Some people have great success consulting the oracle in financial matters, not least stock trading. But they have to realise there is no guarantee that it will always have the same idea they do about their best interests or highest good. An oracle is not quite a tame answer-dispenser.

Hexagram 26 is usually about becoming one’s own ‘farmer’, one’s own master.

If you read moving lines 1 and 6 of hexagram 64 in any translation, I think you will get the message of that reading loud and clear. 64.6, the final line of the oracle, is actually about the dangers of divination (amongst other things), as something you can get ‘drunk’ on to the point of being oblivious to real-world necessities.

For your second reading - since the first reading had told you all you need to know, I have a feeling the second one may have addressed the situation from Yi’s point of view rather than yours. Yi does sometimes refer to itself as the Vessel. This is just a hunch of mine, but in this light I think all three moving lines become self-explanatory.

“Why didn’t you let me buy that condo/that stock/that whatever that subsequently zoomed out of sight in price?”

Don’t you see the absurdity of your behaviour? If you don’t trust I Ching there is no point in keeping consulting it. What are you aiming at? You want I Ching to confirm your mistrust of it!

I’m not saying that we mustn’t have doubts, it’s sane to doubt, and I often had more or less the same doubts you express, but the only way to get out of the fog curtain is to act, to have the courage of one’s own opinions or will. Only real life will tell whether we were right or wrong, (and often things are a bit in between). It seems to me that one of your main problems is that you are afraid to take responsibility of your decisions, you are afraid of doing mistakes and so you want I Ching to take the decision for you. Why didn’t you buy that condo or stocks? You want the rose but not the thorns, you want to make money gambling with stock market but you don want to the risks it implies. In this way you’ll never make money, simply because you are preventing yourself from acting. YOU are cheating yourself not I Ching.

Don’t you see the big contradiction in your behaviour: you say you don’t want to be treated like a farm animal, but as a matter of fact you are following I Ching advice (or what you think is its advice) like a docile and -forgive me -dumb cow. If you want to be a man, act like a man: accept the risks the situation requires.

By the way, I think that to consult I Ching to make money is a path that leads nowhere. (Yes, I’ve tried it myself! “Who is without sin throw the first stone” -hoping my English is all right here) But Hilary might say a better word about that matter - we could start a new thread: “rich with I Ching, should we look for what we don’t have or for the riches we already possess?”

But there is another issue in your post which brings us back to my initial question. Let’s assume you really received wrong answers (I’m not qualified to say whether or not your interpretations were faulty). I have the feeling that strong emotional states or tendencies could influence our readings both at the moment of casting and when we have to understand the answer, and that of course will lead to wrong answers - which is the subject of this thread. And I would like to hear Hilary’s opinion about that.
It seems there is a kind of taboo about that subject among I Ching enthusiasts, we like to cling to the idea that “it” is always right, and we may be blind to all the impediments we create ourselves. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to examine all the things that allow us to “align with the universe” and so enables us to divine satisfactorily, and the ones that prevents us to do so? How many of you there feel that that is “the issue”?

But what I am talking about is 30 years of being astonished at how the Ching seems to direct me, guide me, manipulate me, right into the wrong action - the action that closes off whatever “good thing” I was hoping it would help me attain.

Hilary, this gets back to what you say about Hex 26. We are not interpreting it differently. But the problem is - who wants to be treated like a farm animal? I think Lao Tsu said to the Tao we are all sacrificial animals, and whenever I get this hexagram, in answer to the question: “Why didn’t you let me buy that condo/that stock/that whatever that subsequently zoomed out of sight in price?” I do have the feeling it is quite proudly telling me it has treated me like an animal - manipulating me to go another way from the way I wanted to go. So then I ask, Did you do this for my ultimate well-being? Because in the long run, in some way known to you but not to me, I will benefit because I took your advice. And it never comes out and says Yes, that’s it! Rather, it says, No, I did not try to benefit you. (hex 37 line 3) or - the worst - when I blame it for misdirecting me away from abundance, it very often answers: Hex 7 line 6. Which I take to mean (though I hope I am wrong) that it is saying I do not deserve a fiefdom, do not deserve the prosperity I trusted it to help me gain… This is what bothers me. I feel it has been presumptuous in deciding things without giving me true choices - just (as I say) manipulating, re-directing my energies through dishonest means.

For example, in the case of a condo (unimportant, but a memorable hurt) when I asked if I shld go buy one, it was six years ago, and instead of telling me I would make a lot of money, have a great place to live at lower cost than I was paying in rent - all true - it led me to believe the thing would go down in price. Since then, it has gone up about 800 percent! Now, if it had said, well you’ll make a lot of dough but spiritually, or healthwise, or for some reason we cant say but you’ll see you’ll see - that would be one thing - a Choice - a true advisor - but when it gets the specific answer opposite to right, and then the subsequent excuse, when I blame it, is Hex 26, I do want to say I didnt ask for a farmer, I needed an advisor!

