Hilary Barrett, I Ching

Archive for May, 2007

Brain fetters (and hexagram 4)

Thursday, May 31st, 2007

My reading for this week is Hexagram 4, line 1:
‘Sending out the ignoramus,
Fruitful to make use of punishing people,
Fruitful to loosen fetters and shackles.
Going on in this way is shameful.’
I think the way my brain is(n’t) working just now is a nice illustration of the line. It goes something like this:

Identify knotty problem [...]

EclecticEnergies YiJing

Tuesday, May 29th, 2007

Ewald Berkers’ YiJing translation is available for download in pdf format. It’s worth having. I’d recommend you buy your own copy.
~~~
Now that’s a review in Ewald-style: succinct, straightforward, conveying the main point with enviable clarity. But since I’m naturally a wordier animal than he is, I’ll write a little more…
The book begins with a [...]

On the threshold of Progress

Friday, May 25th, 2007

A client who’s working on my I Ching course had received Hexagram 35, line 1. In Stephen Karcher’s comments on the line, she found reference to ‘using a net’ and wondered what this meant. So - not unreasonably - she asked Yi what to make of the ‘net’.

New I Ching books

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007

There are several new I Ching books available that I don’t have time to review just now. But still, the least I can do is pass on the news. So…
The first is from Ewald Berkers of EclecticEnergies. You can download a copy of his translation and commentary, as used in his site’s online reading, [...]

Yi’s lives

Thursday, May 17th, 2007

You know, for a venerable Chinese institution, Yi gets about a bit. I’ve personally read for people from the US, Canada, South America, UK, Austria, Portugal, India, Israel, New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and Malaysia, just to name the ones I can remember for now. And now look: Yi has its own Second Life, and [...]

Where did I go?

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

My posts here have been a tad sparse of late, and are about to get sparser. How come? Well, in theory the deadline to complete that new site design, with all its assorted rewritten content and behind-the-scenes programming, is 25th May. In practice…
(*pause for strange gibbering noises from the highest branch of a nearby [...]

The Chameleon Book

Thursday, May 10th, 2007

When did you last encounter a Yijing translation where the introduction engendered such curiosity that you were itching to read it through?
Quite. I’m sure this isn’t supposed to happen, but with the Chameleon Book, Freeman Crouch’s translation, I find it does. He reads the Yijing as a historical document, but goes beyond the relatively-familiar [...]