Hexagram 57, in here and out there
The name of Hexagram 57 - Subtle Penetration, the Wind - shows imperial seals on a stand:
LiSe describes them as a personal inner blueprint, something that penetrates everything you do. Some influences flow in steadily and shape you, as wind following wind sculpts trees, or rock.However, this isn’t only something that happens to you. It can also be a way of having an influence, creating an effect. Reading what Maryam Webster wrote on her blog about ‘In Here and Out There‘, I realised she was describing how it works:
‘Attention is there, your inquisitive mind wants to find out more, setting your Intention to subconsciously go looking for mentions of the new interest. You do this Repetitively, many times a day and not suprisingly, the object of your focus appears to become more frequent in your life. You’ve just done a simple act of Manifestation in the physical. And this formula works time and again, equally well for changes in your self, your environment and the world around you.’
Yi says:
‘Subtle penetration, small creating success.
Harvest in having a direction to go.
Harvest in seeing the great person.’
You give your attention to the great person, to your highest potential as source of guidance. You have a direction to go, an intention: as Wilhelm says, ‘only when the penetrating influences works always in the same direction can the object be attained.’ And as ‘wind follows wind’, inwardly and outwardly, you repeat.
So ‘subtle penetration’ goes both ways:
- Influences flow into you, chosen or unchosen, and become the inner ‘seals’ expressed in all you see and do.
- What you see and do flows out from you and influences your environment.
The Image describes that outward flow:
‘Wind follows wind. Subtle penetration.
Noble one delegates orders to get things done.’
Yes, this is simple, practical advice: delegate, and more gets done; the more people you pass an idea to, the further it will reach. But it also works at a deeper level: ‘delegating orders’ also translates as ‘spreading the mandate’. Your personal mandate can reach out and penetrate into the world - which is something very like magic.
In the preceding hexagram, 56, there is the Sojourner, with his overwhelming sense of not belonging. (Out at the fringes of the New Age movement are people with a strong sense that they came to earth on a mission from another star system: natural Sojourners.) The Sequence says simply that in Hexagram 57 you enter in, you are home.
At root, this hexagram is about interpenetration. Just under the surface, we and our environment interpenetrate, feed into one another, each made of the other. When this shared inner nature shows itself a little more clearly, we call it synchronicity. As it emerges fully into consciousness, we move into the realms of Hexagram 58: open, joyous communication.