Anyway, I am very grateful for your suggestions, and I did what you said/

I asked the Ching today: “What will be the effect on my life if I keep consulting with you and taking yr advice?”

The answer it gave was Hex 64 lines one and six.

Then, (to cover all the angles) I asked What will happen if I __stop__ consulting with you and it said:
Hex 50 lines 2, 4 and 6. I know I have always hated line 4, but I dont exactly know what it means here. In the past it has presaged such events as my dropping a platter of food, locking my keys in the trunk of the car, and others too embarrassing to mention on the worldwide. So — did it tell me to lay off or keep consulting? I cant tell.

Mabius, I’m glad you mentioned those readings, as it sounds as though you have been handicapped by misinterpretations. Hexagram 26 doesn’t mean ‘holding back’ or ‘dragging down’. It means building mastery - or, as something that could be done to you, it would mean being restrained and given the opportunity to build up your resources, to grow to greater strength. Lines four and five show the key metaphor of the hexagram very well: the farmer restraining and channelling the animals’ strength.

Hexagram 37, line 3 begs the question: who is in charge in your home? Who is responsible?

And 12, line 6, does not have to mean that the standstill will (magically) be overturned. It may mean that you have to act to overturn it.

What powers the I Ching is the subject of a whole other post/book/lifetime quest… I call it God, because I don’t know another word for it.

Finally, a suggestion that may surprise you. First thing Monday morning, take your I Ching book(s) along to a charity shop, and come home to an oracle-free house. I’d say ‘put it on the shelf for a few years’, except that I know what you mean by ‘addiction’. Think of this as a trial separation; the oracle won’t disappear. It’ll be available if and when you ever want to try the experiment again.

Or if you want to test this advice with one more reading - how about
“What effect will it have on my life for me to keep on consulting with you and following your advice as I have been doing?”
Email this one over to me if you like, and I’ll give you some quick pointers.

I’m a beginner myself too, but I think I can give you a hint: don’t try to use I Ching to know external things - that will come later - start asking about yourself, and use it as a chance to know you better. Perhaps it’s the only real important thing we need to know.
Good luck

It also is not shy about admitting it lied to me. I always get the feeling it is promising that in the future all its bad advice will suddenly appear in its true light and I will see how great it was - but that never happens. It has been saying H12 line 6 or H12 lines 5 and 6 for five years, but the Standstill never ever ends.

Have you ever heard of a person whose I Ching spirit or (or whoever or whatever is answering these questions) is evil? Or, just plain dumb? I’ve considered that, too.

What bothers me most, though, is that when I ask it “WHY” all this untoward advice, it can never bring itself to say, even as a lie, “I have been helping you.” I beg it to say it has been helping me, but it will not. It only insists, over and over H26 - I’ve been holding you back, dragging you down.

I have looked around the net, but so far the only negatives I have found against the Ching are from religious people, who lump it in with the other “demons” and familiar spirits (i.e. - the dead). I myself started consulting the Ching as a form of experiment, do wonder if I am doing something against God, because the Bible is replete with warnings against consulting spirits - but I guess I have convinced myself its more like “casting lots” which seems to be OK with the Bible.

Do you feel the Ching is powered by spirits, One Great Spirit, or just synchronicity? Or what?

Anyway, I am glad to read you have been getting satisfactory results. I have been thinking of giving it up altogether, but it’s tough because after all these years it’s like an addiction.

And in a few more words - absolutely not, at all. There has been the occasional flash of brilliant 20:20 hindsight on my part, but I’ve never been misled by the oracle. And I use it regularly for very, very practical help - it’s my indispensable, impartial business advisor in book form.

One recent example concerns real estate. Five years ago I used to ask it every single day: “Shouldnt I buy a condo? Shouldnt I buy an inexpensive little condo, pay less per month than I pay in rent and own my own place?”

Every day the I Ching said No No No. Now that condo is worth ten times what I would have paid for it and the I ching admits that, but keeps saying it is unimportant, a matter merely “ornamental,” while I am suffering financially.

My question: has anyone else found the I Ching to be really quite shitty? And I repeat, I have been at it for 30 years, enthralled by the way it does get lots of little things exactly right - but very disappointed by its inability to really be of practical help.

I am only a beginner myself, but the way I look at it, we need to look beyond what we expect the Yijing to answer, especially with the “fix it” style answers as if we were trying to sort out some plumbing. Maybe the Yijing IS answering the question, just not within the parameters we have set around what we expect to hear. I write the readings down in a notebook and sometimes when I look back upon previous answers I find that I was indeed given an answer, I just didn’t realise it at the time.

Have some patience and trust it - whether you believe it is a supra-consciousness or your own unconscious.

Best wishes,
hitchhiker