worked it out yet): generate a series of hexagrams, then read the poem this creates as it falls and dwindles away into the centre of your screen.
Two Yi translations freely available online (thanks, Brad, for telling me about these!):
Easy answers they are none by Thomas Meyer (This is a direct download link to the pdf file: right click and choose 'save target as' or the equivalent to save the file on your own computer.)
For each hexagram, this gives you:
On first impressions, I like this very much.
Second, a much more academic undertaking from Prof Gregory Richter. Pinyin transcription, a word-for-word gloss, and a translation of the Zhouyi, aiming to get back to the text's ancient meanings (minus Confucian interpretations). Download from this page.
A sampling from the I Ching Community:
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