Hilary Barrett, I Ching

There’s a lot going on in the first line of Hexagram 53: ‘Wild geese gradually advance to the shore. The small child, danger, There are words, No mistake.’ This is the first stage in the journey of the wild geese as they gradually draw close to their natural home. Now they are just reaching the [...]

It’s a worthwhile exercise to look through the Sequence of hexagrams and see how it occasionally uses trigrams to tell stories – not just in its larger landscapes, but on a small scale. I’ve written about this quite a few times before, but I just noticed one that I’d missed out: the presence of thunder [...]

And I thought I wrote about trigrams in the Sequence. Heh. Here’s Frank Kegan doing a very complete and insightful job of it. He sees the Sequence in groups of ten (which I’ve found works startlingly well – you might think that more patterns would emerge if you took it in eights, but that doesn’t [...]

In my inbox today: a very short response to the last edition of ‘Friends’ Notes’: “dear Hilary! not interested. S….” OK, OK. This is positively the last time I’ll mention, and link to, and generally encourage you seriously to consider attending, the I Ching Class. Tomorrow is the final day to order at the discounted [...]

Which I Ching translation are you most likely to pick up for a reading? I ask because I’m putting together a list of translations to include in the ‘multi-translation index’ of a small I Ching glossary I’m putting together. (And also just because it’d be very interesting to learn what you use.) Since the same [...]

Do you know the feeling of being actually thirsty for readings? It’s a little like the need to talk with someone you love, a little like the need for soul-nourishment that you might satisfy by walking in woods, or making music, or creating something. There’s an inner pull towards the Yijing as Well, often felt [...]

Watching TV gives you square eyes, so I’ve been told. Living with Yi gives you that much stranger phenomenon, hexagram eyes. You see little subtle reflections of ideas from the Yijing everywhere. My reading for this year begins with Hexagram 5, so I’m especially attuned to anything that talks about qualities of waiting, expecting and [...]